Friday, August 12, 2005

CD of the Rebbe Stops Family from Leaving

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CD of the Rebbe Stops Family from Leaving

הישוב מורג
In recent weeks, the International Campaign to Save the Nation and the Land has gone out on a project to distribute the Rebbe's picture and a CD with sichos on shleimus haaretz to all residents of Gush Katif.  On Tuesday, the group visited the Morag settlement.  One woman came out and emotionally told the activists:  "My husband and I were planning on leaving the settlement.  However, on Motzei Shabbos we watched the CD of the Rebbe about Eretz Yisroel Hashleima and we saw how much the Rebbe cares about our settlements and how important it is for us to stay.  We decided to remain and to fight until the last moment."

Hatamim Dovid Kirshenzaft told Chabad.info that the CD has been received with great respect and appreciation.  Many said that this is the first time that they personally witnessed the powerful personality of the Rebbe, particularly in matters of Shleimus Haaretz.   





500,000 Attend Rally in Tel Aviv

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500,000 Attend Rally in Tel Aviv

Half-a-million people gathered in Kikar Malchei Yisrael in Tel Aviv for a huge rally of solidarity with Gush Katif and Northern Shomron.  The title of the rally was:  "Gush Katif, I promise you - we will all be there."  The spokesman of the Yesha Council announced that in addition to the thousands in the square, there were thousands more stuck in traffic on the way there.   The rally was delayed to allow more time for people stuck in traffic to arrive.




International Campaign: Go to Gush Katif

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International Campaign: Go to Gush Katif

The International Campaign to Save the Nation and the Land has issued an urgent call to go to Gush Katif and the Kissufim Crossing.  The Campaign announced that at this critical time it is an absolute obligation on every person to do whatever they can to prevent the expulsion decree from going through.




JTA Reports on Boy Scout Jamboree

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JTA Reports on Boy Scout Jamboree

Scout tests shofar he made in Tzivos Hashem shofar workshop
BOWLING GREEN, Va., Aug 10 (JTA) By Aliza Karp -- When Boy Scout troop 711 from Alaska lost four of its leaders in a freak electrical accident on the first day of the recent National Scout Jamboree here, the one Jewish Scout in the Alaska contingent was left in a quandary.

On the Sunday morning of the gathering, when jamboree activities were suspended for a few hours, all of Noah Magen's troop mates were headed to religious services for their respective faiths. But what does a Jewish Scout do on Sunday?

For Noah, the answer was the Shul Tent, where daily services and special programming were provided for Jewish Scouts.
The Boy Scout Jamboree, which is held every four years at Fort A.P. Hill, near Fredericksburg, brought together more than 35,000 Boy Scouts and another 8,000 volunteer staff for the July 25 to Aug. 3 gathering -- the largest jamboree since 1964.
(Continued in full article)


The Boy Scout Jamboree, which is held every four years at Fort A.P. Hill, near Fredericksburg, brought together more than 35,000 Boy Scouts and another 8,000 volunteer staff for the July 25 to Aug. 3 gathering -- the largest jamboree since 1964.
For the fourth time, Tzivos Hashem, a Jewish children's organization within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, provided special programming for the estimated 1,000 Jewish Scouts who attended this year's jamboree. In addition to hundreds of Scouts who are members of nonsectarian troops, there were also Scouts from all-Jewish troops at the 10-day event.
Some 100 observant Scouts and leaders of the Shomer Shabbat, or Sabbath observant, contingent -- made up of Jewish Scouts from across North America -- prayed together daily.
Although all the Scouts may not belong to Shomer Shabbat troops in their hometowns, the Shomer Shabbat contingent allows Jewish Scouts at the jamboree to be as observant as they choose, providing kosher food and scheduling daily prayers and Sabbath services. On the jamboree's Friday night, the Shul Tent and the adjacent Chapel Tent were overflowing with 500 Scouts for Shabbat services.
Scout Patrick Matson, the sole Jew in Troop 271 from Ocean Springs, Miss., wanted to attend the Friday night services. In order to abide by the buddy system required at the camp, he brought a Catholic friend with him.
Matson found the service, filled with Hebrew songs and English prayers, spirited and fun. "My friend said the service was amazing," he said.
After the services, a non-Jewish Scout in his late teens went to Rabbi Pinny Gniwisch, the chaplain for the Northwest Region of the Boy Scouts of America, and told him in a strong Southern accent, "I don't think I ever met a Jew before, but if it is always like this, sign me up!"
Each jamboree participant was required to visit the Religious Relationships Booth representing his particular religion. The Jewish booth was a constant buzz of activity. Ben Shreibman of Troop 41 from Cleveland put on tefillin for the first time in his life.
"It felt weird," he admitted. Andrew Foster of Troop 1704 from Dallas was with a Jewish friend, who put on tefillin. "I never saw anything like it before," Foster said. "It's pretty cool."
Six Jewish Boy Scouts were called to the pulpit in the Shul Tent to recite blessings over the Torah for the first time in their lives, stimulating interest by the local Fredericksburg, Va., newspaper, the Free Lance-Star, which featured a full page of pictures from the mini bar mitzvah ceremonies in its July 29th edition.
The Tzivos Hashem program in the Shul Tent drew close to 1,000 Boy Scouts. The event, which opened with brief greetings from Boy Scout dignitaries, included a play staged by the Shomer Shabbat contingent, a juggling display, and a lively audience-participation singing session led by Rabbi Shmuly Gutnick from the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn. The jamboree Web site dubbed him "The Reggae Rabbi."
The Scouts then went to various booths in the Shul Tent, where they crafted their own shofars, braided their own Havdalah candles, had their pictures taken in front of a panorama display of the Western Wall in Jerusalem while wearing tefillin, and wrote private letters to God that would be mailed to Israel to be placed in the Wall.
Participating in these activities allowed many of the Scouts to complete the requirements for the Jewish Boy Scout award, the Ner Tamid Award.
When he ran out of the patches given for this award, Bruce Baker, the vice chairman of the Connecticut Yankee Council of the Jewish Committee on Scouting, saw it as a good sign.
"That says so much that Jewish scouting is alive and well," he said.
Jay Lenrow, the chairman of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting, attended his first jamboree in 1964 with his father, who was also his scoutmaster. When he returned in 2001, Lenrow was a scoutmaster and his son was a Scout.
"What we want to do is create a strong Jewish connection to link the generations by combining the love of the outdoors and camping achievements, coupled with growth and development of Jewish knowledge and observance," Lenrow said. "Scouting can do that."
Howard Spielman of Sharon, Mass., is the modest, soft-spoken, powerhouse who initiated the current surge in programming that allows Orthodox youth to benefit from the Boy Scouts.
Spielman brought a small Shomer Shabbat contingent to the jamboree in 1993. At that time, he brought his own 20-by-20 tent and an extension cord so he could have two light bulbs shining for evening services.
In 1997, he brought a 20-by-40 tent to house his growing contingent. By 2001, Boy Scouts officials provided an even larger tent. And this year, the Shomer Shabbat contingent was supplied with one 44-by-66 tent; one 20-by-40 side tent; five 20-amp circuits, and 32 outlets.
"What is most satisfying," Spielman said, "is seeing the impact on the Shomer Shabbat boys and the other Jewish Scouts who come to jamboree. They benefit from the opportunity to grow in their Jewishness through scouting programs."
On Sunday afternoon, the Shul Tent hosted a meeting of Chabad rabbis from Virginia and Maryland and officials from the Boy Scouts of America.
"We stand ready to support any organization that shares Scout values" said David Richardson, the national director of Religious Relationships of the Boy Scouts.
Part of the large crowd



Warning to Bush: Al-Quaeda State Forming

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Warning to Bush: Al-Quaeda State Forming

In today's New York Times, a full-page ad appears with an open letter to President George Bush, calling upon him to stop pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.  Prominent Chabad rabbanim and activists express their dismay that at the same time that Bush is fighting terror in Pakistan and Iraq and trying to destroy Al-Quaeda, he is helping these very same terrorist organizations establish a base for themselves in Gaza.

Continued in full article.  


The letter is signed by Rabbanim R. David Drukman; R. Shalom Ber Volpa; R. Shmuel Butman, head of Lubavitch Youth Organization; R. Yakov Schwey, member of Badatz of Crown Heights; R. Yekutiel Rapp and R. Ephraim Julius.  The Rabbanim warn Bush that by pressuring Israel to hand a victory to terror, he is endangering not only Jewish but also American lives.

President Bush was interviewed on television and presented the ridiculous position that the disengagement will help increase security for Israel.  He also said that the disengagement was only the first step in carrying out his "road-map", which includes withdrawal from all of Yesha and establishing a Palestinian state on the land. 

To listen to the interview with Bush, click here!



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The Fate of Gush Katif is the Fate of New York
by Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski
Thursday, 11 August 2005, 0 0
The Jewish people were the first ones to introduce to the world the idea of embracing conflict as a way of life, and seeing conflict as something positive and wholesome. Life is a battle <I>royale</I> between good and evil, material and spiritual, potential and actual, truth and lies, darkness and light. The belief in one G-d ultimately means that man has the potential to reflect that unity by living a life that's unified, consistent, connected and wholesome. The only way to achieve this breakthrough is through great effort and struggle to overcome our inner tensions and conflicts that result from our external ego disconnect, which distorts our genuine Divine nature.

Those who don't believe in G-d loath conflict. Peace at any price is their motto in life, even at the expense of losing one's soul. The Torah (Job 5:7), however, states: Man was created for hard work. It is what distinguishes men from brutes. It is our connection to eternity and the sure path towards a meaningful life.

In the millennium-long struggle between good and evil, for the first time ever, evil is on the run. We have personally experienced and witnessed the miraculous collapse of communism and despotism throughout the world, and the consequent freeing of billions of people.

In G-d's world, everything needs a holy spark of truth and goodness in order to survive. Pure, absolute and undiluted evil self-destructs. Witness the generation of the flood or Hitler's Thousand Year Reich, which self-destructed. Today, we are facing new strata of evil, a brash declaration of war against life itself and against G-d's desire for existence by terrorists who are plumbing new depths of depravity. Even the Nazis didn't kill themselves.

The good news is, if this is evil's best shot: total nihilism, absolute destruction for destruction's sake, then evil must be scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's all over and evil knows it. This is evil's last act of desperado, its last hurrah. It's suicidal in every sense of the word. One could even detect an ever-so-slight backlash developing even amongst Muslims against the mindless, blood-curling head-sawing and random evil being perpetrated against Arab civilians and children.

How tragic that, at this critical moment, with the smell of victory in the air, Jews who have courageously led the battle against evil for 3,800 years have totally abandoned the good fight and have deserted the front lines. It's surreal; while Americans are fighting, Jew are surrendering. The Jew courageously led the world in the battle against terrorism in 1967, in Entebbe, and in 1981, when Israel took out Iraq's atomic reactor. For the first time in Jewish history, however, Jews are running for the hills.

In an astounding feat, beginning with Oslo and continuing with the Jewish expulsion from Gaza, Israel has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of holding out for genuine peace with democracies founded on righteousness, human dignity and respect for human life, Israel has surrendered to the status quo. Why Israel has chosen a moment of triumph to send a defeatist message, projecting weakness, while our wildest dreams are materializing before our very eyes, is truly puzzling.

During the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, a thousand Jews, fighting practically with their bare hands, managed to hold off the Germans for close to a month, while Israel, which boasts one of the mightiest military machines in the world, can't deal with a few thousand murderers. Israel has just called up its reserves in the largest peacetime mobilization ever not to fight against the daily rocket assaults and terror attacks, but to fight the settlers and their supporters.

<b>It's All the Settlers' Fault</b>

Why should 8,000 Jews insist on living amongst 1.4 million Arabs?

Of all arguments, this one by far is the most objectionable. It proves the power of propaganda; people will repeat nonsense not realizing how foolish they sound. There are 20,000 Jews living in Berlin amongst 3.6 million Germans. No one would dare suggest that we should expel the Jews from Berlin because they may be a provocation to 3.6 million Germans. So, let's get this straight. A Jew is allowed to live in Berlin, a Jew is allowed in Moscow. The only place in the world he is not allowed to live is in Israel. Why? Because some Arab Nazi doesn't want to see a single Jew before his eyes. It is unconscionable that Israel is going to accommodate Arab Nazis. Israel is planning to evacuate the dead as well, because Arab savages barbarically burned the grave of the Biblical figure Joseph, so Israel doesn't trust them that they will not desecrate the dead.

People drip with disdain when they use the word 'settlers', as if it's some dirty word. What is their crime? That they settled on their own land, insisting on a Jew's right to live anywhere in the world, especially in Israel. The 'settlers' of Gaza took sand dunes that were never inhabited by the Arabs and, through the sweat of their brow, turned them into a paradise and a financial powerhouse. Every moral person must be appalled by the illegal act of racism and apartheid of forcing Jews out of their homes to accommodate the murderous tendencies of Jew-haters. One searches in vain through the annals of human history to find a single example where a nation shamefully exiled itself from its own land and so shamelessly capitulated to terrorism.

By this logic, Israel should close up shop. Is it practical to have five million Jews in a sea of hundreds of millions of Arabs and billions of Muslims? Demographics don't frighten us. The Torah promises us that we will always be the smallest of all nations. Abraham and Sara stood alone against the whole world. Our power is not in our might, but in our right.

The Jew is a sheep surrounded by seventy wolves. Pretending to be a wolf won't guarantee our safety. A Jew recognizes that it's only the shepherd and our relationship to the shepherd that could guarantee our safety and security.

<b>Israel is a Democracy</b>

How can we double guess the decision of the democratically elected government of Israel?

In the democratically elected government of America in the 1950s, it was legal to racially discriminate against Blacks. It doesn't mean that it was moral, legal or just. Good people refused to accept the inherently evil notion of judging a person by his skin color. The expulsion of Jews is inherently an immoral act, and even if it were a democratic and majority decision, it wouldn't make it right or just.

The only excuse for liberal democracy, why individuals agree to give up their inalienable G-d-given rights to liberty, is because of the government promise to protect them. Democracy is a trade-off, freedom for security. A government that for political expediency places its own citizens' lives in harm's way, placing 144 Jewish communities on the firing lines of Kassam rockets and worse, loses its legitimacy and is nothing more then a Mafia with guns, which will use brute force to force people out of their homes and beat them into submission.

In the last elections, the choice couldn't have been clearer. Amram Mitzna for expulsion and Ariel Sharon vehemently opposed, stating that the fate of Gush Katif is the fate of Tel Aviv. Sharon won in the biggest landslide in Israeli history. When he abruptly made a 180% about-face, Sharon promised that he would abide by his party's vote. When he lost the Likud vote, he promptly proceeded to ignore that vote and promised to abide by his cabinet's vote. When he was about to lose the cabinet vote as well, he used a very 'democratic' ploy and took the unprecedented step of firing two ministers to create an artificial majority. When he was urged to allow the people to vote in a referendum, he refused, knowing full well that he would have lost the referendum.

To the great merit of the Jewish people, it must be stated for the record that every time Oslo was put to a vote they voted against it. Even today, if you count out the Arab vote in the Knesset, it is doubtful that Sharon has a majority of Jewish votes in favor of the expulsion.

<b>We're Sitting Comfortably in New York</b>

What rights do we, New York Jews, have to get involved in Israel's business whether they disengage or not?

The real question is do we dare not get involved. The imminent expulsion of Jews from Gaza is a clear and present danger to our safety and security, and the safety and well-being of our wives and children, and the safety of all Americans.

Terrorism is like a cancer and you never make peace with cancer. Certain battles you don't have the luxury to grow tired of. Terrorism is a malignant tumor and you don't make peace with a tumor. If you play nice with cancer, it will kill you. Show mercy to a tumor and it will metastasize and mercilessly kill you and kill itself in the process. The only merciful thing to do is to eradicate, destroy and pulverize the tumor into oblivion.

Instead, Israel, which was always on the forefront in the war against terrorism, is about to deliver, on a silver platter, terrorism's greatest reward. The biggest harbor of terrorism today is neither Afghanistan nor Iraq, but Israel, which is about to get out of the way of the terrorists so that Hamas, Hizbullah, Fatah and now Al-Qaeda will have a safe haven to train and develop thousands of new terrorists in total freedom, right at its doorsteps.

Ideas have consequences. This mindless surrender to terrorism has exploded in our face in Iraq. Today, London, tomorrow...? The cancer of terrorism has metastasized out of control. If the expulsion will go through in Gaza, it will guarantee the next 9/11 and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

At this point, the US president's war against terrorism is in full retreat. The president's proclaimed support for a Palestinian State was the first major victory for the terrorists. America spent 300 billion dollars taking out one terrorist state in the Middle East in order to establish another one. The disengagement is another major, huge victory for the terrorists and will only serve the purpose of emboldening Terrorism International. The expulsion means that three hundred billion dollars spent in Iraq was for naught, and it will betray the heroic sacrifice of our young soldiers and render them in vain.

Israel is the heart of the world. When the heart is healthy, the whole organism is healthy. When the heart is ill and loses its vigor, the whole organism becomes critically ill. The world is a global village and what happens in Israel today will happen to the rest of the world tomorrow. At the end of the day, the fate of Gush Katif is the fate of New York.

<b>Peace Through Strength</b>

Peace through strength holds out the only hope for this troubled region. By standing firm, Israel could deliver the coup de grace to terrorism around the world. By helping to hasten the inevitable collapse of dictatorship and totalitarianism in the Middle East, Israel could become part of the solution instead of becoming part of the problem, and earn its honorable place in history.

A wise man once quipped: While it's easy to take the Jew out of exile, it's difficult to take the exile out of the Jew. Instead of exiling themselves from Gaza, it's high time that the Jewish people removed the deep, dark and corrosive exile from within.

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LEGAL RIGHTS DIRECTOR´S WIFE ARRESTED

The wife of Honenu legal rights organization director Shmuel Meidad has been placed under arrest until the end of the legal proceedings against her. Her 8-month old baby will remain with her.
Three of Etti Meidad's nine children - all three of whom are under age 6 - were taken with her to jail when she was arrested on Wednesday. She was arrested following an appeal by the State Prosecution against the dropping of charges against her in a more than two-year-old case (see below).

<I>Email subscribers <a href="http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=87622" class="wntu">click here to see photos</a>, courtesy of "www.hebron.com/news/ettimeidad.htm"</I>
<IMAGE1>
Though the judge on duty originally ruled that the children could stay with their mother in detention, and that questions regarding their future would be discussed the next day, government officials abrogated this ruling and snatched them away from their mother that evening.
<IMAGE2>
The Head Welfare Officer of the Jerusalem Region, Gila Greenbaum, ordered the removal of the two older children, David and Yehudah, from their mother and their placement with a foster family. (The youngest one, 8-month-old Miriam, is still nursing and was allowed to remain with her mother.) Wednesday evening, police officers arrived at the cell and forcibly removed David and Yehuda from their mother.
<IMAGE3>
Ettie later said that the children were traumatized and cried hysterically. The two children were transferred to a foster family against court order - instead of sending them home to their father, who had to travel to the family in Gush Etzion to pick them up.
<IMAGE4>
A spokesman for the Honenu legal organization issued the following response:
"The fact that the decision to remove the Meidad children and place them in a
foster family was made contrary to due proceedings of law, apparently stemming from direct intervention by a governmental organization, leads to the suspicion that this is a politically motivated abuse of governmental power in an attempt to apply severe psychological and physical pressure on Etti's husband Shmuel Meidad, head of Honenu Legal Defense Fund.

"We have learned that Greenbaum received her instructions directly from Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, Head of the Special Tasks Unit in the State Prosecution Office. This unit was assigned of late to deal exclusively with coordinating law enforcement efforts against the opponents of the Disengagement Plan.

"<a target="_blank" href="http://www.honenu.org.il" class="wntu">Honenu, </a>
in its four years of existence, has helped over 5,000 Jews who were persecuted by the law enforcement system in issues relating to the complex military and political situation in Israel. During the last four months alone, Honenu represented over 1,400Jews in legal proceedings initiated against them by the Special Tasks Unit in the State Prosecution Office due to their opposition to the Disengagement Plan.

"This is a wake-up call to what is ahead of us during the expulsion. As is known, the State has ordered Welfare Department social workers to take part in the expulsion efforts, and in certain cases to place children, such as those whose parents have been arrested, in foster care..."

There have also been cases of children ordered removed from their parents because the parents' anti-disengagement behavior, or their tolerance of similar behavior by their children, was deemed to render them neglectful and incompetent.

Honenu warns that this latest incident and others are "a clear indication of what are the true intentions of the State regarding the children of settlers."

Etti Meidad was arrested as the result of a protest incident following the brutal expulsion of widow Livnat Ozeri from her hilltop home outside Kiryat Arba in March 2003. Several women of Hevron were tried afterwards for "child neglect" for having brought their children with them to a spontaneous demonstration at the site of the destroyed home. On a rainy and cold day, they closed themselves up in a car and refused to come out for several hours, protesting the nighttime eviction of the young mother and her young children, just several weeks after their husband/father was murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Three of the women were convicted, but the fourth - Etti Meidad - was acquitted due to lack of evidence.

From the outset, Etti refused to attend the trial, believing it was a farce. After being forcefully brought to court for the first hearing, the trial judge granted her an exemption from attending the proceedings, and eventually acquitted her. The Prosecution appealed the decision, and a court date was set. Neither Meidad nor the main witness against her - a policewoman - attended, however, and the judge decided to close the file altogether. The prosecution refused to accept the verdict and demanded that the court reopen the case, and that the judge issue a writ of habeas corpus, forcing Mrs. Meidad to attend the hearing. The judge agreed to both demands.

On Wednesday, policemen arrived at the Meidad home in Hevron, demanding that she sign the writ in which she promises to either attend the trial or forfeit a sum of money. She refused to sign, and likewise refused to leave her young children alone and go with the police. Over 50 security forces were then called into action, including police, Border Guard police and soldiers, blocking off the Beit Hadassah neighborhood from east and west. After a two-hour standoff, they finally removed Etti Meidad from her home, taking her three youngest children with them to the Gush Etzion police station. At about 10 PM, two children were forcibly taken from her, and were taken, crying, to foster family in Alon Shvut, from where their father came to take them.

Thursday, at a court hearing in Jerusalem, the judge accepted the police request and ruled that Mrs. Meidad must remain in prison until the conclusion of proceedings against her, due to her refusal to attend court hearings. The
next hearing is due to take place at the end of September.

Etti Meidad asked the judge, "The previous judge exempted me from attended the court hearings. Why don't you do the same?" He responded, "That was him, and this is me."

The Meidads have decided not to appeal the court ruling, and Etti will remain in prison for now. Etti explained that she prefers to "sit in jail, despite the suffering my family and children will face, rather than cooperate with the evils perpetrated against our people. I will not cooperate with the forces who are expelling David Hatuel, a close friend of ours [whose wife and all four daughters were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Gush Katif over a year ago], and with the forces who permitted the eviction of Livnat Ozeri and the destruction of her home. I will not
cooperate with the forces who are planning to build a casino in Elei Sinai [one of the Gush Katif communities slated to be destroyed in the coming weeks]. If this is the price we have to pay, so be it."

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