A long-running battle over worship at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine, has been rejoined as Israeli police arrested five Jewish women who wore prayer shawls at a morning service, contrary to Orthodox practice enforced at the site. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Israel
Israel: Women with gall in shawl Wall brawl
Israel: Victims of the Nazis? No, only women!
The Sisterhood has covered Haredi exclusion of women from the Israeli public sphere for some time now. When it comes to the removal of women’s images from public view, we’ve seen the disappearance of women from advertisements; the photoshopping of female leaders like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton out of news photos; the blurring of women’s and girls’ faces on memorial notices and even the erasing of a pair of women’s shoes from an innocuous photo of a family’s shoe drawer. Continue reading
Australia: Islamic ‘Peace’ = exterminating Jews
Suppose they held a Peace Conference and nobody came? Continue reading
Israel: Hamas commander killed — and ten others, including children
Israel hit more than 20 “targets” inside Gaza after it killed the head of the Islamist organisation’s military wing, Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, along with another Hamas official, in a missile strike against the car in which they were traveling…
It was part of a wider Israeli operation against militant groups in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, the Israel Defence Force said, and followed a wave of rocket attacks against Israel.
There were scenes of chaos at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, as dozens of seriously injured patient were stretchered in, ambulances tearing off to collect more casualties.
Gaza’s health ministry said 10 civilians have been killed, including two young children – an 11-month-old and a six-year-old – while at least 45 people were wounded, 10 of them in critical condition.
This is what happens when you institutionalise paranoia.
Bulgaria: Hezbollah bomb kills six
A senior United States official has confirmed Israel’s assertions that the suicide bomber who killed five Israelis in an attack on Wednesday was a member of a Hezbollah cell operating in Bulgaria.
As the bodies of the victims were flown home to Tel Aviv, the official said the US intelligence assessment is the bomber was ”acting under broad guidance” to hit Israeli targets when the opportunity presented itself. That guidance was given to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, by its primary sponsor, Iran, he said.
Israel: ‘Messianic’ leaders mislead public
The recently retired chief of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency has described the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, as men driven by ”messianic feelings” and said that he had ”no faith” in them to lead a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
”The fact that we are talking about clever and calculated people, who seek to stay in power and are striving to reach their goals underhandedly and with an idea of the moves and intentions of their rivals, does not make them rational in the Western sense of the word,” he said in an address on Israel’s Independence Day.
via SMH
Or, indeed, any other sense.
And these guys have nuclear weapons.
Australia: Christian finds bus station, God
Q: Why is God like a Number 400 bus?
A: Because he doesn’t appear for a long time, and then three of Him turn up at once.
Crucifixion generally happened on busy roads so all should see and be intimidated by the horrific scene of slow, agonising death and subsequent decay. Some scholars argue that the body would have been left to rot and so there would be no burial, no stone and no miraculously empty tomb.
But in place of the horror was a strange reassurance: buses depart from that place of the skull for Bethlehem and the journey home.
That one detail put the whole story in perspective for me. All was possible in that place; the hopes and fears of many years met in that moment.
I can understand that for someone brought up in Australia, an adequate supply of public transport comes as something of a shock, but surely this goes too far. Was there ever an epiphany of such staggering irrelevance?
Israel: We don’t need ‘show cause’ with God on our side
With her muscles wasting and her heart under increasing strain, 30-year-old Hana al-Shalabi is on her 41st day without food, and doctors say her condition is worsening by the day.
She has been joined by at least 29 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strikes in Israeli jails, as the protests against Israel’s practice of detaining people without charge gains momentum.
Most, like Ms al-Shalabi, are being held in administrative detention – that is, without charge for periods of up to six months that can be renewed indefinitely.
Institutional paranoia — coming soon to a theocracy near you.
Israel: Air strikes kill 15
Israel pounded Gaza for the second day in a row Saturday, trading airstrikes and rocket fire with Palestinian militants and killing 15 of them as the deadliest Gaza violence in over a year showed no signs of abating.
Despite Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire, Palestinians fired more than 100 rockets, some striking major cities in southern Israel and seriously wounding an Israeli civilian. The military responded with more than a dozen airstrikes and the targeted killings of Palestinian militants from various Gaza organizations.
How do you know they were militants? They must be — they’re dead. Circular reasoning doesn’t only occur in theology.
Israel: Brave woman resists Orthodox Jewish bigotry
Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
And then they'll start doing THIS, just wait and see!
A woman passenger on a public bus from Ashdod to Jerusalem Friday was told by an ultra-Orthodox male passenger to move to the back of the bus. The man held the door of the bus open and would not allow it to move for approximately 30 minutes.
When other passengers began to complain about the delay, the driver called the police. The policeman who arrived on the scene spoke with the man and then also asked the woman, Tanya Rosenblit, to move to the back of the bus. When she refused, the man who had been holding the door alighted and the bus continued on its way.
Rosenblit, who said she was dressed modestly, was traveling on Egged bus 451 to get to work in Jerusalem. She said a Haredi man, who boarded two stops after she did, refused to allow the driver to close the door after he saw Rosenblit. Rosenblit said the man called her a derogatory word for a non-Jewish woman, and told the driver it was his right to have her sit in the back and that he had paid to be able to do so.
“I’m allowed to be a vicious bigot! I’ve paid!”
Israel: Proudly marching into the past, one technology at a time
Any colour you like, as long as it's black
The first step was a kosher-certified cell phone, approved by the rabbinical committee for telecommunications and deliberately devoid of many modern capabilities including text messaging, video options, internet and access to sex lines.
Picking up where its competitors left off, Israel’s second largest mobile provider, Partner, teamed up with manufacturer Alcatel-Lucent to adapt that idea and offer a more personal touch to Israel’s Yiddish-speaking ultra-Orthodox communities.
The result was a cell-phone model with an entirely Yiddish interface, replete with Hassidic folk ring tones, developed by Marc Seelenfreund, CEO of Israel’s Accel Telecom, and a special team of translators.
Kosher cellphones? I didn’t even know they were edible!
But Apple reports that they are now working on a Yiddish version of Siri which reminds you to eat, eat! and automatically enrols you in a medical school when you matriculate.
Israel: ten killed in Gaza hostilities
Israeli airstrikes killed nine Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing in southern Gaza on Saturday, according to the militant group. And Gaza militants fired salvos of rockets at cities in southern Israel, killing one Israeli and wounding at least two others in a sudden escalation of cross-border violence.
Israel: Jewish throwbacks protest girls’ school
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox residents of Beit Shemesh staged a demonstration Tuesday evening outside a religious girls’ school in the city, in protest of the Education Ministry’s decision to open the school near haredi neighborhoods.
Senior Beit Shemesh rabbis took part in the rally, in which participants called for “maintaining the purity of the haredi neighborhoods against strangers plotting to desecrate them, backed by the evil regime.”…
A female journalist was assaulted by a small group of young protestors, who cursed and spat at her as well.
Ignorance is not a crime. Wilful ignorance is.
Israel: Good enough to fight, not good enough to sing
Four of the nine religious cadets who walked out of a military event as a female soldier began singing solo will be dismissed from their officers’ course, an IDF committee has decided.
The remaining five soldiers will continue the course after managing to convince the committee that the move had not been preplanned.
The incident took place on Monday evening during an event focusing on Operation Cast Lead. When female soldiers began singing solo as part of a military band, the religious troops chose to leave the auditorium.
They were followed by Regiment Commander Uzi Kileger, who informed them angrily: “If you don’t come back inside immediately, you will be refusing orders. Anyone refusing an order will be dismissed from the course.”…
Rabbi Haim Drukman, chairman of the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva Center, said in response that the dismissal was an “outrageous, delusional and immoral decision.”
“The obligation to listen to women singing appears nowhere in the General Staff command, and listening to women singing cannot testify to the cadet’s abilities as an officer and commander in the IDF,” Rabbi Drukman said.
Showing contempt for a fellow-soldier doesn’t ‘testify to a cadet’s abilities’? Not if she’s a woman, apparently.
Israel: Hezbollah attack kills eight
The attack by gunmen on bus 392, crowded with holiday-makers and Israeli soldiers going home for the weekend, has pulled the bloodshed in Syria and political instability elsewhere in the region into sharp focus.
Eight Israelis – six civilians and two soldiers – died and at least 31 were injured in the attacks near the southern city of Eilat, near the Israel-Egypt border after gunmen opened fire on two buses, two cars carrying civilians and a military unit that responded to the attacks. Several gunmen were killed in the security response that followed.
And this will achieve a better life for Iranian and Syrian citizens … how, exactly?
Israel: Ok to kill babies, say rabbis…
…because they may grow up to hate Jews.
Rabbis Dov Lior and Yacob Yousef had endorsed a highly controversial book, the King’s Torah – written by two lesser-known settler rabbis. It justifies killing non-Jews, including those not involved in violence, under certain circumstances.
The fifth chapter, entitled “Murder of non-Jews in a time of war” has been widely quoted in the Israeli media. The summary states that “you can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews”.
At one point it suggests that babies can justifiably be killed if it is clear they will grow up to pose a threat.
You know, I can’t think of any better way to make babies grow up hating Jews than threatening to kill them if they do.
US: Rabbi and wife kidnapped man to force divorce
A rabbi and his wife have surrendered to the FBI on charges they abducted an Israeli man, beat him and threatened to bury him alive if he didn’t give his wife a religious divorce.
The case against David and Judy Wax in US federal court marks a strange twist in a chain of events that started with a divorce dispute in Israel’s Rabbinical Court over the victim’s refusal to give his wife a “get” – an Orthodox Jewish divorce document permitting a wife to remarry….
Israeli media reports at the time said the Rabbinical Court had shunned him and put him on a wanted list, and appeals for his whereabouts appeared in religious publications.
“Wanted: for failure to divorce. Have you seen this Jew?”
“Pin it on the noticeboard at the front of the synagogue, Rabbi, with the other mug shots.”
Honestly. You can’t make this stuff up.
Israel: Management conference bans women from attending
Women hoping to attend a management conference in Jerusalem last week were shocked to discover that the event was closed to females.
The ultra-orthodox Jewish newspaper Hamodia, which was running the event, had instructed security to prevent all women, including female reporters, from entering the venue. Speakers included Israel’s finance minister and the head of one of the country’s biggest banks.
“How can we expect to form a representative view of management in the modern world,” said a spokesperson, “if we let women attend?”
Israel: Pro-Palestinian activists blocked
Israeli authorities have denied entry to 85 pro-Palestinian activists at Ben Gurion International Airport, while about 200 other passengers from American and European cities have been barred from flying to Israel after the government provided foreign airlines with the names of suspected activists.
Those barred on Friday included citizens of the US, Belgium and Germany, said the national police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld.
Those who had not already been deported were detained and all would be flown out of Israel over the next 48 hours depending on flight availability, he said.
Israel: Jewish court sentences dog to death by stoning
A JERUSALEM rabbinical court has condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court’s judges 20 years ago….
Despite attempts to drive the dog out of the court, the hound refused to leave the premises.
One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had insulted the judges two decades previously.
Their preferred divine retribution was for the lawyer’s spirit to move into the body of a dog, an animal considered impure by traditional Judaism.
Clearly still offended, one of the judges sentenced the animal to death by stoning by local children.
Because, you know, you have to do something to keep the kids amused.
Besides, they never did like that son-of-a-bitch.
Israel: Jewish newspaper photoshops women out of existence
Rabbi Jason Miller reacts to the photoshopped removal of Hillary Clinton by a Hasidic newspaper:
How dare they attempt to interfere with history?! Women, that is.
Update: They don’t hate women, they just find the US Secretary of State ‘sexually suggestive’. So that’s OK, then.
Palestine: Police shoot Israeli worshipper at shrine
SMH.
An Israeli worshipper who was killed near a flashpoint West Bank shrine on Sunday was shot dead by Palestinian policemen, the Israeli military has said, citing information from Palestinian officials.
One man was killed and four wounded when they came under fire as their cars left Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday, Israeli medics said.
…
The incident occurred as the worshippers left the tomb, which they had entered unescorted and without permission, the army said.
Israel: Making Stuff Up 101
SMH.
Two nails used in Jesus’s crucifixion have been discovered in a 2000-year-old tomb, a documentary maker has claimed, sparking intense debate among historians.
The rusted, bent iron nails were found more than 20 years ago in a tomb outside Jerusalem that contained a number of ossuaries, or boxes containing bones.
Two boxes were inscribed with the name Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest who presided over Christ’s crucifixion, the New Testament says.
Simcha Jacobovici, who has made a documentary about the find for the History Channel, contends that the nails were used to hammer Christ to the Cross. He believes the high priest may have wanted them buried alongside his body for their talismanic powers and as divine protection in the afterlife.
So let’s check the evidence:
Jesus’s tomb? No.
Jesus’s bones? No.
Jesus’s name? No.
Jesus’s dates? No.
The name of some dude mentioned in the New Testament? YES!
Open the champagne, kids, we’ve found a HOLY RELIC!
Palestine: Israel and Hamas on verge of new war
SMH.
An Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip yesterday killed three people, bringing to 10 the number of Palestinians who have died since Israel was targeted with mortar shells, rockets and a missile that hit near a school bus.
Hamas said it had declared a ceasefire on Thursday night to avoid giving Israel a pretext for further assaults. But at least six mortar shells were fired from Gaza yesterday, the Israeli Defence Force said, following the 45 launched on Thursday, one of which targeted the bus and critically injured a 16-year-old boy.
Israel: Islamic bomb kills one, injures 35
SMH.
An Israeli woman critically wounded when a bomb ripped through a bus in Jerusalem on Wednesday has died of her injuries, Israeli radio and television stations said, citing medical sources.
The woman, who was not immediately identified, died at the Hadassa hospital in Ein Kerem, the reports said.
She was one of more than 30 people who were injured when a bomb exploded at a bus stop near Jerusalem’s central bus station, officials said.
Israel: Jewish family murdered in their sleep
SMH.
Israeli security forces yesterday continued their hunt for the killers, who broke into the heavily guarded settlement of Itamar, south of Nablus, and stabbed Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their children as they slept.
The children were eleven, four, and three months old.
Hands up, the Moslems who thought this was a good idea.
Update: Found them — maybe.
Australia: God floods Queensland because a politician was nasty to Israel
Around 8pm on Friday night the 7th of January we had a strong prompting by the Holy Spirit to repent on behalf of Australia. As we started doing so, I was reminded that every time America went against Israel, there was disaster in the land and this has been documented over the years.
Then at once I was reminded of Kevin Rudd speaking against Israel in Israel on 14th December 2010. It is very interesting that Kevin Rudd is from QLD. Is God trying to get our attention? Yes, I believe so.
What, hasn’t he heard of email?
Israel: Judaism lays claim to misogyny
An Israeli activist who defied orthodox Jewish custom by leading a group of women in open prayer at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall has been told to expect years in prison for breaching the peace.
Because you’re not a real theocracy without misogyny and hatred.
Israel: Rabbi attempts to ban women drivers
Holon, Israel – A prominent Israeli rabbi has issued a religious decree forbidding Jewish women from driving or learning to drive unless absolutely necessary.
The order by Rabbi Avraham Yosef prohibits women from driving, especially in Israeli cities predominantly inhabited by ultraorthodox Jews, Ahram Online news website reported.
And here we can’t even make jokes about them any more. Well, that’s civilization for you.
Israel: What, me work? I’m religious!
…more than 60 percent of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel do not work, compared with 15 percent in the general population…
“Those who are not that way inclined,” [Rabbi Ansellem] said, “should go out and earn a living.”
In reaction, he was ousted from his own ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, whose leaders vilified him with such venom that he was assigned a bodyguard. The party newspaper printed a special supplement describing Rabbi Amsellem as “Amalek,” the biblical embodiment of all evil.
This is why we need religion, because it teaches tolerance and understanding.
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