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[COMMENT: Israel, like any country, has it faults. But it is an amazing little country, not only because of its economic success and democratic government, but because of its moral stance. All this falls short of Biblical standards, but no more than we here in America. E. Fox]
The
Israeli date trees are now yielding 400 pounds/year and are short enough
to be harvested from the ground or a short ladder.
Israel the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can lay claim to the following:
The cell phone was developed in
Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by
Microsoft-Israel.
The Pentium MMX Chip technology was
designed in
Voice mail technology was developed in
The technology for the AOL Instant
Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.
Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbours combined
According to industry officials,
In proportion to its population,
(3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).
With more than 3,000 high-tech companies
and start-ups,
Israel is the only
liberal democracy in the
Israel was
the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an
international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."
An Israeli company developed a
computerized system for ensuring proper administration of
medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment.
Every year in U. S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from
treatment mistakes.
Israel's
Given Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so
small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine
from the inside for cancer and digestive disorders.
Israel
leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the
workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U. S.,
over 70 in
Israel
places first in this category as well.
1. Israel
became a state in 1312 B.C., two millennia before Islam;
2. Arab refugees from Israel began calling
themselves "Palestinians" in 1967, two decades after (modern)
Israeli statehood;
3. After conquering the land in 1272 B.C., Jews ruled it for
a thousand years and maintained a continuous presence there
for 3,300 years;
4. The only Arab rule following conquest in 633 B.C. lasted
just 22 years;
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem was the Jewish capital. It
was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even
under Jordanian rule, (east) Jerusalem was not made the
capital, and no Arab leader came to visit it;
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the bible, but
not once is it
mentioned in the Quran;
7. King David founded Jerusalem;
Mohammed never set foot in it;
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem; Muslims face Mecca. If they
are between the two cities, Muslims pray facing Mecca, with
their backs to Jerusalem;
9. In 1948, Arab leaders urged their people to leave,
promising to cleanse
the land of Jewish presence. 68% of them fled without
ever setting eyes on an Israeli soldier;
10. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Muslim
countries had to flee as the result of violence and pogroms;
11. Some 630,000 Arabs left Israel in 1948, while close to a
million Jews were forced to leave the Muslim countries;
12. In spite of the vast territories at their disposal,
Arab refugees were deliberately prevented from assimilating
into their host countries. Of 100
million refugees following World War 2, they are the only
group to have never integrated with their co-religionists.
Most of the Jewish refugees from Europe and Arab lands were
settled in Israel, a country no larger than New Jersey;
13. There are 22 Muslim countries, not counting Palestine.
There is only one Jewish state. Arabs started all five wars
against Israel, and lost every one of them;
14. Fatah and Hamas constitutions still call for the
destruction of Israel. Israel ceded most of the west bank and
all of Gaza to the Palestinian authority, and even provided it
with arms;
15. During the Jordanian occupation, Jewish holy sites
were vandalized and were off limits to Jews. Under Israeli
rule, all Muslim and Christian holy sites are accessible to
all faiths;
16. Out of 175 United Nations security council resolutions up
to 1990, 97
were against Israel; out of 690 general assembly resolutions,
429 were
against Israel;
18. The U.N. was silent when the Jordanians destroyed
58 synagogues in the old city of Jerusalem. It remained silent
while Jordan systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish
cemetery on the mount of olives, and it remained silent when
Jordan enforced apartheid laws preventing Jews from accessing
the temple mount and western wall.
These are trying times. We must ask ourselves what we should
be doing, and what we will tell our grandchildren about our
actions during this crisis? Tell them we had the chance to
make a difference.
http://www.chiefrabbi.org/speeches/JFS_Israel_Rally_23July2006.pdf
SPEECH AT SOLIDARITY RALLY FOR ISRAEL
SUNDAY 23 JULY 2006
JFS, KENTON, LONDON
We have come together today
To stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel
And to say a simple prayer.
Ribbono shel olam,
Let your people Israel live in peace.
Let there be an end to bloodshed and violence.
Let there be an end to hostility and hate.
Let Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev come home.
Let Israel’s defence forces come home.
What else did Your people ever want,
Except the right to live with security, without fear, in peace?
Almighty G-d, let your people Israel live in peace.
Today we stand in solidarity with Israel,
And rarely have I felt so proud of Anglo-Jewry as I have done these past few
days.
Especially of our young people.
Last week 1300 of them, from youth groups right across the religious spectrum,
Went out to Israel.
Every one of them, or their families, might have said: no. Not now. It’s too
dangerous.
Yet almost none of them did.
I want to say to every one of those young people: Kol hakavod. You make us
proud.
And today I want a message to go forth from us to Israel to say: Israel, you make
us proud.
In a mere 58 years, in a country half the size of Lake Michigan, you have done
things that are unbelievable.
You have gathered together Jews from more than a hundred different countries
speaking more than eighty different languages and out of them made a great
nation.
You have taken a land with no natural resources and turned it into one of the
great economies of the modern world.
You have created a democracy in a part of the world where no one thought it
possible.
You have taken a desolate land and made it blossom and bear fruit.
You have developed medical technologies to save life.
Wherever in the world there has been a natural disaster, you have been among
the first to offer humanitarian aid.
Through six decades under almost continuous threat you have given the world
poets and philosophers and musicians and novelists whose heart is Jewish and
whose love is for all humanity.
You have taken the language of the Bible and made it speak again
You have taken a people from the valley of the shadow of death and made it live
again
You have taken hope itself – hatikvah shnot alpayim – and made it breath again.
Israel: you are our people and our pride and we stand with you today.
Why then does a people who have consistently said Yes to life and No to death,
Who have consistently said Yes to peace and No to terror,
Find itself today fighting in Lebanon and Gaza?
The answer is so simple, yet so unbelievable, that we must hear it clearly and
unequivocally:
Israel is fighting today in Lebanon because 6 years ago it withdrew from
Lebanon.
Israel is fighting today in Gaza because 1 year ago it withdrew from Gaza.
And Israel discovered the terrible truth spoken by the late Mother Theresa
That no good deed goes unpunished.
Every gesture of goodwill undertaken by Israel has been seized on by its enemies
as a sign of weakness.
Every Israeli effort towards peace has led without exception to an increase in
violence against Israel.
The Oslo Peace Process led directly to the first Palestinian suicide attacks in
Israel.
Taba: the most generous offer Israel ever made to the Palestinians, led directly to
the most concerted set of terrorist attacks against any nation in modern history.
The Gaza Withdrawal, the most painful act Israel has ever had to undertake, led
within less than a year to 1000 Kassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets
including schoolchildren.
And finally the Lebanon withdrawal, undertaken by Israel six years ago in full
compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425. That
resolution was immediately broken by Hizbullah, about which the United
Nations special envoy to Lebanon warned at the time, in November 2000: “Such
breaches of international peace and security in the south threaten to ignite a new
spiral of violence with tragic consequences for the civilian population.”
That failure led in 2004 to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559
which called categorically for the disarming of militias in Lebanon. Again
rejected. This time Kofi Annan himself protested to the Syrians. The effect? The
arming of Hizbullah with weapons that threaten the very heart of Israel.
Israel withdrew from Lebanon.
Israel does not want to be in Lebanon.
It does not want to do any of the things it is now doing.
It accepted in good faith the commitment of the United Nations that it would not
have to.
It is acting today only because the international community has failed to ensure
that its neighbours met their obligations when Israel met hers.
Israel, the Israel we know and love, is a people that pursues peace, yearns for
peace, sings about peace, needs peace.
For 58 years it has done everything a nation could do in pursuit of peace, and it
has been rewarded instead with violence and terror.
It has done what the world has asked it to do, and the result has been that it has
been left vulnerable and alone.
Which of us does not weep when we see the news day after day?
Does any of us, God forbid, take satisfaction at the devastation of Lebanon?
Is that who we are?
Let me be clear and unambiguous.
We weep not just for Israel
But for the people of Lebanon also.
Lebanon was once a great country,
A centre of civilization
A beacon in the Middle East --
Until Jordan drove the Palestinians out of Jordan into Lebanon
Until Syria used them to terrorise the Lebanese
Until Iran armed and funded and manipulated them;
Until the whole country of Lebanon, every man, woman and child, became a
hostage.
And so a great country was destroyed and reduced to ruins.
And today Israel is fighting in Lebanon so that Israel should not become, G-d
forbid, another Lebanon,
As any country in the world will become
If it lacks the clarity and courage to say No to terror and Yes to peace.
Tragically Jews have learned over the centuries
That when their enemies speaking of killing them, driving them into the sea,
wiping them off the face of the earth, they mean what they say.
What Hizbullah and Hamas have said in word and deed is:
We will kill you if you stay
And we will kill you if you leave.
We will kill you if you retaliate
And we will kill you if you don’t retaliate.
What can Israel do but to seek to end the terror
That threatens and is meant to threaten its very existence?
When alone among the 192 nations that make up the United Nations, after 58
years it still finds its very right to exist denied?
Friends, let me tell you what is wrong with terror. It is not just that it murders the
innocent: the young, the old, the defenceless, the uninvolved.
It is that it murders innocence itself.
It turns virtue into weakness, decency into vulnerability.
And if we, if Israel, if Europe, if America do not take a stand against terror,
if we ignore it as the world ignored it for so long,
then it will leave a stain on the human future that no tears, no regrets, will ever
remove.
The battle Israel is fighting today is not for itself alone.
It is for the sake of all those who say no to terror
No to the desecration of life
No to killing in the name of God
Whether they live in Bali or Beslan, or Madrid or Mumbai.
And therefore let me end with simple words of prayer:
Ribbono shel olam: Be with your people Israel now.
Hear their cry
Heed their tears
Listen to this, our prayer on their behalf.
Grant peace to all your children, Jew, Christian and Muslim alike.
Help us live together, respecting one another.
Help us cherish life.
Help us to use the powers You gave us, to heal, to mend, to build.
We ask of You, Almighty God, just one thing:
You who make peace in high places,
Help us make peace down here on earth.
published
in Maariv on
Monday, July 31, 2006.
Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.
The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel. We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere.
The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.
Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.
And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility. Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.
Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us. The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.
What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya?
What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly. We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.
And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza -- what did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism, and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London. An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.
So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent.
What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't? In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle.
I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.
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