Friday Afternoon Roundup - Memorial Protest

MEMORIAL PROTEST FOR VICTIMS OF JERUSALEM TERROR ATTACK

SUNDAY, MARCH 9TH - 11 AM

ISRAELI CONSULATE - 42ND STREET & 2ND AVENUE, MANHATTAN

On Thursday evening, a Palestinian terrorist murdered eight students at the legendary Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem. Its students are considered an elite, known for their love of the land of Israel.

Palestinian terror rocket attacks on southern Israel continue unabated. On Thursday, terrorists murdered an Israeli soldier on the border with Gaza.

At this difficult hour, express your support of our brothers and sisters in Israel! Join us to memorialize those murdered and protest those who deny Israel's right to defend its citizens.

Bring your family and friends. If you can, bring a book of Psalms and an Israeli flag. Please pass on this message as widely as possible. Ask your rabbi to announce this memorial on Shabbat.

Coordinated by Amcha-Coalition for Jewish Concerns, 3700 Henry Hudson Parkway, Riverdale, NY 10463, (718) 796-4730. Rabbi Avi Weiss, national president

Shalom International will also be memorializing these victims at our rally on Sunday, March 9, 2008, at Noon at Music Center Drive in front of Opryland Convention Center in Nashville, Tn Contact: Bob Kunst, Pres., Shalom International, 305-864-5110

Meanwhile the tragedy hits close to home for Ya'aqov Ben-Yehudah at Esser Agarot and Jameel at the Muqata.

One of Yaakov's former students, Yonatan Eldar HY"D was among those killed.

Yonatan Eldar HY"D of Shilo, and only 16, a junior in high school, was one those martyrs killed.

He lived next door to the Yerushalmi family, whose son Shmu'el Efraim HY"D survived the attack on another yeshiva high school, "Hitzim," six years ago, only to be killed himself a month later at the Givat Tzarfatit (French Hill) bombing, where I was the last one to see him.

I can't get Yonatan's face out of my mine: blond hair, glasses. He was only a student of mine for a short while, four years ago. He was only in the sixth grade, yet the principal and all of the teachers had to call upon him to install and operate software, or even fix their computers. He was that bright.

Joe Settler describes training for a terrorist attack at a school on the same night

Last night, before the massacre, we were training in one of the local schools.

Specifically, we were working on the various techniques, protocols, and procedures for handling different situations where a terrorist has entered a school.

Some local high school kids were invited to participate with us for the color.

When it was my turn to play the terrorist, I grabbed one high-schoolers and used him as a human shield while I mowed down the first rescue squad - until they figured out how to effectively neutralize me.

But then it came in, we got notice over our radios that there was a major attack on the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Maybe dozens dead and injured. The attack and shooting was still going on as we listened to one side of the report.

Our training session ended immediately. We quickly did a summation while the security chiefs checked to see how things were on our own perimeters. We went home to listen to the news.

An hour after we got home, we got a full-scale, emergency drill call-up.

It was decided that we needed to finish the entire session that was planned for the evening.

In that session (as we were to find out), a group of terrorist had entered a high school dormitory and were shooting away – a scenario far too similar to that evenings events.

A scenario that is expected.

We all drove/ran to get there.

IsraPundit has extensive coverage of the aftermath and where we go from here, including Ted Belman's Annapolis is to Blame and Jerry Gordon, The Slaughter of the Valiant

What Would Jarema Wisniowiecki Do? Bill Levinson asks

Jarema Wisniowiecki (pronounced “Yarema Vishnyovyetski,” J=Y, W=V, and cki=ski in Polish) was a Ukranian Catholic voyevode or provincial governor in the 17th century Polish Commonwealth. An argument between Bogdan Chmielnicki (”Khmyelnitski”) and another nobleman resulted in a civil war in which Chmielnicki led armies of Cossacks against the Poles. The Eastern Orthodox Cossacks gave full rein to their hatred of Jews and Catholics by perpetrating murderous anti-Semitic pogroms, massacres of Catholic clergy, and enslavement of Polish prisoners. At one point, however, the Cossacks’ Tartar allies returned to the Crimea to sell their prisoners as slaves, thus weakening Chmielnicki’s army. Chmielnicki accordingly sent envoys to negotiate peace, but he meant the peace to last only until the Tartars returned: that is, he proposed a hudna. Unfortunately for Chmielnicki, or more precisely for his envoys, Wisniowiecki was not Ehud Olmert or Condoleeza Rice.

In the motion picture version, Wisniowiecki orders simply, “Kill them so that they know they are dying.” While messengers and envoys were actually sacrosanct, their protection apparently ended if they engaged in treachery such as negotiation in bad faith. As described above, the peace offer was apparently nothing more than a hudna to buy the Cossacks time to gather their strength for more violence. Wisniowiecki accordingly put the treacherous envoys to death, and then resumed military operations instead of allowing his enemies their desired respite.

At Democracy Broadcasting Online, a look at the amoral insanity going on in Saudi Arabia, the homeland of Wahhabism.

Meanwhile in a bit of good news, Neve Gordon, a radical leftist professor has lost his attempt at suppressing free speech when a court overruled Gordon's SLAPP lawsuit against Professor Steven Plaut. Over at Tikkun Hamas, Richard Silverstein hypocrisy shone forth when he backed Gordon's attack on free speech. Barry Chamish had similarly celebrated the verdict, unsurprising considering the company Chamish keeps when he isn't trying to keep up the facade that he's pro-israel

In particular, Plaut had censured Gordon for repeatedly endorsing the views and writings of Prof. Norman Finkelstein, recently fired by DePaul University in Chicago, and even comparing him to the biblical Prophets. Finkelstein, a fawning admirer of the Hezbollah terror organization, is a favorite of neo-Nazis like Ernst Zundel. Commentary senior editor Gabriel Schoenfeld has condemned his “crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world” (Commentary, January 2001, p. 20).

Gordon had won the first round in June 2006 when an Arab woman judge in the lower court, Reem Naddaf, found in his favor. The appeals panel, however, states that Naddaf’s judgment was replete with errors. Moreover, Naddaf made no attempt in her verdict to hide her own radical anti-Israeli political opinions, which happen to coincide largely with those of Gordon. She inserted outright political declarations in her ruling, including upholding the legitimacy of Holocaust revisionism and declaring that all of Israel is land “stolen from another people.”

On November 8, 2006, Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University blasted Naddaf’s ruling in the Jerusalem Post. He attacked the verdict as a gross violation of Plaut’s freedom of speech and stated: “It is my opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli.” Dershowitz also invited Gordon to file a libel suit against him similar to what Gordon had filed against Plaut. Gordon never did.

Naddaf’s ruling was strongly criticized as biased and antidemocratic in articles all over the world. Plaut’s lawyer, Dr. Haim Misgav, suggested that Gordon had filed his SLAPP suit in Nazareth court solely because he knew many Arab judges sat on the bench there and was hoping to get a radical anti-Israeli Arab to hear the case. Naddaf awarded Gordon nearly 100,000 shekels (currently almost $30,000) in compensation and costs for what she considered “libelous” in Plaut’s criticisms of him.

The appeals court completely rejected every single demand made by Gordon and his lawyer, Fareed Ghanam, in their appeal. It accepted every single point except one made by Plaut in his appeal, overturning the Naddaf ruling.

Samurai Mohel has two posts worth reading Tear Your Bloody Tzizit

Is this enough for you yet, you bastards?

Is this enough for you yet Shas? 300 million shekels. How many dead boys does that buy? How many votes does that buy. 30 million shekels a boy was the deal, eh Ovadya? Clutch those bloody shekels tightly you bastard and dream of making your idiot son Chief Rabbi of Yerushalayim, the city you’re bargaining away.

Are you mad that you sit and do nothing, that in an instant you go back to your old squabbling as if any of it mattered? Hold up these bloody tzizit, torn by bullets. Hold them up to the light. Blood will never wash out of them, the stain will always remain. Our Tzizit are torn and bloody. Our nation is torn and bloody and we wander like fools.

Is there no crime, no deed that will wake you from your suburban homes, your upper west side apartments? Nothing that will make you tear your hair, shout, scream and demand justice? Or are you as dead inside as they already are.

Tear your bloody Tzizit, tear them away, shred them on the earth, wash your hands of the blood but it cannot be washed away. Raise your voice in Zion, blow the Shofar and for once in your miserable empty lives, stand up for your brothers.

and another on Orthomom, a smug liberal jewish obama supporter the closing of which is eerily prophetic

“Stop shouting Vayovoi Haman because shouting Vayovoi Haman is for small children. Adults aren’t meant to do it. Adults have more important things to discuss, like who’s running for the board and who bought a new Lexus and whose son got divorced and whose son got accepted into Harvard. We’re having a good time feasting at the Democratic Party’s feast. We like our suburbs and our cars and yes Israel is important and Jewish lives are maybe important but not really, not to us. We are independent people with our own priorities and we don’t like to hear someone shouting ‘Vayovoi Haman’, it perturbs us.

“So go away and come back when Jews are actually dying. Well more so than right now. Not by the singles or the dozens or even the hundreds. Maybe by the thousands or the tens of thousands or the hundreds of thousands. Then we’ll listen. Maybe.”

and so ends another week at Sultan Knish