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"Israelated - English Israel blogs" - 37 new articles
Russia's Colonial Aspirations :: DocstalkRead this article on the community site Amir Taheri Russia has just invented a new kind of state: one in which the land is supposedly independent but the inhabitants are citizens of another country. Last week, Russia solemnly recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two autonomous republics that had been part of Georgia since the 1920 First, Russia tried to justify its military intervention by claiming it was trying to protect its own citizens there. Using force to protect one's citizens is nothing new in the history of nation-states. However, the normal process is to go into the hostile territory, rescue one's citizens and brig them out- end of the story. In this case, however, the Russians did not go in to bring their citizens out. They went in to give "independence" to Abkhazia and Ossetia. The problem is that a majority of those living in Abkhazia and South Ossetia today are Russian citizens. In Abkhazia, Russian passport holders account for 90 per cent of the estimated 200,000 inhabitants. Another five per cent are Georgians while Armenians ad other Caucasian peoples account for the remainder. In other words, in the newly independent Republic of Abkhazia there are no Abkhazians! A similar situation obtains in South Ossetia where Russia passport holders account for 95 per cent of the 75,000 inhabitants. The remaining five per cent are Georgians, Chechens, Ingush, Kamlouks and Charkess. Again, there are no Ossetians! This situation is a result of an earlier piece of Russian chicanery. From 2000, Moscow has been issuing Russian passports to anyone who demanded it in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The sole criterion was that the applicant spoke Russian. That was not difficult because the Caucasus was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and russified for two centuries. Russia's President Dmitri Medvedev claims that his armies entered Abkhazia and South Ossetia to support national liberation struggles. But which nations are we talking about? Since 2002, more than 90 per cent of the inhabitants of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been voting in all Russian elections, including the one that made Medvedev president. Why did the Abkhaz and the Osset rush to get Russian passports? The first reason is that they both hate the Georgians with whom they have a long history of enmity and violence more than they hate the Russians. In 1991, Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhourdia abolished Abkhazia's autonomous status and ordered the destruction of Abkhaz cultural centres and historic monuments. In the ensuing violence, more than 4000 Abkhaz were killed while tens of thousands fled to Russia. Gamsakhourdia presided over a similar scenario in South Ossetia in 1990-92. More than 2000 Ossets were killed and many more forced out of their villages. In both cases, the Abkhaz and the Ossets regarded Russian passports as an insurance policy against further massacre. Nevertheless, it was only after 2006 that the Abkhaz and the Ossets rushed en masse to obtain Russian passports. The reason was the European Union's decision to allow Russian passport holders to travel freely to Europe, a privilege that holders of Georgian passports did not enjoy. But why is Russia embarking on a high-risk strategy in order to snatch two tiny enclaves from Georgia. (Abkhazia covers a territory of 8600 kilometers, smaller than Lebanon, while South Ossetia is even smaller with 3900 square kilometers.) The Russian move is all the more surprisingly because, in the previous 200 years, Russia had always sided with the Georgians against the Abkahz and the Ossets. A Turkic People, the Abkhaz were regarded by Russia as pro-Ottoman and anti-Russian. The Ossets, an Iranic people, were distrusted because they had sided with Iran in the wars that led to Russia's conquest of the Caucasus between 1801 and 1830. There are three key reasons why Russia has acted the way she did. The first is to signal her return as a major power that regards the Caucasus as part of its glacis. The second reason is to punish Georgia because of its quest for a special relationship with the United States. Georgia, with a population of around four million, has sent more than 3000 troops to Iraq. It has applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and is host to a huge American military mission. President Mikheil Sakaashvili has gone further by pressing for membership of the European Union. Thirdly, Georgia has established itself as the key alternative route for oil and natural gas pipelines linking the resources of the Caspian Basin to world markets via the Black Sea. This is in defiance of Russia's strategy of controlling all pipelines to Europe. By de-stabilizing Georgia, Moscow is telling Western investors to think twice before sinking their money into Georgian pipelines. Finally, Russia's lease of the port facilities at Sebastopol, in the Crimean Peninsula, runs out in 2017. There is little chance that the Ukraine, which owns the peninsula, would renew the lease. This would leave the Russian Black Sea fleet homeless and with difficult access to the warm waters, especially since Turkey, a NATO member, controls the Bosporus, under the Treaty of Montreux (1936). One alternative to Sebastopol is the Syrian port of Lattaqiya, and speculation about its lease to the Russian navy has been going on for years. However, Moscow cannot be sure that the Syrian leadership will not switch sides, leaving the Black Sea fleet homeless. By seizing Abkhazia, Russia could develop its deep-water harbors into a new home for its navy. Without such a base, the Russian navy would lose its blue-water status, becoming, in effect, a coastguard with limited reach. What we have witnessed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is a classical colonial land grab, facilitated by the naiveté of the Georgian leaders, the cowardice of the Western powers, and the weakness of Turkey and Iran, the two traditional powers that tried to counter-balance Russia in the Caucasus. These days, however, colonial land grab is hard to sell. This is why the Russian operation is presented as a move to support self-determination in the two enclaves. • Email to a friend • Related • Livni to party: I'll strike deal with PA :: DocstalkRead this article on the community site Gil Hoffman , THE JERUSALEM POST Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will work to sign a final-status agreement with the Palestinian Authority if she wins next Wednesday's Kadima primary, she writes in a letter to some 70,000 Kadima members. Livni has faced criticism from political opponents for not revealing her opinions on diplomatic issues. But she insists in closed conversations that she has made clear she favors two states for two peoples with borders based on security, demographics and the need to maintain control over Jewish holy sites. "I promise to act with responsibility and good judgment to reach a permanent agreement via dialogue with the pragmatic Palestinians while struggling determinedly against the Palestinian extremists in order to allow the State of Israel to continue to be Jewish and democratic with a Jewish majority living securely within final borders," she wrote in the letter. Livni included in her missive the results of a poll indicating that she would bring Kadima many more Knesset mandates than her rivals. She also introduced a new slogan: "Only with Tzipi Livni can Kadima win." She called on the party members to exercise their right to vote in the primary. The foreign minister needs high voter turnout, because her main opponent, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, is said to have stronger field organization. In what could be a blow to Mofaz, Kadima's election committee decided on Tuesday to remove from the party's ranks 3,691 members who were found to illegally also be members of Likud. The decision is liable to hurt Mofaz, because many Likud vote contractors worked on his behalf in the Kadima membership drive. The Likud removed the same names from its membership list but immediately invited them to rejoin the party. But Kadima decided that the members would not be allowed to return unless they proved that they actively tried to remove themselves from the Likud list before the Kadima membership drive ended. "They need to prove that they didn't want to be in the Likud anymore," a Kadima official said. "We don't want to whitewash people who committed crimes." Mofaz's spokeswoman said his supporters had left the Likud, so the decision would not hurt him. But a source present at the election committee meeting said Mofaz's representative was the only one who tried to prevent the double-members' removal. In a sign of confidence that they will win, both Mofaz and Livni have held discussions with top Shas officials about forming a new government after the primary. Channel 1 revealed that all four candidates would replace Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann if they win the race. Public Security Minister Avi Dichter campaigned in the Arab and Druse sectors on Tuesday and celebrated Ramadan with them. Livni also did her part to reach out to Arab members when she gave an interview in her Tel Aviv office to a crew from the Saudi-based television network Al-Arabiya. • Email to a friend • Related • Website: Croatia has sold S300 to Iran :: DocstalkRead this article on the community site Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST Croatia has recently sold advanced S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran, a newspaper in Zagreb reported this week amid conflicting opinions in Israel over whether Teheran has obtained the advanced anti-aircraft system According to the Web magazine Necenzurirano, Libyan Naval ships were also docking in the Croatian port city of Kraljevica to transfer the system to Iran. Israeli defense officials could not confirm the report but said that Croatia is known to have obtained a number of S-300 systems following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The system was reportedly dismantled several years ago although its exact fate was never publicized. The S-300, a Russian system, is one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft missile systems in the world today and has a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about 200 kilometers and can hit targets at altitudes of 27,000 meters. Israeli officials have not said whether Iran has obtained S-300 systems but has called on Russia not to sell them to Teheran. A top IAF officer recently said that it was not yet clear whether Iran had the system. Ronen Bergman's The Secret War with Iran, published Tuesday in the US, repeats the claim made in the Hebrew version of the book, published last year, that the Iranians already have S-300s. "Iran has purchased an enormous number of anti-aircraft missiles from Russia, some of which, according to Mossad sources, are S-300 missiles, considered among the most advanced in the world. These missiles have been deployed around Bushehr and other strategic targets," Bergman writes. The author continues: "In August 2006, during the war in Lebanon, Israeli satellite photograph decipherers detected changes at several locations in Iran, suggesting strongly that Iran was stepping up its nuclear project. Moreover, many additional anti-aircraft missile batteries were deployed at nuclear sites, and existing ones were replaced with S-300 missiles... By September 2006, no fewer than 26 anti-aircraft missile batteries had been placed around the centrifuge installation at Natanz...." • Email to a friend • Related • An Open Letter to the Recruiters of the World From Job Seekers Everywhere :: JobMob - All Together Now to get jobs and get jobs done in Israel.Read this article on the community site No one likes to be ignored, least of all when it matters most. So why do so few job seekers get replies from recruiters? The Pig, the Old Fish and the Pink Panther :: Yid With LidRead this article on the community site 
Beginning with the selection of Governor Palin, Senator Obama seems to be really LOSING IT. He has lost his focus. Obama has become like Herbert Lom in the old Pink Panther movies, he played Clouseau's Boss who hated the Peter Sellers character so much that he kept trying to kill him. Lom's character keeps hurting himself in his attempts and eventually winds up insane. Obama keeps hurting himself trying to get at Palin. If he can't handle the pressure of a campaign, how is he going to handle the pressure of running the United States?:
• Email to a friend • Related • I'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND HATRED THAT KILLED MY DAUGHTER :: Yid With LidRead this article on the community site Israeli terror victim to UN: I'll never understand hatred that killed my daughter Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was killed in the suicide bombing at Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in August 2001, told the conference he never imagined to himself he would get the opportunity to speak on such a stage. He spoke about the attack, describing how the terrorist entered the restaurant with a guitar to disguise himself as a musician. Nobody would have thought this was a man filled with such a religious passion to kill and main, Roth told the conference. We will never understand the hatred and cruel intolerance that took away her smile, he said. Roth was one of 18 people from different countries brought to testify at the day-long symposium on victims of terrorism at UN headquarters in New York. The special conference was initiated by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and included the participation of terror victims, experts on terrorism and senior authorities in the field of social aid. In his opening remarks, Ban called for an open dialogue to share experiences and practices, and said the symposium would advance the UN's global strategy in the fight against terror. He said this would help "strengthen the international community's solidarity with victims and improve understanding of how the UN and member states could Daniel Carmon, the deputy Israeli ambassador to the UN, revealed his own personal story to the other ambassadors, who were unaware of his tragedy. In 1992, Carmon lost his wife Eliora in the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29; Carmon was also injured. He relayed how he was left alone to raise their five young children, aged 2 to 12. Freed French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt gave the forum's keynote address: "Access to information is strategic," she said. "Too many totalitarian states hide the reality of victims of terrorism in their country in order not to be accountable for them to the world." Betancourt was abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, during her 2002 presidential campaign. She was rescued two months ago, after six years of captivity in the jungle. Other speakers included survivors of the World Trade Center and London Underground attacks. Senior officials at the UN have revealed that the Palestinian Authority requested to include victims of Israeli Defense Forces operations, but the request was turned down. • Email to a friend • Related • Lashon HaQodesh (Loshon HaKodesh) :: Esser AgarothRead this article on the community site 10 of the Sixth Month 5768 Lashon HaQodesh (Loshon HaKodesh)
So let us discuss pronunciation. Can we assume that the way in which Hebrew is commonly pronounced today is correct? Unfortunately not. First of all, Jews in every part of the world (during the Galuth) pronounced, and continue to pronounce, our language differently from one another. They cannot all be right. Secondly, there cannot be any doubt that the long and bitter Galuth had a very negative effect on our command and pronunciation of our ancestral language. Take the letter 'ayin for example. As is well known, the Ashkenazim have not been able to differentiate between it and an aleph for centuries. The Sepharadim and Taymanim, on the other hand, have never experienced such trouble. We can attempt to explain this phenomenon in one of three ways: 1)It is simply a matter of luck that those communities of Jews preserved the original pronunciation. 2) The Ashkenazim lost (as a rule) the ability to pronounce the 'ayin due to the fact that in Europe, the vernacular that they spoke (whether it was German, French, Russian, or Yiddish) lacked such a consonant. (Not one of the native languages of Europe possesses such a sound). Seeing that Hebrew ceased (until recently) to be a spoken and living language at least 2000 years ago, the Ashkenazim simply never heard such a sound, and could not, therefore, pronounce it. 3) The Sepharadim and Taymanim are in fact wrong: the 'ayin and the aleph are supposed to be identical, and thus indistinguishable, and were designed to lead to confusion. I'll leave it to you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions. The same applies to several other Hebrew consonants (according to standard pronunciation). Teth (tet) and Tauw (Tav) are mysteriously and confusingly identical, as are Waw (Vav) and Veth (Vet), Kaf and Qof, and Khaf and Heth (Het). We therefore have five sets of letters, 10 letters in all, that for some reason are precise copies of their 'twin' letter! Does this make any sense? Does this sound like a tongue the Creator Himself would have dreamed up? Sefer Yesira (a very ancient text that discusses, among other things, the aleph beth - see 1:1, 2:2 and 3:3) lists the 22 letters of our aleph beth, and points out that 7 of their number are 'double', i.e. have two alternate pronunciations, depending upon whether they have a dot or not: BeGeD KaPoReT, i.e. Beth, Gimmel, Daleth, Kaf, Pe, Resh, Tauw. All of us know about three of these: Beth/Veth, Kaf/Khaf, Pe/Fe (and according to present-day Ashkenazi tradition the fourth is Tav/Sav, which we shall presently discuss). But what of Gimmel, Daleth and Resh? While not attempting to deal with every aspect of this subject in the current article, I feel that one clear indication from the Talmud that the standard pronunciation of today is woefully lacking is in place. "Sumkhos stated: 'He who lengthens [his pronunciation of the word] Ehad will have his days lengthened [by Hashem]'. R. Aha Bar Ya'aqov added: 'On the daleth'" (Talmud Bavli Berakhoth 13b). This is a standard Halakha (see Rambam Qeriyath Shema 2:9, Shulkhan 'Arukh Orah Hayim 61:6). The trouble is that as anyone who has ever tried to lengthen the daleth knows, this can simply not be done - the letter d is a plosive consonant (i.e. it is formed by the expulsion of air from the mouth in one, explosive burst, and by definition cannot be extended). What usually results, therefore, is Ehannnnnnnd. (Try it and you'll see what I mean). If, however, one knows that the undotted daleth of Ehad is to be pronounced as the th in the definite article the, the matter becomes simple - the way to extend the daleth is to say Ehathhhh (which can be said, try it and you'll see). To perform this requirement is, then, very simple, if one knows that the undotted daleth is to be pronounced like the word the; it is impossible, however, if one pronounces it as a d. Rav Sa'adya Gaon (flourished roughly 1100 years ago, universally accepted as one of the greatest sages, in all areas of Tora, of all time) in his commentary to Sefer Yesira (p. 74 onwards) states the following facts: 1) There are 29 consonantal sounds in our language (22+7). No two letters are identical, with the exception of 'sin' and 'samekh'. 2) The letters of our aleph beth are identical to those of (classical) Arabic, unless otherwise stated. 3) We possess four sounds that Arabic does not: Veth, Gimmel, Pe and the strong (or second) pronuncition of Resh. 4) The Arabs have three that we lack: Jin (as the 'j' in jaywalk), a second, deeper version of our dotted Daleth, and a second, deeper version of our undotted Daleth. The very same information is imparted to us by R. Dunash Ben Tamim (shortly after R. Sa'adya) in his commentary to Sefer Yesira (p. 21). Add to this the statement of the Rambam (letter to Shemuel Ibn Tibon, printed in Responsa Pe'er HaDor no. 143,. p.275) that Arabic is simply Hebrew 'gone somewhat awry' (sic), and the words of R. Avraham Ibn 'Ezra (in his commentary to Shir HaShirim 8:11) "that Arabic is very close to the Holy Tongue...over half the roots are common to both (Shalom-Salaam, Shemesh-Shams = sun etc.)", and the picture is more or less complete: the alphabets of these two related languages are very similar. (In the area of vowels, the difference is greater: Hebrew is much richer in its range of vowels. In addition, despite the similarity, our Holy Tongue is much gentler). The fact that all Medieval Jewish scholars (e.g. R. Sa'adya, Rambam, Ibn 'Ezra) who authored books in Arabic did so utilizing Hebrew characters speaks for itself. Despite the fact that all of the disparate communities of the Jewish Diaspora were adversely affected (linguistically) by the Galuth, the Teymani (Yemenite) community preserved the authentic tradition more than any other. The same is true, albeit less so, for some of the Sepharadi communities. In this matter of linguistics and received pronunciation, the Ashkenazim, living in an environment entirely inimical to a Semitic language such as Hebrew, suffered the most. (If anyone doubts the truth of such a claim, witness the substantial and obvious differences in pronunciation between the average Ashkenazi, Haredi-style Jew, living today in New York, and his Israeli counterpart. One will say 'borukh' (blessed) with a plainly north-American 'r' sound, the other with a distinctly different east-European guttural 'r'. The American Jew will say 'godowl' (big) with the second vowel being identical with the common English-American vowel-sound 'o' as in 'old' but if you step into any schul of Israeli Haredim, you will hear 'godoyl'. This despite the fact that both these Jews stem from the same European communities, and theoretically are recipients of the same tradition. And all this in the space of two, or at the most three, generations of American Judaism. As opposed to this example, we are discussing aberrations that evolved over 2000 years!. Many authorities have openly recognized the lackings of present-day Ashkenazi and Sepharadi pronunciations. The renowned Ashkenazi rabbi R. Ya'aqov Emden (Ya'abes) writes in his introduction to his famous Siddur Beth Ya'aqov: "Pronunciation must be complete and correct...particularly one must not confuse alephs with 'ayins and hehs...not to mention confusing totally dissimilar letters ...not as we the Ashkenazim pronounce the undotted tauw (tav) as a samekh, to our shame. In the matter of vowels, however, we are much better off, not like the Sepharadim who do not distinguish between a qames (kamatz) and a patah..." (new Eshkol edition p. 10). R. Avraham Yishaq Hakohen Kook, (the leading Ashkenazi Rabbi in this country 70 years ago), states that "the essential aspect of any pronunciation is the distinction it provides between letters and vowels, and in this respect the Sepharadi pronunciation cannot equal the Ashkenazi, and even more so the Yemenite pronunciation which is superior to both, in that it differentiates more than the other two..." (Orah Mishpat p. 20). In conclusion, I wish to quote the words of R. Ya'aqov Kaminetzky (in a letter of approbation to the book Safa Berura on the subject of the pronunciation of Hebrew, reprinted in the excellent book Qosht Imre Emeth, on the same subject, p.14): "It is very important to clarify the truth...I know that many will say 'Who is this person who wishes to introduce new things [pronunciations] such as these? As a certain person once said to me after I pointed out to him that our pronounciation of the undotted daleth is plainly incorrect [as explained above]: 'Do you imagine that the Hidushe HaRim [a great Tora sage of the last century] did not read Shema properly?' I replied that he certainly performed his obligation b'diavad. It is also possible that he himself read it entirely correctly, but could not influence the conduct of the entire community...But if only a few will pay heed [to what you have written], it will have been worthwhile". • Email to a friend • Related • Current Events Analogies :: The Jewish Press BlogRead this article on the community site
Apologies, but could not resist. First, Academic Jihadnik Juan Cole from the University of Michigan compares Sarah Palin to an Islamic fundamentalist in: "What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? By Juan Cole So Then: (Ian Lustick, University of Pennsylvania – see this ) • Email to a friend • Related • Obama Calls Palin a Pig :: Yid With LidRead this article on the community site
From Ben Smith on Politico Obama: 'Lipstick on a pig' Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA:
The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick." http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Obama_Lipstick_on_a_pig.html • Email to a friend • Related • North Korea's Kim Jong Il may have had a stroke :: Simply JewsRead this article on the community site Should I be ashamed to be pleased to hear this?Nah...Update: and CNN says Missing Kim Jong Il raises health questions.It's a bit of a misnomer. I bet he raises death questions rather than health ones. • Email to a friend • Related • OU threatens to withdraw kosher certification from Agriprocessors :: JewschoolRead this article on the community site A little late, but better than never, the OU is considering removing its hekhsher from Agriprocessors products as criminal charges are filed against the Rubashkins. It strikes me that it was not the accusations of gross violations of Jewish ethical standards, but rather American criminal standards which moved the OU to remove the hekhsher. This says worlds about where the OU is coming from. Where that is, I really don't know-I wouldn't have presumed that Jewish ethical violations should have swayed them more than American criminal standards, but I guess they have their reputation to worry about. That leads me to the question, if an authority on kashrut, like the OU, were to NOT remove its hekhsher from Rubashkin products, would that then lead to a doubt for their other hekshered products? And also, what does it say about the institution that steps in to provide a hekhsher if things at the plant don't change? Who are you waiting for, Miss America? Guess not. :: A Mother in IsraelRead this article on the community site Last night we went to the shiva for the mother of an old friend. The friend told how her mother's mother studied piano with Bess Myerson, the first (and only?) Jewish Miss America. My friend's great-grandmother tried to fix up one of her sons with Bess, but they weren't interested. If I have it right, this great-grandmother was American-born, and attended Hunter College in the 1890's. When her • Email to a friend • Related • Go Rafi, Go! :: Cosmic XRead this article on the community site Rafi is training to run a marathon. Amazing! |
If the truth be told, I welcomed the letter received by a local Jerusalem newspaper with regard to the transliteration of Hebrew words as they appear in my articles. It affords me the opportunity to broach the issue of the pronunciation of the Holy Tongue. I say 'the Holy Tongue' - because that is what it is. (Hazal almost always refer to our language as 'Leshon Haqodesh' - 'the Tongue of Holiness'). Our language is unlike any other - it comes direct from the Creator Himself. "'This one shall be called 'isha' (woman(, having been taken from 'ish' (man)' (Bereshith 2:24) - from this [the fact that these words for 'man' and 'woman' are, till the present day, the terms for these concepts in Hebrew] we know that the world was created in Leshon Haqodesh" (Bereshith Raba 18:4 - Rashi ad loc.). We should therefore take the matter very seriously indeed. 
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