Newsletter #261     December 9, 2005

The Land of Israel Necklace consists of a crystal glass pendant filled with the entire Land of Israel including Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nazareth, The Sea of Galilee, The Jordan River, The Dead Sea, as well as other locations. The earth inside has beautiful color variations creating a natural layered effect. By wearing the Land of Israel as a beautiful necklace, the land remains in one's consciousness and, literally, close to the heart. A Meaningful Gift!

• An absence of morality
  Jerusalem Post - December 5, 2005  It is certainly possible that the political tailwind Barghouti and Hamas are enjoying has more to do with the unpopularity of the PA, either because of corruption or the general chaos, than it does with popular support for terrorism. But we Israelis can hardly ignore the fact that the most popular Palestinian groups and individuals seem to be those most associated with terror against Israel.

• The PA's New Terror Law
  Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen - FrontPageMagazine.com - December 6, 2005  The very same day that an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber killed at least five Israelis and wounded more than 40 innocent people in a Netanya shopping mall, the Palestinian daily, al Hayat al Jadida (page 3), reported that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, signed a new law to support the families of suicide bombers.

• Too late for Abbas
  By Barry Rubin - Jerusalem Post - December 5, 2005  The evidence for the Palestinian national movement's collapse is accumulating daily. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Palestinian Authority will lose the parliamentary elections scheduled for January if it does not cancel them first. Could it possibly be clearer that Abbas is the Palestinian leader in name only and is incapable of negotiating any agreement with Israel or implementing anything he promises?

• A Selfless Act of Courage
  by Ze´ev Orenstein - IsraelNationalNews.com - November 30, 2005  Chaim Amram was one of the security guards at the Netanya Mall that fateful day. He grabbed the shoulder of that man clutching the bag. Every fibre of his mortal self was probably screaming at Chaim to run and hide, and yet, he began to push the terrorist away from the entrance, away from all the innocent bystanders. He did what normal people wouldn't usually do. He held onto death and steered it away from the innocent.

• Arik and Iraq
  By Carolyn Glick - Jerusalem Post - December 9, 2005  were the US to withdraw its forces from Iraq prematurely, the move would have disastrous consequences for Israel's conventional warfare position. The near consensus view that rooted itself in Israel's public discourse in the wake of the US-led overthrow of Saddam's regime, that Israel's eastern front had ceased to pose a threat, would be thrown on its head. The uncertainly regarding America's longterm commitment to the war in Iraq specifically and the war against Islamic terror generally coincides with the uncertainty regarding the future course of Palestinian society.

• There is a difference
  

  By Ryan Jones - Jerusalem Newswire - December 7, 2005

  Not for the first time Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in trying to justify his headlong rush to sever the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria from the State of Israel, Wednesday quoted from Israel's most famous modern leader, David Ben Gurion.

  “As the years go by, the image of Ben-Gurion - one of the strongest leaders the Jewish nation has ever had - grows,” Sharon said as he opened a state ceremony for Israel's first prime minister at his burial place in Sde Boker.

  Sharon then went on to explain that the silver-maned old man, just like himself, was actually a proponent of territorial concessions for the sake of “peace.”

  Quoting from Ben Gurion, Sharon stated that “for peace we are willing to give up some of what we are entitled to. In choosing between having all of the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all of the land, we chose the latter.”

  Ben Gurion, of course, was speaking from a position of having political sovereignty over none of the land and working feverishly to secure a national homeland for the Jews on whatever amount of territory possible at the time.

  With the memory of the Nazi Holocaust only a few years old, it was a matter of life and death for the Jewish people as a whole.

  Sharon, on the other hand, is working to surrender sovereignty over parts of the homeland Ben Gurion in his day could only dream of seeing in Jewish hands.

  Ben Gurion was temporarily giving up on gaining control over areas he knew rightfully belonged to the Jewish people in order to secure independence for the Jewish state.

  Sharon is planning to relinquish central parts of the Jews' biblical and historical homeland already under their control for the sake of a piece of paper everyone knows will never result in lasting peace.

  Naturally, Sharon chose not to quote from Ben Gurion's more famous declaration before the 1937 Zionist Congress in Basel:

  “No Jew has the right to yield the rights of the Jewish People in Israel. No Jew has the authority to do so. No Jewish body has the authority to do so. Not even the entire Jewish People alive today has the right to yield any part of Israel. It is the right of the Jewish People over the generations, a right that under no conditions can be cancelled. Even if Jews during a specific period proclaim they are relinquishing this right, they have neither the power nor the authority to deny it to future generations.”

  Ben Gurion's failure to insist Judea and Samaria be part of the newborn State of Israel a decade after that statement was a temporary setback in the restoration of the land. However, he never yielded the right of the Jewish people to one day take control of those areas, which they did a short 20 years later.

  If Sharon succeeds in reversing that restoration, it is clear the Arabs will flood Judea and Samaria with millions of so-called “Palestinian refugees,” denying future generations of Jews both the right and the ability to even visit those ancient hills over which their ancestors ruled.

  And that, according to the first prime minister, Sharon has neither the power nor the authority to do.

  Ben Gurion must be rolling in his grave.

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