Jewish Russian Telegraph

Boston Globe: Masha Rifkin, From Newton to Sderot

Boston.com:

By Masha Rifkin
Newton North '04

Imagine feeling terrified at the thought of leaving your home. Imagine dropping your kids off at school, praying that you’ll actually be able to hold them that night. Imagine an awful noise, which can sound up to 60 times a day, notifying you that you have less than 15 seconds to drop everything and run to take cover from an approaching missile. Imagine living with this for 8 years, with no end in sight.

This has been life for the residents of Sderot, Israel - a town which has been hit with over 8,000 missiles, sent from terrorist organizations within Gaza, since 2000. A town whose cries, until very recently, have been met with silence.

Over two years ago, I was studying abroad in Tel Aviv and fell upon Sderot. For four months, I witnessed men breaking down amid a symphony of sirens, furious at their inability to protect their families. I heard the mad cry of a woman who fell to the ground in despair after sirens went off, as she was pushing a stroller down the street. She had been driven to such a point by the years of missile raids, that she couldn’t even lift her child and run him to safety; she could only beat the ground helplessly. I felt the nails of children digging into my back, trying to hide their fear of the nearby “BOOM” of the Qassam missiles.

Where was the international outcry? How could any government tolerate terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad firing missiles at their civilians – freely, with no fear of retaliation? I wrote home to my family and friends in Newton, begging them to do something. The Russian Jewish Community Foundation (RJCF) jumped to my side immediately. Within two months, and with the help of Natasha and Sveta Panaitov of Sderot, we had raised enough money to bring twenty children from Sderot to Boston for a month in the summer. Ten children spent the month at Camp Gan Israel in Brighton. Another ten spent the month at Camp Russian School of Mathematics at Sunapee.

With the left over money, we rebuilt a bomb shelter in Sderot, and began an after-school Math and English program which continues today. We raised funds again to hold two camps in Israel for 50 children of Sderot - one in the summer and one in the winter. College student volunteers, mostly from Newton, traveled to run both of these camps.

The goal? To offer the children of Sderot some respite and a chance at a future. Most of these children have no memory of a time without the Qassams, without the sirens. They’re different, the fear and agony that surrounds them has hardened them and caused them to grow up too quickly. With these camps, they have a place where for two weeks they can actually live without fear, and, as many schools shut down during missile raids, the after school ensures that education isn’t ruined. We can’t protect their bodies, but at least we can protect their minds.

I think my friends, the students who ran these camps, would agree that the most painful moment is watching the children get on the bus to go back to Sderot. For weeks, tried to pour all of our strength and spirit into them, to give them something to hold onto the next time a siren goes off. But, when we saw them get on the bus, we were instantly awoken from the surreal life of the camp. We realized what life the children were going back to.

When Israel went into Gaza to stop the Hamas rockets, the country finally said, “enough is enough.” Eight years is enough. 8,000 rockets are enough. Yes, there will be civilian casualties in Gaza. Yes, these civilian casualties will be made worse by the fact that Hamas hides in hospitals, schools, and behind their own families. But, entering Gaza is unavoidable. As Golda Meir once said, “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”

Sderot was only the first stop. After Sderot, Hamas fired missiles into Ashqelon, then Ashdod. Must every Israeli civilian live with the fear of losing their children? The people of Sderot and the people of Israel deserve the right to life. Any government has the obligation to protect this right.

The camps that the RJCF hold in Israel will continue regardless of the outcome of the war. I know, however, that my friends and I pray for a time when we can put the children of Sderot on a bus back to their home and not have to wonder when the next siren will sound for them.

Masha Rifkin, a graduate of Newton North, is currently an employee of an Investment firm located in Westport, CT. She assists the Russian Jewish Community Foundation in running the Children of Sderot Program. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

BOSTON: RALLY TO SUPPORT ISRAEL!

JRT Public service announcement.

JCRC:

RALLY TO SUPPORT ISRAEL!

WHAT: JOIN WITH THE COMMUNITY TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

WHEN: THURSDAY, JANUARY 8th 7:30 PM

WHERE: CONGREGATION MISHKAN TEFILAH, 300 HAMMOND POND PARKWAY CHESTNUT HILL

 QUESTIONS? CALL JOSH @ (617)-457-8650      CLICK HERE FOR DIRECTIONS    

CLICK HERE FOR GAZA UPDATE | January 7, 2009

 

[link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Leon Panetta Is Bad Choice for CIA Director

Newsmax:

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 4:55 PM

By: Ronald Kessler

As a proposed CIA director, Leon E. Panetta has three strikes against him.

First, as a former member of Congress and former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, Panetta is a politician.
Second, he knows little about intelligence beyond having received CIA briefings in the Clinton White House.
Third, based on his previous statements, his nomination would send a strong message to CIA operatives that if they take risks to protect the country, they may suffer consequences.
Ever since the Iraq war, the media and Democratic critics have been telling us that the Bush administration politicized intelligence. When Dick Cheney went to CIA headquarters to ask questions of analysts, that was supposed to be evidence he was pressuring the CIA to agree with what every Iraqi general believed: that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, as John McLaughlin, then deputy director of Central Intelligence, told me for my book “The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror,” the professionals don’t interpret honest, persistent questioning as pressure. “We’re not here on Mount Olympus delivering revealed wisdom,” McLaughlin said. “The truth is elusive. The questioning is normal interchange. There was no spinning of intelligence.”
Going out to CIA headquarters to ask questions is one thing. Having a political operative who is close to the president in charge of the CIA is another. [Read the rest]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Joe The Plumber Goes To Israel

Haaretz:

Joe the Plumber named conservative Web site's war correspondent in Israel
By The Associated Press

Joe the Plumber is taking on a new job.

The Ohio man, who became famous during the U.S. presidential campaign after asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative Web site called pjtv.com.
Dubbed Joe the Plumber by McCain's campaign, Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher was held up as an example of an American worker who would be hurt economically by Obama's election.
Wurzelbacher says he'll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.
He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants go over there and let their 'Average Joes' share their story.
Wurzelbacher later joined Republican John McCain on the campaign trail.
At one stop, Wurzelbacher agreed with a McCain supporter who asked if he believed a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Anti-War Protester: Go Back To The Oven

Not, so fast, sweetie. We are not going to the oven this time around. Please forgive us, if we shoot back.

Fox News:

An demonstrator shouts at a group of Jews to 'go back to the oven' at a Gaza protest in Fort Lauderdale. Protest organizers accused supporters of Israel of being 'barbaric' terrorists.

Like many other protests of Israel's campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse.

But some protesters at this rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took their rhetoric a step further, calling for the extermination of Israel — and of Jews.

Separated by battle lines and a stream of rush-hour traffic outside a federal courthouse last week, at least 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators faced off against a smaller crowd of Israel supporters.

Most of the chants were run-of-the-mill; men and women waving Palestinian flags called Israel's invasion of Gaza a "crime," while the pro-Israel group carried signs calling the Hamas-run territory a "terror state."

But as the protest continued and crowds grew, one woman in a hijab began to shout curses and slurs that shocked Jewish activists in the city, which has a sizable Jewish population.

"Go back to the oven," she shouted, calling for the counter-protesters to die in the manner that the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.

"You need a big oven, that's what you need," she yelled. • Click here to see video from the protest.

[link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Hamas Uses UN Run School As A Mortar-Launching Base

What a difference a headline could make? Media is willingly following Hamas' lead into a well-rehearsed PR trap.

Here is an example of how the Financial Times, a newspaper of highest journalistic quality in all matters, except Israel and the Jews, is reporting a war-episode:

Israeli tank fire killed at least 30 Palestinians at a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday as Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, was set to join United Nations efforts to end the fighting.

State Department officials said Ms Rice was due to attend a scheduled meeting of the UN Security Council and to meet Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, and Ali Babacan, the Turkish foreign minister, along with Arab ministers, the State Department said.

While European and Arab leaders have been pressing for an immediate ceasefire to end the violence which has gripped the Gaza Strip since 27 December, the US has called for ”durable, sustainable and not time limited” truce, which is likely to take longer to arrange.

News of Ms Rice’s belated involvement to try to end the fighting came as an Israeli strike killed a group of Palestinians who had taken refuge inside a UN-run school in Jabaliya in the north of the Gaza Strip. The UN said at least 30 were killed but medical officials in Gaza said the number was more than 40. The attack was the second on a UN school on the same day. [link] 

You got the point -- per FT -- Israelis are killers of school children in a UN school.
This is an example of smear and journalistic malpractice. Reality is quite a bit more complex.
Hamas is rigging schools, hospitals, and mosques with explosives, and using civilians as shields.

Michael J. Totten:

Journalistic Malpractice

My friend and colleague Noah Pollak on the journalistic malpractice of some of our other colleagues:

Allow me to propose a metric for evaluating whether a journalist is behaving responsibly or not: If he reports that Israel bombed a UN school and killed 30 civilians, he is irresponsible. If he reports that Hamas used a UN school as a weapons cache and base of operations for launching mortars at the IDF, and the IDF’s return fire killed the Hamas cell along, tragically, with a yet-unspecified number of civilians, then he is behaving responsibly. If he wishes to be particularly scrupulous, he might additionally note that Hamas had rigged the school with explosives which detonated after the IDF took out the mortar team, killing a large additional number of civilians. And he might add that you can go to the IDF’s Youtube channel to view footage from 2007 of Hamas using the very same school as a mortar-launching base.

A responsible journalist might also add that what Hamas did is a war crime under international law, and that Hamas is responsible for every civilian killed at that school. Rigging a school with explosives and using it as a base in a war zone is a crime precisely because it endangers the lives of civilians, and in this case of children. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Dovid Margolin: Israel, Land and People, Finally United Under The Siege

Dovid Margolin:

Tuesday, January 6th is Asarah B'Teves, the tenth of the month of Teves. It is the day when the armies of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar surrounded the walls of Jerusalem. It is considered a day of mourning, and therefore we do not eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. In Judaism everything we are taught has relevance to the present day, and the tenth of Teves certainly has a connection to the current situation in Israel.

This Jewish calendar year of 5769 is known as a year of Hakhel. During the times of the Holy Temple, every seventh year would be pronounced a year of Hakhel, a year of "Gathering." The entire Jewish Nation, men, woman and children were commanded to gather at the Temple in Jerusalem and listen to the king read from the Torah. They would then return to their homes energized and ready to serve G-d. Though the commandment to gather during Hakhel does not apply today, because the Temple does not stand, the Lubavitcher Rebbe always encouraged that during the year of Hakhel special emphasis should be added in gathering Jewish people together for the purpose of strengthening Jewish unity, and promoting the learning of Torah and the fulfillment of Mitzvos.

The Rebbe explains that Hakhel has a special connection to the tenth of Teves. The assembly of all of the Jewish People exemplified the way the Jewish People are as a whole, "Shleimus HaAm"- the unity of the People. The tenth of Teves is the day when the entire city of Jerusalem was surrounded, displaying the unity and the wholeness of the city. As the eternal capital of Israel, the necessity of an undivided Jerusalem is innately connected to a whole and unbroken Land of Israel, "Shleimus Haaretz"- the unity of the Land. During the gathering the king would read the Torah to the entire people, similar to what had occurred at Mt. Sinai, "Shleimus HaTorah"- the unity of the Torah.

We must learn these three things from the tenth of Teves, in a year of Hakhel. The same way we are missing, as the Torah says, an "entire world" were there to be even one member of the Jewish Nation missing, and the same way a Torah scroll would be invalidated if it were missing even one word, the same applies to the Land of Israel. Every inch of the Land of Israel is part of this whole, an undividable union of the People, the Torah and the Land.

As Jewish soldiers battle on the front lines, the question arises, "but what can I do?" At a children's Lag Ba'Omer Parade in 1967 (5727), also a year of Hakhel, the Rebbe spoke about the then imminently dangerous situation in Israel. It was a week before the Six Day War, and the Rebbe told the thousands gathered that G-d was bestowing and sending His countless blessings to the inhabitants of the Land of Israel so that they would come out of their current situation with great success. The Rebbe then told the gathered, and it applies to us now as it did to those people gathered then, that in our hands lie a special responsibility to help. Through our learning one more bit of Torah, doing one more Mitzvah and another one and another one, following the precept "to love your friend as yourself", by teaching friends and family to use out their ability to do more and more, this helps our people in whatever place they may be found, especially in the Land of Israel.

At the onset of the Six Day War was also the beginning of the Rebbe's Teffilin Campaign. The Rebbe called on all Jewish men and soldiers to put on Teffilin, one time or more, for themselves and for the safety of the soldiers fighting in the war. A story is told of an old Russian Chossid who, at that time, tried to explain to an American Jew that he had met that he wanted to put on Tefillin with him. The Chossid's command of the English language was rather rudimentary and all he could come up with was "I Jew, I Teffilin- you Jew, you Tefillin." This old man was saying simply that at such a time the unity of the Jewish People is the most important thing, and therefore we must all do what we can to help.

May the soldiers who are now fighting be kept safe by G-d, and may we all do what we can to help make that final push and bring about the coming of Moshiach now.

posted by: jrtelegraph

American Jewish Leaders Get Taste of Sderot

American Jewish leaders are good people. But what took you so long? How could you not to see disengagement for what is was -- a one unmitigated political, ideological, and military disaster.

Jerusalem Post:

US Jewish leaders taste Sderot trauma

Jan. 4, 2009
Haviv Rettig Gur , THE JERUSALEM POST

American Jewish leaders on a solidarity visit to Sderot Sunday witnessed up close the eight-year-old rocket barrage of the town when a Kassam hit a few dozen meters from where they held meetings with local political and military leaders.

The rocket hit caused a resounding boom through the fortified police building into which the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations had rushed following the sounding of a "Color Red" siren.

"That was a close one!" shouted one of the police commanders to the policemen and soldiers who had rushed into the building. Barking orders, he assembled groups of police and sent them to check for damage or wounded.

A few minutes letter, the Jewish leaders witnessed the evacuation of a wounded man from the nearby home that had sustained a direct hit. The scene was chaotic, with residents crying and scuffling and police working to restore order.

"We all live with a sense of suppressed rage," said Kenneth Bialkin, a New York lawyer and former chairman of the conference, shortly after the rocket hit. "You can't look at this and not wonder how the world can stand by and watch as Jews are attacked for being Jews, by people who want to destroy them," he said.

"How do people not understand there is no justification for the course Hamas is taking?" he wondered. "There's no issue here except how quickly we can destroy them."

The Conference of Presidents delegation decided over the weekend to make the solidarity trip, arriving by Sunday afternoon.

"It is important to show the people of Israel we're with them, and with the IDF," said Malcolm Hoenlein, the conference's executive vice chairman. "We're also here to witness this. Our own front line is the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people," he added.

"Israel has to do what is best to stop [the attacks]," said the conference's incoming chairman, Chicago attorney Alan Solow. "It's our job to get the story about what's happening here out to the world."

Solow said the close brush with a Hamas rocket wasn't his first experience of terrorism. "I was on Rehov Ben-Yehuda Street [in central Jerusalem] when Sbarro was blown up in August 2001 [on nearby King George Street]. It's a frightening experience, but I have stronger feelings for the people of Israel who live with this. I'm only here for a short visit."

"I've been in Sderot many times, but this is the first time I've seen a rocket attack firsthand," said Ron Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. "I've never experienced this. I can understand the fear, emotion, anxiety when something like this happens to you. If I was living here with my children, I would be extraordinarily nervous."

The Jewish leaders, including former conference chairman James Tisch, said the vast majority of the American Jewish community supported Israel's operations against Hamas.

"Even among the dovish groups there is widespread understanding for Israel's action," said Hoenlein.

Asked about the influence of far-left groups such as J Street and the Israel Policy Forum who have called on Israel to stop its operations, he dismissed them as "very marginal and not representative" of American Jewish opinion, noting that the dovish president of the Union for Reform Judaism himself castigated J Street's call for an end to the operation. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Cold War And Chess: White King And Red Queen

Washington Times:

HOW THE COLD WAR WAS FOUGHT ON THE CHESSBOARD

By Daniel Johnson

Houghton Mifflin, $26, 416 pages

REVIEWED BY DOUG BANDOW

Thought to have originated in India in the sixth century A.D., the beautiful game of chess finally has returned home. The current world champion is Viswanathan Anand of India.

He is only the third non-Soviet (or Russian post-Soviet break-up) since 1948 to hold a world chess title. Journalist Daniel Johnson explains, "it is impossible to write the history of chess during the Cold War period without contrasting the rival political, economic, and social systems. Only a book that got to the heart of the matter, to what made the evil empire evil, could give the Cold War chess grandmasters their context."

Chess probably entered Russia during the early-16th century. Several czars and czarinas played the game, as did a number of Soviet revolutionaries, including Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin. Notes Mr. Johnson, "Chess has always exerted a peculiar magnetism for megalomaniacs, from Napoleon to Castro."

However, support for chess became a matter of politics. Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko was, reports Mr. Johnson, one of the few Bolsheviks "who had the sacred privilege of playing chess with Lenin." In the mid-1920s, Krylenko established centralized control over the game and, in Mr. Johnson's words, drafted a "five year plan for chess," mobilizing the game "as part of the increasingly totalitarian direction of society." As Commissar of Justice, Krylenko helped prosecute Stalin's campaign of terror, which consumed many in the chess world. Krylenko himself was arrested in 1937 and executed the following year.

Russian Alexander Alekhine actually won the title in 1927. But he played for France and remained in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Only after he died in 1946 did Moscow truly claim the chess crown as its own when Mikhail Botvinnik won the tournament to select Alekhine's successor. With success came privilege - and danger. Explains Johnson:

"Botvinnik was treated as a favored son, though that favor was strictly conditional on his continuing success against Western grandmasters. The minister of heavy industry, Grigory Ordzhonikadze, rewarded him with a car. Apart from the vehicles assigned to the nomenklatura, Botvinnik's may well have been the only private car in the Soviet Union. A year later, Ordzhonikadze vanished into the vortex of the Terror. Botvinnik was fortunate not to join him."

Government control brought resources. Writes Mr. Johnson, "the practical basis of the Soviet school of chess was its colossal infrastructure. From 150,000 registered players in 1929, the numbers grew to half a million in the mid-1930s. By the 1950s they had reached 1 million and would eventually peak at 5 million." Those who won received bountiful wages and unusual travel opportunities, which "conferred almost unimaginable privilege."

Ultimately, the Soviets became victims of "the rumbustious individualism of the American way of life," notes Mr. Johnson. Bobby Fischer was brilliant but erratic, in contrast to the dull but disciplined Soviet machine. By the mid-1960s, Botvinnik had been dethroned, ultimately replaced by Boris Spassky, a relative nonconformist among the Soviet players. He proved to be the unlucky victim when Fischer's will to win overcame the latter's mercurial temperament.

While watching chess has been derided as akin to watching grass grow, the process leading to Fischer's victory provided world-class entertainment, ably described in "White King and Red Queen." Mr. Johnson pays particular attention to the tumultuous impact of Fischer's triumph on the Soviet chess machine. After Fischer won the first "candidate's" match, blanking Soviet grandmaster Mark Taimanov by the shocking score of six-zip, Taimanov found himself in disgrace.

Fischer then took out the Dane Bent Larsen by the same score and in the penultimate match crunched former Soviet world champion Tigran Petrosian by the astonishing margin of four points. Yet Fischer's bizarre antics almost sank the championship match against Boris Spassky. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger even called Fischer, urging him to show up in Reykjavik for the match.

Once both players sat down at the chessboard, the result seemed inevitable. With Fischer taking a strong lead, writes Mr. Johnson, "the real battle again shifted away from the board. It was plain to all that only a miracle could stop Fischer now. Being good communists, the Soviet team did not believe in miracles; they believed in conspiracies instead. The fear of what might await them back in Moscow fueled the atmosphere of paranoia that had pervaded the Spassky camp." At one point, the Icelandic authorities x-rayed Fischer's chair and disassembled a lamp to check for listening devices.

Fischer's triumph heralded the slow, painful end of the Soviet chess system. Apparatchik Anatoly Karpov won the title in 1975 by default in a dispute over match conditions. Mr. Karpov then twice defeated Soviet Viktor Korchnoi, who fell into disfavor before defecting, and whose family became an unofficial pawn in the struggle. But next came Garry Kasparov. Notes Mr. Johnson, "His Armenian-Jewish background made it more likely that the boy would grow up to be a champion not only of chess but of dissidents, too." [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

RACHEL SAPERSTEIN: "Those who flee from Gaza will find Gaza coming to them."

Jerusalem Post:

The Gaza war follows us
Dec. 31, 2008
RACHEL SAPERSTEIN , THE JERUSALEM POST

We have 45 seconds from the time the missile leaves Gaza and reaches us. The tracking system lets each area know that a rocket is due to land in its vicinity. Then the siren wails. It may not land on your doorstep or penetrate your roof, but it is somewhere around.
I know all of this because we got notices from the Home Front Command, the regional council and our own Neveh Dekalim council. The first two were slipped under our door; the latter, via e-mail.
Today we even were visited by the army, which has taken over the community center. Reserve soldiers, both English speakers, knocked on our door, introduced themselves and asked me how I was feeling and could they come in for a chat about security.
My first reaction was to say, "You pulled us out of our home instead of cleaning up the mess we lived under for five years." My second reaction was my general politeness when people come to my door. I invited them in.
I assured them that I don't feel very secure in this cardboard house.
The two young men felt uncomfortable especially when they informed me that Home Front Command was planning on bringing in large sewer pipes.
Yes, you read that correctly, sewer pipes, made of thick concrete, for our protection.
The pipes would be distributed to each cul-de-sac. When the sirens wail, we would run outside, crawl into our very own sewer pipe and wait five minutes or at least until we hear the explosion. Then we crawl out and return to our cardboard homes.
I stared open-mouthed in disbelief. From our homes in Gush Katif to cardboard caravillas in a refugee camp to a sewer pipe. We have certainly hit rock bottom. I laugh as I write this. I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I was assured that the pipes would withstand an explosion close by but not a direct hit. Our bit of security.
THE SOUTH has become a war zone. We went to Ashkelon yesterday. The health clinic I visited was practically empty. The mall in which it is located was mostly closed. Even the pharmacy, open when we arrived, was closed when we left at 4:30 p.m. Except for a shop selling mobile phones, all was dark and deserted. A large city lives under the shadow of massive rocket attacks. Children can no longer go to school. Social and cultural events are cancelled.
Our local grocery and greengrocer are still well stocked. Mail is delivered. Electricity is still on. For how long? This afternoon the sirens wailed. We heard three explosions in the distance. Friends are calling offering us a place of refuge. An emergency committee is being formed. I volunteer for it.
A reporter for a Danish newspaper called. Would I meet with him and give him my take on the war. I agree, and he is thrilled to be entering a war zone. Journalists are not allowed into Gaza, but those who lost interest in us after our expulsion are interested once again now that the war has reached us.
I keep thinking of a motto from our days in Gush Katif: "Those who flee from Gaza will find Gaza coming to them."
The writer is a former English teacher who blogs about the Gush Katif community. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph