Israel & Judaism

Jewish Quotes AND Quotes about Jews

2012-07-15T09:23:00.003-07:00

Famous Judaism Quotes Quotations

*** “I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations ... They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.”

- John Adams, Second President of the United States
(From a letter to F. A. Van der Kemp [Feb. 16, 1808] Pennsylvania Historical Society)
(See the Jewish impact on the world)

*** “This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth… [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

- Robert Jastrow
(God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)

*** ”...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

- Mark Twain
(“Concerning The Jews,” Harper’s Magazine, 1899
see The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, Doubleday [1963] pg. 249)

*** “If we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.”

- David Gelernter, Yale University Professor

*** “It is against their own insoluble problem of being human that the dull and base in humanity are in revolt in anti-Semitism. Judaism, nevertheless, together with Hellenism and Christianity is an inalienable component of our Christian Western civilization, the eternal “call to Sinai” against which humanity again and again rebels.”

- Herman Rauschning, The Beast From the Abyss, pp. 155-56

*** “If we had lived in the second millennium BC, the millennium of Abraham, and could have canvassed all the nations of the earth, what would they have said of Abraham’s journey? In most of Africa and Europe, they would have laughed at Abraham’s madness and pointed to the heavens, where the life of earth had been plotted from all eternity ... a man cannot escape his fate. The Egyptians would have shaken their heads in disbelief. The early Greeks might have told Abraham the story of Prometheus ... Do not overreach, they would advise; come to resignation. In India, he would be told that time is black, irrational and merciless. Do not set yourself the task of accomplishing something in time, which is only the dominion of suffering. On every continent, in every society, Abraham would have been given the same advice that wise men as diverse as Heraclitus, Lao-Tsu and Siddhartha would one day give their followers: do not journey but sit; compose yourself by the river of life, meditate on its ceaseless and meaningless flow.”

“The Jews started it all—and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and aethiest, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings ... we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.”

- Thomas Cahill, The Gifts Of The Jews

*** “Mankind, East and West, Christian and Muslim, accepted the Jewish conviction that there is only one G-d. Today it is polytheism that is so difficult to understand, that is so unthinkable.”

- T.R. Grover, The Ancient World, p. 186

*** There is a famous story in which the Kaiser asks Bismarck, “Can you prove the existence of God?” Bismarck replies, “The Jews, your majesty. The Jews.”

“The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe; they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favorable ones) by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices-owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before “modern idea…

It is certain that the Jew, if he desired-or if they were driven to it, as the antisemites seem to wish-could now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe; that they are not working or planning for that end is equally sure… The resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary…”

- Friedrich Nietzsche
German Philosopher (1844 - 1900)

*** “Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture?”

- Ernest van den Haag, The Jewish Mystique
(New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1971, pg. 13)

*** “Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal… It is the most perpetual people of the earth…”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German dramatist, novelist and poet (1749 - 1832)

*** ”...whatever other qualities Jews may posses, likable or the reverse, no one who knows them well can deny that they are personally interesting. By that I mean, specially alive, alert, quick at comprehending people or events and at making pungent or witty comments on them… One might at times find the rather hothouse family atmosphere, with it intensities and frictions, somewhat trying, but one could be sure of never being bored.”

- Ernest Jones - British psychoanalyst (1879-1958)

*** “For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasure of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separate from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Sura or Bactra of the most distant Indies.”

- Philostratus - The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 3rd Century CE Teacher

“The Jews proved not only unassimilated, but inassimilable, and… the demonstration that this was so proved one of the most significant turning points in Greek history, owing to the gigantic influence exerted throughout subsequent ages by their religion, which not only survived intact, but subsequently gave birth to Christianity as well.”

- Michael Grant,From Alexander to Cleopatra: the Hellenistic World,
(New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1982., p. 75)

*** “The dispersion of the Jews was both a boon and a bane; their nation was disjoined, but their culture was enormously enhanced. Whereas a unique omneitic outlook set the Jews apart from other peoples, a common language, literacy and learning bound the disparate Jewish communities together and provided a firm foundation for further creativity. The exercise of this multifaceted creative propensity rebounded to benefit not only the societies that harbored the Jews, but all humankind.”

- Samuel Karlinsky, The Eight Day - The Hidden History of the Jewish Contribution to Civilzation (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1994.), xviii.

*** “Wishing to make Speyer into a city, I thought to increase its honor a thousand fold by bringing in the Jews.”

- Bishop Ruediger - Huozmann - 1084

*** “So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.”

- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization - The Reformation. (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1953)

*** “The preservation of the Jews is really one of the most signal and illustrious acts of divine Providence… and what but a supernatural power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth hath been preserved. Nor is the providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies, than in their preservation… We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin… And if such hath been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those, who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them.”

- Thomas Newton - British Clergyman: Bishop of Bristol (1704-1782)

*** “The brief legal emancipation of Jews during the Napoleonic wars released unparalleled economic, professional, and cultural energies. It was though a high dam had suddenly been breached.”

- Amos Elon, The Pity of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933 (New York: Picador, 2002) pg. 6

*** “For the Jewish impact on humanity has been protean. In antiquity they were the great innovators in religion and morals. In the Dark Ages and early medieval Europe they were still an advanced people transmitting scarce knowledge and technology. Gradually they were pushed from the van and fell behind, by the end of the eighteenth century, they were seen as a bedraggled and obscurantist rearguard in the march of civilized humanity. But then came an astonishing second burst of creativity. Breaking out of the ghettos, they once more transformed human thinking, this time in the secular sphere. Much of the mental furniture of the modern world too is of Jewish fabrication.”

- Paul Johnson
(Christian historian, author of A History of the Jews and A History of Christianity pg. 585-6)

*** “For many people during many centuries, mankind’s history before the coming of Christianity was the history of the Jews and what they recounted of the history of others. Both were written down in the books called the Old Testament, [the Torah] the sacred writings of the Jewish people ... They were the first to arrive at an abstract notion of God and to forbid his representation by images. No other people has produced a greater historical impact from such comparatively insignificant origins and resources ...”

- J.M. Roberts, History Of The World

*** “The Jew lends himself easily to Communism because it enables him to devote himself to a high cause, involving all of humanity, characteristics which are natural to him as a Jew.”

- Edmund Wilson - U.S. literary critic and author (1895-1972)

*** “People often avoid making decisions out of fear of making a mistake. Actually, the failure to make decisions is one of life’s biggest mistakes.”

- Rabbi Noah Weinberg, 48 Ways To Wisdom, Way #4

*** “Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.”

- Winston Churchill - Prime Minister of Great Britain

*** “Our survey of three and a half millennia of Jewish history is closed. But the story which we have set ourselves to tell is unending. Today, the Jewish people has in it still those elements of strength and endurance which enabled it to surmount all the crises of its past, surviving thus the most powerful empires of antiquity.

Throughout our history there have been weaker elements who have shirked the sacrifices which Judaism entailed. They have been swallowed, long since, in the great majority; only the more stalwart have carried on the traditions of their ancestors, and can now look back with pride upon their superb heritage. Are we to be numbered with he weak majority, or with the stalwart minority? It is for ourselves to decide.”

- Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews
(Oxford University: Shocken Books, 1961) pg. 423

*** “Small minds discuss people. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.”

- Unknown

*** ”...it would be a mistake…to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages… The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see… we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew.”

- U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his The State

“In the facades we put on for others we demonstrate our potential; through our children we reveal our reality.”

- Lawrence Kelemen, To Kindle A Soul p. 195

*** “It’s not how much or how little you have that makes you great or small, but how much or how little you are with what you have.”

- Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch
(Horeb, vol. 1, pg 46)

*** Intolerance lies at the core of evil.
Not the intolerance that results
from any threat or danger.
But intolerance of another being who dares to exist.
Intolerance without cause. It is so deep within us,
because every human being secretly desires
the entire universe to himself.
Our only way out is to learn
compassion without cause. To care for each other
simple because that ‘other’ exists.

- Rabbi Menachem Mendle

*** “Intelligent people know of what they speak; fools speak of what they know.”

- Minchas Shabbos Pirkei Avos 3:18 / Ethics Of The Fathers

*** A renowned genius once asked a student, “What are you watching when you sit on a hillside in the late afternoon as the colors turn from yellow to orange and red and finally darkness?” He answered, “You are watching the sunset.” The genius responded, “That is what is wrong with our age. You know full well you are not watching the sun set. You are watching the world turn.”

- Jeremy Kagan, “The Jewish Self”

*** “The entire purpose of our existence is to overcome our negative habits.”

- Vilna Goan, Commentary to Mishlei 4:13

*** Rabbi Zusha used to say: “When I die and come before the heavenly court, if they ask me, ‘Zusha, why were you not Abraham?’ I’ll say that I didn’t have Abraham’s intellectual abilities. If they say, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I’ll say I didn’t have Moses’ leadership abilities. For every such question, I’ll have an answer. But if they say, ‘Zusha, why were you not Zusha?’ for that, I’ll have no answer.”

Until today (1888), no people has succeeded in establishing national dominion in the Land of Israel. No national unity, in the spirit of nationalism, has acquired any hold there. The mixed multitude of itinerant tribes that managed o settle there did so on lease, as temporary residents. It seems that they await the return of the permanent residents of the land.

- Professor Sir John William Dosson
Modern Science in Bible Lands, London: Harper and Brothers, 1889, pp. 449-450.

*** “If a Jew doesn’t make Kiddush (to sanctify himself by maintaining a distinctly Jewish lifestyle), then the non-Jew will make Havdalah for him (by making the Jew realize he is truly different).”

- R’ Chaim of Volozhin

*** Most people are servants of their passions, but the truly free person is the one who can control his desires. When the sages taught “Only one involved in Torah is truly free” (Pirkei Avos 6:2), they meant to say that only Torah allows one to free himself from the shackles of desire and to truly exercise free choice. Without Torah, one is not free at all, he is a slave, controlled by a master foreign to his better instincts. While intellectually he might have correct ideas of how to live, ultimately his master - his passion - will force him to act otherwise.

Excerpt from: The Torah Treasury pg. 146

*** This people are not eminent solely by their antiquity, but are also singular by their duration, which has always continued from their origin till now. For, whereas the nations of Greece and of Italy, of Lacedaemon, of Athens and of Rome, and others who came long after, have long since perished, these ever remain, and in spite of the endeavors of many powerful kings who have a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as it is easy to conjecture from the natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation has been foretold); and extending from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our histories (which it preceded by a long time).

- Pensees by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952 - Paragraph 620, p. 285

*** Only if you have some knowledge of the human sacrifices, the vicious temple rites, the degrading superstitions and customs that were practiced . . . can you realize how much the modern world owes to the Hebrew prophets, whose monotheism and moral teachings entered into Christianity and Islam….

- from Ancient and medieval history,
by Carlton J. H. Hayes and Parker Thomas Moon.
New York: The Macmillan company, 1929.

*** “All that is thought should not be said, all that is said should not be written, all that is written should not be published, all that is published should not be read.”

- Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern of Tomashov (the Kotzker Rebbe)

*** “Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without Jews it might have been a much emptier place.”

- Paul Johnson
(Christian historian, author of A History of the Jews and A History of Christianity)

*** “Death is merely moving from one home to another. The wise man will spend his main efforts in trying to make his future home the more beautiful one.”

- Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern of Tomashov (the Kotzker Rebbe)

*** “No ancient people have had a stranger history than the Jews. ... The history of no ancient people should be so valuable, if we could only recover it and understand it. ... Stranger still, the ancient religion of the Jews survives, when all the religions of every ancient race of the pre-Christian world have disappeared ... Again it is strange that the living religions of the world all build on religious ideas derived from the Jews. .... The great matter is not “What happened?” but “Why did it happen?” Why does Judaism live?”

T.R. Glover
(The Ancient World, Penguin, pp. 184-191)

*** “This one book (the Bible) ... has attracted to it, and had concentrated on it, vastly more thought and has called forth more works, explanatory, illustrative, apologetic, upon its text, its meaning, its geography, its theology, its chronology, its evidences, its inspiration, its origin, than all the rest of the literature of the world put together. An immense bulk of the world’s literature owes its origin to this book.”

- Carlyle B Heynes in The Bible, Is it a True Book

*** “The world says that time is money, but I say that money is time. In order to earn enough money to satisfy his desires, one must sacrifice inordinate amounts of time. For me, that sacrifice is too great.”

- Chofetz Chaim

*** “What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?!

The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear.

The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.”

- Leo Tolstoy
(What is the Jew?
quoted in The Final Resolution, pg. 189, printed in Jewish World periodical, 1908)

*** “There is a striking point that runs through Jewish history as a whole. Western civilization was born in the Middle East, and the Jews were at its crossroads. In the heyday of Rome, the Jews were close to the Empire’s center. When power shifted eastward, the Jewish center was in Babylon; when it skipped to Spain, there again were the Jews. When in the Middle Ages the center of civilization moved into Central Europe, the Jews were waiting for it in Germany and Poland. The rise of the United States to the leading world power found Judaism focused there. And now, today, when the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward the Old World and the East rises to renewed importance, there again are the Jews in Israel…”

- Professor Huston Smith
The Religious of Man, New York: HarperCollins, 1989

*** “When we scan the diaspora of Jewry over the entire globe and throughout the entire civilized world, we are surprised to see that this Nation, which is almost the most ancient in the world, is in truth the youngest in terms of the land under its feet and the sky above its head. As a result of the relentless persecutions and forced expulsions, most Jews are but recent new-comers to their respective lands of residence. Ninety percent of the Jewish people have lived in their new homes for no more than 50 or 60 years! (The Jewish People) are dispersed throughout over 100 lands on all five continents.”

- Leschzinsky
“The Jewish Dispersion”, pg. 9 (Heb.) click here for history

*** “The struggle for world domination is between me and the Jews. All else is meaningless. The Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world: Circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul. I come to free mankind from their shackles.”

“When over long periods of human history I scrutinized the activity of the Jewish people, suddenly there arose up in me the fearful question whether inscrutable Destiny, perhaps for reasons unknown to us poor mortals, did not, with eternal and immutable resolve, desire the final victory of this little nation.” (Mein Kampf, p.64)

*** “The Ten Commandments have lost their validity… Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish like circumcision…”

- Adolph Hitler
(Herman Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 220) (click here for more)
(click for why do people hate the Jews?)

*** “The preservation of the Jew was certainly not casual. He has endured through the power of a certain ideal, based on the recognition of a Higher Power in human affairs. Time after time in his history, moreover, he has been saved from disaster in a manner, which cannot be described excepting as ‘providential.’ The author has deliberately attempted to write this book in a secular spirit; he does not think that his readers can fail to see in it, on every page, a higher immanence”

- Cecil Roth, Oxford University
(History of the Jews, New York, 1963, p. 424)

*** “I have already explained with clear proofs that the soul is the dominant factor in the nature of the Jew. For example, being stiff-necked is one of the bad qualities that Jews have. Practically speaking, that means that Jews refuse to accept criticism and will not listen to corrective advise. This is in fact because they are not essentially materialistic. Only something which is materialistic is readily altered. Consequently Jews are very resistant to change and will not accept the advise of others. Further, the Rabbis say (Talmud - Beitzah 25b) that they are the most aggressive and pushy people.”

- Maharal of Prague (Rabbi Yehuda Loewe, 1526 - 1609)

*** “Israel’s great achievement, so apparent that mention of it is almost trite, was Monotheism. It was an achievement that transformed subsequent history….One may raise the question whether any other single contribution from whatever source since human culture emerged from the stone age has had the far reaching effect upon history that Israel in this regard has exerted both through the mediums of Christianity and Islam and directly through the world of Jewish thinkers themselves”

- from The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man,
by H. and H. A. Frankfort, John A. Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen, William A. Irwin

*** “The Jews have played an all-important role in history. They are pre-eminently an historical people and their destiny reflects the indestructibility of the divine decrees. Their destiny is too imbued with the “metaphysical” to be explained either in material or positive historical terms.

I remember how the materialist interpretation of history, when I attempted in my youth to verify it by applying it to the destinies of peoples, broke down i the case of the Jew, where destiny seemed absolutely inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint. And, indeed, according to the materialistic and positivist criterion, this people ought long ago to have perished. Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by a special predetermination, transcending the processes of adaptation expounded by the materialistic interpretation of history.

The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolutely peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history; all these point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny…

The historical not only represented man’s external relations, but that it might also reveal the very noumenon and essence of his being. The peculiarity of Jewish destiny consists in its incommensurability with either the pre-Christian or the Christian era. Scientific criticism applied to traditional Biblical history can neither discredit the universal role played by the Jews nor offer a satisfactory explanation of their mysterious destiny. Nor does this criticism grapple with the absolutely peculiar tie existing between the Jews and the ‘historical,’ and their extraordinarily intense feeling for history.”

- The Meaning of History by Professor Nicholai Berdysev
Moscow Academy - London 1935, pp. 86-7

Simple to Remember

Why I No Longer Hate Israel

2012-04-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

Portuguese blogger explains why he changed his views, fell in love with Israel

By Romeu Monteiro - Ynet News

I’m a 22-year-old Portuguese gay activist and PhD student. I’m not Jewish, Israeli or even religious, but I am a Zionist and strong supporter of Israel, and I want to explain why.

My story begins at the age of nine, when I went to the school library to get the Diary of Anne Frank. I had no prior idea about the Holocaust and I could not comprehend such persecution. I had never met a Jew, but I was raised to see other people as similar to myself.

The book’s story haunted me: This girl, slightly older than me, hiding for years, confined, isolated, being persecuted for who she was, constantly fearful of being discovered... How horrible; how could this have happened?

A few months later, I discovered I was gay. I was 10 and in Anne’s attic: Confined, isolated, hiding who I was, fearing what would happen if I was discovered... I felt strongly identified with Anne and the Jewish people, and this feeling never abandoned me.

Shortly after, the second Intifada started. I began seeing Israel, a country which I knew almost nothing about, on the news constantly, for the worst reasons. I learned that the Jews had invaded Palestine after the Holocaust to get a country and were occupying and controlling the native Palestinians who lived in the remaining land.

The TV showed us these people blowing themselves up inside buses and cafes and I, like most people around me, thought: “How desperate must someone be to kill themselves like this? How could the Jews go from being oppressed to oppressors? Have they not learned the lessons of History?” I grew up loving the Jewish people but hating Israel.

In 2008, when I was 18 and in college, I found myself criticizing Israel and the Gaza Strip blockade in a YouTube video about the death of Rachel Corrie. I got an answer from an Israeli commenter about my age, who wrote that there was no blockade, as several trucks were crossing into the Strip daily.

This greatly confused me and I asked him to present me with his arguments in defense of Israel. I said I would change my mind if they were convincing. He wrote me a long message, telling me about the massacres of Jews in Palestine before Israel existed, the wars of extermination, and the indoctrination for hate of Jews and Israel in the Middle East, among other things, which he compared to several examples of the humanist character of Israel and its society.

I read it all and, after verifying the information, I was convinced...

Angry and betrayed

My world shook. I became aware that I was making unfair judgments and spreading hate and false propaganda about Israel... I was sad with myself and I felt angry and betrayed that I had trusted so much in organizations I thought were fighting for peace, equality and against prejudice, like I saw them doing for gay rights.

I realized I was being fed ignorance and hate by people who were, at best, as ignorant and prejudiced as those they were "fighting" against while believing themselves to be enlightened individuals and making me believe it too...

I read more and more about Israel, and I became fascinated with the amazing story of a people who, against all odds, had managed to survive and remain united through centuries of persecution, fight for their homeland, rebuild their country and revive their language - just like a phoenix rising from the ashes, striving for freedom and peace.

I realized Israel is a democratic, tolerant, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, rapidly developing nation. A place I could live in free and more accepted than in my home country, and the only place I could safely set foot at in the Middle East.

I found myself in love with Israel, something I never thought I would do and never really want to be.

In 2010, there was the flotilla incident. Suddenly, all media were reporting about Israel. The news reports were grossly distorted and I knew I had to do something. I found myself arguing about it with professors at the university and I started sharing videos of the IDF through my Facebook account.

I thought I would be risking much socially, but I knew it was a matter of justice, as someone had to tell the truth and not allow Israel to be demonized with no right to defense once again. After the flotilla I kept posting pro-Israel stuff, and had serious and even ugly discussions about this issue with several people.

Each discussion revealed more ignorance and double-standards and made me a stronger Zionist and supporter of Israel and its people. I thought I was the only one defending Israel but I gradually discovered other people doing it.

Once, a friend whispered in my ear: “I am also more on the side of Israel... but, please, don’t tell anyone!” She was scared to voice her opinion, and this reinforced my conviction that I had to be vocal about my defense of Israel; I was speaking for many people who were afraid to do it.

At the end it’s a matter of justice. If there’s a people that fights for its right to self-determination and to live in peace, I will be on their side. If there’s a group that is demonized by prejudice and ignorance, I will fight prejudice and ignorance with them. If there’s a culture whose main values include tolerance for different sexual orientations, races and religions - clashing with another one that educates for intolerance and hate - I know which side I'll support.

I am a Zionist and I support the right of the Jewish people to self-rule and to life in peace, like I believe every thinking human being should.

Romeu Monteiro is an electric engineering Phd student at Carnegie Mellon University. You can see his blog here.

Muslim, Zionist and Proud

2012-04-25T14:36:00.003-07:00

His father praised Hitler, but Kasim Hafeez writes about love for Israel, Jewish people By Kasim Hafeez - Ynet News I am a Zionist, a proud Muslim Zionist, and I love Israel, but this was not always the case. In fact, for many years I was quite the extreme opposite. I experienced the high levels of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity taking place on British university campuses, because I was the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activist. Growing up in the Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials and opinions at best condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers, and at worse calling for the wholesale destruction of the "Zionist Entity" and all Jews. In short, there was no accommodating a Jewish State in the Middle East. To grow up around this constant barrage of hatred directed at Israel has a massive effect on an individual’s own opinions. More disturbingly, many of these people weren’t radical or extreme, but when it was about Israel the most vicious of rhetoric poured out, coupled with the casual anti-Semitism that seemed too prevalent, when the phrase "stop being a Jew" used as an insult. My father, however, was much more brazen in his hatred, boasting of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn't kill enough Jews. By the time I had reached 18 I was completely indoctrinated to the fold of radical Islamism. My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden. These views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies, where speakers predicted Israel's demise as Hezbollah flags were waved proudly in the centre of London.

The Case for Israel

Was there a case for Israel? In my mind, of course not, there was no shadow of doubt. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified; the Jews must obviously deserve it, I believed. So what changed? How could I go from all this hatred to the great love for and affinity with Israel and the Jewish people? I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section of a local bookstore and picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel. Given my worldview, the Jews and Americans controlled the media, so after brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda." I did, however, decide to buy it, content that I would shortly be deconstructing this propaganda piece, showing that Israel had no case and claiming my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause. As I read Dershowitz’s arguments and deconstruction of many lies I saw as unquestionable truths, I searched despairingly for counter arguments, but found more hollow rhetoric that I’d believed for many years. I felt a real crisis of conscience, and thus began a period of unbiased research. Up until that point I had not been exposed to anything remotely positive about Israel. Now, I didn't know what to believe. I'd blindly followed others for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong. I reached a point where I felt I had no other choice but to see Israel for myself; only that way I’d really know the truth. At the risk of sounding cliché, it was a life-changing visit.

No apartheid state

I did not encounter an apartheid racist state, but rather, quite the opposite. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about. After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had been confronted with the truth and had to accept it. But I had a bigger question to confront, what now? I’d for years campaigned against Israel, but now I knew the truth. The choice was obvious: I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me. Doing this is not easy and that’s something that has become very obvious. I have faced hostility from my own community and even some within the Jewish community in the UK, but that’s the reality of standing up for Israel in Europe today. It is not easy, and that’s what makes it so necessary.

This isn’t about religion and politics; it’s about the truth.

When it comes to Israel, the truth is not being heard, the ranks of those filed with blind hatred continue to swell, yet many have not been exposed to the reality, away from the empty rhetoric and politically charged slogans they are so fond of. We can change this situation but we need to be strong and united. Israel is not just a Jewish issue - it’s about freedom, human rights and democracy, all the values that Western nations cherish. It’s also about trying to be a light among nations. Israel’s international humanitarian aid work speaks for itself, but if we don’t get the message out there, no one will. We don’t have to be head-bowed apologists leading with :Israel’s not perfect…" - we should never be afraid to say: I am a Zionist and I’m proud. I stand with Israel. Now I ask, will you do that? Kasim Hafeez is a British Muslim and former Islamist who is now a proud Zionist and stands with Israel. He runs www.theisraelcampaign.org and has a blog on this site. He is also on the advisory board of StandWithUs in the UK and recently completed a university speaking tour .

Everything You Need to Know about Kosher Wine

2012-04-01T16:01:00.002-07:00

It’s not your parents’ syrupy sweet beverage any more.

by Maurie Rosenberg

I have enjoyed wine pretty much as long as I can remember. As a child I was allowed only a tiny bit on special occasions like Kiddush and Passover. In college I was not quite, shall we say, as flavor discriminating as I am now, being a wine critic and author of a guide to kosher wines.

Kosher wine has come of age. Gone are the days when kosher wine could only be described as sweet, sweeter and so cloyingly sweet that it hurts my teeth just to think about it. So without further ado, let’s shatter some misconceptions.

1. Wine is not “kosher” because it is blessed by a rabbi.

This might be the most common misconception about kosher products in general. I know of a rabbi who provides a service in his local community, in cooperation with a regional supermarket, by marking the shelves of all the items which have kosher certification. He does this by placing a small sticker next to the shelf label of the appropriate item to make it simple and convenient to identify those products that qualify. One day a woman observed this activity and, startled with the speed with which he affixed the green dots on a group of similar items, commented: "Rabbi, you're saying those blessings awfully fast, aren't you?!"

Kosher wine esnures the absence of problematic ingredients like ox blood.

Kosher means “prepared” – i.e. processed according to Jewish law. When it comes to wine, various ingredients present kashrut challenges including: casein (a dairy derivative), enzymes (from animals), isinglass (from non kosher fish), and even ox blood (exactly what it sounds like). Further, kosher wine must have rabbinic supervision from the time the grapes become juice, up until the wine is sealed in the bottle.

2. Wine is a mitzvah (under certain conditions).

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Kosher wine is prescribed for use in many Jewish rituals: Bris Milah (circumcision), the wedding chuppa (canopy), the Kiddush that begins Shabbat and holiday meals. While most occasions call for just one cup, on the holiday of Purim, wine is the beverage of choice for the festive meal, recalling wine’s significant role in the "banquets" described in the Megillah story. On Passover we are required to drink four cups at the Seder (a challenge for many). As one rabbi said: "Who else but Jews would complain about how much they have to drink?"

3. Enjoy the variety.

Some wines are great for desert, others for a quiet evening of sipping, and others are especially food-friendly with meat, fish or cheese. White wines are generally younger, fresher and fruity with hints of apple, pineapple, pear and the like. Red wines can be full-bodied with notes of black current, plum, tobacco, leather and wild berries, with months or years of aging in charred oak barrels and a big finish. They can be silky and smooth, or tart and astringent, or even perhaps both at the same time. Wines can be cool, sparkling, light and refreshing for everyday or special occasions.

Two thousand years ago, a Talmudic sage said: "The best kind of wine is that which you enjoy." This rabbi might also have been the first known wine critic, as having rated a 200-year-old vintage "of the highest excellence."

4. Israel produces some of the world's best kosher wines.

Drip irrigation enables grapes to thrive in deserts all over the world.

Chalk, limestone, sand and volcanic soil can provide excellent growth medium for premium wine grapes. These conditions are often found in desert climates, which until recently were not sufficiently friendly to reliable vineyards. In the second half of the 20th century, two key developments allowed noble grape varieties to thrive in deserts all over the world:

Stainless steel tanks and refrigeration allow grape juice and wine to be kept cool after the summer harvest in warmer areas, and during fermentation (the process by which microbes, called yeast, eat the sugar, converting it to alcohol and carbon dioxide).

Drip irrigation, a process refined in the 1960s on an Israeli kibbutz in the Negev, allows a hungry world to be fed with far less water (agriculture places the largest demand on our global water supply) and far greater nutrient control. It also provides for consistent results from year to year in places that could not otherwise sustain agriculture.

Israel is blessed with many state-of-the-art wineries that merge a synergy of technology and tradition. Israeli and other kosher wines are now recognized as "world class" from leading authorities, with many regularly receiving the highest awards and recognition.

5. Don't cook with a "cooking wine."

Just because a bottle says "cooking wine" doesn't mean it is better for cooking. In fact, it is usually inferior wine that is not good enough to drink. My rule is: Wine that is not good enough to drink is not good enough to cook with.

When cooking, add wine early enough to allow the alcohol to evaporate and produce a subtle taste (except for fortified wines that you might want to add at the end). Reduce the wine to intensify its flavor; if you cook wine uncovered for 10 minutes, it will reduce to half or less. Use white wine for lighter-colored dishes and red wines for darker meats or stews.

Wine offers uncommon value in a world of ever-rising costs. In 1940 a typical bottle of kosher Kiddush wine cost about one dollar. In today's terms that translates to $12-15 for a standard bottle. Today you can buy many sweet Kiddush wines for under $5, and in the $12-15 range you can find some very good to excellent wine.

6. Wine is good for you, body and soul.

Almost every week there is another story about the health benefits of wine. Is it white wine or red wine, the tannins, anti-oxidant compounds, flavonoids, enzyme releasers or something else?

“Kosher,” with its added levels of supervision and quality control, has established itself in a broad perception as cleaner, healthier, higher quality, and even safer. Of course, the real reason Jews keep kosher is because of our spiritual health. (Hence the term, “soul food.”)

Wine is an exceptional beverage that can be a metaphor for so many profound ideas in life: balance, nuance, integrity. Wine can even be a metaphor for a completed and perfected human life: It starts off as a simplistic and immature product (grape juice represents childhood; it must develop character as it goes through fermentation (struggle represents the challenge of evil); only then does it become the mature product we call wine.

We could discuss this in more detail over a glass of wine. As Tevya sang in Fiddler on the Roof: "Be happy! Be healthy! Long life! Drink, l'chaim, to life!"

Aish.Com

Kosher Wine and Its Rich Flavor Explained

When it comes to kosher wine, there are numerous misconceptions and one of the widest spread one is that this is a certain style of wine. The truth is that just any kind of wine could be made kosher in case it has been prepared according to the Jewish laws of wine making.

Another really popular misconception is that the wine needs to be blessed by a rabbi. It is important to remember that there is no religious blessing involved in the process.

The wine just needs to be certified as kosher to make sure that the wine is in accordance with the Jewish dietary laws.

The concept of a rabbi blessing the wine is similar to thinking that the USDA blesses the steaks.

There are some rules that need to be kept in mind when preparing kosher wine.

The equipment and tools used in the process must be kosher, meaning that they cannot be involved in the making of non-kosher wine.

The wine must be handled by Sabbath-observant Jews during the entire process, except the case when the wine is mevushal.

The ingredients of the wine must be kosher, including the yeast, gelatin, casein, isinglass and other products used in the process. This is why the majority of the kosher winemakers are using bentonite for fining which is uncommon to regular wine making.

In case of Israel there are some special rules that apply because of the Jewish laws. Naturally these regulations do not apply outside the country. Here the wine has to be at least four years old and the vineyard has to be left fallow once every seven years. The vineyard can only be used to grow grapes and no other agricultural plants.

The reason for which only Sabbath-observant Jews are allowed to handle the wine is that the Jew people didn’t want to have wine that might have been used in pagan religious activities. The non-Jews weren’t really trusted so there was need for someone to supervise the procedures.

The majority of kosher wine is made mevushal, or pasteurized. In case of white wine this happens before fermentation, while in case of red wine, it happens after. In our days this process is a quick one, and without the actual boiling of the wine.

While in the past people have boiled it, in our days there are some other methods as well, to make sure that the flavor will not be altered.

The wine that is usually served at special occasions is mevushal. This happens so because in many cases the caterers might be non-Jews, and if they would handle the wine, it would become non-kosher. The pasteurized wine might be handed by just any person, and it still remains kosher.

To find kosher wine, you will have to be looking for a U inside a circle. This symbolizes that the wine in question is kosher. Also you might find some wine that have a K inside a circle. This symbol also certifies that it is kosher. The K could also be found in a star, and this symbol has the same meaning.

Flavor Red Delight

5 Most Important Things to Know About Passover

2012-04-01T15:18:00.000-07:00

Our greatest contributions to the world summarized in five words: memory, optimism, faith, family, and responsibility.

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech.

Scholars have long wondered why Jews who number less than one quarter of one percent of the world – as Milton Himmelfarb memorably put it, "The total population of the Jewish people is less than a statistical error in the annual birth rate of the Chinese people” – have had such a profound influence on almost every field of human endeavor.

What accounts for the remarkable fact that in the 20th century, Jews, more than any other minority, have been recipients of the Nobel Prize, with almost one-fifth of all Nobel laureates being Jewish?

Perhaps it all goes back to the very beginning of the birth of our people and the Passover holiday that we will shortly be celebrating.

Passover conveys five major concepts that became our mantras for how to lead successful and productive lives. They are the five most important things to know about Passover, and to incorporate into every day of the rest of the year. Because we’ve absorbed them into our national psyche for the thousands of years since the Exodus, we’ve been privileged to fulfill in great measure our prophetically mandated role to become a light unto the nations.

They are our greatest contributions to the world and can be summarized in five words: memory, optimism, faith, family, and responsibility.

The Importance of Memory

The Irish Catholic writer Thomas Cahill was so overwhelmed by how the Jewish people literally transformed the world that he authored what proved to become an international bestseller, The Gifts of the Jews. One of the major gifts he credits to Jewish genius is the invention of the idea of history.

"Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt." "Remember that the Lord took you out of the bondage of slavery." Remember is a biblical mandate that had never seemed important to anyone else before the Jewish people came on the scene. It was the Passover story that initiated a commitment to memory.

Henry Ford was famous for his belief that "history is bunk." The Ford motor company is also famous for producing the Edsel. And both were probably equally stupid blunders. History is the only way we can learn from the past. History allows us to grow by standing on the shoulders of giants. Make a mistake once, and you’re human. Never learn from what happened before, and you’re brainless. That's why it's so important to heed the famous words of George Santayana that "Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it."

Memory links our past to our future. It turns history into destiny.

We know how horrible it can be to live without a personal memory of events that preceded. For an individual we have a name for it that fills us with terror: Alzheimer's. It is a disease we fear perhaps even more than death because it leaves us living corpses. Strangely enough, we don't have a similar word for the condition that describes ignorance of our collective past. Knowing what came before is almost as important in an historic sense as it is in a personal one. Only by being aware of our past as a people can our lives become filled with purpose and meaning.

Memory links our past to our future. It turns history into destiny. Learning to treasure it was the first step in our climb up the ladder of greatness.

The Importance of Optimism

To study the Passover story in depth is to recognize that the most difficult task Moses had to perform was not to get the Jews out of Egypt, but to get Egypt out of the Jews. They had become so habituated to their status as slaves, they lost all hope that they could ever improve their lot.

Without hope they would have been lost.

The true miracle of Passover and its relevance for the ages is the message that with God’s help, no difficulty is insurmountable. A tyrant like Pharaoh could be overthrown. A nation as powerful as Egypt could be defeated. Slaves could become freemen. The oppressed could break the shackles of their captivity. Anything is possible, if only we dare to dream the impossible dream.

In the story of America's Great Seal, a particularly relevant chapter is the imagery suggested by Benjamin Franklin in August 1776. He chose the dramatic scene described in Exodus, where people confronted a tyrant in order to gain their freedom.

"Pharaoh sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his head and a Sword in his hand, passing through the divided Waters of the Red Sea in Pursuit of the Israelites: Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Cloud, expressive of the Divine Presence and Command, beaming on Moses who stands on the shore and extending his hand over the Sea causes it to overwhelm Pharaoh."

The motto he suggested, words based on the Passover story, inspired George Washington and the founding fathers of the American colonies to rebel against their British oppressors: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God."

It was the biblical record of the Exodus that enabled the spirit of optimism to prevail for the followers of Martin Luther King in their quest for equal rights, because they were stirred by the vision of Moses leading his people to the Promised Land. It was the hope engendered by recalling how God redeemed our ancestors that allowed even Jews incarcerated in Auschwitz to furtively celebrate the Festival of Freedom and believe in the possibility of their own liberation.

That optimistic spirit, based on our own miraculous history, is the second great gift we have given to mankind and defines our identity.

The Importance of Faith

A pessimist, it's been said, is someone who has no invisible means of support.

Jewish optimism is rooted in a contrary notion, a firmly held belief that we are blessed with support from above by a caring God. And that faith in a personal God gives us faith in ourselves, in our future and in our ability to help change the world

The God of Sinai didn't say "I am the Lord your God who created the heavens and the earth." Instead, he announced, "I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage." The God of creation could theoretically have forsaken the world once he completed his task. The God of the Exodus made clear He is constantly involved in our history and has a commitment to our survival.

The Passover story conveys that history is not happenstance. It follows a Divine master plan.

Thomas Cahill credits the Jews not only for monotheism but for this additional groundbreaking idea of a Divine being with Whom we share a personal relationship. This, he points out, is key to Western civilization’s concept of personal accountability, conscience and culpability for ourselves and the rest of the world.

The Passover story conveys that history is not happenstance. It follows a Divine master plan. It has a predestined order. “Order” in Hebrew is “Seder” – and that is why the major ritual of Passover is identified by that name. Coincidence is not a Jewish concept. Coincidence is just God's way of choosing to remain anonymous.

Faith gives us the certainty that whatever our present-day problems, history moves in the direction of the final messianic redemption. That is what has always motivated us to believe in progress and to participate in tikkun olam, efforts to improve the world.

The Importance of Family

Passover taught us yet another major truth: the way to perfect the world is to begin with our own families.

God built his nation by commanding not a collective gathering of hundreds of thousands in a public square but by asking Jews to turn their homes into places of family worship at a Seder devoted primarily to answering the questions of children.

It seems all too obvious. Children are our future. They are the ones who most require our attention. The home is where we first form our identities and discover our values.

More even than the synagogue, it is in our homes that we sow the seeds of the future and ensure our continuity. No wonder then that commentators point out the very first letter of the Torah is a bet, the letter whose meaning is house. All of the Torah follows only after we understand the primacy of family.

The world may mock Jewish parents for their over-protectiveness and their child-centered way of life, but they are the ones chiefly responsible for the extraordinary achievements of their progeny.

At the Seder table, the children are encouraged to be the stars and their questions are treated with respect. And that is the first step to developing Jewish genius.

The Importance of Responsibility to Others

One serious question begs to be asked as we celebrate our Divine deliverance from the slavery of Egypt. We thank God for getting us out, but why did God allow us to become victims of such terrible mistreatment in the first place?

A remarkable answer becomes evident in numerous Torah texts. We were slaves in Egypt – and so we have to have empathy for the downtrodden in every generation. We were slaves in Egypt – and so we have to be concerned with the rights of the strangers, the homeless and the impoverished. We experienced oppression – and so we must understand more than anyone else the pain of the oppressed.

The tragedy of our encounter with injustice was in no small measure meant to prepare us to serve throughout all future generations as spokesman for those with whose pain we can personally identify.

The purpose of our suffering was to turn us into a people committed to righting the wrongs of the world, to become partners with God in making the world worthy of final redemption.

We begin the Seder by inviting the hungry and the homeless to join with us. We conclude the Seder by opening the door for Elijah. It is our acceptance of responsibility to others that is the key to hastening the arrival of Messiah.

From earliest childhood every Jew identifies with these five powerful ideas that are at the heart of Passover and its message. And precisely because memory, optimism, faith, family and responsibility have become such vital characteristics of our people, we have been able to achieve far beyond what anyone might have considered possible.

Aish.Com

Israel's Top 10 Surfing Beaches

2012-03-31T11:07:00.002-07:00

By Jessica Steinberg

With 186 miles of sandy beaches, and a sea that is virtually free of seaweed and sharks, Israel is a great spot for surfers, say the country's experts. ISRAEL21c picks the top 10 beaches.

Israel has a stretch of sandy beaches extending for about 186 miles, and a sea that is virtually seaweed- and shark-free. While conditions may not be up to scratch for pro surfers, local experts say it's a great spot for beginners and laid-back surfers.

"The water's warm, there are no strange animals and you only have to worry about two weeks of jellyfish in July," says Nir Almog, known to many as the father of Israeli surfing. "We've got soft, weak waves and you can surf absolutely anywhere. You can't find that everywhere in the world."

What's more, there's summer as well as ample winter surfing, thanks to the relatively mild Israeli weather conditions in the country's center, which is where most of the surfing beaches are located. The waves are actually higher during the winter following heavy rainstorms, and that's when the surfing swells show up, Almog tells ISRAEL21c.

During the summer, the water temperature in the Mediterranean can be as high as 28 to 29 degrees Celsius, while the winter waters cool down to some 14 degrees. Wave height also varies, with summer waves ranging from about one and a half, to three feet on medium surfing days, while mornings consistently offer the best swells, with waves "breaking long and perfect," according to Almog. Fall and winter swells can reach from six to 10 feet, which is the time for the more experienced Israeli surfers to hit the waves.

Almog should know. It was his father, Shamai 'Topsi' Kanzapolski, a Tel Aviv lifeguard, who was recruited by Dorian 'Doc' Paskowitz, a California doctor who came to Israel in the 1950s, hoping to create Israeli surfing champions. Paskowitz brought six long boards made partially from balsa wood, each depicting the blue-and-white national flag.

At the time, Israeli lifeguards were catching the waves with the Hasake, a flat, wide board that had initially been used for near-shore fishing by Arab fishermen. Slowly, as the lifeguards and other locals began to use Paskowitz's offerings, a surfing tradition was born, with Almog riding along on his father's board.

At the time, the waves on Tel Aviv's beaches were very high and would break right on the beach due to a lack of piers, creating a fairly dangerous setting for surfing.

Increased development along the beachfront helped to create safer conditions, and now Tel Aviv locals "can stay put on their own shores" for decent surfing, says Almog, who can be found riding the waves when he's not in one of his two Intersurf stores. But there's surfing to be had in all the major beach towns and cities, from Tel Aviv and Herzliya to Haifa, Netanya, Ashkelon and even in Gaza.

1. Hilton beach, Tel Aviv

In Tel Aviv, locals are fond of the two Hilton beaches, named for the hotel that towers above this particular stretch of sand. With two jetties that protect the waves from incoming currents, the beach offers one of the best reef breaks in Israel. The reef can hold swells ranging from one to seven feet and while the waves start off weak, they strengthen closer to shore. The Hilton Bet shore, also known as Topsy, is a break directly north of the Hilton that is similar in makeup to the other Hilton beach, but with a slightly different reef that tends to be less crowded. According to local surfers, the break often performs better in small to medium swell conditions. Former Israeli skateboard champion and surfer Arthur Rashkovan grew up on the Hilton Beach, in what he calls a "mini-California, surfer's paradise."

2. Maravi Beach, Tel Aviv

If you're surfing in Tel Aviv, try the Maravi Beach, which means Western Beach and is in fact the city's southernmost beach, situated between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Surfers like it during the summer, when there are numerous short boarders, long boarders and body boarders, and, according to a local blog, "everybody is really mellow, no localism to worry about." A structure fashioned of cement and stone poles that juts out of the water forms a manmade reef where waves break left and right, offering even better forms than the beach breaks of Herzliya.

3. Dolphinarium Beach, Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium Beach, named for an old dolphin tank that is now used as a nightclub (that was the site of a suicide bombing in 2001), offers reasonably consistent surf during the summer months, but even better conditions in the winter. Also known as the drummers' beach for the drummers, free-style dancers and jugglers who gather there late on Friday afternoons, you can also rent surfing, windsurfing and para-surfing equipment at the water sports club located on this beach. With offshore winds from the southeast, wind swells are more typical than groundswells and there are great waves from the northwest with good surf during all stages of the tide.

4. Zvulun and Dabush beaches, Herzliya

Take a ride over to Herzliya where a selection of beaches offers decent surfing in winter and summer. Almog likes Zvulun and Dabush beaches, which offer good surfing early in the morning when there's a southern wind. Dabush is north of Herzliya's third sea break, while Zvulun is north of Dabush. Zvulun offers slightly longer rides than Dabush with larger waves and a sandy beach. For Almog, the favorite Herzliya beach is south of the Herzliya marina, known as Marina Beach and home to the yacht crowd. As the city's southernmost beach, it sits between the marina and the first of the three Herzliya wave breaks, and the waves that come in are perfect to ride. "It works the best when there are northern winds," says Almog, particularly on early winter mornings, at around five a.m., when all is silent except for the sound of the waves.

5. Kontiki and Sironit beaches, Netanya

Just up the coast a bit are the nine miles of Netanya beaches that don't receive the highest marks from surfer dudes, but have "okay waves for surfing," according to Almog. Look for Kontiki and Sironit beaches which are connected to the piers, offering decent waves. However, since the "sand moves all the time," on this open beach, it's considered a fickle surf spot for many. At the same time, Netanya Beach is a major site for sailing, diving and snorkeling, and there's ample opportunity to paraglide and parachute off the Netanya cliffs.

6. Beit Yannai Beach, Netanya

Just north of Netanya is a beautiful stretch of beaches connected to the Alexander Stream. Home to famed, giant soft-shell turtles, the banks of the stream are adjacent to the shifting sand dunes and a eucalyptus grove. The beach, where the stream meets the Mediterranean, is home to Israeli parachute surfers, where the wooden posts of what was once a pier, stand out against the waves. Local legend has it that the pier was used before the establishment of the state to land illegal immigrants arriving in defiance of British Mandatory restrictions, but Dudi Shani, director of the national park that contains the beach, says the story is untrue. There are always a few surfers in these waters, and it is the first beach in Israel designated exclusively for kite surfing.

7. Shonit, Sdot Yam beaches, Caesaria

Almog doesn't weigh in on surfing in the town of Caesarea, but surf blogger Tzachi Paz has only glowing reviews for his childhood surf spot. Growing up on the beach between Caesarea and Givat Olga, Paz divides the Caesarea strip of beachfront into three major spots. He describes the Shonit Beach as a great beach for surfers, with rocks at a depth of about 328 feet and another point that sometimes creates a deep, long wave that long boarders like to use. Sdot Yam, another well-known beach in the area has great waves during winter storms, creating walls of waves for surfers.

8. Arubot Beach, Caesaria

The best spot for surfing in Caesaria is Arubot Beach, about a quarter of a mile to the south of Shonit. Located next to major wind turbines, surfers ignore the 'Do Not Enter' signs and make their way down to the beach. According to Paz, there's a myth that the waves only work during winter storms - and many surfers flock there during the winter. But it's also great during the summer, when the waves are perfect and there are few other surfers. Paz describes these waves as the types that are "long, open, start out flat and become a step and wall as you approach the beach."

9. Bat Galim beach, Haifa

Farther north brings you to the Haifa Bay, where the Backdoor and Casino surf spots are located on the Bat Galim (Daughter of Waves) Beach on the southern tip of the bay. They're considered to be very good beaches, particularly in the winter when the storms have strong southwest winds offshore. Protected by two jetties, Backdoor is considered Israel's best reef break, as it is covered with moss that feels soft when it rubs against surfing bodies. With a hollow right wave, it has gained the reputation for the best tube-riding wave in the country. A little further down is Casino, an open ocean break that lacks jetties but provides a great long boarding wave. As a 'split peak' - which means that you can ride both lefts and rights, the wave is at least one foot bigger then Backdoor when it's 'firing.'

10. Goote, Delilah beaches, Ashkelon

While Ashkelon has been a surfers' spot for some time, it's a newer beach destination. Goote Beach is the best surf spot in this southern beach town, with jetties around the marina that make the waves smaller, and a break just south of the marina that holds great waves during winter storms. With waves higher the farther south you head in Israel, Herzliya will have knee-high waves while Ashkelon will have waist- to chest-high waves. According to Grant Shilling, writing about surfing for This Magazine, Delilah Beach in Ashkelon, named after the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, said to have taken place on this spot, is another popular surfing beach. But surfing in Ashkelon has been affected by the rockets launched from Gaza, an ironic turn of events given that surfing lingo for catching a big wave is 'riding a bomb.

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Surfing in Israel

Source: Israel21c

Surfing in Israel

2012-03-31T11:04:00.001-07:00

By Adina Laufer

Hanging ten on blue and white waves

Winter or summer, Israeli beaches offer just the right conditions for some 'epic' surfing. If you've never surfed in the sea, Israel should be your trial destination.

If you've never surfed in the sea, Israel should be your trial destination. With a 300-kilometer stretch of sandy beaches, and a sea that is virtually seaweed- and shark-free, Israel is a great spot for beginner surfers, say the country's experts.

"The water's warm and you only have to worry about a couple of weeks of jellyfish in July," says Nir Almog, a member of Israel's founding surfing family. "We've got soft, weak waves and you can surf absolutely anywhere. You can't find that everywhere in the world." Almog's father, Tel Aviv lifeguard Shamai "Topsi" Kanzapolski, was recruited by Dorian Paskowitz, a California doctor who came to Israel in the 1950s and wanted to create Israeli surfing champions. Paskowitz brought six long boards made partially of balsa wood, each depicting the blue-and-white Israeli flag. At that time, lifeguards were catching the waves with the Hasake, a flat, wide board that had initially been used for near-shore fishing by Arab fishermen. The lifeguards and other locals began using Paskowitz's boards, and slowly a surfing tradition began, with Almog junior riding along with his father.

The Tel Aviv waves were very high in those days, and would break right on the beach due to a lack of piers, creating a fairly dangerous setting for surfing. Subsequent property development along the beachfront helped to create safer conditions, and now Tel Aviv locals can easily stay put for decent surfing, says Almog, who tends to surf along his city's shores. Beyond Tel Aviv, there's surfing to be had in all the major beach towns and cities, from Herzliya to Haifa, Netanya, Ashkelon and even Gaza.

Surf the water, not the Net

What's more, Israel also offers year round surfing, given the relatively mild Israeli winter conditions in the country's center, where many of the surfing beaches are located. During the infrequent heavy winter rainstorms, the sea's waves are higher and that's when the surfing swells and local surfing stars show up, says Orian Kanzapolski, Topsi's youngest son. He's also a surfer and owner of Topsea, a Tel Aviv surfing school quirkily named after his father.

The water temperature in the Mediterranean varies from winter to summer. During the hot summers, temperatures can rise as high as 82 to 84 degrees Fahrenheit (28 to 29 Celsius), while the winter waters cool down to some 57 degrees (14 Celsius). Wave heights also vary, with summer waves ranging from about one and a half to three feet (0.5-1 meters) on medium surfing days, and early mornings consistently offering the best swells, with waves "breaking long and perfect," in Almog's words. Fall and winter swells can reach from six to 10 feet (2-3 meters), which is the time for the more experienced Israeli surfers to hit the waves.

"When I was a kid, we had to convince parents to bring their kids to learn how to surf," Orian recalls. "Now it's the opposite. Moms are trying to convince their kids to surf the water instead of the Internet. It's more mainstream."

With its long sandy beaches, shark-free seas, and great surf, Israel is becoming an increasingly popular surfing destination (Photo courtesy www.goisrael.com)

Surfing in Israel has become more popular because of these welcoming conditions, says Orian, explaining that given the relatively mild waves, Israeli waves are especially suitable for beginners. As more people have become interested in the sport, the number of surfing schools has grown, particularly during summer and winter vacations, when they offer special courses for kids and their parents. The Kanzapolski brothers estimate that there are some 30,000 surfers in Israel, about 20 surf shops and about two dozen surf schools.

No surfing stars, yet

Both Almog and his younger sibling helped to found the fledgling industry, after following in their father's footsteps, mastering the Tel Aviv waves and creating businesses built around the seaside sport. Their father first began making surfboards in a small shack on the Hilton beach in Tel Aviv that doubled as his makeshift store. The business and the sport received a boost when an army sergeant and fellow surfer told Topsi about a new material being used by the army, called polyurethane, which would be easier to mold and use than wood in surfboard production. It was the early 1970s, and Topsi began using polyurethane for the surfboards that he made, sold and rented to local kids. When Almog finished his army service, he apprenticed at a boat shop, learning how to work with fiberglass, and eventually opened Intersurf, his company that manufactures and sells surfboards in Israel. His younger brother, Orian, went in a different direction, opening a surfing school in Tel Aviv. What unites all the local surfing enthusiasts is their thrall and love for the still recreational sport of surfing. "There are some very good surfers in Israel but they don't surf for prizes," says Kanzapolski. "They love surfing as a sport, and they love the water."

For now, there's little money in Israel for surfing as a sport, and both Kanzapolski and Almog say it's a recreational experience, in which learning is encouraged and newcomers are welcome. While there are some local celebrities, such as Adi Gluska, who trains on the O'Neill Europe junior team and Gili Zilka, another well-known local surfer, there aren't yet any career surfers and scant media attention is paid to the sport.

What is changing is the number of people falling in love with surfing and wanting to learn how to surf up and down Israel's coast during all seasons. Almog notes that while many people try the sport once or twice, only a small number stick with it. Living near the sea is one necessity and even when one does, the water doesn't always oblige.

Scouting out the best waves

Still, surfing is considered a "cool" sport and with the combination of the popularity of the clothing, increasingly attractive surfboards and the freestyle surfing spirit, demand has grown. More surfing schools are opening and a "surfing scene" is emerging, with more people buying surf-style clothing or heading to the beach on the weekend to watch the fledgling surfers, if not to surf themselves. Most important to surfers is determining which beaches offer the best waves.

In Tel Aviv proper, locals like Orian and Nir Almog prefer the two Hilton beaches, named for the hotel towering above that particular stretch of sand. With two jetties that protect the waves from incoming currents, the beach offers one of the best reef breaks in Israel, holding swells ranging from one to seven feet that become stronger closer to shore. The Hilton Bet shore, also known as Topsy in honor of Israel's first surfer, is a break that is similar to the one on the other Hilton beach, but with a slightly different reef that tends to be less crowded. According to local surfers, the break often performs better in small to medium swell conditions. At the southern end of the Tel Aviv beach is the Dolphinarium Beach, named for an old dolphin tank now used as a nightclub. It offers decent surfing conditions during the summer months and even better conditions during the winter. Known also as the "Drummers Beach" because drummers, free-style dancers and jugglers tend to congregate there late on Friday afternoons, this beach offers great waves from the northwest with good surfing during all stages of the tide.

Almog favors Herzliya's Zvulun and Dabush beaches in both summer and winter, that offer good surfing conditions early in the morning when there's a southern wind blowing. His especially likes Marina Beach, just south of the Herzliya marina, which is also home to the yachting crowd. As Herzliya's southernmost beach, it sits between the marina and the first of the three Herzliya wave breakers, creating very ridable waves. "It works the best when there are northern winds," says Almog, and particularly during the dark, early mornings in winter, around five o'clock for 'dawn patrol,' when all is silent except for the surfers riding the crashing waves.

Literally "riding a bomb"

Up the coast from Herzliya are the eight miles of Netanya beaches that generally don't receive the highest of marks from the surfer dudes, but are considered "okay for surfing," says Almog. The Kontiki and Sironit beaches are an open stretch of beach in which the sand moves all the time, making it a more fickle surf spot. At the same time, Netanya Beach is a major site for sailing, diving and snorkeling, and there's plenty of space to paraglide and parachute off the Netanya cliffs.

The Caesarea strip of beachfront is divided into three major spots, including the Shonit, Sdot Yam and Arubot beaches. Orian Kanzapolski's favorite spot is Arubot, located near some major wind turbines, where surfers ignore the Do Not Enter signs and make their way down to the beach for some of the best Israeli surfing.

Farther north brings surfers to Haifa Bay, where the popular Backdoor and Casino surf spots are located on the Bat Galim (Hebrew for "Daughter of Waves") beach on the southern tip of the bay. They're considered excellent surfing beaches, particularly during the winter when storms create strong southwest winds offshore. Protected by two jetties, Backdoor has a moss-covered reef break that makes it a soft landing for surfing bodies. And with a hollow right wave, it has gained the reputation as the best tube-riding wave in the country.

At the other end of the coastline, Ashkelon has always been a surfers' spot for its locals, but is a newer beach destination for the rest of the country. Goote Beach is considered the best surf spot in this southern beach town, with jetties around the marina that make the waves smaller, and a break just south of the marina that holds great waves during rare winter storms. Surfing in Ashkelon has been affected in recent years by rockets launched from Gaza, an ironic turn of events given that surfing lingo for catching a big wave is called "riding a bomb."

Finally, there are the waves of Gaza, which has some 50 or 60 surfers compared with the 30,000 in Israel. The previously mentioned Doc Paskowitz, along with his sons David, Josh, and Jonathan, headed for the Gaza border a few years back to deliver some surfboards. Now Explore Corps and Surfing4Peace have sent surfboards and wetsuits to the 20 or so Palestinian wave riders. The Gaza Surf Club is situated on the beach at Sheikh Khazdein, a beachfront neighborhood in southern Gaza City, which is the place where surfers hang out on Friday afternoons in the Gaza Strip.

And so, north or south, winter or summer, there are almost always some waves to ride in Israel. They're not always "crackin'," but are fairly "epic," according to reliable surfing sources, who promise that it is definitely possible to "hang ten" on a surfboard on blue and white waves.

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Israel's Top 10 Surfing Beaches

Your Israel Experience

Israel’s Top 10 Extreme Sports

2012-03-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

Israel offers thrill-seekers everything from surfing and spelunking to paragliding and parkour, in some of the world’s most spectacular scenery. ISRAEL21c takes a look at the top 10.

Extreme sports – the popular term for a slew of inherently dangerous, sometimes counter-cultural activities – are disproportionately popular in Israel. Israelis love a challenge, and a bit of danger added to the mix is just perfect for thrill-seekers across the country.

“This combination of adrenaline and nature is far more suitable to the Israeli mindset than any high-tech amusement park,” says Moshe Meyers, CEO of Israel Extreme, a company specializing in off-the-beaten-track tourism.

“This tiny country has so many natural sites for every type of extreme sport. We have some of the most beautiful and challenging sites in the world. I don’t know any other country with so many participants,” Meyers tells ISRAEL21c.

Fortunately, this small land has natural settings suitable for every type of extreme sport, from remote desert canyons to snow-capped peaks. And with such a keen local audience already paving the way, tourists from abroad are also rapidly discovering that the country is a great go-to destination for the thrill of their lives.

Our picks for Israel’s 10 most challenging extreme sports:

1. Down below

Beyond the obvious airborne, waterborne or ground level sports, going underground is a rapidly developing extreme option in Israel.

“Caving is possibly the most dangerous challenge sport there is,” says Sergey Shipitsin, one of Israel’s most accomplished speleologists (a scientific specialist in caves). “It’s also one of the few activities where you can still go where no one has gone before.”

Shipitsin, 43, tells ISRAEL21c that “Israel is a dream country for the cave explorer,” ranking among spelunkers’ top 10 countries. Israel has four main caving areas: the Jerusalem Hills, Mount Sodom (unique in the world), the Upper Galilee and the Hebron Hills in the West Bank.

Mount Sodom – basically a block of salt rising 230 meters above the Dead Sea – is pierced by labyrinth caverns and tunnels formed by rainwater, including the world’s biggest salt caves. If you know where to look, the Jerusalem Hills have thousands of caves, many of them eminently explorable.

Caving (known as potholing in the UK), which includes climbing, hiking and rappelling, is not an activity to be attempted alone, or without the proper equipment and preparation.

In 2004, Shipitsin and some fellow cavers set up Sarma, a non-profit organization dedicated to cave exploration and rescue, which now has some 3,000 members.

“Israel has many people experienced in both cave exploration and rappelling. We organize challenge trips underground and training courses. You don’t have to be particularly fit – we had children aged seven and a 74-year-old in last weekend’s tour,” he says.

2. Into the abyss

Rappelling – the controlled descent down a rope known as “abseiling” in British English and “snappling” in Hebrew – against the cliffs of the Ramon crater in the Negev, or down wadis in the Judean Desert, produces an unbelievable adrenaline rush.

Israel is blessed with some tremendous rappelling sites, not all of them in the desert. Try Khirbet Oren on Mount Carmel, where the stone wall rises from the valley almost vertically; the Kesh on the border with Lebanon; the prehistoric Pigeons Caves near Karmiel; or the notoriously challenging Black Canyon trail in the Golan Heights, which involves traversing rushing water and hiking through a unique nature reserve.

For training, we counted 12 rock-climbing walls in Ashdod, Haifa, Jerusalem, Kibbutz Ha’Ogen, Kiryat-Ono, Kfar Blum, Petah Tikvah, Ramat Yishai and Tel Aviv.

3. Jump out of a plane

“Anyone who doesn’t parachute once in his or her life is missing out,” says Ziv Kochva, a parachuting guide at the Paradive jump school near Habonim Beach opposite the Carmel mountain range. Paradive is Israel’s largest jump school.

“Parachuting is an empowering experience – a tremendous feeling of freedom. Fear that turns into elation: Nothing can be compared with it,” says Kochva.

Israel has its own skydiving fraternity, many of them graduates of paratroop units or the Israel Defense Forces’ jump school at Tel Nof. Civilian skydivers must take a course and get at least 10 jumps under their belt before being allowed up to 12,000 feet. But the beauty of parachuting is that you don’t need to take a test – anyone can experience it through tandem jumps, harnessed to a guide.

Free-falling is for the particularly strong of heart. “It can be the greatest experience of a lifetime,” Kochva exclaims. “You drop for 50 seconds at 200 kph, then spend five to seven minutes floating down in one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s a closed area – a nature reserve and the only part of the Mediterranean coastline closed to flights.”

Since opening a decade ago, Paradive has conducted more than 300,000 jumps. Parachuting is definitely not a cheap thrill, yet “all sorts of people – from 12-year-olds to some in their 70s, and not necessarily former paratroopers,” take to the air, says Kochva. “Often they come as a birthday present – it’s a present they never forget.”

4. Fly like a bird

“Anyone who doesn’t parachute once in his or her life is missing out,” says Ziv Kochva, a parachuting guide at the Paradive jump school near Habonim Beach opposite the Carmel mountain range. Paradive is Israel’s largest jump school.

“Parachuting is an empowering experience – a tremendous feeling of freedom. Fear that turns into elation: Nothing can be compared with it,” says Kochva.

Israel has its own skydiving fraternity, many of them graduates of paratroop units or the Israel Defense Forces’ jump school at Tel Nof. Civilian skydivers must take a course and get at least 10 jumps under their belt before being allowed up to 12,000 feet. But the beauty of parachuting is that you don’t need to take a test – anyone can experience it through tandem jumps, harnessed to a guide.

Free-falling is for the particularly strong of heart. “It can be the greatest experience of a lifetime,” Kochva exclaims. “You drop for 50 seconds at 200 kph, then spend five to seven minutes floating down in one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s a closed area – a nature reserve and the only part of the Mediterranean coastline closed to flights.”

Since opening a decade ago, Paradive has conducted more than 300,000 jumps. Parachuting is definitely not a cheap thrill, yet “all sorts of people – from 12-year-olds to some in their 70s, and not necessarily former paratroopers,” take to the air, says Kochva. “Often they come as a birthday present – it’s a present they never forget.”

5. Bicycle country

Mountain biking has become incredibly popular in Israel in the past decade – as has urban bicycling. The country has dozens of biking clubs boasting thousands of members, and as diverse a set of biking trails as you’ll find anywhere in the world.

Myriad routes wind through some of the most distinct terrain, traversing dried-up desert wadis, wind-swept hilltops, lush vegetation and even snow. Downhill enthusiasts will love the Hermon Mountain, while the arid south of the country offers yellow-tinted vistas and the silence of the desert. Riding through the Negev by moonlight is particularly recommended as a unique experience.

6. Just enough for the city

Urban anarchists take to parkour, also known as freerunning — the non-competitive, utilitarian discipline of French origin in which participants use only their bodies’ natural abilities to negotiate a route lined with obstacles. City teenagers, in particular, can increasingly be spotted bounding, climbing, vaulting, rolling and swinging through their local concrete jungle. Sometimes they can even be spotted leaping from one rooftop to the next. But be warned – a few have already been injured and the police are on the lookout for participants.

7. Thrills on wheels

You don’t see the same numbers of skateboarders tearing up Israeli streets that you do in North American cities, but skateboarding is alive and kicking in this corner of the Middle East. Israeli cities have many new marble-lined plazas that come alive after office hours. And unlike in other countries, skateboarding is not a crime in Israel and there is no police harassment of skaters.

The Sporteque in Tel Aviv is the best and biggest park in the country with a vert, a mini-ramp, a mini-vert, four quarters, three fun boxes, four banks, two rails, a pyramid and a pro shop selling all the required paraphernalia. Head for Golda Park in central Tel Aviv for the country’s best unofficial skate spot.

Jerusalem boasts a newly rebuilt concrete skate park at Gan Sacher, adjacent to the Supreme Court, while skaters also hang out at Safra Square, next to City Hall. Crazy Roller in Herzliya has a mini-half pipe and a 3.4 meter high vert, and there are also skate parks in Ra’anana, Katzrin and Shoham.

8. Above the metropolis

Here’s a challenge for you: Running up to the top of Israel’s highest skyscraper, the Azrieli Tower in Tel Aviv. It started as a wager between a few local nutcases, and has since developed into every wannabe hunk’s rite of passage. The super-fittest can make it up the 1,144 stairs and 54 floors in seven minutes.

9. Surfing safari

When the waves are high, thousands of surfers and windsurfers flock to the Mediterranean waters all along Israel’s coastline, which is dotted with surf schools. It’s not Hawaii, but the sea often throws up sufficient swell and the shallow, sandy beaches are ideal places to learn how to surf all year round.

The country has produced some fine surfers, including Israel’s first Olympic gold medalist in windsurfing, Gal Fridman. In fact, Israel is a major force in this sport, and has hosted international windsurfing championships. Surfing in Israel began in the 1950s when a young Californian, Dorian Paskowitz immigrated to Israel with six long boards and introduced the sport to Tel Aviv. Today surf schools dot the country’s coastline,

10. Most incongruous sport in the Middle East

The highest point in Israel, Mount Hermon, hosts Israel’s only ski slope, with three chairlifts and a wide range of ski trails at novice, intermediate and expert levels. But be warned: Not all Israelis are expert skiers even if they think they are, and accidents abound. More family-oriented activities at the ski slope include sledding and Nordic skiing.

Israel21c

Israeli Music History

2012-03-31T11:00:00.001-07:00

In every country and among every people, music attests to national character and national ideals. The rhythms, harmonies, melodies, and poetry of music relate to and help to define personal characteristics, social customs and rituals, national religion, as well as national and personal identity. Most of today’s societies have had hundreds or thousands of years to develop a national music; the State of Israel has had only since 1948 to assert itself as a political, social, and cultural entity in a fast-moving world. In many ways, the history of Israeli music reflects the broad struggles of that young country.

The early history of music in Israel was determined by two major forces: the Zionist movement, whose participants encouraged the creation and dissemination of Israeli "folk" music; and the political struggle against Fascism, which led many European-born musicians to flee to the Holy Land.

Jewish immigrants to Palestine brought with them music of their various host countries. The leaders of the Zionist movement sought to inspire and unite these new olim (immigrants) with a common cultural identity. To that end, Zionist musicians composed hundreds of short and simple folk songs for dissemination among the immigrant communities and among Jews abroad. The songs’ lyrics spoke of the experience of living in the Holy Land, from stories about the agricultural cycle to lullabies to stories of love. Their musical qualities combined the sounds of European music with hallmarks of the "exotic" -- minor modes, the Yemenite trill, and Arabic instruments. Many of these songs are still sung today throughout the Jewish community; among the most well-known is the love song "Erev Shel Shoshanim" ("Evening of Lillies").

The folk tradition dovetailed into a new form of national popular music, represented above all by Naomi Shemer. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Shemer sang of the uniqueness of the land of Israel. Her song “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (“Jerusalem of Gold”)--composed just before the Six Day War of 1967--spoke of Jews’ longing for Jerusalem. After Jerusalem’s unification, Shemer famously modified the lyrics to reflect Israel’s accomplishments in the war.

Israel also has cultivated a rich tradition of classical European music. The Palestine Orchestra was founded in 1936 by Bronislaw Huberman, who anticipated the coming war against the Jewish people in Europe and took scores of other Jewish musicians from Europe with him to Palestine. The formation of the orchestra was a distinctly political move: Huberman stated that his goal was to produce a “materialization of the Zionist culture in the fatherland.” After the creation of the State of Israel, the orchestra changed its name to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Classically trained Jewish artists from Israel and abroad--Koussevitsky, Bernstein, Heifetz, Rubinstein, Arrau, and many others--were naturally drawn to participate in the orchestra’s activities from its inception. It is no coincidence that the Philharmonic’s first recording project was of symphonies of Mahler, a Jewish composer. Together with music departments in Israel’s various universities and institutions such as the Jerusalem Music Center, the Israel Philharmonic continues to cultivate the country’s interest in European classical music.

In addition, the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, located in a suburb of Tel Aviv, serves as a hothouse for growing a new generation of musicians, creating a unique and contemporary Israeli sound. The school counts among its graduates the popular Achinoam Nini, an Israeli woman of Yemenite descent who spent her childhood in North America.

Today, the population of Israel is divided over its national identity. Some Israelis think that Israel should attempt to be a country like every other, with no distinct religious or cultural identity; while other Israelis think that there is something unique about Israel as the Jewish homeland and that it should not necessarily strive to be like other Western countries. Israeli popular music reflects this struggle. In 1998, the Israeli singer Dana International won the Eurovision Song Contest seeing herself as a representative of Israel to the rest of the world; her music is very much like contemporary European popular music. Singers like Arik Einstein have further developed the musical style of Naomi Shemer, uniting a distinctive Israeli message with a more modern folk-influenced popular idiom.

In addition, within the country, musical styles of Mizrachi (Middle Eastern) Jews have long competed with Western sounds. In recent years there has been a crossover in which Mizrachi--and even Ethiopian--music has become part of the popular Israeli music scene. Politics, also, is intertwined with the Israeli popular-music scene, with lyrics expressing all sides of the debate regarding the conflict with the Palestinians and the stresses of everyday life in a war-torn land.

How much do you know about Israeli music? - Click on the picture below to take the Quiz!!!

My Jewish Learning

Israeli Sports

2012-03-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

Moving into the international arena.

By Gabe Roth

While Israel is technically part of Asia, the sporting landscape makes the tiny nation more in line with the European continent. Soccer rules in Israel, as it does in the rest of the non-American world, and while the country has its own hierarchy of professional leagues, Israeli teams often face European competition in international matches through UEFA (Union of European Football Associations).

Soccer: The National Sport

The structure of Israeli soccer, which is governed by the Israeli Football Association, is similar to that of English soccer and a number of other continental soccer federations. The best teams play in Ligat Ha'al, the Premier League; second tier teams play in Liga Leumit, or the National League; and third tier teams play in Liga Artzit, or the Nationwide League.

Each of these leagues has 12 teams. Big cities such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa are typically represented by at least one or two teams in the Premier League, and teams from smaller cities populate the other leagues. At the end of the season, the teams in each league with the two worst records are relegated to a lower league, and the two best teams move up a league.

Soccer has been a part of Israeli culture since before the modern state existed. Prior to 1948, men and women making aliyah from Europe founded social movements that they hoped would guide the cultural and political development of the future state. These movements were all encompassing--creating their own settlements, building their own infrastructure, establishing societal norms, and even fielding their own soccer teams. Two of the most prominent movements--the right-wing Revisionist Zionist Movement (Beitar) and left-wing Workers' Federation (Hapoel)--survive today on Israeli soccer fields.

Beitar and Hapoel

As competing flavors of Zionism were becoming popular in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, Zionist leaders established supporting youth movements. Right-wing Revisionist Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky founded the Beitar movement in Riga, Latvia, in 1923.

Immigrants who had been in the Beitar youth movement came to Palestine and then Israel, and their Revisionist forebears aligned themselves with the right-wing Herut political party. Its main offshoot, Likud, still boasts a number of former Beitar leaders today. Following the creation of the state, as fewer people joined civic associations, the number of Beitar youth steadily decreased. However, the number of followers of the Jerusalem-based Beitar Yerushalayim soccer team--arguably the most popular soccer team in the country--continued to grow.

Founded in 1936, the team did not achieve national success until the late 1970s, when, under the leadership of Uri Malmilian (Israel's closest thing to Pele), the team began to win its first State Cups.

Since the end of the 1990's, the team's rabid fans in yellow and black hadn't had much to cheer. But in 2005, billionaire Arkady Gaydamak bought the team and filled the roster with expensive players from Israel and overseas. Only 21 months after purchasing the club, Gaydamak found himself hoisting the Ligat Ha'al trophy--Beitar's first in nine years.

Founded in 1920 in Palestine, the left-wing political and social movement, Hahistadrut (the workers' federation), had its own sporting union called Hapoel (the worker). The first Hapoel soccer team sprang up in the 1920s in Jerusalem (Hapoel Yerushalayim) and became a natural competitor of Beitar Yerushalayim--a rivalry that still exists today.

As the Histadrut movement spread across the country, numerous cities adopted the Hapoel name for both their soccer and basketball teams. Today, a dozen Israeli cities field Hapoel teams in various professional soccer and basketball leagues.

Maccabi

Similarly, numerous cities across the country field soccer and basketball teams called Maccabi, named after the victorious Jews of the Hanukkah story. Started as an umbrella organization for all Jewish sports associations, the Maccabi World Union was created at the 12th World Jewish Congress in 1921. Maccabi Tza'ir, the Maccabi youth movement, was established to improve the physical and mental fitness of young Jews across the world. When Maccabi made its way to Palestine in 1933, it stressed sports as part of one's education, and promoted the establishment of youth and sports clubs throughout the fledgling nation.

Today, seven Israeli cities are home to Maccabi clubs that play in professional soccer and basketball leagues. Maccabi Tel Aviv is the nation's most successful soccer team, having won a record 18 national championships in that sport. The Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team also has a decades-long history of domestic dominance and international success.

Basketball: An American Influence

While most of Israel's soccer culture derives from Europe and South America, basketball's popularity is due to an American influence. It's not uncommon for the top Israeli basketball teams to recruit talented former American college basketball players who were not able to make it in the NBA. A number of these players have settled in Israel and have become fluent in Hebrew. Derrick Sharp of Maccabi Tel Aviv, for example, became an Israeli citizen and is married to an Israeli woman.

Israel's greatest international sporting successes have come in EuroLeague basketball, specifically with the Maccabi Tel Aviv team. Maccabi has won 5 EuroLeague championships, most recently in 2005. In that year the team featured a host of American stars--forward Maceo Baston and guard Anthony Parker who both were on the Toronto Raptors; former University of Illinois player Deon Thomas; and Sharp, who played at the University of South Florida.

The team has won more than 45 Israeli titles, prompting a number of other clubs to try to pass measures to level the playing field. Efforts to enforce a salary cap have been unsuccessful. No other team has been able match Maccabi's wealth and, thus, its ability to sign top talent. However, to try to mollify anti-Maccabists, the league instituted a rule in 2006 that there must be at least two Israelis on the court at all times.

International Competition

Even with soccer and basketball's popularity, the most internationally successful individual Israeli athletes today are tennis stars. Andy Ram and Yoni Erlich have won 10 pro doubles tennis titles together and reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2003. Ram was the first Israeli to win a Grand Slam tournament, winning mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon in 2006 and in the French Open in 2007.

Most professional Israeli tennis players spent their formative years as students at the Israeli Tennis Center, a non-profit tennis education organization with 14 locations throughout the country. Many of the centers are in outlying development towns or poor neighborhoods--consistent with the ITC's goal of promoting social development.

In addition to gaining international prominence in tennis, Israel has recently begun a string of medal-winning performances at the Olympic Summer Games. Israel has competed in the summer Olympics since 1952, absent only in 1980, when they supported the US boycott of the Soviet Union.

In one of the greatest tragedies ever to befall an international sporting competition, Palestinian terrorists killed 11 members of the Israeli delegation at Munich in 1972. The games were postponed for a day following the massacre and more than 80,000 people attended the memorial service in their honor.

Israel won its first Olympic medals at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, when Yael Arad won a silver medal for women's half-middleweight judo and Oren Smadja won a bronze medal for men's lightweight judo. Israel finally struck gold in 2004 in Athens, as Gal Fridman finished first in sailing. It was the first time the Israeli flag was raised--and Hatikvah was sung--at an Olympic medals ceremony.

Israel has a much shorter history at the Winter Olympics, only beginning to send athletes to the games in 1988. The country has never sent more than five athletes to any Winter Games, and most have been figure skaters or ice dancers from the former Soviet Union.

Israel's varied sports history predates the State itself. The immigrants who settled the land brought rich religious and cultural traditions with them, as well as their own sports. Without a doubt, soccer still rules the land--just as it was when the first pioneers made aliyah more than a century ago. But as more and more Russians and Americans move to Israel, other sports, such as baseball and figure skating, are sprouting up and gaining popularity.

My Jewish Learning

Incense in Judaism

2012-03-31T10:54:00.001-07:00

By Rabbi Louis Jacobs

Incense is mixture of aromatic herbs burnt twice daily on the golden altar in the Temple, Hebrew ketoret, from a root meaning "to smoke." The burning of the incense also formed an important part of the ritual performed by the High Priest when he entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16:12-13). The biblical instructions for the preparation of incense are found in Exodus 30:34, where four ingredients are mentioned--stacte, onycha, galbanum, and pure frankincence. But the Talmud (Keritot 6a) records an ancient tradition according to which there were eleven ingredients in the incense. This passage is known, after its opening words, as pittum ha-ketoret ("compound of incense"):

"The compound of incense consisted of balm, onycha, galbanum and frankincence, each in the quantity of seventy manehs; of myrrh, cassia, spikenard and saffron, each sixteen manehs by weight; of costus twelve, of aromatic rind three, and of cinnamon nine manehs; of lye obtained from leek nine kabs; though, if Cyprus wine is not available, old white wine may be used instead; of salt the Sodom the fourth of a kab, and of the smoke raiser [a herb that makes the smoke of the incense rise] a minute quantity. Rabbi Nathan says: Also of Jordan resin a minute quantity. If, however, honey is added, the incense is rendered unfit; while if one omits one of the ingredients he is liable to the death penalty [not by human court but by the "Court of Heaven"]. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel said: Balm is nothing but a resin which exudes from the wood of the balsam-tree, the lye obtained form leek was rubbed over the onycha in order to render it beautiful, and in the Cyprus wine the onycha was steeped that its odor might be intensified. In fact urine might well serve this purpose, but urine may not be brought within the precincts of the Temple."

A Rabbinic comment on this is that galbanum has an unpleasant smell and yet is included in the ingredients of the incense, to teach that when the community assembles for prayer on public fast days the sinners, too, must be included. According to the Mishnah (Yoma 3:11) the incense in the Second Temple period was manufactured by the House of Abtinas who zealously kept their method secret. The Mishnah states that the sages objected to the House of Abtinas having a monopoly on the preparation of the incense but the Talmud comments that the reason for keeping it a secret was that it should not be manufactured by unscrupulous persons for profane purposes. The womenfolk of the House of Abtinas never used any perfume in case people would imagine that they were using the incense compound.

Incense is found in the worship of most ancient societies, no doubt because of the pleasant aroma ascending upward s towards heaven and as a symbol of purification. Maimonides' explanation of the incense (Guide for the Perplexed, 3.43) scandalized the pious who considered it far too banal an explanation for so numinous a rite: 'Inasmuch as many beasts were slaughtered daily in that holy place, the flesh cut into pieces, and the intestines burnt and washed , there is no doubt that if it had been left in that state its smell would have been like that of a slaughterhouse. Therefore it was commanded in regard to it that incense would be burnt there twice daily in the morning and in the afternoon in order to improve its smell and the smell of the clothes of all who served there…This also preserved the fear of the Sanctuary. For if it has not a pleasant smell, and all the more if the contrary were the case, the result would have been the opposite of glorification. For the soul is greatly solaced and attracted by pleasant smells and shrinks from stench and avoids it.'

For the Zohar, the incense has a profound mystical meaning. The smoke of the incense represents the ascent of all creation to the Sefirot and of the Sefirot to their Source in En Sof, the Zohar observes (ii. 218b): 'It is a firmly established ordinance of the Holy One, blessed be He, that whoever reflects on and recites daily the section of the incense will be saved from all evil things and sorceries in the world , from all mishaps and evil imaginings, from evil decrees and from death; and no harm will befall him that day, as the "Other Side" has no power over him . But it must be read with devotion.' Following this, the Talmudic passage of pittum ha-ketoret, referred to above, is recited in man y rites at the beginning of the morning and afternoon services.

Incense itself, however, is never used in the synagogue, probably in order to distinguish the synagogue from the Temple, although synagogues have been known to spray the building with aromatic herbs. not as any kind of ritual but solely for aesthetic reasons. Some of the Hasidic masters used to smoke a pipe of fragrant tobacco when they meditated before their prayers.

My Jewish Learning

Why Don't the Israel Haters Boycott Syria?

2012-03-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

By Arsen Ostrovsky

This week begins an annual part of the global campaign to delegitimize and vilify the Jewish state, as anti-Israel activists and student groups on campuses around the world, including United States and Canada, mark the eighth annual Israel Apartheid Week [IAW].

According to organizers of the IAW, the purpose of the movement is to "to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns."

First, let's make one thing crystal clear -- attempts to brand Israel as an "apartheid" state or compare it to white South Africa are at best uninformed; and at worst, maliciously dishonest and anti-Semitic. It also does a great injustice to the real victims, who had to endure institutionalized segregation and apartheid in South Africa.

The irony is that, despite problems in Israel (as in any democracy), Arab citizens still enjoy more rights, freedoms, and liberties than do their neighbors in any number of Middle East countries currently fighting and dying for these very same privileges.

As the Muslim Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh says: "Israel is not an apartheid state...[it] is a free and open democratic country. The law of Israel does not distinguish between a Jew and an Arab... I would rather live as a second class citizen in Israel, even though I'm not, than a first class citizen in any Arab country."

Notably, those using the IAW to demonize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and which respects the rights of women, minorities, homosexuals, and people of other faiths, are holding no such events for Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has already butchered some 7,500 pro-democracy protestors.

Nor are they holding similar events against Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is a crime, in Egypt, where the Copts continue to be persecuted both pre- and post-Mubarak, or Iran, where women and the Baha'i are repeatedly tortured and executed.

Of course, other great bastions of human rights and democracy, like Russia and China, which recently vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for the ousting of al-Assad, get a free pass too.

So why is Israel the only country singled out for special opprobrium?

During the IAW, you will hear all sorts of lofty humanitarian labels like "justice," "equal rights," and "peace." But don't be fooled. It is all a charade. They have no such interest. The sole purpose of the BDS movement is the vilification, delegitimization, and destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
Just listen to what their leaders say.

Omar Barghouti, one the founders of the BDS Movement (and ironically, also a PhD student of ethics at Tel Aviv University), has said that the Palestinian refugees "Right of Return" is the "litmus test of morality for anyone suggesting a just and enduring solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

To put it a little more bluntly, he added: "I clearly do not buy into the two-state solution...[I]f the refugees were to return, you would not have a two-state solution, you would have a Palestine next to Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to Israel."

Other BDS leaders are equally forthright.

Ali Abunimah is the executive director of the anti-Zionist website, Electronic Intifada, and one of the leading proponents of the one-state solution as a supposedly "just" and "non-violent" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He sees the BDS as key to achieving this. But only last month, he tweeted: "Isn't it the time for a popular Palestinian revolution in the form of a third intifada?" Is that because the first and second intifadas were so "non-violent" also?

And then only two week ago, in what came as a major blow to the legions of Israel haters, anti-Zionist poster-boy Norman Finkelstein said the BDS Movement's call for the "Right of Return" was just "a cover for its desire to see the destruction of Israel," calling the movement "disingenuous" and a "cult."

Granted, Finkelstein made these comments not out of a new found Zionism or desire to advance peace in the Middle East, but rather he believes there are other "more efficient" means for anti-Israel activists to achieve the goals.

But undoubtedly the most illuminating of all the statements by BDS leaders came from Ahmed Koor (another proponent of the Palestinian "Right of Return'", who wrote in April 2010: "Ending the occupation doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean upending the Jewish state itself...BDS is not another step on the way to the final showdown; BDS is The Final Showdown."

The similarity between Koor's "Final Showdown" and Hitler's "Final Solution" is as unmistakable as it is chillingly revealing about the BDS Movement's true motives.

Whereas Hitler's "Final Solution" sought to bring about the end of the Jewish people, the BDS Movement's "Final Showdown" seeks to bring about the end of Israel as the Jewish state, by endorsing a one-state solution and flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians.

The BDS movement is nothing short of racist, insidious, and anti-Semitic. Its goal is not to advance Palestinian rights, but to deny and strip Israel of its rights, with the ultimate objective being the destruction of the Jewish state.

The most unfortunate thing is that supporters of IAW and BDS do nothing to advance the cause of peace or well-being of Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. But then again, that has never been their goal in the first place. They only breed further hate and extremism at a time when peace and cooperation is needed most.

Huffington Post

A Response to Israel’s Haters

2012-03-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

By Joseph A. Klein

My article appearing in Canada Free Press last Friday entitled “Hamas apologist Norman Finkelstein attacks Israel again” (along with its publication by FrontPage Magazine under the title “Finkelstein’s Slander Against Israel”) has apparently brought the haters of the Jewish state of Israel out from under their rocks. And I mean that literally, since the terrorist organization Hamas, which they so zealously defend, still has its founding Charter in force which quotes the prophet Mohammed:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Those who take what the Hamas Charter says seriously about the goal of obliterating the Jewish state are told not to worry. Hamas has changed and wants peace, its supporters argue. It is the villainous Jewish state that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict, we are told.

Yet, would any sane person trust an organization whose leaders have made statements in the last few years such as the following?

Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, in a column in the weekly newspaper Al Risalah in 2008 discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” Astal concluded “Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.”

“We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity” stated Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza on Friday January 2nd 2009.

In a sermon aired on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television, cleric Yunis Al Astal stated, “Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.” He went on to say that Rome would become, “an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe.”

Hamas has repeatedly refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist, refused to disown its Charter and refused to abide by the previous commitments of the Palestinian Authority.

With that as background, let’s examine a few of the arguments that the Israel haters have thrown my way, when they weren’t engaging in their customary ad hominem attacks.

The Jewish Zionists stole the Palestinians’ land and are not entitled to have a state of their own on any portion of “Palestine.”

Hamas’ apologists love to cite international law when it suits their purposes in holding Israel to account, but then reject the international legal framework under which the Palestinians could have had their own state more than 60 years ago. They have nothing to say that would justify why the surrounding Arab states torpedoed the original UN-sponsored two-state solution in 1947-8.

All they do is whine that the land of “Palestine” was stolen from the “Palestinian” Muslim inhabitants. Aside from the long historical connection of the Jewish people to the land, including Jerusalem, that pre-dated Islam by well more than a thousand years, the region the British called the Palestine Mandate (the area that included Jordan, Israel and the “West Bank”) and out of which the British offered the two state solution adopted by the United Nations, emerged out of the pre-World War I Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had been ruled for 400 years by the Turks who lost it when they, fighting on the German side, were defeated in World War I.

Many Jews who were living in this area had bought their homes from the absentee Turk landlords. Arab masses immigrated from outside this area along with the Jews. Most of those who were called “Palestinian Arabs” were members of families who migrated into the same region that Jews were migrating into beginning in the late 19th century. And there had been a continuous Jewish presence in the region for many centuries.

To say that European Jews had less of a right to emigrate to the ancient Jewish homeland starting in the late 19th century (and develop the land from a desolate swamp) than did Arabs who emigrated during the same period from other regions outside of the Palestine Mandate is racist, not Zionism. In any case, the majority of Jews living in Israel today are non-European – some from Africa and many expelled from their homes in surrounding Arab countries.

Jordan was created on about 75% percent of the Palestine Mandate. The majority of its population was, and still is, Palestinian. Thus, even before the two-state solution was offered with respect to the 25% remainder of the Palestine Mandate, a state made up of a majority Palestinian population was already in existence. The fact that the minority rulers of a different Arab tribe run things in Jordan is a problem for the Palestinian majority that pre-dated the creation of the state of Israel.

The 1947 UN Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the remaining 25% of Palestine into a Jewish state and a second Arab Palestinian state (Trans-Jordan being the first) based upon population demographics. The partition was offered even though the Arab inhabitants’ leaders had sided with the Nazis in World War II.

The Jewish inhabitants accepted the partition. The Arab inhabitants rejected the partition and the rest, as they say, is history. The Palestinians could have had their own independent state more than 60 years ago but for the rejectionism of their Arab neighbors who violated international law in trying to drive “the Jews into the sea” and the refusal of the Palestinian inhabitants themselves to negotiate a two-state solution in good faith.

Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since 1967 and “oppressed” the Palestinian people in violation of international law.

Isn’t it strange how the friends of Hamas blithely skip over 20 years of history? Why weren’t the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while those territories were in Arab hands, provided the land to create their own independent state? Where was the outcry for justice under international law back then?

After Israel took over the territories following the June 1967 war, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242 which (i) called on Israel to withdraw its armed forces “from territories occupied in the recent conflict”; and (ii) called for “termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

The resolution deliberately omitted the word “all” before “territories” in (i) above to allow the parties to negotiate a peaceful solution that would best achieve the goals set forth in (ii) above.

Israel has since returned the Sinai to Egypt as part of a peace treaty, normalized relations with Jordan, withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza and offered to give back 90% of the West Bank and negotiate the fate of Jerusalem – all of which was rebuffed by Arafat and his successors.

There were no security fences or elaborate checkpoints in the years immediately following 1967. What has Israel received in return?

Every year Israeli civilians have been murdered by Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, Hezbollah or some other terrorist group. Islamic terrorists use suicide bombers and increasingly sophisticated rockets, launched from lands relinquished by Israel to the Palestinians, to kill innocent Israeli civilians. Their killing machines of choice tomorrow will be whatever weapons of mass destruction they can get their hands on, including from their buddies in Iran whose president has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

Israel is falsely accused of ‘collective punishment’ when it strikes back to defend its citizens. Yet it is the Palestinian and other Islamic terrorists who continually violate the Israelis’ human rights under the Geneva Conventions, which state that “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” The innocent Israeli women and children, who have been slaughtered while going about their daily lives in their homes, their schools, on buses, at shopping malls, and places of worship, have committed no wrong against the Palestinian people. They are the victims of the Islamic terrorists’ measures of intimidation and terrorism, which violate their most basic of human rights - life itself. The Islamic terrorists are pursuing nothing less than the collective annihilation of the Israeli people. Just look at the Hamas Charter and the statements of their own leaders.

When the Israeli government responded with stern but non-violent, defensive measures to protect its most vulnerable citizens from murder – for example, with border closures, security checks, economic sanctions and a separation wall which came years after the 1967 war – the terrorists’ apologists complain that it is Israel which is violating the Palestinians’ human rights under international law. Although Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2005, it is Israel’s citizens who continued to suffer intimidation and terrorism launched from Gaza in violation of their international human rights. Israel ceded the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in a good faith effort to advance peace. Gaza turned instead into hostile territory under Hamas’s control. More than 4200 rockets were launched from Gaza into Israeli residential areas after Gaza was no longer “occupied territory.”

Israel broke the cease-fire with Hamas and launched Operation Cast Lead that turned into a “massacre” of innocent Palestinian civilians. Israel’s “war crimes” are incontrovertibly documented in the Goldstone Report.

Hamas Does Not Honor Truces  

Hamas, not Israel, unilaterally decided against extending the six month ceasefire that had expired in mid-December 2008.

One fundamental problem overlooked by the Goldstone Report and other so-called “human rights” reports is that Hamas does not abide by truces or cease-fires for very long, even when it decides to enter into one. To Hamas, truces are just stalling tactics to use as lulls during which the terrorists build up their military capability. Don’t take my word for it. When asked if he could envision a 50-year hudna (cease-fire) with Israel, Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan (who was since killed in an Israeli bombing attack) responded, “The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don’t need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel. Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God.”

Gaza’s fellow Arab neighbors in Egypt have witnessed first hand Hamas’s destructive ways. In the wake of the militants’ blasting of the barrier between Gaza and Egypt, more Egyptians finally realized themselves where the source of the Palestinians’ problems and of the real threat to peace lies.

For example, Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies director Dr. ‘Abd Al-Mun’im Sa’id criticized Hamas’s failed policies in a column he wrote for Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party weekly Al-Watani Al-Yawm:

“Hamas’s election by the majority of the Palestinian people has invested it with the formidable responsibility of leading the Palestinian people, protecting its interests, developing its abilities, and managing its relations with the world and with Israel. Its military coup against the Palestinian Authority and its [currently] exclusive control of the Gaza Strip have forced it to assume complete responsibility over the Gazans, in financial, social, and security matters.

However, Hamas has failed to fulfill this responsibility, both after it was elected and following its [Gaza] coup. In fact, it has done nothing but publicly condemn Israel and the PA, on television and in daily communiqués to the world, and to the Islamic Arab countries…

The rockets, [which are being used] as a means of opposing the peace process and applying pressure [on it], are not for pressuring Israel, but for gaining popularity among the Palestinians…”

The editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya and Egyptian MP Muhammad ‘Ali Ibrahim was even blunter in his column:

“The Hamas fighters are not satisfied with Abu Mazen’s [i.e. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s] way of reaching a permanent and definitive solution with the Hebrew state that will ensure the establishment and continuity of the Palestinian state. This is because the only aim of [Hamas Political Bureau head] Khaled Mash’al and his men is to keep this issue hot, so that regional [forces] such as Iran and Syria can continue playing the card of the Palestinian problem to promote their private interests – that is, Iran’s nuclear dossier, the liberation of the Golan Heights, etc…

The Egyptians know their Gazan neighbors very well. They blame Hamas for sabotaging any prospects for peace with Israel and for the Gazan residents’ current suffering. Egypt wants to be left alone from Hamas’s aggression and interference with its sovereignty. So does Israel. And don’t tell me that Egypt is in cahoots with Israel. They have what is called a cold peace. They are barely on speaking terms.

Hamas uses its own civilians as human shields

This is not some wild charge of Israeli propagandists. It is based on the boasts of Hamas officials themselves.   Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 29, 2008:  

Fathi Hammad: [The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.” (Emphasis added)

The Goldstone Report

The Goldstone fact-finding panel, commissioned by the anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council, concluded that Israel “may” be guilty of war crimes based on the assumption that the country’s military forces and leaders deliberately targeted civilians. Israel’s enemies have seized on this conclusion to brand Israel’s military operation a “massacre,” to use Norman Finkelstein’s term. It is worth noting that not once in its 575 page report did the Goldstone panel actually use the term “massacre” to describe Israel’s actions during the Gaza conflict.

One of the most serious charges leveled against Israel’s operation during Project Cast Lead was its use of white phosphorous. Yet while the Goldstone Report concluded that Israel was reckless in its use in built-up areas it also noted that “white phosphorous is not at this stage proscribed under international law.” The report cited one specific example of a family in which children were alleged to have died as a result of injuries from white phosphorous. This is tragic to be sure, but it hardly demonstrates a widespread pattern of deliberate and indiscriminate burning to death of Palestinian children by Israel’s military that Norman Finkelstein and his followers try to portray.

It is curious why Israel’s enemies felt they had to exaggerate the Goldstone Report’s findings since the Goldstone panel was biased against Israel in the first place. It consisted of four members, three of whom considered Israel guilty before their investigation began. Judge Goldstone was outnumbered 3-1, even giving him all the credit in the world for his own objective judicial temperament.

Here are just a few examples of the Goldstone Report’s distortions of the facts as compiled and written up by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America:   

REPORT:
There is no evidence of Palestinian fighters using civilian clothes.  

FACT:
Journalists and eyewitnesses repeatedly noted the use of civilian clothes by Hamas fighters.   

REPORT:
There is no evidence of armed groups directing civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forcing them to remain in the vicinity of attacks.  

FACT:
Palestinian witnesses and video evidence reveal that fighters did direct civilians to areas where attacks were being launched.

REPORT:
There is no evidence that hospitals or ambulances were used for military activities.

FACT:
Eyewitnesses describe Palestinian firing from hospitals and using ambulances. Why, for example, did the Goldstone fact-finding mission choose not to visit the al-Shifa Hospital or investigate allegations that Hamas leaders and fighters used this hospital as a base, especially given the testimony by a captured Islamic Jihad fighter to this effect?

REPORT:
The mission could not determine whether mosques were used for military purposes.

FACT:
There is video evidence of weaponry stored in a mosque, and of secondary explosions of mosques consistent with the storage of explosives. While the Report refers to allegations of mosques being used for military purposes and notes that it cannot rule out the inappropriate use of other mosques by Palestinians, the Mission nevertheless chose not to fuhrther investigate these possible war crimes by Palestinians and dismissed or ignored the readily available pictorial and testimonial evidence indicating that this was indeed the case.

CONCLUSION

I could go on and on, but one thing is clear. There can be no real peace so long as the Palestinian terrorists and their state sponsors such as Iran want more innocent Jews to die for death’s sake and will settle for nothing short of Israel’s extermination. As long as they allow Hamas and other extremists to rule them, the Palestinians will remain their own worst enemies.

Canada Press

10 Reasons Why Caesarea is Worth Visiting

2012-03-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

In Caesarea, ancient Roman ruins mingle with a spectacular Mediterranean beach town. From fascinating archeological wonders to incredible snorkeling and diving, this Northern Israeli city located between Tel Aviv and Haifa is well worth a visit. Here are the top 10 reasons why you should include a trip to Caesarea on your tour to Israel:

1. Impressive Archaeology – As an ancient Roman port city equal to the likes of Alexandria and Antioch, the national park at Caesarea is an archeology lover’s dream. Impressive Roman aqueducts, a beautifully preserved complex of Crusader fortifications, Greek temples, Byzantine bath houses, and ancient palaces are just some of the sites that demonstrate the city’s rich history.

2. Spectacular Beaches – Caesarea’s aqueduct beach is considered one of the best – and best-kept secrets – in Israel. Located just north of the national park in residential Caesarea, the beach has a stunning ancient aqueduct running parallel to the clear blue Mediterranean Sea. There is also a phenomenal beach at the port, as well as the private Caesarea Beach Club, which you can pay to enter.

3. Water Activities – For those who want to do more than sunbathe, Caesarea’s Underwater Archeological Park provides an incredible experience for snorkelers and divers of all skill levels. Catch a glimpse of ancient remains and ships, all while enjoying the calm, mild Mediterranean waters.

4. The Revitalized Port – The ancient port at Caesarea retains its historical grandeur while simultaneously being home to swanky, contemporary galleries, boutiques, cafes, and restaurants. It’s the perfect spot to rest your feet, catch some rays, and do a little shopping.

5. Museums – Caesarea has no shortage of museums, which offer something for everyone in the family. The Museum of Antiquities, just outside the city on Kibbutz Sdot Yam, is home to a remarkable collection of ancient Roman and Byzantine artifacts. The Ralli museum, meanwhile, hosts an impressive round-up of Sephardic Jewish art from the middle ages. And the Time Tower, perfect for kids, combines sweeping views with interactive computer simulations and animations on the various rulers and periods of the city.

6. Jazz Festival – Held every summer, the three-day Caesarea Jazz Festival brings people from around Israel and the world to enjoy top tier jazz performers in a beautiful location right at the harbor.

7. Modern music, ancient surroundings – See a live concert at the ancient Roman Caesarea amphitheater, which attracts world-class musical acts. Jeff Beck, Deep Purple and George Benson are just some of the musicians who have recently graced the stage here.

8. Golf – If you want to hit the links during your tour to Israel then Caesarea, home to one of Israel’s only golf courses, is a must. Founded by descendants of the famous Baron de Rothschild family in 1961, the Caesarea Golf Club is home to an 18-hole professional course and offers a host of amenities, including a restaurant, country club and equipment rental.

9. Hiking and Trails – Caesarea offers a number of well-marked hiking and touring trails that are suited for all fitness levels. Many also include historical sites along the way, so you can fit some time in the great outdoors alongside your tour of Israel.

10. Great Restaurants – After a long day of touring, hiking and swimming, nothing beats a wonderful meal. And Caesarea boasts plenty of restaurants with superb food and incredible views. Grab an outdoor seat facing the sea if possible, and sample fine Mediterranean cuisine. Fresh fish is of course a specialty.

If you liked reading this article, you might check more in this link:

***Israel's Top 10 Beaches***

Shalom Israel Tours

Dolphin Reef Eilat

2012-03-25T15:41:00.001-07:00

“THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE”

On the shores of the Red Sea, is an ecological site unique in Israel and throughout the world where visitors can enjoy a natural atmosphere, magical views, secluded beach, together with the unusual opportunity of meeting and observing dolphins in their natural habitat.

A group of “bottlenose” dolphins, including babies born at the site, maintain their daily routine of hunting, playing, courting and socializing. They are free to choose between human company or to continue their daily routine in the group. The fact that the dolphins choose to be with us reinforces, in our opinion, the true bond created between them and us. For our Dolphin News - click here.

Visitors can enjoy getting close to the dolphins from our floating piers and observation points or during one of our guided swims or dives, suitable to anyone who is not afraid of getting wet.

Contact with people is based on the free will and choice of the dolphins. Their choice to approach guided groups of snorkelers or divers is not based on any reinforcement by feeding during these encounters. It is worth mentioning that the dolphins continually develop an even stronger connection with humans based only on curiosity, play, and spontaneous interaction.

The desire to deepen the bond between man and his environment is put into practice at Dolphin Reef in a different way than in other places in the world, starting with the physical conditions at the site and continuing with the warm attitude towards the dolphins.

Entrance fee:
Adult (from age 15) NIS 64
Child (age 3-15) NIS 44
Special rates for students, handicapped and groups.
Advance booking for snorkeling and diving with dolphins, and relaxation pools grants entrance free of charge.

Please note: Children under the age of 15 have to be accompanied by an adult

Hours:
Sunday - Thursday 09:00-17:00
Friday-Saturday & Holidays 09:00-16:30

Please note: we are close on the Israeli National Memorial Day and "Yom Cipur".

Entrance fee includes:
A day of enjoyment in an ambiance of nature, with magical views, secluded spots on the beach, observation of dolphins in nature and nature films. (No lifeguard on the beach)

Additional facilities at extra cost:

* Snorkeling and Diving Center
* Restaurant
* Cafe/Bar on the Beach
* Relaxation Pools
* Children's Activity Center
* Underwater Photography Center
* Souvenir Shop

All prices are subject to change without prior notice.

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***Israel's Top 10 Beaches***

Dolphin Reef Eilat

Southern Part of Israel and The Dead Sea

2012-03-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Dead Sea is one of the world’s best-known and most unique therapeutic resorts. The region is characterized by an unusual combination of natural resources and climatic conditions – the saltiest sea in the world that is also mineral-rich; thermo-mineral waters; medicinal black mud; filtered sunrays; dry air rich in minerals; a pleasant temperature most of the year; a relatively high concentration of oxygen; air that is almost completely free of allergens and other air pollutants. Both a briefly bathing at one of the beaches or a stay for a pampering vacation at one of the hotels and guest rooms scattered along its shores are recommended.

A thirty-minute ride from the Dead Sea is the city of Arad, whose cold, dry, clean air makes it a haven for people suffering from asthma, allergies and respiratory problems.

Mineral Beach

In Mineral Beach, on a well-tended shore of the Dead Sea, are two little pools: a fresh-water pool for small children, and a sulphur-water pool with a fixed temperature of 39 °C whose water arrives from an adjacent spring. On the shore there are open-sided, chill-out style, shelter pavilions from around the world, and plastic chairs. Right on the shoreline is natural mud – when spread on your body, it stimulates blood circulation, strengthens hair roots, and renews skin cells. On the site are cloakrooms, showers, a treatment room, a cafeteria, and a small shop where you can buy Dead Sea products and plastic sandals for entering the sea. A treatment room also awaits visitors, offering various types of treatments and massages by prior arrangement.

Ein Gedi Spa

The Ein Gedi Spa, a well-established site on the shores of the Dead Sea, has six indoor thermo-mineral pools – two for women, two for men, and two for mixed bathing. There is also an indoor resting area facing the primordial panorama of the Dead Sea. The pools are refreshed by a constant flow of salt and mineral rich water, and have a steady temperature of about 38 °C. Outside the building is a large bath containing rich, heavy black mud, which is great for ridding the body of poisons. An all-terrain-vehicle-type train, waiting outside the indoor baths, takes vacationers to the ever-receding seashore, for bathing. There is also a natural freshwater pool outside, which operates in the summer, as well as a spa treatment center. Visitors can enjoy various treatments and massages in the private treatment rooms. It’s worth while to book your treatment in advance, and to inquire about the pampering packages, which include a visit to the facilities on the site, a treatment of your choice, and a packet of cosmetics manufactured from the Dead Sea water.

Neve Midbar

Neve Midbar has baths extending over an area of 8,000 square meters. In the center is a splendid building, inside and around which are stylish pools full of thermo-mineral water drawn from a depth of some 900 meters. The temperature of the water fluctuates between 40 – 46 °C, and is rich in minerals, sulphur and magnesium. There are also saunas and treatment rooms, lawns and a cafeteria at the site. Next to them is Kibbutz Mash'abei Sade, which has guest units.

Khamam Tse’elim

After using the thermo-mineral water for agricultural irrigation for years, the members of Kibbutz Tse’elim discovered its healing powers, and turned the natural resource into a therapeutic site. The small site on the grounds of Kibbutz Tse’elim comprises a little whirlpool, whose water temperature is 40 °C, a dry sauna, a treatment complex, as well as a regular swimming pool. The kibbutz operates as a tourist center, organizes trips in the vicinity and offers the experience of authentic Bedouin tent hospitality. Nearby are the kibbutz vacation apartments.

Ein Bokek

A resort and a therapeutic site at the estuary of Nakhal Bokek, on the western http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifshore of the Dead Sea. The site has some ten hotels, therapeutic baths, two beaches, and a few restaurants. Next to Ein Bokek are several sites, including Nakhal Bokek, Metsad Bokek and Ma’ale Bokek. At Ein Bokek is also located Solarium-400, a site for the natural treatment of skin and arthritic diseases, and psoriasis. The Solarium offers treatments combined with bathing in the Dead Sea and exposure to sun rays used for the healing and treatment of skin and arthritic diseases. The site is located in an enclosure, and has separate sunning courts for men and for women. The main building has four professional clinics that specialize in skin diseases, a workout gym, cafeteria, pub and shops. The site also offers table games and social games, while the workout gym also holds physical activities focusing on joint problems, proper breathing, and the like.

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***Israel's Top 10 Beaches***

Go Israel.Com

Coral Beach Nature Reserve

2012-03-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

One of the world’s most beautiful marine reserves

Level of difficulty: easy
Wheelchair-users
Walkers

At the Coral Beach Nature Reserve on the Red Sea south of Eilat, the moment you put your head in the water (with a diving mask, of course) you are captivated by the magnificent scene.
The reserve offers a spectacular combination of strange and beautiful corals that create colorful underwater ‘gardens’ navigated by a variety of wildly-hued tropical fish, These include butterfly fish, parrot fish, Julie fish, nocturnal fish, and many other species, along with sea lilies, giant shells and much more.

The heart of the reserve is a coral reef some 1,200 meters long parallel to the beach. It is one of the most ‘densely populated’ coral reefs in the world and the only one in Israel.

A coral reef is a complex and delicate ecosystem, all of whose components are interdependent and connected in terms of metabolism and energy with their environment. Damage to even one individual in the system can cause a chain reaction that can adversely affect many organisms on the reef and marine or beach pollution can cause an ecological disaster. Great care is very important to preventing such damage.

Visitor numbers are managed by the reserve staff to allow visitors and divers to observe life on the coral reef.

Guided snorkeling visits for groups of 30 people and above are available by advance reservation.

How to get there:
The reserve is located opposite the Eilat Field School on the road from Eilat to the Taba border-crossing

Length of tour:	one hour - all day
Useful Informatiom
Best season:	year-round
Don't miss:	snorkeling!
Other facilities and attractions:	rental of snorkel equipment, souvenir shop; snack-bar, recliner (fee); beach chair; audiovisual presentation available soon.
Hours:	* April-September 9 A.M.-6 P.M. * October-March 9 A.M- 5 P.M. * Cashier closes one hour before above closing time. Return of rented equipment up to 15 minutes before cashier closes. * On Friday and holiday eves the site closes one hour earlier than above.
Phone:	08-637-6829 (cashier); 057-855-2381, 057-776-2334 (INPA rangers)
Fax / Email:	08-637-5776 / moked@npa.org.il
Entrance fee:	Adult: NIS 33; child: NIS 20 Israeli senior citizen: 50% discount Group (over 30 people): Adult: NIS 29: child: NIS 17 Eilat resident: NIS 10 Student (with valid ID): NIS 25 Equipment rental Mask and breathing tube: NIS 16 Mask and breathing tube for groups (minimum 20 people) NIS 13 (upon deposit of NIS 100 or credit card per mask) Chair: no charge Recliner: NIS 10 Flotation device: NIS 10 All equipment must be returned 15 minutes before cashier closes.
Overnight campground on the beach:	the payment for the parking per each day.
Entrance to dogs:	leashed and muzzled
Accessibility:	Wheelchair-accessibility from the parking lot along paths to the bridge over the water; six steps to enter the water.

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***Israel's Top 10 Beaches***

Parks.Org

Bet Yanai National Park

2012-03-25T15:23:00.001-07:00

Alexander Stream Hof Bet Yanai National Park

Overnight Campgrounds

A running stream with a charming beach

Level of difficulty: easy

Walkers

The Alexander Stream is one of the few year-round streams on the northern coastal plain. Located north of Netanya, the stream is home to soft-shell turtles, which can reach a size of 1.20 meters and a weight of 50 kilograms.

The southern bank of the Alexander Stream is adjacent to shifting sand dunes, and both banks are blessed with a wealth of riparian vegetation. On the northern bank, within the park, is a eucalyptus grove where visitors can picnic and relax.

An ancient ruin, Hurvat Samra, sits atop a small hill near the eucalyptus grove. It may have been an ancient customs station for goods being transported down the Alexander Stream to the port near the estuary. In the spring, the hill is carpeted with anemones, buttercups, and tulips.

In the summer, the Bet Yanai beach, where the Alexander Stream meets the Mediterranean, has lifeguards and first-aid facilities. North of the beach are remnants of a quay constructed in 1938 (during the British Mandate period), supposedly for the use of grove owners, but in reality to moor boats carrying clandestine Jewish immigrants.
Overnight camping on the beach is allowed in the designated area only!
There are showers on the beach near the campground. Toilets are located 200 meters south of the campground. Fires are allowed only in the barrels provided.

Payment for overnight camping is per night

Length of tour:	one hour - all day
Useful Informatiom
Best season:	for swimming--summer; for nature--year-round
Don't miss:	watching for soft-shell turtles
Other facilities and attractions:	picnic tables, life-guard and showers in swimming season; restaurants; overnight camping
Hours:	* Weekdays 8:30 A.M.-6:30 P.M. * Saturdays and Holidays: 8:00 A.M.-6:30 P.M
Phone:	09-866-6230 / 09-8664238
Fax / Email:	moked@npa.org.il
Entrance fee:	Eucalyptus grove: free of charge
Beach during swimming season:	* Weekdays: Car NIS 23- minibus NIS 75- bus NIS 149 * Saturdays and Holidays: Car NIS 32- minibus NIS 90- bus NIS 165
Overnight campground on the beach:	the payment for the parking per each day.
Entrance to dogs:	No
Accessibility:	Work is underway to make the Bet Yanai Beach accessible, including wheelchair access to the water.

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***Israel's Top 10 Beaches***

Parks.Org

Israel's Top 10 Beaches

2012-03-25T09:44:00.009-07:00

By Abigail Klein Leichman

Dig out the sand toys and don't forget the sunscreen. It's time to hit the beach, and here are some of the best Israel has to offer.

Life's a beach in Israel. This small country is blessed by three seas -- the Mediterranean, the Dead and the Red (the Sea of Galilee is really a lake, though it does have beautiful beaches too). With the help of recommendations from veteran tour guide Joe Yudin of Touring Israel and Hassan Madah of the Tourism Ministry, ISRAEL21c offers you the top 10 beaches in Israel, just in time for summer.

1. Beit Yannai Beach (Mediterranean - Netanya)

Named after the ancient Judean king Alexander Yannai, the Alexander River north of Netanya was in a sorry state until a 1994 restoration project transformed the area into a lovely, wheelchair-accessible nature reserve. The beach is at the spot where the river runs into the sea.

Considered by many to be Israel's most beautiful beach and kite-surfing locale, Yannai is pristine and quiet. The Israel Parks and Nature Authority has posted signs with information on the natural features of the beach and its wildlife.

You can camp overnight here, and there are picnic tables, restaurants and showers. Don't miss the nearby eucalyptus grove and ancient ruins.

Entrance fee. Information: 09-866-6230.

2. Coral Reef Beach (Red Sea - Eilat)

The best place to snorkel in Eilat, Coral Beach is a popular diving reef and a family-friendly beach. Its setting on the world's northernmost coral reef affords visitors an amazing place to see the multicolored coral garden and the Red Sea aquatic creatures that inhabit it.

Rent a snorkel, mask, flippers and life jacket, walk along a short pier and step down into shallow warm water teeming with tropical delights. Sunshades and loungers, hot showers and a snack kiosk are available.

Entrance fee. Information: 08-637-6829.

3. Banana Beach (Mediterranean - Tel Aviv)

The entire west flank of Tel Aviv is one long shoreline lined with beaches. Banana Beach, located on the southernmost edge near Jaffa, has become a sort of hippie bohemian sanctuary on Friday evenings. It's a great place to end a walking tour of Tel Aviv, as young people begin gathering here at sunset for drum circles, singing and dancing on the cliffs.

The rest of the week, it's a fairly tranquil spot where you'll find people sunbathing or playing Matkot, Israeli beach paddleball. The Banana Beach café right on the sand screens films and sports events in the evenings for free. You can rent surfboards and wind surfers, or sign up for surfing lessons, at the Galim surf shop.

No entrance fee; sand chairs available for hire or you can bring em' from home.

4. Mineral Beach (Dead Sea)

You want mud? You got it. Whereas at many Dead Sea beaches you can buy packets of its famous mineral-rich mud to slather on your skin, at Mineral Beach there's a huge mud pit to climb into. Prefer a natural Jacuzzi? There's one here, too, fashioned out of hot sulfur pools.

When you get tired of floating on the Dead Sea, try the freshwater pool. At this clean and accessible beach, you can rent a towel or locker, get a health treatment or lie on a tanning bed.

The site also has an amphitheater, a cafeteria and showers to wash off the mud and sand. Mineral Beach is on the northern end of the Dead Sea, so it's a fast destination from Jerusalem and the surface is less pebbly than at the more southern beaches. (If you're into sunbathing in the buff, nearby Neve Midbar Beach has a secluded section for nudists.)

Entrance fee. Information: 02-994-4888.

5. Dado Zamir Beach (Mediterranean - Haifa)

This central Haifa beach has pretty gardens along its long boardwalk promenade, beachside restaurants, pubs and coffee shops, free parking, benches and sitting areas, a dance arena (with weekly public dances and Israeli folk dancing on Saturdays), an amphitheatre for summer events, sports and playgrounds and a pool for toddlers. It's even got Wi-Fi.

The picturesque boardwalk runs from its southern tip to the northern part of Carmel Beach next door. For the disabled, Dado offers reserved parking, adapted showers and bathrooms, and ramps for easy access to and from the beach.

Information: 1-800-305-090; 04-853-5606/5.

6. Sironit Beach (Mediterranean - Netanya)

Netanya has one of the longest coastlines in Israel, and offers eight beaches. What's particularly cool about Sironit, one of the city's southernmost beaches, is the glass-walled Beach Elevator that descends into it from the Rishonim Promenade along the cliff-top. This lets you get from the city center to the seashore in 20 seconds, for just one shekel.

Two breakwaters opposite the beach create tranquil bays for safe swimming almost all year. Sironit has a restaurant, stage and fitness facilities among its other features.

No entrance fee, but parking fee. Information: 1-700-709292; 09-882-7286.

7. Metzitzim Beach (Mediterranean - Tel Aviv)

This northern Tel Aviv spot overlooking the S'de Dov airfield used to be called Sheraton Beach for the hotel that once stood next to it, but was later renamed for the Israeli cult classic film of the same name ("metzitzim" means "peepers").

It attracts a mix of hipsters and families, with calm, warm water due to a man-made lagoon. There's a café-restaurant and playground here, and just south of the main area is a separate section for the religious public, where women are admitted Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays; men on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Also in the area you can find beaches catering to gay sunbathers and another where dog-owners are allowed to let their canines romp.

8. Dor Habonim Beach (Mediterranean - Haifa)

South of Haifa off Route 4, Dor Habonim ("Generation of Builders") is part of a coastal nature reserve, a relatively remote cove favored by nearby kibbutzniks and families.

Natural rock jetties in the sea are perfect for kids to climb and sit on, and along with natural lagoons, they also keep the waves from getting too rough. The reserve has walking routes that pass through the bays, from which you can see sights including caves and wildflowers.

There are no facilities here to speak of, and it's not accessible by public transportation. But these same qualities are what make it one of the most beloved beaches for Israelis in the know.

Beyond the swimming area is the home of Paradive, where you can go skydiving with a tandem instructor.

No entrance fee.

9. Dolphin Reef (Red Sea - Eilat)

Eilat's public beaches tend to get quite crowded, but if you're willing to pay admission to the Dolphin Reef, you get the added benefit of a quiet beach where you can relax under an umbrella and watch the dolphins, or even join them in the water if you're age 10 or over.

"You'll feel like you're in Jamaica," promises tour guide Joe Yudin. There is a snorkeling and diving center here, as well as an underwater photography center and beachside café/bar. Adults can take advantage of the site's music-infused relaxation pools as well.

Entrance fee. Information: 08-630-0100.

10. Aqueduct Beach (Mediterranean - Caesarea)

You can't beat this Caesarea beach for its setting among ancient Roman ruins. While sitting on the clean white sand, you'll marvel at the raised aqueduct built by order of King Herod in the first century BCE and expanded upon 300 years later to bring running water to the old city of Caesarea from the springs of Shummi six miles away at the foot of Mount Carmel.

There are no restaurants here (just a kiosk), but neither are there loud music or crowds. Lifeguards are on duty on only parts of the long strip of seashore, which is sometimes also called Arches Beach.

No entrance fee.

Source: Israel21c

Is Israeli Society Unraveling?

2012-01-10T10:01:00.000-08:00

On balance, Israeli society is extremely healthy.

Unemployment is at record lows. At a time of global recession, the Israeli economy is growing steadily.

Israeli Jewish women have the highest fertility rate in the Western world with an average of three children per woman. Education levels have risen dramatically across the board over the past decade with dozens of private colleges opening their doors to more and more sectors of the population.

Israel's diverse Jewish population is becoming more integrated. Sephardic and Ashkenazi intermarriage has long been a norm. Secular Jews are becoming more religious. A new educational trend that received significant media attention in recent months involves secular parents who send their children to national religious schools to ensure that they receive strong educational grounding in Judaism.

And as secular Jews become more religious, both the national religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors are becoming increasingly integrated in nonreligious neighborhoods and institutions. Ultra-Orthodox conscription rates have increased seven-fold in the past four years. In 2010, 50 percent of ultra-Orthodox male high school graduates were conscripted.

The IDF assesses that by 2015, the rate of conscription will rise to 65%.

While this is still below the general conscription rate of 75% among male 18-year-olds, the rapid rise in ultra-Orthodox military service is a revolutionary development for the sector.

With military service comes entrée to the job market. The trail towards employment integration was blazed by ultra-Orthodox women. Over the past decade, ultra-Orthodox women have matriculated en masse in vocational schools that have trained them in hi-tech and other marketable professions and so enabled them to raise their families out of poverty.

These ultra-Orthodox women, who are now being followed by their IDF veteran husbands, are part of a general trend that has seen women fully integrated in almost every sector of society and the economy. The fact that women make up the senior leadership echelons in both business and government is not a fluke. Rather it is a product of the largely egalitarian nature of Israeli society.

True, as is the case everywhere, Israeli women suffer from male chauvinism. And like the rest of the world, Israel has its share of sexual abusers, rapists, and criminal and social misogynists. But imperfection does not detract from the fact that women in Israel are free, educated, empowered and advancing on all fronts.

As for the national religious community, its youth remain committed to serving as pioneers in strengthening Israel as a Jewish democracy. Not content to limit themselves to national religious communities in Judea and Samaria, more and more young national religious families are moving to poor towns and communities from Dimona to Ramle to Kiryat Shmona to strengthen their educational, economic and social underpinnings.

Modern Orthodox women are taking on expanded roles in religious councils, synagogues, religious courts and other bodies. Soldiers from the national religious sector remain overrepresented in all IDF combat units and in the officer corps.

Israel's growing social cohesion and prosperity is all the more notable as we witness neighboring states aflame with rebellion and revolution;extremist Islamist forces voted to power from Morocco to Egypt; and economic forecasts promising mass privation.

And in the Age of Obama, with cleavages between liberals and conservatives growing ever wider in America, and with the future of the European Union hanging in the balance as the euro zone teeters on the edge of an abyss, the fact that Israeli society is becoming increasingly fortified is simply extraordinary.

In light of these integrationist trends, the media circus in recent weeks that has portrayed Israeli society as frayed through and through has been startling. With women in Israel presented as underprivileged victims, national religious youth presented as terrorists and the ultra-Orthodox community presented as a gang of misogynist, violent crazies set to transform Israel - in the words of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - into another Iran, an average news consumer can be forgiven for wondering how he missed his country's demise.

What explains this sudden flood of gloom and doom stories? Certainly it is true that in a highly competitive news environment, media coverage tends to over represent marginal social forces. Sensational stories make for banner headlines. And it is at the margins of society that a reporter is most likely to find sensational stories.

So it is that when reporters wish to push a socialist agenda, they descend on urban slums and talk to people hanging out on the street doing nothing. As a rule, these stories will not feature visits to vocational training schools that are educating poor people out of poverty.

Just as poor, uneducated single mothers in Lod can be depended on to blame their troubles on an insensitive government, so groups of ultra-Orthodox extremists in Beit Shemesh, whose own communities decry them, can be trusted to treat nonreligious women poorly.

None of this is to say that we should stand by and allow poor single moms and their children to go hungry or that we should accept abuse of women by ultra-Orthodox bullies. The former is an issue for social services. The latter is an issue for law enforcement bodies. And to the extent that these institutions are failing in their missions, they should be required to improve their performance.

But just as the majority of single mothers, who are not impoverished, don't deserve to be placed in the victim column, so, too, the majority of ultra-Orthodox Israelis do not deserve to have their reputation besmirched because of the bad behavior of a small, vocal and easily provoked minority.

ALL OF this brings us to the issue at hand. Stories highlighting the deviant behaviors of marginal social forces tend to be simplistic and misleading, and to serve identifiable political forces. And so, with our national discourse suddenly dominated by stories describing the demise of Israeli democracy, women's rights and the rule of law at the hands of modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews, we need to consider who benefits from the stories.

It is notable that the seam lines being opened by all of the stories, which are again, about deviations from the norm of Israel's social cohesion, all fall within the governing coalition. Stories of "Jewish terrorists" set the security hawks against the ideological hawks. They set the likes of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his supporters against the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and their representatives in the Likud, Israel Beiteinu, Habayit Hayehudi and other coalition parties.

Stories about ultra-Orthodox misogynists make it politically costly for the Likud and Israel Beiteinu to sit in the same government as ultra-Orthodox parties such as Shas and United Torah Judaism. They also serve to weaken Shas among its non-ultra-Orthodox voters. The fact that the ultra-Orthodox bus lines were inaugurated with the support of the Kadima government in 2007 is beside the point. It is the Likud that is now being blamed for their existence.

The current media-supported outcries against the national religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors follow the pattern of last summer's social justice protests in Tel Aviv. The purpose of those protests was to discredit the government in the eyes of working class voters and young people.

The current protests also follow in the footsteps of the protests of 1998 and 1999 that brought down Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's first government. Those protests pitted his Russian immigrant coalition members against Shas. They pitted secular Israelis against his ultra-Orthodox coalition members. They alienated young voters from his leadership. They set his socialist partners against his capitalist partners.

The cleavages wrought in Netanyahu's coalition made members of his own party as well as his coalition partners fear the electoral cost of maintaining their membership in his government. And so one by one, they bolted his government until it finally fell.

Notably, many of the same forces - from the New Israel Fund to various political consultants who work for the Israeli Left to European NGOs - who were active in the protests in 1999 and in the social justice protests last summer are also playing a role in the current protests. The New Israel Fund raised NIS 200,000 in "emergency funds" to pay for buses to transport protesters to Beit Shemesh last week.

It also paid for two rallies in Jerusalem attacking religious bans on female vocalists earlier last month.

Last summer, Israel's New Left movement led by leftist political consultant Eldad Yaniv took credit for organizing the anti-free market protests. Yaniv and his colleagues were assisted in conceptualizing the protests by US Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who was also the architect of the social protests in 1998-99.

Indications of how the political Left has been impacted by the current wave of demonstrations are mixed. A Shvakim Panorama poll from last week, which posited the existence of a new anti-religious party led by popular television personality Yair Lapid and a new anti-capitalist Sephardic party led by former Shas leader Arye Deri, indicated that the Left as a whole has been strengthened against the Right. While Kadima would lose most of its Knesset seats to Lapid's party, it is Deri who would be the undoing of the Right.

The poll claimed that Deri, who since his release from prison has strengthened his bonafides as a secular-friendly political dove, would win seven mandates. Shas would drop from its current 11 seats to five. Deri's rise would decrease the political Right in all its various forms from its current 67-seat majority in the 120 seat Knesset to a minority of 57.

The media have trumpeted this poll as the first harbinger of spring for Israel's political Left. And certainly it provides some reason for celebration among leftist political forces. Like the protests in the late 1990s, and like last summer's anti-capitalist protests, the current batch of anti-religious campaigns serves to turn Israeli against Israeli by feeding on and inflaming sectoral envies and insecurities. And given their success, we can certainly expect them to continue.

For the good of society as a whole, we must hope that the basic health and cohesion of Israeli society that has grown so miraculously over the past decade will prevail in the current contest. We have far more that unites us than separates us. If we focus on this, there is no force either within or without our society that can defeat us.

But if we give in to the forces of contention and chaos, we risk endangering everything we hold dear.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Daniel Lewin (Levin) - An Israeli Hero Of Flight 11 on Sept 11, 2001

2011-09-30T01:22:00.001-07:00

Excerpt from "Year to the Twin Towers Disaster" Yediot Ahronot, Seven Days Magazine Section 6 September 2002. Translation by IMRA:

"Danny Lewin was the first victim of the biggest attack in history that morning, in which almost 3,000 people died. An internal memorandum of the Federal Aviation Administration sets that in the course of a struggle that took place between Lewin, a graduate of Israel's elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal , and the four hijackers who were assaulting that cockpit, Lewin was murdered by Satam Al Suqami, a 25 year old Saudi.

Some time after the attack the Lewin family in Jerusalem received a telephone call from the FBI offices in New York. On the line was the agent responsible for the investigation of the attack on Flight 11. He told Peggy and Charles Lewin that there is a high degree of certainty that their son Danny tried to prevent the hijacking. The FBI relied, among other things, on the testimony of the stewardess Amy Sweeney.

Sweeney called Michael Woodward, the flight services supervisor in Boston, from the rear of the plane: "a hijacker slit the throat of a passenger in business class and the passenger appears to me to be dead." To this day the American investigators are not convinced that Danny Lewin was murdered on the spot. An additional stewardess, Betty Ong, who succeeded in calling from a telephone by one of the passenger seats, said that the passenger who was attacked from business class seat 10B was seriously wounded.

The Lewin family, Danny' parents and brothers, have no doubt that Danny battled the hijackers. And it is for them a tremendous consolation. "I wasn't surprised to hear from the FBI that Danny fought. I was sure that this is what he would do," Yonatan, his younger brother, said. "Danny didn' t sit quietly. From what we heard from the Americans, the hijackers attacked one of the stewardesses and Danny rose to protect her and prevent them from entering the cockpit. It is a consolation to us that Danny fought. We see it as an act of heroism that a person sacrifices his life in order to save others. An act of heroism that everyone should do at such an instance and particularly suitable for Danny."

That battle in the business section ended quickly. Lewin was overcome and bled to death on the floor. Two additional flight attendants were knifed and the captain was murdered. The hijackers were already inside the cockpit. They announced to the passengers to remain quiet in their seats.

Israel Always at Fault

2011-09-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

Media cling to accepted narrative of Israel as bad guy, regardless of the facts.

by Simon Plosker

Only weeks after its release, the Palmer Report into the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident appears to have been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Despite leveling criticism at Israel for “excessive force,” the report could and should have been a major prize for Israel’s public diplomacy. How often, and particularly at a time of precious few PR gifts, does a UN-sponsored investigation uphold the legitimacy of Israel’s naval blockade and highlight the danger of Hamas from Gaza?

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Israel’s government failed to enunciate a cogent message playing up the positives from the Palmer Report to avoid escalating tensions with Turkey.

Turkish PM Erdogan, however, took full advantage, using the hours before the report’s release to hijack the news cycle and reframe the story, aided by a compliant international media.

Even without Erdogan’s help, some media deliberately focused on Palmer’s criticism of Israel, ignoring the justification for the Israeli blockade and Turkish responsibility for the flotilla incident. The main headlines in the following days, however, belonged to Erdogan’s increasingly vitriolic attacks on Israel.

Despite the Palmer Report’s recommendation that Israel express regret over the Mavi Marmara incident, the story morphed into claims that Israel’s refusal to apologize was the reason for Turkish anger and the ever-widening rift between the two countries.

More accurately, the Turkish demand for an apology and Erdogan’s escalatory language should have been emphasized as the reason for diplomatic breakdown.

And Erdogan has continued to play to the media, stating: "The attack that took place in international waters did not comply with any international law. In fact, it was grounds for war."

While only too happy to broadcast inflammatory Turkish rhetoric, the media seems unprepared to revisit the Palmer Report as a point of reference. Despite Erdogan’s claims that Israel had broken international law, the Palmer Report concluded the exact opposite, stating that Israel had every right to board the flotilla in international waters.

Removing all context

Look at the way two different UN investigations have been presented. The harsh and one-sided Goldstone Report received mass media attention. Since then, with far less fanfare, Judge Goldstone himself has distanced himself from the findings, saying that if he knew then what he knows now, the conclusions would have been very different.

The Palmer Report, much like Goldstone’s retraction, has been systematically ignored or deliberately skewed by a media that cannot deviate from the accepted narrative of Israel as the sole bad guy on the block.

But it isn’t just Turkish anger that has been reframed in the media. Following the attack on Israel’s Cairo embassy, the media was quick to pounce on the anti-Israel sentiment of the Egyptian street.

In particular, the inadvertent killing of Egyptian soldiers by Israeli forces pursuing Palestinian terrorists responsible for a deadly attack near the southern city of Eilat, was held up as an immediate reason.

Yet, even the Palestinian terror attack was reframed by some media. An Egyptian analyst quoted by Sky News claimed: “This action shows the state of anger and frustration the young Egyptian revolutionaries feel against Israel, especially after the recent Israeli attacks on the Egyptian borders that led to the killing of Egyptian soldiers.”

The Guardian’s Peter Preston stated in a similar vein: “It (the Egyptian street) doesn’t like five Egyptian border guards shot dead as the hapless byproduct of yet another Israeli reprisal raid.”

So, a deadly terrorist attack on Israeli soil is transformed into a “reprisal raid” or “Israeli attack” on Egypt, removing all context and presenting Israel as the aggressor. Like the Palmer Report, anything that could elicit any understanding or even sympathy for Israel, in this case a terrorist attack, is buried by the media.

In addition, claiming the deaths of Egyptian soldiers as the origin for the Israeli embassy attack fails to address decades of state-sanctioned anti-Israel incitement and anti-Semitism in Egyptian media. Not to mention the best-selling status of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf, readily available in Cairo bookshops.

In the end, it all comes down to a simple line promulgated by the media – Israeli actions are ultimately responsible for anti-Israel feelings from Turkey’s PM Erdogan all the way to the Egyptian masses.

Anything that challenges this simplistic narrative is removed, rebuffed or reframed to suit the dominant anti-Israel zeitgeist. Undoubtedly, Israeli efforts to counter the forthcoming UN Palestinian statehood vote will also be falsely framed as “anti-peace.”

Will Israel be able to recapture the narrative in the coming weeks? Judging by recent developments, optimism will be in short supply.

Simon Plosker is the managing editor of Honest Reporting

Ynet News

Jewish Documentary - The Dawn of the Century

2011-08-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

Faith and Fate is a documentary telling the story of the Jews in the 20th Century.

The first Episode is called, "The Dawn of the Century" and covers 1900 - 1910.

This episode introduces the uniqueness of Jewish history in the 20th century within the context of world history. At the turn of the 20th century, Jews were scattered across the globe, representing only ¼ of one percent of the worlds population. It was a time of empires, imperial rule and colonial expansionism. In Russia the masses, including the Jews, lived in dire poverty which was compounded by grassroots antisemitism. In 1905
the Russian masses revolted and there was a general strike. On Bloody Sunday the Czar responded with force. The Czar did not abdicate until 1917, which is typically the date given for the second Russian Revolution, which, in turn, led to increased pogroms against the Jews. The pogroms and the economic conditions forced approximately 40% of Jewish population to leave the Russian Empire and go to Western countries including the United States and to Palestine and other countries as far away as South Africa and Australia.

Emigration and the Enlightenment presented Jews with the dilemma and opportunity to maintain or reject their traditional Jewish upbringing, and many decided to forgo their traditional Judaism and blend in with their larger non-Jewish society. Within the traditional Jewish world, change was occurring as well, with the rise and acceptance of the Mussar Movement, an ethical approach to Judaism. Because Jews were not allowed into institutions of higher education in Eastern Europe, most of them went to study in yeshivas to sharpen their intellect. The traditional yeshiva, unintentionally, became a breeding ground for all philosophies, Jewish and secular alike. Zionism grew as a national movement, and was led by secular Jews antithetical to traditional Judaism. While most rabbis rejected Zionism and its leaders, because of their nontraditional beliefs, a minority of rabbis developed religious Zionism, which combined traditional Judaism with Zionist philosophy. The Old Yishuv Jews, who had settled in Palestine in the late 1800s, were committed to traditional Judaism and rejected secular, nationalistic ideas of the New Yishuv Zionists.

The Sephardic Jews living in Moslem and Arab countries at the turn of the 20th Century maintained their own rich Jewish traditions and heritage, which often differed from those of the Ashkenazim. There was relative peace within the Jewish community and among the leadership in these Arab and Moslem countries, and although life was sometimes difficult, these Sephardic Jews did not experience, by and large, pogroms or the influences of the Enlightenment or Reform Judaism.

In Europe, Jews were the leaders of the Labor and Socialist movements and spearheaded the establishment of labor unions in America. The challenge of assimilation in the United States was the greatest difficulty confronting Jewish immigrants. Attempts were made to stem the tide. Reform Judaism became a symbol of acceptance into modern American society and Dr. Solomon Schechter initiated the Universal Synagogue movement which became Conservative Judaism. Also Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewish immigrants had to find their respective places within the Jewish community and in their new host country, the United States, as well.. A small, strong group of American Jewish immigrants managed to cling to their Jewish traditions and adapt themselves to the new reality in America. Meanwhile, for Jews around the world, with the threat of WWI looming, the imperial race for supremacy was escalating.

Jewish History

Wake Up and Smell the (Israeli) Coffee

2011-08-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

Israeli coffee culture is bubbling more than the milk at the top of a latte, spilling over into international markets.

By Jeffrey Heyman

Regardless of political and ideological affiliation or social standing, there's one issue that seemingly unites all Israelis - a love of coffee.

Walk down a street at any time of the day in any of Israel's bustling cities, such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, and you'll think you've stumbled out of a dream and landed in Paris or London when you see the sidewalk cafes jammed with tables topped with umbrellas and populated by legions of coffee-drinking patrons.

In the last 15 years, coffee chains like Aroma, Cup O' Joe, Arcaffe and Cafe Hillel have proliferated to the point that their logos are as ubiquitous as McDonald's golden arches.

In a country bursting with specialty coffee chains offering everything from double espresso to mocha cappuccino, some of the successful Israeli coffee chains have started to expand their horizons, exporting their flavorful brands of coffee abroad. Goodbye Jaffa oranges, hello iced coffee milkshakes.

A strong coffee culture

Israel's coffee culture has been part of the country's fiber since before the state was declared in 1948. According to Michael Reiner, the CEO of Ava Coffee, one of the country's leading coffee suppliers and a student of all things java, the sit-down-and-relax approach to drinking coffee rubbed off on Israeli society from its Middle Eastern environs.

"Israel is known to have a strong coffee culture," says Reiner, who's been involved in the coffee business for more than 35 years. "And it's mainly because we're in an Oriental region of the world and have adopted the habits of the local Bedouin and Arab people, who charge great importance to the social act of preparing and drinking a cup of coffee."

In fact, coffee played a significant role in the creation of the country. Heads of the underground units formed to fight the British presence in pre-1948 Palestine used to meet at the famed Atara Café in Jerusalem to plan strategies, share information and drink the strong, thick blend of Turkish coffee known as botz - "mud" in Hebrew.

Botz remained the coffee of choice for decades, with everyone from army reservists on maneuvers to college students cramming for exams subsisting on the sweet, black beverage, and cherishing the social bonding of sitting around brewing the aromatic concoction.

But over the years, other types of coffee inched onto the menus, including nes (short for "Nescafé"), the instant coffee favored in the United States, and the European favorite cappuccino, prepared with espresso, hot milk and steamed-milk froth. Israelis coined the term café hafuch (upside-down coffee) for this sophisticated drink.

As Israelis began to travel abroad more in the 1970s and 1980s, they returned with the seeds of the espresso coffee culture that would soon proliferate across the country - a trend that dovetailed nicely with the already well-ensconced tradition of sitting and shmoozing around a cuppa joe.

Israel's quality coffee movement

According to Ofer Gvirsman, the vice president of marketing for the successful Cup O' Joe coffee shop chain, it wasn't until the mid-1990s that Israelis began to be exposed to what became known as "specialty" coffee.

"Israelis have always been discerning about their coffee and out of that rose a quality coffee movement," says Gvirsman, who counts himself among the numerous coffee addicts in Israel. He credits Ilan Shenhav, a coffee roaster who opened up a shop called Ilan's on Tel Aviv's Ibn Gvirol Street in 1994, along with a new chain called Arcaffe, as being the first to offer different types of coffee concoctions.

"It started with the flavored milkshake around 15 years ago, which Ilan's in Tel Aviv and Arcaffe started selling - they were first ones to use the new terminology of ‘specialty' coffee. Before that, people here weren't really aware that it existed," he says.

By 1996, Israeli coffee culture began to bubble more than the milk at the top of a latte, with chains like Aroma, Café Hillel and Cup ‘O Joe opening branches across the country. One marketing study estimated that some 500 coffee bars opened up in Israel between 1995 and 1998.

Not only did these new businesses offer a variety of hot and cold coffee-based beverages - including the burgeoning favorite for the warm Mediterranean, a thick, milkshake-like iced coffee called barad - but they also served innovative and quality baked goods and food, including sandwiches and salads. Each establishment has its own concept, style and ambience. "I think that Israelis are more passionate about coffee shops than we are about coffee. The coffee is important but so is the clientele, the design of the shop as well as the menu," says Gvirsman.

Today, you can't walk a block without encountering one of the identifiable logos of the major chains or one of the dozens of other chains like Coffee Time, Greg Café and Café Netto, not to mention hundreds of boutique coffee bars.

"The biggest increase in coffee consumption and in the quality and variety of coffee in Israel occurred mainly in the past decade - due to the proliferation of the 'away from home' market, encompassing espresso bars, restaurants and cafés," says Ava's Reiner.

"The most popular beverage at these establishments today is cappuccino, or cafe hafuch - it's actually becoming known around the world as 'Tel Aviv cappuccino.' The second is the iced coffee drinks and the third is espresso. However, espresso is the flagship test of a cafe's quality - tasting the espresso determines if it's a good coffee bar or not."

Despite the divergence of tastes outside the home, most of the coffee being sold in Israel for home use is the fine Turkish ground coffee used to make botz, added Reiner. However, even that tradition is slowly being eclipsed by the growing popularity of the espresso capsule machines that are becoming ubiquitous in offices and kitchens around the country.

Starbucks failed in Israel but Israeli chains flourish abroad

While it may seem like everyone in Israel is drinking coffee all the time, according to Reiner, whose company supplies coffee to chains like Café Neto and Coffee Time, the country's coffee consumption is just a little above average. "Israelis consume about 4.5 kilos [10 pounds] per capita of coffee a year - that's in the upper ranges of average, similar to Italy," says Reiner. "Scandinavians drink much more, about 12 kilos, as do Germans at nine. But it's more than the American average."

Speaking of American and average, when US coffee giant Starbucks researched Israeli coffee culture over a decade ago, its corporate eyes lit up with dollar signs, and in 2001, the chain began opening branches amid much fanfare. However, Israelis rejected the coffee as "bitter," were turned off by the take-away only service and within two years, Starbuck had fled the country.

"The Israeli palate is different - Americans like their coffee more bitter than we do. We're more like the Italians, who prefer a higher acidity," explained Cup O' Joe's Gvirsman. "Starbucks didn't work here because they didn't make any adjustments to the preferences of coffee-drinkers here. They didn't change anything about the coffee; they worked in a self-service concept which wasn't as acceptable back then as it is now and they were more expensive than any of their competitors. Plus they didn't serve food, which is a big thing in Israeli coffee shops."

It was only a matter of time until some of the Israeli chains decided to test the waters abroad.

The most aggressive campaign was launched by Aroma, the popular coffee bar founded in 1994 by brothers Yariv and Sahar Sheffa in 1994. Featuring a pleasing interior design, great service and different blends of quality beans for espresso, cappuccino and regular brewed coffee, as well as a wide array of sandwiches, salads and baked goods, the branch has become an Israeli staple with 107 branches nationwide.

"Aroma opened its first branch outside of Israel in 2006 in New York on the corner of Greene Street and Houston Street in Soho," says Gali Goldwaser, the marketing communication manager of Aroma. "Since than we've expanded and now operate 15 branches around the world in the US, Canada, Ukraine, Romania and Kazakhstan.

According to Ava's Lerner, Aroma's success isn't due so much to its coffee as to its efficiency. "They're exporting the concept of Aroma, and it's doing very well. Arcaffe has opened branches in Paris as well. Israelis are known around the world to be good managers of espresso bars," he says.

Aroma's Goldwaser explains that the company's branches abroad are based on maintaining its characteristics, which are well-known in Israel - "Gourmet coffee, fresh and healthy food prepared only by order, modern decor and atmosphere, dedicated service and the best value for the money."

Toronto physiotherapist Rebecca Gruber, a regular at the Thornhill branch of Aroma, says, "The coffee is much better than at North American chains like Starbucks, as it isn't bitter, and the food is wonderful - huge salads, fresh- baked bread every day and wonderful, unusual pastries and cookies," she says.

Signature roasts

Goldwaser explains that all the international branches of Aroma receive their coffee blends from the corporate facility in Israel, which imports beans from South America and Africa to create unique blends of cappuccino and espresso. "After the beans are roasted, they are packed in special vacuum packs that keep them fresh, and then distributed to all of our branches in Israel and abroad," she says, adding that the menus in the various branches are similar but adapted to the tastes of local populations.

And while there's no explicit connection on display to advertise its Israeli origins, there are hints on the menu - such as the Bourekas treat and the Mediterranean sandwich - to Aroma's geographic location. Of course, the Hebrew heard on the premises from traveling or expat Israelis homesick for a taste of the country may also give it away.

Unlike Aroma and Arcaffe, the owners of Cup O' Joe flirted with branching out abroad but decided to stick to the local Israeli market. The chain, launched in Tel Aviv in 1996 by two US immigrants to Israel, David Klein and Dov Goldfarb, began opening franchises in 2002 and today has more than 60 branches around the country, with 10 more scheduled to open this year. In May, a subsidiary of a major Israeli fuel company, Delek Group, acquired 50 percent of the coffee chain.

"We did think about expanding abroad and David did go to New York to look at options, but it never happened," explains marketing manger Gvirsman. "Instead, we're focusing on developing in Israel - there's still room for lots more cafes here."

Israel Foreign Affair

How to Get the World To Hate Israel

2011-07-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

By Richard L. Cravatts

Mr. Cravatts, PhD, director of Boston University’s Program in Book and Magazine Publishing at the Center for Professional Education, writes frequently on terrorism, higher education, politics, culture, law, marketing, and housing, and is currently writing a book about the world-wide assault on Israel taking place on college campuses.

As part of evaluating the competitive landscape of the popularity of nations, in a process referred to in marketing circles as ‘place branding,’ Israel, to no one’s great surprise, comes up short in brand likeability, ranking last out of 35 nations included in an August 2006 survey conducted by nation branding expert Simon Anholt, even less attractive to respondents than Indonesia, Estonia, and Turkey.

How could this have happened to a country that is the Middle East’s only thriving democracy and enjoys a remarkably robust economy that has spawned some 1000 startup high tech companies, for example, second only to the U.S.? How, in short, would you go about making the world hate Israel?

This is how you would accomplish that objective if you were an enemy of Israel:

Even after 60 years of its existence, you question the fundamental right of Israel to even exist and regularly, though falsely, condemn it for being created “illegally”—through the “theft” of Palestinian lands and property—and thus decide, because of its original sin, it has no “right to exist.” You accuse the government of a “brutal,” illegal “occupation” of Palestinian lands, especially Gaza and the West Bank (but for many, all of Israel), of being a “colonial settler state,” a Zionist “regime” or “project,” a land-hungry nation, a usurper of property that was lived on and owned by a Palestinian “people” “from time immemorial.”

You describe the very existence of the country as being the “greatest threat to world peace,” the core cause of all Muslim anger toward the West, the root of all of the Palestinians’ suffering and economic plight, and describe Israel as a nation that has even been referred to publicly as a “shitty little country” by the French ambassador to Britain.

You make ‘Palestinianism’ into a virtual cult whose members offer a world-wide reverence for the Palestinian cause and repeat without end that their nationalistic striving is inviolable, a basic human right, Of all the 100 million refugees who were dispersed around the globe and were re-assimilated since World War II, you chose only the Palestinians to languish, as if in amber, in barbaric refugee camps where their lives are used as political fodder to denounce the existence of an Israel that supposedly has deprived them of a home.

You have the United Nations set up an agency whose sole function it is to make sure that this one group of refugees in the whole world are coddled, advocated for, and repeat, mantra-like, that a human “right of return” has been sanctified and assured by international law for the Palestinians, giving only this group of refugees a collective, as opposed to individual, right of return—and not only to those refugees who supposedly lived in and left what is now Israel, but all of their descendents, as well.

You use the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to further demonize and delegitimate Israel, making it a pariah in the world community and issuing an edict that equates Zionism with racism. In 2006-07, if you are the Human Rights Council, you pass one hundred percent of your condemnatory resolutions against Israel.

If you are the autocratic, despotic states of the Arab world, you initiate a prolonged, unceasing propaganda war against Israel and Zionism, in which it is your intention to encourage your citizens, not to question why they live under tyranny and despair under their own corrupt, defective governments, but that their circumstances are bleak because of the success and very existence of Israel. You depict Jews as apes, pigs, and subhuman monsters, and regularly produce Nazi-like propaganda and cartoons in your state-owned media that accuses Jews and Israelis of blood libels, bloodthirstiness, militarism, a desire for world domination, imperialism, and complicity with the U.S. and the West to destroy Islam—all which make Jew-hatred inevitable.

You inculcate Palestinian children, nearly from birth, with seething, blind, unrelenting, and obsessive hatred of Jews and the 'Zionist regime,' so that kindergartners graduate with blood-soaked hands while toting plastic AK 47s and dedicate their lives to jihad, and older children are recruited to hide explosives on their bodies to transform themselves into shahids -- a new generation of kindling for radical Islam's cult of death.

When Israel launches a military strike against nests of terrorists or in response to ceaseless rocket barrages, you term their response “disproportionate,” another escalation in the “cycle of violence,” a violation of human rights, aggressive, militaristic, with Apache gunships “pounding” terrorist neighborhoods.

If you are the Palestinian media, and members of the world media who are either intentionally biased or willing to be duped by anti-Israel propaganda, you repeatedly report on supposed Israeli human rights violations, such as an alleged “massacre of the 21st century,” a horrible war crime and example of “genocide” committed by Israel against Palestinians in the village of Jenin.

You talk about the Israeli security barrier as an “apartheid wall,” and describe it as a massive, soaring, unbroken division through Palestinian neighborhoods and communities, overlooking the fact that the wall is towering and solid concrete only in those regions that have been repeatedly assaulted by terrorism, and that 90 percent of the hundreds of miles of barrier is comprised merely of wire fence.

You use the “apartheid wall” image to create a broader misconception about the Palestinians living under a South African-style apartheid regime, disingenuously equating race restrictions that blacks lived under in Soweto with the open society of Israel in which Israeli Arabs have more rights than in any Arab state and are asked only not to murder Jews in their midst.

On campuses where a coddled and insulated professoriate often express antipathy for the perceived ills of capitalism, the usurpation of “Palestine” by Israel, “land grabs” through occupation, and the denial of the civil and economic rights of the Palestinians, you contend that Israel’s very existence is not at all about self-determination (something you deem appropriate only for the Palestinians) and all about greed, globalism, colonialism, exploitation, and undeserved political and economic might. No longer able to fight apartheid in South Africa, you now try to transmogrify that racist social system onto Israel, holding rallies and encouraging the signing of petitions which call from divestiture from companies doing business in Israel.

You fund Middle Eastern Studies centers on university campuses and use them as anti-Israel, anti-American “think tanks” where scholarship is tainted with ideology and singularly focused on the Palestinian cause. You fund the active and vocal Muslim Students Association on campuses across the country that hold “Israel Apartheid Week” and “Holocaust in the Holy Land” festivals at which propaganda, Jew-hatred, apologies for terrorism, and further demonizing of Israel takes place.

In the Arab world, you play fast and loose with history in your attempt to create a historical narrative conforming to your own political agenda, erasing any link between Palestine and the Jews. Though Jerusalem is mentioned not once in the Koran and over 669 times in the Jewish Bible, you claim that Jerusalem is now the “third holiest site to Muslims,” that, as Yasser Arafat announced at Camp David in 2000, the Temple Mount was never a Jewish site, that Jews now “occupy” Muslim lands, and that the archeological and historical evidence that confirms an uninterrupted 3000-year presence by Jews in the Holy Land is merely a “construct,” yet another lie promulgated by Israeli historians and archeologists as way of erasing and obscuring an Islamic past.

If you are in the traditionally Arabist U.S. State Department, or in the “realist” school of diplomacy, or part of the European Union, and you have an insatiable need for oil, you overlook the tyrannies and unfaithfulness of our Middle Eastern “friends,” and ask nothing of them, but demand that Israel, the only democracy in a sea of despotism, continually prove its loyalty to us and embrace policies that could potentially threaten their own security. You write academic books questioning the strength of the "Israel Lobby," and wonder out loud if Jewish influence and wealth forces us to lose credibility and threaten our national security on behalf of Israel.

You do all of these things, as part of a concerted effort and also as random, independent efforts on the part of Israel’s enemies, and you do it for the 60 years of Israel’s existence, and then you are shocked, shocked, when Israel is shown to rank unfavorably in surveys which measure the public’s perception of nations and how they compare to one another in the world community. But you are pleased, because you know that if Israel cannot be annihilated with armaments and rockets, perhaps you can make it cease to exist simply by making the entire world loathe it for being what it is.

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