Israeli Coalition Scenarios

Kadima wins but Bibi Netanyahu becomes Prime Minister.

This is how I called it last night before I went to bed. It sounds as crazy as Victor Krum catching the golden snitch but Ireland winning the Quidditch World Cup but it is quite plausable.

It's 5:15 AM in Israel and finally all of the votes have been tabulated. Centrist Kadima won with 23% of the vote (28 seats) followed closely by Right-wing Likud with 27 seats. I had expected Likud to win but apparently not. However I wouldn't count Likud out yet. President Shimon Perez will now call on the head of the winning party, Tzipi Livni to form a coalition. I don't think she can do it. To make A coalition government one must have a combination of at least 61 seats out of 120 seats in the Knesset, meaning a combination of multiple parties. If Kadima wanted to form a coalition government with all the leftist parties they would fall 6 short, and that's implying that all of the left wing parties join them (which they won't).

Left & center 28+13+3+4+4+3 = 55
Kadima 28
Labor 13
Meretz 3
Hadash 4
United Arab List/Ta'al 4
Balad 3

They NEED the right wing parties here. Likud trails by only a seat and within the entire right wing there are 65 seats. Likud could conceivably form a pan-right coalition/phalanx without the inclusion of Kadima.

Right 27+15+11+5+3+4 =65
Likud 27
Yisrael Beitenu 15
Shas 11
United Torah Judaism 5
Jewish Home 3
National Union 4

As long as Shas doesn't whore itself out to the highest bidder as it did last time (especially as their spiritual leader pronounces his next controversial statement), Likud has Kadima in a vice grip. Likud is likely going to hold out, as is far-right wing Yisrael Beiteinu and not immediately attach themselves to coalitions. The rest of these parties will follow suit.

When Tzipi Livni tried to form a coalition government after the special Kadima Primary after disgraced Premier Ehud Olmert stepped down last year she failed miserably. And now she has even LESS supportive parties. The Arab parties have said they would boycott any coalition that included anyone who demanded a loyalty oath so there is no way any Arab party (the viable parties being Ta'al/UAL, Hadash, and Balad).

About the loyalty oath. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the third place winning Yisrael Beiteinu party has demanded that all citizens of Israel need to take a loyalty oath to Israel just as one must take a loyalty oath to become a citizen of the United States (or in any elementary school classroom's Pledge of Allegiance). If one refuses to take this oath, they will be stripped of their citizenship, right to vote, and right to run for public office but will remain as permanent residents of Israel.

Labor, once the winningest party in Israel's history (they held control from the founding of the modern state until Menachem Begin's Likud finally wrested control in the 70s) has now fallen to fourth place, and although I like their leader Ehud Barak, I don't know if he will have that much of a role in the coalition.

So there are a number of scenarios that can play out, and as long as Shas stays out of trouble it will be a right wing government. Kadima now needs to decide how much it will capitulate to the right or risk being the head of the opposition. President Peres is mandated to appoint the person he feels most likely to be able to form a coalition to do so, but Livni might be passed over for Bibi Netanyahu because Tzipi is likely to fail once again. We shall see. Whatever happens, I hope it is for the best of Israel.

Oh, and Haaretz seems to agree with my theory

A new twist on agunot: chain the husband!

I posted this a few moments ago to the Ziegler listserv but I realize that not everyone I know that this would interest are students in ZSRS. See wikipedia for a definition of Agunah.


An Israeli Rabbinic Court issued an interesting ruling, upheld by the Rabbinical Supreme Court on appeal, that could set a precedent for recalcitrant husbands in cases of agunot. They found this guy hiding out in a Yeshiva who has chained his estranged wife for years and now they're imprisoning him. If he doesn't give her a get soon, they will put him in solitary confinement.

Although I fully support what badatz is doing -- these monsters who refuse to divorce their wives deserve all the punishment in this world and the next, but is a get given under extreme duress considered valid?

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3523781,00.html

Matt

Rabbinical court send divorce recalcitrant to solitary confinement

Supreme Rabbinical Court sets precedent, orders a man refusing to grant his wife divorce, pay alimony, be held in manner reserved for extremely dangerous convicts – in complete isolation
Yoram Yarkoni

A religious rarity: A rabbinical court ordered a man refusing to grant his estrange wife a divorce be sentenced to solitary confinement, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday.

The ruling was rendered as part of a bitter divorce battle: The wife asked to divorce her husband of 10 years, he refused and she ended up issuing a restraining order banning him from their house.

The rabbinical court then ordered the husband to grant his wife the divorce and pay her alimony – but he refused to acknowledge the ruling.

Later on, and following several arrest warrants issued against him for failing to pay alimony, he dropped out of sight.

After a several-years search the man was discovered hiding in a Jerusalem yeshiva. The rabbinical court sentenced him to one year in prison – unless he grants the divorce. He preferred to go to jail.

Faced with the man's ongoing refusal to grant his wife a divorce, the Supreme Rabbinical Court was called into play, ruling that at the end of the man's 12 months incarceration – and should he still refuse to grant the divorce – he will be sentenced to four additional years in prison.

A religious first

The Supreme Rabbinical Court then set a religious precedent, ruling that those additional four years be served in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement in a penalty usually reserved for the criminals deemed extremely dangerous, or those who may be in mortal danger if they came in contact with the general prisoner population.

Prisoners sentenced to solitary confinement are held in complete isolation and are denied any contact with the outside world: They are not allowed to receive visitors, send or receive letters or have any personal possessions.

The court further ruled that in order for the man to understand what he might be facing – and providing he failed to grant his wife a divorce by mid April – he will have to spend a week in isolation.

"A man refusing to grant his wife a divorce cannot be an observant Jew," stated the court.

The man demanded his immediate release as a pre-condition to him making and decision on the divorce. The court denied his requests, further ruling he serve his sentence in a general population ward, not the religious one.

Ahmadinejad is a Sukkah!

(Should be pronounced in the Mr. T pronounciation, not the impending holiday, though that's the reason I used said title)

So I have received maybe 200 e-mails in the past week and a half about Mahmud Ahmadinejad (first spellcheck suggestion in Firefox, BTW: "Shadiness"; how appropriate...). He came, on Monday, to my Alma Mater, Columbia University. Why does columbia continually do this? Anyway, I sent a number of e-mails to the VBS listserv this week and I want to share them with you. Note that I have not included other peoples' e-mails to protect their privacy so they might be out of context:

Sep 21, 2007 9:36 AM
	subject			Re: Ahmadinejad
	mailed-by			gmail.com

As an alumnus and as a member of LionPAC, Columbia's AIPAC arm, I want you to be assured that he's going to have a little welcoming committee when he comes. He was supposed to come speak last year but cancelled at the last minute. Perhaps he will rethink once again speaking on a campus on which a third of the students are Jewish and a good portion are Israelis.

Gmar Tov and a meaningful fast,
Matt

Sep 23, 2007 10:27 PM
	subject			Re: Ahmadinejad
	mailed-by			gmail.com

It's funny, in the last week I have gotten over 100 e-mails regarding the Ahmadinejad situation; the last 11 consecutive e-mails have had the word Ahmadinejad in the header. I have been invited to protests through the Columbia Political Union, Columbia/Barnard Hillel, AIPAC, IsraelCampusBeat, StandWithUsCampus, a chevruta (study partners) program I used to be affiliated with, and various students of Columbia, Barnard, and the Jewish Theological Seminary, as well as invitations to seminars about Iran and Ahmadinejad, and a friendly reminder from the Columbia Democrats to protest nicely.

I turned on FOX News this morning and it was the top story. Sure, Columbia is no stranger to controversy. On IsraelCampusBeat, which reports on Israel and Jewish-related "issues" on universities worldwide, there are usually at least two articles with the little blue Roary The Lion icon, signifying that there is yet another example of Israel getting somehow disparaged in a Columbia classroom/Anti-Iraq War protest, so it comes as no surprise to me that a campus which two years ago rejected the obvious academic intimidation perpetrated by anti-Israel and anti-Semitic (and when I say Semitic, I mean anti-Jewish, nobody ever refers to the other descendants of Shem by this moniker, so please don't counter with the semantics as Professor Hamid Dabashi did when he called a Jewish student with blue eyes "not Semitic") professors not allowing any pro-Israeli opinions within their classrooms. Indeed, nothing surprises me anymore about some of the enterprising (read: incredibly idiotic and embarrassing) programs which my fair Alma Mater and President Lee Bollinger comes up with.

So, yes it was stupid to invite the President of Iran, but at the same time it the opportunity of a lifetime to hear the Hitler of our times on our own home turf. I would not want to be the Jew in the crowd at a Nazi Rally in 1935 Berlin, but the fact is that Ahmadinijad is going to "Columbia JEWniversity of JEW York City" (as we so belovedly call it), where he will be preaching to a whole bunch of Jews. He's not going to win anyone over with his ranting propaganda. He's not in Tehran where they eat up his every anti-Semitic word, but in a room filled with headstrong intellectuals who won't take any of his crap. I just fear that he will be heckled as my fellow students heckled John Ashcroft a couple of years ago... that was just embarrassing.

Count on this not to end pretty. I cringe in advance.

Shana Tova,
Matt

Sep 24, 2007 6:11 PM
	subject			Re: Fw: Columbia President's Statement About President Ahmadinejad's Appearance
	mailed-by			gmail.com

Yes indeed, I am proud of President Bollinger who couldn't have handled it any better. As for the statement, it is actually much longer and much juicier. The transcript of his introduction can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/09/lcbopeningremarks.html

One of the best lines: "Let's, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."

I found these other lines in an article on Breitbart: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070924225252.klmczhdo&show_article=1

"Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?" he asked, challenging the leader of the Islamic republic to explain his comments downplaying the Holocaust.

"Frankly, in all candor Mr President, I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions," he added.

"When you come to a place like this, this makes you quite simply ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," he said.

The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history." (as found on a Fox News Article http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297823,00.html)

As for President Ahmadinejad, he once again proved himself a fool. "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who has told you that we have it." He was evasive on the simplest of questions regarding his basest policies.

I am yet to watch the speech but I am currently instant messaging friends who saw it live so I will update you when I hear more. As of now, I feel good that my worst fears weren't realized -- that Columbians didn't make fools of the United States by heckling and not hearing him out, however stupid he sounds. And as for President Bollinger, I am proud of his ability to not sugarcoat (which I feared he would) but instead attacked where it hurts, even if Ahmadinejad was completely evasive or ridiculous at points. I don't think Iran's president expected it to go like this at all, broadsided as he was, and I think he will rethink how he talks to outside media in the future.

Matt

As of press I am both proud of and ashamed of Columbia. I am proud that President Bollinger broadsided the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran and made him look like a complete fool and liar. I am proud of the Hillel, LionPAC, and other groups and decent individuals who peacefully protested against the Hitler of today from the actual Aryan country (Aryan people originally migrated from Iran. However, I am ashamed and horrified that students cheered when Ahmadinejad called for the destruction of the State of Israel. Having attended Columbia for four and a half years I know that there is a lot of Israel-hating that goes on there. But cheering a murderous terrorist who calls on it's destruction?! I don't separate Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitism. Also self-hating Jews can also be anti-Semites. I consider members of the Jewish sect of Netueri Karta to be anti-Semites. I also consider former acquaintances who have fallen in with the socialist crowd and have become anti-Israel... well you can see why they are not current friends... The great irony in the socialist crowd is that the socialists seem to support the dictator-run countries while denouncing Israel, the only country in the world where socialism has remotely worked. The country was formed by socialists and social Zionism and the Kibbutz system is the best example of social communism at work. Not that I support communism or socialism, but I just find it funny that most of these socialists seem to support fascism over socialism.

Yom Tov is coming, but I don't think I'm done with this one. Gut Yontif and as we celebrate the festival in which we traditionally advocate for all of the other nations of the world, may I advocate that the residents of nations that are forcibly suppressed by evil dictators overthrow their captors. As it is written in the Uvchen prayers of the High Holidays which have just passed, "ki taavir mimshelet zadon min haaretz", "for You shall cause to be removed wicked governments from the world".

Gut Yontif.

Palestinian Civil War

I was working on another entry, on the topic of Harry Potter, but there is something more pressing and less mundane happening right now. The Palestinians are in a civil war right now. Now the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, particularly in this case, but I am still following this closely. Hamas has "conquered" Gaza and Rafah. Israel has not yet gotten involved (if she does, she will get blamed for the Palestinian civil war by the world), and I don't know if we need to get involved yet. Let's let them destroy each other a little more and see what happens. Of course then the world will blame Israel for not stepping in to prevent more destruction. And when it spills out into Israel-proper, we'll still get blamed. Well, I believe that a laissez-faire approach is the correct one -- for now.

Meanwhile all of this stuff going on in Lebanon indicates that they and Syria aren't leading to a good place. According to someone at minyan this morning, Ahmadinijad said that he's sending troops to attack Israel. Bring it on, jerk! I am incredibly hawkish when it comes to Israel, a change that occurred when I lived there and over the last summer. Peace treaties and cease fires mean nothing to those with whom we make them. Iran is something we have to deal with now. They are working on nukes and we need to go Operation Opera on their asses before it's too late. Iran is the puppetmaster and we need to go after it and the rest of the hydra's heads will fall with it. Or not, but at least they will lack their organization and funding...

Jerusalem Embassy Act

In honor of the fortieth anniversary of our liberation and reunification of our eternal capital, Jerusalem, in a battle that took two days to accomplish in a major war that lasted only six days, after a gap of about 1,900 years, I would like to mention something that has been bugging me. There is rampant anti-Semitism that does not allow Jerusalem to be recognized as the eternal united capital of Israel and the Jewish people. While the Palestinians and their lackeys are blowing themselves up and murdering innocent civilians, the world has it in for the Jews who have supported the rights of all (which is why we haven't knocked down anything on our Temple Mount as we respect other cultures). However many appeasements we make, it is not good enough. The specific thing that is bugging me is that there are few or no nations that recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Every country has their embassy in Tel Aviv since Costa Rica and El Salvador moved from Jerusalem a couple of months ago. The UN is anti-Semitic as is Jimmy Carter (sorry, had to throw that one in there.

About 12 years ago the United States congress voted to relocate the embassy back to Jerusalem, in what is known as the Jerusalem Embassy Act. The act explicitly declares Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and demands that the embassy be moved to Jerusalem no later than 1999. The penalty for not doing this (unless the president signs a postponement waiver every six months) is severe, as seen in Section § 3.3.b

Not more than 50 percent of the funds appropriated to the Department of State for fiscal year 1999 for "Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad" may be obligated until the Secretary of State determines and reports to Congress that the United States Embassy in Jerusalem has officially opened.

Presidents Clinton and Bush II have postponed this every single time. I talked to my congressman about this and he said that his top priority is Iran but that this is important too. Let's see what happens, but it's probably going to be just a whole bunch more years of red tape. Sigh...

For those who don't want to actually read the legalese, there is brief synopsis of the law that can be found here.

California Primary moved up

Governator Schwarzenegger signed into law yesterday that the 2008 Primary Elections in California will be moved up to February 5, 2008, from the original planned June primary date. This is HUGE. It makes California a much more important state. I thought it might be fun to move it to, say, January 8, 2008 and see what Iowa does in response with their Caucus. By Iowa state law they must have the first elections in the country. Well, where it is right now gives the great state of California, a state that if it was its own country would have the sixth largest economy in the world, as well as holding 55 congressional seats (13% of all voting house members are Californian), some serious leverage. New Hampshire, traditionally following Iowa, is now third after Nevada's Democratic Caucus. As a Californian I don't like the amount of time which candidates spend in Iowa (one of my former roommates is probably shaking his head right now) and New Hampshire. Why do these states that provide corn and (um) granite hold so much sway over the political make-up of the general elections? How about California that contributes all of the media (which my people, in turn, control)? Well now California is set at #5. Super Tuesday is gone. Now California is going to have its day and maybe we'll see a Presidential Candidate motorcade on Ventura Blvd sometime soon...

The Death of Disengagement

Something I have been predicting since Hamas kidnapped an Israeli citizen from Israel-proper at the beginning of the summer, the Disengagement Plan, that is the second phase of expelling Israelis from their homes in the West Bank, has been cancelled. Hamas and Hizbullah screwed it up for the Palestinians. If you have read my blog before or have even seen the orange ribbon on my backpack, you know my position on this so at this point I am ecstatic. Hamas killed the disengagement. Something tells me the world will blame Israel for stopping her unilateral withdrawal. Once again I think Israel needs to stop appeasing the anti-semites because they will never be satisfied until Israel withdraws to her Pre-1948 borders, ie: no Israel.

The following is an article from Arutz Sheva, a right wing Israeli newspaper:

Olmert Announces Policy Shift: Withdrawal Plan is Off
By Yechiel Spira and Hillel Fendel

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says his Convergence Withdrawal Plan is “no longer relevant.” MK Aryeh Eldad: "He's trying to buy the right-wing."
In his first briefing to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee since the war in Lebanon, the prime minister spoke to committee members on Monday for three hours.

Olmert told the Committee that the withdrawal plan calling for the removal of most of the communities throughout Judea and Samaria is no longer relevant.

Two senior aides from the Prime Minister's office, Shalom Turjeman and Yoram Turbowitz, left for the US on Monday night, reportedly to inform Bush administration officials that the Realignment Plan is dead. However, officials in the Prime Minister’s Office deny the report saying that the two top aides are delivering a post-Lebanon War briefing to Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and not to bury the Realignment Plan.

MK Eldad (National Union) says, "Olmert is waving his burial of the plan as a way of buying off the right-wing, but even those in the nationalist camp who are dying to be ministers [and sit in the government] wouldn't buy a used chair from him."

The plan was at the heart of Olmert’s election campaign, but "what I saw a few months ago," he said, is no longer applicable.

Interior Minister Roni Bar-On, of Olmert's Kadima Party, made sure to put things into perspective. Speaking with Israel Radio on Tuesday afternoon, Bar-On said, "The withdrawal plan is not dead, though its implementation has been postponed. The plan is now on the shelf or in the freezer, but when the time comes it will be accessed."

In general, polls show dwindling support for the Prime Minister, together with a snowballing grassroots call for the establishment of an independent state commission of inquiry into the war in Lebanon. Olmert has turned down the idea, insisting the commissions he appointed to investigate the mishandling of the war will be sufficient. He says that an independent inquiry is unwarranted and will paralyze government functioning for months to come. Mounting calls for Olmert, and other members of his government, to resign from office have also been heard.

Other members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Likud MKs Silvan Shalom and Danny Naveh, stated that the prime minister expressed his adamant opposition to an independent inquiry into the war, but that he did not adequately explain why he has taken this position.

Shalom told reporters earlier in the week that while the Likud Party does not rule out joining an emergency government, this would not be possible until the Kadima-led administration changes major policy positions concerning social-economic issues. Specifically, Shalom said, the government must officially announce the Realignment Plan is not on the agenda, and launch an independent state inquiry commission into the war in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Olmert announced on Monday night his intentions to continue to lead the country "for the next four years, and even more." He addressed a forum of municipality leaders and mayors, making it clear that he has no intention of stepping down, "not today and not in the future."

Olmert stated the nation must move ahead and prepare for the next war, adding,"We cannot know when it will break out." In recent days, the prime minister has warned of the threat from Iran, stating Israel must prepare for future conflicts and cannot be bogged down with state inquiries.

The prime minister told the forum that it is now clear to terror organizations “that Israel is willing to go to war for two soldiers,” indicating the military objective was a big boost to Israel’s deterrence power.

Seeking to stabilize his cabinet, Olmert has signaled his main coalition partner Labor Party leader Defense Minister Amir Peretz that if he and his colleagues do not support the 2007 budget, he will launch talks towards the formation of a new coalition.

War: Part II... already?

Less than 20 hours after the Ceasefire, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 went into effect, FoxNews reports that Hizbullah has launched at least 10 rockets or mortars at Israeli troops in Southern Lebanon. Does this mean that Hot War is going to continue? So far Hisbullah has not released the two kidnapped soldiers and is apparently still fighting. They are holding open-air parades and fireworks are going up over Beirut. Perhaps the Katyushas were fired at Southern Lebanon to make the world think that it was Israel that launched them, but the fact remains that they were Katyushas and they were launched at the IDF. I don't imagine Olmert trying to Wag the Dog or to make some Canadian Bacon. 'tain't Kosher.

Last night I attended a going away party for someone I've known my entire life. Most people present were what I would consider pundits, a bunch of politcal scientists like myself (as in possessing at least a Bachelor's Degree in PoliSci). I made odds that Hizbullah would restart the war within the first 24 hours with odds of 2-to-1. Was right on that one. My gamble that despite Hizbullah restarting it, Israel would be blamed is 5-to-4. I also bet (not real bets or terms, by the way) that there would be a No Confidence vote for PM Olmert, and that Shas would leave the Coalition, Bibi Netanyahu would be the new PM in a realigned Coalition. This is a popular War, a very popular war, and though I don't know any polls that indicate the feeling of the Israelis regarding the government or their feelings on the handling of the war, but with the many Israelis I know, all of them have personal connections to the IDF and to people that serve and fight in it. Everybody fights and nobody wants the Tzahal to be placed in harm's way. We have not done all that we can do short of nukes. We do have a lot more conventional weaponry and technology that for some reason or another (ahem, world opinion, ahem) we aren't using. The world is going to be against us any way. If you see Palestinians throwing rocks at us, it is only because they don't have RPGs (the grenades, not Dungeons and Dragons. Had they had them, I'm pretty sure they would indiscriminitely fire them at our children. Sitting idly by is not an option here. Hizbullah and Iran perpetually say that they will not stop until the Jews are in the Sea. They don't recognize our right to exist, in clear violation of the UDHR. It is the most translated treaty in world history, though I might note that on Wikipedia, there is no Farsi translation of the article (maybe that should tell us something...)


Speaking of my constant referring to Israel in the first person plural, I am not alone: The Editor-In-Chief of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles probably put it best in his editorial in this past week's newspaper:

2006-08-11

Who Is A Jew?

by Rob Eshman, Editor-in-Chief
PHOTO

If you're not Mel Gibson, who correctly guessed that the Malibu sheriff's deputy arresting him at 2 a.m. was, in fact, Jewish -- what are the odds? -- you might want a foolproof tip to discern who's a Jew.

Here's a hint: the first-person plural. Start up a discussion of the war in Lebanon. If the person you're speaking with eventually starts saying things like, "What can we do?" or "Why should we accept a cease-fire?" even though that person is not Israeli, that says it all.

For a great many of us, there is an instant and easy identification with the Jewish state. They are not they, they are we. The heat of battle forges them into us. Whether we've spent much time there, whether we have blood relatives there, we feel ourselves as one, we are they.

At its worst, this intensity of identification can betray an arrogant cowardice. It is one thing to feel -- to know -- that your fate is intertwined with that of another country, 7,570 miles away. It's another to speak as if you or your loved ones will pay the price as quickly for your beliefs. Some Diaspora Jews, goes the saying, are always willing to fight to the last Israeli.

At its best, the fusing of our identities makes all of us stronger. We know who's doing the actual fighting and bleeding and dying. We are well aware who is spending Friday at the bomb shelter and who at The Grove. But with a sense of humility and proportion intact, we do all we can: following the news intently, helping however possible, standing up for Israel whenever necessary.

The Passover haggadah speaks of four sons -- the wise, the wicked, the simple and the innocent. The moment we turn on CNN and settle back into the sofa, we become one of them. As images of the war fill the screen, do we distance ourselves from them by asking: "Who are those people?" Do we stare blankly at the screen, confounded by the ping-pong of punditry and the powerful images cooked up for us, then shrug and flip to "Iron Chef"? Do we leave TV news behind and search for deeper answers? Or do we see ourselves in those flames?

To be fair, at different times in our lives, at different moments, we may be all those sons. The fire in every thinking Jew -- American, Israeli, Persian or Byelorussian -- heats up, cools down, flares up again. For a rare handful of us it burns bright and constant.

You can have criticisms of how Israel is handling the war -- thinking you know better is an integral aspect of Jewish identity -- but there can be no doubt this is a war Israel didn't seek, and must win.

These thoughts struck me as I read how, earlier this week, more than 1,500 gathered for a memorial service in Bucks County, Pa., for Michael Levin. I didn't know him, but the day he was killed fighting for Israel in Lebanon, I heard. He was the son of a colleague's best friend. The connection was hardly close, but it felt immediate.

Levin was 22. He moved to Israel after high school, entered the Nativ College Leadership Program in Israel, and then went to Kibbutz Yavne Ulpan to become more fluent in Hebrew. After receiving special permission to enter the Israel Defense Forces so soon after making aliyah, he became a paratrooper.

"He knew who he was, what he wanted and where he was headed," his father Mark Levin said at the memorial service.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Levin had been deployed to southern Lebanon and was searching a building for Hezbollah terrorists in when it was struck by an antitank shell.

Levin's death reverberated from Israel to Philly to Los Angeles. It wasn't just that he was a great kid who became an outstanding young man. It was also that he acted on his yearning to make they one with us. He threw his lot in with Israel in the most real way possible, in the most honest way.

Part of Levin's Jewish identity was forged at camp. He grew up spending summer at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, where he made lifelong friends.

Last week, just after Tisha B'Av, the fast day of mourning, drew to a close, some 20 staff members gathered in the library at Camp Ramah in Ojai. A candle glowed in front the room, a picture Levin beside it.

Israeli counselors JJ Jonah and Marshall Lestz, who knew Levin in Israel, led a small memorial service in his memory. Rabbi Daniel Greyber, executive director of Camp Ramah in California, read an e-mail sent to him by his cousin, Smadar Cohen, who also knew Mike well.

"I'll remember him as so many things: as a wonderful friend, as a guy who was always there for me," Cohen wrote, "a funny, sweet, brave boy who died for something he believed in with all his heart."

For Greyber, Levin's death had a meaning deeper than the headlines and the evening news.

"I hope you feel in this one death," he wrote to friends, "the cost being paid so dearly by so many -- so many young men and women in their youth who have to fight, so many children and mothers and fathers and relatives waking and sleeping in fear for their loved ones, so many families in bomb shelters -- the cost being paid so that, in the words of 'HaTikvah', we can 'be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.'

May we tie our fate to theirs."

Yes. May we tie our fate to theirs.

In other news, I went up to Visitors Day yesterday at Camp Ramah in California. It was great to go back and see everyone and many of my former campers asked me to come back and to be their Rosh and they my Madors. Uh, we'll see...

The future of the Middle East

In a war that is the fault of the terrorists, Hamas and Hisbullah who have shown their true colors (yellow), the people that are going to come out worst, besides the aforementioned terrorist groups which are on the path to their own obliteration, will be the Palestinian people. Hamas has just caused the downfall of their people. They have set back any possiblity of a restarting a "peace process" decades and unilateral withdrawal is no longer a possibility. Kiss a Palestinian state goodbye, you blew it. Now you are going to have to go back where you came from, Egypt and Jordan or else you will just have to accept your potential of being an Israeli citizen, that is, if you actually recognize Israel. The Palestinians never have recognized Israel and call for the complete destruction of it in their Charter:

Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine. Absolute responsibility for this falls upon the Arab nation- peoples and governments-with the Arab people of Palestine in the vanguard. Accordingly, the Arab nation must mobilize all its military, human, moral, and spiritual capabilities to participate actively with the Palestinian people in the liberation of Palestine. It must, particularly, in the phase of the armed Palestinian revolution, offer and furnish the Palestinian people with all possible help, and material and human support, and make available to them the means and opportunities that will enable them to continue to carry out their leading role in the armed revolution, until they liberate their homeland.

Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947, and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and its natural right in their homeland, and were inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right to self-determination.

Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and everything that has been based on them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of their own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

Article 21: The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all proposals aimed at the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, or at its internationalization.

Article 22: Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and the geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-à-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world. Since liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East. That is why the Palestinian people look to the progressive and peaceful forces and urge them all, irrespective of their affiliations and beliefs, to offer the Palestinian people all aid and support in their just struggle for the liberation of their homeland.
Article 23: The demand of security and peace, as well as the demand of right and justice, require all states to consider Zionism an illegitimate movement, to outlaw its existence, and to ban its operations, in order that friendly relations among peoples may be preserved, and the loyalty of citizens to their respective homelands safeguarded.

The people that advocate such a thing are like Nazis and seeking Genocide against the Jews.

It's like Homer Simpson's (or as he's known in the muslim world, Omar Shamshoon) twisted logic that if I don't see it, then it is not actually there. You can't ignore a State which has had unparalleled influence in the . All you see is 'an occupying power' which is in the way of your caliphate.

Now you're calling your rockets Khybar Rockets? This propagandaish term is shades of the Battle of Khybar in 629 CE where Muhammad led a cowardly attack against a small group of defenseless Jews in Hejaz. Well, Muhammad led another attack against the Jews, but this time we're ready. Terrorists your game is through, 'cause now you have to answer to, Israel, f*** yeah! You're waging a fruitless fight against, pound-per-pound, the greatest military in the entire world, who, by the way, has God as their Commander-in-Chief. No, I'm not talking about Olmert or Katsav, I'm talking about God, the Lord of Hosts. No, this war is seemingly going to lead to a new middle east. As I have maintained in one of the signs I made for the Rally, there can be no peace without security. This comes at everyones cost. Dictators and terrorist leaders cannot survive without war. If Ahmadinejad and his boss the Ayatolah want to stay in power and not have another uprising, they need to distract their own people from their crappy leadership by turing the eye of Sauron away from Mordor and to Gondor... {ahem} Israel so they can destroy the ring (aka the civilized world) undetected (Lord of the Rings perversion). Another two signs I made said "Israel supports America's War on Terror" and "America supports Israel's War on Terror". This doesn't bode well for the terrorists and does not bode well for the civilians amongst whom they are cowardly hiding. Hisbullah has got to go!

We pulled out of Lebanon six years ago, we disengaged from Gaza a year ago, yet another thing to mourn on Tisha B'Av, and yet it is from these two fronts, as the dark comedy of Dry Bones points out, that we now need to defend ourselves against terrorists who have occupied the space we pulled out of. We pulled out in the name of peace; they came in in the name of war.

I also want to mention that Russia excluded Hisbullah and Hamas from its list of Terrorist Organizations today. I think Russia's about to go rogue again...

Finally I present an article from this week's Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles written by my congressman, the Honorable Brad Sherman

2006-07-28
Iran's War on Israel
by Rep. Brad Sherman

The border raid by Hezbollah that sparked swift and strong Israeli military reaction in southern Lebanon was not only an act of war by Hezbollah, but an act of war by proxy by Iran. It is inconceivable that such a provocative act could have been undertaken without the knowledge and approval of people at the highest levels of Iran's government.

The warfare was even foreshadowed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who in a burst of inflammatory rhetoric warned in advance that Israel would be hit by an "explosion" of Muslim anger.

"The fury of Muslim nations is getting more intense," Ahmadinejad said. "It is likely to reach an explosion point soon. If this day arrives, the shockwaves of this blast will not be restricted within our regional boundaries and will strike the supporters of this fake regime."

The day after the Iranian president uttered those words, the attack was launched by the Hezbollah terrorist organization that Iran founded and funds.

Congress rightly has condemned Hezbollah for "engaging in unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel on undisputed Israeli territory." The House passed a resolution by a vote of 410 to 8 supporting "Israel's right to defend itself, including the right to conduct operations in Israel and in the territory of nations which pose a threat to it."

Hezbollah, Hamas and Ahmadinejad have all declared that their policy is the destruction of Israel. They advocate the ethnic cleansing of 5 million Israeli Jews. They advocate genocide. In their quest for peace, Israeli leaders have made concessions, but now the terrorists are using the very territory from which Israel has withdrawn to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. Israel withdrew from Gaza, and now kidnappers and missiles come from Gaza into Israel. Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, now kidnappers and missiles come into Israel from southern Lebanon.

The Israelis must know that when they vacate a territory, it will not be used as a rocket-launching pad against Israel, and that if it ever is, that Israel will have the full support of the United States. We all want peace, but we cannot have peace; we cannot have any Israeli territorial concessions unless Israel knows that those concessions will be met with goodwill, not missiles.

There are some who say the Israeli reaction has been "disproportionate." It cannot be overstated that the recent outbreak of warfare was not simply a reaction to one event. The truth is that there have been five kidnapping raids and hundreds of missiles fired during six years of attacks. If anyone is going to say that Israel's reaction is disproportionate, let them say that Israel is doing too little.

There also are those who have called for a cease-fire. I hope we get there soon. But this all started with rockets and kidnapping, and it would be a phony cease-fire unless the soldiers are returned, and unless Hezbollah is disarmed as required by U.N. Resolution 1559.

There are those who talk of prisoner exchanges, but we should not tell Israel to exchange the guilty for the innocent. Some have called for the release of women and minors held in Israeli prisons. Yet is it clear that terrorist organizations have increasingly used minors and women to perpetrate suicide attacks. It was, after all, a woman who was arrested in 2001 for helping to carry out the bombing of a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including seven children. It is also the stark reality that teenagers have been caught carrying pipe bombs and attempting suicide attacks. Should Israel release those who would resume their terror?

World opinion matters in the Middle East. We should step up our efforts to help our friends in Israel. The United States should spearhead diplomatic efforts to isolate the terrorists who have targeted Israel. We should call every major ambassador from Europe and demand that Europe list Hezbollah as a terrorist entity. We should insist that European governments prevent their residents from sending money to Hezbollah. Finally, we must demand that the World Bank stop making concessionary loans aid to Iran, the source of the money and the missiles that Hezbollah is firing on Israeli civilians.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) is a senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee and the ranking Democrat on its International Terrorism and Nonproliferation Subcommittee.

המצב HaMatzav, the Situation in Israel as it now stands

Two katushas launched from Lebanon have hit Haifa and seven have hit the holy city of Tzfat. This is war!

In Haifa, Jews, Druze, Muslims, Christians, adherants of the Bahai faiths, all live in peace, but now they are all under attack.

Apparently Hizbullah is denying any role in the attack on Haifa.

I am also hearing reports of the Israeli recapture of Gush Katif in Gaza.

I find it very important to keep as updated on news as possible. There are a couple of good websites for Israeli news from many ranges of political ideology.

-The Jerusalem Post is good for its quick snippets, is considered to be relatively unbiased, and allows for user talkback, a feature which I have taken advantage of on occasion. The thing I like most is that they have an RSS Feed (if you use Mozilla Firefox, you can add it when you are at the Jerusalem Post website by clicking on the orange sound icon on the right side of the URL bar) which means I can access a list of their most recent or most prominent articles when I am anywhere on the internet

-Next we have Israel National News put out by Arutz Sheva, which is pretty right wing.

-Ha'aretz is considered to be a good left-wing news source

-Yedioth Achronot has the most print readership in Israel and I present its English edition.

-I was just told about Debka by my uncle. It looks like it is quickly updated. I am not sure of its political affiliation

-If you understand Hebrew (and I guess they exist even if you don't) there are Hebrew news sources which are given much more attention than the english editions and if you understand Hebrew, you are best reading these, the original hebrew versions of news sources I have already mentioned: ידיעות אחרונות, הארץ, ערוץ 7. (It's really cool, by the way, how my Edit program turned this listing right-to-left)

-As for international news sources, I am not objectionable to CNN's coverage. Though I completely disagree with their one-sided approach against Israel, because they have an RSS feed that already comes bundled with Firefox, I also read BBC's Middle East Report. I should probably read MSNBC and FoxNews, shouldn't I?

-I am a proud member of the JRants network, an aggregation of Israel and Jewish-themed blogs. There is always a wide range of opinions on Israel and Judaism. Definitely check this out and you may find someone whose opinions you would like to read.

Alright, so these are increasingly tense times and war is looking very likely, against Lebanon, against Hamas, and perhaps against Syria (maybe even Iran!). We must pray for the victory of Israel and of ultimate peace. I will continue to update this article as I see fit or add new ones.

I just watched on CNN the Lebanese army goosestepping and in flag formation, a blatantly Nazi reference. They were dressed in colors and from overhead looked like the Lebanese flag, the Hisbullah flag, and the Palestinian flag.

I think that we may see a repeat of the 1982 Lebanese war when we captured their capital city of beirut. We have already taken out their main airport.

UPDATE 2:20 PM PDT: I heard a report that the Katyusha rockets that hit Haifa, which Hisbullah is denying actually came from Iran! If that is true, oh man, time for a regional war.

UPDATE 7:50 PM PDT: I've been fasting since 11 PM, so I may not be so coherent right now, but I find it ironic that one of the most right-wing voices in Israel right now is Amir Peretz (Hebrew; Yiddish), head of the leftist Labor party and Minister of Defence ([sic], they use British spelling in Israel). Maybe this is because the Palestinians keep bombing his village, Sderot with Qassams... Anyway, he is saying that they will not allow Hizbullah to remain in the south of Lebanon on Israel's northern border and even in the unlikely chance that Lebanon returns their hostages safely to Israel, I think that Israel will continue until they blot out the حزب الله terrorist organization from the south.

Hollywood Stars Game at Dodger Stadium

Last night was the 48th Annual Hollywood Stars softball game at Dodger Stadium. It was also the first game I've been to this season and the first time I've been to the remodeled stadium (it's beautiful)
Jonny and Jen played in it. Jonny has been doing this for at least a decade, and Jen kind of just hung out with us on the warning track next to third base. Jonny actually won MVP for getting two "out of the park" home runs and doing better fielding than anyone else out there in his shortstop position. His team won 10-3.

from the Dodgers front page today, Jonny and Jen with Nomar and his wife, Mia Hamm

Here's an article from the Major League Baseball official website

LOS ANGELES -- Think about a company softball game, except the company is the entertainment industry and some very well-known names are taking part. Well, that's what happened at Dodger Stadium on Saturday at the 48th annual Hollywood Stars game.

The annual event started before the Dodgers came to Los Angeles in 1958. Celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole would take part in a yearly baseball game at the old Gilmore Field on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, home of the original Hollywood Stars of the old Pacific Coast League. The celebrities moved the game to the Los Angeles Coliseum when the Dodgers came to town and then to Dodger Stadium when it opened its doors in 1962.

Over the years some of the biggest names in entertainment -- including Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Kevin Costner, Billy Crystal, Walter Matthau, Keanu Reeves, Jack Lemmon, Dean Martin and many others -- have lived out their fantasy of playing on a big-league field.

"I thought it was still a hardball game until I got here today; it's now softball," said actor Corbin Bernsen, who starred in the "Major League" films and is currently on the soap opera "General Hospital."

"Back in the original days it was hardball and it was serious hardball with guys like Billy Crystal and Tony Danza really going at it. But I remember a few years ago, when I was on 'L.A. Law' and I played in the game and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played first base and they came out with a 6-foot bat for him to use and you knew they weren't taking this game as seriously as they used to."

In 2004, the Dodgers switched the game from baseball to softball so female celebrities could play instead of serving as "bat girls" as they had previously.

"It's just fun to be out here and meet new people and everyone is just talking about having fun," said soccer legend Mia Hamm, who is also married to Dodgers first baseman Nomar Garciaparra. "People who have played in this game before have told me how much fun it is. I think we all just want to out there, have some fun, not make a fool of ourselves and not get hurt."

Hamm held her own, lining out to left in the first inning. Hamm then roped a clean single to left in the third and was called out at first base on a controversial call at first base by umpire Charley Steiner that ended the game. Replays would later show she was safe, but to no avail.

There are plenty of actors and athletes taking part, but politicians get into the act, too. In this year's game, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa took part and had a great time.

"I'm a better politician who wants to be a ballplayer," said Villaraigosa, who is in his first term as mayor. "I didn't play much baseball growing up, I mainly played football and ran track, so I may struggle out there a little."

The mayor got on base in the first inning and seemed to enjoy just being on the field.

Other celebrities, like the mayor, just loved taking part.

"As a baseball fan you can't beat being on a big-league field," said James Denton, one of the stars of the ABC drama "Desperate Housewives."

"It's just great being at Dodger Stadium; coming out here and taking a few cuts. It's softball, which is obviously a whole different deal, but when they offer you this chance, you don't say no.

"I'm missing the All-Star Game in Pittsburgh this year because we go back to work on July 10th with the show and the game is July 11th, so this may be the only game I may play in this year."

Denton held his own with a clean double to left in the fourth inning.

The game had two award-winning managers -- Cy Young Award winner Bret Saberhagen managing the White Team and Academy Award-winner Lou Gossett Jr. managing the Blue Team.

Paced by two booming home runs off the bat of the game's Most Valuable Player, Jonathan Silverman, the White Team easily beat the Blue Team, 10-3.

No matter what the score was, the game had a happy ending. And what did you expect? This is Hollywood.


LOS ANGELES -- Television and film stars, along with some current and former Dodgers, will be on hand for the 48th annual Hollywood Stars Game. The game will be played Saturday, June 24 at 5:15 p.m. before the Dodgers take on the Pittsburgh Pirates at 7:10 p.m.

Since 2004 when the game was changed to softball from baseball, an auxiliary outfield fence was added to offer greater opportunity for home runs. Fans are also invited to sit on Dodger Stadium's outfield grass and warning track to get a better glimpse of their favorite Hollywood luminaries.

The roster of stars scheduled to appear in the game includes:

James Denton ("Desperate Housewives")
Jonathan Silverman (film and TV)
Jen Finnigan ("Close to Home")
Jimmy Kimmel ("Jimmy Kimmel Live")
Sarah Silverman ("School of Rock")
Matt Gallant (host of "American Inventor")
Brooke Burke (host of CBS's "Rockstar")
Adam Carolla ("The Adam Carolla Show")
Brian White ("Family Stone")
Carlos Mencia ("Mind of Mencia")
Shane Powers ("Survivor Exile Island")
Mario Lopez (film and TV)
Kendra Wilkinson ("Girls Next Door")
James Van Der Beek ("Dawson's Creek")
Michael Clarke Duncan ("Sin City")
Corbin Bernsen ("Psych")
Wolfgang Bodison ("Akeelah and the Bee")
Tony Potts ("Access Hollywood")
Mia Hamm (USA Women's Soccer)
Antonio Villaraigosa (Mayor of Los Angeles)
Michael Rosenbaum ("Smallville")
Scott Patterson ("Gilmore Girls")
Larry Joe Campbell ("According to Jim")
Dave Annable ("Brothers and Sisters")
Louis Gossett Jr. - coach (film and TV)
Tony Todd ("Little Big League")
Ron Cey (former Dodger)
Bret Saberhagen (former Cy Young Award Winner)

Nico from Latino 96.3 will emcee the event. The Dodger Stadium parking lot and turnstiles will open early for the event at 4:45 p.m.

Equipment for the game will be provided by Rawlings, Mizuno and Majestic. Proceeds from the auction of autographed, game-worn player uniforms and memorabilia will benefit the Dodgers Dream Foundation.

I should mention that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa got booed at the stadium. Having been out of town for quite a while and not knowing what the Mayor or even the Governator are up to, but I don't think Dodger fans are going to be voting for the incumbent the next time around. As for the catcher who tagged-out the heroic mayor who tried to steal home, I fear that three summons for Jury Duty may be coming his way soon.

"Last year I went deep off Odalis Perez, but then again, who hasn't? Just kidding, Odalis, it was a joke." --Jonny on the local TV news, one of the funniest things I have ever heard

We went up to a luxury box for the Dodgers vs Pittsburg Pirates game that followed, a game that ended as a Dodgers victory, a 7-0 shutout. In there I chatted it up with Playboy bunnies and taught Carlos Mencia's kids to play 8-ball and then got pranked by Bob the former warm-up guy for The Single Guy. Dodgers are 39-35, 1st Place in NL West and are about to leave the San Diego Padres in the dust 1 game behind assuming that the Dodgers win the game they are currently winning and the Padres lose the game they are currently losing. Seventh inning stretch is over and I now return to the game. Vin Scully\ just talked about last night's celebrity game. Back to Dodgers Baseball...