Grandma's army

  There is an increasingly widespread view that philosophy — that ancient pursuit of meaning, truth and understanding that has been with us for several thousand years at least — is dead in the modern world. Science, so goes the argument, has answered all the questions that philosophers once pondered: From a scientific perspective, there is no grand design, no cosmic plan that bestows meaning upon our lives. As scientists delve deeper into the mysteries of the cosmos, their discoveries reveal a universe that is vast, ancient, and seemingly indifferent to our presence. It’s easy to understand the appeal of this position. Science has been extravagantly successful in explaining the natural world, and its discoveries have led directly to stunning technological achievements, from heart transplants to the moon landing. Philosophy, on the other hand, hasn’t achieved anything that could be considered a clear breakthrough in human understanding.  Not so very long ago, sc...

  THE GIVING TREE There's a well-known children's book by Shel Silverstein about a boy and a tree. The boy keeps taking from the tree. The tree keeps giving. The boy never says "thank you" the tree never says "no". Until the stump of the tree is all that's left. This is similar to the story of Israel and the "Palestinians": Israel is the tree. The "Palestinians" are the "boy". Ungrateful, entitled, and permanently dissatisfied. In addition, the "boy" is invariably hostile. Baum/Boim (tree in Yiddish), is a common Jewish surname: applebaum (apple tree), birnbaum (pear tree), kirschbaum (cherry tree), nussbaum (nut tree), feigelbaum (fig tree), mandelbaum (almond tree). Here are a just a few examples of THE GIVING BAUM: Rescue from neglect and poverty: From 1948 until 1967, the "West Bank" of the Jordan river was controlled by Jordan. Jordan treated it as far less important than the "East B...

The late Prime Minister Menachem Begin famously said: "I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid". For decades, we have confronted the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism. We have outlived expulsions, progroms, massacres, and even the Holocaust. Our history may be tragic, but we have reason to be optimistic. We are living in times in which we need to be reminded of how much strength the Jewish people have: Our survival as a people, the gathering in of exiles and the rebuilding of a Jewish state.   To quote Mark Twain: "Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of.  He is as...

  Douglas J. Feith, Harvard graduate, and U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy (2001-2005) is a world authority on the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine. The following article is based on his historical data. In the late 1920’s, Britain governed the Holy Land. Haj Amin al-Husseini served as Jerusalem’s mufti at the time (subsequently collaborated with Hitler in WWII). His campaign of incitement in 1929 based on the false accusation, that the Jews were plotting to destroy al-Asqa, brought about horrendous anti-Jewish atrocities (torture, rape, murder, beheading, arson, pillage) in multiple towns and villages, of which the 1929 Hebron massacre was the worst instance. In total, 183 Jews were killed and 339 wounded. Husseini had been the loudest voice accusing the Jews of plotting to destroy al-Asqa, fuelling the country-wide mayhem, which lead to the riots - and the astonishing subsequent British concessions. Arab leaders for years had insisted that they would never consent ...

Dr. Salam Fayyad, is a man to be reckoned with, although he keeps a very low profile. Currently, he is a Senior Scholar and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. In 2007 Dr. Fayyad was appointed Prime Minister of the Palestinian authority, a position he held until he stepped down in June 2013. In August of the same year, he founded "Future for Palestine," a nonprofit development foundation. In 2009, he published a plan to take over Israeli-controlled Area C and unilaterally establish a de facto Palestinian state by 2011. This plan, known as “The Fayyad Plan”, posed a significant threat to the Jewish communities across Judea and Samaria. The appropriate Zionist response to this was the agricultural farm movement.  The struggle to thwart the Fayyad Plan to take over Judea and Samaria is still in full swing. Only the establishment of dozens of additional farms will ensure that the Palestinian Auth...

Not only in the Middle East but all over the world Israeli’s are usually the first on the scene to help in any way they possibly can when sudden disaster strikes.   The “Search and Rescue Unit” is a highly skilled force trained to execute special search and rescue missions, both in Israel and abroad. The soldiers go through special training in combat, search and rescue from disaster sites, and responding to ABC (atomic, biological, chemical) warfare. The unit is sent on missions all over the world to aid in natural disaster relief.   Israeli doctors, nurses and medics ito set up field hospitals at the scene of natural disasters anywhere in the world.  The Israel Center for Disaster Medicine and Humanitarian Response teams, which have saved many lives in Haiti, Mexico, Zambia, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala and India, is constantly expanding their crucial operations all over the globe. They have the capability to mobilize and recruit people and ...