Grandma's army

Israel is a country in the Middle East, a piece of real estate so small that one needs a magnifying glass when searching for it on a map. Its main inhabitants, the Jews, together with their brothers and sisters throughout the world , amount to a pathetic less than 0.02 percent   of the world population. As Sir Isaiah Berlin once famously quipped, “The Jews have enjoyed rather too much history and too little geography.” The anti-Semite has a hard time with Jews. They boycott us in academia, journalism, European governments, the marketplace, etc. The trouble with us is that we are constantly breaking the rules. For thousands of years, we have survived powerful empires that did everything to destroy us – the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Germans - and there were plenty to give them a willing hand. In the 20 th century, it looked as if they had finally succeeded. Six million were murdered in the Holocaust. But, instead of disappearing, we decided that after 2,000 yea...

JER USA LEM RECOGNISED The exact three middle letters of Jerusalem are USA Jerusalem has been the capital of only one nation in the history of the world – Israel. Until 1948,when the Jordanians conquered the eastern half of the city, Jerusalem was a unified city, its occupation by Jordan not recognized by the world at large.  Its only period of division was 1949-1967.  1,000 years before Christ, King David conquered Jerusalem and made it the national capital of the Jewish people. This was the first Jewish state. After periods of exile and return, Jerusalem became the capital of the people a second time a few centuries before Christ.  This was the Hasmonean Kingdom, the second Jewish state. The Romans then conquered the Hasmoneans. From the end of the Roman Empire until the 20 th century, Jerusalem changed hands many times. There is, of course, no mention of Jerusalem in the 33 paras. of the Koran, which talks about other holy places. Christians and M...

There are miracles and there are coincidences – it’s a matter of one’s beliefs. I believe that a miracle proves G-d’s presence in the world, whereas coincidences are the opposite. They are G-d's way of remaining anonymous. President Trump’s declaration yesterday of the recognition of Jerusalem as the Jew’s eternal capital was almost a miracle. The Balfour Declaration, the UN resolution of 1947, the War of Independence, the Six-day War, etc. were all miracles in my eyes. Speaking of Jerusalem – it has always been considered the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible and has more synagogues per capita than any city in the world. Religious Jews all over the world have always prayed three times a day, facing Jerusalem. In Israel today, everyone has complete freedom of worship. It is the only city in which some 15 different Christian communities live alongside one another. Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives is home to 1...