On the subject of Soccer, you just have to watch this clip of the

[Source : www.haaretz.com] - July 2010

It’s been a long time since American Jewry has been as shaken as it was by Peter Beinart’s article in the New York Review last month.

By Ofri Ilani

Tags: Israel news Peter Beinart US Jews Jewish World

More than anything else, Peter Beinart’s message to Israelis is that something has happened to Americans, and Israelis don’t seem to get it. Something has happened to Americans in general and to American Jews in particular. And if Israel goes on not understanding what is going on in the United States, the outcome will be grave.


Beinart, for his part, does not purport to understand Israelis fully. True, he is one of Washington’s leading commentators on foreign affairs, but until recently he avoided writing about Israel. Precisely as an American Jew, religiously observant and a Zionist, who attends synagogue in Washington with senior officials from the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League, he was leery of expressing his position publicly. But in the past year, as he read about the militant public atmosphere in Israel, the proposed loyalty laws, statements by Avigdor Lieberman and Moshe Ya’alon against the Arabs and the left, and the campaign of Im Tirtzu − The Second Zionist Revolution against the human rights group B’Tselem and against the New Israel Fund – he couldn’t help recalling a dark period, at least from the viewpoint of liberal Americans: the Bush years.


[Source : http://www.hartman.org.il/  )

By Gil Troy

5th July 2010

The automaker Henry Ford first said: “History is Bunk.” As a trained historian, I am supposed to hate that statement, which repudiates my lifelong mission. But in the real world Ford’s claim sometimes is correct. Sometimes, being handcuffed to the past can shackle us to bad habits, old wounds, or insurmountable obstacles. For example, to resolve the boundary conflict between Israelis and Palestinians both sides will have to value the demographic patterns of today over the historical ties of yesteryear.

Nevertheless, history can help us frame our identities, gain perspective, and attain the wisdom we need in both private matters and public affairs.

Within the team working on the Engaging Israel project at the Shalom Hartman Institute, we have been debating history’s relevance in pushing toward A New Zionist Ethic, in developing a new language about Israel and Zionism for today. We recognize that most Jews today do not build their identities based on the Holocaust of 60 years ago, the Six Day War of 43 years ago, or the heroic Entebbe raid of 34 years ago. We understand that today, for most young people, “history” means their latest Google searches, not their relationship to previous ideas, heroes, actions, and movements.

 Source : www.haaretz.com

Published 02:39 18.06.10Latest update 02:39 18.06.10

By Cnaan Liphshiz

Two brothers at the forefront of South African Jewry will tell a Ra'anana audience next week why they facilitated efforts to ban Judge Richard Goldstone from his grandson's bar mitzvah in Johannesburg last month. Avrom Krengel, 41, and Zev Krengel, 37, eventually helped negotiate the compromise which allowed the South African judge - who authored the controversial eponymous UN report - to attend his family simchah without fear of demonstrations. "You have to understand that for South African Jews, Goldstone's attack was also very personal," Avrom Krengel told Anglo File, ahead of the Telfed-sponsored event in Ra'anana on June 21. For more on this story and the opening statements of Krengel and Goldstone...

 GN ISRAEL 25 06 10

http://www.angloraanana.com

 Quote for the week

“Israel is a nation that dwells alone”

(From the words of Bilam who came to curse Israel and remained to bless them. [We could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps Bilam was right but read on to find that he actually wasn’t. Quite the reverse in fact])

·         How do you start describing people like David and Ziva Shapiro? Angelic? Saintly? They’d balk at both terms because that’s not how they see themselves and quite frankly both terms are inadequate to qualify and quantify what they do. Making Aliyah in 1990, in 2001 they established a multi disciplinary therapy center, Merkaz Rakefet, for children with a wide range of difficulties. The center has grown from a one roomed, limited operation to a large dynamic facility  with 40 professional staff members, funded almost entirely and managed by the Shapiro’s, attending to the special needs of about 2000 children a year. To answer our question, they are a couple with a deep and abiding love for their fellows and a profound need to help, a need that transcends the daunting difficulties that confront them and that is GN that is better than good.

GN ISRAEL 11 06 10
http://www.angloraanana.com
 
Quote for the Week

”If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”

 (The late Abba Eban sometime Israel Ambassador to the United Nations [and things haven’t changed much since his time])
HOT OFF THE PRESS --'I think I could have done some things differently, but I thought he played a pretty perfect match,'

Andy ‘Goliath’ Roddick after going down 6-4, 7-6 to Dudi ‘David’ Sela.
 
·         We could tell you the following because each item is worthy of note so, as we said, we could tell you that:
 

 The numbers involved in the recent gas finds are astonishing. Tamar and Dalit are thought to be worth $50 billion, and Leviathan's potential is thought to total $100 billion. The companies' costs in finding and extracting the gas are small change compared with their potential gains, like $10 billion at the outside, -and you can do the sums for yourselves. Or perhaps that

 

[Source: Haaretz]

Liberal Zionism celebrates the most authentic traits of the Jewish tradition: the willingness for incisive debate and the refusal to bow to authoritarianism.
By Carlo Strenger Tags: Israel news Theodor Herzl

Zionism didn't begin as a unitary ideology. There was Theodor Herzl's liberal Zionism; Ahad Ha'am's and Judah Magnes' cultural Zionism. Socialist Zionism initially carried the day, dominating Israeli politics for the country's first three decades. In the remaining decades revisionist Zionism took over, fused with the messianic Zionism that gave religious significance to land and none to human rights.

An incredible and unique collection of colour film has been discovered showing Israel in the 1940s both pre and post Independence.