"Unsettled"

"Unsettled" is a full length documentary movie (in English) about the Gush Katif evacuation/disengagement/expulsion.

It portrays many angles on the dramatic and traumatic evacuation process and many of the background issues and history.

It does not answer the ultimate question: "Eicha?" Why?

The violation, division, destruction and trauma of the disengagement, seems merely served to install Hamas in control of Gaza.

(Hat-tip: Life In Israel)
 

Eicha - Churban Gush Katif

This year, Tisha B'Av falls on the 10th Av, directly coinciding with the 7th anniversary of the expulsion from Gush Katif, and the tragic destruction of the communities, homes and businesses of 9000 Jews.

Watch and weep, as the thousand girls daven for salvation in the last devastating moments of the shul in Neve Dekalim.



(Music warning if you're watching this on Tisha Ba'Av).


(Another music warning)
 


Although the rest of the world has long ago moved on and forgotten, the trauma of Gush Katif remains, and the daily pain of many who still remain without permanent housing, or reasonable compensation for their suffering and losses.



And where are they today...?

Bet Shemesh News

By Rabbi Dov Lipman


1)CONSTRUCTION UPDATE

The appeal regarding RBS Gimmel 2 was denied after the board insisted on a number of changes which will take time to make to the plans.  We managed to delay any progress on this neighborhood with its current plans for a year and four months which is a remarkable achievement.  There is no possibility of the neighborhood being populated before the next municipal elections which was certainly the Mayor's goal.  We plan to be on guard throughout the marketing progress and will challenge any legal flaws we see - and there are llely to be many.  That may enable us to make changes in the plans themselves after the next elections   We are also on guard for the moment we can begin objections to plans for neighborhoods in RBS dalet.

2)CITY LOANS

The city council approved 14 million shekel in loans this week.  The first loan is for 5 million shekel to cover the municipality moving offices to the new mall in Migdal Hamayim and the first year of rent.  The Mayor had wanted to borrow 20 million for this purpose but the opposition launched a major campaign against this which influenced the Mayor to change the request to 5 million.  A second loan of 9 million shekel was approved for improvements to the city stadium and the development of the new location for the city shuk.  The opposition members expressed their outrage over this management of city funds, especially considering the fact that the national government has not yet approved the 2012 budget and the fact that the first quarter of 2012 produced a deficit of 200,000 shekel.

3)PROGRESS ON TWO MIKVAOT IN RBS ALEPH

Thanks to a citizen driven campaign, progress is being made on the mikva on Lachish.  The initial improvements to the site were not done well which led to leaks and other problems.  The fact that rabbis other than Rav Spektor are involved in this specific mikva has slowed down the progress but the Mayor has gotten involved and there seems to be significant progress.  In addition, a path to the mikva on Dolev is being built from Nachal Soreik which will enable more privacy for women who enter the mikva across from Park Center, next to the playground.

4)ALIYAH TO BET SHEMESH

This summer, 65 English speaking families are making aliyah to Bet Shemesh - approximately 250 people in total.  Seven families arrived on the recent Nefesh B'nefesh flight.

5)CITY SPONSORED SUMMER ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK

a)Family day at Speedy Kef - Thursday August 2

leaving at 8:30a,m,,, returning at 5:00p.m.

Entrance fee - 43 NIS, transportation - 15 NIS

b)Trip to Park Begin - Tuesday July 31

leaving at 8:30a.m., returning at 5:00p.m.

transportation - 25 NIS

Register at Abba Naamat 10 on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday between 12:00p.m. and 3:00p.m.

6)EXTREMISTS DAMAGE NEW PARK

a New playground for children was built on the corner of Yarden and Rabbi Yehoshua.  Extremists vandalized the equipment - puncturing hols in the slides and lining them with black ink and oil.  The city leadership has yet to file a complaint with the police department about destruction of its equipment.

7) WHO WILL BE THE CANDIDATE TO CONTEST MAYOR ABUTBOL?

Many people are asking these questions and names of candidates have been emerging.  Please e-mail me back asap if you would like to be part of an introductory meeting with possible candidates at the end of next week. 

DVAR TORAH ON PARSHAT DEVARIM

Why does the Torah relate that Moshe was speaking to the Jewish people ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE JORDAN RIVER (1:1), a fact which is obvious from the flow of the story which includes the emphasis on Moshe not crossing into Israel?

The Ohr HaChayim answers that the Torah is pointing out that Moshe waited to rebuke the Jews until they were right on the other side of the Jordan River since rebuking them when they were further away would have plunged the nation into despair. Once they were close to Israel and could see their final destination they were able to absorb the rebuke and improve.

ESSAY RELATED TO TISHA B'AV AND OLYMPICS

I hope you find this essay, which I wrote for aish.com four years, to be meaningful as part of your preparation for Tisha B'Av.  It cannot be more relevant to our times.

http://www.aish.com/h/9av/ju/48936532.html  

Shabbat shalom and have a meaningful Tisha B'Av,

Dov Lipman

Visiting Joseph's Tomb

Most of us associate Joseph's Tomb in Shechem with Palestinian/Israeli strife; this was the location of the murder of several Israeli soldiers & civilians and of  infamous and murderous Palestinian rioters who burned and ransacked the building of the tomb.

A few weeks ago, following the lead of some of our kids, my wife and I decided to visit Joseph's Tomb in Shechem/Nablus. There are now scheduled monthly visits, organized together with the security forces, for the general public to pray at the Tomb.

We booked ourselves seats on a bus from Jerusalem with the organizers, and we were called back by a polite lady to confirm we had been approved for the visit, and allocated three seats. Midnight at Binyanei HaUma in Jerusalem. Return-by time was left 'undefined'.

The folks who turned up at our bus were mainly national religious with a scattering of chareidim. Average age around 30.

The armored bus took about an hour to arrive at the main junction, outside Shechem and we waited about half an hour at the well-secured car park (by about ten military vehicles and 50 soldiers and police), for more buses from around the country to assemble. Once there were ten buses assembled, and the previous group of buses had finished their visit, our bus set out and we completed the journey into Shechem and from there to the Tomb.

There was significant visible security – with IDF soldiers manning the junctions and escorting the buses.

Our group consisted of about 500 people, and we were permitted to stay there for about 45 minutes.

This gave us all reasonable time and access, so we could recite tehilim and daven at the tomb. There were a few stands with boys selling posters, as well as free pastries for the visitors.  

I was particularly impressed by the feeling of "amcha" – a cross-section of people. There was a scattering of Sephardim with ill-fitting kipot, settler-types, mainstream national religious, and a variety of litvish and chasidish chareidim.

Our 45 minutes up, we were called back onto the buses, and drove back through the deserted streets of Shechem. We arrived back in Jerusalem around 5am.

According to news reports, around 2000 people visited Joseph's Tomb that night.

I had previously associated the struggle for Jewish access to Joseph's Tomb with daring (extreme?) right-wing activists.

I think it is a definition of an extremist's victory, when his views/activities slide into the 'mainstream'. 

Today's radical, if successful, is tomorrow's bore.

In which case, the current status of Joseph's Tomb is at least a (partial) victory for the extreme right wing – it is definitely moving into the 'mainstream'. 

Syrian Movie Rights Please

The assassination in Syria on Wednesday of Assad's powerful brother-in-law, his defense minister, the Head of the National Security intelligence agency, and a top general, together with severely wounding the interior minister – shows a dramatic turn in the rebels struggle.

The public image of the Syrian rebels as under-armed civilians facing off against a formidable & ruthless national army, and being massacred daily by helicopter gun-ships, tanks and artillery, now looks out-of-sync with the facts on the ground.

It is awesome to consider the level of sophistication required to pull off such an ambitious assassination plot.

These top government and military leaders were assembled together in Damascus' most secure facility, in a time of civil war, when every security precaution for their personal safety must have been taken.

No-one knows what the plot was, and how it was so effectively implemented. Some have proposed the assassin was a treacherous body guard, or the attack was using a planted bomb, remotely operated.

Neither sound credible as a stand-alone explanation of the facts.

This was not Qaddafi, who was found in a fox-hole and then lynched by a mob.

This attack required the best intelligence information, and a privileged access to the top security facility.

The intelligence would have to reliably provided details of the location, timing, attendees of this meeting.

Top level treachery would be required to obtain and distribute this classidied information. This is totally feasible in an environment where both generals and politicians have been deserting the government and joining the rebels. The Syrian Ambassador to Iraq recently turn-coated, and several Syrian generals have recently crossed the border into Turkey to join the rebel cause. So a highly positioned mole, leaking reliable top-secret intelligence to the rebels, is now quite plausible.

The privileged access would also be required to effectively deliver the explosives, undetected, to the location, coinciding with the meeting. Whether delivered by a suicide bomber, such as a body guard, or pre-planted in the room, it would have required amazing planning - surely access was severely limited, the room was minutely checked and everybody searched before entry.

I am therefore in awe of this assassination.

I envisage a James Bond movie, or Mission Impossible, either involving external partners, such as US, British or, who knows, Israeli assistance, and/or the planning, cooperation and participation of Syria's finest intelligence officers and most senior military/politicians.

I therefore think it signals the (oft predicted) death-throes of Assad's regime.

And a golden opportunity for a best-selling Hollywood action thriller.

I bid $100 for the movie rights.

Who do I make the check out to??

US agrees, settlements are “not illegal”

I found this analytic article helpful in comparing the new Levy Committee Report on the legalities of settlements in Yehudah & Shomron, with the US approach.

It is published here with kind permission of the author, Ted Belman.


Ted Belman, Israpundit


The  legal tsunami gathering strength in  Israel will soon  engulf the world.  A report is soon to be released that says, the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) does not apply to Judea and Samaria aka West Bank and that Israel has every right to build settlements there.

In January of this year,  PM Netanyahu set up the Levy Committee to investigate the legal status of unauthorized  West Bank  Jewish building.  The Committee was headed by Supreme Court Justice (ret) Edmund Levy. It included Tel Aviv District Court Judge (Ret.) Tehiya Shapira and Dr. Alan Baker an international law expert, who was part of the team that devised the Oslo Accords,

The Committee reviewed legal briefs from right of center groups but also from far left  groups such as Peace Now, Yesh Din and Btselem. Its 89 page Report was submitted to PM Netanyahu a few weeks ago and is now under review by his Ministerial Committee on Settlements. Though the Report has yet to be formerly published, the contents are already well known.

It found that the settlements are not illegal.  To reach this conclusion it first found that the Fourth Geneva Convention which applies “to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party” does not apply to Judea and Samaria because “Israel does not meet the criteria of ‘military occupation’ as defined under international law” … as  “no other legal entity has ever had its sovereignty over the area cemented under international law,”

Furthermore it found that there was no provision in international law which prohibited Jews settling in the area.

The UN and the EU have for decades repeated the mantra that the land is occupied and the settlements are illegal, both pursuant to the FGC but there has never been a binding legal decision on which they based their assertions. The US has been more cautious and considers the settlements “an obstacle to peace” or “illegitimate”. Nevertheless, it leads the chorus in demanding an end to Israel’s settlement construction.

In 2010, Nicholas Rostow, in the American Interest , regarding the legality of the settlements, wrote:

“On February 2, 1981, President Reagan stated that the settlements were “not illegal”, although he criticized them as “ill-advised” and “unnecessarily provocative.” Throughout the Reagan Administration the U.S. government did not question the legality of the settlements; rather, it criticized the settlements on policy grounds as an obstacle to the peace process. In the United Nations, the United States voted against resolutions describing Israeli settlements as illegal.”

President George Bush followed suit and so did President Obama.

The Levy Report confirms the opinions of a large list of experts who have long claimed the same, including

• Stephen M. Schwebel, Professor of International Law at the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University (Washington), former Deputy Legal Advisor of the U.S. State Department and President of the International Court of Justice from 1997 to 2000: “Where the prior holder of territory [Jordan] had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense [Israel] has, against that prior holder, better title.”
• , Former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and Distinguished Fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace: “The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created… The Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated…”
• Julius Stone, one of the 20^th century leading authorities on the Law of Nations, Doctor of Juridical Science from Harvard and Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law at universities in Australia and California: “The terms of Article 49(6) [of the Fourth Geneva Convention] however they are interpreted, are submitted to be totally irrelevant. To render them relevant, we would have to say that the effect of Article 49(6) is to impose an obligation on the state of Israel to ensure (by force if necessary) that these areas, despite their millennial association with Jewish life, shall be forever ‘judenrein’.”
• David Matas, world-renowned human rights lawyer and honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada: “For there to be an occupation at international law, there has to be an occupying and occupied power both of which are members of the community of nations. The only conceivable occupied power for the West Bank is Jordan. Yet Jordan has renounced all claims over the West Bank.”
• David M. Phillips, Professor at Northeastern University School of Law: Indeed, the analysis underlying the conclusion that the settlements violate international law depends entirely on an acceptance of the Palestinian narrative that the West Bank is “Arab” land. Followed to its logical conclusion – as some have done – this narrative precludes the legitimacy of Israel itself…The ultimate end of the illicit effort to use international law to delegitimize the settlements is clear – it is the same argument used by Israel’s enemies to delegitimize the Jewish state entirely.”
• Jeffrey S. Helmreich, author and writer for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: “The settlements are not located in ‘occupied territory.’ The last binding international legal instrument which divided the territory in the region of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza was the League of Nations Mandate, which explicitly recognized the right of Jewish settlement in all territory allocated to the Jewish national home in the context of the British Mandate. These rights under the British Mandate were preserved by the successor organization to the League of Nations, the United Nations, under Article 80 of the UN Charter.”

The question of the applicability of the FGC was considered by the International Court of Justice (IJC), an arm of the UN, in its advisory opinion on the legality of the fence.

The IJC held that “the Convention applies, in particular, in any territory occupied in the course of the conflict by one of the contracting parties.”.  In other words it ignored that the lands occupied must be the lands of “another High Contracting Party”.  This is not considered sound law and in any event, is not a binding decision.

The Supreme Court of Israel in its decision approving the fence as legal,  said  that “the question of the application of the Fourth Geneva Convention is not before us now since the parties agree that the humanitarian rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention apply to the issue under review.”  Thus it didn’t decide on the applicability.

The Left in Israel are screaming blue murder and referring to the Report as “born in sin” and a “political manifesto”.

On Monday, while speaking to reporters, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said:

“The US position on settlements is clear. Obviously, we’ve seen the reports that an Israeli government appointed panel has recommended legalizing dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts.”

What is interesting about this statement is that Ventrell did not comment on the finding that the FGC did not apply or that the settlements were not illegal.  He merely reiterated the US government position without substantiating it. Furthermore, the settlement outposts that the State Department doesn’t want “legalized” are legal save for having not received their final approval from the Government of Israel. If they were really illegal by international law, Israel wouldn’t be able to “legalize” them. Put another way, the US position is that Israel shouldn’t exercise her rights because such exercise would be an obstacle to peace. It prefers to recognize the non-existing Arab rights rather than the real rights of the Jews/Israel.

Accordingly, the legal conclusions of the Report are sound.  What will the fallout be?

Well for starters, the UN may ask for another advisory opinion from the ICJ on the validity of this report but why bother, it already has one on the applicability of the FGC. It probably will choose to ignore it as just another opinion. Meanwhile the existence of the report will take the wind out of the sails of the US and the EU as they try to damn the settlements and Israeli actions. The US will have to acknowledge that since President Reagan, it has considered the settlements to be “not illegal” but only, ”ill-advised”.

PM Netanyahu will have to decide whether he will embrace the Report and act accordingly or whether he will wait for the issue to be adjudicated by Israel’s High Court.  It is highly unlikely that this Court will fly in the face of the named experts, the US Government and the Levy Report. The Court has previously held that the settlements were legal.

From a political point of view, he cannot ignore the Report.  A political storm is raging. MK Tzippi Hotovely, Likud, is preparing a Bill that will “endorse the principles of the Levy Report and will require the establishment of a judicial tribunal in Judea and Samaria which will be given the responsibility of discussing matters related to land ownership, the establishment of an Israeli land registry in Judea and Samaria and applying Israeli building and planning laws on Judea and Samaria.”

Where does that leave the international community?  The foundation of their attacks on Israel will have been destroyed. It will be hard to ignore the Report and harder still to ignore a confirming decision by Israel’s High Court. It will no longer be able to claim with a straight face that the lands are “occupied Palestinian lands” or that the settlements are illegal.

Congress will no doubt strongly endorse the Report with or without a decision of the Supreme Court of Israel.

The upshot of all this will be that Israel will end the de facto building freeze and start construction of settlements in earnest.  It will also signal the end of the pursuit by Israel of the two-state solution.  The Israeli center will no longer  believe that Israel is an occupier and instead will believe that the land is theirs, which it is.

Presently there is a significant movement in Israel advocating Israeli sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, even if that means making citizenship available to qualifying Arabs.

Israel must decide between two risky alternatives; either accept the two-state solution based on ’67 lines with swaps or annex the land and contend with an extra 1.5 million Arabs within its borders. With the latter alternative, the Jews would be left with a stable 2:1 majority. Israelis are already trending to the latter and this Report will accelerate that trend.

The Arabs in Judea and Samaria will not accept such a two state solution because it will preclude the “right of return” and will require them to recognize Israel as the Jewish State. Furthermore it will require them to sign an end-of-conflict agreement which they will never do. If Israel chooses to claim sovereignty, the Arabs will have to decide whether to push for citizenship or to accept autonomy.

This tsunami will change the political landscape for the better and forever.

Olmert vs State of Israel

 

In a remarkable turn-around this week, Ehud Olmert was transformed from probably Israel's most disgraced & corrupt politician, to becoming a righteous victim of injustice, of political conspiracy and of a corrupt legal system.

In a surprise verdict on Tuesday, the three man court found Ehud Olmert "Not Guilty" of the  two most serious criminal charges against him.

The backlash from the sentence was dramatic, with the full fury of the popular press immediately turned on the prosecution services, with a chorus of calls for State Attorney Moshe Lador to resign.

Others blamed for the miscarriage of justice include American right wing Jews.

There is no doubt that the toppling of a sitting prime minister, on trumped up charges, would be a huge scandal, and would bring shame upon the State legal system. If the charges were clearly false, then, yes, heads should roll.

As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Police forces, prosecution services and courts are universally accused of being too tough on the innocent, or being too lenient on the guilty.

That's simply in the nature of the work they do, all over the world, in every society.

Indeed, this past January, the Chief Comptrollers Office published a scathing report on the police performance in Israel, and concluded that:

The comptroller criticized the conduct of the police regarding almost all criteria used in the investigation. This included findings that the police broke the law in closing cases...

In other words – that the police department are letting too many guilty people walk free.

  

The prosecution in the Olmert case have not been blamed for failing to get-their-man– but rather for investigating, charging and prosecuting Olmert in the first place.

Such an allegation would need to show that the police and prosecution had pushed the case forward, motivated by factors beyond seeking justice, and in spite of them knowing the allegations were false.

It is important to appreciate the varying criteria used for each step of the criminal system. As a whole, the system is designed to weed out cases which will not obtain a conviction, as early in the process as possible – while focusing limited police and judiciary resources on the cases which are evidentially the strongest.

I am not a lawyer, and my layman's understanding is:

1. The police are required to investigate all allegations which there is a reasonable basis to suspect that a crime has been committed and which are in the public interest to pursue.

2. Charges are brought when in the prosecution's judgment there are sufficient evidential grounds to obtain a conviction.

3. The court itself must establish that a crime was committed "beyond all reasonable doubt". In statistical terms I believe this requires "90% certainty that the accused party is guilty as charged".

In the case of Olmert, it seems self-evident that the criteria for the police investigating the allegations were met. We all heard about Talanksy's envelopes of cash, the "Rishon Tours" double-billing scam, and the hiring of cronies at the Ministry of Trade & Industry.

If the police had said there were no grounds to investigate these allegation, or that they were not in the public interest (!!) – the press and watchdogs would have been in arms about a police cover-up of senior politicians.

The decision to bring charges also seems to have been reasonable.

In all the excitement, it has been overlooked that the court concluded there WERE crimes committed with Talansky cash and with scamming the Rishon Tours travel costs.

The court concluded that these crimes were committed by Shula Zaken, but there was insufficient evidence to convict Olmert.

Furthermore, the third allegation against Olmert, involving corrupt appointments of cronies, Olmert was indeed found guilty.

I therefore conclude (from published reports) that, yes, there is plenty of egg on their public face, but actually the police and prosecution did a reasonable job, as defined by the system under which they operate.

Latma: The Dour Old Man

Latma's talented team bring us a story, with a surprising and moving punchline.

What’s The Difference between Stuxnet & Flame?

There have been two major reported cyber attacks on Iranian assets in the past couple of years, by viruses (or malware) called Stuxnet and Flames.

These have some similarities to each other, and some important differences.

For those who are interested in such topics, this is the line-up:

Similarities: both Stuxnet and Flame attacked thousands of computers, the overwhelming majority within Iran.

They were both distributed by removeable media and by local networks.

There is also apparently some common code used for modules within these two viruses, for example the module which exploits a weakness in a printing routine.

Differences: Stuxnet is an attack malware – which rendered thousand of computer controlled nuclear enrichment centrifuges useless. Flame, on the other hand, is designed to collect and relay intelligence data – it’s a massive spying device.

Flame did not solely target the nuclear facilities, but also thousand of computers in Iranian industry, including Government ministries and the vital oil and gas facilities.

.

Stuxnet targeted Seimens industrial controllers; Flame works on standard Windows PC operating systems.

As a starter, Flame copies keyboard entries, sifts through emails & text messages, records microphone sounds and interconnects with Bluetooth devices.

The data is then communicated to command & control servers, scattered around the world.

On a purely legal front, whereas Stuxnet could be considered a hostile & illegal attack under international cyberspace legislation, Flame doesn't seem to directly infringe international treaties such as The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. 

According to most observers, both Stuxnet and Flame are the products of one or more Governments. Fingers have been stubbornly pointed at the USA and, ahem, Israel.

This conclusion has been justified by the complexity of the code, which is apparently well beyond solo geeks, or even whole industries.

My logic would point to the receiving end of the Flame data, collected by this enormous and unprecedented cyberspying mission.

Which geek, or industry, is going to have the resources to obtain useful, even critical, data from simultaneously spying on thousands of Iranian computers?

Whoever is behind this double attack – Stuxnet on the nuclear facilities, and Flame’s mega-espionage on Iranian infrastructure… Yeshar koachachem!!.