CAJL CC 102307 Contact info to President, Israeli Ambassador and Israel Consul

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Dear list, amv"sh

(CAJL will be sending out periodic action items for it's volunteers. If you do not wish to be on this list please email me. Each time you will get such an email with action items for CAJL it will say CAJL CC )

CAJL (Conference of Authentic Jewish Leadership
CC Calling Campaign
101807 October 18, 2007

This letter by Ruth Matar says it all. It says it right! I know at least 3 other spunky ladies around Ruth Matar's generation, the Holocaust generation, that are not afraid to say it like it is. They are not afraid to speak out to President Bush. This letter is phenomenal. Let it be the statement of our United Jewish Voice! Let us carry these women on our shoulders. Nothing written so far can compares!

Action items:
Please forward this letter to all the Rabbanim you know. When you speak to the organizations feel free to talk to whomever picks up the phone. Our biggest advocates are the secretaries.

Call the Young Israel 212-929-1525 plerner@youngisrael.org Rabbi Pesach Lerner

Call the OU 212-563-4000 info@ou.org Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, Stephen Savitsky

Call the OU Washington DC 202-513-6484 ipadc@ou.org Nathan Diament Director

Call the Agudath Yisroel of America 212-979-9000 Rabbi Gertzulin,

Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel PR dzwiebel@agudathisrael.org

Rabbi Avi Shafran PR
and ask them if they read Ruth Matar's letter. Ask them to please forward it to the proper channels in Washington DC. This is the correct Jewish position regarding the establishment of the State of Palestine, G-d forbid. They are the occupiers. Ruth Matar's letter should be read on Shabbos Drashos in shul! Ask everyone you know to use her points in the letter when they call the White House.

Dear Volunteer, Yasher Koach! May you go from strength to strength! Bracha Vehatzlacha and please let us know what response you received!

From: Women in Green
To: wfit2@womeningreen.org
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:52:54 +0200
Subject: OPEN LETTER TO US PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

October 18, 2007

Dear President Bush,

I am taking the liberty of writing you this personal letter because I fear you have put the State of Israel in a most dangerous, life-threatening situation. You have achieved this both by your June 24, 2002, policy speech, and by your planned “Peace Conference”, to be held in Annapolis, Maryland.

I have spent many sleepless nights since your speech on June 24, 2002, when you first declared your vision of dividing Israel into two states; a Jewish one, and an Arab state carved out of Jewish Biblical land.

IN YOUR JUNE 24, 2002, POLICY SPEECH you declared:
“My vision is two states, living side-by-side, in peace and security.”
You also stated that it is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and OCCUPATION.

Mr. President, your “vision” is based on a faulty premise. Israel is not occupying Arab territory! On the contrary: LARGE PARTS OF ISRAEL ARE OCCUPIED BY THE ARABS.

The Arab claim that the country was theirs and was taken away from them by the Jews is completely false and lacks any historic basis.

The following is a short summary of Israel’s history:

Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., i.e. 2,000 years BEFORE the rise of Islam, and long before there was any Arab nation. Israel (Palestine) has been the homeland of the Jewish People since biblical times. It was subsequently “occupied” more than 15 times. Among its occupiers were the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Ottoman Turks. The longest occupiers of the Holy Land who ruled on and off for 400 years­between 1517-1917­were the Ottoman Turks. They were followed by the British who ruled under a Mandate of the League of Nations (later the U.N.) to renew a homeland for the Jewish People.

Jews had dominion over the land of Israel over 1,300 years before their expulsion by the conquering Roman Empire. Moreover, Jews have had a continuous presence in this land for over 3,300 years.

As for your planned, so-called “Peace Conference”, to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, which you announced on July 16 of this year, you seem to have stacked the cards unfairly against Israel.

You have invited all your Arab friends, and in addition, only countries who have declared themselves to be in favor of a TWO STATE SOLUTION.

What then, remains to be discussed at the Conference?

Your plan is to have your Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, chair this Conference. It is well known that Ms. Rice is no friend of Israel.

For example, at her Senate confirmation hearing as US Secretary of State, Rice stated: “If I am confirmed, I will be especially honored to succeed a man I so admire- my friend and mentor, Colin Powell.”
Colin Powell, Secretary of State during your first term, famously described Yasser Arafat to a US Senate committee as follows: “One man’s Terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter.”

In addition, James Baker, your father’s Secretary of State, of “F-ck the Jews” fame, is one of Rice’s best friends. They have many common interests and attitudes.

To top it all, Chevron Oil Company, one of the ten largest oil companies in the world, named one of their giant tankers “Condoleezza Rice” in honor of her dedicated service. As you may remember, many critics complained at the time, that the ship served as a giant floating symbol of your administration’s cozy ties to the oil industry.

No wonder then, that the Israeli People are wary of the upcoming Conference, which Ehud Olmert has agreed to attend on behalf of the country he supposedly represents. (This man is currently under a number of criminal investigations!) At this Conference there will be a preponderance of Arab nations. Prime Minister Olmert has foolishly accepted the invitation. Does he not realize Israel is slated to be the sacrificial lamb?

President Bush, it is only fair that the person writing this letter identify herself. I am an elderly lady, who will, God willing, celebrate my 78th Birthday at the end of this month.

I am a Holocaust survivor, born in Austria. I escaped the Nazi death machine when my parents succeeded in having me accepted on a Kinder Transport to Sweden, just a month before the outbreak of World War Two. (My cousins were not as fortunate, and are believed to have died in a concentration camp).

My parents were able to escape Austria by crossing the border to Italy. At the end of the war they were part of the group of one thousand survivors who President Roosevelt allowed to enter the United States. Our family was miraculously united in the US, where we subsequently became American citizens.

I received my higher education, from age seventeen through college, in the United States. I met and married an American Jewish lawyer who had served in the American Army throughout the war. After the War, he attended Wisconsin University and Yale Law School on the G.I. Bill.

My husband and I have four children and seventeen grandchildren. We currently live in Jerusalem, Israel. We consider the United States as our homeland. At the same time, as religious Jews, we feel that Israel is our spiritual homeland, promised to us Hebrews by the Almighty G-d as an everlasting inheritance.

From my perspective as a Holocaust survivor, I fear that my children and grandchildren are not safe from another Holocaust.

The current situation frightens me more than I can describe in words.
Iran is about to acquire the atom bomb and President Ahmedinejad repeatedly states his intention to wipe Israel off the map.

At this point I must tell you, President Bush, that I voted for you both in the election of 2000, and in the election of 2004. At that time, I worked hard on my popular weekly English radio program from Israel, (INN: Israel National News), to recruit the American absentee vote on your behalf. My program was mainly directed to American audiences. I was fortunate to be able to interview many interesting prominent Americans such as James Woolsey, foreign policy specialist and former Director of Central Intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In light of all this, I implore you, Mr. President: Do not divide the Holy Land!

I truly believe that such an act on your part will have the most dangerous repercussions for Israel, the United States, and in fact, the entire western civilization, whose values and belief system are based on our common Holy Bible.

I believe that you truly wish to promote Peace in the Middle East.
However, dividing the Holy Land will have the exact opposite effect.

We cannot hide from ourselves the fact that Mahmoud Abbas, who you are promoting as Prime Minister of this new theoretical Arab State, is a former well known terrorist who co-founded the PLO together with Yasser Arafat. We must also face the fact that his terrorist Fatah Organization has murdered many more Jews than even Hamas! To this day, Abbas denies that there ever was a Holocaust, a view shared by Iran’s President, Ahmedinejad.

We must keep in mind Mahmoud Abbas’ educational background. He graduated from the University of Damascus, Syria, and subsequently earned his Ph.D degree at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow. Both these institutions are known for their hatred of Israel. Abbas’ thesis was, in fact, about Holocaust denial. His dissertation was entitled: “The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement”.

Abu Daoud was one of the terrorists intimately involved in the planning of the Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes in the 1972 Olympics. Daoud alleged in his autobiography that Mahmoud Abbas was the main paymaster behind the attack.

Mr. President, do you really plan for this terrorist to be Israel’s peace partner?

There are many Israelis and Americans, both Jews and Christians, who feel that your Conference will have a strong anti-Israel component, and therefore will result in a harmful outcome for the Jewish State.

You have yet to announce the final-final date for your Conference. We hope that you give us the courtesy of notifying the public as to when it will be held, so that we can finalize our own preparations. We plan to hold a Zionist Conference in New York preceding your Annapolis Conference by a few days.

In conclusion, I would like to quote Oklahoma Senator Inhofe’s Senate Floor Statement of March 4, 2002, entitled “SEVEN REASONS WHY ISRAEL IS ENTITLED TO THE LAND”:

“Reason Number 7: I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason:
BECAUSE G-D SAID SO.”


Respectfully Yours,

Ruth Matar
Jerusalem, Israel

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A Perfect Solution to the Jerusalem Issue

[Sammy from Yid with Lid has graciously allowed us to cross post his latest piece on Jerusalem. Even when we cry, we laugh...]

A Perfect Solution to the Jerusalem Issue

Jerusalem is Probably the most difficult issue to solve in the ongoing Israel/ Palestinian "peace" process. The Palestinians are demanding control of the holy city, the Temple Mount and Kotel because they claim it is where Mohamed rose to heaven which makes it the third holiest site in Islam. Of course this is a very recent claim and there is nothing about Jerusalem in the Koran. Some people claim that the only reason that the Palestinians want Jerusalem is their continued attempt to de-legitimize Judaism's historical claim to Israel

For Jews Jerusalem is the Holy City, and the Temple Mount is the holiest site in all of Judaism, not only did the mount house the two temples to God, it is where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac and where Jacob had the dream of the ladder to heaven. For two thousand years Jews have prayed for a return to Jerusalem.

Reports that Israel's government is willing to split Jerusalem with the Palestinians and give up sovereignty over the Temple Mount has raised the ire of the Jewish People. Polls have shown that the Israel people are against it, the majority of the Knesset is against it, protests and petitions have come from groups such as the OU and the ZOA. Yet the Palestinians claim that there can be no peace without handing over the holy city. What can Olmert do to satisfy Israel the Jewish People and make a peace with the terrorists at the same time.

Thankfully I have a solution, not only will it work but I got the Idea from an Arab, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . Remember last week when he suggested that we move Israel to Alaska? We we can do the same thing with Arab East Jerusalem--move it. And I am willing to give the Arabs a lot more options--in fact I have an entire list of cities that they can pick to move East Jerusalem to:

• Miami Beach Florida- This one is a no-brainier, their third holiest city for our third holiest city. We will throw in the "early bird" special dinners, and access to Miami's holiest site (the Fontainebleau Hotel).

• Secaucus New Jersey-Remember that old song "Raucus in Secaucus"? This site is perfect for them, and the best part of it is no one in the United States will notice (except maybe NY Jet Fans but we would be much happier).

• London, England- After all Tony Blair thinks Israel should be more flexible on Jerusalem, lets try and see how flexible the British can be. The good part of the solution is that Abbas' Fatah wouldn't have to set up satellite dishes for communications, the could use Prince Charles' ears.

• Vatican City- Lets face it the Palestinian claim to Catholicism's Holy City is just as vailid as their claim to Judaism's. The extra benefit of this solution is that it might help repair the "bad vibes" between the Pope and Islam.

• New York City- The "Jewish Lobby" needs a vacation--lets let the Palestinians Control the banks and media for a while.
  

• Washington DC- This is probably the best solution of all. Think about it--we give away part of Washington, Condi Rice wont be able to force her Dhimmi solutions to the Mideast conflict upon Israel. We know that House Speaker Pelosi would endorse this one, after all she looked so go with her head covering when she visited Syria.

I know that there will be protests to any of these solutions, some may say, "how could you make up reasons to take away a city from a people who have an historic attachment, and give it to people who have no real claim to it?" Well let me answer those people like this:

I Agree.

An urgent Appeal

Young Israel USA and Young Israel in Israel, OU, Agudath Yisroel of America, etc.

You are speaking out loudly for a United Jerusalem. That is praiseworthy, indeed! Your united voice will certainly make a difference. The question, however, is what kind of a difference it will make. Mainstream Jewish organizations is uniting about publicly decrying a division of Jerusalem, yet it refrains from speaking out with the same conviction regarding opposition to a State of Palestine. Are you afraid to take a stand that is diametrically opposed to the Government of the United States? President Bush clearly wants to establish a State of Palestine. You are Silent. Does that mean that you agree? Is that implicit agreement? Have we not been taught shtika kehoda'a?!?

I know that the Rabbinic Leaders of your respective organizations will tell you a State of Palestine is a tragedy. But… will they say so publicly? If as a united voice they only speak up for Jerusalem then, by omission, it means that Yesha is expendable. Think about the dangers! We have then, by default, united to be SILENT on the subject of a Palestinian State. However, if we speak out with conviction against a State of Palestine, then any discussion about dividing Jerusalem ceases to be an option.

Young Israel has 150 member Synagogues. That means thousands of members. Agudath Yisroel has an extensive worldwide network. That means the voice of their rabbis, their representatives, their emissaries can influence hundreds of thousands of caring Jews. Agudath Yisroel of America has shown its ability to mobilize people in record time. The Yesha Leaders from the Yesha Council have in the past led their constituents to believe that they are proactive and, in the end, failed miserably! Will the tragedies of Gush Katif repeat itself, chas vesalom?!?

It is up to each individual to question the decision to remain silent regarding the establishment of the State of Palestine and to urge their Rabbinic Leaders and their affiliated shuls and organizations NOT TO BE SILENT regarding a future state of terrorists that is a direct threat to Israel and Jews around the world! The Jewish people should not allow their leadership to lead them to another Gush Katif! When the Nations of the world perceive total resolution, when they hear the clamoring and see a defense a defense of the entirety of Israel they will lose their brazenness in demanding Jerusalem.

Whoever gets this email in his or her office, pass it around to your friends of coworkers. Don't be afraid to speak out to the higher ups in your organization to be outspoken against the State of Palestine. Secretaries are our biggest advocates. Why does it only have to be the Christians that are Biblically correct and talk about G-d's given borders? Do we care less than the Christians about our Divinely given patrimony?

Sincerely,

Robin Ticker/ Shmuel Koenig initiators Rabbi Calling Campaign
CAJL (Conference of Authentic Jewish Leadership)

If I Forget Thee... a Very Personal Recollection

[The following Post first appeared on Freedom's Cost on May 26, 2006 and in The Jerusalem Post on May 15, 2007]

I arrived in Israel on Friday before the Six Day War, as a volunteer. For Shabbat (Parshat Bamidbar) we stayed in Savyon, a ritzy neighborhood close to the airport and not far from Tel Aviv. The view was absolutely breathtaking! On Sunday morning I was taken to Kibbutz Lavi, strategically perched atop a hill overlooking the Tiberias-Haifa road.

Within minutes of arriving, the secretary of the kibbutz assigned me a room overlooking the road and gave me a quick tour. The first thing we did was to climb to the highest point of the Kibbutz, the water tower. “We are one minute away from Syria by Mig’s flight,” he said… I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear that… not just yet… The rest of the tour did not seem as important, in fact… I barely remember it.

By the afternoon I was joined by 10 more volunteers from England, Ireland, France and the US. At dinner time, in the kibbutz’ dining room surrounded by people I’d never met before, somehow, it felt like a homecoming. For the first time in my life whether I lived in Montevideo (Uruguay - where I grew up), Buenos Aires, Richmond, VA, New York City or traveling through Europe, I felt that this land was mine. Every pebble, every grain of sand, everything was mine, MINE! It’s hard to describe the emotions running though me at the time, but believe me, I am reliving every single one of them as I write…

After a tasty meal in a darkened dining room (no electric lights were allowed anywhere, so as to make it harder for enemy planes to spot us, only candles and small flashlights could be used) when everyone except for the guards had gone to sleep, a horrible noise woke us. We looked out the window and realized it was coming from the road below. Some of us in the room wanted to go down to the road but the guards would not allow it. No one else in the kibbutz was outside… The road was swarming with tanks, on their way to Syria… We tried going back to sleep, but between the noise and the excitement, who could do that?

At early dawn they came for us and we were given suitable clothing (the famous Israeli kova tembel, a very distinctly shaped hat -to ward off the sun - turned out to be the most important item, a sand colored shirt with matching shorts (both ill fitting, of course!) and boots. Then we were issued pickaxes and hoes, and told that we would be digging trenches. Easier said than done, on very rocky ground! By the afternoon, when the heat made it very hard to work, we volunteers had realized very little progress against the rocks, but we all had blisters on our hands… By contrast, a group of teenage kibbutznik girls not far from us working on a similar type of ground astounded us by how much they had accomplished…

Most of us had transistor radios and we listened to the BBC (English was a lot easier to understand than Hebrew) at 7:00am that Monday morning, they reported that Israeli war planes had attacked Egyptian military airfields and totally destroyed their Air Force before they could get airborne… Kol Israel - The Voice of Israel not only reported no news but kept playing an hours long repertoire of Hebrew songs. There was no way to corroborate the truth on this BBC story… At 8:00am one of the kibbutz wives reported with glee that she just received a call from her Air Force husband… Every single Israeli plane returned to base safely.

At 10:00am Kol Israel finally reported that we were amidst a war but gave no details and kept playing songs… Shortly thereafter there was a dog fight, directly above our heads, between an Israeli Mirage and a Syrian MIG, and the Israelis continued working seemingly without a care. We volunteers - mitnadvim, looked up fascinated… strangely without fear… The MIG was shot down after a few minutes, and an armed group from the kibbutz left in two Jeeps, they came back awhile later with a piece of the MIG’s tail and.. the Syrian pilot whom they held until members of the IDF came to pick him up.

At dinner time, we non-kibbutznikim could only talk about the news on the BBC while the kibbutznikim didn’t seem to show much concern… Then came Tuesday, June 7 - the 28th of Iyar… a day that would forever change history… By late afternoon the BBC reported that the Old City of Jerusalem was in Israeli hands, a few hours later Kol Israel played a sound bite by General Motta Gur, commanding officer of the crack paratroopers brigade that captured the Western Wall: “Har haBayit beyadenu, Har haBayit beyadenu… - The Temple Mount, The Temple Mount - is in our hands…” Soon there was barely a dry eye… happiness knew no bounds…

The full import of those simple words did not totally hit me until Shavu’ot (the following week) when five of us mitnadvim found ourselves in Yerushalayim - Jerusalem. On what in the diaspora would have been the second day of the holy day we walked to Har Tzyion - Mount Zion - so we could get to the Wailing Wall. As we found our way through through the narrow, winding road filled with history, soaked with Jewish blood, I felt as if my ancestors were there walking with me, gently guiding me… Finally we spied the Kotel in the distance… not the sweeping plaza we have today, but a very narrow area surrounded by Arab houses and public latrines… The five of us, as if we were part of a Greek chorus in some ancient play… started crying unabashedly as little children would… Avinu shebaShamayim, - Our Father in Heaven, we are home, we are home…!!!

As we walked back through the Old City, as we saw the narrow streets filled with bazaars, with butcher shops hung with huge cuts of meat and myriad flies buzzing on and around them, with the stench of public latrines we, every single one of us, understood why of all the beautiful cities around the world Hakakosh Baruch Hu - The Holy One, Blessed He, chose Yerushalayim, Ir Hakododesh as His Holy City

“Im eshkachech Yerushalayim, tishkach yemini! - If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, let my right arm loose its cunning!” Though we lived in exile for thousands of years, our prayers always spoke of Jerusalem. No Holy Day ever ended without the words: “Beshana haba beYerushalayim! - The next year in Jerusalem!” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, your Jews NEVER forgot you…

Chaim

Statement of purpose

This blog will post the views of CAJL (Conference of Authentic Jewish Leadership) and like minded posts from around the blogosphere.

For two thousand years Jews have longed, prayed, shed tears and lost their lives because of their love of Jerusalem. Their love of the Jerusalem no Jew could forget, the Jerusalem that's engraved in every single Jewish heart, the Jerusalem that kept the flame of Judaism burning for millennia, against all odds, in exile in Israel, everywhere there was a Jew. In June 1967, Jerusalem was united again under Israeli rule. The tears, the suffering, the prayers paid off! The Almighty finally found His people worthy of being in Jerusalem, in the Old City. Its reunification was paid for in blood, the same blood that for two thousand years had the Holy Land and the lands of Europe. The same blood that run through the veins of millions of murdered Jews whose only crime consisted of stubbornly being Jewish.

Currently a government of morally bankrupt, corrupt, spineless, unthinking, uncaring, cowardly political eunuchs believes it will appease its bloody enemies and the West by dividing it again. They seem to believe that by giving over control of the Holy Places in the City of David (which is mentioned over and over in the TaNa"CH but not even once in the Quran) they will achieve peace. For a Jew to spit at this precious gift the Almighty handed us, is treachery of the highest order. It's a betrayal of everything Judaism stands for. It is trampling on the hopes of millions of martyrs throughout the ages, it represents walking away from that which legitimizes a Jew. To divide Jerusalem is akin to gleefully celebrating with our enemies the tragic deaths of our ancestors, as that division puts a knife into the collective heart of Jewry.

Im eshkachech Yerushalayim, tishkach yemini! - If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning! And yet... and yet there are those who in pursuit of an illusory peace have no compunctions in slowly carving away at the piece of land the Almighty bequeathed us. Are they really so blind, so foolish, as to believe they can buy the end of the current state of war with land? Has history not proven over and over that magnanimous concessions only result in more demands, in more magnanimous concession, in more Jewish blood being spilled? Can the forgetting of Jerusalem accomplish other than more death and horror?