Friends,

Toronto had a film festival highlighting movies about Tel Aviv.  You’d think a city that pre-dates the Jewish State, one not in the “occupied territories” would not be controversial.  Guess what?  Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and Eve Ensler (that basket case) Naomi Klein, Alice Walker  etc. are protesting, signing a letter which says: “we are deeply disturbed by [TIFF's] decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv,” the letter begins. “We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine…we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of … an apartheid regime.”

And now, the festival’s director, Cameron Bailey, whose good idea it was in the first place to focus on Tel Aviv, has backed down, calling Tel Aviv “contested ground” and vowing: “to learn more about the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.”  Contested by whom?  The Hamas?

Just shows you the inroads of Palestinian hate speak, and the useful idiots involved. Read more >

Friends,

Who can forget the heroism of Ro’i Klein, the Israeli army major who laid his body over a grenade, thus saving the lives of his soldiers in the last Lebanon War.

Now, in an act of unspeakable cruelty, a far Left organization has gotten our Leftist-leaning High Court to agree to destroy Major Ro’i's home in the settlement of Eli, leaving his widow and two small children homeless.

I urge you to sign the petition at the end of this article, and make your protest clear to Israel’s authorities.

Many thanks, Naomi
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Widow of Israeli war hero to be dispossessed.

July 16, 2009

National Council of Young Israel                                       As reported in Israel National News

On Monday, the High Court in Israel ruled in favor of the far-left organizations Peace Now and Yesh Din and ordered that 11 homes in the Samaria town of Eli be torn down. One of the homes in question belongs to IDF Major Roi Klein, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War when he jumped on a live hand grenade thrown by Hizbullah forces, in order to save his soldiers.

Maj. Klein’s last words, his soldiers later said, were ”Shema Yisrael.” Read more >

Time to Extend Israeli Law to Meah Shearim.

A woman is caught on tape detaching the feeding tube from her starving three-year old in Hadassah Hospital, after years of bringing the child in with unexplained medical conditions and bodily injuries. She is arrested by authorities for child endangerment and jailed. In response, her community backs her up, burns property and assaults police and social workers.

This story makes no sense until you add that the woman is haredi, a member of Neturei Karta sect in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim.

As citizens of Israel look on in astonishment today as the streets of its capital are set on fire and innocent passersby are subject to a pogrom of stones and curses, we long-time inhabitants of Jerusalem are not surprised.

For years, police and government authorities have treated Meah Shearim, the hotbed of virulent haredi anti-Israel provocations, as the French have treated the Arab suburbs of Paris, the banlieues: as a separate country, afraid to engage with its inhabitants, to enforce the laws of the nation.

It is a no-go zone, where citizens take the law into their hands, and inhabitants are subject to mob rule.

I saw this personally when I was writing my play Women’s Minyan, which was based on the following true story: A haredi woman in Meah Shearim, mother of 12, found out her sexually abusive husband was having an affair with a married woman. When she finally stopped covering for him, and demanded he move out and give her a divorce, she found herself not only thrown out of the house, but attacked by armed haredi thugs who arrived at her doorstep. Read more >

Friends,

What’s in a word? While it is true that a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” as a writer, I believe that using the correct words are important. As George Orwell taught us, it is the difference between truth and lie, freedom and slavery.

And so, for years I complained about the euphemisms used by leftist journalists who couldn’t bring themselves to write the words “Islamic terrorist” when buses and Passover Seders blew up, even though that is who the perpetrators were.

They were called militants, or grieving brothers, or activists. You name it. Now it seems that the U.S. government is following suit, because fighting terror seems so politically incorrect these days. A great article from Susan M. Reyto, a lover of freedom, who survived horrific experiences in Communist Hungary. Go to the link and leave a comment. Naomi.  Read more >

A chain letter addressed to President Obama from (apparently) a fourth grade teacher in Missouri gives us hope that America may survive the destruction wrought by the Obama regime. It is entirely possible that Obama is but a couple of speeches away from being exposed for the arrogant know-nothing pompous Marxist ideologue that he is. His economic policies and favor-dispensations to ideological buddies are bound to irk many voters. One day we’ll wake up and everybody will know it and the media won’t be able to run cover for him any more. Obama will be just another bumbling socialist, Jimmy Carter with big ears.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington , DC 20500

Mr. Obama:

I have had it with you and your administration, sir. Your conduct on your recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally. You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of America.  You are responsible to the citizens of the United States.

You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth. I personally resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world. Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe? Are you brain dead? What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about? Read more >

Friends,

I’m looking forward to seeing you there. It’s for a very worthy cause.  And I invite men to come as well.

Every blessing,

Naomi

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Yaldeinu will be hosting an evening for mothers and daughters featuring world renowned author and Jewish thinker Naomi Ragen on May 25, 2009 at the Sephardic Kehilla Center.  The evening will include her keynote, an elegant dessert reception and book signing sponsored by Indigo.  We are expecting well over 300 people. Tickets are being sold for $75 each or $140 for the mother/daughter pair.  We are also including a student rate of $36.00. And the first 150 registrants will receive two complimentary in-home personal fitness sessions by G Force Home Training and a Roots giveaway.  Gifts valued at over $180.00.

A Jewish Woman’s Voice: Literature and Faith

Naomi will be sharing her personal story – how she was taken in as a scholarship student in an Orthodox Hebrew Day school from a poor family, and how that experience changed her life, and made her the writer she is today. The talk will also include her aliyah, and experiences working for women’s issues, war and terrorism, and her view on the activism Jewish women can take in our collective communities.

The evening promised to be one of thought-provoking discussion and inspiration.  To purchase tickets just visit www.yaldeinu.org or call the office at 905.482.3374.

Yaldeinu is a charitable organization providing scholarships and camperships to Jewish children in developing countries and victims of terrorism in Sderot, Israel.  For information on Yaldeinu please see our website at www.yaldeinu.org and our promo video at www.yaldeinu.org/media, which will introduce you to the children we sponsored last year.

Thank you,

Michael Ettedgui

Contact us now

Phone: 905.482.3374

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For more articles,please visit my Web page at: http://www.NaomiRagen.com

The Pope’s recent visit to Bethlehem was one of the most blatant displays of capitulation to terrorism that has been seen in recent years. How well I remember the way Christians were treated by Arafat’s henchmen, including Mahmoud Abbas his right hand man, during the Intifada. The Christian community was decimated, and is now only twenty percent of the population, when it was once the majority. Christian girls were kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert to Islam. Christians were kicked out of their homes by gunmen, who used Christian neighborhoods to set up sniper nests from which they shot into Jewish homes in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, and passing cars on the road (Dr. Shmuel Gillis, on whom I patterned the hero of my book, The Covenant, was killed on his way home from treating cancer patients at Hadassah Hospital by such a sniper.)

And then there was the siege of the Church of the Nativity. The priests and children held hostage by Arafat’s gunmen. The church desecrated. Priests holding up signs at the windows to Israeli soldiers “Please help us!”

The Pope, standing side by side with Abbas, chose to forget these things.

His words:

“Mr. President, the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders.” Read more >

Friends,

I write to you less these days. Less than I did during the Intifada, when buses were blowing up killing our children; less than during the wars with the Hezbollah and with Hamas. I write less because I have no words to express just how bad things are, how beyond imagination that the Jewish State has gotten to this point in its history. I write less, because I keep hoping against hope that all my fears about the new American administration were exaggerated, and that the 72% of American Jews who thought otherwise, including the 900 who left my list to protest my lack of enthusiasm for the Obamas,  might be right. I keep waiting and waiting to be proven wrong. I really hate the fact that it was all so clear from the very beginning, and that we stepped right into it.

Rahm Emanuel, I was told by numerous readers, Obama’s right hand man, would never do anything anti-Israel. His father worked for the Irgun, for goodness sake! And look how many Jews Obama picked. Dennis Ross, etc. etc.

Now Israel sits with a nuclear bomb practically hanging over her head, courtesy of the biggest terrorist supporter and human rights abuser in the world, and what is Mr. Emanuel saying to the  American Israel Public Affairs Committee? The unthinkable: “Thwarting Iran’s nuclear program is conditional on progress in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.” As one of my listmembers wrote me: “The message is clear: America will bar any action against Iran unless Israel makes concessions to the Palestinian Arab thugs who seek to eviscerate all Jewish presence east of the Mediterranean.” I heard Hilary Clinton say the same. Israel will be forced into giving into Arab demands with an atom bomb hanging over her head.

Caroline Glick’s article outlines the demonic new American initiative. And who do we have to thank for this? The Israeli left who told the world “Israel wants to be raped.” And the American Jews who made believe they didn’t understand what they were doing when they voted in the present administration. My hope gets slimmer, but does not disappear. It cannot disappear. My hope is not in politicians. My hope is not in the people who got us into this mess, knowingly or unknowingly. My hope is in the God of Israel, who neither sleeps nor slumbers, and the many worthy citizens of Israel who deserve His help and guidance through these dark times. My hope is in the decency of the many lovers of Zion all over the world who understand what is happening around them, and will oppose it. Here is Caroline Glick’s clear-eyed analysis, for those of you with the stomach to understand what is coming our way. Read more >