Does anyone miss the old horsehair for wrapping etrogim? Someone is bringing back a few tons of the stuff from Israel. Enjoy the FirstOneThrough comedy sketch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDCkTqiWMfQ
Other FirstOneThrough comedy shorts on Sukkot:
Sukkot in the Office: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/anyone-working-in-october/
Occupy Sukkahs- end the 2nd day of Yom Tov: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/occupy-sukkahs-end-the-2nd-day-of-yom-tov/
Diaspora Jews have been forced to celebrate a second day of yontif for thousands of years. The frustration has been magnified as society moves to an “always-on” environment. Try to explain to your boss how you hate taking off for extra holidays.
Enjoy the comedy sketch by FirstOneThrough below:
Other FirstOneThrough comedy shorts on Sukkot:
Sukkot in the Office: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/anyone-working-in-october/
Sukkot package deliveries: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/sukkot-package-deliveries/
The Jewish holiday season is here. Jews who celebrate the holidays outside of Israel will have two days of synagogue in a row – for back-to-back weeks! The stress over missed work days will undoubtedly result in one’s mind wandering about work while fasting on Yom Kippur. They really should add another al chet just for that.
Enjoy the FirstOneThrough animated comedy short “Sukkot in the Office” on explaining to one’s boss about missing a month of work – for holidays no one has ever heard of!
Other FirstOneThrough comedy shorts on Sukkot:
Occupy Sukkahs- End the 2nd day of Yom Tov:
US President Obama again made his opinion clear that he supports Acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas’ calls for creating a Jew-free country.
President Obama told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in October 2014, that the US is against both Jews building new homes and against Jews moving into existing homes in areas that Abbas wants to keep Jew-free.
The Obama administration comments were in response to two events: planned construction of 2600 new homes in Givat Hamatos and six Jewish families moving into homes they purchased in the predominantly Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Both neighborhoods are in the eastern part of Jerusalem.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said “The US condemns the recent occupation of residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan by people whose agenda provokes tensions.” Note this Obama condemnation was not about building a new town in a remote region of the West Bank; this was about Jews buying and moving into existing houses in Jerusalem. The reason? Because it makes the Arabs angry.
Abbas has been on record that he doesn’t want any Jewish presence in a future Palestinian country. He wants Israel to keep Jews out of potential Palestinian land now so he won’t have to evict them or pay them compensation to leave later (similar to the compensation he expects Israel to pay to Arabs who left property in 1948). In July 2013, Abbas said “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands.”
Blatantly anti-Semitic statements from Palestinian leadership which call for banning Jews from the region is not new. In the Arab riots of 1936-9, Arabs effectively convinced the British to limit Jewish immigration to only 75,000 over the 1940-5 years, at the end of which time, Jews would be banned from moving to the country altogether. The Arabs and British took this action during the Holocaust in Europe, aiding in the murder of thousands of innocents who could have found refuge in their homeland, which the League of Nations had mandated 17 years earlier to be “national home for the Jewish people”. While the Jews were being killed in Europe, hundreds of thousands of Arabs from around the Middle East moved into Palestine.
Liberals could perhaps try to forgive Obama’s ignorance regarding Jews in the region – maybe he doesn’t know that:
Beyond a willful ignorance of the long and deep history of the Jews in all of Jerusalem, how could the first African-American president of the United States advocate creating Jew-free zones, knowing first-hand about racism? Would Obama stand for a housing policy that barred blacks from living in Washington, DC?
How can the US support the Arabs’ racist suggestion that would bar Jews from living in Jerusalem?
Sources:
Obama criticizing Netanyahu on new Jerusalem homes: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-02/obama-netanyahu-talks-clouded-as-u-s-slams-settlements.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-israel-ties-in-crisis-over-east-jerusalem-building-plans/
Obama criticizing Jews living in Silwan: http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-israel-ties-in-crisis-over-east-jerusalem-building-plans/
Abbas on Jew-free Palestine: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/07/30/abbas-arabs-in-israel-no-jews-in-palestine-peace-process/
1922 League of Nations Mandate: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp
1939 White Paper: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1939.asp
Yeminite Jews in Silwan: http://www.meforum.org/3281/silwan
Related First One Through articles:
800,000 Arabs moving to Palestine during the British Mandate:
The anthem of Israel is Jerusalem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wulmUGVG3jA
Short history of Palestinians+Jordanians controlling Jerusalem
October 1, 2014 will begin the 100 day-countdown to a peculiar anniversary on the world stage. January 10, 2015, is the tenth anniversary of Mahmoud Abbas winning a four-year term as President – and then never leaving.
The Palestinian Straw Man, Mahmoud Abbas
Abbas’s first four years (while actually sitting and ruling) watched him lose all control of the territories he was supposed to govern:
No matter. The world seemed to love this “moderate” leader. After his term expired in January 2009, no new elections were held.
Perhaps the United Nations would like to produce a 10th anniversary stamp to honor the accomplishment of holding onto a four-year presidential title for so many years, in the face of a public that does not want him. Perhaps a fitting image would be a combination of the UN’s 1981 Palestinian stamp, together with a scarecrow: the inalienable right to be a Palestinian President.
Sources:
Abbas election 2005: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/10/palestinian.elections/
Hamas win elections 2006: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012600372.html
Abbas demands respect music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LipAKFsUNq8
Hamas leads in polls 2014: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Hamas-Haniyeh-would-trounce-Abbas-if-elections-held-today-Palestinian-poll-says-374297
FirstOneThrough on the will of the Palestinians: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/its-the-democracy-stupid/
Gaza rocket fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel
Jihad is a war that Muslims fight against non-Muslims. It is considered a holy crusade that each Muslim must take according to the Quran.
There are different ways that jihad can be waged. According to the Quran and Hadith, it can be fought with the heart, the tongue, the hand, or the sword.
The nature of the battle changes according to place and enemy. A non-believer who lives as a dhimmi – a second-class citizen in an Islamic country – is fought with the heart, not violence. Countries or people that do no accept dhimmi status, that live in or influence lands that are considered to be “Muslim lands” are combated with force.
In modern times, the banners of jihad first appeared on the battlefields. It spread to Muslim countries and then to the center of western cities. It can now be found on college campuses. There are already news reports that it is arriving in smaller communities – perhaps like your neighborhood.
The banners will be different, depending on the makeup of your town and country. But make no mistake, the jihad is the same.
Sources:
Jihad definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jihad
FirstOneThrough on the global/local nature of Jihad: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/pick-your-jihad-pick-your-infidel/
The rise of Islamic extremism is not new. It is not a surprise. The mission of jihadists has been clearly broadcast for years – the destruction and annihilation of non-Muslim people and non-Islamic countries by Muslims and replacing them with Islamic states:
HAMAS
The Hamas Charter was drafted in 1988. It mentions the word “jihad” 11 times in the charter. Its enemy is spelled out clearly: Jews.
“In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews,
we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad.”
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it”
Jew/s/ish is mentioned 12 times in its charter. “Zion/ism/ist” is mentioned 20 times.
Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in 2006 to carry out a war against the Jews and to destroy Israel. The attacks against Israel in the summer of 2014 that continue to this day are a consistent part of its mission.
Hamas jihadist
AL QAEDA
Al Qaeda did not suddenly appear on 9/11/2001. In 1998, it stated its goal of killing all Americans:
“we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military —
is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it
in any country in which it is possible to do it”
Al Qaeda has not backed down on its pledge while the US has enlisted the world support to defeat the group.
BOKO HARAM
The kidnapping of over 200 Christian girls in Nigeria in April 2014 shocked the world. Boko Haram made no secret of its targeted enemy a few years earlier: Christians.
“The Nigerian state and Christians are our enemies
and we will be launching attacks on the Nigerian state
and its security apparatus as well as churches
until we achieve our goal of
establishing an Islamic state in place of the secular state.”
The world tweeted its support to bring back the girls and has provided support to find the attackers.
Many extremist groups continue to operate around the MENA region: Al-Shabaab, ISIS and Khorasan are only a few. Their aims are clear. Their path is jihad. Only the name of the infidel changes based on where the jihadists operate.
What is the world reaction to each of these extremist groups? Is the global community clear in its response?
A few years ago, the United Nations established an anti-terrorism unit. Its directive has noble goals for combating terrorism such as stopping the flow of funds and people to these groups. However, the committee has not been clear about who the terrorists are, as it only mentions Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as terrorist groups. These other jihadists could thereby escape sanctions.
Jihad is Jihad. Terrorism is Terrorism. The world must unite to stop it. The goal must be clear and unequivocal.
The Jihadists are.
Sources:
Hamas Charter 1988: http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html?chocaid=397
Al Qaeda 1998 fatwa: http://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm
Boko Haram 2012: http://www.osundefender.org/?p=32210
Boko Haram kidnapping girls: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/09/26/first_kidnapped_chibok_girl_released_by_boko_haram_still_traumatized.html
Al Shabaab: http://www.nctc.gov/site/groups/al_shabaab.html
ISIS February 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26366197
UN terrorism agency: http://www.un.org/en/sc/ctc/docs/presskit/2013_PressKit_EN_v3.pdf
FirstOneThrough on NY Times preference for Hamas: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/the-new-york-times-wants-the-military-to-defeat-terrorists-but-not-hamas/
Palestinian antiemetism, Holocaust denial and call for jihad: https://firstonethrough.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/what-do-you-recognize-in-the-palestinians/
Acting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas took the stage at the United Nations in September 2014. When he took the podium in 2011, 2012 and 2013, he distorted history out of all bounds as seen in the music video below.
In 2014, Abbas opted to move past simply lying about history. He chose the Jewish New Year of 5775 to repeatedly described Israel as a racist colonial occupier which was waging genocide on the Palestinian people. Hamas could not have written the speech any differently.
Abbas concluded by essentially calling for an end to negotiations with Israel.
The United States had the only immediate reaction, saying the speech “included offensive characterizations” and was “counterproductive”. Little reaction could be heard from the rest of the world.
If governments applaud complete distortions of fact and history, it abets war and undermines prospects for peace. Will the world finally call out Abbas or will it also refuse to engage with Israel?
Sources:
Abbas UN speech 2014: www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-abbas-speech-to-un/
US comment on speech: http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-slams-abbas-un-speech-as-offensive/
The Fleeing Refugees
There is a mass migration occurring in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa). People are fleeing their home countries due to turmoil and are crossing land and sea to escape to more stable societies.
The new host countries are attempting to find solutions for the flood of new people, many which do not speak the language and lack professional skills. The United Nations is working to assist these countries handle the millions of new people who need shelter, food, clothing and education for an indeterminate amount of time.
The UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is currently staffed with 8600 people handling 34 million refugees from 125 countries. The number of refugees continues to swell each day and hundreds of others die before they even reach safety. In 2014 alone, an estimated 2900 refugees died in transit. In 2014, UNHCR estimates that it will assist over 41 million people. Its biennial budget is $5.3 billion.
The Swell and Permanence of UNRWA
Meanwhile, the UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, has continued to stretch its “temporary” existence for 66 years. This distinct refugee agency for Palestinians manages virtually no refugees anymore, but instead handles services for 5.4 million children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of people who left Palestine in 1948.
The UNRWA staff stands at 30,000, or 3.5 times the staff that the rest of the world gets for actual refugees. It services only 13% of the people that UNHCR assists.
Unlike the refugees serviced by UNHCR, the Palestinians speak the language and have skills. The UNRWA infrastructure and systems have been established for decades. Yet, the UNRWA biennial budget is over $2 billion, or $370 per person serviced compared to $130 for each UNHCR refugee who needs real and immediate services and infrastructure such as shelters, medical facilities and schools.
Almost every UNRWA worker is a Palestinian. The few Europeans that occupy the senior positions and act as the face of the organization mask the reality that the organization is simply an employment agency for Palestinians that runs schools and medical facilities in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. As UNRWA writes: “Staff costs constitute the bulk of UNRWA’s budget. This is because the day to day direct delivery of services requires a large number of staff (some 29,000). Efforts to maintain parity with host authorities’ public sector salaries render the Agency’s financial sustainability susceptible to economic volatility”. (In other words, when Jordan gives its public sector unions a 5% raise, the entire world gives the Palestinian UNRWA workers a raise too.)
UNRWA continues to extend its life and grow its mission. Per the UNRWA documents, the agency “has evolved over time in response to developments in the operational context, extends at present to providing education; health; relief and social services; microfinance and emergency assistance to refugees; infrastructure and camp improvement within refugee camps; and protection.”
The mission of the agency, in short, is no longer to have temporary workers in temporary hospitals assist a defined number of people for a temporary period of time. It has become a conduit for the global community to pay generations of Palestinians to care for themselves. As Queen Rania of Jordan put it elegantly “UNRWA is a way of living.”
UNRWA Office just south of the Temple Mount
The Abuse of UNRWA
UNRWA’s evolving mission has distanced itself from core relief operations (as offered by the UNHCR) and the tone and tenor of the organization has come to mimic Palestinian society at large. For example, UNRWA has come under repeated fire for its actions related to Jews and Israel.
During Operation Protective Edge, UNRWA schools extended the meaning of their new mission of “protection”.
Long ago, UNRWA stopped being an independent relief agency, but has morphed into a Palestinian agency with its own agenda, courtesy of funding by the global community.
Ending UNRWA
The Palestinians and the global community have been co-conspirators in a permanent welfare situation for over six decades. Meanwhile, there is a true humanitarian crisis around the MENA region which is underfunded and understaffed. It is time to transition to a new paradigm for each area in which UNRWA operates.
Lebanon and Jordan: Each country has been over-run with actual refugees from Syria and Iraq. These refugees sit in squalor and receive a fraction of the aid that the Palestinian permanent residents receive. It is unfair and outrageous. The UNRWA should hand over all of its operations to the host countries of Lebanon and Jordan. The incremental cost of carrying these facilities should be carried by each country, with a UN contribution made at the country-level which declines over time. At the same time, additional monies should go towards infrastructure for the new actual refugees.
Syria: As the country is still engaged in a civil war, the UN should still maintain operations until hostilities end.
West Bank and Gaza: If the UN truly considers Palestine a country, by definition there can be no Palestinian refugees or SAPs (Stateless Arabs from Palestine) in Palestine. And whether it is or isn’t, all UNRWA facilities should be handed over to the government. The UN will likely give monies to the government as part of establishing and stabilizing the country, which would help cover the cost of the former UNRWA facilities.
The world’s focus on the descendants of Palestinians who left their homes 66 years ago has hurt millions of refugees from around the world. In today’s particularly violent and unstable situation in dozens of countries, the United Nations must transition from spending billions of dollars in welfare checks to capable young SAPs, and direct funds to the millions who are fleeing their home countries due to war and violence.
Sources:
Dying in transit: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/17/how-smugglers-bring-desperate-migrants-across-the-mediterranean-only-for-thousands-to-die-at-sea/
Syria refugee count: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php
Libya refugees: http://www.voanews.com/content/thousands-of-refugees-coming-on-boats-from-libya-italian-navy/1960126.html
UNHCR staffing: http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c2.html
UNHCR budget: http://www.unhcr.org/523ab6bd9.html
UNRWA: http://www.unrwa.org/resources
UNRWA budget and mission: http://www.unhcr.org/523ab6bd9.html
Queen Rania on UNRWA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N1mfw4PKg4
Missiles in UNRWA schools: http://www.timesofisrael.com/rockets-found-in-unrwa-school-for-third-time/
Related First One Through articles:
Palestinian “Refugees” or “SAPs”
Delivery of the Fictional Palestinian Keys
“Please Sir, May I have Some More?”
On the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, Jews have a tradition of eating fruit (usually an apple) dipped in honey. People eat the tasty combination and pray for a sweet new year. The meaning of the apple-and-honey combination extends deeper into the physical land of Israel and human behavior.
The Bible uses the expression “a land flowing with milk and honey” for the first time in Exodus 3:8, when God tells Moses at the burning bush that he will bring the Jews to a “good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey”. The biblical commentator Ramban (Nachmanides b.1194-d.1270) said that the phrase has nothing to do with milk or honey. “Milk and honey” refers to the nectar of the fruit, and a land “flowing with milk and honey” is an expression used for a particularly fertile land that could produce abundant and juicy fruit.
The saying is used several times in the bible, each time meant to convey the richness of the land of Israel. In some cases, the phrase is paired with a threat or caveat. In Exodus 33:3-4, God uses the expression after the sin of the Golden Calf:
“Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you,
because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.
When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn.”
Years later, when the spies returned from scouting the land as the people of Israel prepared to enter it, the spies paired the richness of the land with a warning in Numbers 15:27-28:
“it is also flowing with milk and honey and here is its fruit,
however, the people who dwell in the land are fierce.”
The promised land is identified as rich and fertile, but there are obstacles to getting it. God warns the Jews that their own behavior could keep them from reaching the land. Conversely, the spies described how other people may try to keep them out of the land. God’s words of warning direct the people to improve themselves or risk never reaching Israel; the spies caution that enemies will fight them for the land. God tells people to look inward; the spies, outward.
As Jews around the world welcome in the new year, they consider more than just the sweetness of the foods they eat. The honey dripping from the apple is a reflection of the fertility of the land of Israel. To continue to merit that promised land, Jews must consider and always improve upon their own behavior. Internalizing the blessings of Israel and the necessity to behave properly will fortify the people to defeat its enemies.
Let the New Year of 5775 be a year full of blessing for the land and people of Israel.
First One Through 