(IsraelNN.com) The “Ohel Shem” public high school in Ramat Gan has decided to prohibit students from holding group prayers on school grounds during breaks. School officials and parents came to Jerusalem on Monday to discuss the issue with the Knesset’s Education Committee.

School officials argued that the students would be allowed to leave school grounds and attend prayer services in a nearby synagogue if they wished to do so.  Holding prayers on school grounds was a “provocation,” they said, with one official blaming the school prayers on “a group of extremist sources, who are trying to bring other students back to religion.” Other officials and parents also cited fears that outside sources were attempting to make students religious.

Religious MKs were outraged on Monday by the school’s decision that the students should pray elsewhere.

MK Yaakov Ben-Yizri (Shas) said that he himself became religious as a young man, and encourages others to become religious.  He accused the officials of attempting to delegitimize Judaism, and said “Do you think prayer is some sort of fatal virus... that will damage the secular children in the school?”  He rejected attempts to portray religious leaders as preying on the poor and weak, saying that secular Jews who decide to become religious are generally intelligent and well educated.

MK Shmuel Halpert (UTJ) expressed outrage, calling the ban on prayer “a classic case of anti-religious coercion.”  If Jewish students had been forbidden to pray in any other country, he said, the entire Knesset would have been horrified

(IsraelNN.com) Public Security Minister Avi Dichter announced on Tuesday the government's official policy regarding Jewish prayer on the site of the Holy Temple: "Jews may pray on their holiest site - but only in their heart; no lip-moving allowed." 

Dichter explained that government policy on the Mount is dictated by the wish to ensure that bloodshed not occur.  He said that Jews moving their lips in prayer on the Mount, which the Moslems have sanctified as their own, can be seen as a Jewish provocation that could lead to bloodshed.

Knesset Members Aryeh Eldad and Uri Ariel - both of the National Union party and both residents of Kfar Adumim in the Jordan Valley - had submitted a request to pray on the holy site, and Dichter's response was the result. 

Though the two had pledged not to perpetrate "group prayer" or "demonstrative prayer," both of which have been banned for Jews at the Temple Mount, Dichter said that the "outer trappings" of private prayer - namely, moving of lips - render even that forbidden.  In his response to the MKs, Dichter noted that the only option for Jews who wish to pray on their most sacred site "is to exchange thoughts with his G-d in his heart."

The New Jewish Congress responded with barely-controlled fury, issuing this statement:

"Minister Dichter's comments demonstrate his, and this government's, total disconnect from the reality of the Temple Mount, from the Jewish people, and from the government's obligations towards both. This is yet another indication that the government of Ehud Olmert has ceased to be a Jewish government altogether, having not the slightest connection with the Jewish people."

Just two weeks ago, the government did nothing when Fatah allowed Hamas to broadcast its anti-Jewish incitement directly from the Temple Mount.  The New Jewish Congress noted the irony of the juxtaposition of the loud and clear Hamas broadcasts and the banned silent Jewish prayer emanating from the same site - that of the Holy Temple. 

"In reality," the statement continued, "the Jewish people enjoy freedom of religious expression, including prayer and Torah study, everywhere - except on the Temple Mount, their only holy site."

"Minister Dichter's comments convey hatred and discrimination towards the Jewish people," the New Jewish Congress stated. "In due time, this government will be held accountable for its actions and will stand trial in a Jewish court of justice that will be established by the Jewish people."

Request for Communal Jewish Prayer
Just last week, four top Temple Mount activists and New Jewish Congress leaders - Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, Rabbi Yosef Elbaum, Prof. Hillel Weiss, and Rabbi Chaim Richman - penned a letter to Prime Minister Olmert asking for specific days on which Jews would be allowed to pray atop the Temple Mount.

The letter states that while now, Jews are degraded on the Temple Mount, "it is our position that if the stature of the Jews on the Temple Mount were to change positively, then the standing of the State of Israel would immediately improve. This would effect a positive change for the benefit and security of all its citizens."

Noting that the very day of mourning prayers for the six million Holocaust victims was also the day on which Hamas incitement to violence and death to Jews emanated from the Temple Mount - "we view events as a horrific failure of this government" - the signatories wrote, "We demand that the Government of Israel allow the Jewish people to have freedom of religious expression on the Temple Mount. Additionally, the government must establish special fixed days for Jewish communal prayer in fixed locations on the Temple Mount. This move will serve as evidence of Jewish sovereignty on the Mount."

The specific days on which the Jews should have rights to pray communally atop the Temple Mount, according to the writers, are: Passover Eve [a day on which Jews are commanded to bring the Paschal lamb - a right that Israel's High Court of Justice has recognized, in case #2955/07], Passover, Sukkot, Shavuot, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukah (first day), Israel Independence Day, Jerusalem Day, and the three fast days commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem (Tisha B'Av, Tevet 10, and Tammuz 17).  In addition, once every seven years, at the Hakhel Ceremony concluding the Shemittah (Sabbatical) year, Jews should be allowed to pray at the holy site.
 
"If you do not accept our appeal and demand," the letter concludes, "we shall understand that the chasm separating the Jewish people - whose values have remained unchanged since time immemorial - and the current composition of the Government of Israel, as reflected by its policies, is immeasurably widening and deepening with each passing day."

No response has yet been received.

Israel's 60th Coming Up

(IsraelNN.com) In honor of Israel's upcoming 60th birthday, the World Zionist Organization has sent an educational kit on the topic to hundreds of Jewish communities around the world.

The kit has various options from which schools may choose, ranging from the Shemittah year, music, HaTikvah, Tu B'Shvat, and more.  Click here for more information.

In addition, publications such as a Zionist calendar, a music anthology and a children's magazine will be published and distributed.  A variety of web conferences will also be held throughout the year, for educators as well as for students. For further details, email . 

What Happened
The State of Israel was declared on the 5th of Iyar, 5708 (May 14, 1948), when Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion stood before the People's Council - a 37-member body that had been established as an unofficial provisional legislature and government a month earlier - and read aloud the new state's Declaration of Independence. Excerpts:

"The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish People. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion, and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

"Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses... They made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving society controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

"...This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.

"The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State...

"On the 29th of November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel... This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State..."

Ben-Gurion then declared the establishment of the State of Israel, to take effect as of midnight, upon the termination of the British Mandate.  The declaration itself was made on Friday, several hours before independence actually came into effect, in order not to clash with the Sabbath.

The People's Council became Israel's Provisional Government, serving for 10 months until March 10, 1949.  It was headed by Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion, and was manned by 12 other ministers, including Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, Health and Aliyah Minister Chaim Moshe Shapira, and Religions and War Victims Minister Yehuda Leib Maimon.

Though the Declaration mentioned the new state's goal of absorbing the Ingathering of the Exiles, the ongoing Jewish struggle for the Redemption of Israel, and "with trust in the Rock of Israel," and though it appeared to many that centuries of Zionist dreams had now reached their climax - there were many Jews who were greatly disappointed. 

The hareidi-religious public looked askance at the secular leadership and reigning culture, and did not then see the new State as part of the Divine plan for Israel's Redemption.  Within the religious-Zionist sector, too, there were those who felt that a State without the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and without the Biblical areas of Hevron, Shechem, and more was merely a tease; Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook said he only joined in the general celebrations after great hesitations. 

In addition, there were those who looked at the borders of the new state, as defined by the UN Partition Resolution several months before, as totally indefensible.  They delineated three separate sections, with the east-Galilee section touching the narrow Coastal Plane section at only one point, and the Coastal Plane area touching the Negev at only one point. Half of the Galilee, all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Halutza and what is now the Jerusalem Corridor and Beit Shemesh areas were to become Arab.

However, within hours of the Declaration, seven Arab armies attacked the young Jewish state, and the war ended a year later with Israel in control of what became known as the pre-1967 borders - including the Jerusalem Corridor up to but not including the Old City, Halutza, and the entire Galilee.

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Nasrallah: We have remains of soldiers killed in Second Lebanon War

Hizbullah leader accuses Israel for sluggish pace of negotiations over fate of kidnapped soldiers, says his organization holds remains of Israelis killed on Lebanese soil during war. Secretary-general also asserts that Israel is responsible for political assassinations in Lebanon

Roee Nahmais

Latest Update:

01.03.08, 00:55 / Israel News

Hizbullah is in possession of "human remains the Israeli army left behind on Lebanese soil," Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah claimed in an interview broadcast on Lebanese television Wednesday. "We offered to return these remains within the framework of the negotiation efforts, but the Israeli side did seem to take an interest in the offer," he said.   "After the last deal we were optimistic and things seemed to be progressing positively, but we were surprised by Israel's lackadaisical attitude towards the negotiations… There was a point where we felt that the Israelis were serious, but now this is not our impression. It does not seem like they are interested in information regarding the two soldiers or other matters."   Nasrallah also charged that Israel was responsible for the recent series of political assassinations in the country.   "No one has a greater motive for these assassinations than Israel," said the secretary-general, "their ambition is to drag Hizbullah into an internal war in Lebanon. There are those inside Lebanon who blame Hizbullah for the murders and this serves Israel's agenda. Israel is trying to drive a wedge between Syria and Lebanon and these killings weaken Syria and its allies in Lebanon."   The secretary-general also attacked the United States, saying it was hurting Lebanon. "Thus, our struggle is with the Bush government and the plan it is seeking to realize in Lebanon."   'Lebanon should give opposition veto power' "The Resistance will merge with the strategic framework for national defense," said Nasrallah of his organization's future in Lebanon and further vowed that the Palestinians refugees "won't sit in Lebanon."   During the interview, Nasrallah addressed the ongoing leadership crisis in Beirut, saying that the solution "lies in a partnership through a constitutional guarantee (and) through a veto power for the opposition, which represents more than half of the Lebanese people.   "This will enable us to be partners in all aspects of running the country."   Nasrallah said his party supported Army Commander Gen. Michel Suleiman for president to replace pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud whose term ended on Nov. 23 without a successor being chosen.   But Suleiman's election, he said, ''will not solve the problem without a national unity government in which the opposition gets a veto power.''   Sometimes we don't see eye-to-eye with al-Qaeda Nasrallah acknowledged that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has accused him of allowing UN peacekeepers into Lebanon. "We are not in any competition with al-Qaeda. True, there are two points of view here – they have their way and we have ours. We dealt Israel a first defeat in 2000 and a second in 2006. We have our interests and our country. They can go ahead and disagree with us."    The firebrand leader denied recent reports that Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, had appointed Nasrallah's deputy, Naim Qassem, to replace him as the senior military commander of the organization following the latter's disappointment with his performance during the war.   "It is untrue that the Israelis destroyed out capability of firing long-range rockets. We are read to defend our country. We do not want war, but we are ready for it. If they want war – there will be war," said Nasrallah.   The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Kassim: Hizbullah won't be surprised Photo: AP

Hizbullah: We're preparing for upcoming war

Deputy of militant Shiite organization says Hizbullah training for future conflicts, just recently conducted major maneuver; Nasrallah's right-hand-man claims UNIFIL forces aware of drill

Ali Waked

Published:

11.08.07, 18:40 / Israel News

Naim Kassem, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah's deputy, described a training exercise the group conducted at the beginning of this week as preparation for the next war with Israel.   In an interview with the Arab-Israeli paper Sawt el-Balad published Thursday, Kassem said that the Shiite organization's weapons arsenal can hit all parts of Israel. He described the maneuvers as "enormous and important and they were carried out as part of our deployment so that we won't be caught by surprise.   Hizbullah supporters (Photo: AP)   "Our exercise was unrestricted and was meant to cover all of the territory of the Israeli entity and not simply to strengthen our companies," he stated.   Kassem added that UNIFIL forces detected the increased Hizbullah activity but, since no militants were carrying weapons, he claimed they were acting in accordance with UN Security Resolution 1701.   "The drill was part of our obligation to make our presence and readiness known and (to show) that we act how we deem necessary," Hizbullah's number two said.   Nasrallah supervision  On Monday, the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar reported that Hizbullah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah himself supervised the drill. He claimed the maneuvers were orchestrated in response to a "threatening Israeli reinforcements."   The drill included infantry, anti-tank missile crews, and anti-aircraft teams. Engineering units, search and rescue teams, military propagandists, and communication and logistics teams also took part.