The Al-Aqsa Mosque Imam Declares War on Israel

                                               Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount
                                                                                                          

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

Mosque of Omar or Dome of the Rock

War has been declared last week  by Imam Raed al Danna against Israel.  He's an Imam from East Jerusalem at the Al Aqsa Mosque.  He called all the surrounding Muslim nations to destroy Israel.  This Imam announced this while visiting in Milan, Italy at a Muslim conference.  He emphasized Egypt and Jordan, nations that have peace pacts with Israel to liberate the land from the Jews.  He is waiting for a legion of conquerors to take over Israel.   The leadership of this mosque had been in the hands of Muhammad Ahmad Hussein,  who was expected to avoid controversy and self-aggrandizement.  Now he serves as the 7th and current Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.The appointment came from Abbas.  

  

On January 9, 2011, while addressing a crowd at an event marking the 47th anniversary of the founding of Fatah, Hussein quoted a controversial hadith (saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), stating: "The Hour will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: O Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."  Hadiths supposedly have been written by people after Mohammad's death.  That could be why this is controversial.  This one makes very good anti-Semitic propaganda used to instigate war.  

The site has been a place of unrest lately. Just before Passover on Monday April 14th,   the Israeli police had to limit  attendance at Al-Aqsa because of the fear of more violence after clashes happening over the weekend.  Security measures taken are that the men under 50 couldn't attend.  Neither could any women until a security assessment of the possibility  of more disturbances had been taken.  What can they expect after this announcement by the head Imam?  5 people were arrested on Sunday during a clash.  Muslim rioters threw stones and many Molotov cocktails.  Police officers responded with stun grenades.  Members of Hamas were were in the crowd, probably leading the protesters.  They had to pick Passover to riot!  During major Jewish holidays, when Muslims prefer to attack, the military blocks the road to Israel from Judea-Samaria for 48 hours from midnight.  Entry would be permitted only to medical, humanitarian and exceptional cases.  

Jews are getting anxious to be able to pray at the holy site where the Temple once stood, but cannot get near it or be seen moving their body back and forth while standing in prayer by the Muslim guards.  Moshe Dayan in 1967 gave permission to rule on the site to the Muslim Imam.

"“We have returned to all that is holy in our land. We have returned never to be parted from it again.” 

–Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, upon reaching the Western Wall  

However, "Chief Rabbinate Council reminded the public that "in view of the fact that the holiness of the area never ceases, it is forbidden to ascend the Temple Mount until the Temple is built.  So the Muslims don't allow Jews there and our rabbis say it's not for us at this time as a place to pray.  That should keep things peaceful, but many Jews are not aware of this fact and try to get close, and the Muslims lie in wait for it to happen.  

The Muslims consider the Al-Aqsa Mosque as the "Farthest Mosque" mentioned in the Koran.  It infers this is in Jerusalem, but never mentions the word, Jerusalem.  This couldn't be since Mohammad, who was the author of the Koran, died in 632 and the mosque was built in the year 705 CE by the Umayyads who ruled in Palestine.  The mosque lies along the southern wall of Haram al-Sharif.  It has become the 3rd holiest site in Islam and is in the Old City of Jerusalem. This has a silver dome.   It sits on the same site with the Dome of the Rock or "Noble Sanctuary."

Muslims believe that Muhammad was transported from their Sacred Mosque in Mecca to al-Aqsa during the Night Journey on a flying horse named Buraq.

 Their tradition is that Muhammad led prayers towards this site until the 17th month after the emigration, when Allah directed him to turn towards the Kaaba.  Our Jewish tradition suggests that the change was due to his frustration with Arabian Jews who refused his attempts to convert them to Islam, his new religion.

 This site is called the Temple Mount on Mount Moriah, the holiest site in Jerusalem, the place where the Jewish Temple stood before being destroyed by the Romans in  70 CE, which was the 2nd time the original Temple had been restored.  The First Temple was built by King Solomon, ruler of Israel, who lived from 961 to 920 BCE, dedicated to G-d and as a place to keep the Ark-10 Commandments.  The Assyrians attacked and carted away Jews by 722 BCE after destroying the Temple in 721 BCE.  The Babylonians then attacked Judah in 597 and 586.  Cyrus of Persia (today's Iran)  freed them and told them to go back home and rebuild their Temple which they did.  Herod was appointed king of Judah by the Romans  after he attacked and captured Jerusalem in 37 with the Roman army and he renovated the Temple, but the Romans destroyed it when they seized Jerusalem in 70 CE.

It seems to be the custom of Islamists to build mosques over others' religious sites as a show of ownership.  The Dome of the Rock, otherwise called the Mosque of Omar, is the one with the beautiful golden dome that stands out in Jerusalem.  It was also built in the center of the Jewish Temple area called al-Harim ash Sherif by Caliph Abd al-Malik in about 738.  He had it built to replace the temporary building set up by Caliph Omar 100 years earlier.  It is situated on the traditional site of Mt. Moriah, too.

So Israel has many mosques.  There is freedom of religion for the 1.7 million Muslim citizens of Israel.  One of these days the 3rd Temple will be built.  The location is not known.

Update: 5/8/14:  The Muslim Waqf members saw a 16 yr old Jew's lips move and arrested him for praying.  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/180358#.U2uclIFdU8o

Resource:  http://www.memritv.org/embedded_player/index.php?clip_id=4252 declaring war on Israel
http://midnightwatcher.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/imam-from-jerusalems-al-aqsa-mosque-calls-upon-surrounding-muslim-nations-to-destroy-israel/
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Mosque
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ahmad_Hussein
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/1016102
http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/ReunificationJerusalem.asp
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/abdulmuhd/amuhd/563/muhammad-claims-to-jerusalem-is-a-myth/

  

Kerry's Pressure on Netanyahu to Make Concessions

Nadene Goldfoot                                                    

Advising Israel is the USA's role in assisting Israel to achieve a peace decree with the Palestinians, but they have overstepped their position by becoming a bully.  Israel is being told that they must make many concessions while not asking for much at all from the Palestinians.  They are not acting as mediators.  They haven't even displayed evidence of understanding what part of land belongs to Israel since 1967's attack of all the Arab nations against Israel.

Israel is a country that is independent from the USA or any other country.  It is quite alone as the only Jewish state in  a world made up mostly of 33.4% of Christians and 22.7% of Muslims.  Jews, of which number about 14 million in the world, make up only about 0.02% of the world's religions.  6 million Jews live in Israel while 1.7 million Arabs, a mixture of Christian and Muslim live there also.  There happens to be 1,800-2,200 million Christians and at least 1,570 million Muslims. There are also 13.8 % Hindus and  6.8 %Buddhists.  11.7 % people are non religious with another 11.6 % classified as "other" of which Jews must have been included.

Because of this reason, and from having lost 6 million during the 1940-1945  Holocaust in WWII which reduced their small size to an even smaller one, and religious reasons, Jew have found themselves as the persecuted, the scapegoat of problems in the world.  This small group have also been in known to be the smartest, making others quite jealous, coveting what they have.

Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel was not to be bullied, however.  He told Ronald Reagan, US President, that some people called the land west of the Jordan River "The West Bank," but that it had always been called from the beginning of time "Judea and Samaria." and was only called this new name by the King of Jordan when he took it illegally in 1948.  He said, "this simple historic truth will never change. There are cynics who deride history.  They may continue their derision as they wish, but I will stand by the truth."    He went on to tell the history.  "The truth is that millennia ago there was a Jewish kingdom of Judea and Samaria where our kings knelt to G-d, where our prophets brought forth the vision of eternal peace, where we developed a rather rich civilization which we took with us, in our hearts and in our minds, on our long global trek over 18 centuries, and with it, we came back home."

What Kerry proposed or threatens Netanyahu with has been steps to harm Israel such as releasing murderers from prison.  Giving up land is harmful.  Israel has already lost 80% of the promised land from the League of Nations to the Muslims and cannot afford to lose any of its remaining 20% to them.

The purpose of having Israel in the first place was to regain our former land which had been lying fallow for the past 2,000 years.  The reason Jews needed it was that they had been suffering from the Romans' invasion all this time as the smallest religious group and needed their own homeland.

The Palestinians were not all people native to the land and never had their own state of Palestine before.  They were immigrants who were looking for jobs when Russian Jews had returned to Eretz Israel in the 1880's.  They called themselves Syrian Arabs since so many had come from Syria.  The only time they were thinking of having their own state was after 1967 when all the Arab states again attacked Israel and lost once again.  This is simply a new tactic to gain land and drive out the Jews as the charter of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas adhere to and are carrying out.

This US administration is destroying the role of a big brother who once voted for Israel's acceptance into the nations of the world in the UN on May 14, 1948 through the good will of Harry S. Truman.  Now it is against the only democratic state in the Middle East who  stands for all the good things religions should do.

Netanyahu and his administrators will have to remember that Begin was brave enough to tell Ronald Reagan how far he could go with Israel.  He can likewise tell Obama. " Israel is not the US's vassal state, territory or serf that has to cower before the feudal overlord."

Resource: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/can-israel-say-us-yes-can/?utm_source=Breaking+Israel+News&utm_campaign=cf77090793-BIN+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b6d3627f72-cf77090793-83518689
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/begin.html
http://www.humanevents.com/2014/01/17/john-kerry-jihad-coddler/

Cat Calls From Hamas: How They View Judaism

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                            

Hamas' Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs, Abdallah Jarbu, doesn't think much of Judaism at all. Back in 2010, he proclaimed that Jews suffer from a mental disorder, because they are thieves and aggressors...in fact, they are foreign bacteria, a microbe unparalleled in the world."  He is praying that Allah would "annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience."  Then he added that he condemns "whoever supports sitting down with them and whoever believes that they are human beings."

By saying all this, isn't he condemning his own religion of Islam?  Where in the Koran does it call the "People of the Book" such vile things?   Mostly, Jews were to be respected for being who they were.  Moses is a prophet to Muslims.  So are others in our history.

What sounds like sour grapes to me should be examined.

Thieves?  Jews have less criminal behavior than anyone in cities in the USA.  Thievery is condemned in our Torah.  Coveting is condemned, which leads to thievery.  We are hard workers and our estimation of a MAN is someone who takes care of his family with honor.  Sorry, Abdallah, we're not known to be thieves.  Of course he is aiming at the problems of Israel versus Palestine and intimating that we have stolen Palestine from them.   I have to retort that it is he who is suffering from a mental disorder that I've already written about; delusion.  He does not understand nor want to understand the history of the Ottoman Empire and WWI, and Britain and France's role in holding the mandates nor what the outcomes were.  He doesn't understand a thing about his own people, the Syrian-Palestinians and their history, nor Feisal and Abdullah's part in all this.  .  He's may be a smart guy but he's been so brainwashed that he believes this false story.

Aggressors?  Well, Abdallah, we are people of the Middle East after all. We share a lot of genes with them.   We have the genes for being leaders and leaders might be viewed as being aggressors.  We're not shy people.  We see something that should be done and we know how to organize and do it.  Is that a bad characteristic?  It's something that gets things accomplished.  You might say this of all leaders.  King David and King Solomon could have been called aggressors.  Our aggressiveness is softened by following the 10 Commandments.  We're not cruel people. Without the Torah we might be like others. That keeps us in check.

Filthy people?  Do you know what a mikva is?  It's like the Christian baptism, a free running water-hole where women go every month, where men go every week before Shabbat.  It's water, our friend. We've been using the mikva ever since Moses.  We were dunking people in free running water before others thought of washing.  Our tradition is to wash our hands before eating.  In the diaspora (outside of Israel) we were accused of poisoning people because we had less sickness than others in times of something that came along like the flu or scarlet fever or whatever was catching.  That's because we practiced cleaner habits than others.    We have laws-rules about keeping our homes clean, about what to do in case of infection and viruses and diseases written right in our Torah by Moses.  Every year we do a giant spring cleaning for Passover, something Americans have adopted, not knowing where the tradition came from.  We invented cleanliness, and I know that our neighbors, the Syrians, follow the same ideas, but I don't know about the rest of the Middle East.  Many Syrians are probably walking around with Jewish genes as we were one giant playground way back in King David's day.  People got mixed back then and even recently.  Or possibly being nearby and sharing some friendship, as Syrians used to do with Jews caused them to copy some of our traditions.  That was the whole idea when we came along-to be the light.

Unparalleled in the world?  We are of course not foreign bacteria or microbes, but we are the remnant of a once great nation and people, down to being 0.02% of the world's population now.  We have more Nobel prizes than any other people.  Our IQ has been found to be higher than others.  The average world IQ is 100.  Ours is 106.  We have Einstein, who was an Ashkenazi Jew.  We invent wonderful medical advances and share it with the world.  The Ottoman Empire's leaders invited us back from eastern Europe to take care of their finances.  They couldn't handle it.  When they lost us, they went bankrupt.  We invented the idea of checks, loaning money, etc. from being on the Silk Road and trading.  No other people have been treated as badly as we have been, either, and yet we survive.  We are survivors, Abdallah.  It is written that those countries that help us shall be rewarded and those that try to destroy us will be destroyed instead.  You don't have to believe it, but the statement is there, for we are the Chosen People.  People have never understood that statement like we have, but it means that we were to light the way and are carrying the responsibility for doing so.  It's not meant to be that we are better than others.  We are people, not g-ds.

Religion?  We only happen to be the originators of believing in one G-d.  We started monotheism, that's all.  Did you forget about Abraham and Moses already?  We have held onto our religion for 4,000 years.  How long have Muslims been at it?  Islam has been going on for only about 1,400 years.  Mohammad died in 632 CE.  You have forgotten that Abraham, who was alive in the 2nd millennium BCE, had a family that produced Isaac and Jacob who were the ancestors of Moses.  Ishmael and Esau were from this family but did not go along with monotheism, and their people had to wait for Mohammad.  So don't ever think we are not religious people.  We've been hit with everything humans can throw at us to divert our relationship with G-d:  the Romans and Jesus' death, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust and eternal anti-Semitism and still we hold onto our belief and traditions.  You should be so lucky to say the same one day.

Conscience?   Everything in Judaism has developed in us a conscience so strong that we all suffer from guilt complexes if we don't do the right thing. Haven't you ever read the book, Portnoy's Complaint?   We mothers have striven to develop a conscience in our children.  We strive to do a mitzva (good deed) constantly.  Israelis are known for their outer exterior as being tough, but inside, they have a huge conscience and that exterior cracks if need be.  I"ve seen it, and I myself am Jewish.  We were taught the laws of Kashrut (keeping kosher) that develops a conscience.  We don't even eat meat and milk at the same meal because it makes us think of that poor mother cow who will know that at the moment we drink her milk we are eating her child.  I get the picture in my mind every time this comes up.  We didn't go into Gaza and aim at all the people, did we.  No, we aimed at the sites where the missiles, rockets and mortars were coming from.

It was you without the conscience who stuck them amidst people and in schools,  trying to blame us as being terrible people, but we know your ways.  We even put our own IDF soldiers in harms way rather than harm your women and children.  We don't teach or expect our people to become suicide bombers, either.  In Israel, we have bomb shelters in every building.  In Syria, such a thing is unknown.  How about the rest of the Middle East?  Are they trying to protect their people like Israel is trying to protect theirs?  Who has a machine that can catch missiles and stop them before they explode?  Israel does.  You might just want it to happen in order to blame the aggressors.  Oh yes, who has been raining down rockets, missiles and mortars on southern Israel since 2001?  You have.  You are the aggressors who want our land.  You have no conscience.

You have given your own religion a bad name by your behavior.  Mohammad should be having a lot of oy, oy, oys right now, for people are only becoming atheistic seeing what religion is doing to our planet and what can happen from Iran's ability to get the A bomb.  You are the thieves who are trying to create a country  out of our legal one since you covet the idea, but came from all the surrounding states in the first place.  I swear, if you were given the land right now you couldn't keep it up.  You have no know-how.  You're just programmed to hate.   Another country such as Syria would take it over in a matter of months anyway.  Such is the story of the Middle East.  It's been a battleground since the very beginning of the world. When the Messiah comes and peace happens, then we'll know that people have changed for the better.

Hamas's exclamation about Jews was  brought out in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, The Devil That Never Dies. which was reviewed by Professor Glenn C. Altschuler from Cornell University.  His review was printed in the Sunday Oregonian.  Altschuler gave a bad review for Goldhagen's writing technique but realized he was reading about some mighty true facts about the anti-Semitism that has entered our world again and should be alarmed about.  I note that whenever someone bashes Jews, they call us just what they themselves are guilty of doing, and in this way try to throw the mantle onto us.  Usually it works.  People are so gullible and ready to join the pack of Jew-hating, that it works.

 It takes a strong-minded individual who thinks for himself and seeks out facts to be untouched by such lies and defend Jews when they themselves are not Jewish.  I"m wondering if we have such people today, or have those special gifted people all died off.  I hope not.  However, looking at today's universities, I doubt it very much.  They have become a bastion of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism.

 I've read that the Messiah hoped for by all 3 religions might have already been born, someone from the Middle East, a descendant of King David.  He should be in his 30's by now.  Who knows?  Maybe there's someone out there with thoughts of how to bring people to their senses.  Our idea of a Messiah is a living man, a leader, probably an aggressive person, somebody that can sell his message to people.

Resource:  Oregonian newspaper, 11/10/13, page E5, Books; A sobering look at the rise of anti-Semitism by Glenn C. Altschuler
My review on the reviewer and the book and statements.
Abraham's Children:  Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine

Who Was Moses and Why Do Jews Follow Him and Not Jesus or Mohammad?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

*Abraham, an Ibri (Hebrew, and meaning from the other side)  whose family  migrated  from the other side (east ) of the Euphrates River   was born in Ur, now in Iraq, and was the son of Terah, an Idol maker.  One day Abraham told his father his views that idols were just what they made, statues made of clay and had no higher power.  They were not gods.  Terah's business was ruined with this revelation and they left town to live by themselves as there was too much pressure in Ur to go along with this belief.    Behind all these ideas was G-d leading Abraham along and into a higher state of consciousness.  They wound up in nearby Canaan, a land of pagan idolaters similar to Ur, for that was what most people were in the days in the 2nd millennium BCE.  This means 2,000 years before Jesus was born.

(Euphrates: From the Caucasus Mtns of Armenia, it flows southwesterly across east-central Turkey, then generally southeast through Syria and Iraq, ending in the waters of the Persian Gulf. It joins with the Tigris in southern Iraq, and from that junction continues on as the Shatt al Arab. Overall it's (2,235 miles) (3,596 km) in length, and is certainly the longest river in the Middle East. Historically important in ancient history, the once great city of Babylon stood on its banks.)

Abraham's son was Isaac, born to him by his wife, Sarah.  Their grandson was Jacob.  Jacob took his household of 70 people during a famine into Egypt.  They stayed a little too long, and their numbers came to the attention of a population counter.  They were afraid of their becoming a majority group, and so took them all as slaves to work on the Pharaoh's building projects of pyramids and storage cities. Anti-Semitism started right here.  The Hebrews were too dangerous to keep and too important to lose. The Bible mentions that they were used as workers on these storage cities.

A new Pharaoh decided to kill off the Hebrews.    If a girl was born she would live, but the boys were to be killed. This would force the females to blend into Egypt's population. The pharaoh had a 2nd reason to decide on infanticide.  His astrologer told him that the savior of the Jews was about to be born, so he ordered all boys to be killed for that reason.    However, the midwives  wouldn't do it.  This went on until the Pharaoh came up with another ruling.  All boys born of the Hebrews were to be thrown into the Nile River.

 Amram and Jochebed, his aunt, both from the tribe of Levi,  were expecting a child and were wondering how they would keep it alive if it were a boy.  After concealing him for 3 months, she had to do something drastic for the edict still was in effect.  She put him in a wicker basket smearing with clay and pitch and put her boy into it and then put it in the river among the reeds growing along  the bank.  His older sister, Mirium watched for his safety at a distance so she could report back to her parents.

The Pharaoh's daughter found the baby boy as she and her maidens were walking along the river.  She took the baby and raised him as her own child, but she saw he was one of the Hebrew boys.  She allowed a Hebrew wet nurse to come and allow him to suckle, and it was in reality his own mother, Jochebed.  The princess named him "Moses", meaning "I drew him out of the water." He grew up in the household as a prince.

The next scene is that of Moses as an adult witnessing for the first time an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave, and it made him so angry that he struck down the taskmaster for being so cruel.  Evidently he accidentally killed him, so hid his body in the sand.  The next day he witnessed two Hebrews fighting each other and tried to break them up, and they in turn let Moses know that they witnessed him killing the taskmaster.  Now he was worried, as even then in Egypt you couldn't get away with that.  He found out that the Pharaoh had been advised about his deed, and so he decided that he had to leave Egypt.  He fled to Midian.

7 daughters of a religious Midianite man, a priest,   found him by a well just at the time they were being threatened by some shepherds with their sheep who were trying to drive the girls away. Moses roused himself just in time to come to their defense.  Moses wound up being given the eldest daughter, Zipporah for a wife.  His 1st son was named Gershom.  His 2nd was Eliezer.

One day when he was with his father in law's  sheep, he saw a bush on fire but not burning down.  Out of it came G-d's voice directing him to return to Egypt and go to the present Pharaoh and ask for the release of his people.  When asking who was sending him, the answer was, "I shall be as I shall be."

So went Moses and after much pleading, was able to take the 600,000 out of Egypt.  His older brother, Aaron, did the speaking for him as he had a speech impediment.  Then he proceeded along the way that took him 40 years to write the rules of future living for this people.  He wrote the 10 commandments first, but that was followed by much more which we call today, "The 5 books of Moses."

 One of the 12 tribes was Judah, and was the largest.  It survived the downfall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE when 10 of the 12 tribes were led into captivity.  This is why we are called Jewish and our faith is called Judaism and our language is Hebrew and our land was renamed "Israel," for the first state which was ruled by King Saul.

Many Jews own a 2 volume set of the 5 books called the Haftorahs.  There's a lot of information there to learn and to study.  Our main emphasis is about behavior being fair with others in all matters.  We believe in life, "L' chaim!"  We do not get concerned about what happens to us when we die.  That's in G-ds hands anyway, but we do believe in an afterlife, in a world to come (Olam haba) where man is judged and where his soul continues to flourish.  The belief is that all Israel has a share in the world to come" (Mishna Sanhaedrin 11:1).   Our Jewish tradition cherishes life.  The Torah was given to Israel so that "you shall live" by the teachings and not die through them.  Death to us has no virtue since "The dead cannot praise the Lord...."

 The first direction was to believe in one G-d only.  We feel that we are all the sons and daughters of the one G-d, that we have this spark within us.  That's why we do not worship Jesus or even Mohammad.  To us they remain as men, which even the Muslims agree with us.  It is the basis of our religion.  The Jewish concept of G-d rejects any compromise with the spirituality of G-d.  The notion of man becoming G-d or G-d assuming the form of man was repugnant to the Jewish religious spirit.  They were to see this happening over and over in the Greek and Roman civilizations.  The Jewish mind and faith cannot accept the notion of the infinite Divine reducing Himself to a finite mortal.

We were not to make representations of G-d in an image,  This was forbidden to us, which even Abraham realized before Moses's teachings.  The 2nd Commandments that "You shall not make for yourself a sculptued image...you shall not bow down to them nor serve them" was understood as even for people who didn't really believe that the image was G-d but was only a symbol representing G-d.  The sin of the Golden calf, when Aaron allowed the children of Israel to think that the calf was G-d when Moses had left the group to climb Mt. Sinai was not allowed just because they had demanded a visual image of G-d, Moses's unseen belief in a higher power.

 Moses was 80 years old when he started the 40 year trek, and died at age 120.  Moses had handed the mantle of leadership over to Joshua.  He died but outside of the Holy Land.  His burial place is unknown so as not to start any worship of him.  Moses is accepted as the author of the Pentateuch (5 Books of Moses) and the creator of Judaism, thereby the father of monotheism other than Abraham.  Other writings such as the Midrash and late Aggadah tell of many legends about him.  Other works were pseudepigraphically ascribed to him.

It is not easy to become Jewish.  We regard ourselves as being of one family, extended in most cases.  However, it has been said that one can find a common ancestor if you go back 5 generations between a husband and a wife.  Membership is through the mother, but not limited to just this way.  A convert is looked upon as adopted into it and becomes a partner in faith and with the people of Israel, assuming burdens and tribulation along with sharing in its heritage and its privileges.  They are assuming the spiritual mission of the future by tying themselves to our collective past.  When the central sanctuary in Jerusalem was built, Jews saw it as a "House of Prayer for all peoples" (Isaiah 56: 7) (Kings I 8:41-43.)  We come in all colors of skin.  Our kinship is a mystical experience more than a rationally definable one.  Jews are a conundrum.  We are a faith, a religion as well as a nation.    So we use the term people.  We are a people.

While many religions have fallen by the wayside along with their cultures and people, we  come out of the past intact. In fact, ancient prophecies by the well known prophets are now coming true, especially with the creation of Israel and the ingathering of the Jewish people.   We have maintained our beliefs but have kept up with the present, not to be thought of as "the old."  I for one am so proud to have had such stubborn ancestors who stood by their beliefs in a religion so rightous, that we do not have the history of forcing anyone to believe as we do, but have tried to upgrade whatever we have found that we were living in; like our environment, social life, everyone's lives, not just our own.  For Tikkun olam, repairing the world, is always on our minds, not destroying it.

Resource: Tanakh, Stone Edition, Exodus 1
*To Be a Jews by Rabbi Hayim Halaevy Donin-
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-moses-became-author-of-torah.html

Who Were the Jews of Ukraine? Khazars?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                            

                                                                                                   Kiev, Russia
Jews from Judah have lived in the Balkans, in the Caucasus including Georgia, along the northern shores of the Black Sea and in other areas of eastern Europe since Roman days, probably even before 70 CE when Jerusalem fell and people were either slaughtered or taken as captives destined to be slaves.  Jews have been traders for ages as they lived in the crossroads of civilization.  There were large Jewish communities there before the Khazar empire was established.  Romans and Byzantines took control over ancient Greek colonies, and the Crimean Jews began to trade often with the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.  Later, most of the Crimea became part of the Khazarian empire.  The descendants of the early Jewish populations of the Crimea and Caucasus could have influenced the decision of the Khazars to convert to Judaism.  It was the Crimean Jews that came into direct contact with the Khazars.

Southern Russia back in the 600's was known as Khazaria.  They were Turkic horsemen from the steppes of central Asia, or the mountains of the Urals or Caucasus who believed in shamanism, the worship of spirits,  and the sky,  and lived as nomads. Trees were sacred.  They came to settle down as the centuries went by and a Kagan (king), named Bulan,  chose Judaism for the royal house and converted.  Only the king, leaders and members of the upper class converted to Judaism as reported in 903, by a Persian historian named Muhammad ibn Rustah, in Kitab A'laq an-Nafisa. He said that Judaism later spread to the general populace.   His people were able to choose for themselves whether they wanted to be Christians, Muslims or Jews as everyone was replacing their former Tengri beliefs.  It's thought that he chose Judaism as it was more politically correct at that time since then he didn't have to side with the many Muslims against Christians in trading.  There  was no anti-Semitism and the people were very liberal in Khazaria.

After the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity, conversion to Judaism became prohibited. "Many Greek and Roman women married Jewish men before conversion to Judaism was outlawed by the Roman Empire, and many of the Southern European ancestral lines in Ashkenazic families come from these marriages." In 315, Emperor Constantine I issued the first Roman edict forbidding Jews from seeking converts.  No wonder it isn't our thing to do.  Even today we do not  practice this.  The punishment for doing so was that property would be taken away from  Jews caught assisting anyone to convert.  However, Judaizing movements did continue to spring up in many lands.   Bulgaria proselytes converted others to Judaism in the 800's.  There were even some Christian clergy members who converted.

The Byzantine Empire from 324-638 had strong anti-Jewish policies where they forced many Jews to leave for less dangerous places such as Khazaria.  Some of their emperors' policies were of forced baptism.  By 632, the emperor Heraclius said that all Jews must convert to Christianity.  Emperor Leo in  722 had the same policy.  Jews could not live in that empire.

Everyone referred to The Khazars as Turks.  They were described as having blue eyes, light or white skin and reddish hair.  Other Turkish tribes also had red hair.  Other writers said they had black hair and that there were black Khazars and white Khazars, light and dark skinned.  In an excavation of burial mounds from the 10th to 12 centuries, archaeologists found Khazars belonging to the Slavic people while others were short-skulled Europeans.  Only a few Mongolian types were found.  Another theory was that they originated from Khorasan which was eastern Persia who united with the Sabirs in the 6th century.  One claim is that they are related to the Georgians and Armenians.  Some of the Turkic people believe that they descended from Noah through Japheth and son Gomer to Togarmah who had 10 sons and that the Khazars were descendants of the 7th son.  According to what I find in the Bible, Noah leads right from Shem to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and he leads to Moses and Aaron.
                                                                     

Khazaria was on the Silk Road and a lot of trading with everyone, east and west, went on.  Jews came to live in Khazaria from other places who had been persecuted and found a haven there. Being it was a trading center, people of all types lived there.   Ancient Russian chronicles say that some Jews from Khazaria visited Vladimir, the prince of Kiev, which became the capital of Ukraine, to try to convert him to Judaism in 986.  Jews were already living in Kiev by then.  It lay on the River Dnieper which was the commercial crossroads of Western Europe and the Orient which attracted Jewish traders in the 8th century.  Jewish merchants from the West called Radanites were traders in the city and were referred to in Hebrew as "goers to Russia."

Khazaria was a large empire with many large Jewish settlements.  At its maximum size, it took in the northern Caucasus and the Volga delta, and went as far east as the steppes of Khwarizm/Khorezm and as far west as Kiev. Between 730 and 750, the city of Atil, which was serving only as a royal camp, became the 3rd and final capital of the Khazar Empire. Here the kagan lived with the bek, members of the army, 4,000 attendants and "pure-bred Khazars.  A brick wall surrounded the city.  This could have been a Jewish camp.  Khazaran-Atil sat on the lower Volga near the Caspian Sea in eastern Khazaria and was the most important trading center of the empire and also was the center of religion and government.  It had many markets and baths.  People of all 3 religions lived here in harmony!  Iranians and Khwarizms, Muslims lived in the eastern half of the city which was known as Khazaran.  30 mosques were in the capital in the 920's.  There were still pagans who lived here.  In the 920's the ruler was Khaz, a Muslim.

  Starting in the 10th century the empire started to get smaller and eventually ended.  In the year 930, Kiev was under Khazarian rule.  Two Jewish suburbs of Kiev were Kozary and Zhidove.  There were riots that broke out on the the death of Prince Svyatopolk in 1113 when the people attacked Jewish homes and burned them down.

In comparing Ashkenazis to Sephardim,
1. Ashkenazi showed twice the amount of R1a haplogroup DNA than Sephardim-10:5. and is very common throughout Europe and western Eurasia.
2.  J1, called the Cohen gene,  was almost even with a few more in Sephardim-22:19. found in Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Kurds, higher % in Iran and Iraq, carried by traders into Europe, central Asia, India, Pakistan
3. E showed up twice as much in Ashkenazim-20.5:9 but is found in the Middle East.
4. Q showed Ashkenazim being more prominent-5:2. found in northern and central Asian population, native Americans and 5% of Jews have this haplogroup.
5. Neither showed any N which was 0:0, found in northern Eurasia in Finns, Russians and Hungarians.  It's a common line in western Siberia.

The Jews tested today from Ukraine for their DNA most likely are showing genes inherited from Khazaria along with genes from Judea and Israel itself besides other possibilities.  Not all Ashkenazi Jews originated from Khazaria from the royal house that were converts.  Many Jews had lived in this empire from all sorts of other places.  It is possible that Jews whose ancestors had resided in Ukraine back to the 600's could have have Khazarian ancestors.  There are Jews whose haplogroup is an R1a1 who might show this distinction as this haplogroup is thought to come from southern Russia.    At one time I thought my father's line of Q1b1a could be the royal descendants, but that theory has been discarded even though we are connected to other Q'a who are the native Americans and we both originated from Mongolia, Siberia and parts of  Turkey and make up only 5% of today's Jews. My grandfather came from Lithuania.   Whatever ancestors reside in the Jews from Ukraine, they have turned out to be some of the most intelligent people with great leadership skills such as Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meier and Yitzhak Rabin, former prime ministers of Israel.    A Jew from Ukraine should feel most proud of his rich heritage.

Resource: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11117.html
The Jews of Khazaria, 2nd edition, by Kevin Alan Brook
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_European_populations
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html
http://www.khazaria.com/

From former Governor Mike Huckabee to President of the United State, Barack Obama on his upcoming visit to Israel.  

Well, first let me say thanks for the wonderful frank reminder of Gush Katif. (a group of Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip deliberately destroyed by Arik Sharon while giving all of Gaza to the Arabs in a self-serving gesture of insanity for which Sharon was visited with a devastating stroke and now remains maintained, for some questionable reason, in a permanent vegetative state – jsk)

It has been a delight getting to share a fellowship with you, to share a mutual passion with you, for the protection of the security of Israel. And I was asked earlier, “Why would a Goy, a Christian, be interested in Israel?” Sometimes I feel that my passion for the goodness of Israel, maybe exceeds even my Jewish friends – and I tell people, I say, “you have to understand – It is entirely possible to be Jewish and not have a complete relationship to Christians – but it is impossible to be Christian and not have a complete relationship with Judaism – because it is in fact the foundation upon which every Christian believes and every Christian understands – that Israel is G-d’s Chosen Land! And we recognize that, and respect it and understand that the Nations Who Bless Israel Will Be Blessed And Those Who Curse Israel Will Be Cursed!

My first trip to Israel was exactly forty years ago this year, when in July 1973, just a couple of months before the Yom Kippur war, I made my first trip to Israel when I was just a teenager. I’ve been going back to Israel ever since 1973 for 40 years! You know Moses had the children in the wilderness for 40 years. There has got to be some connection there.

When I visited the Gush Katif Museum just a couple of years ago, it was a brutal reminder of what happens when politicians make decisions that don’t involve their brains! Because in a way, when you ask people – no, when you demand that people abandon their homes, when you do it because you somehow believe you can trust radical Islamic fascists to keep their word and make nice if you make nice, then it shows a level of naiveté that make Chamberlain look like Churchill.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is time we recognize you don’t negotiate with people who do not believe you have a right to exist–much less live next to you! I cannot understand why the Secretary of State visited Egypt and handed over a check of $250,000,000 when we are closing the White House to tours? That makes no sense at all! Why did he give F16’s and Abram tanks to a country whose elected President is associated with a terrorist organization who has openly and publicly called Jews bloodsuckers and the descendants of apes and pigs?

Why would you reward someone with that kind of behavior? And even in his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. John Kerry said they will be held accountable. I got to wondering, “Is accountability being given F16’s, tanks and $250 million?”

Dear Mr. Secretary please hold me accountable ‘cause I’d like $250,000,000. And if that‘s what it takes, to make radical, ridiculous, offensive and inexcusable statements like this, then we should all share in the spoils.

This is absurd!

And now word is that when the President visits Israel, he will not ask the Israeli gov’t leaders (because it would be seen as bad form to lecture them although, he’s been willing to do it before) – but, he will ask the Israeli people to make sacrifices for peace. If that is the case, I would like to escort him personally to the Gush Katif Museum and say, “Mr. President, the Israelis have made many sacrifices for peace, and show me one sacrifice that the Palestinians have made for peace! I have yet to see it!” I would say, “Mr. President, I believe the Israelis have given and given and given, and so far have received nothing in return!”

And, every trip I make to Israel, I always venture into the Old City. I go into some of the shops where one can purchase a Palestinian map. This past month, in February, I had two hundred people that I took with me, most of whom were Christians, most of them had never been there before. I wanted them to understand what is unique about this situation. And I get one of these maps and I said. “By the way – Open the map up and show me where Israel is.” And they opened it up and they didn’t see it. And I said, “Interesting isn’t it? And somehow, the people of Israel are asked to make peace with a people who even in their published maps refuse to acknowledge even so much as the existence of the Nation of Israel?”

The Gush Katif Museum is a stark reminder that sometimes things happen in our past that we need to commemorate — not because they were pleasant, but because they are sobering reminders of the mistakes that have been made in the past.

And so, I say tonight that I wish that the President — I wish he would be accompanied by as many of the Israeli officials as is possible – would attend the Gush Katif Museum while he’s there and watch those films, and talk to the people like Rivka (Rivka Goldschmidt) who is here tonight, who personally experienced it. I wish that, that could happen. So, that the next time he suggests that the Israelis stop building bedrooms for their children, in the Land that is theirs, that instead, he would spend his time not asking the Israelis to stop building bedrooms, but that he would demand that the Iranians stop building bombs pointing at Israel and the rest of the free world!

We would never tolerate in our own cities what the people of Sderot have been asked to tolerate. And I have been to Sderot, and I have seen the thousands of Katyusha rockets stacked up behind the Police Station. I stood there with Dov Hikind and Joe Frager and Paul Brody and others who are in this room tonight, and I can tell you that it is an absolute sobering experience to understand that people have fear every day that a Katyusha rocket would land on their children’s bedroom, land in the park where they play, in the schools they attend, in the synagogues where they worship. And we would not tolerate that!

And I’ll ask Americans, “How many Katyusha rockets fired from Toronto into Buffalo, NY, do you think it would take before Americans would demand that we do something and absolutely stop it? Five thousand? Four Thousand? Three Thousand? One hundred? NO! One Katyusha rocket.” We would demand it STOP! And the Israeli’s have been asked to let it go after thousands of them? I say NO! One is enough. Thousands are too many, and it’s time for the Israeli’s to quit apologizing to the world and to say “We have a right for the secure and safe homeland – Not just for us, but for those grandchildren and great grandchildren of our descendants and who come after us – a place that is a safe place, a haven.”

And, that’s why I believe with all my heart, that when the President goes to Israel, it is important that the American people give him the message – rather than him give Israelis a message! And the message is Mr. President, Americans stand with Israel because they are a mirror image of our freedom and our democracy in this country. And, we suggest that before you make any demands of the Israeli’s to give anything, you set down and look the Palestinians in the face and ask them ‘What have they given up?’ And tell them, as I would love to do, if I was making that trip as the Chief Executive.

Rather than say to the Israeli’s, “Stop Building in Judea and Samaria,” I would suggest that YOU BUILD AS RAPIDLY AS YOU CAN, AND AS MUCH AS YOU CAN, AND AS MANY HOUSES AS YOU CAN! And tell the Palestinians that if they don’t like that, the way they can fix it is to sit at the peace table and sign an agreement that they recognize Israel’s right to exist, within the borders that G-d gave them and to exist with safety and security!

That my friend will probably never happen!

So I say, “POUR THE CONCRETE, BUILD THE HOUSES AND LET ISRAEL BE STRONG!”

That is the message we need to give to the world!

Mike Huckabee (b:August 24, 1955) was a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, and former 44th governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007.  He's also a southern Baptist minister and has his own TV program.  

Resource: http://israel-commentary.org/?p=6102

Excerpted from a Keynote Address at Gush Katif Museum Dinner
Razag Ballroom, Brooklyn NY
March 9, 2013

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Huckabee
forwarded from Victor Sharpe

So It's Okay For Muslims To Call Jews Nasty Names?

Nadene Goldfoot
Along the theme of saying slanderous things about another's religion, the biggest purveyors of this crime are the Islamists who call Jews every despicable name in the books.   One remark that made me laugh is when on the official PA daily on Israel's independence day said that Israel's goal was to turn a "Jewish monarchy in Palestine into a basis for their [the Jews'] eternal rule over the world, that others, 'goyim' [non-Jews], must submit to their will.  It must be the Islamists who started the original rumor that Jews would take over the world and now they're saying it so much they themselves believe it.  Jews, who make up far  less than 1% of the total world population, more like .03-.04%,  are not trying to take over the world.  They're just trying to stay alive, which isn't so easy with Qaradawi's fatwa telling their followers to kill us all. On the other hand, Muslims number 1.6 billion or 23% of the world population.

Islam almost succeeded in taking over the world with empires reaching into Spain and into Eastern Europe from Saudi Arabia, as Mecca, Saudi Arabia is their center. The last was the Ottoman Empire.   They seem to be trying it again as they already have 48 Muslim majority countries and are trying for the 49th with a Palestine.    After the loss of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Jews haven't even had their own state until 1948 , and have had to fight off Muslim invaders ever since.  Now Obama doesn't see why Israel shouldn't be forced back to the 67 borders that really were indefensible.

The weirdest thing I have discovered is that it is Judaism, of all the religions, who calls saying false things about another a crime. Judaism believes in free speech, but this is considered something apart from it.   It is Judaism who frowns on Loshen hora, (gossip, untruths about someone).  Obviously it's okay for Muslims as far as they are concerned to beat the heck out of Jews with their malicious lies, the latest being that Jews are vampires. Other pet names for Jews are Satan with a tail, apes, being void of wisdom, sin and filth, cancers and, tumors.   Oh really! Isn't calling all Jews such names also including our prophet, Moses?   I just printed off 12 pages of lies that Palwatch collected of horrible things that Muslims say about Jews which are said  by their leaders such as Abbas and Ahmadinejad.

When you come right down to it, many distasteful  things are said about us right in the holy books of Islam, so I think that it's a miracle we ever were able to live just as dminnis in the Muslim world for so long.  We must have been seen as harmless folk up till 1948, when they suddenly realized that we might have some clout and they might lose out on taking over Palestine, which they never wanted in the first place.  When Mohammad saw that he couldn't convince all the Jews to convert over to his new Islam, he was angry and added comments that were against Jews.  So this enmity between Jew and Muslim goes back to the origin of Islam.

I admire my Muslim friends who can treat me as another fellow human being without all the thoughts of these horrible adjectives.  They are people who have progressed along with Western civilization and wish to live in peace, just as I do.  Keeping all those horrible attitudes alive just doesn't get us anywhere or help this poor planet to keep on rolling.  These friends are very special to me because they have bucked the prevailing attitude towards Jews.  Their very friendship has caused me to see the whole problem in a new light as well just by their kindness.

And who did this idiot videomaker of blasphemy of Islam blame as having made it?  Of course!  We could guess in a half of a second.  He'd blame the Jew.  It turns out it was a Coptic Christian who was the culprit.

Resource: http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=7475
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_majority_countires
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world

Gabriel, An Angel to All Three Religions and More

Nadene Goldfoot 
 The Archangel Gabriel appears to all three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  He first appeared in the Jewish Book of Daniel around 300 BCE by explaining Daniel's visions.  Here he is a messenger of G-d (YHWH) a way of spelling the unspoken special name for our higher power by using the Hebrew alphabet letters of Yud, Hay, Yud and Hay again.  There is no W in Hebrew. Daniel was a Jewish captive who was taken to Babylon along with most of the best of the men in Jerusalem and had been praying and fasting.  Gabriel is also then mentioned in the Talmud.  His description given is "the man in linen."  He's again in the Book of Ezekiel and this time his role was to destroy Jerusalem for its wickedness and idolatry in the time of the kingdom of Judah.  He would separate the few righteous Jews that would not be killed and would exile them from all the wicked ones who failed to return.  In the Kabbalah, he appears as one of G-d's archangels.  He works with Michael, another angel.  People didn't pray to him directly but  to G-d who answers prayers and might send an angel down as an agent.  Gabriel was the leader of 4 angels and was sometimes referred to as the "angel of the presence."

Christians know of Gabriel through Zacharias, a priest and father of John the Baptist(1st century. CE) .  People were praying and Gabriel appeared, frightening Zacharias who told him not to be afraid and that his wife Elizabeth would have a son and he was to name him "John."  He will be a son that:  will not drink  wine or any other strong drink and shall be filled with the "holy ghost" and that many will listen to him in order to get ready for "the Lord".  His proof was that he told Zacharias he was sent to speak to him and that from that moment on Zacharias would not speak until the baby was born because he didn't believe him.  Gabriel also tells of the birth of Jesus.  Catholics refer to him as Gabriel the Archangel.

The Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons)  believe that Gabriel lived a mortal life as the prophet Noah.  They regard them as the same individual with Noah as the mortal name and Gabriel being his heavenly name.

For Islam, Gabriel had an even bigger job.  He is the angel that revealed the Quran (Koran) to the prophet Muhammad (570-632 CE ) and also told other prophets what their obligations were.  His name appears many times there.  "Who is an enemy to Gabriel!  For he it is who hath revealed (this scripture) to thy heart by G-d's leave, confirming that which was (revealed) before it, and a guidance and glad tidings to believers.  He's also mentioned in the Hadith of Gabriel where he quizzes Muhammad on the core tenants of Islam.

 Gabriel is also in the Koran with Mary where it says that "And mention, (O Muhammad), in the book (the story of) Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place toward the east.  And she took, in seclusion from them, a screen.  Then We sent to her Our Angel, and he represented himself to her as a well-proportioned man.  So here we have the Mary and Joseph story written in the Koran.

Jewish tribes lived in Mecca and Medina after 70 CE when Jerusalem fell.  They had been taken away as slaves before that at the fall of the first and 2nd Temples and may have entered the land then as well.  Both people to become Christians and Muslims were exposed to a Jewish culture and learning this way.

Additional:4/16/14  In LDS (Latter Day Saints or Mormons) theology, Noah was also known as the angel, Gabriel.  They also believe that the angel Michael was Adam, the first man.  The Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, taught that Noah stands next to Adam in authority and in holding the "keys of salvation."  They believe that Noah was a 2nd Adam given the job of repopulating the planet.  The flood was to them a baptism of the earth.  They teach that North and South American continents became a choice land after the flood waters receded (Ether 13:2).  They teach that Noah was ordained as a priest by his grandfather, Methuselah when he was 10 years old (Doctrine and Covenants 107::52).  They believe that Noah was already a Christian and was teaching faith in Jesus Christ, repentance and baptism to his peers.
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Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel
New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.jewishjournal.com/jews_and_mormons/item/why_russell_crowe_should_play_a_mormon_noah by Mark Paredes

Differences Between Judaism and Islam

Nadene Goldfoot
Judaism, with 4,000 years of history,  is the first form of monotheism founded by Abraham in the 2nd millenium BCE who is called "The Father of Judaism."  Islam is one of the forms of monotheism brought to the Arabs by Mohammed in the 7th Century CE.  It became a world religion through Arab conquests. Judaism did try at one time to convert people but soon dropped the idea.  One becomes Jewish by being born to a Jewish mother or by requesting a desire to become Jewish and going through conversion.  Today  Reform Jews may be Jewish by birth with only a father  who is Jewish. 

Mohammad thought that there was no real difference between Judaism and Islam, and mistakedly thought that Jews would quickly convert and accept him as their prophet.   He thought that all holy books were copies of one in heaven and that all revelations were one, just distorted by different people.  He was just there to correct things.  Judaism  is a living faith with a destiny to benefit not only Jews but the whole human race.  There is a variety of thought from strict Orthodoxy, guardians of the unabridged tradition to radical Reform.  They share the same belief in one G-d.  and in following the 10 Commandments. 

Islam's religion and its law are woven together, just like in Judaism.  Islam also has a written Law (Koran) which has been explained more in the Oral Law (Hadith).  Judaism also has the written law (Torah) and the Oral law (codified in Mishna and Talmud)
Originally, Mohammed's creation was similar to Jewish halakhah.  The Jews of Medina would not accept him or his Koran and mission, so he created laws to emphasize the differences between Islam and Judaism, which became quite harsh.

The Koran has plenty of biblical people from the Five Books of Moses in it that he accepted.  Mohammed has Abraham, who lived in the 2nd millennium BCE,  as the founder of monotheism, but also makes him the builder of the Ka'ba, which Judaism does not.  He includes Noah, Moses, David and Solomon as well as Jesus among prophets who were long before Mohammed's time.  Mohammed was born 570 CE and died 632 CE.  His interests in G-d started around the age of 40.  When he was young, he often traveled with Meccan trade caravans and met Jews and Christians to whom he would ask religious questions.  He came to believe that he also was a chosen prophet after his experience with an angel, Gabriel. 

He introduced a day of fast that is very similar to the Jewish Day of Atonement.  He chose Friday as the public day of prayer after the Jewish Shabbat which falls from Friday night to Saturday night.  Jews pray towards Jerusalem, and Muslims did likewise till he saw that Jews would not convert.  Then he changed some of the new rites and became very hostile towards the Jews.  Somehow he overcame his hostility and took Safia, a Jewish girl, as his wife. 

Tombs revered to Jews in Israel, like the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron are also revered by Muslims.  The Moslem tradition has the mosque on the Jewish Temple mount site in Jerusalem as the "farthest mosque" that Mohammed reached on his famous night journey; now regarded as a Holy Place.  When the Romans took Jerusalem in 70CE they razed the Temple and it served as a center of military activity, but later they built a Roman Temple over it.  Then when Islam came into being the mosque "of Omar" was built over the site.  We see much material borrowed from the Midrash of the Jews. 

Many religious laws are common to both Islam and Judaism, like not eating anything from pigs, not having images of G-d, fixed times for prayers.  One difference is that religious Jews pray 3 times a day and Muslims do it 5 times a day. 

Originally, Muslims regarded Jews and Christians as "people of the Book" who should enjoy religious freedom in Moslem countries in return for payment of a poll tax.  Sects of Islam such as Shi'a, predominently found in Iran, were more stern in their attitude towards Jews. (It's good that Queen Esther and the Jewish people lived in Persia way before Islam was created).   The clashes with Mohammed and the Jews of Arabia, who would not convert to this new religion, resulted in the Jews' expulsion and often times extermination of whole Jewish tribes. 

Jews created a Jewish Creed after the way they were treated in Arabia by Muslims.  The persecution of Jews by Moslems for religious reasons was rare and even discriminatory legislation was often unenforced, but today things have changed.  We see religious leaders of Islam putting a fatwa out saying that all Jews should be killed everywhere.  Qaradawi of Qatar, a major Muslim Brotherhood religious leader, is quite bloodthirsty about it.  Though he's an elderly man confined to a wheelchair, he wants to kill any Jew with his bare hands. 

Why do Muslims revere Abraham like the Jews do?  Ishmael was Abraham's first son by Abraham's wife's Egyptian handmaid, Hagar.  He was circumcised at age 13, whereas Jews are circumcised at age 8 days.  He and his mother had been asked to leave permanently at the request of Sarah, Abraham's wife as he was not treating her younger son, Isaac,  well at all.  Ishmael was removed to Paran, but did join Isaac when Abraham died, so they both buried him.

 Ishmael's daughter married Esau. Esau was the 1st twin born to Isaac, and according to tradition was a  a violent person to the point of being quite a villain.  His twin brother was Jacob.  Jacob received the birthright from their father and so got the blessing that was to be given to the first born.  Esau was so mad that Jacob tricked him into giving his birthright to him that he tried to kill him, causing Jacob to escape from his wrath and go to Haran.  He returned 20 years later with gifts for Esau, but it didn't heal Esau's feelings.  Jacob later is given the name, Israel.   Traditionally, Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arab people.  Thus was born the original hostilities between Arabs and Jews.  The birthright was an oral pronouncement from Isaac on his deathbed. 

Definitions: Muslim: noun, adjective, one who surrenders to G-d- Allah, an adherent of Islam
 Moslem: variation of Muslim
Islam  noun,  submission to the will of G-d, the religious faith of Muslims including belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet; the civilization erected upon Islamic faith, the group of modern nations in which Islam is the dominanat religion. 

Resource: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Oral_Law.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia page 667, Mohammed, "He held that all Holy Books were copies of a aheavenly model"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_to_Judaism
http://blog.becomingjewish.org/?p=2173
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F

Logic Has No Hold in the Middle East : Anti-Semitism Practiced by Semite- Arabs

Nadene Goldfoot
Right now there are 48 Muslim majority countries in the world with over 1 billion people living in an area 672 times the size of Israel.  These same Muslims are having a fit over the creation of the only Jewish state in the world that happens to be in their neighborhood.  They are more than intolerant-they are anti-semitic!

1.4 million Arabs are citizens of Israel, but the planned Palestine will have no Jews at all.  Arabs in Israel have the same citizenship as Jews do, even their own political parties and are voted into the knesset.  Yet Jews are not allowed in Arab countries today.  The recent earthquake in Iran called for all people to come help them except the Jews. 

Over 3,300 years ago Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.  This biblical kingdom was first ruled by Saul in 1020 BCE.  King David ruled from 1004-965BCE and his son, King Solomon ruled from 965-930 BCE.  When Solomon died the kingdom was split into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.  Then the Romans conquered the area in 70 CE and it was renamed as Palestine in 135 CE to eradicate the Jewish presence.  To the Jews who never left, it has always been known as Eretz Israel.  Though much of the land was decimated and prisoners were taken or killed, some did remain.  We have always managed to have a Jewish presence in the land.

The first Arabs arrived as conquerors in the 7th century, 2,500 years after the Jews had been there.  Jewish tribes were living in Saudi Arabia but were either killed or converted by Muhammed and his followers when Islam stormed the area.

Jews started returning to Eretz Israel in the late 1800's and created the kibbutz. They bought land legitimately, drained swamps, killed mosquitoes and started communities. They  had been caught in pogroms in Russia and had endured anti-semitism in Europe.  They felt they needed their own homeland and remembered Jerusalem in their prayers every day for 2,000 years.  This caused them to form zionist congresses and confer with Arab leaders.  They bought land from Arab landowners who were living in Europe, and paid the extreme high prices because the unkept, deserted, swampy barren land was precious only to them because of their history with it. After all, it was G-d who told them to live there.  We are eternally tied to this land. 

In 1917 after WWI, Britain was given the task of supervising Palestine.  Jews had fought with the British and Arabs had fought with the Germans.  Chaim Weisman, Jewish,  developed dynamite for the British and Jews were rewarded the homeland they had strived for.  Our promised homeland consisted of both present day Jordan, Israel, and the administered territories.  This was all written up in the Balfour Declaration.

Yet the British also made promises to the Arabs, so in 1922, Britain transferred 2/3 of the mandated Palestine to the Hashemite Bedouins who were driven out of Saudi Arabia by a rival clan.  That became Jordan and no Jews were allowed to live inside it, even today.  Yet Israel allowed Jordanians to come across the bridge to work in Israel.  Jordan and the Palestinian Arabs had a war, and somewhere along the way the king married a Palestinian lady.  Now it is made up mostly of Arabs who called themselves Palestinians.  They have stated that they do not want any more Palestinians living in Jordan! 

The Holocaust in Europe took the lives of 6 million Jews.  Those that lived tried to get to Palestine, but the British fought against that, causing many to return to gas chambers or die in the ocean.  Some managed to get into the holy land.  They hit the ground off of ships only to be given a gun to fight Arabs who were attacking Jews.  Was there no place that Jews could find refuge? 

The Arabs that are citizens in Israel today are the ones whose ancestors, about 160,000 of them,  stayed instead of leaving when all the Arab countries attacked Israel.  200,000 had fled upon the warnings of their leaders.  Many successful Palestinian Arabs are the Christians who live in Haifa.   Arab incomes in Israel are higher than others in the rest of the Arab world.  They have freedoms that others can't even begin to understand. 

Ironically, 700,000 Jews had been living in Arab countries, but when Israel was created, they were forced out.  Yemen is a good example.  They came to Israel and were found homes.  Ofra Haza, our famous singer, was from this group of Yemenites.  So just about the same number of Arabs left to become displaced people from then till now living in camps run by the U.N, while the same number of Jews were forced out of their homes by Arabs and were able to be integrated into a European-Ashkenazi community.  Jews living in Arab lands were treated as 2nd class citizens, but they weren't subjected to acts like pogroms.

 Russia was the vilest of all the European countries in keeping Jews on the Pale of Settlement, an area where they were allowed to live.  They couldn't come into Russia proper.  They were kept poor in shtetles for the most part.  France was showing lots of anti-semitic qualities with the Dryfuss affair where a French soldier was treated differently because he was Jewish.  England had periods of keeping all Jews out of the country. 

Despite all the hardships, Jews kept their faith, and Judaism did not die.  Being the first monotheistic faith, that is quite a feat to continue for almost 4,000 years. 

Jewish Presence of Israel

Nadene Goldfoot
The Palestinians wish to obliterate any show of Jewishness of Israel in order to say that we have no business being there.  They must cringe every time they see the Israeli flag, which was unfurled for the first time on May 11, 1949 at Lake Success, New York when Israel became the 59th member of the United Nations.

The design is that the blue and white colors with the Shield of David on it.  This Star of David remember's Judah's second king of the Jews, King David 1000-960 BCE.  He is the father of King Solomon.  King Saul was the first king and David, at age 25, became his armor-bearer.  David had been the best friend of Saul's son, Jonathan.  David later married King Saul's daughter, Michal.  Unfortunately, Saul became jealous of David. 

The continuing story of King David would make the writers of "All My Children" absolutely  awed.  I love how our Torah tells all, making the reader realize this is the true story and isn't doctored by only telling parts that praise the main characters.  We read about all his flaws as well. 

What Abbas and his Fatah people are doing are trying to obliterate anything Jewish in Jerusalem, of all places.  This city in the mountains of Judea is the capital of Israel.  The first time its name appeared was as U-r (city) ushamem in the Execration Texts from the time of the Egyptian 12th Dynasty (19th-18th century BCE) in the Akkadian language.  Then it was called Urusalim in the Tel el Armarna letters (15th century BCE).  In the early books of the Torah, it is also called Jebus after the people inhabiting it before David.  It is sometimes called Zion, after David's fortress, and was also known as the City of David.  Our bible also calls it the "city of righteousness,", "the faithful city", "the city of G-d", "the holy city", "the city of truth".  The Hebrew pronounciation is  Yerushalayim (Yeh roosh all eye eem) . 

Though the city's actual foundation was built in the Early Bronze Age (3500-2000BCE) to the period when the Canaanites first established themselves in the country,  from 2000-1550 BCE it was the capital of a Canaanite city state.  When Joshua came into the land in 1320 BCE the king of Jerusalem was defeated and it remained an independent enclave between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah.  David captured the city in 1910 BCE and it became the capital of a united Israel.  He was very lenient with the people living there and added the fortress of Zion and other construction.  The Ark of the Covenant was transferred there as well.

This is the city that Jews have been remembering in their prayers for the past 2,000 years.  Islam was born in
610 CE by Mohammed, who was born April 26, 570 in Mecca, Arabia and died June 8, 632.  At age 40 he had his first revelation.  Jerusalem was only important to Islam because he rose on his white horse from there.  Otherwise, Saudi Arabia is the center of Islam. 

The UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947 provided for the creation of an independent area of Jerusalem under UN administration.  Arab outbreaks soon reached the state of regular warfare between the Haganah and the Arabs who first were made up of local bands who were joined by the Arab Legion of Transjordan.  This put an end to  the internationalization scheme.  From December 1947 to July 1948 the Jewish Quarter in the Old City had to be evacuated which was then destroyed.  All the New city, except the Arab quarter north of the walls fell into Jewish hands.  The Arab Legion shelled and starved the Jews of Jerusalem too,  but they did not surrender. 

Jerusalem from 1948 was divided into two parts.  The Israel section included the whole of the West and South part of the New City, including "Mount Zion" and an enclave on Mt. Scopus.  The city was the administrative center of Israel.  When the 6 Day War started on June 5, 1967, Jordanian troops in the Old City and Jordanian sections (held illegally)  bombarded the New City.  Israel's army reacted and in 2 days the entire city came under Israel's control.  The first reaction were mass visits of Jews to the Western Wall that had been kept from Jews for almost 20 years.  By June 29, 1967, Israel formally united the two sections of the city and the barriers that had divided them were removed.  At that point there were 139,600 Moslems and Christians that were incorporated into the total population of 493,500 (1990 census). 

The Jerusalem Law of 1980 extended Israel sovereignty over the entire city. 

Hatikvah is Israel's National Anthem.
So long as still within our breasts    The Jewish heart beats true,
So long as still towards the East, To Zion, looks the Jew,
So long our hopes are not yet lost---Two thousand years we cherished them---
To live in freedom in the Land     Of Zion and Jerusalem. 

Ko l od ba le vav pe ni   ma      Ne fesh ye hu di   ho  mi  yah;
Ul fa a tei miz rach ka di mah     A yin le tzi yon tzo fi yah
Od lo av dah tik va tei nu          tik vah mi shnot al pa yim
Lih yot am hof shi  be ar tzei nu   B'  E retz tzi yon  vi ru sha la yim
Lih yot am hof shi   be ar tzei nu,  B' E retz tzi yon vi ru sha la yim.

We are not a just a band of people tired of being picked on that just happen to be Jews. 
We were so desperate that we even considered creating a state for ourselves after the Dryfus affair of 1894 in Africa after the British offered land in 1903 that is today's Kenya, and quickly realized that wasn't where our history or heart was.  We were from Judea and Israel and knew it was time to go home, our one and only true home. That's where Abram and his father, Terah, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and his daughter in law Sarai, the wife of Abram left Ur Kasdim (Iraq) for the land of Canaan, and they arrived in Haran and settled there where Terah later died. 

Reference: Israel , from Embassy of Israel, Washington D.C.
Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.usa-people-search.com/content-the-dreyfus-affair.aspx
Tanach, The Stone Edition of the Torah/Prophets/etc. 

Imagination, Not Fact: Shaping the UN Members' Minds Over Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot

The land called Palestine after the Roman conquest of Israel in 70AD had become a land holy not only to the Jews but to the Christians as well, but never to Islam.  The fact is that in 632 the Arabs invaded and conquered from Arabia.  By 640 Palestine was a part of their emerging Muslim empire.  The Omayyads, mainly an Arab people, ruled there for 450 years from Damascus.  Then the Abbasid dynasty, mainly Turkish ruled from Baghdad.  The Fatimids from Cairo then took over the rule and these people were either tolerant or were persecuting the peoples there.  The Crusaders ruled Palestine or parts for about 2 centuries and massacred Jews in the cities.  Through it all the remaining Jews continued to survive, no matter who was at the helm.  Jews fought with Muslims against the Crusaders.  When Jerusalem fell, the Crusaders gathered the Jews in a synagogue and burned them.  Jews held out against the Crusaders in Haifa for a month from June to July 1099.  At this time there were Jewish communities all over the country such as Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea and Gaza and they all had to endure persecution and continuous attacks.  They became reduced in population but  their stiff-necked stubborness helped them to hold on and to endure. 

During the time Muslims ruled in Palestine, they weren't impressed with Jerusalem's importance to their own religion of Islam.  When this city fell to the Crusaders in 1099, a Muslim delegation arrived in Baghdad, the capital of their empire , to ask for aid against the invading Christians.  The Baghdadis cried and were sympathetic but did nothing to help recover Jerusalem.   Jerusalem had no part to play in the Arab's political life as it was considered just a backwater provincial townlet.  It wasn't a capital of anything to them.  It wasn't a cultural center for Arabs and no school of Islamic lore came from there or any religious writings.  Even when the Muslims ruled there, the majority of the population was mainly made of Christians., not Muslims.  

In the 1800's when Jews immigrated back from the Russian Empire, they became the majority and have kept this position.  The British encouraged or permitted Arab attacks on Jews from 1920 to when they left by May 1948.  These attacks brought about the Jews' retreat out of the Old city and moving into the newer parts.  In 1948 the Jews ran out of ammunition and the defenders surrendered to the Jordanians.  This was when Jerusalem was divided in half.

Islam was based on a lot of borrowing from Judaism and Christianity, religions established at the time of its birth. Mohammed tried to convert Jews and Christians  and first ordered his faithful to face Jerusalem when praying.  When neither did so after 18 months of pressure, he changed his ruling to face Mecca.  Islam teaches that he rose on his winged horse with a woman's face and a peackock's tail, Buraq, who took him to heaven  at the Temple area.  This area was an existing holy place for Jews for almost 2,000 years before Mohammed ever came along.  The writer of this episode chose this awesome site for Mohammed's ascent.  Islam had the habit of borrowing Holy Places that were originally Jewish. They then built The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque on this Mount so it became the 3rd holiest place in Islam.  First was Mecca and then Medina in Arabia.  There is no evidence that Mohammed ever was in Jerusalem at all.  Christopher Sykes, of the Sykes- Picot Agreement in 1915 wrote:  "To the Moslems it is not Jerusalem, but a certain site in Jerusalem which is venerated...the majestic Dome of the Rock. ...Apart from the hallowed rock, Jerusalem has no major Islamic significance."  In 1948 during the war Abdallah's Arab League under British guidance captured the eastern part of Jerusalem, basically the Old City.  During the Jordanian rule of 19 years the Arabs worked on destroying anything involving the Jewish presence and identity.  All the sysnagogues were destroyed.  At the most famous one, the Hurvah, an Arab erected his stable for his ass and goat.  The ancient Jewish cemetery located on the Mount of Olives was torn up and tombstones were used for paving and for lavatory seats in the Jordanian army camps. 

 However, the Jordanians were very careful not to destroy any Christian places for political purposes, so the Christians there kept mum about what was going on at the Jewish sites. 

In confrontations between Jews and Muslims, it is felt that the Arabs have a facility to manufacture facts and to deceive themselves into accepting them, thereby working themselves up into passionate hatred over what is actually a nonexistent reason for such emotion.  What a people believes, even if untrue, has the same influence over their lives as if it were true.  This is some imagination that has been believed enough to play a part in shaping world events.  Radio, TV, and other modern means of communication serve to spread lies which are used to shape world policy.  Such policies were also used by Germany and the Soviet Union.  Back in the 11th century, Al-Ghazzali, a great Muslim theologian wrote, :"Know that a lie is not haram (wrong) in itself, but only because of the evil conclusions to which it leads the hearer, making him believe something that is not really the case...If a lie is the only way of obtaining a good result, it is permissible...We must lie when the truth leads to unpleasant results."  Sania Hamady, an Arab sociologist wrote, "Lying is a widespread habit among the Arabs and they have a low idea of truth...The Arab has no scruples about lying if by it he obtains his objective...He is more interested in feeling than facts, in conveying an impression than in giving a report.  The Arab language, moreover, provides its users with the tool for assertion (tarokid) and exaggeration (mubalong).  Such descriptions can fit many situations today with many peoples, it seems, not just the Arabs.  I believe this philosophy has permeated into all levels of society everywhere.  Readers and listeners, beware.  In order to make just decisions and rulings, one must really get to facts.   

Such is the goal of Fatah and Hamas, Arabs who will go to the UN to plea for their own state of Palestine.  They also want, not only Gaza, Judea and Samaria which will become a state without any Jews as they will force them out, but will demand East Jerusalem as well for their capital, and this will also be free of Jews.  This contains the  Wailing Wall, for one thing, immensely important to Jerusalem and to Israel.  The fact remains that Israel is being attacked from Gaza constantly and that Israel has good reason to feel that the aim is to take all of Jerusalem from Israel, and then of course, to destroy Israel as well.  This comes from the goals of Hamas and also from the Muslim Brotherhood as well. 

In Israel, over a million Arabs are citizens.  They even serve in the Knesset.  Democracy is the rule in Israel.  It will not be in Palestine.  It will be made up of a people with hatred and vengence on their minds towards Israel.  Nothing will be accomplished except the nod of approval for their actions.  Is this where the world has gone?  Will it seek truth and prevent another war?  The fathers of Israel had accepted  Feisal's plan of a state for the Arabs as well, but not in the state of hatred they have worked themselves up to.  He envisioned a peaceful community of Jews and Arabs living in harmony.  That's not going to happen at this time. 

Resource:  Battleground, Fact and Fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz