"Clueless" US cannot make peace between Arabs but wants to broker peace between Israel & Arabs

Israeli media doesn’t have a favorable impression of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his push toward peace in the 
Middle East, opening one opinion page posting with this title:

 “Clueless U.S. mediator.” 

Ynet News’ Hagai Segal’s angle: Why is Mr. Kerry trying too hard to facilitate a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, when Egypt and Syria are in utter chaos? 

 Even The New York Times wonders this question, Ynet said. And his work to bring about this deal is only “placing American foreign policy in a ridiculous light,” the Israeli paper opined. “The U.S. cannot make peace between Arabs and other Arabs, yet it believes it can make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. … Is it possible that John Kerry is more talented than all the American mediators who came before him? Not at all.” The paper goes on: “Kerry’s mediation skills are limited to pressuring Israel to make dangerous concessions for the sake of negotiations that will lead nowhere. He lacks the intellectual and diplomatic ability to devise a permanent agreement that will satisfy both sides. He is a blind proponent of an impossible vision and is his own candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.” 

Frum IDF Soldier stoned by "Frum" Gangsters in Meah Shearim, rescued by Police

19:44 IL: It appears that a chareidi IDF soldier was attacked by extremists in Meah Shearim a short time ago. According to preliminary reports he was not injured.

The soldier fled and unconfirmed information indicates he is holed up in an area apartment. Police were summoned and they are operating on the scene towards extricating him while avoiding a confrontation with area residents.
UPDATE 19:49 IL: Police and border police working to extricate the soldier are being attacked with rocks.
UPDATED 19:56 IL: The soldier was removed from danger by police. Police are now under attack with rocks, chairs and whatever dozens of extremists can find to hurl at them. There are no immediate reports of injuries or arrests.
UPDATE 20:01 IL: At least four arrests have been made. The soldier is reportedly uninjured. Police are working to leave the area as they are still under attack. Rotter News reports that Ichud Hatzalah responders were also attacked with eggs and other objects.
FINAL UPDATE 20:18 IL: Yassam commando police extricated the soldier and security forces have left the neighborhood. Four arrests were made and additional arrests are expected after police review photo footage

Mea Shearim - David Levi, the uncle of the haredi soldier who was attacked by dozens of haredi men on Tuesday night in the ultra- Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea She’arim on Wedneday spoke out against his attackers and of the “great trauma” suffered by the soldier.

In an interview with Army Radio, Levi slammed the attackers, saying that the hardest thing for the soldier is that that the very people who should identify with his faith would try to harm him.

Yael Dan also interviewed IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai who spoke out against the attack and called on the rabbis an the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox to come out against this phenomenon.

Meanwhile, Shas leader Aryeh Deri condemned the attack “and all other campaigns against the ultra-Orthodox who choose t serve in the IDF” in an interview with Army Radio.

The Shas chairman said he was calling on the heads of all political parties to “return to dialogue, understanding and reconciliation,” in order to avoid similar incidents.

Egyptian sphinx unearthed in north Israel

Part of an ancient Egyptian king's unique sphinx was unveiled at a dig in northern Israel on Tuesday, with researchers struggling to understand just how the unexpected find ended up there.
The broken granite sphinx statue -- including the paws and some of the mythical creature's forearms -- displayed at Tel Hazor archaeological site in Israel's Galilee, is the first such find in the region.
Its discovery also marks the first time ever that researchers have found a statue dedicated to Egyptian ruler Mycerinus who ruled circa 2,500 BC and was builder of one of the three Giza pyramids, an expert said.
"This is the only monumental Egyptian statue ever found in the Levant - today's Israel, Lebanon, Syria," Amnon Ben-Tor, an archaeology professor at the Hebrew University in charge of the Tel Hazor dig, told AFP.
"It is also the only sphinx of this particular king known, not even in Egypt was a sphinx of that particular king found."
Ben-Tor said that besides Mycerinus's name, carved in hieroglyphics between the forearms, there are symbols reading "beloved by the divine souls of Heliopolis".
"This is the temple in which the sphinx was originally placed," Ben-Tor said of Heliopolis, an ancient city which lies north of today's Cairo.
Tel Hazor, which Ben-Tor calls "the most important archaeological site in this country," was the capital of southern Canaan, founded circa 2,700 BC and at its peak covering approximately 200 acres and home to some 20,000 Canaanites. It was destroyed in the 13th century BC.
"Following a gap of some 150 years, it was resettled in the 11th century BC by the Israelites, who continuously occupied it until 732 BC," when it was destroyed by the Asyrians, Ben-Tor said.
He said the find was approximately 50 centimetres (20 inches) long, and estimated the entire statue was 150 centimetres (60 inches) long and half a metre (20 inches) high".
How, when and why it reached Tel Hazor remains a mystery.
"That it arrived in the days of Mycerinus himself is unlikely, since there were absolutely no relations between Egypt and this part of the world then," said Ben-Tor.
"Egypt maintained relations with Lebanon, especially via the ancient port of Byblos, to import cedar wood via the Mediterranean, so they skipped" today's northern Israel, he said.
Another option is that the statue was part of the plunders of the Canaanites, who in the late 17th and early 16th century BC ruled lower Egypt, the expert said.
"Egyptian records tell us that those foreign rulers... plundered and desecrated the local temples and did all kinds of terrible things, and it is possible that some of this looting included a statue like this one".
But to Ben-Tor the most likely way the sphinx reached Tel Hazor is in the form of a gift sent by a later Egyptian ruler.
"The third option is that it arrived in Hazor some time after the New Kingdom started in 1,550 BC, during which Egypt ruled Canaan, and maintained close relations with the local rulers, who were left on their thrones," he said.
"In such a case it's possible the statue was sent by the Egyptian ruler to king of Hazor, the most important ruler in this region."
Shlomit Blecher, who manages the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin, was the archaeologist who actually unearthed the finding in August 2012.
The statue's incrustation was meticulously removed over a period of many months by the excavation's restorer, before the intricate carvings and hieroglyphics were fully visible.
"It was the last hour of the last day of the dig," she told AFP of the moment of the find. "We all leapt with joy and happiness, everyone was thrilled."
"We hope the other pieces are here and that we find them in the near days," she said.
Ben-Dor said the statue was most likely deliberately broken by new occupiers at Tel Hazor in an act of defiance to the old rule.
Finding the sphinx was "unexpected," said Ben-Tor, "but fits" archaeological facts and findings. "When you're in a bank, you find money," he said.
To Ben-Tor, however, the true coveted find would be archives buried somewhere on Tel Hazor that could serve as an inventory to the ancient city's content.
"I know there are two archives," he said. "We already have 18 documents from two periods, the 17th and 14th century BC. If I found those archives, people would come running here."

The real story of the night Bin Laden was killed. VIDEO

The Abbottabad Commission was charged with ascertaining the facts of what happened on the night of May 1, 2011, when the United States unilaterally launched a raid to capture or kill al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in northern Pakistan.

While all previous accounts released to the public have been the stories of SEAL team members, or sourced mainly through Washington's squad of analysts from the CIA and similar agencies, the Commission pieced together testimony from local and provincial officials, police and security personnel - and, indeed, captured members of Bin Laden’s family themselves - to tell the story of that warm May night through the eyes of those who found themselves in the targeting crosshairs.

This is that account.

It is ten minutes past eleven in the evening. Amal Ahmad Abdul Fattah al-Sadah, a 29-year-old Yemeni woman, sits with her three-year-old child, Hussain, in a second-floor bedroom. Near to her is her husband, Osama bin Laden. About 250km away, at a US airbase in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, the rotor blades of two stealth Black Hawk helicopters begin to turn.

The Black Hawks, coated with special radar-evading paint and panels, as well as noise suppression devices, fly low and fast, entering Pakistani airspace in the Khyber tribal area between 11:15pm and 11:30pm. They are closely followed by two other helicopters, mostly likely Chinooks. All four fly along the route of the River Kabul, above Chakdarra to Kala Dhaka, where one touches down, ready to provide refuelling and additional support to the Navy SEALs now en route to their target in Abbottabad.

In the skies on the Afghan side of the border, US aircraft maintain a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) and an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) presence, in order to respond swiftly to any Pakistani military response to the raid.

There is none.

The Pakistan Air Force's (PAF) radar is on "peacetime deployment", and low-level coverage is sparse on the western border. PAF controllers at Air Defence Command in Chaklala track the US CAP and AWACS in Afghan airspace, but log the activity as routine.

Approximately an hour and ten minutes after leaving Jalalabad, the US helicopters arrive at the compound in Abbottabad's Nawan Sheher neighbourhood. Navy SEALs rappel down ropes to the street below. Some head towards the residential buildings, while others, including Urdu and Pashto speakers, form a cordon around the compound to keep locals away.

Having unloaded its soldiers, one of the Black Hawks develops a fault, or encounters unexpected wind or temperature conditions. It crash lands - or "settles with power" - on the compound area, around ten minutes after the operation begins. It is forty minutes past midnight.
They hit the annexe first.

Spo

The storming of the compound

In their cramped rooms on the second floor, Bin Laden and Sadah hear what they initially think is the sound of a storm outside. They go to the balcony to see what is happening, but the night of May 1 is a moonless one, and it is pitch dark.

Sadah, Bin Laden's third wife, reaches to switch on a light, but her husband says "No!" He calls to his son, Khalid, who is in a first-floor bedroom. Sadah goes to see to her five children. When she returns upstairs moments later, Bin Laden has been joined by two of his daughters, Mariam, 21, and Sumayya, 20. They are reciting the Kalma - the Muslim declaration of faith - and verses from the Holy Quran.

Osama bin Laden tells his family that US helicopters have arrived and that they should all leave his room immediately.

In the annexe, meanwhile, Ibrahim al-Kuwaiti, a Pakistani bodyguard and courier for Bin Laden, is asleep with his wife, Maryam, and their children. They are awoken by a loud noise. As he attempts to calm his children, Kuwaiti receives a phone call. He asks if it is his brother, Abrar - also a guard and courier - who lives with his family in the main house. He gets no response.

"Abrar, I cannot hear you. I am coming," he says into the phone, according to his wife.

There is a knock on the door.

"Is that you, Abrar?" he asks, opening the door.

A bullet hits him through the window, and he falls to the floor. As he falls, his feet hit the door, shutting it.

Maryam is shot in the right shoulder, and falls to the floor. Her children rush to her, and she can hear soldiers outside, shouting at her to open the door.

"You have killed my husband, and now only my children and I are in the room," she tells them. In Arabic, a soldier demands that she open the door. She complies, and is told to sit on the stairs outside the building with her children, where two soldiers keep guard over them.

View the Abbottabad Commission report

Back in the main building, some of Bin Laden's family members refuse to leave him, as ordered. His daughter, Mariam, goes out on the balcony with her children to see what is happening outside. Bin Laden reaches for his weapon.

That's when they hear the sound of an explosion - whether it is the helicopter crashing or charges being used to blast through a door is unclear. They hear soldiers on the roof, and footsteps on the stairs. Sadah sees a US soldier, on the landing outside the bedroom, aiming his weapon at Bin Laden. A red laser dot appears on his body, and she throws herself at the soldier.

He screams "No! No!" and shoots her in the knee. More shots follow.

As she lies injured on the bed, she recalls hearing the soldiers asking Sumayya and Mariam the name of the man they just killed.

Sumayya says she grappled with a US soldier. She did not see her father fall, but did see his body on the floor.

She testifies that he was hit in the forehead, and his face was "clear" and recognisable. According to her, "blood flowed backwards over his head". After asking both her and her sister Mariam to confirm Bin Laden's identity, they are told to stand in a corner, and later led out of the room.

"Sharifa" Siham Sabar, Bin Laden's second of three wives, was in her room on the second floor with her son, Khalid, for the initial part of the raid. She saw Khalid rush with his weapon to his father's aid when he realised that US forces were raiding the compound. She was with Khairiyyah, Bin Laden's eldest wife, when they were detained by US forces shortly afterwards.

When the soldiers forced their way in, Khairiyyah said that one of them "looked as if he had seen a witch!" The women and their rooms were searched, and then led downstairs by the soldiers.

That was when Sabar saw the body of her son, Khalid, lying in a pool of blood on the staircase. They also came across the bodies of Abrar al-Kuwaiti, the courier, and his Pakistani wife, Bushra.

Sabar knelt down to kiss her dead son's forehead as she passed.

The dust settles

According to the Commission's findings, by 1:06am, the US operation in Abbottabad was over, and US forces left the compound in a stealth Black Hawk and a Chinook helicopter, simultaneously destroying the downed stealth Black Hawk with planted explosives. The operation lasted approximately 36 minutes.

The first Chinook left Pakistani airspace at approximately 2:16am, with the support Chinook and remaining stealth Black Hawk following ten minutes later, at 2:26am. US forces were in Pakistani airspace and territory for a little more than three hours.

The Pakistani security and military response to the raid, according to the Commission, amounted to a "collective failure". Not only was the country's airspace compromised without the immediate knowledge of the military, but there was also "a grave dereliction of duty" on the part of the civil security establishment - that is, the police and civilian administration.

Police Constable Nazar Mohammad, on patrol in the compound's neighbourhood in Abbottabad, was one of the first to reach the scene, arriving shortly after the Black Hawk explosion at 1:06am.

He saw flames and smoke billowing from the compound, and alerted the local police station. At about the same time, army officials from the Quick Response Force (QRF) of the 19th Frontier Force Regiment arrived on the scene, along with other police officials. The police were relegated to forming a cordon around the scene, with the army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) taking ownership of the site. The commission refers to the conduct of the police as being like "spectator[s]". Senior police officials, including a Deputy Inspector General (DIG), later arrived, and were allowed access to the interior of the house, testifying that they saw four dead bodies in the main house - presumably those of Khalid bin Laden, Ibrahim al-Kuwaiti, Abrar al-Kuwaiti and Bushra, Abrar's wife.

They were then all asked to leave the premises by the commandant of the nearby Pakistan Military Academy, who had established de facto control over the crime scene.

According to the DIG, Khairiyyah, Bin Laden's eldest wife, angrily said to him in broken English: "Now you come, when everything over!"

The commander of the military's QRF received information about the raid at 12:40am, when US forces were still inside the compound. By the time he, along with his commanding officer, arrived at the scene at about 1:20am, however, the Black Hawk had just been destroyed and US forces had left. The commandant of the PMA, who is also the army garrison commander in Abbottabad, arrived at 1:40am. Rescue crews were ordered to put out the flames and see to people's injuries, and all remaining inhabitants of the compound were taken into ISI custody.

By this time, it had become clear that a major operation had just taken place. Superior officers in the military were informed, and at about 2:00am, Major-General Ashfaq Nadeem, the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) called General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff.

Kayani then rang the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman at 2:07am - two hours and 47 minutes after the initial incursion - to inform him that Pakistani airspace had been violated, asking him to "shoot down the intruding helicopters", according to the DGMO's testimony. Pakistani news media by now were already reporting "a helicopter crash" in Abbottabad.

It took an additional 43 minutes for the Pakistani Air Force to scramble F-16s from its Mushaf Air Base (in Sarghoda, about 240km away). This was approximately three and a half hours after the initial incursion.

It is also approximately 24 minutes after the last US helicopter had left Pakistani airspace.

General Kayani then spoke with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the Foreign Secretary, apprising them of events.

It was not until 5:00am that Admiral Michael Mullen, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC) called General Kayani, explaining what had happened. Significantly, that is the only phone call made between US and Pakistan authorities, and it occurs between two senior military officers.

General Kayani then waited a further hour and 45 minutes to make his final phone call of the night, at 6:45am.

And who is that phone call to? Who is the last person in the Pakistani government command structure to know about the raid?

Lawsuit Says 2 Rabbis Abused Boys at YU High School for Boys

George Finkelstein "the wrestler" 

A lawyer for 19 former students at Yeshiva University High School for Boys filed a federal lawsuit Monday claiming that two former rabbis there carried out hundreds of acts of sexual abuse during the 1970s and 80s, and that the university’s leaders covered it up.

According to a 148-page complaint lodged in Federal District Court in White Plains, the abuse included one case, in 1980, of a rabbi who sodomized a 16-year-old student with a toothbrush in his dormitory room in Upper Manhattan. Another boy claims a different rabbi abused him at least 30 times, in his office and the school’s halls, between 1978 and 1982, the lawsuit says.

The lawyer, Kevin T. Mulhearn, said that the depth of the abuse, which the plaintiffs claim occurred between 1969 and 1989, did not come to light until The Jewish Daily Forwardpublished articles about it beginning in December. The lawsuit, echoing The Forward’s reporting, said administrators of Yeshiva University, which runs the high school, brushed off complaints about the two rabbis for years, and after they left the school, the university did not notify their future employers about the complaints. One of the men, Rabbi George Finkelstein, went on to work at a Jewish day school near Miami for several years.

“Their abuse should have been avoided with a bare minimum of responsibility and compassion for the children in their charge,” Mr. Mulhearn said in an interview on Monday.

Matt Yaniv, the director of media relations for Yeshiva University, the lead defendant in the suit, said Monday, “As you can imagine, right now we cannot comment on pending litigation.”

However, Mr. Yaniv noted that an outside firm was continuing an “independent investigation,” initiated in January.
“It is anticipated that the investigation will be finalized and a comprehensive report will be released by Sullivan & Cromwell in the coming weeks,” Mr. Yaniv said in a statement. “We will address the findings publicly once the report is issued.”

Last week, in announcing his retirement, Norman Lamm, the Yeshiva University chancellor who was president when much of the abuse is claimed to have taken place, apologized for not responding more assertively when students began complaining about the two rabbis, who never were reported to the police. “At the time that inappropriate actions by individuals at Yeshiva were brought to my attention, I acted in a way that I thought was correct, but which now seems ill conceived,” Dr. Lamm wrote.

The lawsuit contains complaints from 16 former students who say they were abused by Rabbi Finkelstein, an administrator who became principal in the late 1980s before the school, responding to complaints, asked him to leave in 1995. The lawsuit says that Rabbi Finkelstein rubbed his genitals against students, either in an office at the school, at a dormitory or in his apartment, sometimes under the guise of wrestling. He also groped boys’ genitals while checking to see if they were wearing tzitzis, traditional fringes under the outer clothing, the suit says.

The three other complaints, including the one claiming sodomy, are against Rabbi Macy Gordon, who taught Judaic Studies and left in 1984. Neither rabbi could be reached for comment late Monday but in previous reports they have denied any misconduct. The lawsuit also said Yeshiva allowed a former student with a reputation for improper behavior to enter the high school dorm rooms, where he fondled students.

Each of them is seeking $20 million in damages, for a total of $380 million.
The allegations represent the latest chapter in a series of sexual abuse scandals at private high schools in New York City. In December, Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklynsettled a lawsuit brought by former students accusing the school of covering up decades of sexual abuse of boys by a football coach. Former students of Horace Mann, a top-tier private school in the Bronx, have come forward to claim they were sexually abused by teachers there for decades.

One major obstacle for childhood sexual abuse victims is the state’s statute of limitations, which requires negligence lawsuits to be filed by the time the victims are 21, Mr. Mulhearn said. However, he said, he planned to circumvent that statute by claiming that the school had engaged in fraud. He employed a similar strategy in representing students in the Poly Prep case, and when a federal judge said he would allow the case to go forward, the school settled. 

Hynes Backtracks in Kellner Sex-Abuse Fraud Case

Sam Kellner

Brooklyn prosecutors had been scheduled on Monday to open the trial of an Orthodox Jew charged with paying a child to falsely testify that he was a victim of sexual abuse.
But in a dramatic reversal, they told the trial judge that their key witness was no longer trustworthy, indicating the potential collapse of a controversial case that highlighted the complicated relationship between District Attorney Charles J. Hynes and the politically influential Orthodox community.
The case against the defendant, Sam Kellner, has been unusual from the start. Mr. Kellner had accused a prominent Hasidic cantor, Baruch Lebovits, of molesting his son, and Mr. Kellner helped the district attorney’s office identify other victims, leading to Mr. Lebovits’s conviction in March 2010.
But four months later, one victim who testified against Mr. Lebovits before a grand jury told prosecutors that he had testified only because Mr. Kellner paid him $10,000. Prosecutors turned around and won the indictment of Mr. Kellner, using the original accuser, now an adult, as their key witness in the new case. Mr. Kellner was also charged with trying to extort $400,000 from the Lebovits family to keep other children from making accusations.

The filing of charges against Mr. Kellner prompted criticism from advocates for victims of sexual abuse who viewed him as a whistle-blower. It also undermined the conviction of Mr. Lebovits, which had been a high-profile achievement of the district attorney’s campaign to persuade members of the insular Hasidic community to cooperate with authorities in such cases.

Mr. Lebovits’s lawyers used the Kellner prosecution and other issues to have the conviction overturned. Mr. Lebovits had already served one year of a minimum 10-year sentence.
In State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Monday, prosecutors told the judge, Ann M. Donnelly, that they learned a couple of weeks ago that their witness had made the accusations against Mr. Kellner after accepting financial assistance from Mr. Lebovits’s supporters. That money went to paying for his lawyer; his travel to and from Israel, where he is a student; his apartment; and his school fees.

The judge delayed the trial until July 29 to give prosecutors time to investigate the witness, who previously had said Mr. Lebovits had raped him. A lawyer for Mr. Kellner, Niall MacGiollabhui, said after the hearing that he approached Mr. Hynes’s office months ago with evidence that supporters of Mr. Lebovits were manipulating the accuser.

“The district attorney waited until two weeks before trial to look into it,” he said.
Mr. MacGiollabhui added that he still wanted to bring the case to trial to clear his client, but worried that prosecutors were going to “spin the case out and hope that it dies a quiet death.”
Mr. Hynes’s office declined to comment.

Strong criticism of his handling of sexual abuse cases in the Orthodox Jewish community is not new. Initially he was accused of being reluctant to pursue such cases because of pressure from Orthodox leaders. But after he began an effort to crack down on abuse, he was criticized for refusing to release the names of those charged with abusing children.

The problems with the cases against Mr. Lebovits and Mr. Kellner have raised new concerns. Among them is why separate units of the office pursued cases that were directly at odds with each other: the sex crimes bureau prosecuting Mr. Lebovits and the rackets division prosecuting Mr. Kellner. Both relied on a witness who court records show was addicted to drugs.

The concerns come even from inside the district attorney’s office, where some have worried that Mr. Lebovits’s lawyer, Arthur L. Aidala, had undue influence.

Mr. Aidala, who used to work in the office, had brought the allegations against Mr. Kellner directly to the chief of the district attorney’s rackets division, Michael F. Vecchione. Mr. Aidala turned over an audio recording of a conversation that he said showed Mr. Kellner trying to extort money from Mr. Lebovits’s son, according to discovery material in the case. A translation of the conversation issued by the prosecutor’s office is ambiguous.

Mr. Aidala, who is a campaign contributor to Mr. Hynes and the vice president of Mr. Hynes’s nonprofit foundation, has boasted to prosecutors about his access to and influence with Mr. Hynes and Mr. Vecchione, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case. He requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Mr. Aidala declined to comment. 

In Airplane crash, people grabbed their bags before their children

When seconds can mean the difference between life and death in escaping an aircraft accident, it was startling to see so many photographs from the crash of Asiana Flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport of people carrying out bags, including roll aboards that must have come out of the overhead luggage bins.

 At least one man interviewed in the New York Times indicated that he grabbed his bags and then his child. In that order. 

All I can say is that it was very fortunate that the fire was slow to spread.
While aircraft manufacturers like Boeing BA +0.08% have done much in the last couple of decades to improve survivability in aircraft accidents by including materials that are fire-retardant, the fact remains that accidents such as this one often result in ruptured fuel lines or fuel tanks.  Once aviation fuel spills, the chances are great that it will come in contact with a hot surface like an engine and ignite.  Or the fuel could ignite for other reasons, including sparks caused by the fuselage skidding along the tarmac.

Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

Debris Field Will Yield First Clues For Investigators Of S.F. Crash

Once the fuel ignites it spreads very quickly.  Even the skin of an aircraft will burn through under the right conditions spreading the fire inside the aircraft very quickly.  And no matter how much work has been done in the area of fire-retarding materials, the interior of an aircraft is not fire-proof.  In addition to the fire itself, of course, is the danger from the toxic fumes created by the burning of plastic materials, carpets, as well as passenger belongings.
Of all the aircraft accidents I have investigated or am familiar with, this is the first where it appears significant numbers of people took their belongings with them in escaping.  What impact this had on other passengers and the extent of their injuries will need to be determined by the NTSB.  At a minimum, it seems clear to me that a public awareness campaign needs to be launched to ensure that passengers do not impede the evacuation of an aircraft in an emergency.  Certainly now that airlines and the FAA are clearly on notice that survivable accidents could be imperiled by passengers wasting time collecting their bags, they need to take action to address this issue before anyone needlessly dies in a survivable accident.

Child soloist Yitzi Rosinger sings "Shma Yisroel" (acappela, no music)

Thousands Of Haredi High-School Girls To Protest Against WoW Activists

Thousands of haredi high-school girls are expected to arrive at the Western Wall Monday morning in protest at the Women of the Wall prayer-rights activist group who will be holding their monthly prayer service at the site at the same time.
Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Yossi Deitsch of the haredi Degel Hatorah party, along with several other party members, has been coordinating with the senior haredi rabbinic leadership in order to get approval for the protest. Deitsch’s office said on Sunday that buses have been arranged for the 7,000 haredi high-school girls in Jerusalem haredi girls high-schools to transport them to the Western Wall on Monday morning. The buses will be leaving haredi neighborhoods at 5:30am in order to arrive at the site ahead of the Women of the Wall who have scheduled their prayer service for 7:00am.

 

 

Several hundred haredi men are expected to attend the protest as well, but only married men have been asked to go in order to prevent the more excitable haredi youth from causing violent disturbances. Deitch’s office noted that as well as getting the approval for the protest of Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, the most senior Ashkenazi haredi rabbi, approval has also been received from the leading hassidic rabbis as well as from Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.
Deitch described the Women of the Wall as “a small handful of women who are just interested in causing a provocation.
“The real women of the wall are those righteous women who go every day to pray sincerely at the Western Wall. What the so called Women of the Wall are doing is a debasement of the Western Wall.”
In response to the protest being arranged, Women of the Wall said that they welcomed the arrival of the haredi girls.
“Though this may be intended to intimidate and overpower Women of the Wall, we truly welcome the young women and their prayers,” the organization said in a statement on its website.
“This act just proves what we have always said: there is enough room at the Kotel for all women from all backgrounds and traditions to pray side-by-side. Women

Chariedim now use Nazi tactics against fellow Chariedim that joined the IDF

By ISABEL KERSHNERJERUSALEM — They have been labeled “Hardakim,” a derogatory term that combines Haredim, the name commonly used here to denote ultra-Orthodox Jews, with the Hebrew words for insects and germs.
As the Israeli government presses ahead with plans to enlist young Haredi men and phase out their wholesale exemption from the country’s mandatory military service, hard-line elements in the ultra-Orthodox community are fighting back by ostracizing the few thousand community members already in the armed forces.
Crude, comics-style posters have appeared in recent weeks on billboards across ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods nationwide portraying those soldiers, who volunteered under programs meant to attract Haredim, as fat, bearded, gun-toting caricatures in uniform snatching terrified Haredi children off the streets.
The strictest Haredim, who insist on the right of all ultra-Orthodox men to engage in full-time Torah study and worry about exposure to a more secular life, denounce the soldiers as “traitors” and liken them to a pestilence.
Brig. Gen. Gadi Agmon, from the Israeli military’s human resources branch, told a parliamentary committee here last week that the well-orchestrated campaign was no less vicious in style than that of Der Stürmer, the Nazi-era propaganda organ notorious for its anti-Semitic caricatures. The remark was widely reported in the secular news media and on Haredi Web sites.
Haredi soldiers have been verbally abused, spit on and humiliated while walking through their neighborhoods all over Israel. Some have been attacked with stones, or their car tires have been slashed. The children of others have been rejected by local educational institutions, and there are growing fears that enlisting could harm the marriage prospects of their siblings.
The integration of Haredim, or “those who fear God,” into the military — and providing them a path into the work force — is viewed as essential by many Israelis, not only to uphold the principle of social equality but also to ensure the economic survival of the country. More than a quarter of Jewish first graders in Israeli schools belong to the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox minority.
In recent years, hundreds have served in Nahal Haredi, a combat battalion established in the late 1990s for ultra-Orthodox 18-year-olds. About 3,000 more have served in Shahar, an army program set up in late 2007 to train young married ultra-Orthodox men as technical staff members for the air force, navy, intelligence and other branches of the military.
To attract recruits, Shahar allows soldiers to go home every night during their two-year army stint and provides a government salary.
But with Parliament working on legislation that would eventually lead to the conscription of ultra-Orthodox men, and the subsequent backlash among the Haredim, things now appear to be moving in the opposite direction.
In past years, the ultra-Orthodox community was more tolerant toward members who chose military service; some rabbis even gave their quiet blessing to recruits who were deemed unsuitable for full-time Torah study. But Haredi attitudes have hardened in response to the broad public pressure and government efforts to work toward equal service for all, barring a small quota of Orthodox youths considered Torah prodigies.
In May, up to 30,000 Haredi men flooded the streets around the recruitment office in Jerusalem to protest conscription, exposing for the first time the depth of anger. The Haredi reaction already appears to have dampened volunteer enlistment.
Elchanan Fromer, 29, who is from a small ultra-Orthodox settlement in the West Bank and works as a coordinator for the Shahar program, said the year had begun very well, with more than twice as many volunteers as in the first half of 2012. In recent weeks, however, there have been signs of a drop-off, he said.
Mr. Fromer joined Shahar in 2010 and served for 18 months. But service has become much harder for Haredi soldiers, he said, because of the potential consequences for their families now that passions on the subject have been inflamed.
“Hundreds of soldiers are facing daily problems,” he said. “Personally, if I was supposed to enlist today, I wouldn’t do it.”
On billboards in the ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem last week, black-and-white posters warned the public against the “licentious military” coming to tempt innocent Haredi youths into “the whorehouses of Nahal and Shahar.”
On central thoroughfares, the posters of children being snatched had mostly been ripped off the walls. But in the back alleys, where one hostile resident threw water from a balcony onto reporters, the posters remained untouched. Since most Haredim do not watch television, billboards and fliers are a traditional means of communication.
The comics-style campaign against Haredi soldiers has been primarily aimed at children to counter what opponents of the draft said was the military’s attempt to legitimize the young men by sending them into ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in uniform.
As part of the outreach to children, the anonymous organizers of the “Hardakim” campaign announced a children’s poster competition this summer via a Gmail account, soliciting entries showing how best to shun the soldiers.
Pini Rozenberg, a spokesman for the Haredi community in Jerusalem, said the campaign was “an internal Haredi matter meant to explain to the Haredi youth why the army institutions are not, and will never be, legitimate.”
He added: “It is not personally directed against any particular soldier. It is purely educational.”
Mr. Rozenberg also insisted that the rabbis who supported the campaign behind the scenes opposed any form of violence.
Haredi critics of the campaign point out that the rabbis, like most ultra-Orthodox Jews, have remained silent, allowing more extreme community members to set the tone.
As the backlash has worsened, the military set up a 24-hour help line for Haredi soldiers to report verbal or physical violence against them and says it has received more than 80 complaints.
One 24-year-old Haredi soldier, who asked not to be identified because he feared the consequences of further exposure, explained the path he had taken to the army. Although he grew up in a strictly ultra-Orthodox area of Jerusalem and boarded at an elite yeshiva, he secretly studied for the secular high school matriculation exams. He went on to begin law studies in a special Haredi program at a private college, then joined the military through the Shahar program.
“I wanted to contribute and to be an equal citizen, to advance and to integrate,” he said.
His wife’s family still does not know he is in the military because the couple was unsure how the family would react. His parents know, but keep it quiet.
He lives in Bayit Vegan, once a mixed religious-secular neighborhood of Jerusalem that was considered relatively moderate, and said he had suffered daily abuse in recent months, being spit at and chased by children and teenagers calling out “Germ!” and “Traitor!”
He now carries tear gas for self-defense and a special permit allowing him to leave his base in civilian clothes and still benefit from free bus travel for soldiers.
Some fellow Haredi soldiers have moved from their neighborhoods, but he refuses to do so.
“For me, to move is to hand them a victory,” he said. “They want to banish us from Haredi society