Moshe Montag a city counselor from the Degel HaTorah party, swims with half naked women but wants modesty in Beit Shemesh

Groiser Tzaddik Moshe Montag in Eilat 

Gender equality advocates in Bet Shemesh are up in arms with charges of hypocrisy over images of a local ultra-orthodox politician lounging near scantily clad women in Eilat that are being circulated on social networks.

The photos of Moshe Montag -a city counselor from the Degel HaTorah party close and a senior member of the administration of Shas Mayor Moshe Abutbul- were posted on Facebook Tuesday night and immediately generated an uproar among opponents of the municipality’s policies regarding controversial modesty signs hung by extremists around the Bet Shemesh.

Mixed gender swimming is considered unseemly by the ultra-orthodox.

“I’m not surprised- we’ve known all along that this has nothing to do with real modesty or Jewish and its all been about corrupt power and control and capitulating to extremist elements in the name of politics,” said activist Nili Philip.

The photos of such a prominent ultra-orthodox figure with women who do not meet his community’s modesty norms was especially galling to Philip given recent events in the city.


Moshe Mantag goes for a dip in an Eilat pool frequented by non-religious men and women. he is the one in the pool with the bald head

In January she and several other women won a lawsuit against the municipality for its failure to remove prominent signs put up in central locations in the city warning women to dress modestly and not to linger in certain places.

According to the court’s ruling “the municipality and the mayor chose not to take any steps to enforce the authority and obligations incumbent upon them to remove the signs... they absolved themselves from this obligation.”

The municipality countered by stating that it had repeatedly taken the signs down but that they were replaced on each occasion, adding that taking the signs down had led to riots.

“Unfortunately the court did not manage to understand the complicated reality in Beit Shemesh which we are dealing with, and did not accept the claim of the municipality that concern for the public safety and the harm to the fabric of the delicate relations between different population groups in Beit Shemesh outweighed the immediate and repeated need to remove the signs,” the municipality stated at the time.

Asked about the photos, Montag’s office manager Benzion Rockov said that he did not understand what the point was of even discussing the topic.

“Are you serious” he queried. “Do you really think that you can use pictures of a private individual to defame a person?…These are pictures that also the media in Bet Shemesh understands that they can’t use. Only you think that you are smarter than everyone. Do what you think, on your responsibility, and don’t say you didn’t know.”

The use of religion in Bet Shemesh politics also played a role in stoking anger over the images, with local residents taking to Facebook to vent their feelings, with one local complaining about what he saw as the “obsessive nature of the modesty regime in the city, backed by Rabbonim [rabbis]” as well as “the sanctimonious election campaign which [Montag] headed with the Mayor.”

During the 2013 mayoral race, the ultra-orthodox community distributed campaign advertisements claiming that “evildoers” seeking to “uproot the Torah” were intent on taking over the city” and stating that voting for the ultra-orthodox incumbents would be a “sanctification of God’s name.”

According to Rabbi Dov Lipman, a former Yesh Atid legislator who has been active in combating religious extremism in Bet Shemesh, the problem is not related in any way to Montag’s choice of swim partners.

“How dare he act as part of the political establishment in Bet Shemesh which has worked to prevent the construction of an outdoor pool in the city, a culture hall in the city, a movie theater in the city, and more, all in the name of ‘representing the will of the gedolei Torah [great Torah scholars].’ My issue is with the hypocrisy, not with his own personal lifestyle and I have seen that hypocrisy throughout the haredi political establishment,” Lipman told the Post.

"I believe that the private activities of a public figure which go against the policies and lifestyle which he forces on the citizens he leads is very relevant and is important for the public to know." Weighing in on the issue, Rabbi Uri Regev of the Hiddush religious equality NGO commented that the “ Sages of Old observed [that] it’s not the truly faithful that pose a threat, but the hypocrites.”

“Montag, who is part of a fundamentalist leadership circle in the anti-women war zones of Bet Shemesh, may have shown his true colors in the permissive environs of Eilat. It's high time that greater openness towards human nature be practiced in Bet Shemesh, rather than women being denied their their rightful, equal positions in the public sphere.”

However, not everyone believed that the issue was worthy of public attention, with city opposition councilman Moshe Sheetrit (Likud) stating that he did not think that “it’s any business of mine what a council member does in his own time.”

The issue received no coverage in the ultra-orthodox media aside from one tweet by journalist Israel Cohen of the Kikar HaShabbat news website. He later deleted the tweet with an apology.

Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report

Is the שיטה הקדושה פון ויואל משה running out out of steam and not connecting to young people anymore?

from the Circus Tent Blog

There was some talk about it a few weeks ago, where some young people were interviewed anonymously in some publication. 

Obviously those that were interviewed are likely not the guys you want to use as your "proof." They're not on the Satmar path at all. 

So the fact that they like the Land of Israel is not proof that the Shittah is bankrupt. But we're not talking about the guys in that interview. 

We're talking about young people, in their 20s, 30s and 40s, who send their kids to Satmar mosdos, who daven in Satmar shuls, and who may even spend all the דערהויבענע מאמענטן of the year in Satmar. 

Does the shittah speak to them? 

More and more we see that it doesn't, and for a very simple reason. It's tough to raise a generation on a basis that is the antithesis of what a Jew believes and yearns for. 
Eretz Yisroel is in the heart of every Jew. 

He yearns to go there, whether he feels it or not. It's part of our past, present and future. 

Some choose not to see any of the wrongs going on there, because of the love, and I dare say, some choose to see EVERYTHING as wrong. Maybe because they love it so much, and it's hard to see a beloved country, G-d's country, act that way. 

Young people, however, they're in need of love, to love and be loved. They can't live the way their parents and grandparents did. This is true with regards to most things in life, the way they raise their families, and even the way they see Eretz Yisroel. They need to love. 

The Shittah was good for the old generation, it doesn't seem to be working with the younger ones. Even if we do see bochurim marching and wearing sackcloth, and even if we see 13 year old kids saying דאון וויט איזראעל.

Rare Inscription from the Time of King David was Discovered in the Valley of Elah "Eshbaʽal Ben Beda"

A rare inscription from the time of King David was discovered at Khirbet Qeiyafain the Valley of Elah. 

A ceramic jar c. 3,000 years old that was broken into numerous shards was discovered in 2012 in excavations carried out there by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University and Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority. 

Letters written in ancient Canaanite script could be discerned on several of the shards, sparking the curiosity of researchers.

Intensive restoration work conducted in the laboratories of the Israel Antiquities Authority Artifacts Treatment Department, during which hundreds of pottery shards were glued together to form a whole jar, solved the riddle – 

he jar was incised with the inscription: 

Eshbaʽal Ben Badaʽ. 

Dr. Mitka Golub and Dr. Haggai Misgav were among the team of researchers involved in deciphering the text.

According to Professor Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University and Saar Ganor of the IAA, 

"This is the first time that the name Eshbaʽal has appeared on an ancient inscription in the country. 

Eshbaʽal Ben Shaul, who ruled over Israel at the same time as David, is known from the Bible. Eshbaʽal was murdered by assassins and decapitated and his head was brought to David in Hebron (II Samuel, Chaps. 3-4). 

It is interesting to note that the name Eshbaʽal appears in the Bible, and now also in the archaeological record, only during the reign of King David, in the first half of the tenth century BCE. 

This name was not used later in the First Temple period.The correlation between the biblical tradition and the archaeological finds indicates this was a common name only during that period. 

The name Bedaʽ is unique and does not occur in ancient inscriptions or in the biblical tradition."

According to the researchers, the fact that the name Eshbaʽal was incised on a jar suggests that he was an important person. 

He was apparently the owner of a large agricultural estate and the produce collected there was packed and transported in jars that bore his name. 

This is clear evidence of social stratification and the creation of an established economic class that occurred at the time of the formation of the Kingdom of Judah.

Garfinkel and Ganor add, "In  Samuel 11,there was apparently reluctance to use the name Eshbaʽal, which was reminiscent of the Canaanite storm god Baʽal, and the original name was therefore changed to Ish-Bashat, but the original name of Eshbaʽal was preserved in the Book of Chronicles.  Thus, for example, the name of the warlord Gideon Ben Joash was also changed from Jerrubaal to Jerubesheth." 

 

Khirbet Qeiyafais identified with the biblical city Shaʽarayim. 

During several seasons of excavations directed by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, a fortified city, two gates, a palace and storerooms, dwellings and cultic rooms were exposed there. 

The city dates from the time of David, that is, the late eleventh and early tenth centuries BCE. Unique artifacts that were previously unknown were discovered at the site. For example, in 2008 the world’s earliest Hebrew inscription was uncovered there. Now, another inscription from the same period is being published from the site.

According to Garfinkel and Ganor,"Until about five years ago we knew of no inscriptions dating to the tenth century BCE from the Kingdom of Judah. 

In recent years four inscriptions have been published:

 two from Khirbet Qeiyafa, one from Jerusalem and one from Bet Shemesh. 

This completely changes our understanding of the distribution of writing in the Kingdom of Judah and it is now clear that writing was far more widespread than previously thought. It seems that the organization of the kingdom required a cadre of clerks and writers and their activity is also manifested in the appearance of inscriptions. "

 Skyview Company

Everything is Honkey Dorey ... Rabbanim ban the app "Whatsapp"

B"H we solved all other issues, we have time now to ban apps! 

Translation:
After a number of admorim announced the prohibition of using WhatsApp, a number of prominent dayanim join their call. 

Dayanim HaGaon Rav Yehuda Sliman (סלימן) and HaGaon Rav Shriel Rosenberg of HaGaon HaRav Nissim Karelitz’s Shlita beis din released a letter on Tuesday, 29 Svan in Yated Neeman and HaMevaser warning against using the program for other than earning a livelihood. 

The notice stresses that the tzibur is to use only kosher approved phones. Only persons that absolutely must use the other phones for parnasa may do so.

This applies particularly to using WhatsApp, Telegram and others like it, which are accompanied by destructive dangers to the point one may lose oneself, expose one to prohibited sights, and expose these forbidden sights to one another rapidly via the application. 

Even among many using the application for parnasa, they too often use it for recreational use too and this leads to the destruction of their neshomos.

Hence the safe thing is to use a protected phone and to avoid or cut off from WhatsApp.

Signed by the two rabbonim.

A Harvard Student Breaks Ranks and Falls in Love with Israel

Oliver Marjot came to Israel for ten days to see its arrogance and oppression for himself. It did not turn out quite that way.

Recently, a group of 52 Harvard students - of all backgrounds and faiths - visited Israel for 10 days during the Harvard Israel Trek 2015

Sometimes the impact of such a trip cannot be expressed in prose - but can only be captured in poetry.

What follows is a poem - posted on the Harvard trek blog by Oliver Marjot - a British PhD candidate studying Medieval Latin at Harvard - that reflects his transformative experience.

Oliver expected that the Trek would confirm his reasonable European certainty of Israel’s arrogant oppression.  That’s not quite the way things turned out.

Oliver's Poem eloquently answers those who continue their vicious attempts to denigrate and de-legitimize Israel by exhorting the boycott and isolation of Israel, its people, products, commercial enterprises, medical breakthroughs, academics and artists:

“To my newfound Love,

I came to you, Israel, wanting to hate you. To be confirmed in my reasonable European certainty of your arrogant oppression, lounging along the Mediterranean coast, facing West in your vast carelessness and American wealth. I wanted to appreciate your history, but tut over the arrogant folly of your present. I wanted to cross my arms smugly, and shake my head over you, and then leave you to fight your unjust wars.

I wanted to take from you. To steal away some spiritual satisfaction, and sigh and pray, and shake my head over your spiritual folly as well. To see the sad spectacle of the Western wall, and bitterly laugh at your backward-looking notion that God sits high on Moriah Mount, distant and approachable. I wanted to smirk in my Protestant confidence, knowing that God is with me, even if you refuse to turn to him, standing instead starting blankly at a wall of cold stone, pushing scribbled slips of paper into the Holy mountain, not daring to raise your face, and ask with words.

I wanted to see your sights, to bask in your sun, to tramp my feet over your soil, to swim in your seas, to eat the fruit of your fields. I wanted to be amazed, to be interested, to be engaged. I wanted.

I didn’t realise you were broken as well as wealthy, fragile as well as strong. I didn’t realise that you suffer from a thousand voices clamouring in your head, and that some of those voices care about justice and democracy, and that some of them love their neighbours. I didn’t realise that a thousand enemies press on your borders, hoarding instruments of death, as chaos and darkness and madness consume the world every way you look. I didn’t realise that you care about your past - that some of those voices of yours treasure the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob every bit as much as I do. I didn’t realise. Nobody told me. Or maybe they did, and I refused to listen

I didn’t expect to fall in love with you. Your beauty caught me like a hook. Seeing you, I see what Solomon saw when he wrote about his Beloved. I see that homeland that Jesus loved. The lush green of your Galilee, the stark strength of your desert, the bare whiteness of your Judean hills. I love the Hebrew you speak, the churches your wear like flowers in your hair, the proud golden dome that crowns your head. I love the strength of your soldiers, the warmth of your sun, the joy of your songs, the peace of your kibbutzim.

This cold Boston air is a mockery of your spring warmth, and in this vast sprawl of concrete and red brick it’s no exaggeration to say that I yearn for your troubled horizons, your ancient hills. I’m not ashamed to say it. I love you.

I’m sorry I had to leave you. I know I have no right to love you. What’s ten days compared to a year, a childhood, a lifetime? Or the five-thousand year lifetime of a people? I know that you won’t remember me, that you probably barely even registered my short time with you. I’m sure my love means nothing to you amid the whispers of a million other lovers, and you’re so very far away.

But I will come back to you. I will. I’ll leave these busy, harried, Western shores, and come to you, to the East. I’ll learn your Hebrew, I’ll share your troubles, I’ll breath your air, I’ll walk in your fields again.

I will. I will.

Until then, Israel, mon amour, my love. Until then, shalom.”

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) started in 2005 by “Palestinian Civil Society” falsely claims that Israel is persistently violating international law  – while that Society’s Government  – the Palestine Liberation Organisation – continues to reject substantive segments of international law formulated over the last 95 years legalizing Jewish self-determination, as in this statement:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

The European Union – threatening to join these racist-inspired, Jew-hating BDS campaigners – is being well and truly conned.

Think again Europe. A Harvard student has – so should you.

Michelle Obama to Muslim hijab-clad girls " I see myself. In so many ways your story is my story,”

U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to the United Kingdom today, choosing to give a speech on female empowerment while surrounded by hijab-clad girls in the ethnically “diverse” London borough of Tower Hamlets.

But the Commercial Road in Tower Hamlets, from where Mrs. Obama chose to lecture, isn’t ethnically diverse, and nor is the Mulberry School for Girls that she visited.

Tower Hamlets, which only days ago managed to shake off its Islamist-linked Mayor, boasts a Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani, and otherwise Asian population. At the last census, in 2011, 39 percent of the population self-identified as Christian, while 36 percent identified as Muslim. The Muslim population of the borough is believed to have overtaken the Christian population by some way in the years since, with the next census not due until 2021.

And in Tower Hamlets, nearly 1 in 5 residents did not speak English as their first language, according to the 2011 statistics, opting instead for Bengali.

The Mulberry School for Girls, where Mrs Obama delivered her patronizing ‘Let Girls Learn’ speech, is described in multiple Ofsted school inspection reports as having “nearly all students… of Bangladeshi heritage, with a very small minority from other backgrounds, including White British, Pakistani and African.”

And while the school has been rated as “very good” for a number of years, it has also played host to hard-left conferences sponsored by groups such as ‘War on Want’, which is closely tied to anti-Israel activities in the United Kingdom, the ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ which has its roots in communist sympathizing, and indeed the European Parliament.

The Mulberry Youth Conference boasts amongst its speakers Shami Chakrabarti from left-wing campaign group Liberty, now-deceased Labour MP Tony Benn, ex Labour MP Clare Short, editor of the Guardian newspaper Alan Rusbridger, anti-white racist columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, hard-left activist Owen Jones, and feminist campaigner Lucy-Anne Holmes. 

So why did Michelle Obama choose Tower Hamlets, and the Mulberry School for Girls?

She said she specifically chose the area, and asked the question aloud herself, during her speech: “Why would she choose Tower Hamlets? I’m here because of you,” she told the crowd.

“When I look out at all these young women, I see myself. In so many ways your story is my story,” she told the room full of hijab-wearing girls. “I know I don’t look [older than you all]”, she crowed. 

And then went on to praise the local area, which is known for being a hot bed of Islamist activity and sympathy.

She described Tower Hamlets as a place where “families are tight knit… with strong values”. Perhaps this is true. There has certainly been evidence of a very “tightly knit” cabal attempting to rule Tower Hamlets. And there are certainly strong values too. Almost half of Britain’s 1300 cases of Female Genital Mutilation last year were from London. No prizes for guess which areas these emanate from.

So perhaps Mrs. Obama’s message about “climate change, poverty, extremism” were not best placed in the London borough best known for being a hive of corruption itself. Then again, as she chose to remind us, she is from the mean streets of Chicago. So that rotten stench probably rings quite familiar.

‘Our mandate is to isolate Israel,’ BDS leader tells 'Post'

Kwara ' kockim'un' Kekana, BDS activist

The mandate of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign is “to isolate Israel,” a spokeswoman for the movement told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Interviewed by The Jerusalem Post by phone, Kwara Kekana of BDS South Africa denied accusations leveled by Jewish organizations that her organization is anti-Semitic, a claim heard increasingly as companies such as France’s Orange appear to be buckling under pressure to severe ties with the Jewish state.

The BDS movement’s branch in South Africa has been one of the most vocal worldwide, and has been involved in a series of high profile incidents that have caused vocal outrage among Jewish communal bodies.

In 2013, one of the movement’s leaders justified calls to "shoot the Jew" heard during a protest against a concert by an Israeli musician. During that incident, protesters screamed at concertgoers slogans such as "Israel is apartheid" and "down, down Israel." Some also threw paper at the Jewish attendees.

The call to kill Jews was “just like you would say kill the Boer at [a] funeral during the eighties [and]  it wasn’t about killing white people, it was used as a way of identifying with the apartheid regime,” BDS coordinator Muhammed Desai said at the time.

Asked if the group was hostile to Jews, Prof. Farid Esack, writing on behalf of the board of BDS South Africa, expressed his opposition to "any and all incitement to violence and racism – including anti-Semitism and Zionism.”

More recently the movement hosted convicted Palestinian airline hijacker Leila Khaled on a nationwide speaking tour. In an email to supporters, organizers termed her an icon of the Palestinian struggle, showing an image of the PFLP member clutching an automatic weapon and comparing her to late South African president Nelson Mandela.

“Many Palestinians including Leila Khaled are today considered terrorists like the ANC and Nelson Mandela were once classified as terrorists,” the group declared. “The picture of a young, determined looking woman with a checkered keffiyeh scarf, clutching an AK-47, was as era-defining as that of Che Guevara, Ruth First and other political figures from our recent past.”

At the time, Kekana told the Post that she did not expect the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, which condemned the tour, to understand “the meaning of hosting someone like Nelson Mandela, the South African struggle icon, or Leila Khaled, the Palestinian struggle icon.”

The Jewish communal group, she said, had proudly supported the apartheid regime, just as it supports an Israeli “regime that is killing innocent Palestinians.”

Jewish ire at the group continued to build in April, when a diplomatic spat between Pretoria and Jerusalem prompted the BDS movement and allied organizations to threaten to “take it upon ourselves to be at the Israeli Embassy…to expel the Israeli Ambassador.”

The BDS movement also complained about what it called the “Israel lobby.”

Speaking with the Post on Tuesday, however, Kekana denied accusations of anti-Semitism, explaining that the campaign has Jews among its adherents.

“Oftentimes there is a discussion of BDS being anti-Semitic which is completely false. BDS if anything subscribes to peace. Against all forms of racism, which includes anti-Semitism, xenophobia, you can name it,” she said.

Asked if she believed that Israel has a right to exist or if Zionism is a form of racism, she responded by explaining that “the current form that Zionism as an ideology is being applied today” constitutes a “fundamental problem” for her.

Another such fundamental issue is “the way in which Israel wishes to exist at the expense of an indigenous population,” she said. “It wishes to exist in a state that wishes to exclude another group and also wants to exist at the expense of an indigenous population.”

Her mandate, she said, is to “isolate the apartheid state of Israel until it listens to international law” and gives in to three “non-negotiable” demands: the end of its occupation of lands claimed by the Palestinians, the end of “apartheid” and the acceptance of the Palestinian right of return.

Asked if going outside of the framework of negotiations to pressure Israel would make it less likely that a negotiated solution could be reached, she said that the issue of talks was up to the political leadership of the Palestinians and that her only concern was getting Israel to begin “complying with international law.”

Negotiations, she added, have to be undertaken in good faith and cannot go ahead while Arab “political prisoners” remain in Israeli jails or while there is any building in settlements.

Negotiations under such a state are ridiculous, she said, indicating that she believed that negotiations between the two sides could only commence once Israel has been isolated and made to comply with her movement’s demands.

The general consensus among the international community is that issues such as Jerusalem, borders and refugees must be dealt with in negotiations.

Despite the presence of Arabs in the Knesset and the supreme court, she insisted that Israel meets the definition of an apartheid state under a United Nations definition.

Asked how a right of return might be implemented, especially given the Israeli reluctance to give in on a point which many believe to be demographic suicide for the state’s Jewish majority, she said that she did not know what it would mean at the end of the day.

“What is a right of return. I think that we really need to start having those discussions. The preoccupation right now is not about creating peaceful agreements and I don’t think we are there yet. We are not at a point where we need to be discussing what the right of return itself needs to look like. For one, now Israel does not acknowledge the fact that Palestinians have a right to return to indigenous land,” she said.

The idea that Israel is an apartheid state is not restricted to South Africa. In an interview this week with the Arab website Bokra that was also run by 972 Magazine, Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the international movement, stated that the “Oslo accords disenfranchised Palestinians in the 1948 region, causing a serious rift. On the contrary, the BDS movement insists on the right of all Palestinians to exercise self-determination as a unified people and as such, insists on the rights of all Palestinians, including ‘48 Palestinians.”

“Conflating time-honored, human-rights-based boycotts of Israel’s violations of international law with anti-Jewish racism is not only false, it is a racist attempt to put all Jews into one basket and to implicate them in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians,” he said.

Former Amassador Oren Reveals How Obama Betrayed Israel Alliance

Former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren revealed the depths of US President Barack Obama's antagonism to Israel and abandonment of the policies underlying the alliance between the two countries in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Israel may have made "mistakes" according to Oren with questionably timed building announcements for Jewish housing in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samraria, but Obama made mistakes against Israel "deliberately."

"From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran," wrote Oren. "Mr. Obama posed an even more fundamental challenge by abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America."

Outlining these two principles, he noted the first was the concept of "no daylight," by which the US and Israel avoided public disagreements so as not to encourage their common enemies to exploit the disharmony.

Back in 2009, Oren recalls how Obama told American Jewish leaders, "when there is no daylight Israel just sits on the sidelines and that erodes our credibility with the Arabs," a comment that ignored the 2005 Disengagement plan from Gaza and Israel's previous two offers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to grant them a state.

Obama also nixed former President George W. Bush's promise to include major "settlement blocs" in Judea and Samaria within Israel's borders according to any peace agreement, instead forcing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to impose total building freezes in those areas.

Oren noted that as a result, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas torpedoed the peace talks by sealing a unity deal with Hamas, "but he never paid a price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain part of Israel."

Surprises galore

"The other core principle was 'no surprises,'" details Oren. "President Obama discarded it in his first meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, in May 2009, by abruptly demanding a settlement freeze and Israeli acceptance of the two-state solution. The following month the president traveled to the Middle East, pointedly skipping Israel and addressing the Muslim world from Cairo."

The former ambassador noted that Israeli leaders in the past were given forewarning about major US policy statements regarding the Middle East, and were able to give their opinions on them.

"But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented support for the Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power, without consulting Israel."

"Similarly, in May 2011, the president altered 40 years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines with land swaps - formerly the Palestinian position - as the basis for peace-making," continued Oren. "If Mr. Netanyahu appeared to lecture the president the following day, it was because he had been assured by the White House, through me, that no such change would happen."

Yet another "surprise" was when Obama offered to back a UN Security Council investigation of Israel's communities in Judea and Samaria, and likewise offered "to back Egyptian and Turkish efforts to force Israel to reveal its alleged nuclear capabilities."

"The abandonment of the 'no daylight' and 'no surprises' principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program," wrote Oren. "In 2014, Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy."

"The past six years have seen successive crises in U.S.-Israeli relations, and there is a need to set the record straight. But the greater need is to ensure a future of minimal mistakes and prevent further erosion of our vital alliance," he concluded.

Chareidi Soldiers Saved By A Miracle As Jeep Turns Over on Terrorist

Chareidi Nachal that participated in military activity yesterday in the Arab village of Malik in the vicinity of Ramallah turned over as a result of obstacles placed by local residents. The jeep rolled over an Arab who tried to attack the soldiers with a Molotov cocktail and killed him.

The four Chareidi soldiers who were in the jeep survived the attack, partially due to the precaution they exercised during the ride. The dead terrorist was previously known by law authorities in Israel.

The soldiers entered the village of Malik for an ordinary activity of summoning a few of the local residents for investigations with the Shin Bet. As the activity began, the soldiers were pelted with stones and were tackled by numerous obstacles positioned in the village roads in order to encumber their exit. As the activity concluded, one of the jeeps tried to bump into the obstacles in order to remove it – an attempt that had to it turning over. The Arab lured the jeep so he would be able to throw a Molotov cocktail once the vehicle approached, but he was eventually squashed under it.

As a result of the incident, protests broke out at dawn in the village, with blocks, stones and Molotov cocktails hurled at the soldiers. The soldiers managed to get out of the village, boruch Hashem. Rabbis at the Nachal Chareidi Foundation escorting the Chareidi soldiers throughout their military service stated that “the Chareidi Nachal soldiers risk their lives on a daily basis in face of the organized and spontaneous terror of the Arabs. We thank G-d that the event ended successfully.”