Masorti Australasia
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Masorti Australasia
Masorti means traditional
Mercaz-Masorti Australasia Inc is the new organisation representing Masorti Jews in Australia and New Zealand
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Mercaz-Masorti Australasia Inc
www.masorti.org.au
email: info@masorti.org.au
skype: masortiaustralasia
ph: 61 2 8005 1854
fax: 61 2 9327 8715
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Hamas drive out Christians from Gaza - ban Christmas
m.guardian.co.uk
http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/23/gaza-christians-hamas-cancelled-christmas?cat=world&type=article
Gaza Christians long for days before Hamas cancelled Christmas
Since the Palestinian Authority left the Gaza Strip, festive celebrations and displays of crucifixes have become taboo
Christians in Gaza say they face intimidation and arrest over Christmas celebrations since Hamas took charge in 2007. Phoebe Greenwood in Gaza.
When the Latin patriarch came to Gaza’s Holy Family church to celebrate Christmas mass last week, he instructed a full house of Catholic and Orthodox families to pray for reconciliation. As the archbishop, Fouad Twal, stood at the lectern in Gaza City, Fatah and Hamas leaders were meeting in Cairo attempting to mend differences that have divided the Palestinian factions for four years and rendered Gaza a besieged Islamist enclave.
Of the 1.5 million Palestinians now living in the Gaza Strip, fewer than 1,400 are Christian and those who can are leaving. The church hopes reconciliation will bring them back.
There hasn’t been a Christmas tree in Gaza City’s main square since Hamas pushed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in 2007 and Christmas is no longer a public holiday.
Imad Jelda is an Orthodox Christian who runs a youth training centre in Gaza City. With unemployment hovering at 23%, he has seen young Christian men leave to study and work abroad in their droves. “People here do not celebrate Christmas anymore because they are nervous,” Jelda said. “The youth in particular have a fear inside themselves.”
Karam Qubrsi, 23, and his younger brother Peter, 21, are the eldest sons in one of Gaza’s 55 remaining Catholic families. Both wear prominent wooden crucifixes. “Jesus tells me, ‘if you can’t carry my cross, you don’t belong to me,’” Peter explained. It’s a demonstration of faith that has caused him some trouble.
He describes being stopped in the street by a Hamas official who told him to remove the cross. “I told him it’s not his business and that I wouldn’t,” Peter said. After being threatened with arrest he was eventually let go, but the incident scared him.
The brightly decorated tree in the Qubrsis’ living room sits at odds with the sombre mood. Their sisters Rani, 29, and Mai, 27, left Gaza in 2007 when the 30-year-old manager of Gaza’s Bible Society bookstore, where their husbands worked, was shot dead, having been accused by radical elements of proselytising. They now live in Bethlehem.
Their parents are currently in Israel where their mother is receiving treatment for pancreatic cancer. Israel applies strict restrictions to Palestinians hoping to leave the Gaza Strip, meaning the brothers are unable to join them. A quota of 500 applicants will be given permission to enter the West Bank this Christmas but only people younger than 16 and older than 35 will be considered.
“Christmas for us means going to Bethlehem, being with family. This year we’ll do nothing,” Karam said.
The Qubrsi brothers hold out little hope for Gaza. They agree that life would be better for the Christians here if the Palestinian Authority were to return but they doubt any factional peace would last.
“Many people want the Palestinian Authority to come back just so they can take their revenge,” Peter said.
“This is not a Christian environment. There are no good universities, there is no opportunity to work, no apartments to rent and so no way we can get married. We have no future here.”
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Zealotry, Hannukah and Manny's Bookstore
Only 126 Shopping Days Until Yom HaShoah | The Jewish Week
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/israel/only_126_shopping_days_until_yom_hashoah
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Shalom Auslander
Special To The Jewish Week
Chanukah is almost upon us, the beloved Festival of Lights, that special weeklong holiday whereupon we celebrate the second century BCE victory of the Jewish zealots of Judea over the Jewish secularists of Judea, and give our children iPods, Legos and Nerf guns to commemorate our inexhaustible capacity for internecine violence and stupidity. But some other Jewish zealots — modern zealots — recently enjoyed another victory, a huge victory, just one month ago, a victory that I believe is worth noting.
The evil villain in this Year 2011 story is a devilish bookstore in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem called Ohr HaChaim, or Manny’s, “Your One-Stop Judaica and Judaic Book Shop.” The zealots are a group of local haredi Jews who call themselves Sikrikim, a name chosen in honor of an honorless group of Jewish terrorists from the Roman era who killed so many of their own they were chased out of Jerusalem before the Roman siege ever began. The name, incidentally, is also used today by a particularly violent group of Colombian drug lords; all’s fair, I suppose, in Lord and war.
But that is just ancient history — today’s Sikrikim, patrolling the seemly, iniquitous streets of the Old City, weren’t fooled by the shelves full of Hebrew books and religious texts that Manny’s tried to hide behind. Manny’s (www.mannysbookstore.com), the Sikrikim knew, was secretly “promoting immodesty,” in part by selling books in English, which attracted strangely-clad foreign tourists, as well as books on Zionism.
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Israel Update from Zionist Council of NSW
Hasbara Israel Updates
Zionist Council of NSW | Level 3, 146 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst NSW 2010
t: +61 2 9360 6300 | f: +61 2 9360 6004 | e: natalie@zionistcouncil.com.au
w: www.zionistcouncil.com.au | b: www.ozi-zion.com
Fatah declares 'war' on normalization with Israel
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction has declared war on all informal meetings between Israelis and Palestinians, Hatem Abdel Kader, a senior Fatah official, said over the weekend.
Fatah's decision came came following a series of meetings between Israeli and Palestinian peace activists and academics to promote peace and "normalization" between the two sides.
Last week, Palestinians thwarted an attempt by a group called Israeli Palestinian Confederation to hold a conference in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
At the conference, Israelis and Palestinians were expected to vote for a joint parliament that would offer itself as a "third government" for the two peoples.
Palestinian protesters stormed the Ambassador Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah and forced the Israeli organizers and hotel management to cancel the event.
The following day, a similar anti-"normalization" protest in Bethlehem forced the group to cancel a planned conference near the city.
Al Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh, who was supposed to speak at the conference, had to cancel his appearance after receiving threats from Palestinian activists belonging to Fatah and other groups.
The Fatah leadership fears that the Israeli government would exploit such meetings to tell the world that there is some kind of dialogue going on between Israelis and Palestinians and that the only problem is with the PA leadership, which is refusing to return to the negotiating table, the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper reported.
Abdel Kader, a former PA minister for Jerusalem affairs, revealed that the Fatah leadership has decided to foil all informal meetings between Israelis and Palestinians.
"We will try to thwart any Palestinian Israeli meeting, even if it's held in Tel Aviv or west Jerusalem," Abdel Kader said. "In Fatah we have official decided to ban such gatherings."
He said that it was inconceivable that such meetings are being held at a time when Israel continues to build in settlements and refuses to accept the pre-1967 lines as the future borders of a Palestinian state.
The PA leadership has repeatedly announced that it won't resume the peace talks unless the Israeli government accepts the two pre-conditions - cessation of settlement construction and recognition of the pre-1967 lines.
Abdel Kader criticized Nusseibeh for agreeing to meet with Israeli academics, politicians and peace activists "in violation of instructions by the Palestinian leadership" in the West Bank.
"These meetings don't produce anything [for the Palestinians] and are only used by Israel for political gains," the Fatah leader explained. "If all the meetings the Palestinian leadership has had with the Americans, Europeans and Quartet representatives haven't achieved anything, how can these informal meetings lead to any results?"
He also claimed that Israeli political parties were trying to take advantage of informal meetings to win the votes of "so-called moderates" in Israel.
Israeli, Italian Air Forces wrap up joint exercise
The Israeli and Italian Air Forces wrapped up two weeks of joint maneuvers on Friday, just a month after the IAF flew to Sardinia for similar drills. The forces practiced dog fights, bombing runs and long-range interceptions.
The two-week drill ended on Friday and was held at the IAF Uvda Base near Eilat. The Italians arrived in Israel with the Eurofighter and the IAF participated with its F-16 and F-15 fighter jets.
The exercise in Sardinia in November made worldwide headlines since it was held as Israeli politicians began to speak openly about the possibility of launching unilateral military action to stop Iran.
On the sidelines of the recent exercise, a number of officers from foreign air forces traveled to Uvda to watch the maneuvers and discuss potential future joint training sessions with the IAF. The IAF is planning on holding a large-scale international drill in Israel in 2013.
“The quality of the drill and the cooperation will put the IAF on a whole new level,” a senior air force source said about the 2013 drill.
Italian Air Force Brigadier General Enzo Vecciarelli said that the drill was not connected to current events like a possible Israeli strike against Iran.
“The IAF is one of the best air forces in the world and we try to share knowledge with one another,” Vecciarelli said. “We are here just for the training and it is not connected at all to Iran.”
Brig.-Gen. Hagai Topolansky, head of the IAF’s Air Division, said that Israel was looking to increase its training with foreign air forces and expressed hope that joint maneuvers would resume soon with Turkey.
“We were friends for many years and I believe that we will be able to return to holding joint maneuvers and hope that the diplomatic conditions will allow that to happen,” he said.
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Poisonous blood libel from Swedish "Peace Institute" Professor
Swedish professor links Israel to Norway massacre - Israel News, Ynetnews
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4162450,00.html
Ola Tunander suggests Israel behind bloody terror attacks committed by Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik in July, stirring up controversy in Oslo
A Swedish professor suggested Israel was behind the bloody terror attacks committed by Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik this past July, stirring up controversy in the country.
Research professor Ola Tunander of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) published an article in the Norwegian academic journal Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift in which he called to further examine Brevik’s motives.
According to Tunander, it is possible that some country was behind the terror attacks, hinting that Israel might be that country.Far right extremist Breivik, 32, had previously confessed to the Oslo bombing, which killed eight people, and to the youth camp massacre which killed 69 at the small island of Utoeya northwest of Oslo earlier in July.
In December the confessed killer disputed an expert conclusion that he is criminally insane. His lawyer was quoted as saying: “We have examined a good part of the report that details the conversations he had with the psychologists.”
Behring “reacted by saying that it contained factual errors (and) lies and that his statements were taken out of context,” his lawyer added.
Tunander claimed that in order to carry out a terror attack of such magnitude the involvement of state forces is needed, “and we can’t rule out that being the case this time too,” he wrote.While quoting the controversial article, the Swedish news site The Local presented the professor’s theory. Tunander mentioned the political tensions between Oslo and Jerusalem in the months prior to the terror attacks in light of Norway’s intent to recognize a Palestinian state.
He goes on to link between July 22, the date of Breivik’s killing spree, and the significance of that date in Israel’s history. Tunander brings up the Lillehammer affair of 1973, when Mossad agents accidently killed a Moroccan waiter in the Norwegian city believing he was Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of operations for the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes. One of the agents was arrested the day after the murder, on July 22nd. The Norwegian professor also discussed the bombing at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem carried out by the Irgun on July 22, 1946.
“We have discussed the right-wing extremist Israeli and Judeo-Christian side of Breivik’s network, Israel’s interest in disciplining Norway, and Israel’s celebration of bomb attacks. In this respect, Breivik’s attack appears to resemble a new king David Hotel attack: July 22nd,” he said.
PRIO director Kristian Berg Harpviken told Norwegian magazine Minerva that Tunander’s article left him with a feeling of “considerable unease.” Harpviken added that it was a wrong call on behalf of the Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift to publish it.
Tunander said that it was unfair to conclude from his article about any intention to link between Israel and the most murderous event in Norway’s history since World War II.
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