Levitt Letter Extra News

Intense silence and seriousness Photo: AP

Israeli memory a constant argument between absence and presence
Sara K. Eisen, www.YNetNews.com

Today we think of who we do not have and why, and then what that lack demands of us.

Tomorrow, about how we celebrate being alive to meet those demands.

Today is Memorial Day in Israel, honoring fallen soldiers and victims of terror, observed here a day before Independence Day. The connection is essential since it is widely recognized that without the former, celebrating the latter would be impossible, while always hoping that one day, this will not be the case. That there will be no more names on next year’s list of the fallen. It is, in other words, a sacred day we wish with all our hearts we didn’t need to observe, and in fact grapple with its necessity all the time.

In any event, Israel is not quite Western and also has a very small population – death by war is not something distant and abstract, since everyone has either lost someone or knows someone who has. As such, there are no Memorial Day sales and no Memorial Day home games and no Memorial Day picnics. There are, instead (not in addition,) countless public ceremonies, school observances, lots of sad TV documentaries (and little else on) and public moments of silence when traffic stops all along the nation’s highways. It’s not a case where some of the country mourns its fallen sons and daughters and some of the country shops or watches baseball.

Memory is pervasive around here, fraught. It is as much something as it is a lack of something.

The mood shifts dramatically sometime around 5 pm, as people get ready for Independence Day, an out and out celebration, complete with picnics, barbecues, parties, fireworks, etc. Much like the Fourth of July.

(But stores: Still closed.)

It seems that Israeli memory is about a conscious decision to always be remembering and forgetting all the time, in the same instant, a constant argument between absence and presence that sometimes results in the type of massive virtual memory overload that can causes one to freeze. Independence Day is, to continue that metaphor, like one big national reboot.

In truth, I sometimes miss the days of memory being something you celebrate at Macy’s, unless, of course, you had someone die in Vietnam or Iraq, in which case your day might look a little Israeli.

In any event, this silence and seriousness and restraint and celebration of life that nearly everyone does around here is very intense and it makes me want to hide some days.

But then I forget that I need to. Memory is like that.

www.IsraelToday.co.il 

Even before Ahmadinejad could start speaking, a man wearing a colorful clown wig stood up and and began jeering the Iranian leader. After the man had been removed by security, Ahmadinejad called him “ignorant.”

The Iranian leader then went on to accuse Western powers of having brought great death and destruction to the whole world during two world wars, and then using the conclusion of those conflicts as an opportunity to impose oppressive and racist restrictions on the rest of the world.

As evidence he pointed out that a mere five nations have veto power in the UN Security Council, the most important decision-making body in the world.

Ahmadinejad then turned to Israel, which he insists European powers established out of guilt over the Nazi Holocaust.

“Under the pretext of compensating for the evil done in the name of xenophobia, they in fact set up the most violent xenophobes, in Palestine,” stated Ahmadinejad.

It was then that the delegates from those European nations who had not boycotted the event all together rose from their seats and filed out of the room right in front of Ahmadinejad’s podium.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama on Sunday defended his decision to boycott the anti-racism summit, calling its open criticism of Israel “hypocritical and counterproductive.”

ZLM reported Irena Sendler’s story on page 28 of the April 2008 Levitt Letter and in May 2008 on this LLX website.

Academy Award Winners Anna Paquin, Marcia Gay Harden Headline True Story of World War II Heroine

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, the 236th presentation of the Hallmark Hall of Fame, recounts the inspiring true story of the brave woman who helped save the lives of 2,500 Jewish babies and young children in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Academy Award winner Anna Paquin (The Piano, True Blood) plays the title role; another Academy Award winner, Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock, In From the Night), plays her mother, Janina. Goran Visnjic (ER) is Stefan, a friend from Irena’s university days who helps Irena and her underground network map out strategies and routes to smuggle the children out of the ghetto.

The film premieres on CBS Sunday, April 19, 2009, 9-11 p.m. PT/ET.

Irena Sendler was a Catholic social worker, but used fake identification to pass herself off as a nurse, which allowed her to enter and exit the walled-off ghetto with relative ease. She used that advantage to mount the daring and dangerous operation to smuggle children to safety.

Finally, in 1943, the Gestapo arrested Sendler. She spent three months in captivity, undergoing interrogation and torture. She betrayed no one. After she was sentenced to death, a guard – bribed by the Polish resistance movement – freed her.

Irena Sendler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, and died at age 98 in May 2008. While alive, she was never comfortable being singled out for special recognition. She always reminded people that smuggling and then protecting all those children represented a collective effort on the part of many brave souls, including couriers, nuns, priests and Polish families, to say nothing of the close-knit band of mostly women who were part of her underground smuggling network.

Anna Paquin researched the life and times of Irena Sendler before filming began in November 2008, in Riga, Latvia.

“She was extraordinarily strong,” Paquin says, “and extraordinarily modest. She had no sense of being in any way special or heroic. She was angry about what was happening to the Jews she knew personally, and the thousands more she didn’t know. She said the only way she could live through that terrible time was to do something. She felt she had no choice.”

Paquin continues, “When she was asked years later, ‘Weren’t you scared?’ she answered, ‘Yes – but my anger was stronger!’

“It speaks to her sense of mission and her sense of humility that for the rest of her life, looking back on those war years, she felt she hadn’t done enough.”

Marcia Gay Harden says Irena Sendler and her fellow smugglers weren’t the only individuals worthy of praise during that troubled time.

“Equally amazing, I think,” Harden says, “is the courage of the mothers and fathers who kissed their babies one last time and then parted with them, so they’d have a chance to live. I think everybody who sees this film will ask themselves if they would have had the courage to do that.”

Asked to describe Anna Paquin’s performance in the lead role, Marcia Gay Harden says, “Anna is portraying more than the nobility of Irena Sendler. She’s portraying the humanity of Irena Sendler.”

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler is written by John Kent Harrison and Lawrence John Spagnola, based on the book The Mother of the Holocaust Children by Anna Mieszkowska.

John Kent Harrison directs. This is his sixth Hallmark Hall of Fame film; previous projects include William Faulkner’s Old Man, What the Deaf Man Heard and The Water Is Wide. Jeff Rice (The Watcher), Jeff Most (The Specialist) and Brent Shields (Front of the Class) are the executive producers. It is from Jeff Most/Jeff Rice Productions and Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions, Inc.

By Robert Maginnis, www.HumanEvents.com

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s new prime minister, will soon visit the White House to deliver a tough message: President Obama must stop Iran from acquiring atomic weapons or Israel will soon act unilaterally to prevent Tehran from going nuclear.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told The Atlantic magazine. He describes Iran’s nuclear program as “an existential threat for Israel” and warned that Iran threatens a second Holocaust with its “wipe Israel off the map” ideology.

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran,” Netanyahu said.

This issue is urgent for Israel and time lines are now drawn in months, “not years,” Netanyahu said. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” said another adviser.

Israel’s urgency was explained by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East. Last week, Petraeus told Congress Tehran’s “…obstinacy and obfuscation have forced Iran’s neighbors and the international community to conclude the worst about the regime’s intentions.”

Petraeus cautioned, “The Israeli government may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take preemptive military action to derail or delay it.”

But some U.S. officials don’t share Israel’s sense for urgency. Adm. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, said Israel and the U.S. are working with the same set of facts, but are interpreting them differently. Israel takes “…more of a worst-case approach to these things,” Blair explained.

“Reaching a military-grade nuclear capability is a question of synchronizing its strategy with the production of a nuclear bomb,” Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel’s chief of military intelligence said. Yadlin argues Iran is stockpiling low-level enriched uranium (LEU) and hopes to use the dialogue with the West to buy the time it requires to manufacture an atomic bomb.

Iran has a growing inventory of LEU. The United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that as of November 2008, Iran had almost a ton of LEU, and nuclear analysts estimate that’s nearly enough for conversion into high-enriched uranium suitable for one bomb. Meanwhile, Tehran’s uranium enriching centrifuges run around the clock and the regime continues to add more of them.

Further, on March 24, the IAEA indicated it “…was unable to make any progress … about possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme because of lack of cooperation by Iran.” IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei believes “Iran only wants enough mastery of enrichment to keep the world guessing about its nuclear defenses without provoking massive retaliation.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates guesses Iran isn’t close to having a nuclear bomb, and Director Blair adds, “[t]he minimum time at which Iran could technically produce the amount of highly enriched uranium for a single weapon is 2010 to 2015.”

Blair concedes Iran has imported some weapons-grade material, but it’s his view Tehran is still unable to make a bomb, even though it cooperates with ally North Korea which tested an atomic device in 2006.

The differences in the interpretation of the facts will be an issue when Netanyahu meets Obama to present three courses of action for the president’s consideration.

First, the prime minister will warn Obama that doing nothing could have dire consequences. Netanyahu will encourage Obama to reject the notion an atomic-armed Tehran will “behave like any other nuclear power.”

Netanyahu will cite Tehran’s irrational behavior during the eight year Iran-Iraq war as evidence. It “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness,” Netanyahu explained. “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.”

He will caution Obama that an atomic Iran would enable its terrorist proxies, Hizballah and Hamas, to fire rockets at Israel while enjoying a nuclear umbrella and could “embolden Islamic militants worldwide.” The regime could give atomic weapons to terrorist proxies and other nations.

Netanyahu will warn that a nuclear-armed Iran would dramatically change the balance of power in the Middle East, weakening America’s influence especially in the energy sector. It might persuade Arab nations to develop nuclear arsenals which would further destabilize the region.

Second, the prime minister will support Obama’s diplomacy and sanctions course of action, but not for long. “How you achieve this goal [denying Tehran atomic weapons] is less important than achieving it,” Netanyahu will repeat to Obama.

The prime minister is skeptical that Iran can be pressured to surrender its atomic program, however. Netanyahu acknowledges Tehran’s economy is in trouble, “…which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.”

But the U.S. has imposed sanctions against Iran under the National Emergencies Act, and the U.N. has sanctioned the regime’s commercial activities associated with its nuclear program. Tehran continues its atomic activities in spite of these measures.

Last Friday, Obama told a NATO summit in France “We cannot have a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.” He promised his administration will use diplomacy to dissuade Tehran from pursuing atomic weapons. But top Iranian officials have dismissed U.S. overtures, demanding the U.S. remove its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan before dialogue could begin.

The Israeli prime minister’s final course of action is an Israeli attack, possibly with U.S. assistance. Some Israelis believe Netanyahu has made up his mind to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities with or without the U.S., because he has no confidence in diplomacy and sanctions.

An attack could be triggered once the Israelis determine that the Iranians are close to acquiring a finished bomb. It’s not clear exactly how anyone will know that time, however.

Israel has the right attack arsenal to destroy the Iranian targets, but mission success is dependent on certain U.S. support. The Israeli Defense Forces have special operations forces, long-range fighters and refuelers, cruise missile armed submarines and ballistic missiles that can range Iran. But they lack air space control, electronic warfare cover, air defense codes, and other support that the U.S. can provide.

Some experts say, however, that the Iranian facility at Natanz is buried so deeply and hardened sufficiently to prevent an Israeli air attack — even with the bunker-buster bombs sold to Israel last year — from succeeding.

Netanyahu will promise Obama the strike can destroy Iran’s atomic facilities. But the prime minister will exclude the possible consequences from his petition because the list is long and sobering.

Iran would immediately retaliate by trying to blockade the Straits of Hormuz through which 40 % of the world’s oil passes. This can be done by sinking tankers in the narrow channel.

Tehran will counterattack Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf with hundreds of ballistic missiles and unleash its terrorist proxies. In 2004, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, said, “If anyone invades our nation, we will jeopardize their interests around the world.”

The long range implications are potentially more problematic because Iran might redouble its atomic efforts. Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor served to reinforce that country’s atomic lusts, even though it set Saddam back by at least a decade. After the attack, Saddam Hussein increased his nuclear staffing from 400 to 7,000 personnel and invested 20 times more money in his renewed program.

How serious is Netanyahu about unilaterally striking Iran, and how close is Tehran to acquiring an atomic weapon? Obama’s national security team wants those answers before selecting the administration’s course of action.

The answers are deadly serious and too close.

The upcoming meeting between Netanyahu and Obama is likely to be a watershed event in our Middle East policy and world events.

By Sara A. Carter, www.washingtontimes.com

A Mexican marine patrols near the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico, on March 18, 2009. The administration of President Obama is preparing to send federal agents to the U.S.-Mexico border as reinforcements in the fight against Mexican drug cartels. The Obama administration is preparing to send federal agents to the US-Mexico border as reinforcements in the fight against Mexican drug cartels. (Associated Press)

Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America’s tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.

Hezbollah relies on “the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers, and transportation experts as the drug cartels,” said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

“They work together,” said Mr. Braun. “They rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected.

“They’ll leverage those relationships to their benefit, to smuggle contraband and humans into the U.S.; in fact, they already are [smuggling].”

His comments were confirmed by six U.S. officials, including law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism specialists. They spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the topic.

While Hezbollah appears to view the U.S. primarily as a source of cash – and there have been no confirmed Hezbollah attacks within the U.S. – the group’s growing ties with Mexican drug cartels are particularly worrisome at a time when a war against and among Mexican narco-traffickers has killed 7,000 people in the past year and is destabilizing Mexico along the U.S. border.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Mexico recently to discuss U.S. aid. Other U.S. Cabinet officials and President Obama are slated to visit in the coming weeks.

Hezbollah is based in Lebanon. Since its inception after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, it has grown into a major political, military, and social welfare organization serving Lebanon’s large Shiite Muslim community.

In 2006, it fought a 34-day war against Israel, which remains its primary adversary. To finance its operations, it relies in part on funding from a large Lebanese Shiite Muslim diaspora that stretches from the Middle East to Africa and Latin America. Some of the funding comes from criminal enterprises.

Although there have been no confirmed cases of Hezbollah moving terrorists across the Mexico border to carry out attacks in the United States, Hezbollah members and supporters have entered the country this way.

Last year, Salim Boughader Mucharrafille was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Mexican authorities on charges of organized crime and immigrant smuggling. Mucharrafille, a Mexican of Lebanese descent, owned a cafe in the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. He was arrested in 2002 for smuggling 200 people, said to include Hezbollah supporters, into the U.S.

In 2001, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani crossed the border from Mexico in a car and traveled to Dearborn, Mich. Kourani was later charged with and convicted of providing “material support and resources … to Hezbollah,” according to a 2003 indictment.

A U.S. official with knowledge of U.S. law enforcement operations in Latin America said, “we noted the same trends as Mr. Braun” and that Hezbollah has used Mexican transit routes to smuggle contraband and people into the U.S.

Two U.S. law enforcement officers, familiar with counterterrorism operations in the U.S. and Latin America, said that “it was no surprise” that Hezbollah members have entered the U.S. border through drug cartel transit routes.

“The Mexican cartels have no loyalty to anyone,” one of the officials told The Washington Times. “They will willingly or unknowingly aid other nefarious groups into the U.S. through the routes they control. It has already happened. That’s why the border is such a serious national security issue.”

One U.S. counterterrorism official said that while “there’s reason to believe that [Hezbollah members] have looked at the southern border to enter the U.S. … to date their success has been extremely limited.”

However, another U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed that the U.S. is watching closely the links between Hezbollah and drug cartels and said it is “not a good picture.”

A senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing operations in Latin America, warned that al Qaeda also could use trafficking routes to infiltrate operatives into the U.S.

“If I have the money to do it – I want to get somebody across the border – that’s a way to do it,” the defense official said. “Especially foot soldiers. Somebody who’s willing to come and blow themselves up. That’s sort of hard to do that kind of recruiting, training and development in Kansas City.”

Adm. James G. Stavridis, commander of U.S. Southern Command and the nominee to head NATO troops as Supreme Allied Commander-Europe, testified before the House Armed Services Committee last week that the nexus between illicit drug trafficking – “including routes, profits, and corruptive influence” and “Islamic radical terrorism” is a growing threat to the U.S.

He noted that in August, “U.S. Southern Command supported a Drug Enforcement Administration operation, in coordination with host countries, which targeted a Hezbollah-connected drug trafficking organization in the Tri-Border Area.”

In October, another interagency operation led to the arrests of several dozen people in Colombia associated with a Hezbollah-connected drug trafficking and a money-laundering ring. Hezbollah uses these operations to generate millions of dollars to finance Hezbollah operations in Lebanon and other areas of the world, he said.

“Identifying, monitoring and dismantling the financial, logistical, and communication linkages between illicit trafficking groups and terrorist sponsors are critical to not only ensuring early indications and warnings of potential terrorist attacks directed at the United States and our partners, but also in generating a global appreciation and acceptance of this tremendous threat to security,” he said.

Mr. Braun, who spent 33 years with the DEA and still works with the organization as a consultant, said that members of the elite Quds, or Jerusalem, force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also are showing up in Latin America.

“Quite frankly, I’m not opposed to the belief that they could be commanding and controlling Hezbollah’s criminal enterprises from there,” Mr. Braun said.

The DEA thinks that 60 percent of terrorist organizations have some ties with the illegal narcotics trade, said agency spokesman Garrison Courtney.

South American drug cartels were forced into developing stronger alliances with Mexican syndicates when the U.S. closed off access from the Caribbean 15 years ago, Mr. Braun said.

Mexico’s transit routes now account for more than 90 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S., he said. The emphasis on Mexico intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, when beefed-up U.S. security measures greatly reduced access to the U.S. by air and water, he said.

The shift put Mexico’s drug cartels in the lead and helped them amass billions of dollars and an estimated 100,000 foot soldiers, according to U.S. defense officials.

Hezbollah shifted its trade routes along with the drug cartels, using Lebanese Shiite expatriates to negotiate contracts with Mexican crime bosses, Mr. Braun said.

The World Trade Bridge between Nuevo Laredo and its sister city, Laredo, as well as Interstate 35 and Highways 59, 359 and 83, are like veins feeding the Mexican syndicates, running from southern Texas to cities across the U.S. and as far north as Canada, U.S. officials say. In addition, access routes from El Paso, Texas, to San Diego are also high-value entry points.

By Dr. Alex Grobman, www.IsraPundit.com

 During World War II, the staff of Hadassah Hospital played a significant role in helping Allied military forces throughout the Middle East. They offered weekly lectures and meetings to British medical personnel that acquainted them with regional medical issues including blood diseases, jaundice, dysentery, anemia and high blood pressure. Courses were also given on how to deal with infestations of sand-flies, worms, poisonous snakes, mosquitoes and other disease carrying insects.

The Hebrew University’s Department of Bacteriology and Hygiene provided anti-typhus and anti-dysentery vaccines. The Zoology Department’s research on relapsing cave fever taught the British army to avoid encampments near caves.

Malaria was a major debilitating threat to Allied forces. As a result, the British Army established ten anti-malaria units that were sent to Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Burma, Greece, and Italy in advance of their troops. Four of these units were under the command of Jewish malaria experts, who pioneered the use of aerial use of pesticides to kill nests of mosquitoes. Medical expertise was provided by the Parasitology Department.

 While Hadassah and Hebrew University were assisting the British, Arabs led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, were fighting a guerrilla war against the British and Jews. In late 1941, as a refugee in Berlin, the Mufti used radio broadcasts to urge Arabs to become fifth columns in the lands where they lived and to commit sabotage and to murder Allied troops and Jews.

 His spies provided the Nazis with information about British troop movements. His reports also described successful acts of sabotage in the Middle East by many of his agents. They cut water pipes and fuel and telephone lines, and destroyed bridges and blew up railroads. He organized an Axis-Arab Legion, the Arabisches Freiheitskorps, who wore German uniforms with “Free Arabia,” patches. They were part of the German army, and were responsible for protecting the Nazi communication system in Macedonia and for hunting down American and British paratroopers who landed in Yugoslavia.

 Once the partition of Palestine was approved by the United Nations on November 29, 1947, the violence against the Jews intensified. The equivalent of a Red Cross medical convoy comprised of non-combatants including doctors, nurses and university faculty and students was ambushed by Arabs in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem. Although The British High Commissioner and the British Secretary of State personally gave their assurances that these convoys would be protected by British troops and police, seventy-eight Jews were murdered.

 The attack, which lasted seven hours, began at 9:30 a.m. and took place less than 600 feet from the British military post. The British watched from the sidelines. Jewish appeals for help were ignored until mid-afternoon. But by then the Jews had either been burned alive in buses or shot. There were 28 survivors, only eight had no injuries.

 Among the dead were the founders of the new faculty of medicine, a physicist, a philologist, a cancer researcher, the head of the university’s department of psychology, and an authority on Jewish law. A doctor who waited four years to marry the nurse he loved was killed when he went to say good bye to his patients before leaving on his honeymoon.

 One victim, a doctor, treated the Arab peasants in the village of Isawiye on Mount Scopus two weeks prior to the attack. Yet Arabs claimed that the ambush was a heroic act, and the British had no business intervening even at the last-minute: They did not want a single Jewish passenger to remain alive.

 Thousands of furious Jews attended the funeral and lined the streets of the procession. British indifference was responsible for this loss of life. The British Army dismissed the ambush as retaliation for an Irgun attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin. Official Arab response was that they had heard that Jewish gangs were assembled near Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University. R.M.Graves, the British appointed Chairman of the Jerusalem Municipal Commission, said “…the Arabs do not realize that the killing of doctors, nurses and university teachers was a dastardly outrage.”

Despite this sad and bloody piece of history, Hadassah has endured through hundreds of terrorist attacks and always has been there for the health of Jews and Arabs in the region.

Dr. Grobman is a historian with an MA and Ph.D. from the Hebrew University.

By Wayne Stewart, www.PalestineHerald.com

No matter how hard we try, humans can’t seem to make things better. Usually, when we try and solve our own problems they just end up getting worse.

In the early years of Israel we see many instances of times when they are left to their own devices and they end up getting themselves into a real pickle.

Let’s take a look at the example of Gideon, the mighty warrior and judge for Israel.

First, a little background. It seems the Midianites were giving the Israelites a lot of grief, they stole their food, ruined their fields and generally made life miserable for them. Through all the good times it seems many of the Israelites forgot to pray and give God the glory for the blessings they received, oh, but when times were hard they got on their knees, and God being the loving creator he is responded to their pleas.

“When the Israelites cried to the Lord because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, ‘This is what the Lord the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live,’ But you have not listened to me.” — Judges 6:7-10

Did you catch that last line. God said they didn’t listen, yet he still would raise up for them a savior.

As we look at those three verses we can see parallels to our Christian life.

Jesus Christ brought us out of the land of slavery. Through his work on the cross, he rescued us from the bondage of sin. His death paid the penalty we should have had to pay and he drove Satan from before us. All this was a free gift, we didn’t have to do anything, but Jesus said only through belief in him would we benefit from his redemptive work.

Now here is that last sentence again, the world has failed to listen and because of that we can see the world coming apart at the seems.

We all should know the story of Gideon quite well. A nobody chosen by God to break the hold the Midianites had on the Israelites.

So, God sent an angel to call Gideon, now, let’s see if we can see ourselves in Gideon’s response to this calling.

“When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.’ ‘But sir,’ Gideon replied, ‘if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has abandoned us, and put us into the hand of Midian.’” — Judges 6:13

Can you hear the derision in Gideon’s voice?

Pretty much Gideon said, “If God is so tough like all the old people say He is, then why can’t he rescue us from Midian. God doesn’t care.”

As an interesting note, many commentators and scholars believe this angel conversing with Gideon to be Christ. In verse 11 of this chapter, we see Him called the angel of the Lord, but look what verse 14 says.

“The Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” — Judges 6:14

Notice it was God himself who was talking to Gideon. Then there was Gideon’s pathetic answer: “But Lord,’ Gideon asked, ‘how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.

“The Lord answered, ‘I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.” — Judges 6:15-16

Now, with this knowledge that Gideon was talking to Jesus Christ, maybe we have something to work with here and delve into a little deeper. Let’s look at some similar words from Jesus.

“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” — Mark 16:15-18

Now these words from Matthew: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” — Matthew 28:19-20

Do you see the similarities here between the Great Commission and what Jesus was telling Gideon some 1,200 years earlier?

Christ is sending us off into battle to war against the world, but he doesn’t send us alone and without protection and great power. To the disciples he said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

To Gideon he said, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”

Christ has not changed. Never in history has God asked us to solve things on our own. God warred against Egypt and brought that empire down without the help of a single human. He lifted up judges and kings to bring about his promises.

And even today, He fills us with the Holy Spirit to equip us to do battle in this world and win souls for Christ.

We don’t do it by ourselves, we can’t do it ourselves. We must allow God to work through us. He will soothe our fears and turn our weakness into strengths.

The wisdom and strength of Christ our Savior can be seen in his response to Paul’s pleadings. And this strength and wisdom can be ours if we fully put our lives in the hands of Christ.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

There is a strength we can cloak ourselves with that is stronger than any armor and any bullet the world can throw at us — and that is the Word of God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This body can be brought down, but through Christ we can overcome the world.

We can’t do it alone — only through Jesus.

Passover begins April 9, with tonight being the First Seder on Passover Eve. 

Where Are You?
by Sara Debbie Gutfreund, www.aish.com

Every year my great grandmother stood by the living room window on Seder night looking for her son. Uncle Leo was always late, year after year. I would stand beside her in my pink and white dresses and new, shiny shoes, and peer through the lattices of the curtains as I glanced into the darkening, deserted street and then up at my great grandmother’s anxious face.

“Don’t worry Ma, he’s coming. Sit down,” my grandmother would always say. But my great grandmother refused to move from her spot. Sometimes she would pace in front of the window and notice me beside her. Then she would smile for a moment and put her hand on my shoulder as we both looked out past the red oak tree that towered in the front yard.

“Where is he already?” she would repeat as the rest of the family finished setting up the Seder table. And when he finally arrived, she would laugh with relief, and her eyes would fill with a kind of peace that I didn’t understand then. This happened so many times over the years that “Great Grandma standing by the window and Uncle Leo arriving late” became as much a part of Seder night as the matzah and the snow white tablecloth.

A few years ago I stood by my own living room window in the mountains of Jerusalem. I watched my children playing on the swing set in the backyard as I set the table for the Seder. And I felt a stinging pang of homesickness and yearning for the Seders of my childhood. I looked around me at the empty chairs, and I tried to conjure up the images of my grandparents, my great grandparents, my cousins running in and out of the rooms of my childhood home on erev Pesach. I could almost hear the laughter that used to float from the kitchen. But most of all I remembered my great grandmother’s face by the window, and I suddenly realized that her face was a reflection of a sliver of the love that God has for us as He waits for all of His children to come home on Seder night.

One year right before Passover, something happened to me that showed me just how powerful God’s love for us actually is. I was in the garden with my three-year-old, and we had a tall fence around the backyard. When the phone rang I ran inside for a minute, and when I returned my daughter was gone. I looked desperately all around me. Where could she have gone? She couldn’t have climbed over the fence.

And then I saw it. A tiny hole near the side of the fence where the ground was lower. But she couldn’t have possibly crawled under there! I unlocked the fence and ran to the front of the house. And there in the middle of the street was my three-year-old on her tricycle. A car was coming around the corner, and I ran desperately into the street reaching her just in time.

 Can a heart break from gratitude? I held my child and sobbed. I almost lost you. I almost lost my child. This is how the Almighty felt when He took us out of Egypt. My children, I almost lost you. I’m never going to let you go.

It took us so long to come home. We were so late we almost didn’t make it. And like a parent who almost loses a child, on the night of the Seder God promises every Jew that He will hold them and protect them no matter how far from Him they may be.

Personal Redemption

There is a custom for people at the Seder to tell their own stories of personal redemption. How many of us have felt stuck in the emptiness, the loneliness and the materialism of this world and thought that we would never emerge? And in the blink of an eye, our lives, our souls come alive again? Or maybe there was a time when you were lost and confused and then you heard the right words or read just what you needed to understand. Or maybe there was a time when you lost someone that you loved and the grief was so deep and so painful that you thought that you would never smile again. And then one day just when you were about to give up, a child’s laughter penetrated your soul and a hint of a smile began to return. The near miss in a car accident. The narrowly escaped diagnosis. The lost job that became a new opportunity.

Our individual stories of redemption are all integral pieces of our joint, unfolding journey towards national redemption. Because on Seder night God is watching all of us through the windows, waiting for us to come home to Him. And He promises us that when life becomes so hard that it looks like we are lost forever, that is when He will lift us up and bring us home.

Author Biography:
Sara Debbie Gutfreund holds a BA from the University of Pennysylvania and a MA in Family Therapy from the University of North Texas. She is currently researching women’s issues and specializing in pre-marital/adolescent counseling. She lives with her husband and children in Telzstone, Israel.

By Ben Lynfield, www.independent.co.uk

When Jaaber Hussein signed an agreement with Israel’s Chief Rabbis last Monday, he inked the only Arab-Jewish accord sure to be meticulously observed by both sides. The deal makes him the owner for one week of all bread, pasta, and beer in Israel – well a huge amount of it anyway. The contract, signed for the past 12 years by the Muslim hotel food manager, is part of the traditional celebrations ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Jews are forbidden by biblical injunction to possess leavened bread, or chametz, during Passover and ironically an Arab is needed to properly observe the holiday. The agreement with Mr. Hussein offers a way of complying with religious edicts without having to wastefully destroy massive quantities of food.

Jaaber Hussein, a hotel manager, prepares to take control of much of Israel's bread, beer, and pasta.

Through legal acrobatics, the forbidden goods belonging to the Israeli state are simply sold to Mr. Hussein for the duration of Passover and then revert back to the state once the holiday is over. Like the government’s adherence to the Sabbath and to dietary laws, the ceremony sets Israel apart as a Jewish state that upholds religious traditions.

Mr. Hussein, a resident of the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, sees nothing odd in the arrangement, believing there are affinities between his Islamic faith and Judaism. He relishes the role the Jewish state has assigned him, one that puts his picture on the front pages of Israeli newspapers year after year.

“I see this as a way to help people with whom I work and live,” he said.

Mr. Hussein was a natural choice for the ritual because he works in a hotel that stringently observes Jewish dietary laws. He even keeps some of the strictures at home.

“There are many things that are close in the two religions. If not for politics, the religions would get along very well,” he explains. One example he cites is the halal slaughtering of meat, which he likens to kosher slaughtering.

Passover, which celebrates the biblical exodus from slavery in Egypt, starts tonight and lasts for seven days, eight outside Israel.

The reason for the prohibition of leavened bread is, according to the Bible, that the Israelites departed Egypt in such haste that their bread did not have a chance to rise and so they ate the cracker-like unleavened bread known as matzo.

Many of their descendants in modern Israel defer to this dictum every spring to the extent that a kind of fermented dough fixation suffuses the country. Housewives become the new slaves, scrubbing and vacuum cleaning to remove every trace of chametz. Religious men scald pots in the streets, making them kosher for the holiday.

For the Orthodox, there can be no half-measures. A single crumb that evades detection could spoil everything for Passover.

Those families who do not want the extra workload simply check-in to kosher hotels and escape the ardor. Even secular Israelis stock up on pita bread and put it in their freezers so that they too have enough supplies to survive the week.

Last Monday, Mr. Hussein put down a cash deposit of $4,800 for the $150m worth of leavened products he acquires from state companies, the prison service, and the national stock of emergency supplies. The deposit will be returned at the end of the holiday, unless he decides to come up with the full value of the products. In that case he could, in theory, keep them all.

At the close of the holiday, the foodstuffs purchased by Mr. Hussein revert back to their original owners, who have given the Chief Rabbis the power of attorney over their leavened products. “It’s a firm, strong agreement done in the best way,” Mr. Hussein said.

But Israelis are divided on whether the state should be enforcing Passover. A law introduced by religious parties in 1986 bans the display of bread in public areas, except in those where there is a non-Jewish majority. But a court decision last year said it was legal for restaurants to sell leavened products during Passover on the grounds that they are not public spaces. The move sparked anger among the ultra-Orthodox Jews.

This year, ultra-Orthodox activists in Jerusalem sent warning letters to stores, telling them not to sell bread or pizza because this could bring divine punishment on the city. And the chief rabbinate called for supermarkets to install a computer program that would enable cash registers to detect unleavened products by their bar codes so sales could be stopped. Supermarkets cover over their chametz with papers, but the rabbis are concerned that some customers lift the covers and buy proscribed foods.

Variations of the contract between the Israeli state and Mr. Hussein are being signed all over the world between selected non-Jews and rabbis, including those in the UK. The ceremony, like the absence of civil marriages in the country, reflects “some elements of theocracy” in the Israeli state, says Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “Israel is a unique state – very modern on the one hand but with very strong religious traditional elements on the other. Every government keeps this ritual.”

In one final Passover twist, the restaurants of Mr. Hussein’s town, Abu Ghosh, are gearing up for what is always their busiest week of the year, catering to secular Jews who want to get away from the holiday’s dietary strictures.

“It is also nice that you have people who don’t keep Passover, who eat leavened bread,” Mr. Hussein said. “It is good that we are also able to help the people who are not religious.”