Levitt Letter Extra News

(Patrick Hertzog) The tomb of St Paul in Rome

By Richard Owen, www.timesonline.co.uk

Pope Benedict XVI has announced that bone fragments found inside the tomb of St Paul in Rome had been carbon dated for the first time, “confirming the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul”. 

He said that archaeologists had inserted a probe into the white marble sarcophagus under the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls which has been revered for centuries as the tomb of St Paul. 

The pontiff said: “Small fragments of bone were carbon dated by experts who knew nothing about their provenance and results showed they were from someone who lived between the 1st and 2nd century. This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that these are the mortal remains of Paul the Apostle.” 

The Pope, who said the discovery “fills our souls with great emotion”, made the unexpected announcement during Vespers at St Paul’s Basilica last night, marking the end of the Pauline year held in honor of the apostle. He said that as well as bone fragments, archaeologists had found grains of red incense, a piece of purple linen with gold sequins and a blue fabric with linen filaments in the tomb. 

Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, the archpriest of St Paul’s, said that he had known for more than a year that the tests had shown that the bones were those of a man of the 1st century, but had been sworn to secrecy because it had been “up to the Holy Father to make this public”. He said this was why the Vatican press office had denied last week that the bones had been identified. “Only the Pope can make such an important and solemn announcement,” he said. 

The cardinal said he was now waiting for permission from the Pope to open the tomb, which would be a “long and delicate operation” in order to avoid any “structural damage” to the sarcophagus. Andrea Tornielli, the papal biographer, said that Pope Benedict’s announcement recalled Pope Paul VI’s declaration 41 years ago that the bones of St Peter had been identified. 

At the weekend L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, announced the discovery of a fresco in a 4th-century Christian catacomb depicting St Paul. Archaeologists believe it is the oldest known icon of the apostle. 

St Paul is believed to have been beheaded in Rome in the 1st century during Nero’s persecution of Christians. Tradition holds that fragments of his skull are in kept in St John Lateran but that his other remains are inside the sarcophagus at St Paul’s. 

The seven-foot-long tomb is buried under layers of mortar and plaster beneath the main altar at St Paul’s Basilica and covered by an iron grate. It survived the disastrous 19th-century fire which destroyed much of the building, but is hidden from view. Vatican archaeologists began to unearth it in 2002 after many pilgrims to Rome during the 2000 Holy Jubilee year expressed disappointment at not being able to visit or touch it. 

The Pope marked the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul on Monday, June 29, by bestowing palliums on recently appointed archbishops, including Monsignor Vincent Nichols, the new Archbishop of Westminster. The pallium, a band of white lambs wool decorated with black crosses, is symbol of an archbishop’s pastoral role as shepherd of his flock and of the authority he derives from the pontiff.

By Rosslyn Smith, www.AmericanThinker.com

Are the Ayatollahs learning that hell hath no fury like 34 million women scorned, forced out of the workplace, harassed, and humiliated by religious police for three decades? I have noticed some of the bravest protesters in Iran have been women, including a few who have been without headscarves and showing a great deal more of their figures than the regime would approve. Roger Cohen of the NY Times has noticed this, too.

…. Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

CNN has noted that for at least some of these women it is about far more than a stolen election.

Like thousands of other Iranian women, Parisa took to Tehran’s streets this week, her heart brimming with hope. “Change,” said the placards around her.

The young Iranian woman eyed the crowd and pondered the possibility that the rest of her life might be different from her mother’s. She could see glimmers of a future free from discrimination—and all the symbols of it, including the head-covering the government requires her to wear every day.

Earlier stories about the Iran election noted that Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, is a formidable political force in her own right, having been the first woman chancellor of an Iranian university since the Revolution. That she may have lost that position in a purge of reformists after Ahmadinejad was elected President in 2005 helps explain some of the enmity between the candidates. Unusual for Iran, Rahnavard’s actively campaigned for her husband, particularly among university students and women. On the campaign trail she noticeably flouted violations of the dress codes that tightened up after Ahmadinejad’s 2006 election. Her head covering was a brightly colored scarf, her use of makeup was noticeable, and her chador was worn so you could glimpse the outfit underneath.

The flouting of the moral police was probably political theater. A more substantive reason that Rahnavard’s active campaign presence excited women is this dismal fact about how the kleptocracy of misogynist ayatollahs has thwarted human expectations: More than 60 percent of Iran’s university students are women, but women make up only perhaps 15 percent of the workforce. One sector often favored by college educated American women, that of civil service, has been increasing hard for women to access under Ahmadinejad.

Women left alone with children after the death or desertion of a husband are particularly hard hit in a culture that openly discriminates in employment. So are those in abusive relationships with fathers or husbands. One of Iran’s dirty little secrets is how many women are forced into prostitution. News stories from 2002 reported as many as 300,000 women were engaged in prostitution in greater Tehran. In an area with a population then estimated at 12 million that is close to 5% of the total female population.

The religious fig leaf for the business of selling sexual favors is a practice allowed in Shiite branch of Islam know as sigheh, or a marriage contracted for a fixed period of time. Supposedly the woman contracted in such a marriage is not to enter into a new contract until one menstrual cycle has passed. This was obviously not the case because the reason prostitution came to official attention in 2002 was that two women engaging in the trade infected over 1,100 men with the HIV virus.

I am not a bit surprised that women are among the leaders of this revolt. Several years ago I read Azar Nafisi’s memoir of life in Iran during and after the 1979 revolution, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Educated in the West where she was active on the political left, Dr, Nafisi returned to Iran in 1979 to teach English language literature. Some of the best passages in the book relate to her fight not to have to wear the head covering and shapeless cloak increasingly being mandated by Iran’s new rulers. Those forcing her to become a walking mummy included Marxists who went along with the Islamic fundamentalists on the issue before they, too, were squeezed out of the power structure. The Marxists argued that staying with Western-style dress was a symbol of solidarity with colonial oppressors! When Nafisi lost the fight on the chador, she vowed to teach her own children, sons and daughters alike, about the injustice of such restrictions on women.

Dr. Nafisi knew that her favorite students mostly agreed with her on such issues, but she later learned she had also had a great influence on some others who had gone with the flow in 1979. Near the end of the her book, when she is preparing to emigrate to America, Dr. Nafisi runs into one of her students. This young woman had belonged to the Muslim Students’ Association. She had vocally objected with fellow MSA members on being made to read about “immoral” characters like Heathcliff and the foolish, unreasonable, stubborn, and equally immoral Daisy Miller. It seems the student had been far more engaged in the material than her classroom protests would have indicated. She told Nafisi she had continued to read literature “for her own heart” after leaving school. She was married now, with a newborn daughter she named after the professor! Not the name on the birth certificate. That was the name of a favorite aunt, now deceased.

…but I have a secret name for her. I call her Daisy. She said she had hesitated between Daisy and Lizzy. She had finally settled on Daisy. Lizzy was the one she had dreamed of, but marrying Mr. Darcy was too much wishful thinking. Why Daisy? Don’t you remember, Daisy Miller? Haven’t you heard that if you give your child a name with meaning she will become like her namesake? I want my daughter to be what I never was — like Daisy. You know, courageous.

When I read Nafisi’s words, I thought of how one of the events that helped the women’s movement initially resonate in America was the manner in which some women who had taken jobs outside the home during the labor shortages of WW II were summarily fired in peacetime. A good friend’s mother who taught at a noted left-wing university during and immediately after the war never let her son forget that she had lost her job just as soon as a male with a newly minted degree under the GI bill had became available. The injustice done American women pales besides that inflicted on the women of Iran. But in both situations the women made sure their sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews all knew that such discrimination was wrong. And like the student who wished she had spoken for herself instead of allowing the MSA to speak for her, many American women of the post-war era urged their own daughters to do what they had not dared to do.

When I watched the brave and often incredibly beautiful young Iranian women take to the streets the last few days, I also thought back to how Dr. Nafisi’s favorite students mocked a culture that allowed them a university education while attempting to confine them to gender roles more appropriate to 7^th-century warring Arab nomads. One favorite way to do so was to parody the opening sentence of their favorite novel from Dr. Nafisi’s syllabus:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife.

I could see them marching through Iran’s cities, casting a wary eye at onlooking security forces even as they poked fun at then. They talk about how the Islamic Revolution was for men who couldn’t find a wife another way, and how Elizabeth Bennett wouldn’t go near a man who wanted a child bride — or multiple wives.

Iranian-American journalist Roya Hakakian, who left Iran in 1984 at the age of 18, echoed the sentiments of Nafisi and her students in a recent interview in which she noted that in the last ten years a new generation of women has organized in ways not seen since 1979. She notes the women of this generation learned an important lesson from their predecessors. (http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/political-climate-elections-iran-forbes-woman-power-feminism.html)

The feminist movement, which has been ongoing in Iran, has now joined the broader public movement against the regime. This happened in Iran in the late 1970s too, but it actually had a terrible effect on the women’s movement in Iran. Women were somehow “hoodwinked” to think that the veil wasn’t such an important issue, that it was more important to sacrifice for the greater good. So the Shah went and the veil stayed.

This generation is a lot smarter. The broader social movement is far more sympathetic to the cause of women than in the late 1970s. Thirty years later, Iranian men now realize that their fate is entwined with that of their female counterparts: If women are doing better, then men will do better too.

Azadeh Moaveni, born in Palo Alto of Iranian parents in 1976 and co author of Iran Awakening with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, had this to say about the extent of the repression:

The weight of discrimination against women is felt most profoundly through Iran’s legal system, but Moaveni said Ahmadinejad added to the hardship by clamping down on women’s lifestyles. He mandated the way women dress and even censored websites that dealt with women’s health, Moaveni said. A woman would be hard-pressed to conduct a Google search for something as simple as breast cancer.

Azar Nafisi, now a professor at Johns Hopkins, told CNN she has been watching the footage from Iran with “inordinate pride.”

After Saturday, Dr. Nafisi probably wants to add “and great sorrow” to her statement.

Another Iranian woman not allowed to use her education, who has taken to the streets:

Artemis, a 41-year-old Tehran woman, is the proud holder of a law degree, but has never been allowed to work. She was clear about why she joined the million-plus men, women, and children who took to the streets of Tehran last Monday.

“People want freedom and justice,” she said. “They stole the vote. No one in his right mind believes this result.”

She said she had been afraid to voice criticism before. “The neighbors listen to you, and people go to prison just for what they say, or what they write. But this is contagious. What you are seeing, all these people, this comes from 30 years of oppression and now we have had enough.”

Perhaps the most poignant words about what is happening comes from an Iranian woman sending messages to Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post who has been living blogging events for a week now (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html). She wrote that she would be in Saturday’s demonstrations where she may be killed. Saturday evening she got out a message that she was okay, but that her ”sister” had died.

Here is the translation of part of her message.

I’m here to tell you, my sister who died was a decent person… and like me, yearned for a day when her hair would be swept by the wind… and like me, read “Forough” [Forough Farrokhzad]… and longed to live free and equal… and she longed to hold her head up and announce, “I’m Iranian”… and she longed to one day fall in love to a man with a shaggy hair… and she longed for a daughter to braid her hair and sing lullaby by her crib…

my sister died from not having life… my sister died as injustice has no end… my sister died since she loved life too much… and my sister died since she lovingly cared for people…

Much of the world has seen the video of this beautiful young woman, sister to us all, taking her last breath before our eyes. It is being reported that her name was Neda, which is said to be Farsi for voice or call. Her actions give voice to the oppressed women of Iran, and call out to all of us to stand with them against oppression.

www.IsraelToday.co.il

 In stark contrast to the overly cautious tone being sounded by U.S. President Barack Obama, Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sunday cheered on Iranians protesting the results of the recent presidential election in the Islamic Republic, and urged them to continue until they are freed from the clutches of the current regime.

 In remarks carried by the Israeli press, Peres said Iranians need to “raise their voice of freedom” until the oppressive and dangerous government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappears.

 In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the demonstrations across Iran had finally unmasked the repressive nature of not only the Ahmadinejad regime, but the ayatollah-ruled theocratic system of government as a whole.

 On Monday, Netanyahu told German newspaper Bild he has no doubt that given the opportunity, the Iranian people would choose a totally different system of government and would ultimately make peace with Israel.

 ”There is no conflict between the Iranian and Israeli people and under a different regime, the peaceful relations that existed in the past could be reestablished,” said Netanyahu.

 In the U.S., Obama is under growing pressure from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to express greater support for Ahmadinejad’s opponents in Iran.

 But last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak cautioned that backing Iranian presidential challenger Mir Moussavi would not be enough, since he shares many of the same dangerous views and policies as Ahmadinejad.

www.IsraelToday.co.il

Thousands of New Yorkers on Sunday ignored cool, damp weather to enjoy a day at a makeshift “Tel Aviv beach” in Central Park.

The event was set up by the Israeli consulate in New York to mark Tel Aviv’s centennial. The consulate spent about $150,000 to import tons of sand from Tel Aviv and create a beach atmosphere in the middle of Manhattan.

Guests were treated to live Israeli entertainment, typical ice treats sold on Tel Aviv beaches and popular Israeli beach games.

www.jta.org

JERUSALEM (JTA) — American voters’ support for Israel has dropped 20 percent in the past nine months, a new survey found.

Some 49 percent of American voters call themselves supporters of Israel, down from 69 percent last September, according to the poll conducted for The Israel Project.

The number of voters who called themselves undecided rose during that same period, and the number of Palestinian supporters remained steady at 7 percent. The number of Israel supporters hit a low of 38 percent immediately following the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, with an equal rise in undecided voters.

The poll was conducted among 800 registered voters on June 2 and 3 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. It has not been officially released by The Israel Project, but was leaked to the media by someone who received the numbers the day after the poll was completed.

According to the poll, some 44 percent of voters believe the United States should support Israel, down from 69 percent a year ago. Some 5 percent of voters believe the United States should support the Palestinians, with 32 percent undecided.

Some 23 percent of voters believed that Israel should return all lands captured in 1967, with 57 percent saying some should be retained for security.

Some 66 percent of those polled do not believe that Israeli support of a two-state solution — including establishing an independent Palestinian state and stopping the expansion of settlements — will  bring lasting peace to the region, with 22 percent saying it will. In addition, 48 percent believe the Israeli support would not end Palestinian terrorism; 39 percent said it would.

Some 85 percent of respondents believe that Iran is a serious threat to Israel, with only 7 percent saying it is not — figures that have remained virtually unchanged over the past year.

Rick Moran, www.AmericanThinker.com
With tens of thousands of police, Revolutionary Guards, and paramilitary Basij’s on the streets of Tehran, mass protests of the kind we saw earlier in the week are, for the moment, not possible.

Demonstrating very effective crowd control techniques — along with a brutality that shocked the world — the regime’s strategy apparently worked fairly well. Any area where people began to mass, they sent a flying wedge of riot police (probably Rev Guards dressed in police gear) straight into the people and beat as many as they could, as hard as they could, as long as they could. In this way, they prevented tens of thousands from forming in order to protest.

Estimates of police and Guards deployed range from 25,000 to 60,000 in Tehran alone. And the Basij were busy overnight, keeping the pressure on reformists by carrying off several high profile home invasions in richer neighborhoods while scouring hospitals for people injured during the clashes.

That latter activity is being enthusiastically carried out as there have been reports that they are dragging people out of the hospitals and taking them to the notorious Evin Prison where, as one wag put it, “waterboarding will be the least that they do.”

Hossein Mousavi has issued another letter, asking people to go on strike if he is arrested. He says he is “prepared for martyrdom” which, given Khamenei’s threat during his speech on Friday to hold him directly responsible for any blood spilled, might be a prescient statement.

So with no mass demonstrations possible at the moment, what next?

Look for a shocker coming out of the holy city of Qom where former President Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani has reportedly been holed up with what we might loosely refer to as a kind of Shia “college of cardinals” since early this week. (I admit it is not the best analogy but the I am trying to impart a sense of the religious influence these mullahs have on Shias.) This from Nico Pitney who has been doing a bang up job at Huffpo in liveblogging events:

6:00 PM ET — Where is Rafsanjani? “According to an online reformist news source Rooyeh, Rafsanjani has been in Qom meeting some members of Council of Experts and a representative of Ayatollah Sistani.

According to the source that asked to remain anonymous, during this meeting they recounted memories of the days of the Revolution.
A reasonable purpose of these meetings, according to the source, is that Rafsanjani is looking for a majority to possibly call for Ahmadinejad’s resignation.

As one reader points out, Sistani is “one of the most respected Grand Ayatollahs within Shia Islam in the world. He’s Iranian (from Mashhad, same city as Khamenei), but spends most time in Najaf/Karbala in Iraq.”

The Shia clerics are not a monolithic bloc. And the clerics in Qom may hold the key to breaking this situation wide open.

There is no love lost among many of the clerics in Qom and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. The sticking point is the “Grand” designation for Khamenei’s clerical position. There are many clerics in Qom who believe the idea that Khamenei has that title — which denotes a piety and scholarly achievement that few attain — to be nonsense . Author and scholar Kamil Pasha points us to veteran Middle East reporter Robin Wright’s article up at Huffington Post:

The position of supreme leader has been controversial since it was created in the chaotic early days of the revolution to deal with internal squabbling. After his return from exile, revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khameini had originally returned to the religious center of Qom, but was forced to move back to Tehran as disputes among the fractious coalition that ousted the last shah began to fall apart.

Many of the Shiite clerics in Qom never embraced the idea of either a supreme leader or a central role for clerics in the new Islamic republic. Iran’s revolution represented not just a political upheaval. It was also a revolution within Shiism, which for 14 centuries had prohibited a clerical role in politics. With clerics taking over government, many senior Shiite clerics feared that Islam would end up being tainted by the human flaws of the state.

The current crisis has effectively revived that debate — and deepened the divide between the government and the Shiite clergy as well as with the public. The government includes many clerical institutions, including the 12-member Council of Guardians, the 86-member Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council. But not even all of its members are happy with the election.

More importantly, senior clerics in Qom have noticeably failed to either endorse the election results or embrace Ahmadinejad, while long-time critics within the clergy used the crisis to encourage resistance to the supreme leader’s dictates.

The fact that Rafsanjani is in Qom could mean many things. He may be hiding out there, waiting to see which way the wind is blowing before leaping. Or, as Pitney reports, he may be trying to get these respected clerics in Iran’s holiest city to speak with one voice on the election fraud and Khamenei’s role in government. A strong, unified statement coming from Qom might spell curtains for both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

While Rafsanjani himself has been absent from view, his daughter spoke out strongly for the reformists. He even rated some heavy criticism from his old friend Khamenei on Friday, although he stopped short of warning the powerful Rafsanjani.

A couple of Grand Ayatollahs in Qom have already come out in favor of the protests. Robin Wright:

Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, who was originally designated to become supreme leader until he criticized the regime’s excesses in 1989, dismissed the election results and called on “everyone” to continue “reclaiming their dues” in calm protests. He also issued a warning to Iran’s security forces not to accept government orders that might eventually condemn them “before God.”

“Today censorship and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide the truth,” said Montazeri. “I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.”

Others have also bestowed legitimacy on the protests. Grand Ayatollah Saanei — one of only about a dozen who hold that position — pronounced Ahmadinejad’s presidency illegitimate.

Neither man weilds much political influence. But if Qom’s clerical leadership calls on Khamenei to resign (thus delegitimzing his role as “Supreme Leader” even more), this would cause a crisis in government — a near civil war — as the clerical establishment would likely be ripped in two. It would paralyze the government and perhaps even split the security forces.

Because of that — and because many of the clerics in Qom have shown a great reluctance to involve themselves too heavily in politics — such a strong statement might not be forthcoming. But don’t count Rafsanjani out. He has a lot of friends in very powerful places. If he decides to risk a confrontation with Khamenei (him being a candidate to replace him although the reformers would take a dim view of that), anything is possible.

So I would look to Qom for the next big story in the Iranian revolution. Whether the blood spilled yesterday is enough to convince the religious in Iran to replace Khamenei is a question that will probably be answered shortly. They will either issue a call for his resignation, or Rafsanjani will emerge empty handed.  The old revolutionary and kleptocrat will try to trim events to fulfill his ambitions. But in the process, he just may free Iran from the grip of the fascists.

UPDATE

AP is reporting the arrest of Rafsanjani’s daughter (mentioned above) and 4 other relatives of the powerful former president.

Um… they’re not being very subtle, are they? They know full well what Rafsanjani is up to and are making it clear to him that there will be consequences unless he ceases what he is doing.

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com

The Chavista (follower of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez) red shirt onslaught seems to be sharpening its pitch. After all, weeks and weeks of attacks, fanned by “Globovision (a 24-hour television news network in Venezuela) as the source of all evil,” have a way to self-generate excessive stimulation in those quarters.

Yesterday (Wednesday, June 17), we saw many concerted attacks of the sort, worthy of any self-respecting totalitarian regime. I chose to show only one, the attack on Miranda State’s Governor Radonski ’s office by the mayor of Los Teques, Alirio Mendoza. The pictures say it all. My only question is how come nothing will happen to this mayor promoting violence and using public employees for that purpose DURING working hours, while Globovision will be closed any time soon just because Rafael Poleo did not control his big mouth for a few seconds? Does chavismo ignore that these things do go around the world? The shirts might be red, but this is Fascism and the language is clear: those who wear the swastika in their heart are those covering the walls with it.

By the way, just for the record, the grandparents of governor Capriles Radonski died in the Holocaust. So we can mark that down as yet more chavista anti-Semitism.

Chavismo will not stop at anything to weaken those opposition officials elected last November. Rosales, Maracaibo mayor is in exile; Ledezma, Caracas mayor, has been stripped of any function; Governors Perez of Zulia, Navarro of Nueva Esparta, and Salas Feo of Carabobo have lost control of ports, airports, and highways; and now it is the turn of the two last-remaining governors with still some authority. The attack on Capriles Radonski in Miranda has restarted and in the most ignominious way one can think of.

By Gerald A. Honigman, www.IsraelNationalNews.com

It was a moment in time never to be forgotten—July 4, 1976.

I was watching those spectacular tall sailing ships from numerous countries passing under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Brooklyn in salute to America’s two hundredth birthday. Tears of pride were in many of our eyes that day.

I was there with my best friend Arie, who is from Israel. At almost the very same moment that those tall ships were sailing by, something else was happening which would link Israel and America together in many a mind forever after.

During the night before and the early morning hours of July 4, 1976, Israel launched Operation Thunderball AKA Operation Entebbe AKA Operation Yonatan.

On June 27, Air France Flight 139 was hijacked by Arabs and some European soul mates. The plane was taken to Idi Amin’s Uganda, where the hijackers were met with open arms.

The passengers were soon asked to form two lines—one for Jews, the other for gentiles. Most of the latter were freed, but the Jews became Idi Amin’s “guests.” Amin’s buddies next announced that the Jews would be killed if demands were not met.

This is an amazing, true story that sired several movies and accounts. Look it up on the Internet or rent one of the movies.

But what you need to know is that on July 4, 1976, Israel raided Entebbe, freed the hostages and showed the world that it was possible to defeat terror—a lesson some still need to learn today. It was a wonderful present commemorating America’s own liberty as well.

There was one Israeli combat fatality.

Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, of Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal, had commanded the strike force and was killed by a Ugandan soldier. Yoni was a Dean’s List Harvard scholar who returned to Israel to resume his combat role during the stressful years leading up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He was a remarkable human being—both a man of the world, as well as a true son of Zion reborn.

When my own son was born, we named him Jonathan, in honor of King Saul’s son, Prince Yonatan—King David’s closest friend—and in honor of Yoni Netanyahu.

Today, the mainstream media would portray Yoni as a right-wing extremist. Just look at how most of it has dealt with Israel going after the non-stop terror machine and its willing supporters in Gaza. Any Jew who refuses to stick his head in the sand regarding what the Arabs’ true intentions are regarding the Jew of the Nations is branded this way.

Arabs claim twenty-one states to date in their Arab League, on over six million square miles of territory, forcibly Arabized from mostly non-Arab peoples; but how dare Jews claim a sole, minuscule, resurrected one of their own—practically invisible on a world map?

On July 4, 1976, Yonatan Netanyahu re-sent America and the entire world a message that Jews have been delivering for thousands of years.

Rabbi Hillel, who lived during the Roman occupation of Judaea, restated already ancient Jewish teachings when he proclaimed: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am not for others, what am I?”

Israel has tried very hard to come to fair accommodations with current “others”, who see the entire region as merely purely Arab patrimony. Justice, through Arab eyes only. That’s what Darfur and the south of the Sudan is about; that’s what gassed, massacred and subjugated Kurds, Copts, Berbers, and so forth, is about as well.

The compromises Israel has sought with the Arabs are light years beyond what Arabs have offered to the scores of millions of non-Arabs with whom they have clashed and competed themselves. But nothing will really change until the Arab mindset changes. Until then, Israel must concentrate on the first part of Hillel’s famous quote.

Given this reality check, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must send the same message his elder brother Yoni sent over three decades ago. He must demand—not beg—empathy for live Jews, not crocodile tears of sympathy for dead ones.

What would over three hundred million Americans in a three thousand mile wide America do given the true nature of the beast Israel faces? If I am not for myself, who will be for me….?

As protestors fight with the police in the streets of Iran, the opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, asks Iran's Supreme Court leader to declare the election invalid.

Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi marched in the streets of Tehran Monday.

Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, with his wife Zahra Rahnavard, addressed supporters in Tehran.

online.wsj.com

Gunfire from a compound used by pro-government militia was believed to have killed at least one demonstrator Monday after hundreds of thousands of opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad massed in central Tehran to cheer their pro-reform leader in his first public appearance since elections that he alleges were marred by fraud.

A group of demonstrators with fuel canisters attempted to set fire to the compound of a volunteer militia linked to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard as the crowd dispersed from Azadi Square after dark. As some attempted to storm the building, people inside could be seen firing directly at the demonstrators at the northern edge of the square, away from the heart of the demonstration.

An Associated Press photographer saw one person who appeared to have been fatally shot and several others who appeared to be seriously wounded.

The chanting demonstrators had defied an Interior Ministry ban and streamed into central Tehran — an outpouring for reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi that swelled as more poured from buildings and side streets.

The massive show of protest followed a decision by Iran’s most powerful figure for an investigation into the vote-rigging allegations.

The chanting crowd — many wearing the trademark green color of Mr. Mousavi’s campaign — was more than five miles long, and based on previous demonstrations in the square and surrounding streets, its size was estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.

Security forces watched quietly, with shields and batons at their sides.

Mr. Mousavi, in a gray striped shirt and talking through a portable loudspeaker, had paused on the edge of the square — where Mr. Ahmadinejad made his first postelection speech — to address the throng. They roared back: “Long live Mousavi.”

“This is not election. This is selection,” read one English-language placard at the demonstration. Other marchers held signs proclaiming “We want our vote!” and raised their fingers in a V-for-victory salute.

“We want our president, not the one who was forced on us,” said 28-year-old Sara, who gave only her first name because she feared reprisal from authorities. The demonstration lasted several hours before the crowd began to disperse and violence erupted.

Hours earlier, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei directed one of Iran’s most influential bodies, the Guardian Council, to examine the claims.

The results of the elections touched off three days of clashes — the worst unrest in Tehran in a decade. Protesters set fires and battled riot police, including a clash overnight at Tehran University after about 3,000 students gathered to oppose the election results.

Security forces have struck back with targeted arrests of pro-reform activists and blocks on text messaging and pro-Mousavi websites used to rally his supporters.

One of Mr. Mousavi’s websites said a student protester was killed early Monday in clashes with plainclothes hard-liners in Shiraz, southern Iran. But there was no independent confirmation of the report. There also have been unconfirmed reports of unrest in other cities.

Most media are not allowed to travel beyond Tehran and thus cannot independently confirm protests in other cities.

The unrest also risked bringing splits among Iran’s clerical elite, including some influential Shiite scholars raising concern about possible election irregularities and at least one member of the ruling theocracy, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, openly critical of Mr. Ahmadinejad in the campaign.

According to a pro-Mousavi website, he sent a letter to senior clerics in Qom, Iran’s main center of Islamic learning, to spell out his claims.

The accusations also have brought growing international concern. On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden raised questions about whether the vote reflected the wishes of the Iranian people.

Britain and Germany joined the calls of alarm over the rising confrontations in Iran. In Paris, the Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador to discuss the allegations of vote tampering and the violence.

Overnight, police and hard-line militia stormed the campus at the city’s biggest university, ransacking dormitories and arresting dozens of students angry over what they say was mass election fraud.

The overnight gathering at Tehran University started with students chanting “Death to the dictator.” But it quickly erupted into clashes as students threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, who fought back with tear gas and plastic bullets, a 25-year-old student who witnessed the fighting told the AP. He would only give one name, Akbar, out of fears for his safety.

The students set vehicles on fire and hurled stones and bricks at the police, he said. Hard-line militia volunteers loyal to the Revolutionary Guard stormed the dormitories, ransacking student rooms and smashing computers and furniture with axes and wooden sticks, Akbar said.

Before leaving around 4 a.m., the police took away memory cards and computer software material, Akbar said, adding that dozens of students were arrested.

He said many students suffered bruises, cuts, and broken bones in the scuffling and that there was still smoldering garbage on the campus by midmorning but that the situation had calmed down.

“Many students are now leaving to go home to their families, they are scared,” he said. “But others are staying. The police and militia say they will be back and arrest any students they see.”

“I want to stay because they beat us and we won’t retreat,” he added.

The university was the site of serious clashes against student-led protests in 1999 and is one of the nerve centers of the pro-reform movement.

After dark Sunday, Ahmadinejad opponents shouted “Death to the dictator!” and “Allahu akbar!” — “God is great!” — from Tehran’s rooftops. The protest bore deep historic resonance — it was how the leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini asked Iran to unite against the Western-backed shah 30 years earlier.

In Moscow, the Iranian Embassy said Mr. Ahmadinejad has put off a visit to Russia, and it is unclear whether he will come at all. Mr. Ahmadinejad had been expected to travel to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg and meet on Monday with President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of a regional summit.

By Thomas Erdbrink, www.WashingtonPost.com

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared a “new beginning” for Iran late Saturday after he was declared victor in the presidential election, but as he spoke on national television violent demonstrations rolled through several areas of Tehran. Supporters of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi burned dumpsters, threw stones and clashed with police in the worst rioting in Tehran in many years.

The Interior Ministry, controlled by Ahmadinejad, announced that he had been elected in the first round with 62.6 percent of the vote, compared with less than 34 percent for Mousavi, who was the leading challenger. Turnout was a record 86 percent of the 46.2 million eligible voters.

Announcement of the results triggered protests throughout the day. Families lined the streets in the middle-class neighborhood of Saadat Abad, cheering on the demonstration and shouting, “Death to the dictator!”

Ahmadinejad’s reelection will pose fresh challenges to the United States. It has pressed Iran to halt a nuclear program that critics say could be used for weapons, but Iran says it is for civilian purposes. Ahmadinejad has also taken a sharply confrontational approach in foreign affairs.

Talks between Iran and the United States are still a possibility with Ahmadinejad at the helm. On several occasions, he has said he wants such talks. His oft-repeated verbal attacks on Israel are not expected to change.

After the results were announced, the Obama administration said it was examining the charges of election fraud. “We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran, but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.

The White House released a two-sentence statement praising “the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians,” but it expressed concern about “reports of irregularities,” the Associated Press reported.

In Tehran, Mousavi’s whereabouts were unknown. Reporters on their way to a news conference by the former candidate were stopped by security personnel, who said the meeting had been canceled. Several journalists were beaten.

In his speech from the garden of the presidential palace, Ahmadinejad, who campaigned as a champion of the working class, lauded the high turnout in the voting, which he described as free and fair.

“There were two options,” he said. “Either to return to the old days or continue our leap forward towards high peaks . . . and progress. Fortunately, the people voted for that last option.” He said the Iranian people had chosen a program over a personality, and he promised to continue his policies “only with more energy.” He also attacked foreign media coverage of the campaign, saying “they have launched the heaviest propaganda and psychological war against the Iranian nation.”

Mousavi, who had said on Friday that he won, posted a statement on his website rejecting the vote tally as rigged.

“I’m warning that I won’t surrender to this manipulation,” he said. “The outcome of what we’ve seen from the performance of officials . . . is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s sacred system and governance of lies and dictatorship.”

He warned that “people won’t respect those who take power through fraud.” The headline on the website declared, “I won’t give in to this dangerous manipulation,” the AP reported.

Mousavi appealed to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to intervene. But Khamenei had already issued a televised statement that declared Ahmadinejad the victor, and he appealed to Iranians and the defeated candidates to support the president. Khamenei’s statement made it unlikely the election results will be overturned.

In his address, Ahmadinejad criticized his opponents, particularly the influential clerics and former officials behind Mousavi who have ties to the 1979 Islamic revolution. He said it did not matter what they had done at the time of the revolution. “It matters what they do now,” he insisted, suggesting that his opponents were not working for the people.

Tensions enveloped Tehran early Saturday after Ahmadinejad had been declared the victor. Youths, families, and young women in traditional black chadors gathered around the heavily fortified Interior Ministry, where the votes had been counted.

Fights erupted in several locations across Tehran soon after Khamenei’s televised statement.

On Mottahari Street, protesters set three buses on fire. Riot police appeared in full protective clothing and helmets, wielding batons as they raced through the streets in two-man teams on red motorcycles. Others stood in lines between three burned city buses.

Hundreds of protesters rained stones at the police. Thick black smoke filled the air. Loud thuds could be heard in the distance.

“We want freedom!” protesters shouted. Many covered their faces with green cloth, the color of their candidate, Mousavi. About a dozen ran after someone they thought was an undercover policeman. Dressed in a checkered shirt, wearing a backpack, he had stood between the mostly younger protesters, trying to film them.

“You are without honor!” two girls covered in traditional chadors shouted at police.

Traffic sign poles that had been ripped from the ground lined the streets. “Fight them!” one man shouted. “Death to the dictatorship!” others yelled at they ran toward the riot police.

In other locations, demonstrators threw policemen to the ground, who were then beaten and kicked by bystanders. “They have insulted us with this result,” said Mehrdad, a student who refused to give his family name. “We want Mousavi,” the men around him said.

“Commando troops are beating the people. I even saw they beat an old lady,” said Morteza Alviri, a former major from Tehran, now a campaign official for Mehdi Karroubi, a former candidate. He was trapped in his car by the protests and spoke by phone. “They were beating her to a pulp,” he shouted.

The demonstrations continued into Saturday night, with riot police receiving support from Iran’s voluntary paramilitary force, the baseej.

Ahmad Zeidabadi, a political dissident, was arrested Saturday evening, his wife, Mandieh Mohammadi, confirmed. There were reports that 11 other prominent opponents were also arrested. Mobile telephones services were cut and social network sites Facebook and Twitter were filtered. Internet connections as a whole were down part of Saturday. Iranian media remained silent on the riots. State television showed voters saying it was time to move forward and accept the result.

Mousavi was not seen Saturday. In the afternoon, Ali Reza Adeli, a senior official in Mousavi’s campaign, denied reports that his candidate was under house arrest. Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, told the BBC by phone that she and her husband will continue to fight to achieve the “rights of Iranian voters.”

Ahmadinejad announced a “victory party” on Sunday at a central square that Mousavi supporters used in recent weeks to stage their election rallies.

“We are hopeful,” the president said during his speech. “Now it’s time to move on and continue to build our great Iran.”