The Lekarev Report 26 Sept 2007

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Rockets and Mortars from Gaza This Morning Four Kassam rockets and some 25 mortar shells were fired this morning at Israeli towns in the western Negev by terrorists in Gaza. Though ten shells fell short and landed within Hamas-controlled Gaza, others landed near the Kissufim and Erez crossings, and 11 of them fell in the Ein HaShlosha area. Kassam rockets landed near Or HaNer and Mefalsim, in the Sderot area, and near the border fence. Baruch Hashem, no injuries were reported after this barrage.

A military committee set up by Defense Minister Ehud Barak has recommended, among other things, that Israel reduce the electricity it supplies to Gaza by seven megawatt-hours following every Kassam rocket attack. The recommendation follows the Cabinet decision of last week defining Hamas-run Gaza as a "hostile entity."

IAF aircraft attacked a group of north Gazan terrorists as they prepared to launch a rocket in the area of Beit Hanoun. Two terrorists were reported wounded in the attack.

Finally Caught
Who can forget this chilling photo that flashed across international television screens seven years ago? Early this morning, IDF soldiers arrested the last of the Palestinian Authority (PA) terrorists responsible for the brutal lynching of two IDF reservists in Ramallah on that fateful day.

36-year-old Tanzim terrorist Hayman Zaben was captured in Shechem in the early hours of today. Zaben was one of those responsible for bludgeoning to death IDF reservists Vadim Nurzitz and Yossi Avrahami in a PA police station in Ramallah in October, 2000.

The two reservists had accidentally entered PA-controlled Ramallah, just six miles north of Jerusalem, and were arrested by PA police. Once they were in custody the lynch occurred.

TV images of the lynching show a body of one of the two Israelis being tossed from the police station window to a mob of local Arabs who beat the soldiers' bodies with anything they could get their hands on. The mob is seen waving body parts in the air and proudly displaying their blood-soaked hands to their comrades.

It was one of the most gruesome and unspeakably horrific incidents in recent years, sparking outrage within Israel and around the world.

Ever Defiant Ahmadinejad DEBKA analysts write today that Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, clearly enjoyed every moment of the uproar he provoked in American discourse yesterday and totally mishandled the tough questions posed him at the end of his speech to 600 students and faculty on Monday, Sept. 24, by throwing questions back, longwinded evasions and boldfaced lies.

Even though Columbia University President Lee Bollinger greeted the Iranian visitor as "a cruel and petty tyrant and terrorist," there his no gainsaying that he granted a coveted platform to a world figure who abused it to disseminate a creed which preaches the superiority of the Iranian race, culture and religion and whose highest objective is the downfall of Big Satan America and Little Satan Israel.

In his speech to the UN yesterday, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran's disputed nuclear program is closed as a political issue and said Tehran will ignore a U.N. Security Council demand imposed by "arrogant powers" to curb its nuclear program.

When Ahmadinejad was ushered to the podium, the U.S. delegation walked out, leaving only a low-ranking note-taker to listen to his speech, which indirectly accused the United States and Israel of major human rights violations. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said the U.S. wanted "to send him a powerful message."

Ahmadinejad also used the UN platform to unveil a vision of a world without Israel, in which America and Europe would be freed of what he said was 'Zionist oppression'. Ending his verbal assault on what he described as the injustices and oppressions practiced by the "big powers" since World War II, he said that the ungodly era of lewdness and violence was coming to a close and that "the age of monotheism has commenced." The world is "nearing the sunset of the time of empires," he claimed, and urged the dominant world powers to eschew their "obedience to Satan" and "submit to the will of god." [Note: Obviously his 'god' is Allah, not the true G-d of the Bible.] If they did so, "they will be saved." If not, "calamities will befall them."

But whether or not these powers chose to reform themselves, he continued, the day was fast approaching when "occupied lands will be freed. Palestine and Iraq will be liberated from the domination of the occupiers." And the people of America and Europe would be liberated from Zionist oppression. "This is the promise of god," he said. "Therefore it will be fulfilled."

Bush to UN: Lay Off Israel United States President George W. Bush urged the United Nations to reform its Human Rights Council Tuesday, criticizing the body for ignoring abuses in places like Iran "while focusing its criticism excessively on Israel." "The American people are disappointed by the failures of the Human Rights Council," Bush said. "The United Nations must reform its own Human Rights Council."

In the course of his speech, Bush pointed out several regimes which he termed "brutal" and "cruel." He announced new sanctions against the military dictatorship in Myanmar (Burma), accusing it of imposing "a 19-year reign of fear" that denies the basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship. He purposely used the country's old name, Burma: the military junta renamed the Asian country Myanmar but the U.S. refuses to recognize the change.

"Basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship are severely restricted," he said. "Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking and rape are common. The regime is holding more than a thousand political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party was elected overwhelmingly by the Burmese people in 1990.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sat in the chamber and checked his watch during Bush's remarks. First Lady Laura Bush, also present for the president's speech, walked by the seated Iranian president without making contact, and Israeli Ambassador Danny Gillerman, too, made a point of avoiding Ahmadinejad.

Bush urged the UN to help those nations struggling to establish democracy. "The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have asked for our help, and every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand with them," he said. "Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship, " he added. "In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration" of the United Nations.

"In Cuba, the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end," Bush said. "The Cuban people are ready for their freedom. And as that nation enters a period of transition, the United Nations must insist on free speech, free assembly and, ultimately, free and competitive elections." The Cuban delegation walked out in protest.

Kassam Rockets Found Near Bethlehem Palestinian security and the IDF's civil administration are coordinating the transfer of two Kassam rockets that were discovered near Bethlehem by PA security forces early this morning.

The rockets, as well as TNT and a briefcase holding documents, were found by the Palestinian forces in an area between Bethlehem's El-Aida refugee camp and Beit Jala, opposite Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood.

Palestinian news agency Ma'an said that the rockets were 1.5 meters long. The IDF said that if the dimensions of the rockets were accurate, they were not as sophisticated as the rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip on a daily basis.

Central Command sources said that it was possible that the Kassam rockets were being manufactured in Bethlehem where a Tanzim terror cell had fired mortar shells at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo in recent years.

For those who may not have visited Israel yet, Bethlehem is a mere 5 miles from Jerusalem.

The Succah Still Stands There is simply no describing the plaintive, moving melody to which Yiddish writer Avraham Reisen's poem was set. As a song, it is familiar to many of us who were introduced to it by immigrant parents or grandparents. And, remarkably, the strains of "A Sukkeleh," no matter how often we may have heard them, still tend to choke us up. Based on Reisen's "In Sukkeh," the song, whose popular title means "A Little Sukkah," really concerns two Succot, one literal, the other metaphorical, and the poem, though it was written at the beginning of the last century, remains tender, profound and timely.

Several years ago, thinking about the song, as so many invariably do every year this season, it occurred to me to try to render it into English for readers unfamiliar with either the song or the language in which it was written. I'm not a professional translator, and my rendering, below, is not perfectly literal. But it's close, and is faithful to the rhyme scheme and meter of the original. Here goes:

A sukkaleh, quite small, Wooden planks for each wall; Lovingly I stood them upright. I laid thatch as a ceiling And now, filled with deep feeling, I sit in my sukkaleh at night. A chill wind attacks, Blowing through the cracks; The candles, they flicker and yearn. It's so strange a thing That as the Kiddush I sing, The flames, calmed, now quietly burn. In comes my daughter, Bearing hot food and water; Worry on her face like a pall. She just stands there shaking And, her voice nearly breaking, Says "Tattenyu, the sukkah's going to fall!" Dear daughter, don't fret; It hasn't fallen yet. The sukkah's fine; banish your fright. There have been many such fears, For nigh two thousand years; Yet the sukkeleh's still standing upright.

AS WE approach the holiday of Succot and celebrate the divine protection our ancestors were afforded during their 40 years' wandering in the Sinai desert, we are supposed - indeed, commanded - to be happy. We refer to Succot, in our Amida prayer, as "the time of our joy." And yet, at least seen superficially, Jewish joy seems misplaced and elusive these days. Jews are brazenly and cruelly murdered in our ancestral homeland, hated and attacked on the streets of not only European cities but places like Canada and Australia as well - and here in the United States, our numbers are falling to the internal adversaries of intermarriage and assimilation.

The poet, however, well captured a transcendent Succot-truth. With temperatures dropping and winter's gloom not a great distance away, our succa-dwelling is indeed a quiet but powerful statement: We are secure, ultimately protected as a people, if not necessarily as individuals.

And the Jewish people's security is sourced in nothing so flimsy as a fortified edifice; it is protection provided us by God Himself, in the merit of our forefathers, and of our own emulation of their dedication to the Divine. So, no matter how loudly the winds and the tyrants may howl, no matter how vulnerable our physical fortresses may be, we give harbor to neither despair nor insecurity. No, instead we redouble our recognition that, in the end, God is in charge, that all is in His hands.

And that, as it has for millennia, the succa continues to stand.

This article was published today in the Jerusalem Post and was written by Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

Chag Sameach Succot
At sundown tonight, Jewish people around the world will begin the week long celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles or Chag Succot in Hebrew. The first and last day of the festival are like Shabbat, so there will be NO Lekarev Report tomorrow.

Succot is a feast of great joy, a feast of great faith - it always has been and it always will be, even as the previous article pointed out. The Succah integrates the spiritual realms with physical reality. Like the Holy Temple which joined spiritual and material, so that even physical materials became holy, the Succah brings inside and outside together. In fact, the Holy Temple was called the Succah of David.

The Succah embraces us, as Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who lived some two hundred years ago, taught. The halachically mandated two full walls are like the arm's two larger members. With the third wall a minimum of one hand's breadth in length, the Succah is like a hand embracing us. God values our merits, but more fundamentally, He loves us and gives us a "hug" just for ourselves. The sages taught that we enter Succot with the knowledge and conviction that God has forgiven us our faults and errors. Though by right we can not reverse the past, God overlooked our transgressions and gave his full atonement on Yom Kippur, only because He loves us. We need only sit in the Succah to receive his embrace. Accepting that God loves us for our very selves truly touches the heart, especially as we wonder and feel His love is unearned. This love means that we can change our focus to a higher, gladder reality. Sukkot is the Time of our Rejoicing.

Succot, following so closely after Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, is described as "the morning of the new year". If we truly satiate ourselves with the love and kindness of the Divine embrace in the Succah, the effect will last during the whole year.

Til Friday, Chag Sameach Succot to all of you, Leah

email: leahrafaeli@ yahoo.com

phone: 703-587-4420

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