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| Week ending Shabbat, December 30, 2006 |
9 Tevet, 5767 |
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Jobless Gaza Arabs Miss Jewish Employers
Tens of thousands of Arabs once worked in factories and in construction throughout Israel until the Oslo War broke out in 2000. The constant flow of terrorists from Gaza forced Israel to severely restrict traffic and to withdraw work permits, in an attempt to prevent terrorists from abusing them to carry out attacks. Still thousands of Arabs were able to work for Jewish farmers in Gush Katif until the summer of 2005. It was then that the Israeli government forced the nearly 10,000 Jewish residents out of their homes and destroyed their flourishing communities. The hopes for a robust "Palestinian" Authority [PA] economy following the eviction of the Jews turned to dust, however, and the former greenhouses (pictured above) became training grounds for terrorists. The situation has fostered a drug problem among the poor and jobless, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The U.N. agency cited the example of a 35-year-old man, Hassan, who worked for Jewish shippers and was left jobless after the Oslo War. "My life was normal," he said. "Everything was normal, but unemployment is difficult and poverty is more difficult. Bad conditions led me down a worse path. I have even had to beg for money." Since then he has been unemployed, a situation that drove him to drug addiction. To fund his habit, he first sold his wife's and children's clothes, then stole his brother's property to be able to pay for his drugs. "Overall, drug dependency... is on the rise, according to... police and doctors," the U.N. report said. "This, they say, is due to a sense of hopelessness among ordinary "Palestinians" and the lack of both effective policing to catch the dealers and of a clinical safety net to help those already addicted."
Joshua's Altar Deepens National Consciousness
Just before this past Chanukah, two busloads of Russian-speaking Israelis - new immigrants, veteran immigrants, and some tourists - made their first visit to the site known as Joshua's Altar near Shechem (Nablus). The visitors - many of whom had never been to the area - came away greatly inspired, and some were even moved to tears. Secular Jews found themselves reciting special blessings and prayers appropriate to the novelty of the experience. What was so special? "To see the actual altar that Joshua built, by Divine command, on the day the Jewish People entered the Land of Israel, is simply overwhelming," one participant tried to explain. The trip was organized by the Maof organization - helping Russian-speakers get to know the Land of Israel - and ex-Minister of Knesset Uzi Landau's Machatz (Zionist Camp), whose Eretz Nehderet (Beautiful Land) program does the same for people all over the country. The two buses were targeted by a small bomb hurled by "Palestinian" terrorists in the region, but no damage was caused.
Professor Adam Zertal, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv University, was the man who discovered and excavated the area and determined that it is the remnants of Joshua's Altar. "We discovered this place, all covered with stones, in April 1980. At that time I never dreamt that we were dealing with the altar, because I was taught in Tel Aviv University - the center of anti-Biblical tendencies, where I learned that Biblical theories are untrue, and that Biblical accounts were written later, and the like. I didn't even know of the story of the Joshua's altar. But we surveyed every meter of the site, and in the course of nine years of excavation, we discovered a very old structure with no parallels to anything we had seen before. It was 9 by 7 meters, and 4 meters high, with two stone ramps, and a kind of veranda, known as the sovev, around," said Professor Zertal.
The Torah itself, in Deuteronomy 27:4-8, recounts the command to build the altar on Mt. Ebal (Eval) when the Jewish People would cross the Jordan River into the Holy Land. The command stipulates that the stones should not be hewn by iron, and that sacrifices should be brought there. Joshua 8:30 states that Joshua fulfilled the command and, in fact, built the altar on Mount Ebal. This occurred, according to traditional chronology, in the year 2488 to the creation of the world, or 3,252 years before Zertal began his excavation of the site. A very critical piece of evidence cited by Zertal in support of his identification of the structure as Joshua's Altar appears to be the animal bones found there:
"There were more than 1,000 burnt animal bones - exactly of the type that were used for sacrifices. It was clear that this was not the remnants of some village, but rather a cultic site. But the critical turning point [in our excavation] came when a religious member of our team showed us the Mishna describing the altar of the 2nd Temple period - 1,200 years later than our discovery. The description was very similar to what we had found - meaning that the Mishna was clearly and definitely a continuation and prototype of the one on Mount Ebal. They both have ramps, just as the Torah stipulates, for the High Priest to ascend to the altar without going up steps, and the sizes matched, and more... The architecture itself was the evidence."
220 New Immigrants Arrive in Israel
On Wednesday, two hundred twenty new immigrants arrived in Israel as part of a joint aliyah project by the Nefesh B'Nefesh (NBN) organization and the Jewish Agency. The new olim traveled to Israel from North America on the 23rd plane to arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport over the last four years as part of the project. "We dreamed of reaching 10,000 olim, and now that we have, our next goal is to bring at least 5,000 olim to Israel per year," said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, executive director and founder of NBN during a ceremony held at an airport in New York. "We dreamt of the return to Zion - but you aren't dreaming, you are doing it," the rabbi added.
Among the "olim" were a couple of doctors and their three children, an 87 year-old man who repaired the "Exodus" when it was on its way to Israel and docked in one of France's ports, a 24 year-old named after Yoni Netanyahu that made the decision to make aliyah the day after his friend was killed in the second Lebanon war, a 60 year-old judge, and a retired couple who dreamed of living in their "true home." All the passengers on board had in common the strong aspiration to make aliyah. "Aliyah is my dream, all my life I've wanted to fulfill it, and the war with Hizbullah pushed it forward," said twenty-four year-old Yoni.
Photos from our Recent Israel Tour
Quality photos from Israel featuring Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Caesarea, Megiddo, Nof Ginossar, Sea of Galilee [Yom Kinneret], Banias, Golan Heights, communities of Samaria, Jerusalem, Qumran, En Gedi, Masada, Gush Etzion, Hevron/Kiryat Arba, and the march with the Temple Mount Faithful. See photos!
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