The Birkat HaCohanim (“priestly blessing” in Hebrew) at the Western Wall in 1995. Photo: Moshe Milner/the Israeli government press office via Flickr.com.

OCTOBER 20, 2015 5:46 PM 17
Author:  Algemeiner Staff

Jewish groups around the globe roundly condemned a proposal introduced by six Arab countries at the U.N.’s cultural arm that would strip Israel’s cultural and historic ties from the Western Wall plaza.

Senior officials at the Simon Wiesenthal Center held a conference call with UNESCO’s director-general,the Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova, who had already condemned the incendiary nature of the Arab proposal.

Source: Global Jewish Groups Outraged over UNESCO Western Wall Resolution | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com

Hamilton student heard Nobel Prize winners at World Science Conference

There were 15 Nobel laureates speaking at an international science conference in Jerusalem that Hamilton student Alex Kennedy, right, attended. He’s pictured discussing the experience with Hamilton Boys’ High School headmaster Susan Hassall, left, and ambassador of Israel to New Zealand Yosef Livne, centre.Five days of listening to science lectures isn’t every high school student’s idea of fun, but Alex Kennedy loved it.The 18-year-old Hamilton Boys’ High School student was one of five Kiwis chosen to attend the World Science Conference – Israel in August.Along with students from 70 countries, there were fifteen Nobel Prize laureates at the Jerusalem conference.

Source: Hamilton student heard Nobel Prize winners at World Science Conference | Stuff.co.nz

Pastor Nigel Woodley, Flaxmere Christian Fellowship

NZ government urged to stop “pressuring Israel” October 22, 2015 by J-Wire News Service

11,685 people have joined Pastor Nigel Woodley in urging the New Zealand Government to cease from pressuring the State of Israel to give up its rightful and God-given Land.The Clerk of the House informing Parliament of the PetitionThe petition also urges the Government to support Israel’s right to have sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria (West bank) and all of Jerusalem.

Source: NZ government urged to stop “pressuring Israel” – J-Wire » J-Wire

Hi Folks

Just to report back:

1. SJP put posters up with headlines like “Baby  Killers” and “War Criminals”
2. Despite that, the meeting went ahead.
3. The meeting had over 200 attendees.
4. There were around 40 demonstrators, some with megaphones, outside.
5. Several demonstrators seeded themselves through the crowd and tried to shout down Naftali and Rafael.  The crowd boo’d them into silence.
6. Clearly there is an appetite for intelligent enquiry.
7. Freedom of speech won.
8. A fuller report will be available in the coming days.

Much thanks to Naftali Gross and Rafael Wein.  We sent them to the lions’ den and the lions were silenced.  They were bold and they were courageous.  Plaudits to Caelan and the rest of the AUJS team, who stood tall and didn’t bow to pressure from the SJP et al.   A hearty kol hakavod also goes to Gael Keren and David Zwartz for their behind the scenes work in preparing press releases for the AUJS, despite both being quite ill.  Great job from Susette McLachlan who despite difficult personal circumstances put in a lot of effort to promote the event.

Finally, thanks to all those supporters who tapped “like” buttons, wrote supportive comments, prayed, and/or stood up for us during workplace coffee breaks and thereby showed, among many things, that you value free speech, the rule of law, a safe and secure Israel, there is still regard for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you value those who risk themselves so that liberty is maintained and tyranny is defeated. Also a special thank you for standing up without descending into name calling, abusive criticism and ad hominem attacks. I am proud to stand amongst you.  Am yisrael chai.

My 11-year old son, Joshua, attended Naftali and Rafael’s talk on Saturday, and has been watching on as this situation played itself out.  Tonight he came to me and asked if he could become a member of NZ Friends of Israel.

Laila tov in New Zealand; and boker tov for those in Israel

Tony Kan

President

NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
Box 37 363
Christchurch
New Zealand 8245

P +64 (27) 433 9745
E contact@nzfoi.org
W www.nzfoi.org

Last weekend we were granted a fascinating and revealing account of what it was like to serve in the IDF  during the 2014 Gaza War.

Naftali Gross and Rafael Wein gave moving accounts of patrolling the borders of Gaza, whilst working within the IDF’s ethical framework, which is in turn an expression of Jewish traditional values.

What is prominent throughout the evening was the idea of loving your enemies.

What other nation on earth would provide food, construction materials, electricity, medical aid and fuel to its enemies, knowing that that enemy will use those materials to advance their deadly cause against their provider?

Who would give medical assistance even as your enemies attack you and berate you for being there?

In aspiring to meet such lofty ideals the price is much personal sacrifice and loss.

Gross and Wein gave a personal, poignant and intimate testimony of their experiences. Their talk doesn’t cover the role of Dabla, the IDF ‘s international law department and how they sign off on every target card to ensure that it complies with the world’s laws of military conduct.

They don’t talk about the findings of the multinational High Level Military Group who reported to the UN that:

“In the air, on the front and at sea , Israel not only met a reasonable international standard of observance of the laws of armed conflict, but in many cases significantly exceeded that standard… A measure of the seriousness with which Israel took its moral duties and its responsibilities under the laws of armed conflict is that in some cases Israel’s scrupulous a dherence to the laws of war cost Israeli soldiers. and civilians their lives…”

No, they didn’t talk of these things, instead they gave a deeply personal memoir that has left an indelible impression in our souls.

A recording of their address can be downloaded from here: http://1drv.ms/1O2neQR

There is a heated debate about the role of Islam in Jihadism.  Will it make a difference?

Western leaders have long urged Muslims to do more to counter jihadist ideology. This month Barack Obama said moderate Muslims including scholars and clerics, had a responsibility to reject “twisted interpretations of Islam” and the lie “that Americans and the West are somehow at war with Islam.” On February 23^rd Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, urged Muslim leaders to say that Islam is a religion of peace—“and mean it.”

Muslims have not taken kindly to such hectoring. Yet they are starting to debate the role that Islamist ideology plays in extremism. On February 22^nd Ahmed al Tayeb, the grand imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar mosque, part of a university that is the Sunni world’s oldest seat of learning, declared that extremism was caused by “bad interpretations of the Koran and the Sunna [the doings of the Prophet Muhammad]”, and that what was taught in Islamic schools and universities needed to change.

The doctrines of jihad and takfir are central to the debate. Extremists interpret jihad as mandating offensive holy war, though they may disagree about when and against whom it should be waged. The evidence from the hadith (the Prophet’s sayings) and renowned scholars that Islam is a religion of the sword is “so profuse that only a heretic would argue otherwise,” claims the most recent issue of Dabiq, the magazine of Islamic State (IS). Extremists differ too, about takfir, the process whereby Muslims declare other Muslims to be apostates or unbelievers, for which the penalty is death. Al-Qaeda applies the doctrine with some limits to avoid alienating Muslims from its cause; IS invokes takfir wholesale, especially against Shias, perhaps in the belief that cinematic gore is the stronger lure.

Mainstream clerics are trying to rebut such views. “Jihad does not mean holy war but striving to achieve peace and anything good in obedience to Allah,” says Dauda Bello, an imam from Nigeria’s north-eastern region, where Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgent group, rampages. Last year 120 Muslim scholars wrote to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS’ leader, saying that he had misconstrued Islam by ignoring the context of the Koran, classical teaching and the current era. Takfir, they said, can only be pronounced on those who have openly professed unbelief. It is properly carried out only by ulema ( a group of recognised experts in sacred law and theology), which will first offer the opportunity to repent. To prove the point, al-Azhar will not call IS non-Muslims.

The authority of al-Azhar, Tunisia’s Zitouna mosque and Saudi Arabia’s University of Medina rests on their long histories and traditions of scholarship. The approach of al-Azhar, which was founded in 970 AD and led the integration of Islamic and secular subjects, is “based on teachings which the Muslim umma [community] has approved over thousands of years,” says Muhammad Mehanna, an adviser to Mr Tayeb.

But Sunni Islam, unlike the Shia form, has no pre-eminent doctrinal authority, nor, since Ataturk ended the already weakened caliphate in 1922, anything resembling a single leader. This makes it harder to hold the line against extremists. Four schools of sharia law and thousands of hadith allow much room for interpretation. Both IS and Boko Haram argue from primary sources and ancient scholars. Supporters of IS point out that their leader has a PhD in Islamic studies from Baghdad University and claims to be of noble and learned stock.

Governments in the Middle East are trying to counter such new claims of authority by imposing their own versions of Islam. Last year Egypt sacked 12,000 preachers and replaced them with al-Azhar graduates, who must preach on government approved themes. Saudi Arabia, which itself espouses a puritanical form of Islam, has long co-opted clerics with cash and is adding CCTV in mosques (ostensibly to prevent theft). Overhauling religious education in schools is being discussed, too. In 2012 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington, DC, found that Egyptian textbooks embraced jihad against both infidel and enemy countries. Callers to a recent radio show about radicalisation on FM Masr, an Egyptian station, said such books needed to be rewritten. In Nigeria imams are setting up schools that combine secular and Islamic education, since teachers in traditional religious schools are low level imams barely out of their teens.

Complicating attempts to shore up traditional sources of authority is the fact that he establishment is precisely what many extremists reject. Salafists (devout Muslims who seek to emulate the times of the Prophet), both of the quietist and the violent jihadist sort, see much of the centuries old tradition of Islamic jurisprudence as distorting the true religion. When denounced by the emir of Kano, a former central banker who is now Nigeria’s second most important Muslim leader, Boko Haram retorted: “We do not practise the religion of Lamido Sanusi…. but the religion of Allah.”

And Muslim majority populations that have risen up against dictators are less willing to trust religious authorities—especially those they regard as captured by political or government interests. Egypt’s government appoints the head of al-Azhar. Members of Dar al-Ifta, Lebanon’s official body of teachings and fatwas (rulings on Islamic law), come from its two main political groupings.   Middle Eastern rulers have a history of alternately backing religious groups and denouncing them as terrorists for short term political gain.

The internet, social media and improving literacy in the religion make other sources easier to find. “I think about religion myself by searching and seeing the different opinions,” says Muhammad Gamal, a chemistry teacher at Cairo University. Alternatives are often better packaged and more appealing to young people, too. A region wide joke says that Mr Baghdadi, in his 30s, is the youngest person to head an Arab organisation.

“you see ISIS videos, all slick Hollywood style, and what astark contrast with the turbans and robes of the sheikhs of al-Azhar,” says Raphael Lefevre, a French scholar who studies Lebanon’s Sunnis. “Radical groups seem closer to the people. Institutions are seen as bourgeois, stuffy and speaking a language people don’t understand.” Some Muslim scholars compare the appeal of jihadism to that of fundamentalist Christianity: the message is clear and certain.

Firm government action against those who preach violence is probably worthwhile. And traditional centres of Islamic authority could surely do more to explain their interpretations of Islam, and in more appealing ways. But the result of the debate within Islam about the roots of extremism may not be entirely to the taste of liberal muslims—or Western politicians.

Imposing state sanctioned creeds has in the past pushed jihadists underground. And these versions of Islam are by no means sure to be more liberal: the Saudi regime uses harsh sharia punishments such as beheading and last year al-Azhar launched a campaign to rid Egypt of unbelief after a survey claimed the country held precisely 866 atheists. Bu the alternative, attempting to promote liberal doctrines in a free market of religious ideas, has dangers too. Georges Fahmi, an Egyptian scholar, detects a conservative mood among Muslims: “what is shocking is how many people support IS’ actions even if tey would not do them themselves.”

Source: The Economist, 28 February 2015.