The EU Is At War With Israel

 

It's official. For all intents and purposes, the EU is at war with Israel.Some of the members, particularly in Eastern and central Europe aren't participating, but most of the EU is.

It isn't a shooting war, but an increasing effort to marginalize the Jewish State so it can be destroyed..

The EU supports anti-Israel NGOs financially,and continues to fund the PLO even though it uses much of those funds to pay terrorists for murdering Israeli civilians, even though that financial support frees up funds to be used in what the PLO refers to as 'operations.'

Only Israel has fruits, vegetables and fresh flowers specially labeled as being from 'the Occupied West Bank.'

Led by Angela Merkel and Frances Emanuel Macron, the EU has consistently evaded U.S. sanctions against Iran and continued to observe the farcical Iran 'deal' of Barack Hussein Obama. The EU has done this even though Iran has been quite clear of its genocidal intentions towards Israel.

And it was none other than Germany's Angela Merkel who pressured Eastern and Central European countries with good relationships with Israel not to relocate their embassies in Jerusalem or face her wrath.

The founding director of the European Coalition for Israel in Brussels, Tomas Sandell, reported that  that the  German Chancellor  waged a strenuous campaign to stop central and eastern European countries from moving their capitals to Jerusalem..

 “I have spoken to many Germans these last few days in Brussels,” he said. “They are not aware of this, and all of them would be shocked that all of the countries in the European Union today would want to block an embassy move to Jerusalem, not only for your own country, but for other countries that have the conviction [that] this is the right thing to do, the only country to do would be Germany. This is a big shock.”

According to Sandell, most of  Merkel’s calls to put the squeeze on European leaders happened when “many of the nations were seriously considering moving their embassies.”

This isn't a shock to me at all,but let's continue.

Germany also implemented  the marking of Israeli goods from 'disputed territories' in 2015. Not only did Germany start the labeling, but Merkel used her influence to get other Eu nations to do the same.The idea, of course is to further isolate Israel as an 'occupying power.'

As recently as a few days ago, the EU showed that it had chosen sides against Israel. When American U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley tried to discuss aspects of President Trump's proposed peace plan, they essentially brushed it off. Let's look at their official statement and then dissect what it really means.

After the usual horse manure about a 'just peace 'based on international law, relevant UN resolutions and previous agreements', here's what they said:

  "The EU is truly convinced that the achievement of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital of both States, that meets Israeli and Palestinian security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation and resolves all final status issues, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2334 and previous agreements, is the only viable and realistic way to end the conflict and to achieve just and lasting peace."

Let's translate this, shall we?

 

Resolution 2334 is the one former President Barack Hussein Obama engineered when the Security Council had a majority of anti-Israel countries on it and then made sure the US abstained so it would pass, his final hateful attack on Israel. Here's what it stipulated, and it's an  'anti-zionist' wet dream.

First of all, it negates every Israeli community as illegal outside the pre-1967 lines and gives East Jerusalem to the PLO. This creates 580,000 homeless Israeli refugees, bars them forever from all their holy sites, and puts all of Israel's central plain and its airports in easy missile and mortar by giving Israel's sworn enemies the high ground.

 

Not only that, it also  takes away any notion of security from what's left of Jerusalem that the resolution is willing to leave to Israel. The Israelis themselves had previous experience with this in 1967, when Jordan's King Hussein announced his entry into the war by shelling civilians and having snipers fire on West Jerusalem

Even worse, there would be nothing to stop Iran from supplying deadlier and deadlier missiles and arms to both the PLO and Hamas. With the Jordan Valley out of Israeli control, there would be nothing to stop Iran from moving troops, missile launchers and armor  to Israel's new borders.

Essentially, what the EU was saying to Ambassador Haley is that they weren't going to support President Trump's plan whatever it was, that Israel should be moved to indefensible borders, and that its enemies should have every strategic advantage so they can finally destroy it.

2334 also  violates the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, agreements the U.S. was a signatory to that stated unequivocally that any settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority could only be achieved through direct negations between the two parties.

And then of course, there's that notion of 'occupation.' That term has always been used to describe one country forcibly invading and taking control of another country's sovereign territory. And sovereign territory means land inside another established country's recognized borders, like Saddam Hussein occupying Kuwait or the US occupying Germany or Japan.

So we have to ask the question...which country's sovereign territory is Israel 'occupying?'

It can't be Jordan. Yes, Jordan illegally occupied Judea, Samaria (AKA The West Bank) and East Jerusalem in the 1948 war for 19 years after ethnically cleansing the Jewish population in this area,  but the UN never recognized these areas as Jordanian territory, Israel took it back in the Six Day war after Jordan attacked them and Jordan later gave up all claims to this area as part of their peace treaty with Israel. So it isn't Jordan Israel's occupying.

And it can't be 'Palestine' either. It never existed as a sovereign nation with established borders at all. Owning a house in say, Pennsylvania does not make it and maybe your yard a sovereign country, now does it?

So there really is no 'occupation.' According to the San Remo Accords between the League of Nations (the UN of its day) and Britain in 1922, the 22% of the Palestine Mandate that includes Judea and Samaria and what is now Israel was supposed to be the Jewish State, while the 78% of it that's now Jordan was supposed to be the Arab State. It's the only partition of the area both sides ever agreed on, and it was reaffirmed in Article 80 of the UN Charter.

What the EU and their pals at the UN are doing is pretty simple to figure out. They're simply doing what  Mark Twain predicted they would back in 1899 when the  Zionist movement was  beginning. Here's what he had to say  in a famous article on Jews he did in Harper's Magazine:

  I am not objecting; but if that concentration of the cunningest brains in the world were going to be made in a free country (bar Scotland), I think it would be politic to stop it. It will not be well to let the race find out its strength. If the horses knew theirs, we should not ride any more. 

Want further proof of how the EU has it in for Israel? The recent attempt to simply pass a resolution  condemning unprovoked terrorism  by Hamas against Israel in the UN General Assembly failed dismally once Israel's enemies in the UN insisted on a two thirds majority instead of the simple majority Ambassador Haley wanted.

You know what did pass? A resolution sponsored by Ireland calling for 'the achievement, without delay”  of the implementing  of U.N. resolution 2334.

Since 2334 was a series 6 Resolution that has no status as international law,  Israel promptly rejected it, as any country not interested in national suicide would.But thanks to Barack Hussein Obama, it remains a framework for countries that want Israel gone.

And make no mistake,it definitely is about the Jews. Much of what constitutes the EU will never forgive them for Auschwitz. Or for being so successful in a region noted for failed states.

Forum: What Do You Most Like About The Holiday Season?

Every week, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:What Do You Most Like About The Holiday Season?

Bookworm Room: I like Christmas music. I may be Jewish, but I think Christmas music is one of the great gifts Christians have given to the world or, at least, to America. Whether it's the old classics with their decidedly religious focus or the modern odes to winter, hearing those songs makes me happy. I dread the day when the PC police make all of that music go completely underground. Until then, once Thanksgiving is over and right up until 11:59 p.m. on Christmas day, I revel in those melodies.

Puma By Design :While I do not decorate as much as I used to because everyone are adults with their own families, the grandchildren will come over for a weekend, mid-December to help me decorate.

When they were younger, I used to take them on a day trip to Toys R Us or FAO Schwartz in mid-town Manhattan where they’d have open access to the many games and holiday props. However, since everyone is so politically correct in NYC, we now head over to Barnes and Nobles or one of the malls depending on the events.

The following day, we put up Christmas lights and the tree. Hopefully, this year, Kiki won’t knock down the tree and screw up the decorations before the next morning’s sunrise as she did last year.

After the tree is decorated, we’ll have cookies and hot chocolate or tea (sounds all Norman Rockwell, right?) While decorating, we’ll play Christmas music. They like my choice of Christmas music (thank goodness).

Once settled for the evening, I bully (well, not exactly) them into watching a Christmas movie of my choosing. Hey, I earned it and of course, they’ll moan and groan, “Oh, Grandma….really?” My grandson and granddaughter will fight for the seat closest to me until unable to stand them anymore, I switch seats allowing one to sit on the left of me and the other on the right. Case closed.

Then we’ll hang out again, Christmas Eve until about 10 p.m. at which point, their parents who waited until the final days have completed Christmas shopping take them home.

In between and all around, by the second week of December, I am in the holiday spirit whether I have decorated or not. However, once the mission has been accomplished, there is no holding me back. I often spend late evenings or since I’m such a horrible sleeper awaken to find my favorite spot in the living room where I admire the decorations, tree and lights while enjoying Christmas music preferably old school Christmas music of all genres except Hip-hop. Okay, one or two artists from the Hip-hop era.

I believe that music is God’s gift to us and his way of touching us deep within. There is a reason that it’s called joyful noise and when I’m not listening to music or have lowered it in the background, I’m like a 10-year-old enjoying my Christmas movies.

Life is good and we are blessed.

Jeffrey Avalon Friedberg: love "the prettiest sound" in the world: the call to Prayer.

The sound of goats screaming death cries as they are slaughtered. The cacophony of terrified unbelievers naked and shrieking in cold air. The crisp crackle of animal and snake hides as we unwrap our newest weapons and killing devices.

Yessss---the ssssssong of the sssssands blowing passssst usssss, under a full moon....

Ahhhhhh...nothing better....

Nothing.


Patrick O'Hannigan: I'm not actually sure what I like most about the holiday season, but I appreciate being given the chance to think aloud about it.

If you set aside some of the hymns I like on the grounds that Easter and (in the U.S., at least) the Fourth of July have also inspired music, then the forced pause over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day might be the thing I appreciate most. By then, "holiday prep" of whatever kind is done, and the questions you're left to ponder get simultaneously bigger and smaller. What I mean is that those of us inclined to such pondering are nudged by the calendar to marvel at the fact that God became Man, which leads first to the big, comforting, incredible question of "Why?"

I'm not sure whether my Jewish friends see the ecumenical and fellowship possibilities in Christmas the way that I do, but I also like how the Nativity of Jesus sits squarely on the pivot point between Jewish and Christian scriptures.

That said, nobody can think big thoughts all the time, and so by December 25 we're also playing "small ball" with questions like "Which flannel shirt do I like best?" or "Will this Irish coffee taste as good as Uncle Jim's?," and "Is the soprano soloist at the late Mass going to handle 'O Holy Night' as beautifully as Mary Beth did all those years ago?"

I think "the holidays" as a catchall phrase wrongly conflates observances of unequal rank by putting things like New Year's Eve on equal footing with more significant observances, but it's also true that seeing the confluence of sacred and secular in the month of December provides food for thought.

Rob Miller: People's attitudes. They seem to enjoy life more, to let the little things go. Oh, and using the pool and the jacuzzi in December.


Laura Rambeau Lee: For me the holiday season is about carrying on family traditions. We always have turkey for Thanksgiving; a standing rib roast for Christmas dinner; and a roast pork with sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and apple sauce on New Year’s Day. We do end up working around everyone’s work schedules and don’t always celebrate on the actual day, but we get together when we all can. And with an extended family it is nice to make the day a special day when no one must run to another dinner and celebration. Since my mom passed away in 2011, I guess I have taken over the matriarch role and try to do the little things she always did. My sisters especially love the shoo-fly pies I order from Lancaster, Pa, which is one thing mom always did after we moved to Florida as we got older. I don't enjoy the shopping, not crazy about the malls and the crowds. My husband loves to shop so he takes on that task. I make the list, he fills it. I still mail out Christmas cards, too, to family and friends near and far.

The holidays can be bittersweet as we remember our loved ones no longer with us. I do love the music and have a Pentatonix CD from a few years ago that I love to play. I especially love their rendition of “Mary Did You Know?”

Now that the grandkids are 13, 11 and 3 this year they are going to help decorate the house and tree. We have a beautiful nine-foot artificial tree and lots of decorations to put up around the house. We hang stockings and after the kids leave we fill them up with fun things, practical things, and candies.

Our traditions keep us bonded through the generations. The holidays are a time to cherish our families and remember our loved ones no longer with us. It's our time to express thanks for how truly blessed we are.

 Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the 'net. Take from me, you won't want to miss it.

Hanukkah, The Festival Of Lights And Freedom

Tonight marks the second night of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights .

While many of you may be familiar with the story of the Miracle of the Oil, the truth is that Hanukkah really celebrates another miracle - the miracle of a group of untrained farmers and tradesman with hardly any arms or experience in war utterly defeating the professional armies of the Seleucid Empire, a victory for freedom that belongs to all of us alike, Jew and Gentile.

Hanukkah celebrates not only one of the important events in Jewish history but is a celebration of the triumph of faith,of light over darkness. It takes place every year,usually in mid to late December, but while its date varies if you go by the western calendar, in the Hebrew calendar Hanukkah always falls on the eve of the 24th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev.

This war for Jewish independence took place in the second century B.C.E. The story is told in the First Book of Maccabees, and retold in the Second Book of Maccabees. An excellent contemporary military history of the war can be found in Battles of the Bible, coauthored by Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gichon.

After his death, Alexander the Great's empire broke into several parts, and Israel was under the control of the Seleucid Greek empire, based in Syria. Israel had lived peacefully under the Persian Empire and under the Ptolemic empire (of Egypt), both which tolerated Judaism but the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes was an arrogant, bigoted ruler who attempted to force the Jews to abandon their religion and to adopt the Seleucid Greek customs and worship,which included idolatry.

There were those Jews back then whom considered themselves `modern' and `assimilated' who were willing to go along with this, even to the extent of having surgical operations to reverse circumcision.

Others did not, and they were persecuted vigorously and brutalized by the Seleucid Greeks. Even the teaching of Torah,the Jewish Scriptures was forbidden.

Tyrants always overreach and the start of the Maccabee Revolt sprang from a single spontaneous act of resistance. In the foothills village of Modi'in in 167BCE, a Greek army unit set up an altar, and ordered the local Jewish rabbi, Mattathias, to sacrifice a pig and eat it. He refused, as did his five sons. When a Jewish collaborator came forward to offer to perform the sacrifice, a furious Mattathias "ran and killed him on the spot, killed the king's officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and tore down the altar" (1 Mac. 2:15-25).

Mattathias, his sons and their followers then headed for the Judean hills, to launch a guerrilla war along with a handful of followers. They were farmers who had no military training, facing a war with a well armed professional military. There hadn't been a Jewish army since Babylon had destroyed the Judean kingdom four centuries before. The only weapons they had were farming tools and whatever simple weapons they could construct, such as bows, maces and slings. During this first year, Mattathias died, and his middle son Judah took over command as his successor.

Nicknamed "the hammer" ("Maccabee," in Hebrew), Judah put together a guerrilla army that staged daring nighttime raids on the Greek outposts, then melted back into the countryside. His successes attracted more supporters, and the revolt spread.

The war went on for 25 years, one of the most singular wars for independence in history. It's amazing that it was fought at all, let alone won.

The Seleucids and their King Antiochus were determined to crush the revolt. They sent huge, well equipped armies into Israel to subdue the Jews. They were all defeated, at odds that seem miraculous even today. Judah Maccabee turned out to be a military genius, using unheard of tactics, leading the Greek phalanxes into the hills where they could not maneuver and destroying them in ambushes.

To give you an idea of how essential the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria was and is to Israel's survival then and now, the map below shows where the major battles of the war took place.(hat tip, Carl) Click on it to enlarge it:



Judea and Samaria were a natural fortress that completely defied all attempts of the Seleucid armies to take it, a lesson well worth remembering even today. Even their famous war elephants, the heavy tanks of the day were of no use in that terrain.

One thing that is seldom mentioned about the war is the fact that a significant part of it took place against the Hellenized, `modern',`assimilated' Jewish traitors I mentioned earlier, who were more than willing to abandon the Jewish way of life and supported their Seleucid masters against their fellow Jews.

As Ecclesiastes famously said in the Megillot, there's nothing new under the sun.

In 164 BCE, the Jews utterly routed a large force commanded by the Seluecid Viceroy Lysias that had outnumbered them two to one. That battle took place six miles north of Hebron, near the Jewish fortress of Beth-zur. The victory allowed Judah and his army to retake Jerusalem.

When they entered Jerusalem, Judah and his followers entered the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount. The Temple had been wrecked and horribly desecrated, with profanities scrawled on the walls and the Ark by the Seleucids.

So the Maccabees built a new altar. When the time came to light the N'er Tamid, the Eternal Light of the Temple, the Jews could find only one sanctified jar of oil marked with the seal of the High Priest. It was enough to last one evening. On the 25th of Kislev, in the year 164 BCE,the lamp was lit with this small jar of oil and, miraculously, stayed lit for eight days, until more oil suitable for the temple was made. The eight days of Hanukkah celebrate that miracle, as well as the divine intervention that had led the Jews to amazing victories over well-equipped enemies far superior in numbers. "Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place" (2 Mac. 10:7).

The war itself continued. In 160 BCE, near modern-day Ramallah, Judah was killed, but Judah's brother Jonathan, and then his brother Simon took command of the Jewish army, finally winning complete independence in 142 BCE. At last, "All the people sat under their own vines and fig trees, and there was none to make them afraid" (1 Mac. 14:12).

Towards the end of the war, Antiochus and the Seleucids became so obsessed with defeating the Israelites that they sacked their own cities and sold their own citizens into slavery to get money to pursue the war against the Jews.

That verse from the first Book Of Maccabee, by the way, was quoted by America's first president George Washington in his famous letter to the Jewish community in Providence, Rhode Island in 1790, telling them they were welcome in America. Being obviously familiar with the story of the Maccabees,General Washington may well have taken comfort in the dark days of our own struggle for independence and freedom from tyranny from it.

The War of the Maccabees was the first war ever fought for religious freedom. Somehow, a group of farmers who refused to bow to their oppressors defeated a mighty empire and its immense standing armies. There seems to be no plausible explanation for the victory of the Jews except that it was a miracle.

Hanukkah reminds us that with G-d's help, victory over evil is assured, that light triumphs over darkness and no miracle is impossible. Modern Israel and the survival of the Jewish people against all odds are proof of that.


Symbols in Hanukkah

Aside from the Hanukkiah (candlesticks), the other great symbol of Hanukkah are those small spinning tops known as dreidels.













The four letters which appear on the four corners of a dreidel allude to the miracle of Hanukkah. They spell out: Nes (N-miracle), Gadol (G-great), Haya (H-happened) and Sham (S-there, meaning in Israel). Or, `a great miracle happened there.'

Indeed it did.

And this is also a time for Jews to light the menorah, to 'make public the miracle and shed light on the world, and to celebrate and to sing this ancient hymn, 'Maoz Tzur', (Rock of Ages). This version, fittingly, was cooked up by students at the Technion, one of the most advanced scientific seats of learning in the entire world and a symbol of Israel's rebirth:



חנוכה - בפקולטה לכימיה בטכניון יצרו גירסה מיוחדת באמצעות כלי מעבדה
ר מעוז צו

Chag Hanukkah Sameach! Happy Hanukkah!