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July 3, 2008

Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget (TOUCHING!)

Jeff Jacoby: Israel still paying for its defeat

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part IV by Rabbi David Aaron

July 2, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Appeasers Make Poor Patriots

The Kosher Gourmet By Kathleen Purvis: Slaw, y'all: For BBQs or Sabbath dinner, these southern recipes are something else!

JWisdom:: Rabbi Mordechai Becher: Jewish Rx for A Simpler Life

July 1, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. I think it's important to leave a legacy to my children. How much should I save towards this end?

Paul Greenberg:A President who is history deficient?

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism

June 30, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Remembering the architect of Torah Judaism for the modern world

Abe Novick: Hulk: Still a Jew?

JWisdom: : Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 2: The Abandoned Child

June 26, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Quantum leap to evil

Caroline B. Glick: Victimized families must not be allowed to dictate policy

June 25, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Today in Biblical History: King Jeroboam of Israel prevents pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Jonathan Tobin: Real Friends and Real Enemies

JWisdom: Raping of reason By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 25, 2008

Steven Emerson: Kristof: Never Mind the Terrorists

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch?

JWisdom: Rabbi David Aaron: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part III

June 24, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: What were they thinking!?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Guilty knowledge

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Warping Innocence

June 23, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Diploma dilemma

Jeff Jacoby: A world without children

JWisdom: Rabbi Dovid Gross: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality --- Introduction

June 20, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Man: The Crowning Glory of Creation

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's darkest week

JWisdom: We aren't worthy? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 19, 2008

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: The saints who don't come marchin' in

Chris Christoff: Muslim woman demands an apology from Obama after camera snub

June 18, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Still Dancing Around Jerusalem

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Chilled fruit and vegetable soups

JWisdom: Souls Need A Check Up? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Baby Einstein

Caroline B. Glick: Bush's rhetoric, Bush's policies

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part II by Rabbi David Aaron

June 16, 2008

Varda Branfman: Bob Dylan, won't you please come home?

Diana West: Academic dares to question the 'religion of peace'

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Positive Backfire

June 13, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Trading manna for whine

Caroline B. Glick: Peace with friends

JWisdom: From the mouths of … by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 12, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet Paul Revere's pal, the Orthodox Jew who played a key role in laying Boston's cultural and business infrastructure

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: No need to be tempted by Wendy's mandarin chicken salad

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

June 11, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: What would Hillel say?

Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA and NGOs: The Real U.N. 'Insult'

JWisdom: Sara Yoheved Rigler: Greatness Made Simple: How a momentary decision shifted life's course and destination

June 6, 2008

Rabbi Pinchas Stolper: Revelation: The basis of faith

Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Mere hours after becoming Israel's new 'best friend' Obama backtracks on status of Jerusalem

Caroline B. Glick: UN choosing to protect rogue nuclear programs

JWisdom: Sameness in difference by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 5, 2008

David Lightman: Now Obama wants to be Israel's newest 'best friend'

Obama's remarks to AIPAC policy conference

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Lokshen Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread

JWisdom: Why a Jewish Jerusalem makes so many nervous by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 4, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: A different sort of 'religious broadcaster'

Jonathan Tobin: Misgivings on the Road to Damascus

JWisdom: 44 Years Without An Argument? by Sara Yoheved Rigler

June 3, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East

Everything's Relative: There is a crisis growing in Orthodox synagogues worldwide, reveals Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel

JWisdom: White Facades; Black Secrets by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Lie to outsmart discriminator?

He writes the songs that make our souls sing:Gavriel Aryeh Sanders interviews Jewish music legend Ben Zion Shenker; includes stirring, uplifting song

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Of laws and lives

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 5, 2007 / 19 Sivan, 5767

Revising history on June 5, 1967

By Jonathan Gurwitz


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Scientists believe history began 13.7 billion years ago. Proprietors of the newly opened Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., believe history began 6,000 years ago. Apologists for Arab terrorism and tyranny believe history began a short 40 years ago.


That was when Israel, evading the noose being tightened around its neck by Soviet-supported Arab enemies, launched a pre-emptive attack on the military forces arrayed against it. In May 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had expelled U.N. peacekeeping forces from the Sinai Peninsula, sent 100,000 troops across the Suez Canal, remilitarized the border with Israel and blockaded the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping.


With diplomatic efforts to halt Nasser's march to war in tatters, Israel struck first on June 5. Like so many chauvinistic dictators who came before and after him, Nasser fabulously misrepresented the success of his military in the early stages of the conflict. Believing victory against the Zionist enemy was finally at hand, the Baathist leaders of Syria and King Hussein of Jordan blundered into battle on two more fronts.


After six days, it was over. Israel had once again inflicted a stinging defeat on Arab armies. Israeli forces controlled the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River. And for people of a certain persuasion, history began.


No one had ever heard of the "occupied" Gaza Strip or the "occupied" West Bank before June 10, 1967. Not because there hadn't been occupations in both places. Of course, Egypt had occupied Gaza and Jordan had occupied the West Bank since 1948. And if there had been any inclination on the part of the Arab world to create even the rudiments of a Palestinian state, it might have occurred at any time in the preceding 19 years.


But as with so much else, you have to ignore history — and the facts — to buy into the belief system that constitutes the mythology of anti-Zionism. Attributing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the Israeli occupation, pretending that no other occupation came before it, is far easier than explaining the unanimous Arab rejection of the 1947 U.N. partition plan and the failure of Arab leaders to pay more than lip service to Palestinian statehood.


You simply can't reconcile the explicit repudiation of a two-state solution and the jubilant calls in 1947 — and again in the days leading up to the Six Day War in 1967 — for the annihilation of the Jews with any notion of Arabs and Jews living together in peace.


You can't claim Islamic extremism is a reaction to Israeli occupation if you know that the Muslim Brotherhood — the ideological grandfather of all jihadist groups — started in Egypt two decades before the founding of the modern state of Israel or that Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab made a pact with Muhammad ibn Saud two centuries earlier that entrenched a radical interpretation of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula.


And you can't possibly blame Israeli policies for fueling violence in the Middle East if you know about the dozens of regional conflicts that have inflicted tens of millions of casualties on the Muslim world and have nothing to do with Palestinian self-determination — in Algeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan; between Morocco and Algeria, Egypt and Libya, Libya and Chad, Syria and Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait, Iran and Iraq.


But a fair reading of history isn't kind to anti-Israeli fabulists. So to make the mythology believable by the gullible and the willfully ignorant, history must begin in 1967 and the Israeli occupation must be the root of all Middle East evil. But the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and the tragic degeneration of Palestinian society that followed has rendered this fantasy ultimately obsolete.


For those of us who seek an honest reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians and peace between Jews and Arabs — and, not least, among Arabs and Muslims — hope must triumph over experience. That hope is predicated first and foremost on an honest reading of history, a mutual recognition of humanity and a calendar that begins before June 5, 1967.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Comment by clicking here.

JWR contributor Jonathan Gurwitz, a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, is a co-founder and twice served as Director General of the Future Leaders of the Alliance program at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. In 1986 he was placed on the Foreign Service Register of the U.S. State Department.

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© 2007, Jonathan Gurwitz

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