Anatomy of a Jerusalem garden

In my Jerusalem patio, overlooking the jaws of Hell, bougainvillea blooms in shades of magenta, crimson, and pale orange. We planted an olive tree, a cypress, a lime tree, jasmine, honeysuckle, red geraniums, climbing roses, morning glory, hydrangea, purple daisies, basil, mint, and lemon verbena. Everything thrives, thanks to the Palestine sun birds and bumble bees. Plus daily watering, using a cleverly designed Israeli drip irrigation system boosted by the odd watering can. There's always a drought.
Across the Hinom valley we hear the muezzin calls from thirteen different minarets, and church bells from the Dormition Abbey and other venerable Christian chapels. Shofars sound at the synagogue and are tooted by groups of Christian Zionist tourists, Birthright teens and Messianic Jews who ostentatiously tote the ram's horns around, occasionally by segway! Helicopters frequently whack the air overhead, but Jerusalem is defined mostly the Sounds of Sirens: Police, ambulance, VIP convoy.
It'll be difficult to say goodbye to all this, but the lease is soon up on the house, and our stay in Jerusalem is coming rapidly to a close. Izzy Bee still has more buzz left...and will continue to blog from afar. Cranky will be the new resident blogger.

The US Veepstakes viewed from Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, political wonks are not yet fully glued to the American vice presidential race, and some are more gripped by the upcoming city elections here, which will be a power struggle between the ultra-religious and the secular candidates. But considering there are 100,000 or so American absentee voters living in Israel, many as dual-citizens, the Jewish take on the 2008 election is worth considering. The common wisdom is that McCain is more trusted by Jews--but this has been turned on its head.

Biden misquotes broadcast on Army Radio and apocalyptic church Sermons that got Amens from Palin already are raising alarms for many Israelis, according to the latest on the Huffington Post.

While the American media obsess about whether Alaska Governor and aerial wolf-sniper Sarah Palin is ready for prime time and national office, many Israeli political buffs have been scrutinizing the 2008 vice presidential candidates in light of foreign policy issues.



Today, Sen. Joe Biden's photo was splashed on the front page of the conservative Jerusalem Post, which showed no pictures of the Barracuda from Wasilla or her photogenic family.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Israeli reporters in a phone interview yesterday that Israel doesn't need any green light from the United States in order to attack Iran over its nuclear program.

A broadcast on the official Army Radio station last week claimed that unnamed Israeli officials were preoccupied about the prospect of Biden as number two in the White House because they said he had ruled out an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and cautioned them that the region would eventually have to learn to live with A-bombs in Tehran.

Concerns were heightened in Jerusalem after Iranian officials boasted that 4000 atomic centrifuges were already enriching uranium for their nuclear energy program, with an additional 3000 ready for installation. Biden has warned that Israel is less secure now than before the Bush administration's ill-considered Middle East policies shifted the strategic balance in the region.

On Monday, the Obama-Biden campaign had "scathingly rejected" the unsourced broadcast as a partisan lie. "We will not tolerate anyone questioning Senator Biden's 35-year record of standing up for the security of Israel," Biden's press secretary, David Wade, said in a statement.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

"Joe Biden's first trip as a senator was to Israel. He has worked with every Israeli leader from Golda Meir to Prime Minister Olmert, and he takes a back seat to no one when it comes to protecting the relationship between Israel and the US," Wade added. "Senator Biden has consistently stated - publicly and privately - that a nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat to Israel and the United States and that we must prevent a nuclear Iran."


Wade noted that only two months ago, in a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations committee - which Biden heads - the senator reiterated his long-held view on this subject by stating: "Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon would dramatically destabilize an already unstable region and probably fuel a nuclear arms race in the region. It is profoundly in our interest to prevent that from happening."

The Army Radio report asserted that Biden had expressed doubt over the effectiveness of economic sanctions imposed on Iran. The report also said Biden was against the opening of an additional military and diplomatic front, saying that the U.S. had more pressing problems, such as North Korea and Iraq.

Biden has a solid 36-year Senate record of pro-Israel leadership. He has called Israel "the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East" and declared himself a Zionist in an interview with a U.S. Jewish television channel last year, saying that "you don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."

The controversial Army radio report was issued after a newspaper story quoted intelligence sources from the Netherlands who predicted an American strike on Iran's nuclear program within the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, local business reporters crowed that $35 million worth of security systems for Iran will soon be supplied through--get this-- an Israeli company. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly ordered over 70,000 units from Sonar Company via one of their branches in China. The company's owner, Yaakov Salman, said that it was "impossible" that the Iranians were unaware that the cutting edge system, which identifies hostile elements through radio waves, was developed by scientists in Israel.

Hostilities of the political sort certainly were evident on the convention room floor in Minnesota as Palin delivered her hard-hitting acceptance speech to adoring Republicans. Even though Palin had been sequestered most of the day for last-minute grooming, she interrupted her prep sessions to speak with members of the "frozen Chosen," Minnesota's Jewish community, and met with powerful Jewish lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to reassure them of her full commitment to Israel.

Much has been made of the miniature flag of Israel pinned to Palin's office drapes in the backdrop of widely circulated video.

Most pundits view its display as a sign of Palin's Christian Zionism, and note that the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus actively reaches out for funding and support from the estimated flock of 400,000 Evangelicals in America. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel has become a reliable touchstone for conservative grassroots campaigns for years.

More troubling videos have emerged showing evangelical sermons, attended by Palin and her large family, which blame the Jewish people's rejection of the Christian messiah for the violence visited upon them in Jerusalem for the past 60 years.

David Brickner, of Jews for Jesus, pointed out last month at Wasilla Bible Church how: "a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment--you can't miss it."

Even though Palin was quick to say she does not share these radical views-- in an instant replay of Obama stepping back from Reverend Jeremiah Wright's notorious remarks-- her born-again embrace of End Times prophecies does not play so well in a country which anticipates apocalypse coming from Tehran in the form of nuclear-tipped missiles.

Still Biden his time??

Messing with the Messianic Jews

On this harvest holiday, while people are happily tucking into cheesecake and blintzes all across Israel, some Messianic Jews will be saying grace before tasting the first morsel. Their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, even though they do not renounce any of the basic tenents of Judaism, has enraged some intolerant Orthodox Jews, who went on to burn bibles and attack one prominent family. ( Time magaine reports this week. The response after plastic explosives blew through their flat and maimed a teenage son? Turn the other cheek, but first put Shin Bet on the case and prosecute the culprit.

Bible bonfires inside Israel

Was there a whiff of brimstone and sulfur when Bibles went up in smoke last week? Certainly, it was not the finest hour for the people of the book...particularly when news of the incident coincided with an American soldier getting disciplined for using a Koran as target practice over in Iraq. Holey holy books create rancour, and the sight and odor of burning texts brings totalitarian stormtroopers and witch hunts to mind.

Messianic 'Jews for Jesus', who are closely linked with Evangelical Christian groups from America and now number up to 15,000 inside Israel, called for an official investigation after orthodox students from a yeshiva in the town of Or Yehuda allegedly dumped and burnt hundreds of copies of the New Testament. These had been distributed to Ethiopian immigrant families in the town.

At first, the action was defended by Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon, of the Shas party, as "purging the evil among us", but he was quick to backtrack. Ultimately, he blamed "three or four" hotheaded students for a "spontaneous act" which led to an international public relations disaster. Aharon apologized by saying "sorry we hurt the feelings of others", but he shrugged off criticism of his anti-missionary zeal. To proselytize is against the law inside the Jewish State, although Christian missionaries often are tolerated when they spread the gospel to Israeli Arabs.

Tensions are on the rise. Two months ago, a parcel bomb left outside a house in Ariel wounded the son of a prominent Messianic Jew. Haredim massed outside messianic Jewish gatherings in Beersheba and Arad, and stirred up violence.

And just before Independence Day, a group of religious Zionist rabbis called for a boycott of this year's International Bible Quiz after discovering that one of the four finalists from Israel, Bat-El Levi, an 11th-grader from Jerusalem's Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood, was a messianic Jew.

The rise in tensions is partly due...to increased fervor within haredi anti-missionary groups.

...Victor Kalisher, the son of Holocaust survivors, spoke to the Jerusalem Post about his shock and dismay at the burnings. "As Jews we were raised and taught that were books are burned, worse things can happen. That's what I think when I see the pictures of what happened in Or Yehuda. What worries me is that nobody has stood up against this. It seems there is a war against messianic Jews in Israel. Nobody cares about many, what I believe to be cults, in Israel. These cults, which are not based on the Bible, don't pose a threat to the establishment. But God forbid a Jew learns about the messiah from the [Christian] Bible," Kalisher said.

He said he did not know who paid for and distributed the New Testaments that were distributed in Or Yehuda, but that there was demand for the books from many quarters. "The Bibles are not forced on anybody and are not forced into any homes. The book has never harmed anyone, you can choose to read it or choose not to read it. If this happened to Jewish books overseas we would be screaming anti-Semitism. This sort of thing happens in some regimes around us that we don't like," he said.

Arsonists scorch Baptist church in Jerusalem

A Baptist Bible church, located in one of the swankiest neighborhoods of Jerusalem, was torched last night, 25 years after ultra-Orthodox extremist vandals burnt down its original wooden chapel. This attack comes barely 2 weeks after the murder of a Baptist bookseller on the streets of Gaza City, and the Christian community in Israel is playing the incident down.

Chuck Kopp, one of the pastors of the Narkis Baptist church, said he did not know who was behind the latest outrage, which left smouldering chairs and a scorched interior, but did not destroy Bibles or hymnals. Attackers fled the scene and remained at large on Wednesday.
Their motive for arson was not immediately clear, police said.
Arsonists broke into the church building, located in Rehavia, just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, setting it alight in three different places.Jewish neighbors summoned firefighters to protect the present sanctuary, which had opened in 1993.

The church offers services in English, Hebrew, and Russian. Worshippers number in the hundreds and attend separate sermons for different congregations, including two for Messianic Jews. Worryingly, some of the Russian speakers attending the services for Messianic Jews had been previously threatened, church officials told police. Messianic Jews consider themselves Jewish even though they believe in Jesus, and are anathema to ultra-Orthodox extremists, who pity them.

In the past, Israeli anti-proselytizer activists have called the church a hotbed of missionary activity.

The church pastor, who has been living in Israel for 40 years, noted that the arson attack took place on the date commemorating the assassination of the late prime minster Yitzhak Rabin 12 years ago, according to the Hebrew calendar.

"Every society has its fanatics and there is no lack of fanatics here in the Middle East," he said, adding that he was not surprised by the attack.

"We've been needing a face-lift anyway," he shrugged.