29-Sep-19: As we prepare for the High Holy Day season

This is about the king's breakfast. (We just tweeted about it here.)

(Clicking the photo will enlarge it.)

A king?

Yes, Abdullah II. He's the absolute ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Who else was there?

A select group - the king's selection, it seems - of leaders of the most important Jewish organizations in the United States. How or why these particular Jewish leaders were invited is a little mysterious but from what we understand, they all hold positions of prominence in US Jewish public affairs. Still, neither their names nor the names of whom they represent are in the published record. Nor are the views they expressed, assuming they expressed any at all. We recognize some of them from the photo. But others are unknown to us and the published photo - not of the highest quality - released by the Jordanian govvernment doesn't help.

Which breakfast?

A formal one, or maybe it was just coffee and cookies, in a New York City hotel dining room on September 22, 2019, in the week that the UN General Assembly got its year underway. The king often speaks in the US General Assembly's opening session and did this year too. The official report from the king's Royal Court says the breakfast meeting included discussion around the table covering efforts "to reach political solutions to regional crises" and "to fight terrorism within a holistic approach".

Holistic? An odd word in the context. We know from years of following their somewhat opaque reports about terror that the Hashemite Kingdom is the only country fighting terrorism that claims to do it holistically.

The word means "dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part" (Cambridge English Dictionary). If they deal with terror by attacking all of it, but at the very same time keep Ahlam Tamimi, a confessed murderer, an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist and a celebrity savage whom they have allowed to become a national celebrity, safe and secure in Amman where she can do daily, irrepairable harm, does that make it holistic? It's hard to tell.

The Jordanian government's news release identifies only some of those breakfasting. The king of course, along with Jordan's long-surviving foreign minister Ayman Safadi. Also "Adviser to His Majesty for Communication and Coordination" Bisher Khasawneh, Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sima Bahous and Jordan’s Ambassador in Washington Dina Kawar. (To her shame, Ms Kawar with whom we have been unfailingly polite and reasonable blocks us on Twitter.)

As we said, none of the Jews are named. Nor are the organizations they represent.

The Jordanians have no interest in dealing with the Jewish content of the breakfast. And even now, days later, the Jews themselves are silent. We're making enquiries. But so far we're getting zero co-operation. Given who we are and the unique circumstances, that hurts us deeply. We asked an official at one of the Jewish groups that attended (no names) for help in identifying who took part. We got this email from him yesterday:

I was unable to attend the meeting, which I know was off the record, so I can’t make any comment on it.

Can't make any comment? Off the record? Really? Because that's what the Jordanians wanted? Anyone can see the Jordanians have placed it on the record themselves; on their record, along with the photo. Is he open to the thought that his fellow leaders have been used?

Who did and who did not report this high-level event?

First, King Abdullah's personal website [here] gave it prominence along with this commentary (which differs slightly from the text provided by the Royal Heshemite Court):

The King meets representatives of international and American Jewish organizations in New York | 23 September 2019
His Majesty King Abdullah II met in New York on Sunday with representatives of international and American Jewish organizations on the sidelines of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly.
His Majesty stressed that the two-state solution is the only way to achieve peace between Palestinians and Israelis, which leads to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the lines of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and live in peace and security alongside Israel.
His Majesty pointed to the role of international and American Jewish organizations in supporting efforts aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace in the region.
The crises of the region, the search for political solutions, as well as the war on terrorism efforts were reviewed in a holistic approach.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Affairs, His Majesty the King's Advisor for Communication and Coordination, the Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations and the Jordanian Ambassador in Washington.

Essentially identical reports, accompanied by the same group photo, were re-published by

• Jordan's Royal Hashemite Court [here and archived here and here in case it disappears]
• Petra, the official Jordan government newsagency - in Arabic and in English
• A Jordanian commercial site: RoyaNewsTV. (They're the media organization that has taken a leading role in promoting Ahlam Tamimi, confessed bomber of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria, as a Jordanian national hero: see "24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers [Video]")
• Jordan's Al Ra'i, a government-owned daily Jordanian newspaper, the Arabic-language sibling of the English-language Jordan Times which also blocks us on Twitter
• Urdoni, a Jordanian site
• Akherkhabr Today, an Arabic-language news consolidation site
• Maqar, a Jordanian site
• Al Malaz News, a Jordanian site
• Al Bosala (Compass) News, a Jordanian site
• Khaberni, a Jordanian site
• Sabaq News, a Saudi site

There might be more by now. 

So while not a single Western media organization has given it attention, it's certainly all over the Jordanian news. So much for 'off the record'. More significantly, there's no reporting at all, as far as we can tell, by any of the Jewish organizations. (If we're wrong, we welcome corrections.)

It's obvious this September 22, 2019 gathering held considerably more significance for the Jordanians than it did for the Jewish attendees. On that basis, and deeply bothered by what's just happened, we're left to ask:

1. why some of the most influential US Jewish leaders in the US would want to get involved in a PR exercise like this without trying to get their own views heard by a wider audience; 
2. why the mattter of justice for the murdered Jewish victims, three of them Jewish Americans, all of them females, one of them our fifteen year old daughter, somehow doesn't rise to the level of being worth speaking out about or appearing on their agenda papers; 
3. why these careful and thoughtful people imagined there was something in this for them and those they represent. If they did, what was it, ladies and gentlemen?
4. did they omit any mention of the Tamimi extradition so as to avoid offending their host? Or out of fear of spoiling the congenial breakfast mood? Or missing out on an invitation to next year's royal get-together? Or do they simply know nothing about the Jordan extradition issue and the ongoing Tamimi scandal? Can someone tell them about our efforts and those of the US Department of Justice, to see Malki's killer finally brought to justice? Because if they don't know, that's simply incredible.

It's a troubling affair.

As bereaved parents of a murdered Jewish child with US citizenship who are determined to see long-delayed justice done, we're perfectly aware of how few US Jews appear to be bothered by it. And of course how few know anything about it all, thanks to a certain disgraceful media understanding (don't report on Jordan harboring the killer) that's never discussed.

And not for the first time. Did you know another breakfast meeting hosted by the Jordanian king for Jewish US leaders exactly a year ago similarly got publicized only by the Jordanians and almost no one else? (The only exception, we think, is Haaretz which published an interesting Amir Tibon report.)

Here's how the Jordanian royal court reported that 2018 gathering on Twitter:

جلالة الملك عبدالله الثاني يلتقي، بحضور جلالة الملكة رانيا العبدالله، ممثلين من منظمات يهودية دولية وأمريكية #الأردن

His Majesty King Abdullah II accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah meets with representatives of international and #US Jewish organisations#Jordan pic.twitter.com/NEPN17CciO

— RHC (@RHCJO) September 21, 2018

That's about all we want to say about Jewish leadership for now.

A happy new year and good wishes to all.

31-Jan-18: In Negohot, another thwarted Arab-on-Israeli attack today and military garb is involved again

Negohot [Image Source: Getty]

An attack that sounds worryingly similar to the one we reported this past Sunday ["28-Jan-18: In Itamar tonight, two uniformed infiltrators are thwarted"] was detected and stopped by alert Israeli security this afternoon (Wednesday). Today's happened at the Negohot community. With a population of about 300, it's in the Southern Hebron Hills area of Judea, part of the West Bank in Area C and therefore under full Israeli control.

Times of Israel says a Palestinian Arab male was arrested there earlier this afternoon

holding a knife and a map of the Israeli community, security forces said... “Soldiers apprehended a Palestinian suspect wearing a military-style jacket near the community,” the army said, adding that a knife and a map of the settlement were found in the suspect’s possession. “The suspect and the found items were transferred to [the] security forces,” the statement said.

The incident, which was reported around 1:30 pm, comes three days after a pair of Palestinians wearing army uniforms tried to infiltrate the settlement of Itamar in the northern West Bank. When arrested, one had a pair of binoculars but no weapons; the second one fled and has not been found yet.

We noted a while back [here] that Negahot has the dubious distinction of currently being one of Israel's four most-vulnerable communities. A report around that time [here] said the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset - whose work covers the foreign affairs of the state, its armed forces and its security - was told that the IDF Homefront Command considers four Yehuda and Shomron communities to be under especially significant security threat. They are Elon Moreh, Otniel, Karmei Tzur and Negahot. The IDF urged the government to enhance the defenses of those places immediately. That evidently paid off this afternoon.

Many may remember the shocking murders [background here] that brought Negohot into the headlines fourteen years ago on Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana) night, September 25, 2003. A Palestinian Arab attacker in the service of Palestinian Islamic Jihad - a resident of Dura, a nearby Palestinian Arab settlement - managed to get into the community armed with an M-16 rifle and two hand grenades. He knocked on the door of a home in the community as the family and their guests were seated at their holiday dinner. One of the guests, Eyal Yeverbaum, answered and was immediately shot to death. The gunman then fired on baby of seven months, Shaked Avraham, and killed her.

05-Oct-16: A Gazan rocket crashes into a residential street in southern Israel

The scene in Sderot earlier today [Image Source]

There has been another rocket attack on southern Israel today with damage to property and cars but thankfully no physical harm to people.

Being the day after Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year), the explosive device is a reminder that the insatiable appetites of the Palestinian Arab terrorist ranks for more mayhem and more Jewish victims produce largely unpredictable outbursts of violence directed at generally unpredictable targets and with unknowable outcomes.

What we can say with confidence is that ordinary people living peaceful lives on our side of the fence are again being terrorized.

Times of Israel published this at 10:40 am today (Wednesday):

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck a street in the city of Sderot in southern Israel on Wednesday morning, police said. Two people who suffered anxiety attacks were treated by medical teams, but no one was physically hurt by the attack, according to the Magen David Adom medical service. The two — a 15-year-old girl and 60-year-old man — were taken to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center for further care, MDA paramedic Oren Benita said. Israel Defense Forces tanks responded to the rocket attack with strikes against Hamas sites in the northern Gaza Strip, the army said. The rocket alert siren was activated at approximately 10:20 a.m. and was heard in Sderot, Nir Am, Ivim and Gevim. A few minutes later, Israel Police officers located the rocket in Sderot. The road was slightly damaged in the attack, as were several nearby cars and homes. Police sappers were called to the scene, and the area was closed off to pedestrians and traffic, police said...

No physical injuries to Israelis but that, emphatically, was not the intention of the people doing the firing.

The terrorists of Gaza have a deep arsenal of rockets - thousands of them (this source estimates at least 12,000). The rocket men and their backers can pick their time, and they can afford to miss and then try again. Life, as measured by their own out-in-the-open value system, is extraordinarily cheap. Rockets are even cheaper. During the seven weeks of battle between Hamas terrorist forces and the IDF during the summer of 2014, Hamas managed to fire some 4,500 rockets and mortars in the general direction of Israel's cities and towns [source]. Israel's defensive Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted 735 rockets. The system first ascertains that the inbound missiles are headed toward densely-populated areas and strategic facilities before launching against them. Thus Hamas fired many more rockets than Israel fired against.

The terrorists of Gaza evidently chose to fire today rather than, say, yesterday or the day before because, on those other days, all the Israeli schools and all the Israeli kindergartens were closed. In fact, the whole country was on holiday to mark Jewish New Year.

So they fired today and during the morning hours when those schools and those kindergartens are filled with children. That's one of the reasons they are terrorists.

The photo at the top of this post does a better job than the text above of explaining how just how maddeningly random the outcomes of these terror eruptions are and how miraculous that the losses were not catastrophic.

How far from the homes of ordinary Sderot civilians did today's rocket crash? It's not hard to see; take a look. The answer is: mere meters. (A video clip on the Israel National News site [here] makes this reality even clearer.)

Did the rocket-men care? Of course they cared; they sought, as they always seek, to inflict the maximum possible pain and fear that their life-threatening efforts could produce.

Here's a security-camera view (via Times of Israel and YouTube) of what the in-bound rocket looked like and felt like to the people on Sderot's streets. Those are city employees who stopped their truck on hearing the Tzeva Adom siren and then scattered as the explosion took place just meters from where they parked:

From experience, it's likely to be suggested now in parts of the media that those firing the rockets are not actually Hamas - the Islamist terrorists who rule the tiny Gaza enclave with an iron fist - but this or that so-called splinter group. And that by implication Hamas is against these random outbursts of violence and would prefer quiet and peaceful relations with their Israeli cousins.

We think that's unfounded wishful thinking and fails to take account of the ruthlessness with which terror regimes operate.

24-Sep-14: Forward-looking statements (and reflections on the past) about the new year that starts tonight

Screenshot from the new Malki Foundation Blog. Clicking there
brings up the electronic version of the new brochure for
The Malki Foundation

We don't make a secret here that we are passionate promoters (unpaid and non-executive) of a charity that bears our murdered daughter's name and that does really good non-sectarian, strictly non-political work very efficiently. It's a small not-for-profit whose ethical standards match our expectations (we defined them when we founded the organization) and which we wish more people actively supported. An honest charity that achieves what it says it wants to do is never something to be taken for granted.

Tonight marks the end of a rather difficult and challenging year, according to the Jewish calendar. The new year, 5775, starts at sunset.

In Jewish tradition, new year is a time not only for making resolutions (which it is) but for thinking back on what happened in the year just ended and how we ourselves coped. Introspection is a serious value, and Judaism places considerable emphasis on it. Not to get too philosophical about it, but the mood set by our tradition is about "How can I do better?" Actually, how can we all do better?

Now we're very aware that not everyone who reads this blog of ours is Jewish or celebrates the new year in the middle of September. We also know that, as much as we would want people to know about our daughter's beautiful life - the one stolen from her and us by the murder-obsessed Islamist thugs of Hamas in August 2001 when she was just fifteen years old - most of our readers have just a passing familiarity with Malki, our daughter, and with The Malki Foundation that bears her name.

That's exactly as it ought to be.

Those for whom the story resonates will find their way to the source material. Those who come here because of an interest in the threat posed to all of us by terrorism are very welcome, and please don't feel that we're demeaning your interest. Quite the opposite - we appreciate it hugely and are grateful for the steady growth in readership that This Ongoing War has had in the past two years.

Apple and honey: the most symbolic of
Jewish new year customs

But for everyone who reads these words, we have a new year's eve request. Please pay a brief visit to a new blog we have just set up, called The Malki Foundation Blog. Nothing political, nothing contentious, but it's still going to be interesting to those who wonder about how being at the receiving end of an act of incomprehensible hatred can get a person to wake up and start doing something that brings a little more good into the world.

Please, in particular, take a look at a beautiful new brochure that has just been mailed out to the charity's supporters around the world, and that can be viewed online here. Pointing your friends to it would be hugely appreciated. Thank you. And may this be a wonderful new year for all of us who cherish peace, family life and mutual respect. Shana tov, ketiva vehatima tova (translation: a prayer that you be inscribed and sealed for a good year כתיבה וחתימה טובה - שנה טובה).

2-Oct-11: Signs that our neighbours know we're in the middle of High Holyday season

Israeli servicemen on duty during the High
Holyday season enjoy a platter of apples dipped in honey,
a traditional symbol of the Jewish people's constant hopes
for a better, sweeter, more peaceful year. [Source]

Israel almost entirely shut down over the past three days. Wednesday night through Friday night were Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year and a time devoted to family, prayers and introspection. And the Sabbath followed immediately on Friday night, making for a three-day interlude of holiness or vacation, depending on your outlook.

Our Palestinian Arab neighbours along with the Arab states surrounding Israel have never shown any inclination for respecting the Jewish people's religious sensitivities (remember the co-ordinated massive attacks by multiple Arab armies on Israel on Yom Kippur 1973?). Hardly a surprise then that the past several days have seen several civilian-focused rocket attacks by the terrorist gangs of the Gaza Strip.

• Tuesday, two rockets fired from Gaza exploded in the Sha'ar Hanegev region of southern Israel. One exploded next to an electricity line, causing damage to property. The second landed in an open field. [Source] Both were intended to kill civilian Israelis and cause maximum damage to non-military targets. 
• Thursday evening, yet another Qassam rocket fired by the jihadist terrorists of the Gaza Strip landed in an unspecified open area inside Israel. No injuries or damages are reported. [Source] 
• Saturday: In Beit Hanun, in the northern Gaza Strip, a gang of Palestinian Gazan Arab terrorist jihadists was spotted by Israeli intelligence in the act of preparing to launch multiple long-range rockets into Israel. The Israelis called in Israel Air Force fire of the pinpoint variety for which the IDF is famous. Though the potential for collateral damage in the heavily populated area from which the terrorists love to fire is great, the IAF achieved a direct hit on the gang members. Ynet says they are connected with Hamas. There are three of them, and all are injured, one critically. The IDF says the same three were behind the Thursday rocket firing and previous such terror attacks. The official Chinese newsagency rather ingenuously says the three (it calls them "a group of people") were attacked by "an Israeli reconnaissance drone [that] fired at least one missile". Reconnaissance drones carry sensors but no weapons, but if the terrorist thugs were stopped, we're more than happy to accept the Chinese distortions.

Daily rocket fire directed at Israeli civilians is not exactly what we have been praying for these past three days. But if an alert, rapid, accurate and effective defence force is part of the divine plan for protecting our land and our people from the barbarian practitioners of terror in the coming year, we'll accept that as a blessing too.  

28-Sep-11: Quotation of the day - just in time for having in mind when we formulate New Year wishes

85 people were murdered in the bombing of  the Asociación Mutual
Israelita Argentina (AMIA or Argentine Israelite Mutual Association)
building in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, Argentina's deadliest bombing.
Argentine formally charged the government of Iran in 2006 with
directing the bombing, and its client the Hezbollah terrorist organization
with carrying it out [Source]

While terrorism is a constant concern for Israelis, it's by no means limited to us or our part of the world.

The phenomenon of terrorism against Jewish communities and Israeli targets abroad represents the most violent aspect of contemporary anti-Semitism, and the greatest physical danger to diaspora Jewish communities. The rational calculations of political violence and the irrational fantasies of extreme ideologies can combine to threaten the lives of ordinary Jews and others all over the world. This clarifies in the starkest terms why Jewish communities require security at their synagogues, schools, and community buildings. 

From an article entitled "Terrorist Incidents Against Jewish Communities and Israeli Citizens Abroad, 1968-2010". The writer, Michael Whine, is Director of Government and International Affairs at the Community Security Trust in the UK [Source]

Our prayer, as the year winds down (Jewish New Year is this evening) is that the plotters of terrorism, in all their evil manifestations and many locations, be thoroughly confounded in their plans with the start of the new year. The future of mankind and of civil society depends on our decisively winning this ongoing war.

Shana Tova Umetuka. A sweet and good new year.

21-Sep-07: Your lives, our lives, their lives

People who use the expression “war against terror” normally believe they are being clear about what they mean. Our experience is that different people often mean very different things. And when a real shooting war against terror is underway, you might be surprised at how confused and confusing the reporting can be. So allow us to analyze a specific chain of incidents that is unfolding as we write.

Mid-week, Israeli papers carried alarming headline reports that the intelligence establishment had identified a specific gang of terrorists with so-called 'suicide-bombing' (in unambiguous terms: murder) in their plans. The gang was being pursued by the army in the Nablus area following a concrete, focused tip-off. We know from living through this sort of thing in the past that intelligence tips, while never 100% certain, are reliable indicators of events taking place far from the media spotlight.

Persuaded by the accuracy of the intelligence, the IDF and the Border Police mounted a serious operation in Nablus, focused on the city’s Ein Beit Ilma neighborhood and placing residents under curfew. (The Palestinian Arabs and most of the media call it a refugee camp, though it's plainly not a camp - see photo. And if the residents are refugees then the word needs an overhaul.) Israeli forces stayed in place for three violent days, carrying out many arrests (at last count, 49 Palestinian Arabs believed to be involved in terror activities) and engaging in fire-fights with heavily armed locals while coming under frequent sniper attack.

The outcome was important for us. Israeli soldiers located and apprehended a complete four-person cell of Palestinian Arab terrorists planning a suicide bombing – the cell identified in the intelligence reports. In the alphabet soup of Palestinian Arab terror, these barbarians were affiliated with Hamas (i.e. the government of the Pal. Arabs) and with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Their names are Haled Nuri, Mustafa Nuri, Yusuf Nadi and Nihad Rashid Hasan Shakirat. In a report headlined "IDF captures head of Nablus cell planning suicide bombing", Haaretz says today, referring to Shakirat, that he was the head of a joint Hamas and PFLP terror cell in the city and terror fugitive number one on Israel's list in Nablus.

Under interrogation, the cell-members admitted to planning a terrorist attack which the security forces below was set to happen today – the eve of Yom Kippur. Confession is a routine part of the terrorist modus operandi and psychology.

In an invaluable contribution to solving the problem, Mahmoud Abbas spoke at a press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday, and called on Israel to withdraw from Nablus. He complained that the counter-terror operations amounted to a “policy of invasion”. For most rational people, this reaction is more or less expected. When you attack the agents of terror and then you interview their elegantly-suited spokespeople, they will tend to complain about counter-terrorist activity. Sadly, most journalists and their editors will report this with a straight face, afraid or incapable of trying to figure the complex situation out and reach appropriate conclusions.

We’ll point out that if you happen not to be Abbas, and you believe (as we do) that there ought to be constant, all-out war by all available means against the barbarians who bring terrorism and hatred into our lives, then the outcome was an excellent one – as good as it gets.

Now we'll add that the army also arrested two senior terrorists from Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah in this operation: Ibrahim Ismail and Jamal Ismail. But it happens that the names of the two Ismails are on the list of individuals granted amnesty last month by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. The deal – criticized bitterly by many in this country, including the authors of this blog – involved Al-Aksa Brigades terrorists allegedly laying down their arms and the IDF agreeing to stop pursuing them. (See our blog article "17-Jul-07: The Joke's On Us", in which we quote Palestinian terrorists accurately characterizing the charade of handing their weapons to Abbas's official militias with this blunt assertion: "It's all a joke".)

Sadly, the joke goes on. Yediot Aharanot’s web edition says the Fatah men were released early this morning, mere hours after being arrested in that IDF counter-terror operation. Why? Because their arrest drew criticism from Fatah "higher echelons". These men, it's said, were active in kidnapping Hamas members following Fatah’s defeat in Gaza. Their arrest would jeopardize the entire amnesty deal whereby Al-Aksa Brigades terrorists are supposed to hand in their arms and be given jobs with the Palestinian Authority. Hence the release.

Understand? Neither do we.

Yesterday (Thursday) the Palestinian Authority said – and they ought to be believed on things like this – that Israel has now agreed to add 41 more Fatah terrorist fugitives to the current amnesty list of 300 in what’s dubbed a “goodwill gesture.” It’s of course possible that there are rational politicians and civil servants, fully in possession of the relevant facts, who make decisions like this intelligently and with the best interests of the people of this country in mind. We can hope. Right now, we’re deeply worried.

Back in Nablus, Palestinian sources are quoted in the media downplaying the IDF's operation and saying none of the arrested are terror suspects. In their version, senior figures from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in fact left town before the Israeli army forces entered. They also assert the city is subject to starvation (“Famine hits Al Ein camp”) and their claims are faithfully carried in the media. So is an Iranian story that "Israeli troops kidnap 20 Palestinians". The BBC manages to report "Two killed in West Bank clashes". Clashes - that's just the way the BBC likes this war against Palestinian Arab terror to be depicted.

The one headline we haven't seen yet, the one which might accurately sum up what's happened here this week, would be: "Terror massacre averted by proportionate, pro-active intervention; hundreds of innocent lives saved on eve of Day of Atonement".

Time to go and pray that the new year will be much better than the one just ended.

25-Sep-06: On Radical Islam and the Global Economy

Writing his weekly column on economic issues in the Jerusalem Post, the business journalist Pinchas Landau makes some original and worthwhile observations (in an accompanying note he calls them mildly apocalyptic) about Islam and the central role its plays in some relation to certain issues that you find surprising:

Looking back over the outgoing Jewish year, it is plain that the outstanding global events shared a common theme – they all involved radical Islam. These events were (a) the publication of and (belated – the fuss started two months later) uproar over the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark; (b) the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah; (c) the protests following the Pope's reference to Mohammed and his legacy in a lecture last week.

Of these, the last seems to me by far the most important, both in itself and because it confirms and extends the implications arising from the others. This conclusion is being borne out by the fallout from 'the Pope incident', as expresssed in every kind of communications medium – but most especially in the rapidly-growing 'blogosphere'. Whereas the response of the West, primarily its secular majority but also its religious minority, to the cartoons was dominated by confusion, embarrassment and ultimately surrender; and whereas the response of the West to the second Lebanon war was, overwhelmingly, to blame Israel and the Jews for causing trouble; this time is very different... The intensity of the response across the Moslem world tells its own story and reinforces the message from the earlier round of rage, inspired by the Mohammed cartoon.

Ironically, the secular world – from neo-liberals to Marxists to post-modernists – has been more shaken by the Moslem fury that followed 'the Pope incident', than it was by the backlash to the Mohammed cartoons. They and other neutral parties – such as Jews, Protestants and even Hindus – to this clash between Roman Catholicism and Islam seem to grasp implicitly that this is not funny, nor is their traditional dislike of the Catholic Church an excuse for some schadenfreude. On the contrary: people finally realised that there is a global war going on after all, and that, despite all protestations to the contrary, it is about religion.

Until this week, enormous efforts have been expended in 'the West' – a very loose term that in this context includes Japan, Russia and probably even China – to deny that the world has a problem with the extremist versions of Islam, which now dominate the Moslem world and agenda. This epiphanic moment is only partially due to 'the Pope incident' and is probably more the cumulative outcome of all the 'incidents' over the last year and indeed decade.

What has all this to do with the global economy? A great deal, actually. 'The Pope incident' may prove to be the turning-point for Europe, when it finally realises that it has a choice between seeking to preserve the culture it developed over the last 1000-1500 years – which is, at root, a Christian culture – and between rolling over and dying under a Moslem demographic and cultural onslaught. If so, everything now taken for granted by economists – such as the primacy of mainstream socio-economic issues in the political life of 'the West', and especially of European Union countries – goes out of the window. When you are fighting for your national, cultural -- let alone spiritual -- existence, inflation targets and debt: GDP ratios become less, dare one say, sacrosanct.

As for the Israeli economy, the idea that we are in peril has reasserted itself powerfully these last two months and is beginning to impact economic and social policy making. But if 'the Pope incident' proves to be the precursor to an anti-Moslem backlash in Europe, the continent's Jews will surely revert to their historic role of being caught in the middle. Expect, therefore, to hear a lot more French in your neighborhood soon.

The whole column's here.

22-Sep-06: Most Of Us Already Get Too Many New Year Greetings So...

We won't take more than a moment to wish you and your loved ones a year that is the fulfillment of the prayers you offer at Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year). And to point you to a letter, like several others, received at the Malki Foundation's offices this week from a parent whose child is being helped by the Malki Foundation. (Well over a thousand families in Israel - among them Christians, Jews and Moslems - are currently supported by the Malki Foundation. Its programs provide those families with the practical means to care at home for a child with special needs.) Please click here to read it - it's short and lovely. We can't think of a better way to go into the High Holyday season.

21-Sep-06: Some Annual Statistics

Every year on the day before Rosh Hashana, Jewish new year's day, the government here makes an announcement of Israel's updated population statistics. As of this New Year, the number stands at just a few thousand below 7 million people. Population growth in 2005 was 1.8%. This is about the same as in 2004 and 2003.

5.3 million Israelis are Jewish and 1.4 million Israelis are Arabs. And a total of 1.2 million Israelis have re-settled (generally successfully) in Israel from the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Life expectancy: For all Israelis, it's 79.5 years. For female Israelis, it's 81.7 years. For male Israelis, 77.3 years. Israel's overall population density is 313 persons per sq km, and its overall literacy rate is 96%.

Israel's economy: Its gross domestic product (GDP, based on purchasing power) is US$154.5 billion. In 1980, it was US$23.2 billion.

Per capita, this means US$24,600 (the 2005 estimate). Egypt by comparison, with its 74 million people in 2005, produced GDP of US$4,158.

Between the time the state was established in the late 1940's and 1997, Israel's GDP grew annually by 7%. Its GDP per capita in 1948 was 30% of that of the United States. Fifty years later, the proportion was 65% of American per capita GDP.

In 2005, Israel had a current-account surplus of $3.8 billion. Its exports to the world in 2005 amounted to US$40.1 billion.

We plan to go look for, and then publish here, some comparative statistics showing how Israel's statistical profile compares with its own early-days performance (the country was re-established after a 2,000 year interruption only 58 years ago), and with that of the various Arab entities. There's an unforgivable tendency to swallow whole the data which are trotted out at every opportunity to justify the desperation and lack of alternative (to teaching their children to blow themselves up) of the Palestinian Arabs. But not today.