Remembrance Day Begins Tonight

Via IsraelNationalNews:

Commemoration of Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day for its fallen soldiers and terrorism victims, will begin at 8:00 this evening (Sunday) with a country-wide siren and minute of silence. The opening ceremony will take place at the Western Wall, with the participation of Chief Rabbis Amar and Metzger. A second siren will be sounded tomorrow morning, at 11 AM, once again bringing all activity to a standstill and marking the beginning of memorial ceremonies at the 43 military cemeteries around the country. A Knesset Member or government official will speak at each ceremony. A special ceremony will also be held in memory of Jews murdered by terrorists and anti-Semites around the world. Some 200 such Jews will be remembered at tomorrow's ceremony at Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. The event is being organized by the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish National Fund, and the UJC of North America. A monument with the names of the victims will be unveiled.

The names of all Israel's fallen soldiers and terrorist victims will be broadcast on Israel's public television channel this evening and tomorrow, one after the other, for 4-5 seconds each. The somber day comes to an end tomorrow evening (Monday) with the onset of Israel's 59th Independence Day.

Both Remembrance Day and Independence Day are commemorated one day later this year than usual, by order of the Chief Rabbinate, in order to prevent the Sabbath desecration that would have resulted from having Remembrance Day begin on Saturday night.

18,784 soldiers and security personnel have fallen since the U.N. decision to establish a Jewish State on Nov. 29, 1947. In recent years, Yom HaZikaron has been expanded to include civilians killed by terror attacks as well.

The number of soldiers and security personnel who have fallen since Nov. 29, 1947, when the UN accepted the partition, thus mandating the creation of a Jewish State, is 20,526. The struggle to re-create a Jewish homeland beginning in the year 1860, when Jews began to move outside Jerusalem's Old City walls, claimed an additional close to 1,500 victims.

The War of Independence was Israel's costliest war, with more than 6,000 dead and 15,000 wounded. The war consisted of 39 separate operations, fought from the borders of Lebanon to the Sinai Peninsula and Eilat, and was fought for about a year, until 1949. Then followed seven years of relative quiet - during which there were "1,339 cases of armed clashes with Egyptian armed forces, 435 cases of incursion from Egyptian-controlled territory, and 172 cases of sabotage perpetrated by Egyptian military units and fedayeen in Israel," in which 101 Israelis were killed, as Israeli Ambassador to the UN Abba Eban explained to the Security Council on October 30, 1956. Eban gave these statistics the day after Israel began the Sinai Campaign - its military response to Egypt's violation of international agreements by sealing off the Israeli port of Eilat, effectively stopping Israel's sea trade with much of Africa and the Far East. A total of 231 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting. In March 1957, after receiving international guarantees that Israel's vital waterways would remain open, Israel withdrew from the Sinai and Gaza - yet the Egyptians still refused to open the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping.

The Six-Day War broke out on June 5, 1967. Despite the stunning victories, over 770 Israelis were killed.

Then began the period of the War of Attrition, which claimed ,424 soldiers and more than 100 civilians. A ceasefire was declared on August 8, 1970.

Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, 1973. The IDF ultimately emerged victorious, but a total of 2,688 soldiers were killed.

In June 1982, in response to continued terrorist attacks from across the Lebanese border, as well as an assassination attempt upon Israel's Ambassador to Great Britain Shlomo Argov, Israel attacked the terrorists in Lebanon in what was known as Operation Peace for Galilee. Close to 460 soldiers were killed between June and December 1982, and another 760 in daily ambushes against Israeli forces over the next two and a half years.

Between December 1987, when the first Arab "intifada" broke out, and the signing of the Oslo Accords in late 1993, 90 Israelis were killed.

Between the Oslo signing and the beginning of what became known as the Oslo War (seven years), 251 Israelis were killed.

Another 1,287 have been felled by PA terrorists and gunmen since September 2000.

In the year 2000, then-Prime Minister Barak wrote to the bereaved families, "We visit today the rows of graves that extend to infinity... we still refuse to believe and we refuse to be consoled. Because there is no consolation. Heavy, maybe too heavy, is the price we bear for our independence and building the 52 years of the State of Israel."

MK Eldad Drafts Law for Toppling 'Gov't of Disgrace'

From IsraelNN.com:

MK Aryeh Eldad (NU/NRP) has submitted a draft version of a law that would empower the Knesset to declare that a government had become "a government of disgrace" if one tenth or more of its members were under police investigation at a certain point in time.

Should the Knesset declare the government to be a "government of disgrace" according to the proposed law, the result -– for the political system – will be as if the Prime Minister resigned. In such a scenario, says Eldad, the Knesset will be empowered to bring about the resignation of the government and to fill its seats with a new one.

Eldad wants Section 26 of the Basic Law for Government amended to include a subsection that will define as ”disgraceful” a government that "the Attorney General has instructed police to start investigations against one-tenth of its members."

Eldad said, "These days the investigations against government ministers are multiplying quickly. There is a cumulative weight of public opinion and heavy public relations damage to Israel and the whole Jewish people just from the very fact that so many ministers are under criminal investigations."

According to Eldad, when a corrupt government stays in power, it leads to “abhorrence, disgust...and a lack of public trust." It is therefore suggested, he explained, "to enable the Knesset to bring about the resignation of the government in order to create a more worthy one."

Government ministers currently under police investigation include Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson, and Minister for Jerusalem Yaakov Edri. Earlier in the government's term, then-Justice Minister Chaim Ramon was investigated, tried and convicted for sexual misconduct. There are 26 ministers in the government.

Pesach Massacre Averted: Hamas Mass Murder Car was in Tel Aviv

From INN:

For as yet unknown reasons, a massive Hamas terror attack intended to take place in the Tel Aviv area during the Passover Seder was averted. A similar attack five years ago killed 30 people in Netanya and triggered the IDF's Operation Defensive Shield. The General Security Service (Shabak) has acknowledged that a Hamas terrorist successfully entered the Greater Tel Aviv area in a car laden with 100 kg. (220 lbs.) of explosives before Passover. Besides the explosives, it contained large amounts of shrapnel material, intended to maximize carnage. For reasons that are not yet known, the attack was not carried out and the terrorist drove the car back to Kalkilye, from where it had come. The car exploded in Kalkilyeh, in what the Shabak says was a 'work accident.'

Kabbalist warns Israel is on brink of war

A highly-regarded kabbalist elder from Bnei Barak has issued a warning that the next war in Israel is on the way.

Rabbi Eliyahu Leon Levi, who frequents the Western Wall every Saturday night to recite Psalms and teach Torah, told his students that there is an "evil decree" of war looming on the horizon. According to the Rabbi, Syria is liable to join Lebanon in firing missiles at the Jewish State in the pending war.

The missiles will have a much greater range and carry much larger warheads than katyusha rockets...

The missiles will have a much greater range and carry much larger warheads than the katyusha rockets fired against Israel this past summer in the Second Lebanon War which claimed some 156 lives, he noted.

On several occasions, Rabbi Levi first alerted Israeli military authorities of security threats and movements of massive amounts of enemy weapons, that were subsequently verified by IDF intelligence. The kabbalist Rabbi said just before the Passover holiday that he does not want to cause panic, but suggested that the Israeli public stock up on two weeks of water, food supplies, candles and matches in case the delivery of basic commodities is disrupted.

Rabbi Levi said that though Israel "may, G-d forbid, pay a heavy price initially, the Jewish People would muster strength to crush their enemies leading to a great sanctification of G-d's name through ultimate victory."

"We are on the brink of redemption, and a great war is coming." he said. "Whoever doesn't prepare himself spiritually is at great risk. A person must turn to G-d in prayer and cry and confess his wrongdoings, and rectify his ways. A person must recite Psalms as we do every Saturday night here at the site of our holy temple. The recitation of Psalms constitutes a spiritual rinsing of the mouth from idle talk, as well as from the transgression of causing others pain through our speech. Come with your children to cry and pray before G-d and ask forgiveness."

Rabbi Levi said that once the rockets start falling, it is too late for a person to wake up and begin to rectify his ways. "Now is the time to ask for mercy. If one doesn't do so, G-d have mercy on his soul - there will be problems."

Why America Closed Its Doors to Anne Frank

From INN:

Anne Frank's family tried to escape the Nazis by immigrating to America - but they were turned away.

This extraordinary new chapter in the teenager's tragic saga emerges from seventy-eight newly-discovered documents from the correspondence of Anne's father, Otto Frank. They detail his efforts, in 1941, to gain permission to bring his family to the United States.

The new correspondence presents an opportunity - and an obligation - to tell the rest of the story.

At the time of the correspondence, the Franks were living in exile in Holland, having fled their native Germany after Hitler's rise to power. By 1939, with anti-Semitism spreading throughout Europe, the Franks began thinking about how to get to America. Otto had already lived in the US from 1909 to 1911, working as an intern at Macy's Department Store, in New York City.

But by 1939, it was a different America. After World War I, in response to the public's intense anti-foreigner sentiment, Congress had enacted restrictive immigration quotas. The quota system was structured to reduce "undesirable" immigrants, especially Italians and Jews. The original version of the immigration bill had been introduced in Congress with a report by the chief of the United States Consular Service, Wilbur Carr, characterizing Jewish immigrants as "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits... lacking any conception of patriotism or national spirit."

The new annual quota for Germany and Austria allowed a maximum of 27,370 immigrants - far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian Jews searching for haven from Hitler.

Remarkably, even those meager quota allotments were almost always under-filled. American consular officials abroad were directed by Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to "postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas" to refugees. They created a bureaucratic maze - "paper walls," to borrow the phrase of David S. Wyman - to keep refugees far from America's shores.

And so, during the period of the Nazi genocide, from late 1941 until early 1945, only ten percent of the quotas from Axis-controlled European countries would actually be used. Almost 190,000 quota places remained unused - representing almost 190,000 lives that could have been saved, even under the restrictive quotas.

Anne's mother, Edith, wrote to a friend in 1939: "I believe that all Germany's Jews are looking around the world, but can find nowhere to go."

In May 1940, the Germans conquered and occupied the Netherlands. Emigration was forbidden and the Franks' hopes of going to America appeared to be dashed.

But they didn't give up. In 1941, Otto began writing to his American friends and relatives, and to US officials, in the hope of securing permission to immigrate. But at the same time the Franks were seeking shelter in America, State Department officials were seeking new ways to shut the nation's doors even tighter. In the summer of 1941, Breckinridge Long implemented new procedures to further reduce the number of immigrants.

Long had the full backing of President Roosevelt. When refugee advocate James G. McDonald appealed to FDR against Long's policies, the president dismissed his pleas as "sob stuff."

As a result of the new restrictions, less than half of the German-Austrian quota places were used in 1941.

Otto and Edith Frank, and their daughters Margot and Anne, were turned away by the United States that year. Not because the quotas were full. Not because this successful middle-class couple and their two young daughters would have been a burden to American society. But simply because so many Americans considered Jewish refugees undesirable, and because too many politicians feared losing votes if more Jews were admitted.

Today, Anne Frank has become the best-known victim of the Holocaust to people all over the world, especially as the subject is taught to schoolchildren. Anne's diary of the two years that her family hid in an attic to elude the Germans is the centerpiece of classroom instruction about the Nazi genocide. The betrayal of the Franks, and their final months in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, provide the grim climax to a story that represents the fate of millions of Jewish victims.

"I believe that all Germany's Jews are looking around the world, but can find nowhere to go."

But now a new chapter must be added to the Anne Frank saga. The new correspondence presents an opportunity - and an obligation - to tell the rest of the story. Every sixth-grade student in America needs to know that Anne's death was not inevitable. The Franks were turned away from America by callous bureaucrats and politicians, even though there was room in the immigration quotas.

We need to teach our children why America cast aside its proud tradition of welcoming "the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and closed its doors. Only then can we hope that such moral failures are not repeated by the next generation.