Jerusalem News (19 February, 2014, 19 Adar-1, 5774)
Contents:
1. ISRAEL FACES ALMOST UNPRECEDENTED WATER CRISIS  by David Lev
2. Israeli Jews are Becoming More Religious and More Nationalistic.
Israel at a Point of No Return - In the Right Direction by David P. Goldman
3. Arnold Ruth:Â Why is the US Complaining when the Muslims Free Murderers?
13-Feb-14: What does US fury at Afghan militants walking free say about US role in freeing convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists?
====
====
1. ISRAEL FACES ALMOST UNPRECEDENTED WATER CRISIS
by David Lev
From: "Arutz Sheva" <news@israelnationalnews.com>
Arutz Sheva Daily Israel Report
http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com
Monday, Feb. 17 '14, Adar 17, 5774
Extracts:
Israel faces a severe crisis if urgent measures are not taken to address the country's growing water scarcity, according to experts.
January passed with barely a drop of rain, and February hasn't been much better, despite last weekend's rainstorm, said Avshalom Vilan, chairman of the Israeli Agricultural Federation, a group representing farmers and agricultural families. Unless there is a "climatic miracle," he said, Israel would soon be in a very serious water shortage situation.
The situation is so bad, he said, that stored water that is usually released only in April to farmers in northern Israel is already being used, due to a lack of natural rainfall.
Fortunately, there is something the government can do to alleviate the shortage, by activating all of Israel's water desalination plants. Due to last year's good rainfall, the desalination plants are currently running only at half capacity. At full capacity, said Vilan, they could supply 150 million cubic meters of water, enough to get Israel through the current crisis.
One reason the authorities prefer natural water over desalinated water is because the latter costs more to produce, but according to Vilan, Israelis will not pay directly for that water, because most of it will be used for agricultural purposes, leaving the fresh water for drinking. While farmers and food processors would probably pass on their extra costs to consumers, who would end up paying the desalination costs indirectly, Â it was still a better alternative than going thirsty.
====
====
2. Israeli Jews are Becoming More Religious and More Nationalistic
Israel at a Point of No Return - In the Right Direction by David P. Goldman
PJ Media
February 12, 2014
http://www.meforum.org/3748/israel-jewish-demographics
Extracts:
Israel now has a religious majority, as Times of Israel blogger Yoseif Bloch observes:
"According to our Central Bureau of Statistics, 43% of Israeli Jews are secular, 9% are haredi, and the remaining 48% are somewhere between masorti (traditional) and dati (religious): 23% the former, 10% the latter, and 15% smack in the middle. ...
So 57% of Israelis practice a form of Judaism that for the most part Americans would call "Orthodox," in that it recognizes normative Judaism in the rabbinic tradition (the presence of the "progressive" Reform and Conservative movements is almost imperceptible and largely limited to transplanted Americans). Many Israelis who are dati are far from completely observant, but there is a great gulf fixed between a semi-observant Jew who knows what observance is, and a "progressive" who asserts the right to reinvent tradition according to personal taste.
This majority seems to be expanding fast. I spent the second half of December in Jerusalem promoting the Hebrew translation of my book How Civilizations Die and was struck by the increase in commitment to religious observance, including among people who were steadfastly secular. Almost half of Israel's army officers are "national religious" and trained in pre-army academies that teach Judaism, Jewish history, as well as physical training and military subjects. The ultra-Orthodox are going to work rather than studying full time, little by little, but the little adds up to a lot. Naftali Bennett's national-religious party "Jewish Home" has created a new political focus for the national-religious. Outreach organizations like Beit Hillel are bringing once-secular Israelis back to observance. Beit Hillel's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ronen Neuwirth, was in New York recently lecturing about Israel's religious revival.
This is a crucial, counterintuitive story: Israel is swimming against the secular current, becoming more observant as the rest of the world becomes more secular. ... Israeli is a standpoint in the modern world with a fertility rate of 3.0 children per woman (the closest second is the U.S. with just 1.9). Excluding the ultra-Orthodox the number is 2.6 children per woman, still outside the range of the rest of the industrial world. Secular Israelis are having three children. Not only does that defuse the much-touted "demographic time bomb." It ultimately changes the character of the country. It validates the hundred-year-old argument of Rabbi Isaac Kook, one of the founders of religious Zionism, that identification with the Jewish people eventually will lead Jews back to Judaism.
... And "progressive" American Jews, who have been running away from Judaism for the past three generations, are upset that Israel has embraced the normative Judaism they worked so hard to suppress. American "progressive" and unaffiliated Jews, one should remember, have the lowest fertility rate of any identifiable minority in the United States. Even if most of them did not intermarry (and the intermarriage rate in the past ten years approaches 70% according to the October 2013 Pew study) their infertility would finish them off in a few generations. Meanwhile 74% of all Jewish children in the New York area live in Orthodox families. The center of gravity of Judaism will shift decisively to Israel in the next generation, and the segment of American Jewry that most identifies with Israel, the Orthodox, will set the tone for American Judaism and eventually become the majority in a much smaller American Jewish population.
This is good news for Christians as well as Jews. The secularization thesis is refuted: a country with the world's greatest record of high-tech innovation is also becoming the industrial world's most religious country.... Israel, as Franz Rosenzweig said of the Jewish people, is there to be "the paragon and exemplar of a nation." For all its flaws, the State of Israel stands as a beacon to people of faith around the world. It is honored by its list of self-appointed enemies. Will Israel prevail against the unholy coalition against it? As we say, b'ezrat Hashem [i.e. with the Help of the Almighty].
====
====
3. Arnold Ruth:Â Why is the US Complaining when the Muslims Free Murderers?
From: "This Ongoing War: A Blog" <noreply@blogger.com>
13-Feb-14: What does US fury at Afghan militants walking free say about US role in freeing convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists?
http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.il/2014/02/12-feb-14-what-does-us-fury-at-afghan.html
Extracts:
Here are some questions for the US State Department and for Secretary Kerry.
The Afghanistan government this morning freed some 65 prisoners [according to Associated Press], many or all of them "linked to attacks that have killed American troops... American officials have questioned why President Hamid Karzai's government is turning them loose". They "have ties to the most violent terror groups in Afghanistan and were caught with weapons and materials for making improvised explosive devices... "These are bad men," said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. "They've got a lot of blood on their hands. A lot of blood." ...All 65 were freed Thursday morning, prison spokesman Maj. Nimatullah Khaki told the Associated Press. They were laughing and smiling as they boarded a bus to leave the prison, Khaki said."
The New York Times, anticipating the release, said yesterday that the US military feels
exasperation at the Afghan side's apparent determination to release the remaining prisoners and growing concern over the consequences. ["U.S. Military Denounces Afghanistan's Planned Release of More Prisoners", February 11, 2014]
And it's not only America's military which is angry and shouting, justifiably so. The State Department is too.
Jen Psaki, the spokeswoman for the State Department, criticized the release, saying that it undermined justice under Afghan law and that the detainees being freed were 'dangerous criminals against whom there is strong evidence linking them to terror-related crimes, including the use of improvised explosive devices, the largest killer of Afghan civilians.' ["With Release of Prisoners, Afghan Leader Again Defies U.S. Wishes", NY Times, January 9, 2014]
Now here in Israel, our government - under intense pressure from the US - has freed three out of four groups of murdering terrorists in the past half year. The fourth and final bunch of them is due to walk out in the next two weeks. Their reception in Palestinian Arab society has been a sickening, well-publicized orgy of public celebration of barbarism and savagery. The prime minister of the PA has led the parade, waving the freed killers' arms, declaring them heroes, honoring them with high ranks in his military apparatus (they don't call it an army but that's what it is) and granting them phenomenally large cash prizes plus ongoing salaries from his regime's bankrupt coffers.
There's one big difference between the Afghani jihadists and the Palestinians that we should mention before we get to our question. Those prisoners in the Israeli system were all, every last one of them, put on trial with the assistance of legal counsel, and were convicted and lawfully sentenced. In Israel, the rule of law, the systemic administration of justice and the checks and balances which come with that, are all real. Not make-believe like the propped-up Afghan regime of Karzai, but real.
So now how are we to understand the justifiable American fury and the State Department's gnashing of teeth over the release of alleged perpetrators when those same American voices are right behind the same kind of process that has delivered up unwarranted freedom for unrepentant Palestinian Arabs?...Â
As parents of a US citizen, aged 15 at the time she was murdered in a jihadist outrage, we have tried to have you hear our protests about the US spearheading the freeing of convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists - and have been comprehensively ignored....
The main organizer of our daughter's murder, just to complete the background, is walking free today despite the 16 life terms to which she was sentenced. She's vociferously unrepentant, widely honored, and fully engaged in inciting globally for more murders of more people like our daughter. This may help you understand the passion and deep pain we bring to this issue and our questions. ...
http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.il/2014/02/12-feb-14-what-does-us-fury-at-afghan.html