The man who brought the suit, Richard Warman, apparently is quite fond of suing anyone who disagrees with him, according to the link below which we urge you to click.

Amazing.

Please educate yourself and read the entire story.

For the attention of “Cindy,” the Mossad agent who seduced the atomic spy, Mordechai Vanunu: a new Halachic study has established that it is a mitzvah to have sex with a terrorist for operational purposes. The new study establishes guidelines on this issue. For example, if the agent is a married woman, “it would be best for her husband to divorce her before, and after the act he will be entitled to take her back.”
The title of the study is “Illicit Sex for the Sake of National Security,” and it appears in the new edition of Tehumin, an annual publication of Halachic studies on issues that pertain to the interface between religion and modernity — Kashrut, the army, the economy and so forth. The periodical is published by the Tzomet Institute in the Etzion Bloc, and which is identified with the Religious Zionist movement.  The article was written by Rabbi Ari Shvat, a teacher of Jewish studies. Rabbi Shvat published in this case a guidebook, so to speak, for the woman Mossad agent who serves as a seductress and is forced to sleep with dangerous terrorists either in order to obtain vital information or to bring about their capture. This is known in professional jargon as setting a “honey trap,” and it was used in the Vanunu case as well as, according to foreign reports, in the assassination of the terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last January.

Rabbi Shvat addressed in his study past instances of Jewish seductresses, such as Queen Esther (who slept with Ahasueras, the king of Persia, in order to help the Jews) and Yael, the wife of Hever, (who tradition suggests slept with the enemy chief of staff, Sisra, in order to tire him and to cut off his head). It turns out that a fierce debate raged in the Gemara about such significant questions. The conclusion drawn by the Gemara was that if having sex with a gentile is crucial for advancing an important national purpose, it is even to be considered a mitzvah to do so.

“Of course, one ought to prefer an unmarried agent for a honey trap mission,” wrote Rabbi Shvat, “but if it is necessary to use a married woman it would be best… were her husband to divorce her with a get, and after the act he would be entitled to bring her back.” In order to help the couple avoid the discomfiture of having to go to the rabbinate each time, Rabbi Shvat has authorized the couple to be divorced in writing so that the matter does not become public. If the couple doesn’t have an opportunity to divorce prior to his wife leaving on the mission, her husband is obliged to divorce her after the fact since, according to Halacha, she betrayed him, even if it was for the sake of an important national mission.

Any woman who is thinking about applying for the job needs to take into account that she won’t be able to marry a Cohen, but the author of the study seems to realize that that isn’t what is going prevent women from enlisting into the Mossad ranks or, as the article put it: “Naturally, a job of that sort could be given to a woman who in any event is licentious in her ways.”

In conclusion, Rabbi Shvat wrote: “Not only is it permissible but the sages raise that action of devotion to the top of the pyramid of Halachic priorities as the most important mitzvah of all.”

The director of Tzomet and the chief editor of Tehumin, Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, praised the new study as daring and important. “Despite the fact that women employees of the Mossad are probably not going to come consult with a rabbi, it is an important connection that requires courage to make.”

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2010/10/rabbi-says-its-okay-to-have-sex-with-the-enemy-to-further-israels-security-234.html

JUDY WOODRUFF: Thirty seconds left. The firing of Juan Williams, the analyst, by National Public Radio: the meaning of it and what is the fallout going to be?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Juan Williams is a former colleague of mine on the Washington Post editorial page and a friend for 30 years. And I think that NPR made a serious mistake. He is an analyst. And he wasn’t a correspondent. And I think they did it in a terrible way, by telephone call, without a personal chance to explain himself. And, you know, I think it has given the right wing a tremendous opening to attack NPR, which I hate to see happen, because I think it is a valuable public institution.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I work at NPR somewhat. And I’m friends with Juan. I’m friends with the people who fired him.

But I think they did it in a bad way. I agree with Mark. I think what he said was perfectly within the bounds of debate. And the damaging thing to me is, NPR has really worked hard over the past 10, 20 years to become a straight-down-the-middle network. I’m not sure they always were decades ago. But now they really are.

And now, because of this unfortunate episode, they begin to get some ideological baggage again. And that is damaging.

There is a red line which one cannot cross without some backlash. Firing Juan Williams for saying what he thought, on another station, brought them to their knees.

Juan was asked what he thought and he gave his opinion.

His statement was very simple.

He said that he feels uncomfortable when he sees women clothed in Muslim garb, designed to prevent anyone from seeing them. That is his opinion. He worked at NPR to provide his personal commentary.

He also mentioned that he sees a relationship between jihad, mentioned only in the Koran as an Islamic precept, and Islam.

Nothing noteworthy here.

NPR’s response was to fire him.

When it was called on this their president, Vivian Schiller, said that maybe the matter had been poorly handled. She then remarked, that Williams should keep his beliefs to meetings with ” his psychiatrist.”

And they are calling Williams unbalanced?

The Washington Post, was one of thousands of newspapers around the country to detail the backlash.

NPR was shocked at the backlash. Here is what their ombudsman wrote on her blog:

Thursday was a day like none I’ve experienced since coming to NPR in October 2007. Office phone lines rang non-stop like an alarm bell with no off button. We’ve received more than 8,000 emails, a record with nothing a close second.

At noon, the deluge of email crashed NPR’s “Contact Us” form on the web site.

The overwhelming majority are angry, furious, outraged. They want NPR to hire him back immediately. If NPR doesn’t, they want all public funding of public radio to stop. They promise to never donate again. They are as mad as hell, and want everyone to know it.  It was daunting to answer the phone and hear so much unrestrained anger.

Even NPR’s own staff expressed exasperation at the decision during a meeting Friday with NPR’s president, Vivian Schiller. Several of those who attended said Schiller told employees that she regretted how she handled the episode.

Staffers said that at the Friday meeting, Schiller apologized again for telling an audience in Atlanta on Thursday that Williams should have kept his comments about Muslims between “himself and his psychiatrist.”

Maybe she should be the one to get fired?

“There wasn’t anger” among NPR employees at the meeting, “but I did get a sense of despair and disappointment,” said one NPR journalist, who asked not to be named because employees are not authorized to speak on the record about the matter. “I got the impression that [management] felt they had acted rashly and without deliberation. When [Schiller] made the psychiatrist crack, it just made matters much, much worse.”

Williams commented: “I’ve always thought the right wing were ones that were inflexible and intolerant and now I’m coming to realize that the orthodoxy at NPR, its representing the left.”

Coming just before a national election which looks as though NPR will suffer at the polls, indirectly, the entire affair just hammered home how irrelevant NPR is becoming in American life.

It is the radio equivalent of The Daily Worker, the Communist paper, totally out of synch with the American psyche.

An NPR spokeswoman, Dana Davis Rehm, said there will be a  review but it   won’t second-guess the decision itself, but would focus on how it was carried out. NPR president,Schiller,declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Congress will consider whether to suspend funding for all public broadcasting.

Several Republicans have mentioned that the timing of the firing of Williams is the perfect gift for even more anti-NPR voting at the polls.

A large GOP win will be seen as evidence that the American people refuse to pay NPR’s propaganda bills.

We call on all of our readers to contact your congressperson and your local affiliate radio stations that carry NPR.

Let them know that you will not allow your money to be spent on such propaganda especially in a time of national economic distress.

The affiliates are especially vulnerable.

They are NPR’s local voice.

Cut the connection by leaning on your local affiliate.

Organize meet ups, make sure local listeners tell the stations, no more NPR.

Let them know why you will not donate.

Let them know that when renewal time comes with the FCC, you will complain that they are abusing their non-profit status.

The public airwaves are strictly licensed. If you complain, as I have against WAMU-FM, Washington, DC,  for carrying NPR and abusing its public broadcasting status, then you will hit NPR where it really is vulnerable.

Contact the Federal Communications Commission. Complain against your local NPR affiliate. Let the affiliate know that you have done so.

Here is the FCC link to complain.

NPR fired Juan Williams, one of its senior news analysts, after he made comments opposing jihad and linking it with Muslims on the Fox News Channel.

Over 50 Muslim states. One Jewish homeland.

The following is an op-ed which Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, published in the NY Times. Because of its importance, we are reprinting it in its entirety.

NEARLY 63 years after the United Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to independence in their homeland — and more than 62 years since Israel’s creation — the Palestinians are still denying the Jewish nature of the state. “Israel can name itself whatever it wants,” said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, while, according to the newspaper Haaretz, his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said that the Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Back in 1948, opposition to the legitimacy of a Jewish state ignited a war. Today it threatens peace.

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Erekat were responding to the call by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, enabling his government to consider extending the moratorium on West Bank construction. “Such a step by the Palestinian Authority would be a confidence-building measure,” Mr. Netanyahu explained, noting that Israel was not demanding recognition as a prerequisite for direct talks. It would “open a new horizon of hope as well as trust among broad parts of the Israeli public.”

Why should it matter whether the Palestinians or any other people recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people? Indeed, Israel never sought similar acknowledgment in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Some analysts have suggested that Mr. Netanyahu is merely making a tactical demand that will block any chance for the peace they claim he does not really want.

Affirmation of Israel’s Jewishness, however, is the very foundation of peace, its DNA. Just as Israel recognizes the existence of a Palestinian people with an inalienable right to self-determination in its homeland, so, too, must the Palestinians accede to the Jewish people’s 3,000-year connection toour homeland and our right to sovereignty there. This mutual acceptance is essential if both peoples are to live side by side in two states in genuine and lasting peace.

So why won’t the Palestinians reciprocate? After all, the Jewish right to statehood is a tenet of international law. The Balfour Declaration of 1917called for the creation of “a national home for the Jewish people” in the land then known as Palestine and, in 1922, the League of Nations cited the “historical connection of the Jewish people” to that country as “the grounds for reconstituting their national home.” In 1947, the United Nations authorized the establishment of “an independent Jewish state,” and recently, while addressing the General Assembly, President Obama proclaimed Israel as “the historic homeland of the Jewish people.” Why, then, can’t the Palestinians simply say “Israel is the Jewish state”?

The reason, perhaps, is that so much of Palestinian identity as a people has coalesced around denying that same status to Jews. “I will not allow it to be written of me that I have … confirmed the existence of the so-called Temple beneath the Mount,” Yasir Arafat told President Bill Clinton in 2000.

For Palestinians, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state also means accepting that the millions of them residing in Arab countries would be resettled within a future Palestinian state and not within Israel, which their numbers would transform into a Palestinian state in all but name. Reconciling with the Jewish state means that the two-state solution is not a two-stage solution leading, as many Palestinians hope, to Israel’s dissolution.

Which is precisely why Israelis seek the basic reassurance that the Palestinian Authority is ready to accept our state — to accept us. Israelis need to know that further concessions would not render us more vulnerable to terrorism and susceptible to unending demands. Though recognition of Israel as the Jewish state would not shield us from further assaults or pressure, it would prove that the Palestinians are serious about peace.

The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the refusal to recognize Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with the right to self-government. Criticism of Israeli policies often serves to obscure this fact, and peace continues to elude us. By urging the Palestinians to recognize us as their permanent and legitimate neighbors, Prime Minister Netanyahu is pointing the way out of the current impasse: he is identifying the only path to co-existence.

Thanks to National Public Radio magazine for the following:

A new issue of the online magazine Inspire — from the Yemeni group al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula — has some alarming advice for would-be terrorists: Open fire on lunch-hour crowds in Washington, D.C., to “knock out a few government employees.”

After making a splash with the first issue of Inspire, an English-language magazine that grooms readers to become radical jihadists, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula released a second edition this week, complete with essays by Anwar al-Awlaki, suggestions about bombing Washington, D.C., restaurants and tips for using your pickup truck to “mow down the enemies of God.” In the magazine’s introduction, the editors celebrate “recent U.S. assessments” that have designated AQAP “one of the most dangerous branches of al-Qaeda,” and tell readers that they can expect more to come: “[Y]ou haven’t seen anything yet.” Inspire is believed to be spearheaded by Samir Khan, a 24-year-old former North Carolina resident who attracted attention in 2003 by running one of the Internet’s most popular—and radical—al Qaida sites. After Charlotte’s Muslim community staged an intervention, Khan boarded a flight to Yemen, and six months later, the first issue of Inspirewas published. In the October issue, Khan is credited with an essay titled “I Am Proud to be a Traitor to America,” in which he lambastes the U.S. for “kill[ing] millions of Muslims around the world” and “get[ting] away with it wearing a tuxedo.” Counterterror experts worry that the magazine’s Western-friendly attitude—it features articles like “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,”—”will appeal to kids who have never really been very interested in violent jihad before,” one official tells NPR. “The magazine seems to make it fun and accessible. It used to be to get into this you needed to speak Arabic. Now you don’t—English subtitles, English translations of extremist videos, that’s the norm now.”

Oh, no. Tolerance is only a one way street.

In a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations, Imam Rauf, the head of the Ground Zero mosque, said that he is a reasonable man and that he would never, ever think for one second of being insensitive.

“Everything is on the table,” he said with relation to the mosque location.

He added that the mosque is not hallowed ground.

Here is my response:

Inside Cordoba House, the name of the new mosque, is part of one of the planes that flew into the WTC.

Cordoba House is named after the city in Spain, Cordoba, where the victorious Muslims destroyed the largest church and built a very large mosque which still stands. According to Muslim law, no mosque may ever be removed from its site.

The 13 story Cordoba House mosque will tower over Ground Zero, which, along with the site of the mosque and the plane there, is hallowed ground. This site is a deliberate choice on the part of those who want a symbol of Islam overlooking the site of a mass grave of 3,000 New Yorkers who were murdered in the name of Islam.

The Arabic word Islam translates into English as “submission”.

Recently, one of the last bastions of moderate Islam, Turkey, fell to the extremists who have now taken over the entire religion. A referendum was passed which gives the ruling Islamic Party power over picking the judiciary. The Islamist immediately announced that Muslim law, sharia, will be imposed on Turkey, a previously secular state. Women are now wearing the veil in Turkey just as they now are in Gaza, which before Hamas , the Islamists ,took power, was largely secular.

There is no going back to a secular life once sharia is imposed.

The imam is playing a game with us until he and his cronies get what they want, our submission to their demands.

If you want us to show respect, Imam Rauf, try showing some yourself first. You are a guest in this country. Act like one and don’t push us around.

You may just find that we will push back.

The orthodox rabbis in Teaneck, NJ who have pushed the local newspaper, the NJ Jewish Standard, to refuse to carry Jewish same-sex union announcements, have, with one exception, refused to allow their names to be known.

As the NY Times wrote in its recent article on this matter, “Neither the Orthodox rabbis contacted nor the newspaper responded to phone calls. And on the streets of Teaneck, businesspeople preferred to speak anonymously, rather than risk offending. Still, there was widespread speculation that the economic clout of the Orthodox gave them outsize influence.”

Now, however, they have emerged with a statement which was leaked by The Jewish Channel (TV).

As publicized by Failed Messiah , a major online journal of investigative reporting on the Orthodox Jewish community, this statement is noteworthy both for its condemnation of the exposure of the rabbis, who were caught with their pants down as well as for their excessive denial of any wrong doing while at the same time affirming that they are innocents whose only crime was that they are too devout to be involved in such bitul Torah ( waste of time when you could be learning Torah) as terrorizing their local Jewish newspaper.

Here are some choice nuggets taken from the statement .

Following Jewish traditional exegesis, we have inserted commentary  as appropriate. All bold type is used to highlight certain language used by the rabbis and is not to be found in the original statement.

To our great consternation,

[hence the phrase, " pain and consternation", used in the NJ Jewish Standard statement disavowing future same-sex union pieces which Rebecca Boroson, the editor of the paper allegedly was forced to sign. ]

the local Orthodox rabbinate, comprising the RCBC (Rabbinical Council of Bergen County), has become and continues to be the target of much venom presently being spewed, especially on the aforementioned blogs, based on the presumption that the rabbis played a major, and indeed bullying and arm-twisting role in the Jewish Standard’s decision making process. As a result of many erroneous assumptions, unsubstantiated claims and baseless fabrications, the rabbis of our community have been vilified in the most insulting, defamatory and obnoxious of terms.

[ One of the aforementioned blogs was the NY Times which included language in a previously referenced article discussing the allegations of extortion and financial pressure on the newspaper]

The following open statement is directed to our congregations in an attempt to accurately present the facts and set the record straight.

In the days following the appearance of this marriage announcement, a number of RCBC rabbis spoke with each other either in person, on the phone or through email. There was never, as suggested in one report, any special rabbinical meeting convened to deal with this matter. The reactions among the rabbis varied. Some stated that they had been approached by numerous congregants who were very upset by what they saw in the paper; others said that only a few in their synagogue seemed to care. Some held that the RCBC should send some kind of response to the newspaper, either orally or in writing; others contended than in as much as this paper does not conform, and does not claim to conform, to Orthodox standards – they do, after all, advertise non-Kosher food establishments and announce communal events which take place on Shabbat – this is not an RCBC problem. In light of the lack of any consensus, and in light of the fact that all this was taking place in the middle of the holiday of Sukkot, when the minds of most rabbis are understandably focused elsewhere, it was decided that any official RCBC reaction would wait until a full discussion could take place at our next regularly scheduled meeting, already planned for the week after Yom Tov.

[ No official meeting took place but  it was decided  via informal discussion among the various rabbis that any official RCBC reaction would wait. But none of these unofficial discussions count except that they resulted in a group decision.]

One single RCBC rabbi, who has been consulted by the Jewish Standard on a number of occasions in the past about issues relating to the religious sensibilities of the Orthodox community, did go, with the approval of the RCBC leadership, though not representing the RCBC,

[ Come on, guys, you can't have it both ways]

to meet with the executive staff of the Jewish Standard. The meeting was characterized by calm, civility and mutual respect. The rabbi communicated that there were a significant number of Orthodox Jews who felt that the Standard had crossed a line by publishing this wedding announcement, and that if the leaders of the paper are concerned about the opinions of these members of our community, they should reconsider their position on this matter for the future.

[ As in, we respectfully advise you that you have crossed a line and in publishing this announcement - it was a union, not a wedding - to do as you are told or there will be consequences. Sorry, we cannot discuss the consequences now because our minds are understandably focused elsewhere, on our spiritual duties.]

- At no time did this rabbi or any other RCBC rabbi express any threat whatsoever, financial or otherwise, to the newspaper.

[ Such as, "you have crossed a line"; if you are concerned about our opinions, don't publish what we tell you not to publish. Read the report in that tiny blog, The NY Times, for what everyone is discussing.]
- At no time did anyone representing the RCBC ever contact any proprietor of a food establishment under RCBC Kashruth supervision regarding anything to do with this matter or with the Jewish Standard.

[ No one officially "representing RCBC" but unofficially things kind of get known, even though, as mentioned earlier it is via email, phone, conversation, innuendo,etc. Come on, we weren't born yesterday.]
- At no time did anyone representing the RCBC advocate any kind of boycott of the newspaper or force, urge, encourage, coax or cajole anybody else to do so.

[The magic words throughout this statement are no one officially representing the RCBC. These same rabbis to this day refuse to put their names on paper and even identify themselves in the media. They simply will not take responsibility for the mess they have created.]

Any reports, allegations or accusations implying the contrary are outright lies. They remain outright lies regardless of how loudly they are proclaimed or how often they are repeated.

It is a source of embarrassment to the greater Jewish community

[ Their homophobia is also a source of embarrassment for the entire world. One wonders,what greater Jewish community are they referring to? How would they know what the greater Jewish community thinks, given that they represent at best a tiny portion of the smallest minority within the Jewish community, the orthodox community. Certainly most Modern Orthodox and even many of the rabbis quoted earlier in your statement have no problem with the announcement.]

that there are various Jewish blog sites, claiming that they accurately report on the Jewish world in general, or cover the Orthodox world in particular, or something of the like, who seem, at least in this case, to have felt no need to display any sense of professionalism, journalistic integrity or even common courtesy. Any one of these values would dictate that all relevant facts should be thoroughly checked and rechecked before launching a nasty verbal attack on others, but that clearly did not happen here.

[Tell it to the NY Times which specifically mentions the speculation of rabbinical economic clout. Tell it to the NJ Jewish News which also addresses this reality. ]

Instead, the sites fed off of one another, built on the uncorroborated posts of others hiding behind the anonymity of a screen name and “protected” themselves by inserting words like “allegedly” and “supposedly” every once in a while. And so the Orthodox rabbis of Bergen County have this past week been labeled thugs, Ayatollahas, Mafiosos, Taliban and who knows what else. All, of course, in the name of tolerance, decency and sensitivity to the feelings of others, and all based on falsehood.

[Actually, all in the name of providing the Jewish community with the news of what is actually happening. That is our mission.]

——

All of this follows on the recent homophobic attacks on several gay men in New York City which the NY Police Department describes as the worst anti-gay hate crime in the history of the city. Just a few weeks ago Tyler Clementi committed suicide not too far from Teaneck, NJ because of homophobic harassment by fellow students who have since been arrested. NJ is vigorous in enforcing hate crimes. The rabbis have been notably silent on such matters. They are too busy attempting to change policy at their local newspaper.