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1. Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu Passes Away
by Hillel Fendel and Rochel Sylvetsky
Just as Jews from throughout the country were preparing to gather to pray for the health of former Chief Rabbi HaRishon LeTzion, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, news of his death reached the nation.
Over 100,000 mourners, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, knitted and black skullcapped, participated in the Jerusalem funeral, which began at 10:00 PM and ended close to 1:00 AM due to the slow movement of the throngs that surrounded the funeral car. . Both sides of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv hghway approaching Jerusalem were filled with parked cars whose passengers simply parked and walked from the intercity road to the funeral.
Rabbi Eliyahu, 81, was the revered spiritual leader of the religious-Zionist world for many years, respected by all streams for his brilliance, erudition and kindness. His encylopedic knowledge of all areas of Jewish Law was legendary. He encouraged settlement of all of the land of Israel, opposed the expulsion from Gush Katif and expressed disbelief that it could occur in a Jewish country.
Hospitalized for nearly a year in Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center, his condition was once again downgraded to "critical” earlier in the day. As reports went out that the sage's condition had severely deteriorated, people were organizing prayer rallies for his recovery. Family members were called to his bedside and were by his side when he passed away. His sons said Tehillim (Psalms) around his bed from the time of death until the funeral.
The funeral departed from Heichal Yaakov, the rabbi's synagogue and Torah study hall, located near the Eliyahu family residence in Jerusalem's Kiryat Moshe neighborhood. The police closed the streets in the area, and were out in large numbers.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement expressing the national sadness at the loss of a great rabbinic leader.The leaders of Israel's rabbinic world spoke at the funeral, including Sefardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger.
Upon hearing the news, Rabbi Chaim Druckman, head of the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva Movement and the Ohr Etzion Yeshiva, cried in a tear-choked voice: "We are orphaned, left without a father..."
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, who studies Torah weekly with Rav Zaafrani, Rav Eliayhu's longtime assistant and who delivered a short eulogy at the funeral, said earlier, “I am a partner to the heavy mourning of the Nation of Israel in general, and of Jerusalem in particular, on the passing of the great Torah leader, father and rabbi to myriads, and from whom I was privileged to benefit from his proximity and learn from his wisdom. Rabbi Mordechai Eliylahu, who engraved on his flag love of Israel and outreach, and who always found the good in people, will be engraved in all our hearts and his path will light our way. I send my condolences to the Rabbanit [his widow], his sons the rabbis, his family members and his many students.”
Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe of the Land of Israel Task Force said, “One of the great leaders of the People of Israel has been lost. He fought bravely for the integrity of the Land of Israel, and the love of Israel beat in his heart. The loss of righteous people is as terrible as the burning of the House of our G-d; who can replace him? All of those loyal to the Torah of Israel and the Land of Israel must strengthen themselves and continue in his path. We express our condolences to his son and follower in his path, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.”
The National Union and Jewish Home parties issued a joint statement of mourning for the loss of Rabbi Eliyahu, as did the Hevron Jewish Community. For years, Rav Eliahu visited Hevron to lead the Slichot prayers during the High Holy Day period.
The Binyamin and Shomron Residents Committee issued this statement: “We bitterly mourn the loss of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu of saintly blessed memory. The Rabbi was the pillar of fire that walked before the camp of the residents of Judea and Samaria, encouraged them at their difficult hours and worked to helped them.”
Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu was born in 1929 in the Old City of Jerusalem to an illustrious Baghdad family; his father was a renowned Kabbalist and his mother was a granddaughter of the famed Ben Ish Chai's sister. He was recognized as a prodigy at a young age and went on to become Israel's youngest Rabbinical Court Judge.
Rabbi Eliyahu served as Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi - the Rishon LeTzion – from 1983 until 1993, together with the late Rabbi Avraham Shapira. The two Torah giants, who were fast friends, continued to lead the national-religious public in matters of Jewish Law and philosophy for years following the end of their official terms in office.
Rabbi Eliyahu gave weekly Torah lectures, authored several legal and philosophical works and was close to many leading rabbis, including the Chazon Ish, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim. He also served as personal rabbi to Prisoner of Zion Jonathan Pollard. Rabbi Eliyahu headed the Keren Moreshet network of Torah core groups that settled in various cities throughout the country. For years, the beloved rabbi would sit in his Kiryat Moshe Synagogue each day answering hundreds of legal questions and dispensing advice to the endless streams of people of all stripes who sought to profit from his wisdom.
The sage was in pain for months. His wife, Rabbanit Tzvia Eliyahu, recently told a Radio Kol Chai interviewer that the Rav had told her that he was prepared to suffer if he could only save the Jewish people from suffering.
2. Helen Thomas Steps Down after 'Jews, go Back to Poland' Remark
by Maayana Miskin
Veteran American journalist Helen Thomas, the former dean of the White House press corps, has retired from her job as a columnist for the Hearst News Service. Her retirement followed shortly on the heels of an interview in which she told Rabbi David Nesenoff that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go back” to Germany and Poland.
The May 27th interview spread widely online, and earned Thomas criticism from the White House press secretary and the White House Correspondents Association.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs called Thomas's remarks “offensive and reprehensible.” The Correspondents Association termed the interview “indefensible,” and “unfortunate.”
Thomas expressed regret for her comments, and said they “do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance.”
Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman said the apology was insufficient. Thomas' suggestion that Jews “go back to Poland and Germany” is “bigoted” and “shows a profound ignorance of history,” he said.
Thomas, 89, began her career in 1943 as a reporter for United Press International. She began covering the White House in 1960, and became a Hearst columnist in 2000.
3. Sen. Schumer Demands Probe of IHH-Terror Links. EJC Wants More.
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer has added his voice to growing cries for an investigation of terrorist links with IHH, the Turkish-based organization that sponsored last week’s flotilla that included Turkish terror activists.
The United Nations immediately condemned Israel for the violence on the Mavi Mamara flotilla ship last week, but no mention was made of links between terrorist groups and IHH.
Nine Turks aboard the Mavi Mamara ship were killed after they brutally assaulted Israeli Navy commandos who boarded the vessel without standard counterterrorist weapons and after the flotilla refused to answer calls to change course from Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Senator Schumer asked U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “immediately conduct an investigation to determine if the IHH is currently – or has in the past – provided financial, logistical or material support to any terrorist organizations listed on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”
Former Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams wrote on the Weekly Standard website that the Israelis “understand that no one is going to investigate Turkey and its role, nor investigate the pro-terror groups on board those ships — not if the United States fails to insist on it.”
Interviewed on CNN, Abrams maintained, “Israel interfered, thank God…with a group of armed Turks who came prepared for a fight with iron bars, night vision devices, ceramic vests, despite what, frankly, are the lies that the Turkish foreign minister” stated the same day on CNN.
B'nai Brith Canada Executive Vice President Frank Dimant said, "We have contacted both Prime Minister [Stephen] Harper and the Leader of the Opposition to call on them to act against IHH without delay. IHH…has a long history of involvement with and links to Islamist terrorist organizations which clearly justify its inclusion of the list of designated terrorist entities. Designating the IHH as a terrorist entity would clearly fit with the Harper administration's public safety platform.”
The IHH openly sympathizes with Hamas, which is designated by the United States as an outlawed terrorist group. U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told reporters last week that the IHH is not on the list of terrorist groups but added, “Based on statements from U.S. State Department officials, IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years.”
He also referred to IHH’s “clear, long-standing ties to terrorism and jihad” and said the Obama administration is "concerned” about IHH ties with terrorist groups.
A Washington Post editorial on Saturday also questioned the activities of the IHH. “The relationship between Mr. [Tayip Recep] Erdogan's government and the IHH ought to be one focus of any international investigation into the incident,” the newspaper stated. “The foundation is a member of the ’Union of Good,’ a coalition that was formed to provide material support to Hamas.”
New York Post columnist Ralph Peters, Zvi Mazel, Israel's former ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and the European Jewish Congress also have demanded a probe of IHH. The EJC also called for putting it on the EU terrorist group list, calling on Spanish Foreign Minister Angel Miguel Moratinos - whose country currently chairs the European Union - and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton to “immediately proscribe the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, otherwise known as the IHH and other similar terrorist front organizations.
“According to a report issued in 2006 by the Danish Institute for International Studies, during the 1990s the IHH maintained links with al-Qaeda and a number of ‘global jihad networks.” After an investigation on reports that the IHH bought weapons, the Turkish government raided IHH offices in Istanbul and found weapons, explosives, and instructions for bomb-making.
The EJC cited a French intelligence report that "in the mid-1990s IHH leader B’ulent Yildirim recruited soldiers for jihad activities in a number of Muslim countries and that the IHH transferred money, firearms, and explosives to jihadists in said countries.”
Newsweek magazine reported that officials in the Obama administration question whether the IHH is a terrorist group. “IHH is sympathetic to Hamas,” one of the officials told Newsweek. “[But] that by itself does not make them terrorists.” Two other counterterrorism officials admitted there is evidence of previous contacts between IHH and radical Muslim groups.
4. IDF Appoints Flotilla Probe Panel
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi late Monday night announced a rare military committee of experts to study the “Sky Winds" naval operation against the flotilla terror activists who tried to reach the embargoed coast of Hamas-controlled Gaza last week.
IDF spokesmen pointed out that the panel differs from an investigative committee and will be comprised of professionals with expertise who were not part of the chain of command that carried out the operation against Muslim terror activists.
Reserve Major Gen. Eiland, who resigned last year from his senior position in the Defense Ministry, will head the team, whose objective is to learn lessons from the counterterrorist operation. The committee has been ordered to present its findin6gs to the Chief of Staff by July 4.
The team's members are reserve officers Brig. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, the former head of the Operations Division, Brig. Gen. Yuval Halamish, former head of the IDF Intelligence and a senior member of the Israeli National Security Council, and Col. Ben Tzion Daabul, the former head of the Israel Navy Operational Branch and a senior figure at the defense establishment's controller's bureau.
The new committee is independent of another possible panel of jurists that the “septet” Inner Cabinet proposed Monday night, depending on its acceptance by the Obama administration. American officials have opposed an investigation of the flotilla United Nations Human Rights Commission, which immediately condemned Israel after the clash on the Mavi Mamara ship.
The proposed panel would include at least one American jurist who would serve as an observer. One high priority issue the panel would study is the legality of the Israeli partial blockade on Gaza, as stipulated in the Oslo Accords.
The proposed panel of jurists would not have the power to investigate IDF officers or the commandoes who carried out the operation on the flotilla. .
5. George Galloway: ‘Break the Embargo’ Via Syria and Jordan
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Former British MP George Galloway, standing alongside a Hizbullah flag in London, announced a new land-sea attempt to break the embargo on Gaza. Iran’s Red Crescent also said it will send ships to Hamas-controlled Gaza to challenge Israel.
Galloway, who recently lost his seat in the House of Commons, protested outside the Israeli embassy this past Saturday and vowed that the land convoy “will leave Britain shortly after the end of Ramadan in September and travel through Europe, down through Turkey and Syria into Jordan".
He said a flotilla of boats also will sail for Gaza under the sponsorship of the Viva Palestina organization, which has been questioned by activists in the United States as being a charity front for a terrorist group. Galloway vowed that the embargo “won't end by resolutions in the [U.N.] Security Council; it won't end by, by G-d it won't end, with ruminations in the Arab League…. We have to break it down ourselves and we will do so."
Galloway previously has visited Gaza in highly publicized visits ostensibly aimed at bringing aid to Gaza residents. Hamas so far has refused to accept truckloads of aid that Israel has tried to transfer to Gaza after unloading it last week from the Turkish-sponsored flotilla, which the Navy escorted to the port in Ashdod.
In Saturday’s protest rally, which was covered by the Iran’s Press TV, he declared that the shots fired in a flotilla clash between the Israeli Navy and terror activists aboard the Mavi Mamara ship “reverberated around the world,” according to a transcript translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
“This is indeed their [Israel’s] Soweto,” he said, referring to the 1976 uprising in South Africa. “Just as Soweto began the countdown to the end of racist, apartheid state of South Africa, so the killings of our martyrs on Monday begin the numbering of the days of the Zionist apartheid state of Israel. Be sure, be sure about that,” he told the demonstrators.
During his speech, some supporters shouted ‘Allahu Akbar,’ (G-d is Great) the Muslim cry often used immediately before terrorist attacks.
"Brothers and sisters, …there can be no peace between the occupied and their occupier," Galloway continued. There can only be eternal struggle between them, struggle until justice has prevailed and freedom has been won, and you are a part of that struggle and freedom will be won." (Photo above: Galloway and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.At left, Galloway in London )
Israel has warned all parties that any attempt to reach Gaza will be blocked in order to prevent any attempt to bring more weapons, terrorists and explosives for Hamas and allied terrorists.
Two days after the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said they could escort a flotilla to Gaza, Iranian Red Crescent director Abdolraoof Adibzadeh said it would send aid would send aid by sea to Egypt and then via the border of Rafiah, a city which straddles Gaza and Egypt.
The Red Crescent last December attempted to send a ship of aid to Gaza, but the Israeli Navy intercepted it.
Last Friday, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for the formation of a "Freedom Flotilla II to break the siege on our brothers and sisters in Gaza. This means we will need to form more flotillas of different nationalities and see them on to Gaza."
He promised that "any Lebanese who is on that flotilla will come home safe and sound.”
6. Obama Official: Netanyahu Waiting for ‘President Palin’
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The Netanyahu government’s attitude to the United States shows it is “waiting for President [Sarah] Palin, an Obama official reportedly told Peter Beinart, writing for the Atlantic Monthly news site. Palin was the Republican candidate for vice president two years ago and is considered a front-running candidate for the next presidential election in 2012.
“As an Obama official once told me about the Netanyahu team, with amazement, ‘these guys are actually waiting for President Palin,’” wrote Beinart, a senior political writer for The Daily Beast and associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York.
In a critical article noting that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and senior government officials preach to the chorus of right-wing and Christian fundamentalist groups in the United States, Beinart cited the American education and background of the Prime Minister and senior aides. Prime Minister Netanyahu learned at a Philadelphia high school and his close adviser Ron Dermer and Ambassador to the United States were born there.
He maintained that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reaction to the flotilla crisis “shows just how out of touch he is with America” while ignoring what Beinart said is the “need to join the age of Obama.”
“This familiarity breeds overconfidence and ignorance,” Beinart argues. “When Netanyahu travels to Washington, he speaks before Jewish audiences that mostly dislike Barack Obama’s Israel policy, even though according to a recent American Jewish Committee survey, American Jews overall support it by a margin of close to two to one. When he’s not speaking to right-wing Jews, he’s speaking to right-wing Christians. And when he’s not speaking to right-wing Christians, he’s speaking to former Bush administration officials who expect to soon be back in their old jobs.”
Beinart also asserted that today’s Arab leaders, such as Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who learned at an American university, support non-violence. Beinart contrasted him with Yasser Arafat, although Fayyad is often careful to be photographed with a picture of Arafat in the background.
7. Rubashkin Verdict: 'Not Guilty' on Child Labor Violations
by Hana Levi Julian
Agriprocessors CEO Sholom Rubashkin has been found “not guilty” on all counts of child labor violations in a case that rocked the American Jewish world of kosher meat production.
Jurors acquitted Rubashkin, former head of the "glatt" kosher meat packing plant, of 67 counts on misdemeanor charges in a verdict reached after two days of deliberations following a month-long trial.
The case revolved around 26 former employees from Mexico and Guatemala who testified that they had worked at the plant as teenagers. Prosecutors said some had operated dangerous machinery and that all had been exposed to dangerous chemicals. The state argued that Rubashkin knew the workers were underage and did not remove them or change the plant's employment practices.
Rubashkin was also charged last November with 91 counts of money laundering, bank, mail and wire fraud. He was convicted on 86 of the charges and is to be sentenced later this month.
Prosecutors recommended that Judge Linda Reade send the 50-year-old Chabad Chassid to jail for the rest of his life. By comparison, the recent conviction of a Toyota executive, following several deaths caused by defective vehicles and the recall of thousands of the company's cars, resulted in no prison time at all.
The plant's financial difficulties came in connection to business loans that were immediately called in by the bank after federal immigration agents raided the Postville, Iowa plant in May 2008. A total of 389 undocumented workers were arrested in one day, forcing the plant to shut down. Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy months later and was subsequently sold.
