Снимка: архив, Reuters

На това му се вика мечтана професия: да бъдеш дегустатор на марихуана. Всяка седмица Уилям Брийтс публикува отчет за дегустациите си на канабис в сп. "Уестуърд" в Денвър, щата Колорадо. От тази равносметка става ясно, че няма само един вид марихуана, а има най-различни сортове трева, носещи екзотични имена като Пурпурна страна или Ананас експрес, пише „Монд“.

Брийтс /това е псевдоним, означаващ трето лице, единствено число на глагола дишам – бел. прев./ през 2010 г. стана първият критик на марихуаната в САЩ. Тогава ставаше дума за марихуана за медицински цели, а Колорадо по онова време беше един от 18-те американски щата, разрешили използването на леката дрога за терапевтични цели.

В един от първите си анализи Брийтс сподели учудването си, че получава пари, за да се друса и че някой възстановява разходите му за седмичната му доза. Неговата работа обаче е свързана и с отговорности.

"Трябва да пиша статии, да спазвам срокове, а имам главни редактори", разказва Брийтс. За Коледа журналистът дори състави списък с препоръчани от него подаръци. Начело в списъка беше електронният джойнт, инхалатор с размерите на химикалка.

Медицинската марихуана имаше голям успех в Колорадо, един щат, чието население не изглежда чак толкова зле /тук затлъстелите хора са най-малко в целите САЩ/. Над 107 000 пациенти от Колорадо получиха карта, която им дава право да консумират марихуана. В щата сега има повече диспансери за канабис отколкото кафенета от веригата Старбъкс.

Продажбите на марихуана се оценяват на 200 милиона долара /около 150 милиона евро/ само за тази година. От тази сума няколко милиона отиват у данъчните власти, които се обогатяват по този начин, дори и ако това не се нрави на съдебните власти. Производителите бяха така благоразумни да работят с властите, за да елиминират черните овце /разрешителното струва 18 000 долара и служи за финансиране на специален отдел, създаден от силите на реда/.

Предвид успеха на марихуаната за медицински цели Колорадо преодоля следващия етап и на 6 ноември легализира притежаването на една унция марихуана /заедно с щата Вашингтон/.

Привържениците на тази идея бяха с 250 000 повече от противниците. Разликата беше по-голяма от преднината на Барак Обама пред Мит Ромни на президентските избори, състояли се на тази дата.

Губернаторът от Демократическата партия Джон Хикънлупър се съобрази с това решение и обнародва закон, който регламентира марихуаната подобно на алкохола, без да крие, че прилагането на този нормативен акт ще бъде сложно. "Според федералния закон марихуаната продължава да си остава незаконна дрога", предупреди той. "Така че не вадете веднага пакетите с Чийтос и Голдфиш /крекерите, които похапват обикновено пушачите на марихуана/", добави той.

Оттогава в щата е настъпила истинска какофония. Местната полиция припомня, че не е натоварена директно с прилагането на федералните закони, но в окръзите, които гласуваха против закона, прокурорите не се отказват от съдебното преследване.

Няколко общини пък избързаха и забраниха местата за продажба на марихуана, разрешавайки същевременно на жителите да притежават 6 растения канабис в затворено помещение.

Правителството на Обама стъпва на хлъзгав терен. В единствения си коментар по въпроса президентът, голям пушач на марихуана като юноша в Хаваи, не искаше да отсъжда прекалено строго. "Имаме си други проблеми за решаване", каза той. И американците са съгласни с него. Шейсет и четири процента от тях смятат, че федералното правителство не трябва да се меси, ако даден щат разреши марихуаната на местно ниво.

В Денвър обаче нещата са достигнали следващ етап. Този на регламентирането. Според закона за легализиране на марихуаната купувачите и потребителите трябва да са навършили 21 години. Забранено е както при тютюна да се пуши на обществено място. И както при алкохола се забранява шофирането под въздействие на канабиса /проект на закон налага ограничението от 5 нанограма тетрахидроканабинол - главната активна съставка на марихуаната - на милилитър кръв/.

В началото на януари парламентът на Колорадо ще започне да проучва условията за регламентиране на пазара. Може би ще ограничи още повече разрешения сега тетрахидроканабинол. А що се касае до транспорта, то служителите на Управлението за безопасност на полетите вече подчертаха, че пътниците могат да пътуват с разрешената лична доза марихуана, но само от Колорадо до Вашингтон.

Перспективата за легализиране обаче породи истинска треска за новото зелено злато. Бизнесът е тук със своите бизнесмени с костюми и вратовръзки и със своя холдинг, чийто акции се котират на борсата.

Това е сферата на бъдещето, написа сп. "Нюзуик" след посещение в складове в предградие на Денвър, където се отглежда тревата, на изкуствена светлина и на фона на класическа или хард рок музика, в зависимост от стила, който стимулира растежа. В сектора вече няма нищо хипарско. Сортовете марихуана носят специалните за сортовете вино наименования, например Reserva privada. В диспансерите тревата се държи в прозрачни буркани, подредени на лавици. В един от тези "дворци на канабиса", които са едновременно почивни центрове и билкови аптеки, човек може да си купи шоколадови десертчета, мюсли, хотдог, но всичките с канабис. Както и газирана напитка, наречена Дикси Иликсърс /осем различни аромата, от праскова до нар/.

Тютюневата промишленост е нащрек, готова да се преориентира. "Филип Морис" е отдал под наем свои складове за целите на отрасъла. Според допитване на Галъп от ноември американците, благосклонно настроени към легализирането на марихуаната /46 процента/, са се удвоили за 15 години. Страната остава разделена, но краят на забраната настъпва, ако се съди по примера на Колорадо.
 

(БТА)
 

Трима полицаи са ранени при престрелка в полицейски участък в градчето Глостър, щата Ню Джърси, съобщи агенция Асошиейтед прес.

Стрелбата е започнал един от задържаните. При престрелката той е убит.
Пострадалите полицаи са били приети в най-близката болница, на единия от тях е направена операция, но няма опасност за живота му.
Мотивите за престъплението, както и останалите подробности по инцидента не се съобщават. /РИА "Новости" /

Партията на израелския премиер води в социологическите проучвания пред вота на 22 януари

Партията на израелския премиер Бенямин Нетаняху "Ликуд" се очаква да спечели парламентарните избори на 22 януари, макар че нараства популярността на крайнодясна партия, противопоставяща се на създаването на палестинска държава, предаде Ройтерс, като се позова на социологически проучвания.

Две от три изследвания сочат, че дясната партия "Ликуд" губи гласове в полза на крайнодясната религиозна партия на Нафтали Бенет "Еврейски дом" и на раздробен левоцентристки блок. Все пак всички предричат появата на силна дясна коалиция в 120-местния парламент, която ще осигури на Нетаняху още един мандат. Според публикувано от ежедневника "Йедиот ахронот" проучване "Ликуд" ще спечели 33 места - с четири по-малко от прогнозите преди месец. Проучване в "Джерузалем пост" показа, че само преди две седмици местата на партията паднаха до 34 от 39. Според изследване на в. "Маарив" "Ликуд" ще получи твърдо 37 места. Без мнозинство в парламента партията на Нетаняху ще трябва да се обедини с други партии за съставяне на правителство.

Премиерът може да избере Бенет и ултраортодоксални партии или да се съюзи с представители на левоцентристкия блок. Във всички проучвания лявата Партия на труда е на второ място, като тя би спечелила 17 или 18 места. Платформата на партията на Бенет отхвърля решение с две държави на спора с палестинците и твърдо подкрепя строителството на еврейски селища на окупирания Западен бряг - проблем, който спря мирните преговори, посочва Ройтерс. Според всички проучвания подкрепата за него расте, като той би спечелил между 12 и 14 места.

По протежението на стената ще бъдат поставени камери за видеонаблюдение и ще бъдат изкопани защитни окопи

Израел е започнал строителството на нова стена по границата си със Сирия, за да се подготви за възможната нестабилност след очакваното падане от власт на президента Башар Асад, предаде информационното издание "Нюз ком".

Целта е да се заздравят съществуващите заграждения по 90-километровата разделителна линия между контролираните от Израел и Сирия части на Голанските възвишения. По протежението на стената ще бъдат поставени камери за видеонаблюдение и ще бъдат изкопани защитни окопи.

Изграждането на новата стена е започнало преди около година. Израелската телевизия "Канал 2" съобщава, че стената се изгражда с изключително бързо темпо и се очаква да бъде завършена до няколко месеца.

Ismail Salami

english.pravda.ru

Terrorism is terrorism and it cannot be defined otherwise unless the interests of one party tilt the scale in disfavor of another and the dichotomization of the terrorists in Syria into good and bad by the West casts doubt on its claim on democracy.

In a somber political tone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out as “absolutely unacceptable” the West’s support for the terrorists in Syria in his exclusive interview with Russia Today.

Lavrov said the West has divided the terrorists into “bad” and “acceptable,” throwing its support behind the latter.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable, and if we follow this logic it might lead us to a very dangerous situation not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world, if our partners in the West would begin to qualify terrorists as bad terrorists and acceptable terrorists,” the Russian foreign minister said.

The dichotomization of such a grave issue by the West is almost nothing new. The delisting of MKO, a long-considered terrorists group, by Washington is in line with this process of redefining well-established concepts and terms by the West.

Paradoxically, the MKO has been supported by Washington even when it was on the terrorist list. They even received their training at the hands of the Bush administration.

In a enlightening article, Seymour Hersh showed that US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained members of the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MKO) at a secretive site in Nevada from 2005 to at least 2007. According to Hersh, MKO members “were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office.”

In a separate interview, a retired four-star general said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of MKO members in Nevada by an American involved in the program. He said that they got “the standard training in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry-that went on for six months. They were kept in little pods.” He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror.

To the dismay and disappointment of many, US State Department decided in September to remove the MKO from the terror lists.

US State Department said its decision to delist the group was made because the group has not committed any terrorist acts for a decade and brashly whitewashed the fact that the group has been to all intents and purposes instrumental in carrying out nuclear assassinations in the last few years in Iran. Although the group has never officially assumed responsibility for the assassinations (which is quite natural), there is solid evidence suggesting that it has been complicit in these terrorist acts.

The terrorist group made unrelenting efforts for years to be removed from the terror list and enlisted a number of Republican and Democratic officials to lobby on its behalf. Instead of paying lobbying fees to them, “it offered honoraria ranging from $10,000-$50,000 per speech to excoriate the US government for its allegedly shabby treatment of the MEK. Among those who joined the group’s gravy train are former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Dershowitz, and former FBI director Louis Freeh. Many of them profess to have little interest in the money they have collected” (Richard Silverstein, The Guardian September 22, 20212).

MKO has long been engaging in a series of sabotage and terrorist activities against the Islamic Republic in league with Israeli intelligence agencies.

In January 2012, Benny Gantz, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, told a parliamentary committee: “For Iran, 2012 is a critical year in combining the continuation of its nuclearisation, internal changes in the Iranian leadership, continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner.”

Just 24 hours after Israeli military chief warned of unnatural events for Iran, Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated in broad daylight. It soon transpired that it had been a joint Mossad-MKO operation.

The MKO has reportedly assassinated over 12,000 Iranian citizens, seven American citizens, and tens of thousands of Iraqi nationals.

Anyhow, the dichotomization of ‘terrorists’ into good and bad is far uglier than any form of apartheid.

A comparatively similar story is being repeated in Syria. Washington has branded the Qatar-funded Al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organization. But why? They are fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad together with other militants in Syria who are chiefly composed of foreign mercenaries. The former are considered terrorists simply because they to a large extent fly in the face of Washington’s policies in Syria. So, it is Washington or the US-led West which decides who is a terrorist and who is not.

Let us not forget that the notorious al Qaeda which is sowing seeds of blind extremism and religious sectarianism in the world was founded and financially supported in the seventies by Washington and CIA in an apparent bid to fight the Soviets. Robin Cook laments the creation of al Qaeda and says, “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia  was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organization would turn its attention to the west.”

This CIA-created Frankenstein’s monster has not changed but has grown up monstrously.

Truly known to be one of the most misinterpreted and misused words, terrorism is defined and refined by the West according to the context where it proves deleterious or beneficial to those who define the term.

stripes.com

Thomas Brennan was still unloading his bags at his first duty station when he saw the other Marines drinking on the catwalks.

“In a way, I expected it,” he said. “A bunch of people partying, having a good time, getting ready to go to war.”

Brennan, now a sergeant who will be medically retired this month, said drinking and partying in the barracks isn’t quite as obvious now. Marines know they will be punished if they get caught drinking underage or drinking hard liquor in the barracks, he said. But that doesn’t mean the drinking has stopped. People just keep their doors closed, he said, and if the platoon sergeant is coming at 6:30 a.m. for inspection, “that means all the evidence is gone by 6:15.”

While some military doctors say they don’t believe troops binge drink or abuse alcohol more than their civilian counterparts, a recent report by the Institute of Medicine called drugs and alcohol abuse among troops a “public health crisis.” A report released by the Army in January reported that 43 percent of active-duty soldiers had admitted binge drinking within a month of the survey and that 67 percent of the binge drinkers were 17 to 25 years old.

The military’s alcohol-soaked culture plays out on weekends and on weeknights, in the apartments of noncommissioned officers, where subordinates guzzle liquor straight from the bottle; at bars in military towns, where recently promoted officers are expected to pick up the tab for the other officers in their command; in hotel rooms packed with underage servicemembers, where men and women wake up with hangovers and few memories of the night before; and at officers clubs and pubs around the world, where commanders buy rounds and rounds of beer to build camaraderie and esprit de corps.

It also shows up in war zones, where alcohol is prohibited but frequently comes hidden in mouthwash bottles or given to troops after battle. Brennan recalls the Marines in his unit — all ages — being given two beers and a shot to celebrate the Marine Corps birthday after the battle of Fallujah.

No one is required to drink — at least not exactly.

A West Point guide on the tradition of “dining in” — a formal dinner for members of a military unit — explains that while toasts “are considered a mandatory part of any dining-in,” participants are not required to drink or sip the wine, just to touch their lips to the glass.

Brennan said his first “mess night,” which is similar to a dining in, had only alcoholic “grog,” and everyone was ordered to drink it during the dozens of toasts. At his most recent mess night, in 2010, there was a nonalcoholic grog option.

“That was the first time in my Marine Corps career I saw a non-alcoholic option,” he said.

Jason Hansman, an Army Reserve veteran who runs the health and mental health programs for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the military’s drinking culture is evident at mandatory social events, unit functions and, on a more informal basis, after work.

“It’s a way to deal with stress,” he said, a way to unwind. The problems arise when it becomes a way to self-medicate for issues like depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

“One of the primary ways we as Americans try to get rid of stress is by drinking,” Hansman said, and that idea is accepted and amplified in the military.

“But when it gets to the point of alcoholism, people don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “People don’t want to tell their friends that they have a problem or seek help.”

Time to decompress

The service branches have recently taken steps to identify and address alcohol and substance abuse. Troops and their families are asked about their alcohol use at every medical appointment. The Army is testing a program that allows confidential alcohol treatment.

The Marine Corps will soon start random alcohol testing of all Marines, with at least two Breathalyzer tests each every year — no matter where the Marine is stationed or deployed. Those with blood alcohol levels of .01 percent or higher will be referred for training and further screening, while those with levels of .04 percent or higher will be referred to a doctor to determine whether he or she is fit for duty.

Navy Capt. Michael Colston, director of mental health policy for the Defense Department’s Office of Clinical and Program Policy, said the training has changed dramatically from when he was first exposed to it in 1986.

Now, he said, it is more frequent and more specific.

“We take advantage of opportunities to tell folks that treatment is available,” he said.

Still, Brian Lewis, a former Marine, said the training didn’t work very well for him. Instead of getting the time he needed to decompress after he returned from a deployment to Iraq in late 2007, he said he was subjected to a week of PowerPoint slides.

“I never truly had time to sit down and deal with events,” said Lewis, who now works with and leads group therapy sessions at a mental health hospital. “I turned to drinking each night. My idea was to force out the emotional meltdown I felt was coming, and it also aided me in getting to sleep.”

Lewis tried working with a substance abuse counselor on base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., but said she told him to “find Jesus.” Finally, he asked his psychiatrist to help him check into rehab. The month there was “incredibly helpful,” he said.

Hansman proposes making mental health training a part of basic skills training, “just like how we learn how to tear down an M-16 and put it back together.”

“One of your greatest weapons — and it sounds cheesy — is your brain,” he said. “That’s what they need to start instilling in soldiers: Take care of yourself. And commanders and NCOs need to make sure that’s OK and afford time for people to actually do that.”

Bonding over beer

In recent years, the military has tried to shift away from alcohol, letting troops know “it’s OK not to drink,” Colston said.

Charles Gould, program manager for the Navy’s substance abuse rehabilitation program, said commanders on Navy ships try to alleviate the emphasis on alcohol during port calls by flying in people from the ports to talk about nonalcoholic recreational activities that sailors can participate in and tours they can take. They’ve also changed the culture at official events, he said, partly by changing the rules so funding can’t be used for alcohol.

Still, the tone varies by command, said Cmdr. Rosemary Malone, the Navy director of psychological health.

Malone said a friend of hers is assigned to a unit in which the Friday night routine is usually “mandatory fun” at a bar — in which officers are expected to throw back a few beers with their co-workers and commander with an eye toward unit cohesion.

“That doesn’t necessarily send the best message,” Malone said. “And what happens with that, too, is your officers who are asked to go, it sends this message to the enlisted (sailors) that, ‘Hey, look at these guys, there’s nothing wrong with that.’ It is important to lead by example, and there’s been that push, especially with alcohol, to try to do that.”

Shoshana Pilip-Florea, deputy public affairs officer for the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, said the culture — at least in the Navy — is definitely changing.

Commanders issue letters of caution to officers who were present when one of their sailors or Marines is involved in an “alcohol-related incident,” to remind them of their responsibility to set the example and prevent those problems.

Still, Hansman said first-line leaders are the key to changing the culture and addressing the problem, not commanders.

“If you’re a staff sergeant in the Army, you know who (in your unit) has a drinking problem, or you’re not a good leader, you’re not doing your job,” he said.

A noncommissioned officer talking to a younger soldier as a mentor and encouraging him to get help, would go a long way, Hansman said.

“We don’t want to stop [people from] drinking,” he said. “We want people to drink responsibly and not drink emotionally.

“It’s not a substitute for therapy.”

High stakes

The statistics cited by the IOM report are particularly grim – the percentage of active-duty servicemembers who reported binge drinking shot from 35 percent in 1998 to 47 percent in 2008. More recent statistics suggest some of the training may be taking hold. Diagnoses of alcohol abuse and dependency have been on a downward slope since 2008 and are now lower than 2000 levels, according to a June report from the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.

In the Air Force, the rate of alcohol-related incidents has dropped from 18.3 per 1,000 airmen in 2008 to 16.2 per 1,000 airmen, according to Maj. Deborah Sirratt, chief of the Air Force’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment clinical program. The number of alcohol-related incidents and driving under the influence of alcohol arrests in the Navy are also now lower than 2002.

Still, the stakes are higher for servicemembers than most civilians, Malone said.

“It’s not just [that] you wake up with a hangover in your bed in college. Their impairments can really result in some bad outcomes,” she said. “You have a job and a responsibility, and that includes watching out for your fellow Marines, fellow sailors, and it includes being able to do your job so you don’t put anybody at risk. Especially over in Afghanistan, you can’t afford to have your mind blurred when you’re in situations where you really have to be at the top of your game.”

http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com

nytimes.com

A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train.

The woman, Erika Menendez, selected her victim because she believed him to be a Muslim or a Hindu, according to Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney.

“The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter’s nightmare,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “Being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train.”

In a statement released by the district attorney’s office, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, “in sum and substance,” as having told the police: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said.

The victim, Sunando Sen, was born in India and, according to a roommate, was raised Hindu.

Mr. Sen “was allegedly shoved from behind and had no chance to defend himself,” Mr. Brown said. “Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant’s actions should never be tolerated by a civilized society.”

Mr. Brown said he had no information on the defendant’s criminal or mental history.

“It will be up to the court to determine if she is fit to stand trial,” he said.

The attack occurred around 8 p.m. on Thursday at the 40th Street-Lowery Street station in Sunnyside.

Mr. Sen, 46, was looking out over the tracks when a woman approached him from behind and shoved him onto the tracks, according to the police. Mr. Sen never saw her, the police said.

 The woman fled the station, running down two flights of stairs and down the street.

 By the next morning, a brief and grainy black-and-white video of the woman who the police said was behind the attack was being broadcast on news programs.

Patrol officers picked up Ms. Menendez early Saturday after someone who had seen the video on television spotted her on a Brooklyn street and called 911, said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department. She was taken to Queens and later placed in lineups, according to detectives. Earlier police reports gave Ms. Menendez’s first name as Erica.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Friday that, according to witnesses’ accounts, there had been no contact on the subway platform between the attacker and the victim immediately before the fatal shove.

The case was the second this month involving someone being pushed to death in a train station. In the first case, Ki-Suck Han, 58, of Elmhurst, Queens, died under the Q train at the 49th Street and Seventh Avenue station on Dec. 3. Naeem Davis, 30, has been charged with second-degree murder in that case. A lawyer for Mr. Davis said his client had been trying to push Mr. Han away after an altercation.

Ar Suman, one of three roommates who shared a small first-floor apartment with Mr. Sen in Elmhurst, said that Mr. Sen, who after years of saving money, had opened a small copying business this year on the Upper West Side..

“He was a very educated person and quite nice,” Mr. Suman said. “He never had a problem with anyone.”

http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com

ed note–anyone who has tried to carry on a rational, productive conversation with someone from within the pro-Israel community knows what an impossible feat it can be. Is it any wonder when one considers how much part of the collective mental energy the whole business of the ‘Holocaust’ is? It is their essence, the center of their being, and if it ever appears that it is about to be supplanted with something more sane, then those who write the mental software within the Jewish community make sure that something ‘new and improved’ is introduced–such as this–in order to keep it where it has to be if the Jewish community is to remain in the mentally-paralyzed state that it is.    

ynet

The heroic three-week uprising mounted by Jews held captive at the Warsaw Ghetto is soon to become the subject of a high school quiz tournament meant to encourage teens to learn about the Holocaust.

Esther Farbstein, the director of the Holocaust Research Center at Jerusalem College and the program’s architect, hopes that the contest would help high school students embrace their Jewish heritage much like the trips to Poland’s concentration camps have done.

Some 400 10th graders from dozens of schools across the country are slated to take part in the multi-part tournament. Its final round is to be held in April 2013, on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Participants will have to become experts not only on the annals of the battle but also on details pertaining to daily life at the ghetto, as well as notable figures and Jewish traditions observed during the Shoah.

If it manages to generate positive response, the pilot program is to be expanded to a larger number of schools the following year

Haaretz

The last of a group of rabbis arrested in New Jersey’s largest-ever corruption sting was sentenced Thursday, in a case that sent shockwaves through Orthodox Jewish enclaves from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn.

Lavel Schwartz was one of five rabbis and more than 40 people arrested in July 2009 in a massive money-laundering and political corruption sting that included Jewish leaders, New Jersey politicians and a man convicted of trafficking in human organs.

Schwartz was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Trenton to 12 months and one day in prison.

The 61-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., resident pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy last May, admitting he conspired to launder illegal proceeds through purported religious charities run by his brother, Rabbi Mordchai Fish.

Fish, who was arrested in the same sting, was sentenced in July to nearly four years in federal prison after pleading guilty.

Prosecutors say Fish and Schwartz laundered money for Solomon Dwek, a disgraced real estate and admitted Ponzi schemer who became a government informant in 2006 after his arrest on a $50 million bank fraud. Dwek told Fish, Schwartz and others in the sting that the money he needed laundered was proceeds from the sale of illegal handbags or assets he needed to hide from bankruptcy proceedings.

Fish and Schwartz would take Dwek’s checks and deposit them with a religious charity Fish controlled, then give Dwek back cash minus a 10 percent commission, according to court papers.

Schwartz admitted to engaging in ten transactions with Dwek, converting between $200,000 and $400,000 in checks into a similar amount of cash, minus the 10 percent fee.

Dwek is now serving a six-year prison term for the bank fraud charge that lead to his becoming a government cooperator.

About three-quarters of the defendants arrested in 2009 have pleaded guilty or been convicted.

jpost.com 

The United Nations envoy for Syria warned Saturday that the country’s civil war could plunge the entire region in chaos by sending an unbearable stream of refugees into neighboring countries, but his talks in Moscow brought no sign of progress toward settling the crisis.

Lakhdar Brahimi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov both said after their meeting that the 21-month Syrian crisis can only be settled through talks, while admitting that the parties to the conflict have shown no desire for compromise. Neither has hinted at a solution that would persuade the government and the opposition to agree to a ceasefire and sit down for talks on political transition.

Brahimi, who arrived in Moscow on one-day trip following his talks in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad earlier this week, voiced concern about the escalation of the conflict, which he said is becoming “more and more sectarian.”

Brahimi warned that “if you have a panic in Damascus and if you have a million people leaving Damascus in a panic, they can go to only two places – Lebanon and Jordan,” and that those countries could break if faced with half a million refugees.

Brahimi said that “if the only alternative is really hell or a political process, then we have got all of us to work ceaselessly for a political process.”

Russia has been the main supporter of Assad’s regime since the uprising began in March 2011, using its veto right at the UN Security Council along with China to shield its last Mideast ally from international sanctions.

Lavrov reaffirmed that Russia would continue to oppose any UN resolution that would call for international sanctions against Assad and open the way for a foreign intervention in Syria. And while he again emphasized that Russia “isn’t holding on to Bashar Assad,” he added that Moscow continues to believe that the opposition demand for his resignation as a precondition for peace talks is “counterproductive.”

“The price for that precondition will be the loss of more Syrian lives,” Lavrov said.

Both Brahimi and Lavrov insisted that peace efforts must be based on a peace plan approved at an international conference in Geneva in June.

The Geneva plan called for an open-ended cease-fire, a transitional government to run the country until elections, and the drafting of a new constitution, but it was a non-starter with the opposition because on Russian insistence it left the door open for Assad being part of the transition process and didn’t contain any mention of possible UN sanctions.

Brahimi said that while some “little adjustments” could be made to the original plan, “it’s a valued basis for reasonable political process.”

With the opposition offensive gaining momentum, there was little hope that the initiative would have more chance for success than it had when it was approved.

english.al-akhbar.com

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said on Saturday his country supported the Syrian revolution and that President Bashar al-Asasd’s administration had no place in Syria’s future.

Mursi said Egypt’s priority was to halt the bloodshed and to work, with “Arab, regional and international support and consensus”, for a political solution that would allow “the Syrian people to replace the current regime” with elected leaders.

“All of that while preserving the unity of Syria,” Mursi, an Islamist, said during a televised speech to Egypt’s Shura Council, or upper house of parliament. “There is no place for the current regime in the future of Syria.”

Assad has been losing ground to rebels waging a 21-month-old uprising. Egyptians ousted their longtime authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, in a popular revolt in February 2011. Mursi won office in a free election earlier this year.

“The revolution of the Syrian people, which we support, will go forward, God willing, to realise its goals of freedom, dignity and social justice,” Mursi added.

His proposal received strong backing from Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister who said negotiations were the only way to end the fighting.

“The alternative to a peaceful solution is bloody chaos. The longer it continues, the greater its scale – and the worse things get for all,” he said.

After five days of negotiations with the regime in Damascus, Mr Brahimi claimed to have the outlines of a power-sharing pact but his proposals were instantly rejected by the main opposition council.

It has been angered by the suggestion that Mr Assad could stay on as figurehead despite the deaths of 45,000 in the fighting.

The Christmas mission by Mr Brahimi, who has kept a low profile for months, alongside a “softening” of Russia’s hardline support of Assad’s regime, has lifted hopes for a diplomatic end to Syria’s civil war.

Mr Brahimi said the regime must make once unthinkable concessions to the leaders of the 21-month uprising.

“Change should not be cosmetic – the Syrian people need and require real change, and everyone understands what that means,” said Mr Brahimi, the joint UN-Arab League envoy.

“We need to form a government with all powers … which assumes power during a period of transition. That transition period will end with elections.”

Speaking before he prepared to fly to Moscow on Friday, Mr Brahimi also warned, however, that there must not be a “collapse of the state or the state’s institutions” during any power-sharing period.

Yasser Tabbara, a spokesperson for Syria Opposition Coalition, said the terms outlined by the envoy were unacceptable.

“It has been the position of the coalition that we need to find a quick solution on the issue of Bashar al-Assad stepping down. The priority of the Coalition is to preserve lives and finish this with the least casualties. However, the plans proposed by Lakhdar Brahimi are out of touch with reality,” he said. “The plan takes us back months and months, if not years.”

Moaz al-Khatib, the Coalition leader, flatly dismissed Mr Brahimi’s proposals in a Facebook posting earlier this week.

Moscow has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity to promote power-sharing and its view that the conflict does not have a military solution.

Mr Lavrov met on Thursday with Faisal Mekdad, the Syrian deputy foreign minister and Mr Assad’s cousin, to press Damascus to co-operate with Mr Brahimi.

Western diplomats remain doubtful of the shift in Russia’s stance.

One European official said there was “nothing that gave credence” to suggestions that Russian was moving closer to a joint approach with the US and other opposition backers.

Grassroots rebel supporters believe the Brahimi mission is a distraction at time when fighters have advanced to the gates of the presidential palace in Damascus.

“As long as the regime is still bombarding its people with missiles, how can we accept Assad hanging on,” said a British-based activist from Homs. “We will change Assad even if it does take longer than we hope.”

Alarm over Syria’s disintegration led to crisis talks between Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister and King Abdullah of Jordan over the fate of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

The meeting – the first between the two leaders in two-and-a-half years – was confirmed in anonymous briefings to the Israeli media after it was initially reported by the London-based Arabic newspaper, Al-Qods Al-Arabi.

It is believed Mr Netanyahu travelled to Jordan without the knowledge of Israeli diplomats.

Mr Netanyahu publicly predicted the collapse of Mr Assad’s regime this week and warned of “implications” for Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons.

Israel fears the weapons could fall into the hands of Islamists fighting Mr Assad or the Lebanese Shia group, Hizbollah, an ally of Iran.

Mr Netanyahu’s government has twice sought Jordan’s co-operation to attack the weapons facilities, according to the Atlantic magazine.

“Reports of this meeting in the press are quite credible,” one Israeli official told The Daily Telegraph. “It makes a lot of sense to have top-level co-ordination [between Israel and Jordan] about non-conventional weapons, which are a matter of great concern here.”

guardian.co.uk

The Syrian government’s former spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, is co-operating with US intelligence officials who helped him flee to Washington almost one month ago, the Guardian understands.

Makdissi became one of the most prominent regime defectors in late November when he left Beirut after first crossing from Syria. The Guardian reported at the time that he had fled for the US, possibly in return for asylum. This has now been confirmed.

The latest development comes after almost a month of debriefings, which have helped intelligence officials build a picture of decision-making in the inner sanctum of the embattled regime.

Syrian officials have denied that Makdissi has defected, saying he had instead taken three months of administrative leave. However, at the time of his departure, Hezbollah’s television network in Beirut – not known to be out of step with the regime line – announced that the spokesman’s views had strayed from official positions and that he had been fired.

The state department did not respond immediately to requests for comment, and the CIA was unwilling to discuss the story.

Makdissi is the most senior member of the regime to defect since Syria’s prime minister, Riyad Hijab, fled with his family to Jordan in August. While not a member of the inner sanctum, Makdissi was central to shaping the regime’s message and privy to many of its most sensitive communications.

Makdissi, a former senior diplomat at the Syrian embassy in London, worked closely with foreign minister, Walid al-Mouallem and information minister, Adnan Mahmoud, whom he dealt with regularly as security steadily decayed over the past 18 months.

Despite the worsening situation, the Syrian security establishment has remained largely intact and committed to defeating the armed insurrection that aims to topple it. Key decision makers in Syria are largely drawn from the Alawite sect, to which Bashar al-Assad belongs.

Intelligence officials in states that are hostile to the regime are not known to have close links to the inner sanctum. Until recently, debriefings of Hijab and former general, Manaf Tlass, both Sunni Muslims, have been instrumental in shaping western views of how decisions are taken in Syria and the influence of foreign stakeholders.

Details of Makdissi’s journey to the US are not yet known, although Britain has previously denied that he arrived in the UK after fleeing Beirut. Lebanese officials had previously suggested he was either staying with his family in a Christian area near Beirut or had been captured and returned to Syria.

uruknet.com

“For Sale” signs placed on used cars around the city with phone numbers lead potential buyers to a recorded message profanely insulting Palestinians and the Prophet Muhammad.

Hamza Mahmoud, a resident of the Old City, told Ma’an that he and several others tried to call numbers they found on cars for sale and they heard racist insults and curses.

A Ma’an reporter tried one of the numbers and was led to a profane recording by a male speaking Arabic in a Hebrew accent. That number was 054-6032825.

Jerusalem-based journalist Jihad Zghayyer told Ma’an that he received complaints from residents saying they were tricked into calling in an attempt to buy cars, and the result was the same.

He highlighted that it was common to see such cars with “For Sale” signs on the main road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem where Palestinian workers frequently travel.

Palestinian residents complained about what they described as a racist phenomenon to lawyers and Arab members of Knesset.

Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri told Ma’an she was unaware of the issue and said the authorities would act only if they received a complaint from residents.

Haaretz

Vandals spray-painted graffiti on gravestones in a cemetery and poured a flammable liquid on a church in northern Israel earlier this week, it was discovered on Thursday.

The church is the only remaining structure in the town of Baram in northern Israel, whose Arab-Christian population was forced to flee in 1948. 

The committee of the abandoned town said that this was not the first time unknown suspects have broken into the cemetery and vandalized the graves. The word “revenge” and a Star of David were spray-painted at the entrance of the church.

The committee explained that in the last few days families came to the site to celebrate Christmas and that no signs of vandalism were discovered. Only on Thursday was the vandalism discovered so that the attack must of taken place during the night of Wednesday and Thursday.

Camal Yaakub, a member of committee, said an official complaint was lodged with the Safed Police, but that similar complaints were lodged in the past, and no one has been arrested.

“This is a heinous act that epitomizes criminal extremism and it cannot be ignored…We plan to contact the Vatican and complain about the repeated attack on this holy site without any proper action on the part of the police,” Yaakub said.

The site is gated and kept under lock and key in order to protect it from exactly these kinds of attacks after similar incidents that took place in the past.

The committee said that they hoped that this time the Israel would do its duty and protect the holy site by finding and arresting those responsible.

jpost.com

If you look through the bars of the locked gate at 14 Prozna Street in Poland’s capital, a place that was the center of the Jewish ghetto 70 years ago, you may spot a small statue of a figure kneeling in prayer. That figure is Adolf Hitler.

“Amen,” a new exhibition by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which includes the praying Hitler, has caused outrage among the Jewish community in Poland as well as among Jewish and Catholic organizations worldwide that regard the exhibit as extremely offensive.

Cattelan, 52, an Italian-born sculptor living in New York, is known for his controversial work. One of the most famous is “La Nona Ora” (“The Ninth Hour”) depicting Pope John Paul II being struck down by a meteorite.

Last month, Cattelan opened a show at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

Most of the exhibits are displayed inside the museum, which is elsewhere in Warsaw. Only the praying Hitler has been placed in the middle of the former Jewish ghetto.

The Center for Contemporary Art has a description of Cattelan’s exhibition on its website: “In a Warsaw ravaged by the cataclysmic 20th century, Maurizio Cattelan’s works take on a particular dimension; they become an artistic commentary on the Catholic credo. What, in fact, does love thy enemy mean? What does forgive those who trespass against us mean? Evoking the traumas of history, they deal with memory and forgetfulness, good and evil.”

Cattelan’s decision to put the Hitler figure in the former Jewish ghetto has angered many in Poland, Jews and Christians alike. The organizers of the international film festival Human Docs being held in Poland and dedicated to human rights, have decided to hold a debate on the question “What’s Hitler up to in Poland? The moral impact of provocation in art.”

Historians and artists have tried to explain Cattelan’s decision to place the figure in one of the most sensitive places for Jews in Poland and to resolve the question of whether it is a legitimate art exhibit or an offensive provocation. Some said the kneeling figure appears to be vulnerable and ambiguous. On one hand, the hero is an icon of evil; on the other, the view of Hitler kneeling may evoke sympathy in the viewer. Viewing this object, they say, provokes mixed feelings.

A few days after the Hitler figure was placed in the yard of 14 Prozna Street, someone covered its face and hands in an attempt to obscure its identity, perhaps fearing the reaction it would produce.

Another sign of the strong emotions the figure has raised is that, despite there being no public access to the exhibit, the museum’s management has mounted 24-hour security around it.

Maria Poprzecka, an art historian, said: “Cattelan is a provocateur, to some extent, but it is definitely not a blasphemer. He is one of a few artists who have won fame not because of their artistic activity, but because of scandal caused by politicians.

“In the exhibition ‘Amen’ he is trying to deal with such subjects as suffering, martyrdom and death. That’s the reason his other works present a crucified woman and a wounded horse.”

The controversial exhibit has aroused great interest, and hundreds arrive every day to look though the gate at the praying figure. Two women, both aged 81, read about the exhibit in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and came to see it with their own eyes. “We want to believe that the statue is intended to show Hitler repenting or apologizing for his evil actions,” they said.

Another passerby wondered: “Why did the artists decide to put a praying child here? Is he praying for those who lived here? It must be a Christian, because Jews do not pray on their knees.”

When she heard that the “child” was in fact Hitler, she said angrily: “Hitler did not have the right to ask for forgiveness.”

Haaretz

Hawaii’s governor named his on Wednesday Jewish lieutenant governor, Brian Schatz, to replace the late Daniel Inouye in the U.S. Senate.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced the appointment after receiving a list of three candidates from the state Democratic Party earlier in the day. The other candidates were U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa and Esther Kiaaina, a deputy director in the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Inouye died December 17 of respiratory complications at the age of 88. He had sent Abercrombie a letter that day, saying he would like Hanabusa, 61, to succeed him.

“Sen. Inouye conveyed his final wish to Gov. Abercrombie. While we are very disappointed that it was not honored, it was the governor’s decision to make,” Jennifer Sabas, Inouye’s chief of staff, said in a statement. “We wish Brian Schatz the best of luck.”

The White House said Schatz was set to fly to Washington on Wednesday night aboard Air Force One, which was bringing President Barack Obama home early from his Christmas vacation as Congress considers what to do about the so-called fiscal cliff.

Schatz will serve until an election is held in 2014, when there will be held a general election for the seat. Had Hanabusa been appointed, a special election would have been needed to fill her seat.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had urged Abercrombie to name Inouye’s successor before the end of the year. Schatz could be sworn in as early as this week, which would make him Hawaii’s senior senator heading into the new Congress, which begins January 3.

Sen. Daniel Akaka is retiring at the end of this Congress, after 22 years in the Senate. Democratic Rep. Mazie Hirono was elected in November to succeed him.

Schatz, 40, is a former state representative and a former chairman of the state Democratic Party. He also was a leader of Obama’s campaign in Hawaii in 2008.

In making his case before the party’s central committee Wednesday, he said he understood the importance of seniority in the Senate and said that if he was appointed, he would strive to make serving in the Senate his life’s work.
Schatz brings to 11 the number of U.S. Senators who identify as Jewish.

 

calgaryherald.com

The Defence Department has quietly removed from the Internet a report into the killing of a Canadian military officer by Israeli forces, a move the soldier’s widow says is linked to the Conservative government’s reluctance to criticize Israel for any wrongdoing.

Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener and three other United Nations observers were killed in 2006 when the Israeli military targeted their small outpost with repeated artillery barrages as well as an attack by a fighter aircraft.

IN early 2008, the Defence Department posted on its website a 67-page report from the Canadian Forces board of inquiry into the killing. The board found Hess-von Kruedener’s death was preventable and caused by the Israeli military.

But less than a year later, the report was quietly removed from the DND website and has since remained off-limits to the public through official channels.

Hess-von Kruedener’s widow, Cynthia, told the Citizen that the decision to remove the document from the public domain was made by DND and the government in an effort to protect Israel’s reputation.

“They don’t want people reading about it,” she said. “It’s embarrassing to the Israelis and, as we know, Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper has given his unconditional support to the Israelis.”

The circumstances surrounding Hess-von Kruedener’s death and the attempts by DND and the Canadian Forces to limit access to the board of inquiry report are outlined in an article in the new edition of Legion magazine, an Ottawa-based publication sent to members of the Royal Canadian Legion.

DND originally refused to provide the magazine with the previously public board of inquiry report, claiming the publication needed to use the access-to-information law to obtain a copy.

Legion magazine obtained a copy of the report by other means. It has now posted the report on its website.

In an email sent to the Citizen, DND confirmed it had removed the board of inquiry report from its website in early 2009 for security reasons “after it was discovered that some of its content is considered protected information.”

That explanation, however, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as Legion magazine compared both the 2008 version and the 2012 copy issued under the access law, discovering that the latest version actually contains more information than the original.

The Legion article also raises questions about the disappearance from DND of a United Nations report into the killing. The document was used by the Canadian Forces for its board of inquiry and the UN report is cited in the Canadian report. But DND’s access to information branch claims it has done a thorough search of records and no such report could be found.

DND could not comment on claims by defence sources that hard copies of the board of inquiry report were also removed from military libraries.

The death of Hess-von Kruedener, a UN observer assigned to the Israeli-Lebanon border, has largely been forgotten.

The Israeli attack on the UN outpost began shortly after noon on July 25, 2006, prompting the UN deputy secretary general to almost immediately call the Israeli ambassador to the UN and complain.

Several hours later another artillery barrage hit the outpost. That was followed by another 16 artillery rounds hitting the base, destroying most of the buildings above ground and blowing the door off the underground bunker where Hess-von Kruedener and his fellow peacekeepers had taken refuge.

At one point, a general in charge of UN operations in Lebanon called the Israeli liaison officer and told him, “You’re killing my people.” Previously, the Israelis halted such attacks when protests were received.

Later that day, an Israeli fighter pilot directed a precision-guided bomb through the door of the UN bunker. The blast from the massive bomb killed the four men.

Gen. Rick Hillier, then the chief of the defence staff, later described the major’s death as a “tragic accident.”

Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener told the Citizen that the Canadian Forces didn’t inform her of her husband’s death. Instead, she learned he had been killed from a television news report.

The Legion article notes the Israelis had deliberately targeted the base. The base had been included in the Israeli military’s “targeting list” which they acknowledged was an error on their part.

Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener also takes issue with some of the remarks made by Harper about her husband. At the time of the killing, Harper questioned what Hess-von Kruedener was doing at the UN outpost.

She said the answer is simple: He was doing his job as ordered by the Canadian Forces and government of Canada. “Instead of asking why this happened, (Harper) turned it onto an innocent UN peacekeeper,” she said.

On Sept. 19, 2006, then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote Harper, expressing his deep regret. Harper wrote back on Nov. 20, 2006, thanking Olmert for his “expression of condolences, for the Israeli government’s rapid investigation of the incident and for information provided to Canadian officials.”

However, the Legion magazine article noted that the Israelis refused to answer questions from Canada about the attack.

Read more:http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/removes+report+killing+Canadian+soldier+Israeli+forces/7742746/story.html#ixzz2GDvc2KVX

Times of Israel

In a fierce excoriation that brought Israel’s subterranean racial tension to the surface for the first time in this election season, Aryeh Deri of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party on Thursday lashed out at the Yisrael Beytenu party’s chief, Avigdor Liberman, claiming that he and his Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list were on a crusade against Sephardi politicians.

“Once the people’s party, Likud-Beytenu has become an arrogant and smug party that represents Russians and white people,” said Deri, responding to an interview in which Liberman derided Shas and asserted that the Interior and Housing ministries wouldn’t remain in the hands of Shas’s top MKs, but would rather be given to Likud-Beytenu parliamentarians.

Liberman — who recently resigned as foreign minister to fight corruption allegations but remains No.2 on the joint Likud-Beytenu list — had reserved a special barb for the ambitious Deri, a charismatic ex-convict who’s in the midst of a political comeback, saying wryly: “Aryeh shouldn’t be a minister. It’s beneath him.”

In his response, Deri suggested that the October retirement of popular Likud party member and former communications minister Moshe Kahlon was due to racial concerns.

“They humiliated Kahlon,” he said — an apparent reference to Ashkenazi elitists in the Likud — “and now they want to humiliate the rest of the Sephardi ministers. This should be a wake-up call for all Sephardim.”

According to Deri, Liberman was calling the shots in the joint Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list.

“Today the real boss of Likud-Beytenu was revealed,” Deri said. “Yisrael Beytenu has staged a hostile takeover of Likud. Only a strong Shas will safeguard a Sephardi presence in the next Netanyahu government.”

thestate.com

The charismatic new leader of Israel’s Jewish religious right is siphoning a large chunk of votes from the prime minister’s party, according to polls ahead of Jan. 22 elections, and if the trend continues, the high-tech millionaire and former commando could emerge as a powerful voice opposing Palestinian statehood.

Though Naftali Bennett, the 40-year-old son of American immigrants, is a classic religious hard-liner, comfortable in the settlements he champions, he has been able to draw on his military and entrepreneurial background to widen his appeal to secular circles as well. His sprawling, modern home in Raanana, an upscale suburb of Tel Aviv, is far from the barren hilltops of the West Bank settlers who form the backbone of his support.

Polls show his Jewish Home party becoming the third-largest in the upcoming parliament, behind Netanyahu’s Likud-Yisrael Beitenu bloc and the centrist Labor. As Bennett’s party gains ground, it has been steadily eating into Netanyahu’s still-formidable lead. Several of Netanyahu’s recent moves, including a surge in settlement construction announcements, have been attributed to the “Bennett factor.”

Philosophically, Bennett and his party would fit easily into a hardline government of the type Netanyahu is expected to put together, though the political newcomer and the Israeli leader – his former boss and political mentor – have a history of bad blood that deepened over this past week.

Bennett’s campaign has enlivened an otherwise drab election season. Recent polls suggest the Jewish Home party could add two to four seats to the 11 it already holds in the 120-member parliament. Bennett says his goal is to broaden the base of his party by appealing to centrist, secular voters alongside the traditional backing of settlers and their supporters.

His political message, however, doesn’t sound centrist.

“My positions are very clear: I never hide the fact that I categorically oppose a Palestinian state inside our country,” Bennett told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. In the terminology of religiously devout hard-liners, “our country” means not only Israel, but also the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the Palestinians hopes to incorporate into a future state, with east Jerusalem as its capital.

Bennett takes pride in his straight-talking campaign and accuses other politicians – including Netanyahu – of being “ambiguous.”

Bennett, a father of four, also has an image perhaps more palatable to the Tel Aviv hipsters he hopes to target: Success on their secular terms.

After serving in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, Bennett made a fortune in the largely secular world of high technology. In 1999, he co-founded Cyota, an anti-fraud software company that he sold in 2005 to U.S.-based RSA Security for $145 million. He says he is living in Raanana, rather than a settlement, for unspecified “personal reasons.”

“There is a huge gap between his appearance and his content,” said Amnon Abramovitch, a veteran political commentator for Israel’s Channel 2 TV. “He looks very modern, he speaks very liberally, but his messages are very extreme.”

Political columnist Sima Kadmon said Bennett’s clean, family image and modern lifestyle blind some of his supporters to his hard-line positions.

“Quite a few secular young men and women have fallen into that honey trap,” she wrote.

Bennett rejects the barbs, saying his positions are clear and distinctly hawkish: He opposes a Palestinian state, the uprooting of settlements and territorial concessions that most of the world deem necessary for peace. He’s presented a plan that calls for the annexation of much of the West Bank territory Israel currently controls.

“I say the same thing everywhere I go,” he insists. “The mistake is to categorize me as extreme.”

Bennett turned to politics after the sale of Cyota and served as Netanyahu’s chief of staff for two years. They parted ways after a mysterious falling out he won’t discuss but that Israeli media have linked to Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, who wields great influence over the prime minister’s inner circle.

He and Netanyahu clashed again when Bennett, then leader of the mainstream settler group, fiercely opposed Netanyahu’s decision in late 2009 to slow settlement construction for 10 months in a U.S.-led effort to encourage Palestinians to renew peace talks.

This year, he took his positions to the national political arena. Two months ago, he captured the chairmanship of the stodgy Jewish Home party from its colorless leader and set out to transform the party’s image. Bennett took his campaign everywhere from remote West Bank settlement outposts to trendy bars in Tel Aviv.

The strategy worked, and Jewish Home started gaining in the polls.

Evidence that Bennett was a political force to be reckoned with came this week when Israel’s top-rated comedy show, “A Wonderful Country,” introduced a new character, iBennett: a user-friendly app that shows a broadly smiling Bennett-lookalike making extremist political pronouncements – described as bugs in the system.

Netanyahu hit back after Bennett told a TV interviewer last week that he would personally prefer to go to jail than to obey an order to evict Jewish settlers from their homes under a peace deal, as happened when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

The prime minister summoned all three major Israeli TV stations for rare domestic interviews and announced that anyone who preached insubordination in the military would not be welcome in his next government. Netanyahu’s camp then followed up with a campaign of posters and newspaper ads depicting Bennett as irresponsible and extremist.

Bennett says his comments have been distorted, that he wasn’t preaching insubordination but voicing his own personal opinion – one that resonates widely within the religious right, which was traumatized by the Gaza pullout.

“I think people are looking for the truth and are drawn to real people who speak at eye level, even if sometimes they make mistakes,” he said. “It was an unfortunate comment, but aside from wars I don’t think the prime minister ever calls all the TV stations to him at once. The public isn’t buying this spin and rejects it entirely.”

Despite the campaign conflicts, Bennett insists he can work with Netanyahu.

“The question is who will be by his side,” he said. “Netanyahu will drive the bus, but I refuse that he be alone at the wheel. I’ll be there to put a hand on the wheel and influence where it goes.”

МОЛИТВА КЪМ АНГЕЛА-ХРАНИТЕЛ, т.е. ПАЗИТЕЛ:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=493437714019791&set=a.247351968628368.69481.100000606992567&type=1&theater

Молитва към Ангела-Хранител

 Светий Ангеле,
 който покровителствуваш окаяната ми душа
 и изпълнения ми със страсти живот,
 не изоставяй мене грешния,
 нито отстъпвай от мене, заради невъздържанието ми.
 Не давай място на лукавия демон да ме завладее
 чрез насилване на това смъртно тяло.
 Укрепи бедствуващата ми и слаба ръка
 и ме настави по пътя към спасение.