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French Defence Minister: Sharon`s call for French Jews to emigrate to Israel is `unjust, excessive, inappropriate` (Reuters)

'Disengagement operates on the principle that Israel must suit its own convenience first, withdrawing from territory that has become a strategic liability, while consolidating control over territory that remains an asset" is Bret Stephens's reasoned, if at times tortuous, description of why he changed his mind and today supports withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The Jerusalem Post's editor explains, in two long articles, that he did not reach this conclusion easily. "I'd rather Israel seize its chances, on its own terms, than wait for winds to blow fair in Ramallah or Iraq or Brussels or Turtle Bay." Stephens has lost...

On a dank March morning in 1948, Esther Cailingold telephoned me. She sounded jolly. "I've just interviewed a volunteer who says you can vouch for him," she chortled through the static. "Also, I've got personal news. See you at Caf Atara, noon?" "Atara? They've no menu. I'm starving.""Don't fret. I'll scrape together some leftovers from the Schneller mess." Esther Cailingold had arrived from England a couple of years before, to teach at the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem. Senior to me by a few years, she had recently signed up with the Hagana full time and was stationed at...

Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has called on rabbis in the Diaspora to encourage immigration to Israel. Speaking at a rabbinical conference outside Paris on Wednesday, Yosef said that in his opinion, there is no future to Jewish spiritual life outside Israel. Some 300 European rabbis are meeting under heavy police protection, in view of growing anti-Semitism in France. France's chief rabbi, Yosef Sitruk, said earlier that Jewish life in the Diaspora should remain independent until the coming of the Messiah.

Here are some of the reasons I love Israel, in no particular order: The clock radio rouses me with "Shema Yisrael," the Jewish pledge of allegiance, and the weather is nearly always fine. On Memorial Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day, the act of remembering halts traffic. The Israel Prize recognizes lifetime achievement for actresses and rabbis, scientists and singers. Mother's Day is celebrated on the yahrzeit of Henrietta Szold, who organized Youth Aliya with Recha but who had no children of her own. All citizens have health care, and the fight is on to get coverage for foreign residents. If...

I have a confession to make: I'm in love with the Land of Israel. After nearly 18 years living here, through two intifadas, two Gulf Wars, the ups and downs (mostly downs) of Israel's turbulent economy, and a two-and-a-half-year wave of terror which fills me with dread and heartbreak, my ardor for Israel has not abated. Why do I love Israel? Because I have been to half the world's holy sites. I have meditated in Varanasi, immersed in the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, visited the Vatican, circumambulated the Buddhist stupa in Sarnath, bathed in the waters of Lourdes,...

On a hot June day in 1944, my mother dragged her starving and emaciated body toward one of the many electrified fences in Auschwitz. A lifetime ago, it seemed, she and her family had stood face to face with Mengele. His cursed finger had pointed my mother's family to the left and to death. She had been sent to the right, to slave labor and, by the grace of God, to life. Now, on this hot and soul-numbing June day, she found herself near one of the fences dividing two parts of the Auschwitz camp, longing to be with her...

The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain delivered this speech in London on Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh Iyar, 5762, (April, 13, 2002). Its relevance still rings loud and clear. "Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has seen anything like it? Can a country be born in a day? Or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet Zion laboured and gave birth to her children immediately. Shall I bring to labour and not give delivery? says God. Shall I bring to birth and then close the womb? Says your God . . . As a mother comforts her...

The nation stood in silence for two minutes Monday morning, as sirens wailed marking Holocaust Remembrance Day in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Traffic came to a standstill nationwide as drivers stopped their cars and stood in attention, while workers exited their stores, and passersby stood motionless in their place. In a day filled with somber ceremonies, the names of the Jews known to have been killed in the Holocaust were read out at Yad Vashem and at the Knesset, as the Israeli flag flew at half-staff nationwide. Throughout the day, as the various...

Close to 7,000 Jewish youth are taking part in the annual March of the Living in Poland today. The three-kilometer march between Birkenau and Auschwitz is a commemoration of the Death Marches the Nazis forced Jews to take along that very route in the 1940's. Thousands of Jews perished in three of these Death Marches during the Holocaust years. The March of the Living, a loud proclamation that "Am Yisrael Chai" - the People of Israel still live - takes place each year on Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day. Most of the young people taking part in the march...

Young Jews from around the world joined Holocaust survivors on Monday in a march at the former death camp of Auschwitz to mourn millions of Jews killed during World War II by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Some 7,000 people from Israel and more than 20 other countries marched some three kilometres (two miles) from Auschwitz to the remains of crematoria at the nearby Birkenau camp on Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day. The route is followed every year in the March of the Living by young Jews, Poles and elderly survivors to remember the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust,...

A total of 965,000 new immigrants have come to Israel since 1989, according to a report by the Absorption Ministry released on Monday. The southern port city of Ashdod absorbed the largest number of immigrants in the last 15 years. Some 71,831 immigrants have settled in the city, comprising 34.6 percent of the Ashdod population. Haifa is in second place with the second largest immigrant population. The northern port city's 69,998 immigrants make up 23.3 percent of its total population. Jerusalem, in third place, has absorbed 60,080 immigrants since 1989, who now comprise 7.9 percent of the capital's population. The...

They came from the hills. They came from the highrises, the farms and the settlements. They came out of the pages of history. Thousands of paratrooper veterans, many decorated, not a few glad to be alive, and all proud of their unique place in this young country's history, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the IDF's Paratrooper brigade Thursday. The reunion epitomized so much the Israeli melting pot, with a spicy mix of nostalgia and adventure. Gathering at Ramat Gan Stadium, old friends slapped backs and showed off scars. Some wore wings and other paratrooper insignia and smacked shaking bellies in...

Today, the 15th of Av in the Jewish calendar, is "destined for engagements and marriages," according to Jewish tradition (Bnei Yissaschar). A record number of wedding were registered in the Jerusalem Rabbinate last night - 33 - and another 24 will be married today and tonight. Although the day has been secularized to a degree - some even call it Jewish Valentine's Day - it has been rooted in Jewish tradition for 3,300 years. The Mishna explains that on this day, which it calls one of Judaism's most festive, Jewish maidens used to go out to the fields wearing borrowed...

The basic tenet of all of Jewish life, history, culture and civilization appears in this week's Torah reading: "Hear O Israel the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is uniquely one." Jews have lived by this credo, died with these words on their lips and in their souls and sustained themselves through all times of adversity by the knowledge and faith of G-d's existence and relationship to Israel represented by these simple words, known as the Sh'ma. Throughout Jewish history, as Moses himself attests to in Dvarim (Deuteronomy), there have been differing shades of Torah piety and observance amongst Jews....

To the devout secularist, there is something offensive about commemorating an ancient defeat, as we do on Tisha Be'av. Interior Minister Avraham Poraz openly berated the idea of remembering the destruction of the Temple. It's old, it's sad, it's negative why keep doing it? Commemorating defeat may seem strange, but it is hardly unique. The Crucifixion is obviously central to Christianity, and Shi'ite Muslims flail themselves to mourn the death in battle of Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, whom they believe to be his rightful heir. Yet what is striking about Tisha Be'av is that it is about a defeat,...

On the 90th anniversary of Menachem Begin's birth - a fond recollection of Shabbat in his company The weather in Jerusalem was unusually warm and naturally breezy that Shabbat afternoon, adding spice to the smell of poplar and pine that always fills Rehavia in high summer. Under a blue sky streaked with tangerine wisps of cirrus that heralded the onset of sunset, tourists, soldiers, yeshiva boys, neighbors, and even casual passers by, lined up at the prime minister's gate waiting their turn to enter. Menachem and Aliza Begin were hosting an open house, a tradition they had maintained for the...

Today, the Jewish world commemorates the sad day of the Ninth of Av. This anniversary date of the destruction of both Temples and of other sad events in Jewish history serves as a stark reminder of the dangerous and inimical world in which we live. Bad things can and do happen in this world and the unthinkable can nevertheless become tragic reality. Any study of the Biblical narrative leading up to the destruction of the First Temple or of the Talmudic description of the climate of the Jewish society before the destruction of the Second Temple will impress the reader...

Reiterating the rabbinate's official position of the past two decades, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar on Wednesday forbade Jews from visiting the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount certainly belongs to the Jews, Amar told The Jerusalem Post, but Halacha dictates that Jews are not permitted to enter it. In the wake of Israel's sudden victory in the Six Day War of 1967 that brought the site of the Holy of Holies under its control, former chief rabbi Shlomo Goren ruled that Jews are permitted to congregate in certain areas of the Temple Mount without fear of violating halachic prohibitions. However,...

A speech delivered in Hebrew by Nadia Matar, Co-Founder of Women in Green, at the Tisha B'Av Jerusalem March last night. Translation provided by Women in Green.On Tisha B'Av (the Ninth of Av) of the year 1929, exactly 74 years ago, the first mass march to the Western Wall was held. Actually, this was one of the first Jewish demonstrations against the British occupation. All this is described in his book by Ze'ev Golan, entitled "Free Jerusalem". A week before Tisha B'Av, the British (who ruled Eretz Israel at the time) enacted anti-Jewish decrees that severely restricted the conditions of...