Month: January 2009

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Commentary;

The results of the first day on the ground show that Operation Cast Lead will be anything but a cake-walk. Israel lost her first ground fatality;

St.-Sgt. Dvir Emmanueloff, 22, from Givat Ze’ev and of the Golani reconnaissance unit, was killed on Sunday by mortar shell shrapnel during clashes with Hamas terrorists near Jabalya.

Meanwhile, Ynet’s Roni Sofer reports Olmert’s comments to Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev regarding the goals of the operation. These comments leave more questions than they answered. read more

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This author recalls a commentary by the K’li Yekar (Judiaca Press Chumash, Vol.3, page 600) on the first posuk of Parsha Vayechi which is leyned this Shabbos.

The K’li Yekar explains the lack of a space between the end of the previous sedra Vayigash and our parsha as meaning that the two poskim are understood together. The final verse of Vayigash reads;

And Yisrael dwelt in the land of Mitzriyim in the land of Goshen, and they acquired property in it and… multiplied greatly. read more

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Commentary;

IDF ground action in Gaza commenced Motsei Shabbos after troops began firing artillery at Gaza targets. Are Cast Lead’s goals the destruction and eradication of Hamas or merely a “dream world” concept of “restored security” and disabusal of Hamas from terror attacks either via rockets or mortars or any other mode of attack? Will it be “a war to the bitter end”? Or is this a high-stakes stinking political maneuver with the lives of both Jewish troops and a major urban section of Israel with a collective population of approximately 800,000 on the line? And what about the freeing of Gilad Shalit? read more

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Received the email below from Lema’an Achai’s David Morris;

Here in Israel, innocent sounding measurements of distance, have turned into death threats.