2012 January With Ominous Signs

2012 Has Landed By Sea And By Cell

"American forces land in Israel, 9,000 of them"

" 'Coincidentally' Al Qaeda claims to land in Jerusalem"

"Monday night, Jan. 2, Al Qaeda claimed to have established its first Jerusalem operational cell calling it the "Sunni Youth Movement Cell in Greater Jerusalem.". Debka's Bulletin No. 1 with details of the organization and its targets was promised in the next few days. According to DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources, Israeli intelligence has advised the government and security services to treat the announced appearance of al Qaeda, and its aim to reach out from Jerusalem to the West Bank, very seriously.

"Those intelligence sources also tie the rise of the first Al Qaeda cell in greater Jerusalem with the mushrooming of Palestinian Islamist Salafite organizations in the Palestinian centers of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. These organizations are either linked directly to Al Qaeda or deeply influenced by its jihadist ideology and ready to act on it."

Such a perceived external threat might achieve what the great minds could not do: be the catalyst for unifying the various groups so irrationally attacking each other, religious and secular. I cannot help but think of and compare what is happening now with the infighting that consumed the Jews in the years before our Temple was destroyed. G-d forbid it should continue. Hopefully, something will occur to put out the fires of hatred.

On the surface this appears to be a Peace-keeping Deployment from both sides to provide a diversion from the inner sinas chinam that infiltrated Israeli society with it's eruption recently, as powerful and threatening as the Vesuvius or Mt Etna eruption:

"Pliny the Younger authorized an account of the eruption —

• Broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of Vesuvius; their light and brightness were the more vivid for the darkness of the night... it was daylight now elsewhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night." 79AD

The holy seat of the quasi island of Italy, the 4th Golus (Edom) is full of fire and ash just beneath the surface waiting for their cue.


Volcanoes of Italy (12 volcanoes) : Amiata | Vulsini | Monte Albano | Campi Flegrei (Phlegrean Fields) | Vesuvius | Ischia | Stromboli | Lipari | Vulcano | Etna | Campi Flegrei Mar Sicilia | Pantelleria


All the world could be watching and hoping that Israel will implode from the inside. But one aspect of teshuva (that we read in this week's Parsha, which was a deciding factor in Yaakov Avinu's brocha of Kingship to Yehuda), was his aspect of truthfulness and his tshuva. The Rambam includes as one of the conditions, "being in the same situation (being tempted to do wrong) and NOT reacting the same way" but choosing to do "good." Let the good people of Israel put an end to the sinas chinam from within the fullness of their hearts.

Last evening coming back from an uplifting Melava Malka, we saw an Egged bus with a big clear message on the sides and back of the bus, that said (in Hebrew) "Sinat Hinam, Don't Speak It To Me". I heard that this campaign was the idea of the Optica Halperin family. Rafael Halperin, a wrestler and body builder, later in life, opened a single eyeglass store in Bnei Brak 15 years ago that became the largest eyeglass store chain in Israel, with more than 120 outlets across the country. [story not fully verified, partially from our Monit driver and from partially Wikipedia]

The visionary brilliance of one man helping his fellow Jews to see better with their eyes and their hearts.

May these buses traveling all over Yerushalayim impart this simple but profound message and help to bring achdut.