Ve'hayyalim ve'hayyalot

There is a piyyut in the Rosh Hashanah service (Shaharit, first day) with a stanza that reads
וחיילים וחיות יוועדו בקול - the heavenly hosts loudly proclaim [God's greatness]. For years I've said וחיילים וחיילות , my kavana being the earthly hosts, Israel's soldiers male and female. Here's a couple of pictures I found of some of our female soldiers at the kotel:

These wonderful beautiful women have to brave both the enemy and put-downs from our own. Heaven bless them all.

Kaf Vav - Kaf Zayyin Ellul

Moshe Weinberg
Yosef Gutfreund
Elizer Halfin
Mark Slavin
Yosef Romano
Yaakov Shpringer
Ze'ev Friedman
David Berger
Kehat Schorr
Andre Spitzer
Amitzur Shapira

It will be 34 years since eleven Israeli athletes were murdered by Arab terrorists of "Black September" at the Munich Olympics, but I can still recite all eleven names from memory. Four wrestlers, four weightlifters, a marksman, a fencer and a track-and-field coach. Two killed in the morning, blocking a door so that teammates could escape as the terrorists burst in. The rest murdered that night at the airport after a botched West German police raid to free them. I was a student at Columbia University at the time. One of the murdered athletes, weightlifter David Berger, had studied at Columbia. As is customary, the university flag flew at half staff for the day.
The perpetrators were apprehended, but set free after other terrorists hijacked a German plane and demanded their release. Munich once again synonymous with appeasement. The world made excuses for Arab barbarism then; now it is plain that the world sowed the wind and is reaping the whirlwind. Then-Prime Minister Golda Meir gave the order that all the perpetrators were to be hunted down and killed. She was criticized in the media ever since, most recently in the movie "Munich." But all the carping in the media and among the liberal elite doesn't change the fact that she was right. Arab barbarians cannot be talked to, reasoned with, negotiated with, compromised with. They are Amalek. They must be hunted down and killed.

David Berger, weightlifter

Yahrzeit this Shabbat

The Jewish Yahrzeit for those killed five years ago on September 11 comes out this Shabbat - kaf gimmel Elul, exactly one week before Rosh Hashanah. Here's a link to a frantic phone call placed by a man trapped on a high floor of one of the towers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE9TLgCVLBM

Was he Jewish? Who knows and who cares? It makes no difference. Watch the clip and imagine it was you trapped with the rising heat and smoke, having told your wife everything was okay a second before your building was hit. Should we not do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to wipe those evil bastards off the face of the earth? Do we have a choice? It's either them or us.

Five years later

It's been five years since America and New York City were attacked. The unthinkable became thinkable. We can no longer take our safety for granted. The enemy has proven both clever and persistent. They know they cannot defeat us militarily so they are trying to break our will. If we break we can expect nothing but trouble all over the world. We grumble about the inconvenience we have to put up with, and the intrusions on our civil liberties that are an inevitable concommitant of war, but thank God and George W. Bush we have not been attacked on our own soil since. It is not because the enemy has not tried. The mainstream media harps on our alleged mistreatment of captured terrorists, barbarians who wear no uniform and serve no country, but to whom the media expect us to extend the protections of the Geneva Conventions intended for legitimate prisoners of war. Those of us who feel sorry that people who would kill us in a heartbeat are not given five-star accommodations should remember the results of Shaul Ha-melekh's misplaced mercy toward Amalek.
Here are some pictures to remind you of the nature of the enemy we face:





The following is the El Malei Rahamim that I recite out loud when I have occasion to be at the World Trade Center site:


אל מלא רחמים שוכן במרומים המצא מנוחה נכונה תחת כנפי השכינה במעלות קדושים וטהורים כזוהר הרקיע מזהירים את נשמות אלפי אנשים נשים וטף שנהרגו ושנשחטו ושנחנקו ושנשרפו ושנקברו חיים על ידי הערבים הרוצחים ימח שמם בעבור שמתפללים בעד הזכרת נשמתם בגן עדן תהא מנוחתם לכן בעל הרחמים יסתירם בסתר כנפיו לעולמים ויצרור בצרור החיים את נשמתם ה' הוא נחלתם וינוחו בשלום על משכבם ונאמר אמן.