Please enable JavaScript in your browser to experience all the custom features of our site.

RabbiHorowitz.com

Mr. Harry Skydell, Chairman
Mr. Mark Karasick, Vice Chairman
Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, Director
Rabbi Avrohom M. Gluck, Director of Operations
The first 1000 members will have a chance to win a
16 GB
iPod
touch
with Rabbi Horowitz audio

Membership Benefits:

  • Save articles to your favorites folder.
  • Save and print selected articles in a PDF journal.
  • Receive emails containing the latest comments on your favorite articles.
  • Mark articles as "READ".
  • More member features coming soon...

Raffle Rules:

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. To enter, complete the signup form and join as a member. Incomplete entries will be disqualified. All entries shall become the property of CJFL. CJFL is not responsible for lost, misdirected or delayed entries.

The contest is open to the general public. Members need to be at least 18 years old. Identification must be produced on request. Employees of CJFL, its raffle sponsor, advertising and promotional agencies and their respective affiliates and associates and such employees' immediate family members and persons with whom such employees are domiciled are excluded from this raffle. ALL PREVIOUSLY REGISTERED MEMBERS WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY ENTERED INTO THIS RAFFLE. The prize is not redeemable in cash and must be accepted as awarded. Decisions of the raffle judges are final - no substitutions will be available. By claiming the prize, the winner authorizes the use, without additional compensation of his or her name and/or likeness (first initial and last name) and municipality of residence for promotion and/or advertising purposes in any manner and in any medium (including without limitation, radio broadcasts, newspapers and other publications and in television or film releases, slides, videotape, distribution over the internet and picture date storage) which CJFL may deem appropriate. In accepting the prize, the winner, acknowledges that CJFL may not be held liable for any loss, damages or injury associated with accepting or using this prize. CJFL retains the rights, in its absolute and sole discretion, to make substitutions of equivalent kind or approximate value in the event of the unavailability of any prize or component of the prize for any reason whatsoever. This contest is subject to all federal, provincial and municipal laws. CJFL reserves the right to withdraw or terminate this raffle at any time without prior notice. One entry per person.


Pray for the Gazan Boy
by Rabbi Avi Shafran

  Rated by 1 user   |   Viewed 10098 times since 1/1/09   |   1 Comment
Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size    [ Change Font Size ] Email This Article to a Friend
   

1/1/09

No, I’m neither a prophet nor a covert Israeli operative. Yes, it was only a day after I distributed a column taking the New York Times to task for refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organization that Israel launched its offensive against Hamas in Gaza. But, really, I had no foreknowledge of the fact that Israel’s leaders would do anything more in response to the shelling of its towns by Hamas and its friends than offer the sort of statements that have been issued for years after such terrorist onslaughts.

But they did do more, in the hope – may we merit its fulfillment – of crippling the infrastructure of the murderous entity to its south. And, true to form, The Times avoided the “T” word, going only so far as to identify Hamas on first mention as a group “which Israel and the United States brand as a terrorist organization.” According to informed sources, Israel and the United States have also branded the sun hot and the Pope Catholic.

Similarly true to form was Hamas itself, whose spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, according to the very aforementioned newspaper, “called for revenge in the form of strikes reaching ‘deep into the Zionist entity using all means,’ including suicide attacks.” Still no you-know-what-word, though.

There was more of interest in the paper’s reportage, too. In a dispatch by veteran Times reporters Ethan Bronner and Taghreed El-Khodary that appeared on December 30, the scene at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital was vividly brought alive.

“Armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roamed the halls,” they wrote. “Asked their function, they said it was to provide security. But there was internal bloodletting under way.”

The report then described how a young woman came to the hospital seeking her wounded husband. She asked a “militant” to help her but was turned away. Fifteen minutes later, however, she saw her spouse being carried out on a stretcher and watched as, lying there helplessly, “he was shot in the left side of the head.” The fatal bullet was administered by a terro – a “militant,” that is – presumably convinced that the man on the stretcher, who had been incarcerated by Hamas before an Israeli bomb liberated his prison, had collaborated with Israel. So charged Sobhia Jonaa, a lawyer with the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights.

Perhaps some ray of hope lies in the possibility that the man killed on the stretcher was indeed cooperating with Israel and not just someone from a different clan than his killer. If there are in fact Arabs unlike those whose angry faces adorn the front pages of papers worldwide, who realize that Islamist terror-mongers do not bode well for the Arab umma, that is true reason to celebrate.

As it happens, an undeniably hopeful spark was reported in the very same Times story.

Highlighting the saga of Gaza families lamentably displaced by the bombings, as civilians unfortunately are in even the most justified wars, the reporters interviewed the members of one such family, whose home stands next to a Hamas compound.

After recounting “the utter fear and panic they all felt as the missiles hit,” the father of the family’s bemoaning of the fact that “we have no shelters in Gaza” and his expression of concern for his elderly, paralyzed mother, one of the reporters had the idea of asking the man’s 13-year-old son for his view of the situation.

The boy, taking, as the dispatch put it, “an unusual stand for someone in Gaza,” responded: “I blame Hamas. It doesn’t want to recognize Israel. If they did so there could be peace. Egypt made a peace treaty with Israel, and nothing is happening to them.”

Were only such insight and common sense as contagious in the Palestinian world as hatred and violence have been.

Kudos to The Times for including the quote. But brickbats, too, for taking the astoundingly irresponsible step of actually identifying the quoted boy by name.

Pray for him.

© 2009 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]



To sign up for Rabbi Horowitz’s weekly emails, please click here.


Reader's Comments:      Rating & Comments Policy      Rate & Write a Comment!
 Average Rating:              Rated by 1 user    (1 comment)
Subscribe to this Article
(by subscribing you will receive email notification
when new comments are posted)
There are no comments yet. Click above to write the first comment.
Dear Readers:

Please visit our Parenting Resource listing to learn about agencies and services that you can make use of. If you know of an agency that can be of assistance to others, kindly drop an email to our site administrator at admin@RabbiHorowitz.com and pass along the information to him.

I ask that you please consider supporting the work we are doing to improve the lives of our children. Click on these links to learn more about our teen and parent mentoring program that serves hundreds of teens and their families, or our KESHER program, now in 20 schools in 4 states. Your financial support can allow us to expand these services and help more children.

If you believe in the governing principles of this website – to help effect positive change through the candid discussions of the real issues we collectively face, please consider becoming a daily, weekly or monthly sponsor of this website and help defray the costs of it’s maintenance.



Working with Families and Educators on Behalf of our Children

This site is managed by The Center for Jewish Family Life, Inc., 56 Briarcliff Drive, Monsey, NY 10952
Project Y.E.S. was founded by Agudath Israel of America
The Center for Jewish Family Life/Project YES - 56 Briarcliff Drive, Monsey, NY 10952 (845) 352-7100 ext. 114 Fax: (845) 352-9593
email: email@kosherjewishparenting.com


Advertisements