Highlights of the brilliant performance by Germany against Argentina

But isn’t it sobering to remember that brilliant Israeli movie Cup Final  (Gmar Gavi’a) Directed by Eran Riklis, and set as a 1982 World Cup backdrop to the Lebanon war. 

As summarised in Wikipedia,  “A young Israeli soldier, Cohen, is kidnapped by a group of Palestinian fighters who hold him hostage. The 1982 FIFA World Cup happens to be on during the invasion, and their mutual love of soccer, helps break down the barriers of nationalism and the historical baggage that the two bring. A kind of alliance is forged between the two men. Their relationship heads for a tragic ending as the Italian team, along with the goal scoring Paolo Rossi make their march toward winning the Cup.”

As we all get ready to will Australia to victory against Ghana tomorrow night, 

A moving ceremony heralded the initiation of a monument in the Jerusalem Forest Hills to the victims of Sept 11 bombing… to the victims from 91 countries including 4 Israelis.

Videos of the ceremony are here and here

Yaakov Shwekey performed in Efrat, Gush Etzion, on Wednesday night before an audience of over 4,000 people of all ages.

According to Arutz Sheva, the highlight of the evening was when Shwekey invited a group of the 100 soldiers present, some from the navy commando unit that boarded the flotilla and all of  whom had been treated to the evening by the local and regional authority, up on stage to join him. They sang “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem” together to Shwekey’s well known melody, swaying along with the audience. Towards the end, one of the soldiers placed his beret on Shwekey’s head and the singer was visibly moved.

Part of the concert is shown here.

And earlier Vehi Sheamda  in Caesaria.

As many will know, May the Fourth is official Star Wars Day

Israel’s leading edge technology now includes a system to see through walls. as shown on this video.

Applications for the Israeli developed technology by the company CAMERO include military, law enforcement and search and rescue.

As the article from IMRA states, the Camero system reveals the location of people in any room without having to venture into it.  The device enables you to know where people are located in a room in real time before having to enter it.  The Xavier 400 is about the size of a laptop computer weighing under 3kg including the battery.  It also has an optimized design for tactical operations which makes it easy to carry around by combat soldiers in the field. The identification system is based on a unique, multichannel, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) sensor that operates at very high bandwidth that enables reliable detection and object resolution. The Xavier 400 system is able to locate images through walls using electromagnetic pulses and is able to provide quick location and number of people hidden by walls and barriers.

When a child was kidnapped in a foreign country, the local elite police squad used the Xavier 400 to determine where in the building the kidnappers were located. They were then able to wait until the girl was alone in a room before bursting in to save her, saving her from possible harm during the rescue operation.   The device is already deployed worldwide, and will continue to be marketed to special forces, law enforcement agencies, and firefighting and rescue teams.

Yeh Oh Yeh!

Those who are fixated on the link between Colombia and drugs (and not just coffee), miss out on all its wonderful history, music and culture, including Shakira and  the star footballer Valderamma.  I greatly enjoyed my trip to Colombia several years ago, which including interaction with some members of the Bogota Jewish community.

There have long been positive links between Colombia and Israel, so it was great to read the article in the Jerusalem Post, describing the recent warm visit to Israel of the Colombian Foreign Minister. 

As the article stated, “Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez assured Israel on Thursday that bilateral ties are “very strong,” and whoever wins his country’s presidential election next month will be supportive of the Jewish state.  “Colombia and Israel have had a very long relationship and a very strong partnership too,” Bermudez told The Jerusalem Post, in an interview in his suite at the King David Hotel.  “I truly believe that Colombia today, regardless of who will be the most likely winner, is going to continue on the same track… I am very optimistic about the future of our relationship.”  He also expressed a desire to strengthen Colombia’s military relationship with Israel as well as trade ties, and develop what he termed “joint ventures on innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital.”

With the difficulties that Israel has had with the Obama administration, it is also not surprising that Obama has been less supportive of Colombia than previous Presidents.

Back to Bermudez who said in the Jerusalem Post article “Colombia and Israel have had a very long relationship and a very strong partnership, too. Both countries and our peoples have suffered and have endured, in a way, similar difficulties. At the same time, I would say that we both are resilient and determined, that we share somehow a lot in common. I would say that for us, it’s very important to make a partnership with Israel in several aspects.  One of these aspects, which was part of the conversation with President Peres, is how we can come up with a joint venture between the private sector and public sector in Israel and Colombia, in projects on innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital.  You are a well-reputed country, and you serve as innovative, entrepreneurial and so on, and we would like to learn about that, and we have certain experience. Colombia is well-rated worldwide in terms of professionalism, commitment and innovation too.”

On ANZAC day, it is worthwhile to look at some of the ties of friendship and support between Israel and Australia.  Last year, we focused on the Zion Mule Corps here and it is worth another look. 

The Charge of Beersheba is another important link between the 2 countries. The sunset charge by 800 Anzacs mounted on horses defeated 400 Turks, and captured Beersheba, which led to the liberation of Jerusalem and the fall of the Ottoman Empire.  It was the last mounted horse charge in the history of warfare  (see the image of the reenactment)

Richard Pratt established the “Park of the Australian Soldier”  in Beersheba to commemorate this historic moment.  As described in an article in the Australian Jewish News here,  “Jeanne Pratt joined around 400 people from the Australian and Israeli military, diplomatic and Jewish communities at a ceremony on October 31 (2009) that commemorated the Australian Light Horse charge at Be’er Sheva.  The ceremony took place at the Park of the Australian Soldier in Be’er Sheva in front of a monument to the Australian Light Horse regiment and also honoured the memory of businessman and philanthropist Richard Pratt, who died in April this year.  On October 31, 1917, the Australian Light Horse regiment charged the wells of Be’er Sheva, repelling Turkish forces and opening the route to the British arrival in Jerusalem and its victory in the World War I Middle Eastern campaign.”

Australian politician, Joe Hockey, has a special interest in Beersheba. His grandfather, Joseph Hocadonian, was deputy clerk of Beersheba after the war. And one of Joe Hockey’s predecessors in his seat of North Sydney was a commander of a division of the Light Horse at Beersheba.

Two books have been recently published on the subject.  Paul Daley, as mentioned here was the author of   Beersheba while Roland Perry, previous author of an excellent book on Sir John Monash,  wrote The Australian Light Horse 

A project contributed to by JNF Australia plans to develop an ANZAC trail in the area as described here.

Kelvin Crombie is an Australian historian who specialises in tours related to the ANZACS in Israel.

The pro-British NILI Spy Ring, under the leadership of Aaron Aarononsohn supplied valuable information to General Allenby which helped in the success of the Beersheba charge and other battles.

The plight of Israel’s “Missing in Action” soldiers has never been too far from the media headlines in Israel, particularly in recent years with the abduction of Gilad Shalit by Hamas and Ehud Goldwasser z”l and Eldad Regev z”l by Hezbollah in 2006.

One of the first principles of the Israel Defence Force is to never leave a soldier behind in the field. When soldiers enlist in the army, they do so with the belief that should something happen to them, the country will do whatever it can to bring them home. This has been the driving force behind the many prisoner exchange proposals over the years (all of them disproportionate but rarely is there any sympathy or respect given to the Jewish State in certain quarters in relation to such disproportionality), which have put forward the return of thousands of prisoners in return for the MIAs. In some cases, these exchanges have been for the remains of Israeli soldiers, as was the case in 2004 with the return of Adi Avitan, Benyamin Avraham and Omar Sawaid (see more) and in 2008 with the return of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (see more).

I have often written about the plight of Gilad Shalit, and for many years I also wrote about the plight of missing in action IAF navigator, Ron Arad, whose plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. While he was believed to have been transferred to Iran, until this day his fate is unknown. I was reminded about Ron’s plight when I came across an article this morning about a decision by Reuven Rivlin to dedicate the lighting of the torches on the eve of Yom Ha’atzmaut to Gilad Shalit “and the rest of the IDF’s missing soldiers”.

This decision drew the ire of Ron’s wife, Tami Arad. In a newspaper article she declared, “in his speech, Rivlin honoured Gilad Shalit and the rest of the IDF’s missing soldiers, and I received a punch in the heart. This year, thanks to the Knesset speaker, we finally receive the unique name of ‘the rest’… How could I not understand that my Ron, Yuval’s father, Ron Arad, the man I have painfully carried in my heart for my entire adult life, would lose his name and become buried with the rest. How could I not understand that after 24 years, Ron has expired just like Yehuda Katz, Zvi Feldman, Zacharia Baumel, Guy Hever and Majdi Halabi” (see more).

The article upset me too, for another reason as well. For years I have been writing about the plight of Israel’s Missing in Action soldiers. We even have a page dedicated to the soldiers on the Zionist Council of Victoria’s website, but I had never heard the name Majdi Halabi. A quick google search took me first to a Wikipedia page and then to a 2007 report on him from Jerusalem Post.

Majdi Halabi is a Druse, who had been serving in the IDF for five months, when at age 19 on his way back to his army base he disappeared. This occurred on 24 May 2005, just over a year before the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. At first, the army believed that he had simply deserted the army, and it was only a few days later that they realised that there could be something more sinister involved. His family believe that he could be held in Syria, Lebanon or the West Bank, to ‘be used as a bargaining chip in the future’ but until this day, no group has ever even claimed responsibility for his disappearance.

 Thinking about Madji’s plight, made me feel personally ashamed. As his family has stated, “one would expect that if something physically harmful had happened to him, there would have been some evidence of this, somewhere an item of clothing, something… It is not possible for the earth to have swallowed him up – to have vanished without a trace”.

So why have so few people even heard the name Madji Halabi? Perhaps it is because there is no official idea as to where and by whom he is being held, but the same can be said for Guy Hever, who went missing in 1997.

Is it because Halabi’s family has not campaigned as hard as other families? I would like to think it has nothing to do with the fact that Halabi is a Druse. As one member of the Druse community put it, we are “not Jews, we are Israelis. We believe in a strong Israel and the Druse soldier today is no different from his Jewish comrade in commitment and fighting ability. We feel we are together with the Jewish people, like brothers. We are patriotic and live this country and all its people”. The Druse give theirs lives to the IDF in the exact same way that Jewish soldiers do, and when they enlist, they do so with that same belief that the army will never leave a soldier behind in the field.

 And so, when I think of Israel’s Missing in Action soldiers, I will now add another name to the list. Please hold Gilad Shalit, Ron Arad Yehuda Katz, Zvi Feldman, Zacharia Baumel, Guy Hever and Majdi Halabi in your hearts and keep the hope alive that their families will one day receive the closure that they have been searching for. As Tami Arad put it, “anyone who has any doubts about any prisoner exchange deal should try substituting Gilad’s name with that of their child. That will solve any dilemmas (see more).

Following the unlikely victory of Portsmouth against Tottenham in the semi final of the FA Cup after a dismal season - “a season of hell ending in heaven” - David Horowitz editor of the Jerusalem Post, wrote an excellent piece about the Portsmouth manager and Israeli,  Avram Grant. 

We will remember how Grant was a surprise choice as manager of Chelsea, some years back.   Despite being put under massive pressure from the press and Chelsea fans,  Chelsea did well, only to stumble at the last moment. 

But now, Grant is the the hero in England for guiding struggling Portsmouth to the FA Cup Final… 

David Horowitz nicely weaves Grant’s experiences with that of Israel. As Horowitz writes “In our 63rd year, we deserve to have our qualities more widely appreciated. And we don’t just deserve, but rather require, more practical support. The unfairly maligned, belatedly appreciated and dignified Avram Grant has been leading an embattled soccer club, seeking success on the field of play. We are an embattled nation, seeking survival.

But as the Grant saga exemplifies, the capacity to act honorably is not enough to reverse misperceptions. The ability to show resilience is not sufficient to woo new friends and regain old ones. In a world that is superficial, unfair, quick to oversimplify, misjudge, distort and misassign blame, what you have to do, ultimately, is to act honorably, to show resilience… and to win.”  

Portsmouth 2  Tottenham 0  here for the last few minutes of the game, and here for the goals.  In the final, Avram Grant and the jubilant Portsmouth fans (hear them shout for Avram!) will be up against Grant’s old club, Chelsea.

Onward and upward also for Israel as we celebrate Yom Haatzmaut.

While Jews in Australia and elsewhere outside Israel celebrate an eighth day of Passover on Monday night and Tuesday, many Jews in Israel - especially those of Moroccan descent – are celebrating the Mimouna.  

As described in this article by Hillel Fendel,  “Mimouna is a Jewish post-Passover celebratory tradition brought to Israel by immigrants from North Africa. It begins with a festive meal, with families gathering together and opening their doors to neighbors to enjoy singing, traditional foods and spiritual nourishment for the coming months.”   One of the main centers of the commemorations takes place in Sacher Park in Jerusalem, where President Shimon Peres was again a guest of honor.

According to Fendel, two explanations for the word “Mimouna” are firstly, that it marks the hope and belief [emunah in Hebrew,  that just as the Jewish People were redeemed on Passover, so too they will merit the Final Redemption “speedily in our days.” Secondly, some scholars believe that the source of the name Mimouna is Maimon, father of the Rambam (Maimonides). 

Here is a brief video from Sacher Park in Jerusalem where Mimouna is celebrated.