Remembrance Day for 22,682 Fallen Soldiers Begins at Sundown
Video

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137071
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

The annual Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers begins at sundown Sunday in memory of 22,682 soldiers who fell defending Israel as well as more than 2,000 victims of terror. This year,112 soldiers were added to the death toll.

The opening ceremony is at 8:00 p.m., when a one-minute siren wails throughout the country. A two-minute siren will sound at 11 a.m. Monday. The main ceremony takes place at the Western Wall after the opening siren, beginning with the President's message to the families of the fallen and continuing with the words of Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. A bereaved parent, this year a Russian immigrant whose son fell in the Cast Lead Operation, recites the Kaddish prayer.

The IDF Chief Rabbi and the Rabbi of the Western Wall recite prayers. The Hatikva anthem closes the event

The ceremony, in the presence of bereaved parents, dignitaries and honor guards from the various IDF forces, is the sole broadcast on Israeli radio and television at that time. All entertainment and dining facilities are closed. Most families light a memorial (yahrzeit) candle for the fallen.

During the evening and the following day, memorial ceremonies will be held at hundreds of locations, inaddition to the Western Wall which is in the presence of President Shimon Peres. Thousands of Jews will study Torah at synagogues where study sessions and lectures will be arranged. The Chief Rabbis of Israel and of the IDF will attend the "Chai HaTzafon" synagogue in Petach Tikva.

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin will lead a ceremony at the Knesset, where songs in memory of the fallen soldiers will be heard. Defense Minister Ehud Barak also is scheduled to attend. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will participate in a ceremony at the Mt. Herzl military ceremony on Monday. On Saturday night, he visited the gravesite of his brother Yoni, who fell in the Entebbe rescue effort.

Widows and Orphans
A study conducted among IDF widows has revealed that most children of fallen soldiers experience learning difficulties. Nearly half of the widows said that raising their children after the loss of their husbands has been the most difficult challenge for them.

The loss of soldiers and the last several years of disappointment in the political echelon were registered in a survey of the general public. Only 22 percent of respondents said they think that politicians carry out the promises they make on Remembrance Day, that bereaved families should be considered throughout the year.

There are approximately 4,800 IDF widows and 8,000 children who suffered the loss of a parent who died in the service of the IDF. The most recent widow is Shlomit Peretz, whose husband Eliraz was killed in Gaza last month.

Despite the pain, Israel will end Remembrance Day on Monday night with the beginning of celebrations of the 62 years since the modern State of Israel was established. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

Related Links:
?Ten Years, 968 Terror Victims
?Netanyahu Visits Grave of Brother Who Fell in Entebbe Rescue
?Netanyahu on Remembrance Day: Peace Requires Strong Defense

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Police Honor 1,249 Killed Since Independence

by Maayana Miskin
Commissioner of Israel Police David Cohen spoke Sunday in honor of Israel's fallen police officers.

"The Israel Police has lost 1,249 officers over the course of the years," he said. "These fallen comrades left us, along with the precious memories, the obligation and the privilege to continue in their path."

"We stand on guard every day, protecting the state, its citizens and its residents, fighting crime, working to increase personal security, and defending democracy and human rights. By carrying out these tasks we, the commanders and officers of the Israel Police, fulfill the legacy of those who have fallen," Cohen concluded.

He emphasized the importance of unity on Remembrance Day. "We will each stand with our memories, secluded with the memory of those who have fallen, and we will know that the seclusion contains within it the concept of unity... Our private mourning and national mourning are intertwined... As one man we stand and see not only our loss, but also the admiration and limitless gratitude for those who gave their lives for the revival and the security of Israel," Cohen stated.

Rivlin: unity outside the mourners' tent
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, speaking at Ammunition Hill, emphasized the need for unity as well.

"We seek comfort in the strength of the unity that is revealed in the moment of truth... The simple unity, unsophisticated, that stood behind the unusually high levels of volunteerism for the IDF reserves during our last two wars. The unity that stood behind the convoys of cars that made their way to Sderot from all over the country, when its residents found themselves on the front lines," Rivlin declared.

"A piece of our fallen sons' legacy lies at our doorstep. In order to be worthy of their sacrifice - of your sacrifice, the sacrifice of their loving families - we must learn, as you taught us, to bring forth that unity during our day-to-day life as well. Outside the mourners tent. You will see, our sons, that we can do it," he concluded. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

Related Links:
?Netanyahu on Remembrance Day: Peace Requires Strong Defense

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Netanyahu on Remembrance Day: Peace Requires Strong Defense

by Maayana Miskin
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paid tribute to Israel's fallen soldiers on Sunday evening, at a ceremony marking the beginning of Remembrance Day, at Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem. Netanyahu recalled his own experience with bereavement, when his brother Yoni fell during the daring rescue of the hijacked Israelis in Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976.

"My brothers and sisters, I am all too familiar with the pain and the feeling of loss... I know the loss experienced by bereaved families," he told his audience.

Netanyahu said peace will come only if Israel remains strong. "Over the course of the years, we learned that the olive branch of peace is attainable only if we remain strong, only if we are prepared to defend our country, as soldiers did here," he said.

He compared Jerusalem in the days of the 1967 battle of Ammunition Hill to Jerusalem of today. "Forty-three years ago, this hill, Ammunition Hill, symbolized a wounded city, a city cut in half with a wall through its heart. But today, along the path of that wall lie train tracks that will connect Jerusalem's flourishing neighborhoods, the neighborhoods built in the decades that have passed since that day," he said.

"The life that we create here is a debt that we pay every day to our fallen soldiers," the prime minister said. "It is an ancient, inner duty - to establish a state here that will be the pride of generations, that will justify their painful sacrifice with its existence and its future." (IsraelNationalNews.com)

Related Links:
?No Change on Jerusalem Policy Despite US Pressure

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and wife Sara visit the grave of his brother, Yonatan, as Israel prepares to mark its Memorial Day. Yonatan Netanyahu was the only Israeli casualty during the daring 1976 raid to save Israelis held hostage at the airport in Entebbe, Uganda.

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Netanyahu: Israel can only rely on itself
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reminded his fellow cabinet members that in the midst of Israel's most serious rift with the US in decades, they must remember that Israel can only truly rely on itself.

Echoing the words of Zionist philosopher Theodor Herzl in 1901, Netanyahu said, "Don't rely on help from strangers, don't trust even the charitable and don't wish for stones to grow soft, for the charitable give degrading charity at most, and stones do not soften. A nation that wishes to stand tall must place all its trust in itself only."

Netanyahu was addressing the cabinet on the day before Israel's Independence Day, which will begin at sunset on Monday, April 19.

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The "New Hizballah" built by Syria sparks ME summer war fear
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 18, 2010, 5:24 PM (GMT+02:00)

Syrian M-600 missile converted from Fateh-110
debkafile's military sources disclose that Syria has expanded the flow of smuggled Syrian and Iranian weaponry across the Lebanese border to Hizballah in line with a master-plan charted in Tehran and Damascus for transforming the 25,000-strong Hizballah terrorist militia into an organized, mobile army with a whole range of sophisticated missiles and other weapons. The new Hizballah is being trained to carry out such offensive operations as capturing parts of Israel's Galilee and equipped with the hardware for knocking out warplanes, warships and armored strength.
One of their missions will be to defend the Syrian capital, Damascus. Tehran and Damascus calculate that the next time a war erupts on Israel's borders, its army will try and outflank Syrian forces on the Golan and drive past the units defending Damascus. That is where Hizballah is expected to come in.
Even after the Kuwaiti Al Rai claim that Syria had smuggled Scud ground missiles into Lebanon proved inaccurate and was denied in Washington, regional war tensions remained high - although not for the reason ascribed by Jordan's King Abdullah during his current visit to Washington.
The king forecast an outbreak of Middle East hostilities in the coming summer because of the Israel-Palestinian diplomatic stalemate. What's the connection? Our sources ask. Rather than admit he is nervously watching his aggressive Arab neighbor to the north, the Jordanian ruler is pinning the region's troubles on Israel because it is the right tune to sing in Barack Obama's Washington.
In actual fact, a Middle East war this summer depends on two actions which have nothing to do with the Palestinians: a decision by the US and/or Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities together or separately, and a decision in Tehran to unleash its allies against Israel - spearheaded by Hizballah - to preempt such an attack.
Ready to step into its new shoes, Hizballah is being armed with five major military capabilities, debkafile reports:
1. Surface-to-surface missiles able to reach as far as the Dimona reactor in southern Israel: They include Fajr-5, which has a range of 33 km, and the M-600, developed by Syria from the Fateh-110, whose range is 250 km. Both are precise, propelled by solid fuel and carry 500-kilo warheads of conventional explosives, as well as being able to deliver chemical, biological and radioactive materials.

This dangerous new arsenal which tops up the 40,000 rockets Hizballah was allowed to pile up since the 2006 Lebanon war.
Saturday, April 17, Israel's deputy defense minister Mattan Vilnai, warned that Syria and Hizballah between them had ballistic missiles that could reach every millimeter of Israeli territory.
But he did not explain how the national defense leadership, of which he is a senior member, allowed this to happen.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said nothing to account for his 14-month old government's failure to make good on its pledges for change, and first of all to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. Instead, he follows his predecessors' same old passive routines on Iran, Syria and Hizballah, an open invitation to aggression and a recipe for armed conflict. Of late, he is hardly to be seen or heard except for the irrelevant comments he makes at state ceremonies.
2. Iran has built for Hizballah five expanded commando brigades whose mission in a future conflict will be to capture and hold key northern Israeli towns and villages, including the town of Nahariya or parts thereof. This tactic would force Israeli forces marching into Lebanon to turn back and recover lost land.

On March 28, debkafile revealed this Iranian-Syrian master plan in detail.
3. Syrian instructors are training Hizballah militiamen at top speed in the operation of ground-to-air weapons, including self-propelled missiles, against warplanes and incoming missiles and cruise missiles. Israel has threatened to destroy these batteries if they cross the border into Lebanon. They are therefore being held back in Syrian bases up against the border until such time as fighting flares. They will then be transferred into the hands of Hizballah units standing by on the Lebanese side of the border.
4. Syria has set up a Hizballah special unit for attacking warships and fighting off Israeli coastal landings. It is equipped with advanced Chinese SS-26 Yakhont marine cruise missiles, which combine assault features with the ability to intercept attacking missiles or cruise missiles.
5. Iranian and Syrian military engineers have constructed fortified anti-tank lines in many parts of Lebanon. They are linked by fast highways, to be closed to all traffic barring Hizballah units in an emergency, and by a military-grade communications network.

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NY Times Calls Neighborhood in Jerusalem 'West Bank Settlement'

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The New York Times, in keeping with the Obama adminstration's policy that many Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem are "settlements," has corrected a photo caption in which it used that term for a Jewish neighborhood in the city, also stating it is the "West Bank."

The mistake was published last Thursday in a photo caption that read, "Ultra-Orthodox Jews last month in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank," the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) reported.

The following day, the Times wrote, "A picture caption on Thursday with the continuation of a news analysis article about a shift in the Obama administration's Middle East policy referred incorrectly to Ramat Shlomo, the name of a Jewish housing development that Israel says it is expanding despite objections by the United States and the Palestinian Authority. It is a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, not a settlement in the West Bank."

However, the term "East Jerusalem" also is inaccurate. It refers to all parts of the city that were restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967, and those areas include neighborhoods in southern and northern Jerusalem as well as in the eastern part of the capital.

The term "East Jerusalem" also implies that it is a separate political entity, unlike the term "eastern" or "southern" Jerusalem, which refers to an area in relationship to the rest of the city.

Unlike parts of Judea and Samaria that were to be part of the country of "Trans-Jordan," the United Nations Partition Plan did not allocate to Jordan any parts of Jerusalem, which was supposed to be administered by the United Nations.

Following the Arab world's rejection of the Partition Plan, it tried to annihilate the new State of Israel, which fought until a ceasefire in 1949 left the capital divided until 1967.

Another term that has been recognized internationally but is misleading is "West Bank", meaning the land that lies west of the Jordan River. Literally speaking, that would include all of the Land of Israel whose border is the Mediterranean Sea. In practice it is used to refer to Judea and Samaria. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

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Gaddafi: Obama from Arab Descent, a 'Blessing' to Muslim World

by Hana Levi Julian
Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi blessed U.S. President Barack Obama as a "friend" over the weekend in a speech published by the London-based al-Hayat newspaper, labeling him "an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent."

Gaddafi's speech was delivered in the city of Sirt at an event marking the 24th anniversary of a U.S. attack on Libya.

Gaddafi was quoted by the Arabic-language newspaper as saying that any dispute between Libya and the United States had since vanished. "Now, ruling America is a black man from our continent," he explained, "an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent, and this is something we never imagined - that from Reagan we would get to Barakeh (Arabic for Barack) Obama." He called Obama's presence in the White House "a major historical gain."

The Libyan leader went on to say that he personally considered the American president "a friend," explaining, "He knows he is a son of Africa. Regardless of his African belonging, he is of Arab Sudanese descent, of Muslim descent. He is a man whose policy should be supported, and he should be assisted in implementing it in any way possible, since he is now leaning towards peace."

Gaddafi also pointed out that regardless of what Arab leaders might say in public for English-language consumption, the truth comes out in private conversation, and in Arabic-language speeches at home.

"The Arabs hate America, there is no doubt. There is not an Arab that loves America," he admitted, "and even the leaders who the United States considers allies or friends, hate it. The external love is merely hypocrisy or pragmatism."

Gaddafi blamed "Palestine" for the hatred, saying "The Palestinians today are like the Jews of the past - dispersed in exile and persecuted. Now the Palestinians are at a point where they deserve to have the United States on their side and not on the side of the Israelis."

The Libyan leader has been campaigning for a one-state solution - to be called "Isratine" - in which the so-called "Right of Return" would be implemented for millions of foreign-born Arabs, descendants of those who fled the area during the 1948 War for Independence. The bi-national state that would be created in Gaddafi's vision would be a democratic, nuclear-free country populated equally by Arabs and Jews, and would not be a Jewish nation. Israel, in its current form, would cease to exist. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

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El Al in Frantic Rush to Bring Home Israelis Stranded by Volcano

by Maayana Miskin and Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
El Al is using European overland routes in a frantic rush to try to bring home for Independence Day thousands of Israelis stranded by the volcanic ash that has crippled air travel on the continent.

The Israeli national airline and its Sun D'Or subsidiary, along with Arkia Airlines, sent more than two dozen planes Sunday morning to airports in Italy, Greece and Spain which remain open. El Al is arranging overland travel to the terminals from airports that have been shut down, including those in Britain, France, Holland, Germany, northern Italy, Switzerland and Poland. They are not expected to reopen before Monday morning, at the earliest.

The "rescue" effort already has run into problems with the shutdown of the airport in Barcelona on Sunday.

The cloud of volcanic ash has forced U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others to cancel trips to Poland, where they were to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski who was killed in a plane crash in Russia last week.

A huge ash cloud has covered Europe in recent days, following the explosion of a volcano in Iceland. The thick cloud has left most planes grounded as airports shut down overseas flights due to safety concerns.

The Israel Airports Authority estimates that 30,000 people have had their flights to or from Israel cancelled due to the situation in Europe.

Disruption from the volcanic ash is costing airlines an estimated $200 million each day. Delays are also causing financial losses to producers who cannot ship their products, and to passengers stranded far from home.

The volcanic ash is considered dangerous as it lowers visibility and contains particles that can damage engines. Geologists warned Saturday that the volcano that has filled the sky with ash is not finished erupting, and new mini-eruptions may continue for some time.

The disruptions to air travel are the worst since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States that forced the shutdown of all trans-Atlantic flights to and from the country for three days. (IsraelNationalNews.com)