The Vicious Babushka

President Barack Obama Arrives in Israel

Air Force One at Ben-Gurion Airport

Shalom.  President Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and most of all, to the people of Israel, thank you for this incredibly warm welcome. This is my third visit to Israel so let me just say tov lihiyot shuv ba’aretz..

I’m so honored to be here as you prepare to celebrate the 65th anniversary of a free and independent State of Israel. Yet I know that in stepping foot on this land, I walk with you on the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here, tended the land here, prayed to God here. And after centuries of exile and persecution, unparalleled in the history of man, the founding of the Jewish State of Israel was a rebirth, a redemption unlike any in history.

Today, the sons of Abraham and the daughters of Sarah are fulfilling the dream of the ages — to be “masters of their own fate” in “their own sovereign state.” And just as we have for these past 65 years, the United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.

Read more at Haaretz.

No Bread for POTUS! Obama Will Keep Kosher-for-Passover on Israel Visit

It's Matzah!

The King David will roll out the carpet, but hold the rolls. With the hotel in a security lockdown, all the food necessary for the trip and the prosperous Pesach crowd to follow is being stored in containers out back.

When U.S. President Barack Obama said yes to a long-overdue visit next week, his first since becoming president in 2008, it’s not clear that he knew what he was getting himself into. Gastronomically, anyway. The entire King David Hotel, where he’ll be staying with an entourage that will fill all 233 rooms from Wednesday March 20 to Friday March 22, will be made kosher for Passover (Pesach) ahead of his visit.

Were the staff of Israel’s most famous hotel to have waited until Obama and his team departs next Friday, it simply wouldn’t have left the King David enough time to get ready for the holiday, which is an enormously important time for nearly every hotel in the Jewish state – especially in Jerusalem.

“We’re used to hosting heads of state and also American presidents, but this situation is very special for us because it’s so close to Pesach,” says hotel manager Dror Danino. “For us it will be double the preparations.” The additional security necessary for ensuring the president’s safety means that the entire hotel will be “under siege,” as he put it, meaning that everything necessary for servicing the hotel during the president’s visit must be there in advance of his arrival – from food to linens. As such, the hotel had to rent out huge refrigerated containers and park them out back, just to accommodate all the food and drink that won’t be able to be delivered during the visit – and which will be needed for the well-heeled Passover guests who will arrive straight after Obama and stay through the following week.

Read more at Haaretz.

First Sign Language Megillah Reading

Sign language interpreter at Tel Aviv megillah reading

The Institute for the Advancement of the Deaf and the national-religious rabbinic association Tzohar joined together on Purim to hold for the first time a sign-language megila reading for the deaf and hard of hearing.

More than 600 people turned up to the Tel Aviv International Synagogue on Saturday night for the unique reading of the Book of Esther, one of the central customs of Purim.

As the megila was read aloud, a designated translator provided a simultaneous translation into sign language from atop a raised platform at the front of the synagogue.

The event was broadcast live over the Internet by Ynet.

Rabbi Ariel Konstantyn, the founder of the Tel Aviv International Synagogue and head of the community, said that it was important on Purim to include all members of society in the megila reading.

“We were saved on Purim because the Jews came together as a people and through that merit, God acted to deliver us from our enemies,” Konstantyn said.

“This unity is important and we can’t have an element of society missing out on an important experience of the Purim holiday, so this was the motivation behind the megila sign language initiative.”

Yael Kakon, director of the institute, also noted the importance of helping “the deaf and hard of hearing to enjoy the special experience of the Purim megila reading.”

The Purim celebrations at the Tel Aviv International Synagogue also included a Jewish rock concert, an open bar and a communal version of the traditional Purim meal.

In addition to the sign-language reading, Tzohar helped stage 192 megila readings around the country in 100 cities, towns, villages and kibbutzim.

Read more at Jerusalem Post.

President Obama to Receive Israel Presidential Medal

Bibi & Barack

Barack Obama will receive one of Israel's most prestigious honours during his upcoming visit to the Middle East. On Monday, the office of the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, announced that Obama will be given the presidential medal of distinction in March.

A statement said that the honour recognised Obama's "unique and significant contribution to strengthening the State of Israel and the security of its citizens".

Obama's political opponents have complained constantly that he has attempted to distance the US from its traditional support of Israel. In the lead up to the presidential election last year the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, accused Obama of "repeated efforts" to "throw Israel under the bus". Obama's pick for defence secretary has also been criticised, due to comments allegedly made by Chuck Hagel regarding the power of the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington.

Obama's White House has always maintained its support for Israel, but the president has had a tense relationship with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, particularly regarding West Bank settlements and the lack of a peace process with the Palestinians.

Peres and the committee behind the award noted Obama's overall friendship and backing of the Iron Dome missile defence system. Obama's visit to Israel will be his first as president.

Read more at Guardian.

Haredi Rabbi Sworn in to Knesset as Member of Secular Party

Rabbi Dov Lipman of Yesh Atid

By Jodi Rudoren

Dov Lipman's introduction to the conundrum of the ultra-Orthodox in modern Israel began more than two decades ago, when he was a 19-year-old American student in a Jerusalem yeshiva. It was during the gulf war, with Scud missiles threatening Tel Aviv, yet the prayer for Israeli soldiers that is commonly said daily in synagogues worldwide was not recited at the school.

"I couldn't understand any ideology that justified living here and not praying for the soldiers who are risking their lives for us to be here," said Mr. Lipman, who grew up in Maryland. But when he questioned the yeshiva rabbis about it, he said "they had no answer" beyond "it's complicated - it's politics."

Now, Mr. Lipman is playing a critical role in trying to unravel those complicated politics and integrate the insular ultra-Orthodox into the broader society. They have long lived a world apart: they attend separate schools with a curriculum short on math, science and English; rarely serve in the military; and have large families living on welfare because men study Torah rather than work. He was among the 19 people elected to the Israeli Parliament last month from the new Yesh Atid Party, whose primary platform is to "equalize the burden" between the ultra-Orthodox, known here as Haredim, and the rest of society.

But unlike the party's secular leader - and the vast majority of its voters - Mr. Lipman, an ordained rabbi, has an ultra-Orthodox background and has tried to position himself as a constructive critic from within.

"I share the same value system," Rabbi Lipman said, citing the importance of studying Torah, the "fears about societal influence" and the desire to limit interaction between men and women. "The Haredim have done themselves a disservice by saying it's us against them and we will not be part of Israeli society."

Sworn in on Tuesday as one of 48 first-time lawmakers - the most since the earliest days of Israeli independence - Rabbi Lipman, 41, is the first American-born member of Parliament since Rabbi Meir Kehane was elected in 1984. The new 120-seat body also has more Orthodox members (39 of them) than ever and more women (27), including the first born in Ethiopia, and the youngest member ever elected, Stav Shaffir, who is 27 and was a leader of the 2011 social protest movement.

Rabbi Lipman, an educator and author of three books, is also the first legislator from Beit Shemesh, a city of 80,000 people halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that became an international symbol of the Haredi conflict when a group of men spit at an 8-year-old girl on her way to school in late 2011 because they considered even her modest dress inappropriate. Rabbi Lipman's activism after that episode and in other Beit Shemesh controversies paved the way for his political future, but also created many critics close to home.

He is beloved by many of the modern Orthodox in Beit Shemesh, but several Haredi leaders here questioned his legitimacy as a spokesman for their community, pointing out that the Yesh Atid Party received 1,273 of the city's 29,593 votes. They also noted that Rabbi Lipman does not pray in a Haredi synagogue or send his children to Haredi schools, and said he did not understand the "nuances" of Haredi culture. Some have called him a "rabbi of Purim," a holiday in which children don costumes.

"He has created a kind of Haredi that allows him to don the black kippa, wear the suit of a yeshiva student, while being part of a party with values that are opposite of the values of the Haredi sector," said Moshe Abutbul, the ultra-Orthodox mayor of Beit Shemesh. "It is as though I would put on a white robe and call myself a doctor."

Read more at NY Times.

Kol hakavod to Dov Lipman!

 

London "Sunday Times" Observes Holocaust Memorial Day with Ugly Cartoon

London - The Sunday Times marked Holocaust Memorial Day in a less-than-traditional manner, running a virulently anti-Israel cartoon depicting a big-nosed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paving a wall with the blood and limbs of writhing Palestinians.

The cartoon included a caption beneath the image entitled “Israeli elections- will cementing peace continue?” Drawn by Gerald Scarfe, the cartoon appeared in the national paper on Sunday.

“This cartoon would be offensive at any time of the year, but to publish it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is sickening and expresses a deeply troubling mindset,” said European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor. “This insensitivity demands an immediate apology from both the cartoonist and the paper’s editors.”

“Amazingly, as this cartoon was published days after the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, underwent fully democratic elections, as others in the Middle East were being butchered by the tens of thousands, the Sunday Times focuses its imagination solely on the Jewish State.  This contravenes many of the criteria laid out in EUMC’s Working Definition of Antisemitism and is part of a worrying trend to legitimize the growing assault on Israel by opinion-shapers.”

British anti-Semitism has made headlines throughout the week after Liberal Democrat MP David Ward accused “the Jews” of inflicting violence on Palestinians on a daily basis,” and questioned how they could do this so soon after their “liberation from the death camps.”

He issued something of a backtrack on Saturday evening, in response to condemnation from his party and a huge backlash on social media. “I was trying to make clear that everybody needs to learn the lessons of the Holocaust,” the MP posted on his website.

“I recognize of course the deep sensitivities of these issues at all times, and particularly on occasions of commemoration such as this weekend [Holocaust Memorial Day],” he said.

He added that his criticisms of Israel “remain as strong as ever.”

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton paid a special tribute to Holocaust survivors on Sunday, in a statement released on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Read more at Jerusalem Post.

 

Your Guide to the Israeli Elections (Info Graphic)

Israel Voting Guide

Haredim as the next wave of tech entrepreneurs?

Yitzchak Crombie

In the minds of many people, the terms “ultra-Orthodox” and “high-tech entrepreneur” are two that don’t match up. The former are open to new ideas, experiment with advanced technologies, show independent spirit, and are at home on the Internet — quite the opposite of the average ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi Jew, according to the image many Israelis have.

But is that an accurate image? To hear Haredi entrepreneur Itzik Crombie tell it, it is not. Crombie, a Habad (Lubavitch) hassid who could be called a “serial entrepreneur,” has started several business, the latest of which, iSale Global, won an award last year for an app it developed to help salespeople sell more. Crombie doesn’t see himself as an exception, but as a pioneer.

“Haredim are just as creative and imaginative, and as willing to succeed, as are secular Israelis. In fact, from what I have seen among those in the high-tech world, they are even more ambitious,” Crombie told The Times of Israel. “The problem is that they don’t have role models to show them how to navigate the business world and get to the point where they can build their own businesses.”

To that end, Crombie organized, along with venture capital fund Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), the first Haredi Hi-Tech Forum, in which ultra-Orthodox businesspeople, industry leaders, and business experts will present ideas on how to take a high-tech idea and run with it, getting financing and backing, and achieving business success. The event will be held at JVP’s Jerusalem headquarters on Tuesday.

While most Israelis don’t realize it, ultra-Orthodox Jews are already well-entrenched in the business world, especially the high-tech world. But the vast majority are working at low-level programming and data entry jobs, said Crombie. “Today there are many courses that teach basic computer skills that are attended by Haredi women, and increasingly by men.”

Read more at Times of Israel.

IDF Nahal Haredi Soldiers Rescue Palestinians from Flooded River

Ultra-Orthodox troops use civilian tractor to pull Palestinians trapped in car; 669 unit helicopter boards family trapped on roof surrounded by water, power lines

Lifesaving cooperation occurred Tuesday between haredi IDF troops and Palestinians who were trapped in a stream growing violent due to the stormy weather.

Soldiers of the IDF's haredi battalion Netzah Yehuda managed to rescue three Palestinian men before the fierce currents washed over them. Ynet obtained a documentation of the rescue.

The IDF troops were called to an area near the Nablus River, where, they were told, cars were stranded with their drivers trapped in a constantly intensifying current.

The storm was too severe for helicopters to arrive at the scene, and the battalion commander resorted to utilizing a Palestinian's tractor that was passing by.

The commander mounted the tractor, as he and the owner drove toward the trapped cars, rescuing three men. A fourth man is known to have also been trapped in the river, but he was not found and was reported missing.

The tractor exited the flooded area just before the asphalt started collapsing. The soldiers gave the rescued men initial medical care at the scene.

Throughout Wednesday, Netzah Yehuda rescued some 33 people, of whom 30 who were trapped in a bus. In many of the rescues, the troops worked in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority's rescue forces.

Read more at YNet.

Israel Wants to Keep Its Place as Diamond Capital of the World

Diamond polishers in Tel Aviv (Working next to a woman)

RAMAT GAN, Israel (Reuters) - Diamond manufacturing is a dwindling trade in Israel. The country has one of the world's hottest diamond exchanges, but polishers and cutters of the precious stones have been replaced by cheaper workers in newer hubs like India and China.

Israel wants to bring them back. To do so, it plans on recruiting a legion of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who because of their dedication to prayer and study, have been unable or unwilling to join the work force, putting a heavy weight on the economy.

The job of a diamond polisher, however, is unique, said Bumi Traub, president of the Israel Diamond Manufacturers Association. It need not disrupt their pious lifestyle.

"The profession is fitting. You deal with the rock, and if you need to go pray, no one will bother you," he said.

The door to Traub's office requires a fingerprint scan. Security is tight in the four-building exchange where annual turnover of trading reaches $25 billion each year.

About a third of rough diamonds produced in the world each year pass through the Jewish state and diamonds account for more than a fifth of the country's industrial exports.

It was a natural sector to develop when Israel was founded 64 years ago, since the small stones have been choice merchandise for generations of Jews who had to quickly flee from riots and persecution.

The plan to revitalize manufacturing will cost millions of dollars and the diamond sector, for the first time, is turning to the government for help. The government, eager to get as many ultra-Orthodox working as possible, is on board.

Read more at Yahoo News Reuters.

$500 Million in Checks Found at Jerusalem's Western Wall

The checks were squashed between the stones.

Someone praying for financial security at the Western Wall had their prayers answered on Wednesday, when a man found an envelope containing checks worth more than half a billion dollars. 

The man said he saw the envelope resting up against the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, where Jews traditionally leave notes in the cracks of the stones. When he opened the envelope, he found 507 checks from around the world, each worth about a million dollars, signed but not made out to anyone. 

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben Ruby said the man immediately brought the checks to a lawyer in downtown Jerusalem, who turned them over to the Jerusalem police's lost and found unit. Ben Ruby said police opened an investigation to determine if the checks are real or forged. 

The checks are currently waiting at the downtown police station as to police investigate their authenticity, so anyone who has just realized he or she has lost half a billion dollars can still retrieve them. 

The Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz said many of the checks were Nigerian. There was no comment on whether or not the checks could be from the notorious "Nigerian prince," one of most prolific email scammers, who suddenly had a change of heart.

Read more at Jerusalem Post.

Jewish Mom Becomes Poetry Star

Zvia Maroliot

The kerchief on her head and long skirt she was wearing didn't stop Zvia Margaliot, an Orthodox Jewish wife and mother from Jerusalem, from winning the Poetry Slam competition last week at Tel Aviv's Levontin 7 club.

As opposed to many spoken-word (memorized text) artists as well as prophets of doom or ordinary street-corner poets, Margaliot does not preach anything; on the contrary, she succeeded in conveying her profound ideas through a great deal of humor and charm.

At Poetry Slam, Margaliot performed two of her original selections: In "Charity Will Save From Death," she spoke about her complex relationship with the poor of Jerusalem, while "A Third Breast" was about breast feeding, couples and family.

"May He be blessed and His name be blessed, who created His world/ With such fatal disharmony, with such total lack of coordination/ Between nothing and not a thing/ Eternity he gave to stones, and to words, to world-famous poets, the poor things. And to me he gave dishes,/ laundry, laundry, yes, why hide it/ And the nights that end only when the three of us are already exhausted,/ And to be the materials from which poems are created," she declaimed towards the end of the "The Third Breast."

While the audience was still surprised by the words, Margaliot took an artistic pause, then ended the selection with a line that resolved the ostensible contradiction contained in her blessing. To those interested in hearing how, she will take part in another evening of Poetry Slam tomorrow at Jerusalem's Avram Bar.

Margaliot, 29, studied acting and works as a tour guide in Jerusalem. She says she does theatrical tours in which she plays imaginary Jerusalem characters, and under cover of these characters performs spoken-word selections. "I started to do spoken word - and discovered that that's what it's called - about half a year ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter. I write poetry, but I think that there's something very annoying about poetry: All the pomp that accompanies it, that heaviness at poetry evenings. On the other hand, 'spoken' has the atmosphere of the slam, in other words of a contest. You have to be relevant, to speak simply, in everyday language. I like that."

Read more at Haaretz.

IDF Soldiers Protest Gaza Cease-Fire With "Bibi Loser" Photo

"Bibi Loser" spelled out in Hebrew

Jerusalem - Sixteen IDF soldiers could face court-martial proceedings after posing in uniform for a photograph where their arranged bodies spelled out the phrase “Bibi Loser” in Hebrew letters. Their act is an expression of defiance against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to accept a cease-fire with Hamas instead of sending ground troops into Gaza.

The Times of Israel reports (http://bit.ly/SYd2bf) that the photograph has gone viral, and has received over 3,000 “Likes” and 400 “shares” in one Facebook group alone within just three hours of being posted. Comments on the photo ranged from those calling for the soldiers to be court-martialed to sympathy for the soldiers’ frustration.

Other comments refer to Netanyahu as a coward for keeping the IDF from “giving it to Hamas” and “getting the job done.”

Read more at Vos Iz Neias.

Code Red at the Kotel!

 

State Department Spokesperson Delivers Smackdown to Belligerent AP Reporter

This is the same Victoria Nuland who is being excoriated by certain "pro-Zionist" bloggers for not being sufficiently "pro-Israel." It's the State Department, folks!

President Obama: "Israel has the right to defend itself!"

 

About Those Maps of "Disappearing Palestine"

"Disappearing Palestine" as sent around all over Twitter

Yaakov Lozowick comments:

Anyone who deals with the Israel-Palestine conflict will probably have come across the nasty four-map series purporting to show how Israel is eliminating Palestine step by step. Recently some fellow in the NY area hired space on local billboards to expose them to commuters. I contacted him and asked if he’d be willing to listen to a critique; when he said he would I sent him the following analysis. You can see his brief response - and mine - at the end.

According to what I’ve read on Mondoweiss, you seem to be of the opinion that the series of four maps showing the disappearing Palestinian presence in what was once Mandatory Palestine are factually accurate. I suggest we take a closer look.

There are various problems with the series, the most obvious being that it compares apples with oranges and also with screwdrivers, meaning that the different maps present different data-sets. Some of the data-sets themselves are inaccurate.

Judging by the picture above, your version of the maps is even more problematic than some of the other versions which are out there. I’ll relate to your version as presented on Mondoweiss.

First, the map from 1946. Even standing alone without the series, it’s misleading in that it contains two distinct types of information. The outline is of the territory controlled by the British, commonly known as Palestine. Being a map of a political entity, however, the whole thing should be the same color, green in this case, since the entire territory was ruled by the British, the white parts and the green. If one wished to show privately owned land under the sovereignty of the British according to ethnic identity, the green would have been replaced by a hodgepodge of colors. Some of the land was owned by Jews, some by Arabs (today we would call them Palestinians), some by Arab absentee landlords of other nationalities (Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians and so on), some by European churches – Catholic Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and others, and finally, the largest section by far would have been land registered by no-one and thus belonging to the government, i.e the British.

As far as I can see, your version has omitted the Jewish ownership of property in Jerusalem (where there was a majority of Jews), and in various pockets such as the Etzion Block, Neve Yaacov, settlements on the Dead Sea, Hebron, Safed, Naharia and its hinterland, Kfar Darom in Gaza, and so on. But the main problem with this map isn’t its omissions of Jewish property, but rather the implication that any land not owned by Jews was “Palestine”. Not true. If it’s land ownership you’re trying to depict then most of the territory was owned by the British government; if it’s political sovereignty then the entire area was British.

The second map drops the issue of land ownership, and the series never returns to it. This map is a reasonably accurate depiction of the partition plan adopted by the United Nations on November 29th 1947, with one glaring omission: the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area, which was very clearly not allocated to either side, but designated as a Corpus Separandum. I emphasize: Jerusalem and Bethlehem. So the cartographer has allocated to a notional Palestine a very important piece of territory which it never had.

Of course, this map never depicted a reality. At the time it was rejected by all the Arab states which had a vote, and also by the local Arabs themselves who did not generally call themselves Palestinians at the time, but we can agree to call them that now. I’m not going to get into the question of who foiled the UN partition plan, but I think we can agree that all sides played their roles; the Jewish Yishuv, Husseini’s Palestinian forces, Kaukji’s forces, and the Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese forces which participated in fighting in territory which had previously been under British rule.

Read the rest at Yaakov Lozowick's blog.

Range of Hamas Rockets

Range of rockets fired by Hamas

Rockets have already hit Rishon Lezion and Tel Aviv.

Hamas Rockets Claim 3 Israeli Lives in Kiryat Malachi

Building in Kiryat Malachi where rocket struck

Israeli political consultant Jonny Daniels citing an Israeli source and a Chabad leader in Israel told The Algemeiner that among the victims of this morning’s Gaza rocket attack on the Israeli city of Kiryat Malachi was a 25 year old Chabad “shlucha (female emissary)” to New Dehli, India named Mirah (nee Cohen) Scharf, who was visiting Israel this week for the memorial service of Chabad Mumbai terror victims Gabi and Rivka Holtzberg. The Hebrew anniversary of their brutal murder is today.

According to Chabad website Lubavitch.com, Scharf was pregnant. Sources on Facebook say she was the mother of 3 young children.

A second victim named Ahron Smadga said to be in his late forties was the father of the 8 month old baby girl who was injured.

“He was married for 20 years and couldn’t have children then he had twin boys nine years ago, and 8 months ago his daughter was born and he was walking around with a smile on his face that he had a daughter after all this years,” Daniels told The Algemeiner.

“He was one of the first Chabad soldiers to join the Israeli Army,” he said.

The third victim was 22 year old Yitzchak Amselam. The funeral is planned for later today.

Israeli Chabad websites Shturem and COL, reported that the rocket attack hit the neighborhood of Nachlas Har Chabad and that “the entire community is devastated from the tragedy.”

Read more at Algemeiner.com.

Heads Explode as Orthodox Jews Vote Overwhelmingly for Obama

Scary Jew Shadow in Line to Vote

As election results have been confirmed and statistics from national polls emerge, showing that American Jews overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama - with 70% of the Jewish population voting for Obama - questions emerge about the the true sentiments of this population towards Israel and the disconnect between Jews in Israel and those abroad.

David Bedein, founder of the Israel Resource News Agency and Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research finds the disconnect between the religious in Israel and the U.S. particularly startling, saying many Republican supporters were shocked by the refusal of Orthodox leaders to throw their support behind the pro-Israel Mitt Romney.

“Those who think that orthodox Jews supported Romney and secular Jews supported Obama are wrong. This is simply not true,” said Bedein. “In New Jersey they established the organization ‘Rabbis for Romney,’ and they turned to all sectors of Orthodox Jews, and there are a million Jews like that, but their rabbis refused to join.”

In his opinion, Jewish support for Obama indicates a grave detachment from the land of Israel. “We approached the Young Israel organization, which represents hundreds of synagogues, we approached the Council of Rabbis in the U.S., the Chabad organization, Agudath Israel, all of them refused - they told us they wanted to protect their ties to the current government. We need to understand that the difference (in votes for) Obama and Romney was very slight in the key states, and if those rabbis and leaders would have done something, if they would have emphasized how dangerous Obama is for Israel, it would have changed the entire picture and Romney would have been put in the White House.”

More bitter, bitter tears at Arutz Sheva.