Five synagogues and a Jewish school were targeted by vandals who hurled rocks through windows between 2 and 3 a.m. Sunday.
The weekend attacks resulted in only broken windows, but in one incident last March, the Ahavath Israel synagogue in Outremont was defaced with swastikas.
[Rabbi] Poupko [chairman of the Jewish Community Security Coordinating Committee] said he believes Montreal police are taking the attacks seriously, adding that police have moved quickly in the past to arrest those responsible for other attacks on Jewish institutions, such as the firebombing of the library at United Talmud Torah School in 2004 and the firebombing of the Jewish community centre in Snowdon in 2007.
It is unfortunate that the tragedy in Tucson continues to stimulate a political blame game. Rather than step back and reflect on the lessons to be learned from this tragedy, both parties have reverted to political partisanship and finger-pointing at a time when the American people are looking for leadership, not more vitriol. In response to this tragedy we need to rise above partisanship, incivility, heated rhetoric, and the business-as-usual approaches that are corroding our political system and tainting the atmosphere in Washington and across the country.
It was inappropriate at the outset to blame Sarah Palin and others for causing this tragedy or for being an accessory to murder. Palin has every right to defend herself against these kinds of attacks, and we agree with her that the best tradition in America is one of finding common ground despite our differences.
Still, we wish that Palin had not invoked the phrase “blood-libel” in reference to the actions of journalists and pundits in placing blame for the shooting in Tucson on others. While the term “blood-libel” has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.
"Race matters in these books," Gribben told PW. "It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."
Conner hopes the new center will help the public remember the lessons of Dec. 7, particularly the need to be prepared.
"For anything that might happen. There are a lot of people that don't like us and would like to see us destroyed. We have to keep alert all the time," he said.
A daughter to one of the royal families in the Persian Gulf is in Israel undergoing a complicated heart operation, according to Knesset Member Ayoub Kara.
The royal patient insisted on undergoing the procedure here - after her doctors recommended one of Israel's leading hospitals as the best place to undergo the operation. For security and other reasons, the name of the hospital has not been published....
The woman's husband, a prince of the unnamed Gulf kingdom himself, is considered a key figure in his country. He told MK Kara that if – and hopefully, when – his wife recovers, he plans to lobby for construction of a large medical center that will take in patients from around the Arab world – with Israeli doctors helping to set up the project. In a statement, MK Kara's sees medicine as an important bridge to bring Israel and the Arab world closer, “especially given the fact that in recent years more and more Arabs have been exposed to Israeli medicine, and are well aware of the high quality of Israeli medicine.”
Commenting on the story, MK Kara said that “this is another humanitarian gesture that displays the true values of the State of Israel. Incidents like help bring peace closer than the last 10 years of peace talks did; peace is made not with a piece of paper, but with positive human relations between nations."
Abbas, who worked behind the scenes to fund the murder of 11 Israelis at Munich, earlier this year told American Jewish leaders he would halt incitement and the encouragement of violence against Jews. One month later Abbas praised Abu Daoud, the mastermind of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 who died this year.
At last week’s Fatah’s Revolutionary Council meeting, Abbas sat at the head table in front of a poster of Amin al-Hindi, one of the senior planners of the terrorist attack that shocked the world but not enough to stop Olympic officials from continuing with the Games despite the massacre.
The Fatah meeting officially was held in honor of “the Shahid (Martyr) commander Amin Al-Hindi,” according to Palestinian Media Watch... Last August, the official PA daily described al-Hindi's participation in the Olympic massacre, saying he was "one of the stars who sparkled... at the sports stadium in Munich." The attack itself was referred to as "just one of many shining stations" in his life.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -John Stewart Mill
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
