So what is the most Pro-Zionist newspaper in Israel?

(Apologies for not posting for a long time. I've been busy with my son's Bar Mitzvah. Only Simchas!)

So what is the most Pro-Zionist newspaper in Israel?

The World's Main Stream Media and their war against the Jews

One of the proofs that Anti-Zionism is actually Anti-Semitism in disguise is the many articles in main stream national newspapers all over Europe and America, questioning the State of Israel's right to exist.

Think of all the countries in the world throughout history that have committed the most appalling acts. Has anyone written that because of these things, any of these countries should cease to exist? The MSM wages a relentless war against Israel, printing every lunatic lie of rumoured atrocities on their front page without waiting for confirmation or any reliable sources. Yet, when the rumours are proved false, Israel receives a tiny apology hidden away somewhere on page 16 and that's if we are lucky. They continue to throw mud and some of it is sticking. The goal of this war is the destruction of the State of Israel.

If proof be needed that some of this mud is sticking, just contemplate that for the past 10 years, polls carried out in Europe have consistantly showed Israel as the No.1 greatest threat to the world, well ahead of Iran, North korea China, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Russia.

Israel is hated for being a parasite upon the world, Israelis as being an inferior race, actually not even a people (a common British view) – but at the same time the Jewish people are accused of dominating the world economy and taking over the world.

Israel is hated because it is claimed that they stubbornly maintain their separateness – yet banned from International organisations that would otherwise accept any tin pot state or banana republic.

Israel was established to be a safe haven for Jews who Europe had persecuted, stolen from, tortured, raped, murdered and finally tried to annihilate in The Holocaust. Yet Europe is at the forefront in the call to "peacefully" dismantle the State of Israel in a civilised manner, as opposed to the Arabs who simply wish to murder every single Israeli and throw our bodies into the sea.

The United Nations racism committee was set up as a direct result of the Holocaust against the Jews, yet today is being used as a major weapon by Anti-Semites to persecute Jews and the Jewish State. You just cannot make this stuff up! Had these facts been a plot for a fictional novel, it would have been rejected by the publishers as being beyond plausibility.

The list of contradictions towards the State of Israel goes on yet all can be explained with this simple statement.

First comes the hatred, then the justification. This is the very definition of classic anti-Semitism.

Instead of supporting Israel, Israel's MSM joins in attacking Israel and Judaism

The Israeli government is still in a state of denial. It has no resources to cope with the fact that the media war against us is in fact anti-Semitism.

Likewise the MSM in Israel bends over backwards to try and be accepted within the international community, showing its liberal, left wing credentials yet is looked upon with the distrust of De Sturmer.

Instead of defending their own country by explaining the lies of the international media against Israel, in a pathetic attempt to be accepted within world media, Israeli newspapers actually print anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic articles themselves.

Take for example this disgusting opinion piece published in Yediat Achronot last week and their Internet site – Ynet.

Is Israel a great injustice?

In a two part article no less, this major national Israeli newspaper published the anti-Semitic rantings of a sick individual called Benny Levy, claiming to be chairman of an organisation called "Shivah" or "Zionism Now". He asks if Israel is in fact not the cause of hatred of Jews around the world and tells us that we ought to be seriously thinking about dismantling our state ourselves. I've waited for a statement from YNet that their site had been hacked by ne-nazis who placed the article on their pages or that in fact the article was meant as a subtle Purim joke. However I have to tell you that no such statement has been published.

Doing a Google for this organisation does not return one result of an internet site for them. However, this man and his "organisation" is being quoted by every anti-Semitic site on the WWW.

One anti-Semite, after quoting Mr Levy's article at length from Ynet concludes with the words:

"There's nothing magical about the 'success' of jews -- they're simply a highly organized and networked gang of thieves and murderers that have been perfecting their craft for over 2,000 years."

Don't think that Ynet is alone. HaAretz often publishes articles that go well beyond criticism of the government and are clearly anti-Zionist. The Jerusalem Post with its reputation for being a right wing pro-Zionist newspaper nevertheless publishes articles, in the name of free speech and broadmindedness of course, articles by leftwing Israelis that spew self hatred.

Moreover, both YNet and the Jerusalem Post publish on a regular basis the most revolting anti-religious articles that ferociously attack the Torah community in Israel with such venom, using the standard anti-Semitic myths to slander a whole population. They don't seem to realise that had these articles been published in any non-Israeli media outlet they would be condemned as outright anti-Semitism. Israeli newspaper editors justify these articles by claiming that a good juicy "Dos" bashing piece sells newspapers and generates plenty of page hits on their site, whether from anti-religious secular Israelis or from incensed and irate religious Jews.

Now let me quote from the main editorial (not an opinion piece) of an Israeli newspaper, published in Hebrew and English that is unashamedly pro Israel and pro Jewish:

The Arabs of Israel, aided by compatriots and sympathizers around the world, recently added a new tact to their agenda of discrediting the Jewish State of Israel.

They are doing everything in their ability to negate historic Jewish claims to the land and are endeavoring, wherever and whenever they can, to erase anything that proves Jewish connection to the land.

The compliant world media and Western powers enable their tale of fiction to grow and gain legitimacy, and provide a platform to promote their fictionalized, distorted, revisionist history of the Holy Land.

No longer is the Meoras Hamachpeilah referred to as the Cave of the Patriarchs. When the media writes about it, they state that “the Jews call the building the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Muslims refer to it as the Ibrahimi Mosque.”

This Arab neighborhood was built illegally on park land which Yerushalayim’s mayor wanted to tear down to restore the original beauty.

In fact, last week, on February 25, the New York Times reported in an article entitled “More Clashes Over Israeli Claim to Shrine” that, “Zahran Abu Qubeita, the mayor of Yatta, a nearby Palestinian town, came on Thursday to pray at the Ibrahimi Mosque. ‘It is an Islamic site, not a Jewish one,’ he said.”

When referring to Kever Rachel, they make sure to let you know that the Arabs refer to the burial place of Rachel as "Quibbat Raqhil", and inform you that there are multiple claims to the area.

This canard was oft repeated last week after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had the ‘audacity’ to announce that he was adding the Meoras Hamachpeilah in Chevron and Kever Rachel in Bait Lechem to the list of official sites of Jewish heritage in the Jewish land which the government spends money on renovation and preserving.

The routine government action recognizes two of the oldest and most famous Jewish religious and historical sites in the world, and whose ancient connection to the roots of the Jewish people are clearly mentioned in the Chumash.

Not only are the Arabs protesting, but so is the US government as well as other Western countries. Not to be left out, the United Nations has also lodged a protest against the Israeli government designation.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that the Obama administration viewed the Israeli designation to be “provocative” and “unhelpful” to the goal of getting back to the negotiating table. He added that the US displeasure with the declaration had been conveyed to senior Israeli officials by American diplomats.

On Monday, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah complained about Arab “silence” in the face of Israel’s restatement of the Jewish claim to the holy sites. Nasrallah claimed that the Israeli action constituted a threat to Islamic holy sites, and that nobody was actually defending them except the Palestinians.

That same day, the Palestinian Authority held its cabinet meeting in Chevron as a form of protest against the designation.

In Chevron, there has long been a de facto agreement between the Muslims and the Jews on sharing access to Meoras Hamachpelah, which the Muslims have traditionally revered as the burial place of Avraham Avinu, and treated as a mosque. However, until just 25 years ago, Muslims had shown little if any special regard for Kever Rachel, other than its Jewish origins, which are recognized in the Koran. In fact, an Ottoman decree gave Jews living in Israel the right of access to Kever Rachel at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

However, now that it is under Jewish control, Arabs have begun claiming that it is a mosque. They have named it after an Ethiopian slave woman who served in the household of the founder of their religion.

RECOGNIZING THE JEWISH HERITAGE

At the cabinet meeting at which the designation was announced, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained the rationale. “Our existence here in our country depends not only on the strength of the Israeli army and our economic and technological might. It is anchored, first and foremost, in our national and emotional legacy, which we instill in our youth and in the coming generations. It depends on cultural heroes and national symbols. It depends on our ability to recognize and explain the justice of our cause, and to underscore our links to the land, first and foremost, to ourselves as well as to others,” Netanyahu added.

Both Netanyahu and Israeli president, Shimon Peres, have described the Arab protests as an artificial attempt to stir up trouble.

A State Department spokesman said that the United States had “asked both parties to refrain from provocative and unilateral actions” that might further hamper US efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

PA AND ISRAELI LEFTISTS STILL SEE EYE TO EYE

Hamdan Taha, director of the PA Tourism Minister’s antiquity department called the Israel designation, “an act of aggression against the cultural and religious rights of the Palestinian people. Instead of making use of heritage to promote peace, it is being used as a means to promote war,” Taha said. He insisted that designating them as Jewish heritage sites “reflects an artificial history that solely serves Israel’s settlement policy.”

Chaim Oron the chairman of the left-wing Israeli Meretz party also criticized the designation. “This is another attempt to blur the borders between Israel and the occupied territories. All it needs is a bit of pressure from the right, and Netanyahu falls into line. This decision puts Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan declaration of two states for two peoples in an absurd light,” Oron told a reporter for Yediot Achronot.

This unashamedly and blatantly pro-Israel editorial was published in last week's Yated Neeman. Yes that's right. A so called anti-Zionist Chareidi black newspaper. (See Wikipedia article which clearly states that Yated Neeman is Anti-Zionist).

Yated Neeman article

You cannot even claim that the article is only pro settlement of Eretz Yisrael. The editorial clearly states at the very beginning :

"their agenda of discrediting the Jewish State of Israel".

Please don't think that this article is an apparition. There are articles like these published in Yated on a regular basis.

Are they Anti-Zionist?

It is true that if you ask most Chareidim if they are Zionists, the answer will probably be No! However, ask the same people if they support the State of Israel and Jewish control of land of Israel and they will answer Yes!

This apparent contradiction occurs because secular Jews define Zionism as support for Israel whereas Chareidim are using the original classical definition of the term. Zionism was in its origin, an anti Torah secular movement that grew up along side Communism, Socialism, Bundism, Fascism and many other "ism"s whose objective was to tear down the established society and build a new secular world based on humanistic values. Zionism was indeed a direct threat to Torah. The Zionist movement's goal was to seek out Jewish youth and persuade them to reject G-d and His Torah and turn them into good secular farmers, all be it in Eretz Yisrael.

At the founding of the state, the early Zionist leadership took in Jewish immigrants from all over the world and put them in absorption camps. Their goal was to "civilise" the "backward" Jewish youth and strip them of their Jewishness. I remember some 30 years ago publically crying in a Chareidi home in Yerushalayim after I proudly proclaimed that I was  Zionist. One guest there. an elderly softly spoken man, described how a madrich had burnt his tephilin in front of his younger brother's and his eyes upon entering the absorption camp. Despite this, both his brother and himself came out believing Jews. They were the exception though.

So, no the Chareidim are not Zionists yet they recognise that the State of Israel is an open miracle by Hashem. After 2,000 years we are back in the land of Israel as rulers. There are more Jews sitting and learning Torah today in Eretz Yisrael then there have been at any time in the past 2,000 years in Galus. The centre of Torah decisions come from Israel and the Jews look to Eretz Yisrael as their spiritual and perhaps physical home.

Here's to the most Zionist (whoops ! Pro-State of Israel) Newspaper in the country. "Yated Neeman".