As of this writing, a Libyan 'aid' ship that was on its way to challenge Israel's naval blockade of Gaza and further inflame the world against the Jewish state for keeping arms out of the hands of Hamas terrorists has now docked in Egypt. The ship is paid for by a charity run by Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. When it comes to the Gaddafi family mob, anything with the word 'charity' in it must be taken with an Everest-sized helping of salt. This is, after all, a family that has brutalized Libya and plundered its wealth for four decades making it easy to give away money that was never theirs in the first place.
It should come as no surprise, however, that Gaddafi's 'charity' is directed against provoking and delegitimizing Israel. Godfather Muammar's hatred of Israel is obsessive and neurotic. In just the last year alone Gaddafi has accused Israel of instigating every current African conflict, being responsible for genocide in Sudan, and, at the UN general assembly in September, murdering John F. Kennedy. Last summer the tyrant called for Israel's embassies to be kicked out of all Africa. In March, 2009 his mission to the UN accused Israel of turning Gaza into a concentration camp and last December Gaddafi's Ambassador to the UN, Muhammad Shalgham, my next-door neighbor, showed images of decapitated and burned Palestinian adults at the Security Council, blaming the grizzly carnage on unprovoked Israeli aggression. His display, which flouted all rules of UN protocol, was condemned by the United States as a 'rhetorical display designed to inflame.'
All of this makes me ask a simple question. How is it that Englewood, New Jersey, which has thousands of prominent Jewish residents and an estimated 700 orthodox Jewish families, simply accepts the presence of the Libyan mission to the UN in its midst?
I will not here recount my ongoing and fruitless effort to have our elected local and state officials in New Jersey challenge the presence of the Libyan mission, which refuses to pay a single dollar in taxes, even for their own police protection and trash removal, since the tale of their capitulation to the Libyans is something they justify with having launched a failed court challenge nearly thirty years ago. It seems odd that a state that tragically lost 37 residents in the Lockerbie bombing would feel comfortable allowing the terrorist government who sponsored the attack -- and today celebrates the cowardly terrorist who planted the bomb -- safe haven within New Jersey borders.
I am, however, extremely puzzled at how committed Jews, who love and publicly support Israel, can allow an embassy which regularly defames and threatens the Jewish state, to live peacefully in its community and immediately next-door to one of North America's largest Jewish day schools without protest. After all, Englewood, New Jersey, is not the United Nations. What are the Libyans doing here?
Is the job of combating all the evil libels directed against Israel from Libya solely the responsibility of Israel's Jews? Do we in the American Jewish community have no role in combating Gaddafi's attacks?
In May the New York Post reported that another Gaddafi son, Al-Saadi Gaddafi, invested $100 million into a Los Angeles-based movie production company, Natural Selection, run by Matthew Beckerman, a Jewish producer. That a Jewish American could accept the blood money of the Gaddafi family, who have murdered so many innocent people, including American servicemen, in order to make entertainment is simply staggering.
Like the Jewish Day School that is my neighbor, I too live immediately next-door to the Libyan mission. Waking up every morning and seeing the Libyan flag flying in the midst of a robust American community is shocking. I ask myself, what kind of example is it for American children to learn that we adults are utterly passive in the face of Gaddafi's evil? Should these children not be learning that part of being an American and part of being Jewish is protesting oppression and banishing it from our communities?
Visualize this for a moment. Every day, hundreds of Jewish children play on swing sets and in sandboxes a few hundred feet from a fluttering Libyan flag. If a convicted sex offender moved right next door to the school, there would be an outcry. Pressure would be brought to ensure that the resident, however legal, moved elsewhere. But the Ambassador of an Israel-hating, terror-sponsoring government -- whose leader Ronald Reagan called the mad-dog of the Middle East -- lives in the heart of a robust, American Jewish community. Where is the logic?
Jewish education must be first and foremost about Jewish values, one of the greatest being an ironclad commitment to opposing injustice and the trampling of innocents. We are the people who produced Moses who brought Pharaoh's oppressive regime to its knees. We are the people who gave the world the Ten Commandments, with its injunction to forever rail against murder. And we are the people who gave the world the Hebrew Bible with its magnificent commandment to never stand idly by the blood of one's neighbor.
I speak here not only of Jewish blood but also, of course, of Arab blood, of whom Gaddafi has murdered untold thousands. All are equally G-d's children.
In Englewood we need the residents of our community making it clear to our public officials, some of whom are up for election this coming November, that our support for their candidacies is contingent on their public opposition to Gaddafi and his representatives' presence. Englewood, like every American city, should be a terrorist-free zone.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of This World: The Values Network, hosts 'The Shmuley Show' on WABC in New York City and is the author most recently of 'Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.' Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Follow Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RabbiShmuley
"By the end of March, the Americans were already intercepting messages broadcast by the Trojan, which was only activated during heavy communication traffic hours. Using the Trojan, the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world ... . As the Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that the Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What’s more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it"
"On April 14, 1986, one hundred and sixty American aircraft dropped over sixty tons of bombs on Libya. The attackers bombed Tripoli international airport, Bab al Azizia barracks, Sidi Bilal naval base, the city of Benghazi, and the Benine airfield outside Benghazi.....On the Libyan side, there were approximately forty civilian casualties, including Qadhafi's adopted daughter."
The Other Side of Deception, (Harper Collins, New York 1994) pages 113 to 117.
http://www.straight.com/article-248956/gwynne-dyer-almegrahi-free-because-case-was-so-weak
Why not right some articles about relationships or slice of life anecdotal piece? Or why don't you talk about the injustice visited on these people in this story from the Guardian. That will show you do indeed have balance and care about all lives of everyone in the region.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/16/idf-kills-mother-gaza-israel
African population = about 800-million @ about 85 nations = 40% of the votes and receives most of the aid.
USA consists of 50 states and 300-million population, pays 40+% of the U.N. annual budget and has 1/192 (a bit above 0.5% of the votes in the general Assembly.
5 nations alone: USA, China, India, Russia and Indonesia represent over 50% of the world's population and most every religion and have collectively 2.85% of the votes in the General Assembly.
Great deal. Time to move on and allow that train wreck (the U.N.) to collapse under its own gravity.
Why is the Belgium based De Beers the biggest diamond producers? I didn't know Belgium was flush with diamond mines. Please, the west wants these dictators in place for access to cheap commodities with lack environmental rules and corrupt governments that they can pay off.
Because in the USA civil rights are not a matter of priveledge--reserved only for the majority position.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abraham-h-foxman/presbyterian-church-still_b_647611.html?ir=World
Given the ADL head's statements about the Presbyterians, that might be the next target.
and are not paranoid
My understanding was that God was the one who gave the world the Ten Commandments and the Hebrew Bible.
Christians should no longer keep the Old Testament in our Bible. Jesus would not I think, he was teaching a more simple, common sense idea of getting along......not hundred's of laws that require power hungry leaders, and of course they want money......including the OT makes as much sense as the Founding Fathers including royality in the Constitution...
The Rabbi is living in a world were he is discriminating while supposedly fighting discrimination.
i don't claim to be 'we the people founded this nation'
I wasn't there
The author is trying to divert attention from the need for aid for Gazans and the crippling effects of the blockade by trivializing the issue and instead focusing on his own discomfort of living next door to the Libyan representative. How is the aid flotilla and the residency of the representative even related?
Rabbi - you state: "..we are the people who gave the world the Hebrew Bible with its magnificent commandment to never stand idly by the blood of one's neighbor."
Perhaps next time you go to express your outrage, you may do so for the plight of your Palestinian brothers and sisters who are being subjected to human rights abuses under Israeli occupation. Show some humanity.
Btw, which was there first, the school or the mission?