Ombudsman for children’s rights proposes that Jews and Muslim replace male circumcision with a symbolic, nonsurgical ritual.

In a radio interview today, comic legend Jackie Mason slammed President Obama for his campaign’s recent announcement of a potential second term to visit Israel, asking “Did he just buy a map a week ago?”

Mason, who bills himself as “The Ultimate Jew,” took issue with Obama failing to visit Israel during his first term despite overwhelming Jewish support for his 2008 presidential election.

Mason was speaking today on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio.

Stated Mason: “What I would like to know is this: Why does it take five years to find out that Israel is there? Did he just buy a map a week ago? He didn’t know that Israel exists until two hours ago?”

The stand up continued: “Can someone answer this question? The Jews gave him 78 percent of their vote. They went everywhere to help him but he can’t go across the street to help them? He is in Egypt and in Lebanon and every country around there within a block and a half of Israel. And he couldn’t cross the street to say hello to them?”

Mason said the Obama campaign’s announcement last week of a second term visit to Israel sends a message to Jewish voters that “they don’t deserve [a visit] unless they send him another 78 million dollars and give them another 78 percent of the vote.”

The campaign announced that potential visit amid heavy GOP criticism for the president’s not going to the Jewish state during his first term.

As a presidential candidate, Obama visited Israel in July 2008.
In 2009, Obama addressed the Arab world from Egypt and then traveled to Saudi Arabia but did not stop in Israel during his only Mideast tour as president.

Mitt Romney visited Israel last week.

Police demolish a building in the Mitzpeh Avichai outpost on the Sabbath. ‘They’re adding insult to injury,’ residents say.

Six IDF soldiers are “fighting” in the London Olympics – competing as part of the Israeli Team in swimming, Judo and rhythmic gymnastics.

Top Nazi war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary denied all allegations against him at a first hearing before prosecutors in Hungary on Tuesday.

The question of Israel’s capital city suddenly has become a hot-button political issue, and a pair of former WND columnists is now running for office to make sure that once and for all, Jerusalem is declared the capital.

Jeremy Gimpel and Ari Abramowitz, creators of the “Israel Inspired” videos and makers of “Tuesday Night Live in Jerusalem,” the largest English-speaking TV show broadcast internationally from Israel, have announced their candidacy for the nation’s governing body, the Knesset, on the central platform of demanding the world finally recognize Jerusalem as capital of the Jewish state.

Their entry into the fray is only the latest in a string of news items about the controversy that has exploded on the international scene in the last few days.

As WND reported, last week the two most senior correspondents in the White House press room – Connie Lawn of USA Radio Network and WND’s Les Kinsolving – asked Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, to answer whether the Obama administration considered Jerusalem or Tel Aviv to be the capital of Israel – only to be refused a coherent answer.

Over the weekend, however, according to an Associated Press report, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney stood on Israeli soil and openly declared Jerusalem to be the nation’s capital.

Even the Olympics have been caught up in the controversy, when it was discovered the British Broadcasting Corporations’ website covering the games listed Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, while not listing a capital city for Israel at all. As WND reported, the website was amended after Israeli protest, but still only lists Jerusalem as Israel’s “seat of government,” while explaining that “most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.”

The changes, however, have failed to smooth over ruffled feathers.

“We cannot accept those who deny our history, our sovereignty, and our right to determine our own capital,” said Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. “Irrespective of the BBC’s political agenda, Jerusalem is, was, and always will be the capital of Israel.”

The controversy over the nation’s capital exists because many Jews, as well as many of Israel’s supporters around the world, have long understood that Jerusalem is more that just the capital of the country, but the heart and soul of the Jewish people’s understanding of returning to the land of their forefathers.

And even though the presidential residence, government offices, supreme court and Knesset are located in Jerusalem – designated as the capital city by Jewish law – the United Nations doesn’t recognize Jerusalem’s place, and most nations’ embassies, therefore, are located in Israel’s northern city of Tel Aviv. In fact, not a single nation on earth diplomatically recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Even the U.S., long considered one of Israel’s most faithful allies, has fudged its position on the capital controversy as incoherently as Carney answered the press corps.

For example, in 1995 Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, a resolution supporting recognition of a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and declaring “the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.” But the act has yet to be carried out, as President Clinton’s administration believed the act was an unconstitutional invasion of presidential authority. No president has yet to act on the 1995 resolution.

In another example, Congress in 2002 passed a law that would allow Jerusalem-born Americans to list “Israel” as their birth country, but Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have refused to allow it, citing the sensitive and unsettled status of the city.

For many of the Jewish faith, this steadfast refusal to recognize Jerusalem is nothing less than a slap in the face to their culture and a symbolic undermining of their national sovereignty.

In the following video, Gimpel and Abramowitz display dramatically the heart of the Jewish cry to rebuild Jerusalem and call the U.S. State Department’s refusal to recognize the capital city “a tragedy.”

“The administration’s refusal to take a courageous stand for truth, to honorably reflect the will of the American people and to loyally defend an indispensable ally? It’s a tragedy,” states Abramowitz.

“We want our greatest ally to take a stand,” says Gimpel, “and to lead the way for the rest of the world to recognize Jerusalem as our capital.”

Delhi police point to Revolutionary Guards in attack that injured Israeli attaché’s wife, according to ‘Times of India’ report.

In the year 2005, Israel’s government tore apart the lives of nearly 10,000 of its own people in pursuit of peace – but peace did not come.

An Iranian athlete likely to compete against an Israeli withdrew from the competition, claiming he was suffering from a “gut infection.”

(Israel National News) Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of Av in the Hebrew calendar, is a sundown-to-sundown fast, a day of mourning marking the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples in Jerusalem, the subsequent exile from the Land of Israel, as well as other historical calamities that befell the Jewish People on the same date. This year the fast began at 7:43 p.m. Saturday in Jerusalem and will end on Sunday at 8:09 p.m.

Among the calamities that occurred on this day …

(TheKotel.org) View the thousands of mourners at the Western Wall who have come to mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples as well as other calamities throughout history.

A definitive answer to Seth Mandel’s recent Commentary article against Danny Dayan’s op-ed in the New York Times.

Romney is in Israel and just in time for his visit, we have some behavior hints that will set him apart from his opponent.

Technically, this year the fast should be called Asarah Be’av, not Tisha Be’av.

(Algemeiner)
Irwin Cotler –
The refusal of the IOC to observe a moment of silence on the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre – the slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes for no other reason than that they were Israelis and Jews – is as offensive as it is incomprehensible. This steadfast reluctance not only ignores – but mocks – the calls for a moment of silence by government leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird; by various parliaments including resolutions by the U.S. Congress as well as the Canadian, Australian, German and Italian Parliaments; and the sustained international public campaign and anguished civil societies appeals.
It is not hard to infer that not only were the athletes killed because they were Israeli and Jewish, but that the moment of silence is being denied them also because they are Israeli and Jewish. The writer as former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is apparently upset about a Jewish video in which two children
build the Third Temple out of sand.

The Jewish Federation of Colorado set up a fund to aid the victims and families affected by the recent shooting in the city of Aurora.

Barack Obama is making Americans in Israel very, very nervous. How will Mitt Romney take advantage of this opening?

Israel Museum exhibit called “A World Apart Next Door: Glimpses into the Life of Hassidic Jews,” attracting haredim from all sects.

Arab viewers of ‘educational’ clip with image of Mursi claim it promotes replacing mosque with rebuilt Temple.

In near future, Republican Jewish Coalition plans to begin multimillion-dollar campaign dubbed “My Buyer’s Remorse.”

Two can play at that game, remarked Professor Alan Dershowitz, responding to the smear tactics of liberal leftists aimed at wealthy Republican donors.

Golan Heights residents near the Syrian border say “business is as usual” despite nearby bombings; deny reports of gas mask shipments.

Shomron Regional Council gives leftists “honorary citizenship” for helping to legalize communities through court petitions.

Mitt Romney says he supports an official minute of silence to honor Israeli athletes killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Bulgaria has denied claims of responsibility for the suicide attack on an Israeli tour bus last week by a small Muslim terrorist group.

Over 250,000 attend the rabbi’s funeral procession, coming from across the country to pay their final respects.

Germany’s lower house of parliament passes a resolution to protect the religious circumcision of infant boys.

At least seven Israelis were killed and 30 others wounded in an explosion aboard a tourist bus at a Bulgarian airport. Israel’s prime minister already blames Iran and promised a strong response, while Israeli media point to a possible Hizballah link.

Terrorist throws large rock at a Jew, 60, in Abraham’s Spring in Hevron, knocks him unconscious.

The stories of Jewish refugees from Arab countries must be recorded, and their claims noted, before it is too late, MKs warn.

Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal center tells the ‘Post’ he is “overjoyed by the news,” calls it a great victory.

Authorities in Hungary arrest the “most wanted” Nazi war criminal after British paper tracks him down.

A beggar drew a knife over the weekend and threatened to stab a yeshiva student in Crown Heights. Residents trying to solve beggar problem.

J Street has launched a new campaign, insisting Congressmen are “not pro-Israel” if they support Israeli annexation of Judea, Samaria.

Prof. Shlomo Bentin, who received the Israel Prize this year, was killed in a car accident near the University of California, Berkeley.

Since arriving on aliya scene, NGO has streamlined absorption process, but immigration from North America hasn’t risen dramatically.

Until recently, J Street says, it’s worked defensively, “Now we’re taking it to the next level.”

This new form of Jewish identity is called “attachment to Israel” and it is strengthening among young US Jews.