Kids say the darndest things .....

The feisty Renegade Rebbetzin reports a theologically challenging dialogue with one of her children. This reminds me of one of my all-time favourites. Years ago, an aquaintance of ours was driving her kids somewhere.
Voice from the back seat: "Mummy, where do babies come from?"
Mummy (driving), takes deep breath:" Well, Hashem puts a seed into mummy's tummy, and Hashem asks daddy to help make it grow, and Hashem looks after the baby in mummy's tummy, and then Hashem decides it's time for the baby to come out, and Hashem decides whether it will be a little brother or a little sister."
Back seat (silence,thinking): "Mummy, I have another question, then."
Mummy (alarmed, trying to concentrate on traffic): "Yes darling, you know you can always ask Mummy any question"
Back seat:" How do goyim have babies?"

Note: Please do not comment on the theology or the biology of this exchange. B'H, the 'back seat' grew up to be a wonderful young man, who has been in a deep Litvish Yeshivah foir many years. He may have been updated on the birds and bees since.

Rav Lichtenstein takes Rabbi Sacks' side

On the Tsunami/G-d question:

Some people concern themselves with the question of why it happened, voicing opinions on why the tragedy occurred specifically in that place and that time. These same people, in different circumstances, also explain why infants and young children die. Apparently, they consider themselves experts in the ways of Divine Providence.
We must distance ourselves completely from such shallow and false answers. Those are questions for Chazal – who spoke in terms of some kind of general correlation, rather than with reference to a directly retributive causal nexus - to deal with, not people like us. The message that arises in the wake of the events of the twentieth century is that we have no business poking our noses into the "why;" in the context of such questions, what is required of us is absolute humility. We have no business explaining, or pretending to explain, things that cannot be explained. We must remember Chazal's teaching concerning Bilam, who thought that he understood God's supreme wisdom. The Gemara derides him: "This person, who claimed to know God's mind – could he not understand his donkey's mind?" This pretentiousness – moral, philosophical and religious pretentiousness – we totally reject.

I don't believe "we have no business poking our noses into the 'why'"; indeed, we have every right to ask why G-d would allow such a tragedy to happen (as Rabbi Sacks clearly explains). Pretending that we can answer that question with any certainty, however, is ridiculous.

(Rest of the transcript of Rav Lichtenstein's talk here; Via Lamed)

The national religious crisis

Two must-read pieces in today's Ha'aretz and Jerusalem Post regarding the immense theological and practical crisis facing Religious Zionism / the National Religious camp today.
Disengagement means the certain end of the dream of Eretz Yisrael Hashlemah (Greater Israel), a cause the National Religious camp has completely devoted itself to and pursued almost single-mindedly for the past 35 + years.
The fringe of this camp, as both articles explain, has reacted by rejecting one of the central tenets of religious Zionism, that is, the belief in, and their association with the state of Israel, which they feel has betrayed them. Yisrael Harel, who should know, insists that the rest of the Religious Zionist camp is horrified by this development; I hope he is correct and that this does not spread any further, because that would mean the complete breakdown of the 'national religious' community, with an emphasis on 'national.'
Others insist disengagement is a temporary setback; that even if the land is returned, the settlers still managed to achieve a lot spiritually and this was not wasted; or that the generation was not worthy. Last but not least,

Rabbi Shai Peron, co-head of the Petah Tikva Yeshiva, believes the religious Zionist camp must change tactics.
"In order to maintain our connection with the rest of Israeli society, we must emphasize other values besides settling Judea, Samaria and Gaza. For too long we have neglected other values dear to us, like socioeconomic justice, equality and fighting poverty. As a result, we failed to present to secular society the intricacies of the religious Zionist movement. Instead, we have appeared one-dimensional."

That is the closest you are going to get to an admission that the religious Zionist camp may have been wrong to place all its eggs in one basket, and a vision to get on with instead. Significantly, it comes from a rabbi in a rare, urban Hesder yeshiva within the Green Line.

Suddenly, my cake tastes a bissel better...

Jewish! 

Here's a weird piece of trivia: the Bundt pan was originally invented by David Dalquist, who died this week, as a fundraiser for Hadassah! It only took off, however, "in the mid-1960s when a Texas woman won second place in the Pillsbury Bake-Off for a Tunnel of Fudge Cake made in a Bundt pan."
Who knew? Who really wanted to know?

UPDATE: According to the Hadassah press release, that 'homey little baking pan' is responsible for no less than the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital. I guess fundraising, in this case, really was a piece o' cake....

Blessed water, indeed

The Kabbalah Center is raising 'tens of thousands of dollars' -- and perhaps as much as $1m. -- to ship trendy Kabbalah water to South East Asia.
I think a clarification is in order. Other organizations have donated money/items and sent them through recognised and experienced international relief organisations, as three US presidents (past and present) have urged. Is all this money, irresponsibly, going towards the shipment costs? Or could it really be that the Kabbalah center guys are raising money to pay for their own products, thereby increasing their own income on the backs of the victims of this human tragedy?
Alas, it's not entirely impossible.

(Via Canonist)

Jpost discovers the Jblogosphere?

Editor and Publisher is reporting that the NYT is completely redesigning its website (and the Washington Post preparing to make smaller changes) to take into account the fact that many people now no longer reach their articles through their home page, thanks, in the main, to blogs.

[I]t's no surprise that many editors of newspaper Web sites are looking at how to effectively integrate blogs into their content offerings — and how to capitalize on the readership outside blogs often send to articles and features posted on newspaper sites.

And in related news, Nushyman (technically, Nushywoman) says she has it

it on good authority that The Jerusalem Post website is thinking of starting a Jrants type blog page, hopefully they will also do a feature on a different blog each week. I heard they may also feature other sites of interest, like Palestinian blogs.

Why don't they just start their own blog/s, a la The Forward or the WSJ? Or do you have to be an ex-JPost employee to want to blog?

The Kosher consumer always comes last

The Washington Post reports on a struggle in Chicago between small, Jewish owned Kosher food stores and the brand-new Kosher section of a local supermarket. Apparently rabbis have sent out letters to the community urging them to carry on shopping at the old Kosher stores, in order to protect their business. On the one hand, the paper quotes customers who actually tried the new supermarket marveling at its range, accesability, and lower prices. On the other hand, as one Kosher consumer told the paper,

She worries that Jewel will drive away its more vulnerable competition. She also believes that something more important than profits are at stake.
"I try and maintain my old shopping habits," Margolin said. "We have a responsibility."

The thing is, you don't. I know nothing about the specific situation in Chicago (other than what's been reported), but this is a battle which is replayed in city after city, and I see no reason why tens of thousands of Kosher consumers should continue paying higher prices, have to shuffle from store to store to do a week's shopping, and suffer from crowded (and often dark) aisles in order to protect the business of a handful of business owners. Why do a few shop owners' rights come before those of thousands of consumers?

For the 'Yuck' file

The more I hear about Abu Hamza's personal hygiene habits, frankly, the less I want to know.
The latest is that Britain's arch-terrorist and most evil man refused to turn up to court because.... his toenails were too long, making it hard for him to walk. (I know Captain Hook has no hands, but surely his private male nurse should have taken care of this?).
In any case, his request to wear flip-flops was denied (on health and safety grounds) and the judge asked the defence to provide the court with a medical report on Abu Hamza. Erm, how about asking him to clip his toenails and get down to court, pronto?

Jewish murder mystery

Jonathan Edelstein has waded through the accounts of the minister assigned to preach to the condemned at Newgate Prison in the mid-18th century (newly online), and come up with the absolutely fascinating case of one Hosea Youell, who was convicted of stabbing a man to death during a mugging and was sentenced to hang on October 14, 1747.
Youell gave himself up to the authorities three days after the incident, explaining that he wanted

to clear himself, being ask'd of what, he began his Tale, told them he was a Jew, and that he was so often charg'd with being guilty of Robbing and Stabbing the Gentleman near Bishopsgate, that he could bear it no longer, and was come resolv'd to prove the Accusation false.

Bad decision. Unfortunately, the victim of the stabbing was at this point still alive. After a dramatic reconstruction of the crime, he identified Youell as the culprit and promptly died.
According to the minister's account of Youell's last days as he awaited execution,

He was very ignorant and illiterate, not being able to read English, nor the Jewish, or Hebrew Language, so as to understand it, nor yet to write. Religion of all Kinds, even the Jewish, he was an utter Stranger to, and had no more to say about it, but that he loved to hear the Name of God. When I offered to lay before him the happy and glorious Advantages of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, how many and how superior to all the Mosaic Dispensation, had Title to; he said he had heard of such Things, but having been a Jew by Birth, and bred that Way, he would live and die such.

"So it was that on November 16, 1747," writes Edelstein in his elegant retelling, "Youell was taken to Tyburn. Unlike the other three men hanged that day, who had "receiv'd the Sacrament in the Morning," Youell "was attended by a Person, who in the Jewish Manner and Language read Service to him for some Time." Still maintaining his innocence, and still holding fast to a faith he barely knew, Hosea Youell met his end."

Read the full crime story here.

Who's afraid of clever women?

It's official: smart women are less likely to marry. Which confirms what I've always known, that it's not a coincidence that so many of my single female friends are amongst the most intelligent, accomplished, interesting people I know.
Whilst clearly some of these high-flying single women are not interested in marriage, I believe the majority of at least the ones I know very much are. They simply can't find men who are interested in a woman who will really challenge them.
So, instead of JDate, Speed Dating etc., here's a long-term solution the 'Shidduch Crisis.' Let's find a way to boost the confidence of Jewish men, so that more of them begin feeling comfortable asking out women who are just as clever as they are. Won't do the Jewish gene pool no harm, either....

(Via JDaters Anonymous, Chayyei Sarah and Allison)

They hate us! They really hate us! Maybe...

By now many you will have seen the survey of British attitudes to other countries, which was published in yesterday's Daily Telegraph. At first glance, the results are pretty disturbing: Israel was named by 37% of respondents as the country in which they would least like to live, coming top of the survey. The state was also ranked the place where Britons would least like to take a holiday (41%), and the least beautiful country (23%).
Only France and Germany were considered to have less friendly people than Israel, and only the United States was considered more dangerous than the Jewish State. Despite being the only fully democratic state in the Middle East, Israel was also thought to be among the world's "least democratic countries,” beaten only by China, Russia and Dubai.
I've just spent the last couple of hours speaking to a bunch of British Jewish leaders about the results for a news item for tomorrow's Jerusalem Post, and two things clearly emerge:
a. No one is very suprised
b. No one is really that bothered.
No one is very surprised, because the negativity reflects the British media's coverage of Israel. And no one is really bothered, because anyone taking a close look at the survey can tell straight away that while it does come from a very reputable polling company, the questions are simply not sophisticated enough to really measure public sentiment towards Israel.
To cite just one example, respondents were asked to rank countries according to various criteria. They were given a choice of less than 25 countries -- of which few are engaged in conflicts, and many are members of the British commonwealth. Is it any wonder Israel did so badly?
The simplistic phrasing of the questions also lends itself to misunderstandings. People don't want to visit Israel -- okay; but that doesn't explain why they feel that way. Perhaps they are scared of suicide bombers and blame the violence on the Palestinians? The questions don't measure nuances (nor do they tell us how the same respondents feel about the Palestinians, come to think of it).
In short, it's clear that our hasbara is not good. What's not clear is how much the Brits dislike us -- at least not from this particular survey...

How many Jews do you think remain in Russia? Take a wild guess

Ha'aretz claims (with some very vague data) that the number of immigrants to Israel who are returning to Mother Russia is dropping -- precisely at the moment when the world's media is picking up on the story. Unhelpfully, the Ha'aretz story seems to refer to Russia-proper, with no stats for the FSU as a whole. Still, I find the following numbers amazing:

Currently 243,000 "nuclear" Jews, those who define themselves as Jews and generally have two Jewish parents, live in Russia. The expanded nucleus, which includes the "nuclear" Jews and their expanded families, is twice this number. Meanwhile, the number eligible to immigrate to Israel according to the Law of Return is said to be 800,000, Tolts said....
Recent restrictions on the immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union to the United States and Germany makes Israel nearly the only option available to Russian Jews. Today, of some 1,600,000 Russian-speaking Jews in the world, constituting 12 percent of world Jewry, more than two-thirds live in Israel. Israel is unequivocally the center of Russian Jewry today.

That makes less Jews living in Russia today than in the UK, France or Canada.

Finally .. some really new thinking: who is 'Rav Shagar'?

While here in Israel (leaving in a couple of days) I found a really interesting and original book - 'Kelim shevurim' (= "Broken Vessels") by Rav Sholom Gershon Rosenberg ("Rav Shaga'r"), head of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak in Efrat. I have no idea who this Rav is, and can't find much on the Internet about him - but he is a really original and thoughtful thinker. (Can anyone give some info?)
The book is a collection of essays, most revolving around postmodernism and Judaism, especially as it affects the 'kipah srugah' (="k-s") community. His basic line is that all of the premises on which the relationship of the dati-leumi ideology and the State were founded no longer apply, and that the world of relativistic values and 'relativistic democracy' has irrevocably changed the Jewish religious world, and it is useless trying to explain our world-view in the old terminologies and categories. He also points out the implications for the religious community (and the religion) of the shift from the feeling that the religious duty of the knitted-kippah wearer is to the collective (characteristic of the old style Mizrachi pioneers, and of the post-67 mitnachalim) to the idea that the religious duty of the knitted-kipah wearer is to personal spirituality. One of the interesting essays explores changing dress styles in the k-s community of yeshivot and mechinot, ranging from whether the wearing of Reboks on shabbat signifies a changed mindset as well as a changing fashion to an analysis of the increasingly variegated headgear to be seen in the same institutions.
He does not, however, comment on the same changes among women. Last shabbat I spent in Modi'in, and davenned at a typical Israeli k-s minyan in a local school. The men, with very few exceptions, were in white shirts with k-s's. But after the davening I was struck by the clothing of the women. The fashion seems to be somewhat Bohemian/Eastern/hippie in effect -- close-fitting 'skullcap' type hats, colorful earrings, and very colourful, eastern-looking kaftans and robes. Some were wearing Indian-style tunics over trousers. What statement is being made here?? ("I'm conforming but I'm not conforming" ?)
Does anyone else know what I'm describing? What does it mean???? (I would add to that that I have also noticed a lot of ads from the same community, from the women, offering a whole range of 'alternative medicine'-type therapies -- reflexology, reiki, etc etc).

Comments?

It doesn't take a nuclear scientist....

Israel has apparently released never-before-seen video footage from inside the Dimona nuclear plant, formerly top-secret. The tape, which will be shown on Israel's Channel 10 on Friday, is "an apparent attempt to promote a positive image of what experts believe" -- and everyone knows -- "to be an atomic bomb factory."
Now, before anyone even begins to discuss whether or not this is a good idea, let's just take a brief look at the scenes contained in this must-watch video:

Channel 10 television said its tape of the plant, to be aired on Friday, showed technicians in various non-military activities -- mingling on the lawn, inspecting lab equipment and lecturing at an "atomic school" for disadvantaged youths....
"A lot has been written and said about Dimona, almost all of it negative and critical," a senior Channel 10 staffer said on condition of anonymity.
"We were happy to discover that there are positive things there too -- such as high-schoolers learning in the most secretive place in the country."

I guess it makes it easier to study late at night for your bagrut if you glow in the dark....

Rabbis vs. psychologists

Ha'aretz reports from a conference held last week at Bar Ilan, "about the mistrust that characterizes relations between rabbis and psychologists, and the damage this mistrust can cause anyone who in their time of trouble wants to receive spiritual help from a rabbi as well as professional help from a psychologist."
According to Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, who is completing a Master's Degree in psychology, the sources of the conflict are that

"The psychologist is obligated first and foremost to the patient, while the rabbi is obligated first and foremost to the patient's God. The psychologist tries to help the patient solve his problems by helping him to connect to himself, while the rabbi tries to help him by helping him connect to the world of mitzvot [righteous deeds]."
The greatest concern of the rabbis stems from their assumption that psychologists, who are free from the bounds of halakha (Jewish law) and obligated only to alleviating the distress of their patients, grant legitimacy to phenomena and behavior that are proscribed by halakha...
The rabbi's suspicion vis-a-vis the psychologist is further reinforced, said Feuerstein, by the fact that many rabbis view the psychologist as a competitor - as "someone who can hurt the rabbi's ratings among the public" - who can impair the rabbi's standing as the leader to whom the members of the community present their problems.

Part of the problem, I think, is simply that rabbis have taken on a role they are usually completely unqualified for and should not be filling. Rabbis can be very wise men but, unless they are trained, are not social workers and not psychologists and should not be offering people in real trouble help in most of the areas over which, according to Feuerstein, the majority of the conflict with the psychologists takes place ("issues related to the children's education, problems in the family, troubles between husband and wife, individuals who have difficulty finding their place in their community, people feeling they are experiencing a non-clinical breakdown"). On the whole, they should stick to questions of a halachic nature.
In addition, the whole point of going to see a psychologist is to work out for yourself what you really feel and want through talking to someone with no emotional involvement or vested interest. A good psychologist is someone who can put their own baggage aside and help people come to their own decisions; not to guide them, but to help them guide themselves. If someone really wants to find a solution to their problem which is in tune with halacha or with a religious way of life, they will through the psychologist (it would, of course, help if the psychologists had a better understanding of where their religious patients are coming from -- another important problem highlighted by the article). What the fear of psychologists betrays is a fear of what would happen if members of the religious public thought for themselves and expressed their true desires.

Ungrateful Israel?

There seems to be a row brewing in Israel over the pace at which the country is bringing over the Falash Mura, those Ethiopian Jews who converted (or whose ancestors converted) to Christianity and have now returned to their roots. In the meanwhile, riots are breaking out in the Jewish community compound in Addis, as reported by the JPost and today's NYT.
In the midst of all this, a sad story in Ha'aretz. Israel has ordered the expulsion of a 67 year-old Christian Ethiopian, who put himself at great risk to help dozens of Ethiopian Jews make Aliya in the late 70's-80's, when the Jewish Agency was not allowed to operate in the country. His own children were allowed to come to Israel because the state recognized they were in danger, and they converted when they got to Israel and became citizens. He has been living in Israel illegally with one of his daughters for some time.
Why does Israel seem so perenially ungrateful to non-Jews who have helped its people? You need look no further for this than at the case of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) fighters, who were shamefully abandoned once they were no longer 'useful'; it took more than four years until Israel finally gave them real rights in the country last month. The fact that Israel is willing to recognise Righteous Gentiles who helped Jews during the Holocaust -- people who didn't necessarily ever have any connection to Israel at all -- makes this behaviour even stranger. (Although some have pointed out that while Israel is willing to put up a symbolic plaque or plant a tree, it rarely offers practical help when it's needed -- eg. Israel was more than happy to bury Oskar Schindler on Har HaZeytim and carry his coffin through Jerusalem, but what about his wife Emily, who played a role as well, and who lived in notorious poverty in South America for years?).
The answer isn't racism, or they would have made sure that hundreds of thousands of Russian non-Jewish Olim couldn't enter the country. But I have no idea what it is....

JIB Awards -- the nominations

Wow. I am simply so humbled to see that Bloghead has already been nominated in four categories (Best Overall Blog, Best Jewish Culture Blog, Best Jewish Religion Blog and Best Politics, Current Affairs and Academia Blog) in the 2004 Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards! Thank you so much to the kind anonymous reader(s?) who nominated us.
Click here to see the full list of categories and nominees to date, and to nominate other favorites by the closing date of January 16th. May the best blogs win (and may everyone's readership go up and up and up)...

UPDATE: And now, a nomination for Best New Blog 2004 as well, courtesy of Mike. Thanks!

Would you put this man on trial?

Solomon Morel

The Daily Telegraph reports on Poland's ongoing attempts to extradite Solomon Morel, 86, from Israel, on the charge of 'crimes against humanity.' Morel, a Pole who fled to Israel in the early 1990s, watched the murders of his mother, father and brother during the Holocaust, was held in Auschwitz as a young man and suffered the loss of more than 30 of his relatives:

In November 1945, after the Soviet occupation of Poland began, he was one of many Jews appointed by Stalin to supervise the brutal "de-Nazification" camps, where up to 80,000 ethnic Germans are believed to have died as a result of torture, starvation and typhus.
Stalin deliberately picked Jews as camp commandants in the knowledge that they would show little mercy to the inmates.
According to John Sack, the late author of An Eye for An Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945, Morel made his desire for revenge clear from the first day the camp at Swietochlowice opened.
In a television interview before his death earlier this year, Mr Sack said: "On the first night at Swietochlowice, when the first contingent of Germans arrived, at about 10 o'clock at night he walked into one of the barracks and he said to the Germans, 'My name is Morel. I am a Jew. My mother and father, my family, I think they're all dead, and I swore that if I got out alive, I was going to get back at you Nazis. And now you're going to pay for what you did.' "
In his book, Mr Sack, himself a Jew, describes in detail the alleged atrocities committed at the camp: "The guards put the Germans into a doghouse, beating them if they didn't say `bow-wow'. They got the Germans to beat each other; to jump on each other's spines and to punch each other's noses, and hit the Germans so hard that they once knocked a German's glass eye out."
Guards also raped German women and trained dogs to bite off German men's genitals on command, he said.

So far, Israel has politely resisted extraditing Morel, and the major Jewish organizations have remained silent on the matter. One of the reasons is fairly obvious: a quick Google search shows that by now, most of the pressure to have him extradited is coming from neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers who are eager to prove that the Jews are 'just as bad' as the Germans were and that no side has a monopoly on evil. Clearly, the PR implications of any such trial would be daunting. In addition, it is hard not to understand someone who has lost 30 members of family seeking revenge; the WJC's Elan Steinberg has argued Morel probably answered to the definition of 'temporary insanity.'
And yet... And yet, disregarding for a moment all the political/PR sensitivities, I believe that if there is reasonable cause to believe the accusations have some foundation (something which is not entirely clear), Solomon Morel should stand trial.
Going through unimaginable horror still does not entitle one to inflict the same horror on others, or excuse one from moral responsibility. If Morel is guilty of the things of which he has been accused, he is still morally culpable (unless he can prove -- in a court of law -- that he was, indeed, 'temporarily insane').
Even if you believe he had the right to seek revenge, the inmates who were in his camp, who were mostly German nationals living in Poland, were not necessarily Nazis or directly reponsible for Jewish deaths; there were also Polish civilians, women and teenagers in the camp as well, all innocent from his point of view.
Lastly, as Jews, if we believe that putting people in camps, beating them to death, leaving them to starve, putting them through physical torture and other inhumane behaviour is wrong, we must hold our own to the same standards, or else we lose all claim to the moral high ground. If we expect other people to extradite Nazi criminals and hold them accountable for their behaviour, we must be prepared to do the same when our own are charged with horrific crimes.

Ours not to reason why

Dov Bear reports that

The chatterers in shul this weekend said they've heard that, among the faithful, it has been decalred that last week's disaster was sent, by God, to remind the Jewish people that slanderous talk (loshon hara) is a great evil.

Wonderful. So 120,000 Muslims, Hindus and other non-Jews had to die in order to teach the Jewish people a lesson? What a selfish worldview.
For people looking for a more profound response to this theological challenge, read British Chief Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks in yesterday's Times (apparently, he delivered the article as a sermon from the St. John's Wood synagogue pulpit yesterday as well....). He explains that in the bible, the truly religious people (eg. Abraham, Moses, Job) have always asked why G-d allows evil to happen, but have never come up with the answer:

in the end it is not Job’s comforters, who blamed his misfortunes on his sins, who were vindicated by heaven, but Job himself, who consistently challenged God. In Judaism, faith lies in the question, not the answer.

He concludes:

The religious question is, therefore, not: “Why did this happen?” But “What then shall we do?” That is why, in synagogues, churches, mosques and temples throughout the world this weekend, along with our prayers for the injured and the bereaved, we will be asking people to donate money to assist the work of relief. The religious response is not to seek to understand, thereby to accept. We are not God. Instead we are the people He has called on us to be his “ partners in the work of creation”. The only adequate religious response is to say: “God, I do not know why this terrifying disaster has happened, but I do know what You want of us: to help the afflicted, comfort the bereaved, send healing to the injured, and aid those who have lost their livelihoods and homes.” We cannot understand God, but we can strive to imitate His love and care.

Sounds sensible to me!

Vatican cleared

It now appears that the report that the Vatican paper had attacked Israel for 'refusing' a Sri Lankan request for help, which I commented on here, originated in a mis-translation of the article by Catholic World News. The paper has now issued an apology and a corrected version of the article, which puts the blame squarely on Sri Lankan soldiers for refusing what was, in fact, a voluntary Israeli offer of help.
Part of me can't help wondering, however, just how likely it is that CNW would mis-translate not just a word, not just a phrase or a paragraph, but an entire article? At the very least, they need a new translator......