The "Victory Conference" ongoing now in the International Convention Center in Jerusalem (Binyanei Hauma) is interesting and problematic.

Do I support renewal of the Gush Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip? I will participate in the conference organized by Daniella Weiss and Yossi Dagan next week that support the possibility. I will not stand against if there are people who want to live there.

Translation:

Haredi journalist Yisrael Cohen reported on Twitter the other day about a bag of lettuce sold in Osher Ad. TOI and Mako followed suit.

Seems mundane but what was interesting is that this bag of lettuce was officially a package of certified bug-free mehadrin lettuce. This lettuce has 5 different Badatz hechshers on it, as Cohen himself noted. And the lettuce included a nice little fro in the bag. At no extra charge. People are shocked. 5 hechshers and they missed this!!??

On the one hand, they the lettuce is said bug-free. They did not say frog-free. So they kept strictly to their mandate. And, as one of the consumers pointed out in the video, perhaps they kept it bug-free by putting the frog in there to eat all the bugs!

On the other hand, more seriously... mistakes happen. to the best and worst of hechshers. No hechsher is perfect. And obviously this isnt a bug that grew on lettuce that might indicate an infestation, but a frog that probably got in during the packaging of the lettuce.

And on the third hand, second of the serious hands, 5 hechshers? 5 sets of mashgiach eyes missed this? What are we paying so much money for? 1 guy missed it, no problem. Mistakes happen, nobody is perfect. 2 guys, ok, same. 5 guys missed it?
Sometimes multiple hechshers on a product do not mean each has its own mashgiach checking. Sometimes some of the hechshers rely on one mashgiach and certify base don what the one mashgiach for one of the organizations said. In general I don't like that policy, as it seems to somewhat be defrauding the consumer who wants to rely on Rabbi X and not Rabbi Y, but it is often what is in place.
I dont know if that so the case in the case of bug-free lettuce. Does each organization send their own inspectors to check and supervise or do they all rely on the word of the supervisor of one organizations. Either way There is a big problem here. Either nobody is really checking, because 1 guy can make a mistake and miss it but 5 sets of eyes wouldn't, or one guy made a mistake and 4 guys are defrauding their customers.

Anyways, had I been there I would have taken the frog home as a pet. Win Win. The best deals are at Osher Ad!

While I respect the personal pain of each person that was forced to leave his home, I think they pumped up, cultivated and exaggerated the description of the trauma [of the evacuation from Gush Katif], in part in order to make it more difficult for any future process to happen..

  -former PM Ehud Olmert, in an interview about his discussions with Palestinian PM Abbas about evacuating Jews from the West Bank - a deal that never went through..

This is a very powerful and moving video about the Disengagement from Gush Katif called Tefillat He'Ne'arot - the Prayer of The Girls.

See the kid drinking chocolate milk on the left in the picture on the container of chocolate powder made by Elite?

he just sued Elite for using his image without due compensation. He won the court case and Elite is being forced to remove his picture within 6 months. He also sued for 5 million NIS when they initially refused to remove the picture, but I do not know if he was awarded the monetary compensation.

This kid is now a young man in the IDF and has had enough. he was initially paid 3520 NIS for participating in a photo shoot as an extra for a modeling agency. No agreement was signed, supposedly, for use of the picture, and since then his picture has adorned the Strauss-Elite can of chocolate powder for 10 years!

It started to bother him when he would be taunted in school, as kids gave him the nickname, it seems not an endearing one, "Shoko". The name stuck, some still call him "Shoko" it seems, and it still bothers him.

Clearly he never received due compensation for 10 years worth of advertising for a flagship product for a major company when he was paid 3520 NIS (about $800).

the courts ruled in his favor and Elite must remove his image within 6 months.

2 things about this story caught my interest:

1. Nowhere did I see was he interested in money. All he wanted was his image removed. the only time he sued for money was when they refused to remove his image, and it seems like the monetary demand was dropped (I guess) when the courts ruled against Elite and they agreed to comply.

2. The lawyer for the young man is a lawyer named Gilad Korinaldi. I recently read an article (in Mishpacha Hebrew magazine, if I remember correctly) about Gilad Korinaldi. He was the only lawyer to defeat Ariel Sharon and his government in the time of the disengagement in the many lawsuits against different aspects of the disengagement.

The Sharon government had decided, and insisted in subsequent decisions, that they would destroy the shuls in Gush Katif after pulling the residents out. The Sharon government decided they had to do this so as to prevent the rampage and destruction that was sure to be caused by the Arabs after Israel left the strip. he wanted to avoid images of Arabs destroying shuls, and felt it was better for Jews to destroy the shuls "respectfully" (!?) than to have it done in a disrespectful way.
Korinaldo sued and said we should not destroy the shuls. he went around the world to try to get international protection for the hsuls as holy sites, and there was a certain amount of agreement form various governments to provide a certain level of protection. Aside from that he pressed on against the Sharon decision to destroy the shuls claiming it would look very bad for us to destroy shuls, never have Jews done that before, better for us to leave them and hopefully they will be safe, but even if not at least they won't be destroyed by our hands.

After much deliberation, and with the courts seemingly inclined to rule in Korinaldi's favor, Ariel Sharon reconvened his government to discuss the matter again, for a fourth time I think, and this time they changed their position and decided to not destroy the shuls.

We were later exposed to the images of the Gazan Arabs destroying our shuls.

It interested me when I saw Korinaldi's name in the article about the shoko lawsuit, after recently reading about him in the Gush Katif shul issue.

Shirat HaYam was a beautiful seaside village in the Gish Katif area. It was a central part of the disengagement as anti-disengagement protesters gathered there by the hundreds to stage a standoff. Eventually Shirat HaYam was evacuated like the rest of the Gush.

The people of Shirat HaYam have been promised a permanent home. A community is supposed to be built for them in the Jordan Valley. Until that actually happens, they have moved around a number of times.

Where they are living now they have no synagogue. Innovative as they are, they have come up with an interesting fundraising program, called "Double Your Mitzva".

Basically the idea is that as you now renew your synagogue annual membership and/or purchase seats for the High Holidays/Yamim Noraim, you can have your synagogue double the donation and they will get the proceeds, which will help them build their synagogue, giving them a place to pray during the upcoming holidays.

Read up on it for more info...

Kfar Maimon.

A little village south of Sderot very close to the Gaza border.

The location of the three day protest 2 years ago. The big one. The one with 50,000 people camping out in every available spot in Kfar Maimon waiting to make the move into Gaza to thwart the disengagement.

I went back to Kfar Maimon this past Friday. Not for anythign so dramatic as the protest that took place 2 years ago. A friend of mine was sitting shiva in Kfar Maimon. He grew up there and his parents still lived there. His father died and he was sitting shiva. I went Friday morning to pay a shiva call.

I was joking around with people, and I told my friend, that I would have to leave extra early to get there (it is about an hour and a quarter drive from where I live) because I only know the way cutting through the fields.

2 years ago, the Yesha Council called for a protest against the disengagement. They decided to make a big one and they made a three day protest that was meant to culminate in a mass move on the Gaza border.

The government tried to limit the numbers of people who could go and participate in the protest. So they declared the whole area a closed military zone. They only partially enforced it though. They did not let anybody openly go to Kfar Maimon or anywhere near the border with Gaza. However, they mostly turned a blind eye to people going when they went via alternative routes. By alternative routes I mean driving or hiking through the surrounding fields.

I went with a group of guys down for the third of the three day protest. We had a fearless driver with a "company car". After being turned away on a number of routes, we drove through a number of fields until we finally made it to Kfar Maimon.

What happened happened and what did not happen did not happen. That is history.

So my joke was that the only way I know to get to Kfar Maimon is via the fields and not via the roads, so I would need some extra time to get there...

Going there on Friday was a totally different experience.

2 years ago the place was a wreck. People were covering every inch of the little settlement. Local residents gave up everything of themselves and their lives for three days to spearhead the protest against the disengagement. The aesthetics of the yishuv had been destroyed by the masses of people sleeping everywhere and hanging out and eating, etc. The authorities had limited the entry of basic necessities, so there had been no garbage collection for a number of days. You can imagine the havoc an additional 50,000 people would cause to a sleepy town of 200 or so people.

Now it is just a sleepy, quiet village with working people. They work in the fields and as educators. It is a simple place with simple, salt of the earth people. The place is quiet and clean.

It must have taken them a long time to clean the place up when it was all over and get back to living their lives again normally.

Kfar Maimon placed a marker stone at the entrance to the settlement to commemorate the historic event. The marker tells, briefly, of the events of 2 years ago.

This is a public service announcement...

The second yahrtzeit for the Gush Katif communities falls out on Thursday. They were destroyed two years ago on 11 Av, 5765.

To commemorate the yahrtzeit, they are planning an event for this Thursday in Nitzan with former Gush Katif and Northern Shomron residents at 5:30 pm.

There will be performances by great musicians, such Ariel Zilber, Aaron Razel, Yishai Lapidot, Mendy Gerufi and Sinai Tur.

Entrance is free of charge.

There will be transportation available from areas around the country. For information call Ezrat Menachem 054-7-770631.

The following video was originally released by the army spokesperson. It was made and released to be a morale booster for the troops training to carry out the expulsion/evacuation of the (Jewish) residents of Gush Katif. The video was quickly retracted when they realized it looked bad, as though they were treating the expulsion light heartedly and as a primary goal, rather than with the sensitivity they claimed they were using.

The video had been released for a very short time. I never saw it because it was pulled very quickly, but had supposedly left a copy in the outside world. Someone just posted it the other day on YouTube and here I present it to you....

donate toys for Hannuka to kids of the families that were expelled/evacuated/transferred from Gush Katif.

click here