Yeshiva World News

President Barack Obama will seek to keep 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the war formally ends later this year and then will withdraw most of those forces by the end of 2016, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

Obama’s decision is largely in line with what military commanders have been seeking and will allow the president to fully end the American-led military effort by the time he leaves office.

The two-year plan is contingent on the Afghan government signing a bilateral security agreement with the U.S. While current Afghan President Hamid Karzai has declined to sign the agreement, U.S. officials are confident that either of the candidates seeking to replace him would give his approval.

The plan calls for the U.S. military to draw down from its current force of 32,000 to 9,800 by the start of next year. Those troops, dispatched throughout Afghanistan, would focus on counterterrorism and the training of Afghan security forces. They would not be engaged in combat missions.

Over the course of next year, the number of troops would be cut in half and consolidated in the capital of Kabul and at Bagram Air Field, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan. Those remaining forces would largely be withdrawn by the end of 2016, with fewer than 1,000 remaining behind to staff a security office in Kabul.

The American forces would probably be bolstered by a few thousand NATO troops. The total NATO presence, including U.S. troops, is expected to be around 12,000 at the start of next year.

Obama was to announce the plan at the White House Tuesday afternoon. He is just back from a surprise weekend trip to Afghanistan where he met with U.S. commanders and American forces serving in the closing months of America’s longest war.

The officials providing details of the announcement insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan by name ahead of the president.

Top Republicans swiftly criticized the plan before Obama had even announced it publicly, taking issue with Obama’s decision to announce that troops will be out of Afghanistan after 2016.

“President Obama is not ending wars, he’s losing them,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a frequent critic of Obama’s foreign policy, wrote on Twitter.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., praised Obama’s troop levels but questioned his timing and whether the president was replicating actions in Iraq, “where he abandoned the region to chaos.”

“Holding this mission to an arbitrary egg-timer doesn’t make a lick of sense strategically,” McKeon said.

Ahead of his remarks, Obama was expected to speak with Karzai, who has had a tumultuous relationship with the White House. The two leaders did not see each other while Obama was in Afghanistan, but they did speak by phone as Air Force One was returning to Washington.

Obama has also discussed his plans with several European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

U.S. military commanders have been arguing for months to keep roughly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, if only for a limited time, while they bolster the Afghan forces’ ability to do long-term logistical planning and increase their air force capabilities. In recent weeks, the military had expressed confidence that they had been able to sell their plans to the White House.

Germany and Italy have said they will continue as lead nations in the north and west of Afghanistan, and there has been some discussion that the U.S. would also have some troops in those areas to work with the allies.

After Karzai refused to sign the bilateral security agreement, Obama asked the Pentagon to plan for the possibility that all American forces would withdraw by a year-end 2014 deadline. But given the supportive comments of the candidates in Afghanistan’s presidential election, Obama signaled during his holiday weekend trip to Bagram that he was likely to keep some American troops in the country.

“After all the sacrifices we’ve made, we want to preserve the gains that you have helped to win, and we’re going to make sure that Afghanistan can never again, ever, be used again to launch an attack against our country,” Obama declared.

At least 2,181 members of the U.S. military have died during the nearly 13-year Afghan war and thousands more have been wounded.

(AP)

MK (Yahadut Hatorah) R’ Moshe Gafne launched a harsh verbal attack against Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein. The judge is a member of the dati leumi community and the judge who wrote the opinion in this week’s ruling halting supplementary payments to avreichim.

In his address from the Knesset podium R’ Gafne referred to Justice Rubinstein as the “Rosha who stole the bread away from the children”. Gafne explained that the court’s ruling will impact the avreichim and their families that have nothing. “Not those who learn and the wives work and they have an apartment, but those who have nothing and will now have even less”. He called the court’s ruling “cruel”, one that will leave a growing number of children without the basics, not even a slice of bread.

He stressed that these avreichim, the poorest of the poor, will now be left with absolutely nothing and without the means to provide the basic sustenance to their children.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

Hillary Rodham Clinton writes in new excerpts from her upcoming book that she wishes she could go back and reconsider some of her past decisions but she is “proud of what we accomplished” during her time as secretary of state.

Clinton, a potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, writes in an author’s note released Tuesday that her four years running the State Department for President Barack Obama taught her about the United States’ “exceptional strengths and what it will take for us to compete and thrive at home and abroad.”

“As is usually the case with the benefit of hindsight, I wish we could go back and revisit certain choices. But I’m proud of what we accomplished,” Clinton writes. “This century began traumatically for our country, with the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the long wars that followed, and the Great Recession. We needed to do better, and I believe we did.”

“Hard Choices,” Clinton’s book about her time at the State Department, will be released June 10. The book arrives as the former first lady considers another White House campaign and as Republicans seek to question her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, and other decisions on her watch.

In the excerpts, Clinton writes that she didn’t write the book for followers of “Washington’s long-running soap opera,” but Americans and people everywhere who are trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world.

Clinton aims to recount her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat in terms that average Americans can understand, writing that everyone faces hard choices on how to balance their careers with family responsibilities. “Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity,” she wrote.

When she chose to move to Arkansas and marry future president Bill Clinton and start a family, Clinton writes that “my friends asked, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I heard similar questions when I took on health care reform as first lady, ran for office myself, and accepted” Obama’s offer to become secretary of state.

Clinton says the need to keep America “safe, strong, and prosperous presents an endless set of choices, many of which come with imperfect information and conflicting imperatives.” She cites Obama’s decision to authorize the raid to capture Osama bin Laden as a leading example, noting that the president’s top advisers were divided and the intelligence “was compelling, but far from definitive. The risks of failure were daunting.”

Clinton writes, “It was as crisp and courageous a display of leadership as I’ve ever seen.”

If she runs for president, the author’s note offers clues to how Clinton may characterize the nation’s role in the 21st century. She writes that “talk of America’s decline has become commonplace, but my faith in our future has never been greater. While there are few problems in today’s world that the United States can solve alone, there are even fewer that can be solved without the United States.”

“Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America remains the ‘indispensable nation.’ I am just as convinced, however, that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be earned by every generation,” she writes.

In speeches, Clinton has often derided partisanship and gridlock in the nation’s capital, a theme that she is expected to revisit in the book. She writes the nation will continue to play a vital role around the globe, “so long as we stay true to our values and remember that, before we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or any of the other labels that divide us as often as define us, we are Americans, all with a personal stake in our country.”

Clinton says in making the major decisions of her life, she has “listened to both my heart and my head. I followed my heart to Arkansas; it burst with love at the birth of our daughter, Chelsea; and it ached with the losses of my father and mother. My head urged me forward in my education and professional choices.”

“And my heart and head together sent me into public service,” Clinton writes. “Along the way, I’ve tried not to make the same mistake twice, to learn, to adapt, and to pray for the wisdom to make better choices in the future.”

(AP)

Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto has returned to Israel and he is expected to give testimony to police investigators this morning, Tuesday, 27 Iyar 5774. Rav Pinto is a suspect in a major bribery fraud case involving senior police commanders. The investigation against them is being spearheaded by Israel Police’s 433 Unit, Israel’s equivalent of the FBI.

According to the information being released, Pinto has struck a deal with the state prosecutor and he will be testifying as a state witness. Rav Pinto has been working to cut a deal by which he would incriminate the former commander of the 433 Unit, Menashe Arbiv, and in exchange for his information receive immunity. The prosecution however is seeking a one-year prison term for Pinto despite his willingness to cooperate.

Commando Arbiv was compelled to resign his senior post amid harsh allegations of accepting large sums in bribes from Rav Pinto. Arbiv insists that it is Rav Pinto who accepted the money and the rabbi is now seeking to cut a deal to save his skin. The sum allegedly accepted by one of the defendants is 200,000 shekels.

There is a considerable amount of criticism surrounding the state’s willingness to deal with Rav Pinto as many feel the senior police commander who has dedicated his life to public service should have been given the first opportunity to become a state witness and not the rabbi.

Rav Pinto sent a message to his talmidim and followers that in a moment the truth and justice will become apparent to all regarding the criminal allegations against him.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

A convoy of chemical weapons inspectors came under attack Tuesday while traveling to the site of a suspected chlorine gas attack in Syria, but all staff members were safe, the international watchdog agency said.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been working with the United Nations to oversee the destruction of the Syrian government’s stockpiles since September 2013, when President Bashar Assad’s administration acknowledged it has chemical weapons and agreed to give them up to avoid the threat of U.S. military strikes.

Syria has since destroyed or handed over more than 90 percent of the weapons and toxic chemicals it has formally declared. Its sole remaining declared stockpile has been packaged for shipment out of the country to meet a June 30 deadline for destruction.

However, last month allegations surfaced that chlorine gas has been used as a weapon in fighting between the government and rebels. Chlorine is not banned under chemical weapons conventions, and it was not part of Syria’s disclosures. However, using any toxic material in warfare violates chemical weapons treaties and international law.

The circumstances of Tuesday’s attack were unclear. Syria’s Foreign Ministry initially reported that 11 people, including six members of a U.N. fact-finding mission and their Syrian drivers, had been abducted by rebels fighting to topple Assad’s regime. But the OPCW issued a statement shortly afterward saying a convoy had come under attack but “all team members are safe and well and are travelling back to the operating base.”

Opposition activists could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said the convoy, which consisted of four vehicles, was heading toward the rebel-held town of Kfar Zeita where activists and Human Rights Watch reported gas attacks on April 11 and April 18 that killed two people.

It said the government had agreed to a daylong cease-fire in the town in the central province of Hama “to facilitate the work of this mission.” As the team reached the nearby government-controlled village of Taibet al-Imam, the government said it was unable to provide protection beyond that point but the team decided to continue without Syrian security forces, according to the statement.

A roadside bomb then hit one of the team’s vehicles, forcing the passengers to move to another car and turn back toward Taibet al-Imam, the ministry said. The ministry said only one vehicle arrived in the village, which is under government control, a fact that might have caused Damascus to issue the statement saying the rest had been abducted.

A doctor in Kfar Zeita who identified himself as Abdullah Darwish said the team had been expected to arrive in the village on Tuesday and medical officials had prepared for them documents as well as a number of people who suffered during the alleged chlorine attack. But the main rebel group the Free Syrian Army later said the inspection team wouldn’t be coming, Darwish told The Associated Press via Skype.

The OPCW Director-General Ambassador Ahmet Uzumcu expressed concern about the attack, repeating his call to all parties for cooperation with the mission.

“Our inspectors are in Syria to establish the facts in relation to persistent allegations of chlorine gas attacks,” Uzumcu said. “Their safety is our primary concern, and it is imperative that all parties to the conflict grant them safe and secure access.”

The Geneva-based OPCW, which monitors the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and oversees the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, had sent a team to Damascus this month to investigate claims that chlorine has been used in Hama. The U.N. Security Council authorized the OPCW to oversee a fact-finding investigation into the alleged gas attacks.

The Syrian government has agreed to cooperate with the inspectors and their U.N. security detachment in the parts of the country it controls.

In August, a U.N. team that was trying to reach a Damascus suburb following a chemical weapons attack came under fire. Both the government and the opposition blamed each other for that attack. No one was hurt in the attack and the inspectors eventually arrived in Moadamiyeh, a western suburb of Damascus.

(AP)

A policeman was injured lightly when Arabs pelted police with rocks on Har Habayis. Jews were visiting the holy site and the Arabs began shouting at them, compelling police to intervene. The Arabs then began attacking police.

Police permitted the Jews to continue with their visit.

The group in this latest incident was comprised of 30 dati leumi rabbonim. This included Rabbi Gideon Pearl (Rav of Alon Shvut), Rav Avraham Gisar (Rav of Yishuv Ofra), Rav Yitzhak Levy (Alon Shvut), Rabbi David Dudkevitz (Rav Yishuv Yitzhar), Rav Yaakov Medan (Rosh Yeshivat Har Etzion), Rav Yehuda Kroizer (Rav of Yishuv Mitzpei Yericho), Rav Yisrael Rosen (Zomet Institute), Rav Yosef Tzvi Rimon (Rav Alon Shvut South), Rav Yisrael Ariel (Temple Institute) and others. The rabbonim visited as this week Israel observes Yom Yerushalayim.

The rabbonim discussed the Halacha pertaining to one visiting Har Habayis and the different piskei Halacha. They stress that visiting Har Habayis is permitted amid a realization one must be aware of the kedusha of the site and visitation must be within the framework of Halacha. They explain that one may not visit the area where the Mikdosh was located because today we are all ‘tamei meis’. They explain this is why one may not approach the center of Har Habayis, especially the Dome of the Rock, which we believe is the location of Kodesh Kedoshim. The rabbonim stressed the importance of adhering to Halacha and one that does not chas v’sholom incur karess.

The attacks against Jewish visitors are commonplace as they usually result in police rushing the visitors off the area. Hence the Muslims have learned that by becoming violent and offensive they will succeed in removing the Jews from the site. In this case they were permitted to continue with their visit.

Ironically, Yariv Oppenheimer, the director-general of the radical left-wing Peace Now organization criticized the rabbis, pointing out to them that Rav Kook ZT”L opposed visiting Har Habayis. While Oppenheimer is not motivated by concern for Halacha, his statement is in line with the ruling of Maran HaGaon HaRav Yosef Sholom Elyashiv ZT”L and other poskim prohibiting Jews from visiting Har Habayis. This is also the position of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Oppenheimer wrote on his Facebook page “The settler leadership continues to recreate Yiddishkheit”.

He added that after some dati leumi rabbonim permitted construction in yishuvim on Shabbos and there was the psak permitting the murder of nochrim and now the heter to visit Har Habayis.

Oppenheimer continues “I am not a religious person and regarding freedom of religion in holy sites, this is an integral component of the peace agreement which we back. However it is sad to see how people from the religious Zionist camp create a new religion to adapt the political struggle that they are running”. He points out in the cases mentioned the rulings of dati leumi rabbonim are in contradiction of “Gedolei Yisrael and it appears in the name of settlements and the struggle with the Palestinians everything is permitted, even changing Halacha.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

[COMMUNICATED CONTENT]

[COMMUNICATED CONTENT] The upscale Ramat Givat Zeev neighborhood north of Jerusalem continues to generate a lot of interest and demand in the United States. As the result of the many contracts signed at previous sales events in the Five Towns area in New York, requests have been received to hold another event. The developers have agreed and a new sales event has been scheduled for June 8, 2014 at the Eish Kodesh Shul in the neighborhood. Special deals will be offered exclusively for those who sign contracts at the event.

The Five Towns neighborhood is currently home to a nucleus group of families who are planning to make aliyah and settle in Ramat Givat Zeev. The widespread interest that the new neighborhood has generated, with its unique social fabric that is distinctly suited to American olim, as well as the educational and community institutions and the suburban setting, have encouraged many additional families to take the step of realizing the dream of living in a luxurious neighborhood in the Jerusalem Hills.

Being that the lots for private homes have all been sold, the sales event will focus on the luxury apartments the project is offering. Significant discounts will be offered. For example, a 4 room apartment, spanning 120 square meters, with a balcony of 20 meters, will be available for just $460,000! This is a very attractive price and will be given exclusively to sales events participants. Likewise, the developers are offering unprecedented payment terms, with a small percentage as a down payment and the rest to be paid to just a few months before moving in. This saves the buyers the burden of taking a mortgage for the construction period.

Ramat Givat Zeev is Chish Nofei Israel’s flagship project, and many rabbanim in the United States have classified it as the ideal solution to realize the dream to move to Israel. The project offers special advantages to help new residents settle comfortably into their new homes, with an emphasis on a warm, homogenous community that includes a wide range of communal institutions that are suited to the lifestyle of the residents. The neighborhood will have a Talmud Torah for boys, an elementary school for girls and all the necessary educational options that meet the community’s needs. This advantage gives parents the peace of mind that their children will be able to continue their studies in Israel in a format similar to what they were used to in the United States.

 (Studio B – YWN)

In his address to the annual Bar Association conference in Eilat, Finance Minister Yair Lapid stated that if the government moves ahead in the direction of unilateral steps towards annexing areas of Yehuda and Shomron, it will mark the end of the current coalition. Lapid added that his Yesh Atid party will also not tolerate new construction outside so-called settlement blocs; areas that he and other left-wingers feel are included in the national consensus and would remain under Israeli control in an agreement with the PA (Palestinian Authority).

Lapid also addressed his policies vis-à-vis the chareidi tzibur. He explained that “Every chareidi MK who meets with non frum Jews insists the sharing the burden concept will not be successful. However when they speak with one another it is a different story.

Lapid commented on the agreement reached between the government and Shas’ Mayan Chinuch education network. He stated the coalition will design workable programs and after a great deal of dispute the deal with Shas was made and the school system will include core subject matter such as math and English.

Most of all Lapid stressed the rule has returned to the sovereign government “and we no tell the chareidim these are our values and you will accept them”.

And to continue his mantra, Lapid added that a democratic state cannot tolerate mehadrin bus lines for one does not send women to the back of a bus in 2014. He warns if this is the case “Tomorrow the chareidi tzibur will not have a bus”.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)