....מתי יבא לידי

an elderly Rov sitting with his bekishe, hat and Rezhvulke at the protest in Washington today. (is it the Kashauer?)

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, we know that, but what you may not know is how politics can take an elderly man, many elderly men, rather, and dress them in dark and heavy coats and overcoats, drive them four hours in what may be uncomfortable means of transportation, and have them sit for hours in oppressive, record-setting, 100+ degree heat for hours. All for what? I'm not here to belittle the cause, only the means by which they show for what they came. In fairness to the faction of Satmar that organized the protest they did organize this weeks ago and did cancel the original one planned for around the time of the Flotilla incident in the Holy Land. I also realize that they're using decades-old tactics here, where they think that they "embarass" the Israeli Gov't by protesting against them displaying all the tired and used signs and the token English language speech. Today protests against Israeli politicians are not as rare as they were back in the 60's and 70's, when Israel was somewhat of a holy cow. I'm dispensing free advice to my Satmar brothers here. It's not worth risking the lives of Holocaust survivors just to have a few hundred people at an unnoticed rally when nobody can bear being outside in the heat. Having said that putting older gentlemen in harm's way by making them sit in that opressive heat is definitely not worth anything - unless it's all about politics and showing the "other side" - the Aron faction.

The kevorim battle rages on, and the Satmorim see themselves as the messenger of the "Yahadus HaChareidis" in Eretz Yisroel. They plan on continuing their mission of "embarassing" by placing ads in the D.C. papers, just like they did in New York a while back. We call this NK Lite. All the dirty deeds minus the visits to Teheran and Damascus. Obviously the fight to prevent desecration of graves needs to continue, but it needs to be limited to the mission at hand, not to the existence of the State, which Satmar usually does not limit it to. It's about time the rest of us strike back. No, we're not talking boycott again, we're talking using the media to condemn them - or at least refute what they say in the name of "Torah True Jewry" - and gathering petitions in support of the host country where 5 million of our brethren live and prosper, spiritually that is. They prosper in Torah like never before - and yes, we know that they may not have our best interest in mind, the Zionists, but that is the fact, Israel is the gretest place of learning ever. Can we do that for their sake instead of sitting back and grumbling every time we see and hear the zealots talk about the "Zionists?" Can we stand up and put aside our differences and be proud of the fact that we care about the security of Israel no matter what we think about the Medinah?