Yakov Churgin HaSofer Now Remembered

Yakov Churgin was born on the 23 of December 1899 (י' בטבת ה'תרנ"ט, 1899 - י"ז בשבט ה'תש"ן, 12 בפברואר 1990) and died February 12, 1990. He was the son of HaRav Shmuel Yitzhak Churgin  and the younger brother of Rachel Churgin wife of David Blick - a member of the 39th Royal Fusiliers - HaGdud Ha Evri from World War I.

Just as his father, Yakov Chugin was one of the first modern day Hebrew writers and authors. He was a founding member of the first Va'ad HaLashon. He was a teacher and editor of children's books and magazines during the early years in the history of the Yishuv and during the British Mandated Period. He was a professor of literature Hebrew at Bar - Ilan University. And in 1956 he was awarded the “Lamdan” Scholarship Prize.
He was born in Neve Tzedek or (Abode of Justice) a neighborhood located in southwestern Tel Aviv, Israel. It was the first Jewish neighborhood to be built outside the walls of the ancient port of Jaffa. He learned in the Talmud Torah "Sharei Torah" which was one of the first Hebrew speaking schools in Eretz Yisrael. Later, he studied at a "Midrash" -a college for teachers "Ezra" in Jerusalem, and taught in a "Girls" school Neve Shalom in Jerusalem.

During World War I he was drafted like many members of the Yishuv into the Turkish Army. His job in the Turkish Army was as interpreter of languages ​​Arabic, Turkish and a Liason between a Commander of an Imperial German Army engineering unit and the Turks. During the First World War he accompanied the commander of the German Unit throughout the land of Israel and its surroundings until 1917. With the fall of Jerusalem in the fall of 1917 to the British Army, he returned to Jerusalem.

From 1920 until 1930 he taught in Tiberias and during the years 1936 to 1939 he was chairman of the cultural committee of the Farmers' Association.

From 1952-1954 was a professor at Yeshiva University in New - York. From 1955-1970 he served as a professor at Bar - Ilan University.

In the Fourth Knesset elections of 1959 he was a candidate for office on the list of the General Zionist Party. They merged with the right-wing Herut to form Gahal which later became the Likud.

During the early twenties he began publishing his poems and stories in the journal "HaShiloch" and "Hapoel Hatzair ". Churgin wrote a great deal of children's literature. He was an editor and writer for the Pre-State of Israel Farmers' Association.‎He wrote many articles for newspapers for children and youth, one weekly magazine that he wrote for belonged to the Farmers' Association. "בוסתנאי לנוער" "The Young Gardener". He also wrote stories for the "הבֹ‏קר לילדים" "The Morning Magazine for Youth".

In the center of Churgin's writings was the image of the "New Jew" or "New Hebrew", who were born in the Land of Israel during the "Yishuv" (Settling of the land) and the (Pre-State of Israel) Mandate For Palestine period . The "Cultural roots" of the new Hebrew, Churgin wrote, are derived from the ancient Hebrew culture in Eretz Yisrael that existed until the revolt of  Bar Kochba. He wrote that this new "Proud and Defiant Militarist Jew" will need to act for the creation of the Jewish Homeland but within the constraints of the social and political circumstances of the British Mandate. Churgin urged and inspired the new modern Hebrew youth  to act as modern contemporaries of Bar Kochba, the leader of the second revolt against Rome. He taught them, "You will need to act as freedom fighters and revolutionaries in order to achieve the State."
As an outcome of the bloody Arab riots of 1929 and the massacre in Hebron and as well with the murderous outpouring of Mufti inspired hatred in 1936. Churgin advocated for a more belligerent, assertive posture with actions against both the occupying British and the belligerency of the Arabs during the "Arab Revolt of 1936. He was a member of the ETZEL-the Irgun Zvai Leumi the pre-state Jewish underground. Because of  Churgin's rejection of  "practical Zionism" expoused by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann and his "Revisionist" views he was fired from his job as editor of  "בוסתנאי לנוער" "The Young Gardener".

During the Second World War and before the creation of the state, Churgin wrote articles and stories of brave strong and defiant Jews. Be proud of your heritage as those who resist tyranny and the new threat of Nazi anti-Semitism. His words inspired many children and young adults in the pre-State period of the Mandate as well as among those living in Europe.

"His Revisionist views of the "Proud Jew" inspired many among the young Jews. Among them was the Hebrew writer Ehud Ben Ezer - and according to him many more. At his funeral in Feb 1990 at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetary Professor Meir Feldblum Head of The Talmud Department of University Bar Ilan spoke of the time of the Holocaust when he ran away at age 12 from the Vilna Ghetto to join the Partisans of Abba Kovner in the forests. That what inspired him and other young Jews to fight back and survive was Yakov's book “The Young Zealots” (הקנאים הצעירים) that had been published in 1935.

Sadly this proud and defiant Jew who had been branded the "Revisionist" did not sit well with the Labor Party dominated young State of Israel. In his obituary (Seen above) by the newspaper Yediot Achronot he is labeled the writer "הסופר שנשכח והושכח" - The writer who was forgot and forgotten. 

Yakov's research into modern Hebrew poets and poetry mainly scholarly works on: Chaim Nachman Bialik, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Saul and David Shimoni Tchernichovsky had been widely published.

Churgin also documented writings and publications dealing with his childhood and youth, in Neve Tzedek, together with David Tidhar (1897 -1970) British policeman, private detective, author, and communal leader.
Yakov had based his book "הבלש משכונת הצריפים" The Detective From Tzrifin (The British Military base located near Rishon L'Zion) on his friend Tidhar.

16th Street Baptist Church And Hatred

The Incident

On Sunday, September 15, 1963, four young African-American girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14), were murder by the Klu Klux Klan in a racially motivated act of terrorism in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.  Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss, members of United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, planted the box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement that murdered these innocent children.

“Bombingham”: The untold forgotten story

During the 1950s, as the civil rights movement gained momentum, local white supremacists led by members of the KKK reacted fiercely and violently. It was during this period that the city of Birmingham, Alabama became known as “Bombingham” due to the numerous bombs set off at black churches and at homes of black activists — and attacks against whites who sought to upset the status quo.

Caught in the middle of all this was the relatively small Jewish community, which endured harsh anti-Semitic rhetoric by the Klan and white supremacists. I was only ten years old and I was in Sunday school at Temple Emanu-El on Highland Avenue when the blast occurred at the Church. I can still vividly remember that as a seven year old Jew and a member of the kindergarten at Temple Beth-El in 1958. I nearly met the same fate as those young African-American children at the hands of those very same hate-filled members of the Klu Klux Klan. 

The bomber, Klansman Frank Cherry and his fellow Klansmen accomplishes, used the very same bombing method in the horrific bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 as was used in an attempted bombing by the Klu Klux Klan five years earlier at Temple Beth-El on Sunday April 28, 1958.

The bomb was comprised of 54 sticks of dynamite bundled into a canvas satchel. It had been planted sometime in the darkness of that early Monday morning, had been drenched in a heavy rain. Birmingham Police Investigators later found that, due to the dampness from the heavy rains, the 20-foot fuse had fizzled out with less than a minute before it would have detonated. From the stand point of time I can only state that the hand of God was definitely on our side that fateful day. The words "What if" still remains in my mind.

I remember how Karl “Bubba” Freidman and Sol Kimerling both related to me the story about the bomb found at Temple Beth-El. Both of them acknowledged that if the tremendously destructive bomb had gone off, the explosion would have demolished the entire Temple Beth-El and done extensive damage to nearby structures. According to the Birmingham Police Investigators and the FBI the explosive charge found at Temple Beth El was three times more powerful than the one that was used to kill the four young African-American girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963!

 
On July of 1958 The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr had stated that;

"Emboldened by the obvious lack of prosecution for the 1956 bombing of Temple Beth El the Baptist Church, the dynamiters recently crossed the color line and (attempted to) bomb a Jewish Synagogue.”

King continued by stating;

"Prejudiced minds, may regard this lightly and try to dismiss it as involving “only Negroes and Jews.” But this plague will surely spread unless city and state officials take stern and vigorous action to ferret out and punish both those who traffic in the sale of explosives for criminal use and those who use them. No human lives have been destroyed, as yet; but Divine Providence will not always intervene."

In my memory I can still remember being hurriedly led out of the Kindergarten building to the parking lot that chilly morning. I remember the cold and the dampness as we were hurried out the side door after the temple's janitor, James Pruitt, had found the bomb. It had been planted in a basement window on the eastern wall of the school part of the Temple. Just like the bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church five years later.

In a letter from my “Uncle Bubba” from the 20^th of February 2006 he relayed to me that his wife Glady’s sister Ida Mae Seligman and his daughter Lolly were also in the Temple building. My "uncle Bubba" also disclosed to me that he had been informed from "sources" at that time that the Klansmen; William Hugh Morris  , Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor and fellow white supremacist lawyer Jesse Benjamin "J.B."Stoner were behind the bombing attempt. 

J. B. Stoner was an unapologetic racist and virulent anti-Semite whose conviction for bombing a church, divisive political campaigns and vituperation's about Jews and blacks made him a benchmark for racial extremism in the United States. Stoner had once said that; "being a Jew [should] be a crime punishable by death"

In his letter to me “Uncle Bubba” relayed to me, how he went to speak at a memorial service for the African-American Civil Rights Lawyer Arthur Shores and how he had gone through the civil rights struggles together at the same time and that many Jews were involved in the march for civil rights.

I read with interest the articles from the Birmingham Federation Newsletter about Rabbi Milton Grafman, who was the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham; from 1941 until his retirement in 1975 and then served as Rabbi Emeritus from 1975 until his death in 1995,  and his stand for Civil Rights and his backing of the Negro community in his writings;  “A Call For Unity” and An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense .

I also remember Reverend King’s replies in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail

The two most outstanding points of: "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense", which was issued by ten prominent members of the local clergy together with Rabbi Grafman, in which they affirmed basic principles of equality, justice and free speech, but also the need to obey current law, in my opinion are:

• That hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions.
• That no person's freedom is safe unless every person's freedom is equally protected

I can remember Rabbi Grafman urging us at Temple Emanu-El not to give in to fear in a city suffering from moral apathy:

"You cannot yield to terror and violence….If you yield once you yield a second time [and] you yield a third time. And then there is nothing more to yield…you have already been captured."“I’m just sick at heart as you are about what’s happened in our city. I have been sick about it for years. Anybody with a shred of humanity in him could not have been but horrified by what happened Saturday or Sunday.”"And I’m sick at heart for a lot of other reasons. I’m sick at heart because of the attitude not of the people who either by direction or indirection were responsible for the death of those children…I’m sick at heart because of what the so-called nice people…the liberals … that sneer at everything that happens put the blame upon everyone but themselves. I am sick at heart (at) their attitude also. I am sick of and tired of finger pointing. I am weary of reasons and rationalizations. And I am weary of people congregating in their homes and their places of business over their coffee, wherever they may be…I answer to my conscience. You’ll have to answer to yours.”

Above all I remember Rabbi Grafman's words from the pulpit that September 19th, Rosh Hashana morning in 1963:

“And let me say these people are primarily anti-Semitic and this is where you have got a stake. Because let me tell you, if they get away with this, nobody’s going to be safe and the first ones that will not be safe, will be the members of the Jewish community…”

How prophetic these words of his words spoken then are today 

Epilogue:

 
I was recently made aware of an excellent article in the Southern Jewish life Magazine with an in depth and comprehensive background of that sad period in American history, the letter by Martin Luther King and the harsh unjust criticism of Rabbi Grafman's response at that time. Specifically from those who did not know the whole truth and background of the whole affair. Rabbi Grafman was a giant among humanitarians and few know of his works and efforts on the part of the community.

Dayr az-Zawr, Obama and WMD

In light of the continuing "fall out" from the abject failure of President Obama administrations "Foreign Affairs"dealings, more specifically the "Iran Deal".  Several people from both sides of the political isle have leveled accusations at one another concerning the Bush administrations haste in invading Iraq because of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Those who back President Obama claim that there were none to begin with in Iraq. I will not argue I will simply state facts.

Did Saddam Hussein and Iraq have a nuclear bomb? 

• August 17, 1959 USSR and Iraq wrote an agreement about building a nuclear power plant and established a nuclear program as part of their mutual understanding. 
• In 1968 a Soviet supplied IRT-2000 research reactor together with a number of other facilities that could be used for radioisotope production was built close to Baghdad. 
• In 1975 Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow and asked about building an advanced model of an atomic power station. Moscow informed Saddam that it would approve the station only if it was regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iraq refused. Even though Iraq refused an agreement of co-operation was signed, which superseded the one from 1959. 
• In 1976 Paris agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% Uranium and built a nuclear power plant without International Atomic Energy Agency control at a price of $3 billion.
• In 1980 the United States Commerce department approved $500 million worth of dual use exports to support Iraq during the Iran– Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraq's nuclear program. 
• Operation Opera, also known as Operation Babylon, was a surprise Israeli air strike carried out on 7 June 1981 against Iraq's unfinished Osiraq nuclear reactor some 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. The facility was destroyed, killing ten Iraqi soldiers and one French researcher.
• In March 1990, a case of nuclear triggers bound for Iraq, were seized at Heathrow Airport in to what was called  the Arms-to-Iraq affair.

Did Saddam Hussein and Iraq have chemical Weapons?

• In 1980 the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency filed a report stating that Iraq had been actively acquiring chemical weapons capacities for several years.
• The non-profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease Control sold or sent biological samples of anthrax, West Nile virus and botulism to Iraq up until 1989, which Iraq claimed it needed for "medical research". A number of these materials were used for Iraq's biological weapons research program.
• In 1984 the CIA secretly started providing intelligence to the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq War. This included information to target chemical weapons strikes. The same year it was confirmed beyond doubt by European doctors and UN expert missions that Iraq was employing chemical weapons against the Iranians.
• On March 23, 1988 Iraq had launched a large scale chemical assault on Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan 7,000 people had been killed and 20,000 wounded.
• Between 1991 and 1998, UN inspectors conducted more than 70 inspections into Iraq's biological warfare activities. In its 1999 final report to the U.N. Security Council, UNSCOM noted that Iraq's biological warfare program was "among the most secretive of its programs of weapons of mass destruction." It said that Iraq "took active steps" to conceal the program, including "inadequate disclosures, unilateral destruction, and concealment activities." Therefore, the Commission concluded, "it has not been possible to verify" Iraq's statements about the extent and nature of its biological weapons program.
  
  

I had written the following information on October 27, 2007 - in a Blog  “How to destroy a hard site” in the aftermath of the resounding silence from Syria after the devastating attack on September 6th, 2007 by Israeli Air Force F-15 and F-16s conducted on targets deep inside Syria near the city of Dayr az-Zawr. This facility and it’s surrounding underground storage facilities was constructed for the storage of Iraq's WMD chemical/bio weapons for safekeeping in Syria prior to the US invasion of April 2003.

  

 The site described by the experts is a bunker built into the side of the wadi/valley at 25 42'24 74 N 39 49'57 92E is atypical of a hardened bunker for weapons storage it is not only a Nuclear site.

  

Now here are two satellite images. These are two existing Nuclear facilities are based on North Korean plans. Compare them with the site found at 35 11'57 91N 40 05'01 24E. 

The outstanding question in the after math of the attack was; "Why would the Syrian government be so tight-lipped about an act of war perpetrated on their soil?"

The first half of the answer lay in a story that appeared in the Israeli media on the 13th of August 2007 concerning “Syria's Antiaircraft System Most Advanced in World”.  Syria had gone on a profligate buying spree, spending vast sums on Russian systems, "considered the cutting edge in aircraft interception technology." And as the story continued; Syria now "possesses the most crowded antiaircraft system in the world," with "more than 200 antiaircraft batteries of different types," some of which are so new that they have been installed in Syria "before being introduced into Russian operation service."

Now take a look at a map of Syria:

Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel.  An F15/16 attack there was no tiptoe across the border, but a deep and very long penetration into Syrian airspace.  And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge antiaircraft missile batteries when the Israeli aircraft penetrated so deep into Syrian airspace? Nothing, nothing at all but total resounding Silence. The "elite" Russian made systems didn't even light up nor gave any indication whatsoever of any detection of enemy aircraft invading Syrian airspace. The Israelis had blinded the Russian antiaircraft detection systems so completely the Syrians didn't even know they were blinded this in itself was an an incredible success.

After the attack retired military officials indicated that a technology like the U.S.-developed “Suter” airborne network attack system developed by BAE Systems and integrated into U.S. Unmanned aircraft by L-3 Communications was used by the Israelis. The system has been used or at least tested operationally in Iraq and Afghanistan. The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions so that approaching aircraft can’t be seen, they say. The process involves locating enemy emitters with great precision and then directing data streams into them that can include false targets and misleading messages algorithms that allow a number of activities including control.

A Kuwaiti newspaper wrote that "Russian experts were studying why the two state-of-the art Russian-built radar systems in Syria did not detect the Israeli jets entering Syrian territory. Iran reportedly has asked the same question, since it is buying the same systems and might have paid for the Syrian acquisitions."

The system in question is thought to be the new Tor-M1 launchers which carry eight missiles as well as two of the Pachora-2A system. Iran bought 29 of the Tor launchers from Russia for $750 million to guard its nuclear sites, and they were delivered in Jan., according to Agency France-Press and ITAR-TASS. Syrian press reports they were tested in February 2007. They also are expected to form a formidable system when used with the longer-range S-300/SA-10 which Iran has been trying to buy from Russia. Syria has operated SA-6s for years and more recently has been negotiating with Russians for the Tor-M1. What systems were actually guarding the Syrian site are not known.

The conclusion of this story was that the highly successful Israeli Airforce operation left not only the Syrians and Russians speechless but it scared the "Beegesus" out of the Iranians. They thought they were protected - at an enormous expense - only to discover they are defenseless. All of this caused Tehran to panic. 

How was the attack done and what were the implications to Iran?

The GBU-28 or the BLU-113 Conventional Bunker Busters

They are 19 feet (5.8 meters) long, 14.5 inches (36.8 cm) in diameter and weighs 4,400 pounds (1,996 kg).

The U.S. Military has developed several different weapons to attack these underground fortresses. Known as bunker busters, these bombs penetrate deep into the earth or right through a dozen feet of reinforced concrete before exploding. These bombs have made it possible to reach and destroy facilities that would have been impossible to attack otherwise

During the 1991 Gulf war, allied forces knew of several underground military bunkers in Iraq that were so well reinforced and so deeply buried that they were out of reach of existing munitions. The U.S. Air Force started an intense research and development process to create a new bunker-busting bomb to reach and destroy these bunkers. In just a few weeks, a prototype was created. This new bomb had the following features:

Its casing consists of an approximately 16-foot (5-meter) section of artillery barrel that is 14.5 inches (37 cm) in diameter. Artillery barrels are made of extremely strong hardened steel so that they can withstand the repeated blasts of artillery shells when they are fired.

Inside this steel casing is nearly 650 pounds (295 kg) of tritonal explosive. Tritonal is a mixture of TNT (80 percent) and aluminum powder (20 percent). The aluminum improves the brisance of the TNT -- the speed at which the explosive develops its maximum pressure. The addition of aluminum makes tritonal about 18 percent more powerful than TNT alone.

Attached to the front of the barrel is a laser-guidance assembly. Either a spotter on the ground or in the bomber illuminates the target with a laser, and the bomb homes in on the illuminated spot. The guidance assembly steers the bomb with fins that are part of the assembly.

Attached to the end of the barrel are stationary fins that provide stability during flight.

Busting a Bunker

From the description in the previous section, you can see that the concept behind bunker-busting bombs like the GBU-28 is nothing but basic physics. You have:

An extremely strong tube that is:

• Very narrow for its weight
• Extremely heavy

The bomb is dropped from an airplane so that this tube develops a great deal of speed, and therefore kinetic energy, as it falls. When the bomb hits the earth, it is like a massive nail shot from a nail gun. In tests, the GBU-28 has penetrated 100 feet (30.5 meters) of earth or 20 feet (6 meters) of concrete.

In a typical mission, intelligence sources or aerial/satellite images reveal the location of the bunker. A GBU-28 is loaded into a B2 Stealth bomber, an F-111 or similar aircraft. The bomber flies near the target, the target is illuminated and the bomb is dropped.

The GBU-28 has in the past been fitted with a delay fuse (FMU-143) so that it explodes after penetration rather than on impact. There has also been a good bit of research into smart fuses that, using a microprocessor and an accelerometer, can actually detect what is happening during penetration and explode at precisely the right time. These fuses are known as hard target smart fuses (HTSF). The GBU-27/GBU-24 (aka BLU-109) is nearly identical to the GBU-28, except that it weighs only 2,000 pounds (900 kg). It is less expensive to manufacture, and a bomber can carry more of them on each mission. 

Now that you have read my Blog entry watch this YouTube presentation that was released recently

Operation Orchard (Hebrew: מבצע בוסתן‎, Mivtza bustan) was an Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria, which occurred just after midnight (local time) on September 6, 2007. The Israeli and U.S. governments imposed virtually total news blackouts immediately after the raid that held for seven months. The White House and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) subsequently confirmed that American intelligence had also indicated the site was a nuclear facility with a military purpose, though Syria denies this. A 2009 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation reported evidence of uranium and graphite and concluded that the site bore features resembling an undeclared nuclear reactor. IAEA was initially unable to confirm or deny the nature of the site because, according to IAEA, Syria failed to provide necessary cooperation with the IAEA investigation. Syria has disputed these claims. Nearly five years later, in April 2011, the IAEA officially confirmed that the site was a nuclear reactor.

Mossad (Hebrew: הַמוֹסָד‎, IPA: [ha moˈsad]; Arabic: الموساد‎, al-Mōsād; literally meaning "the Institute"), short for HaMossad leModiʿin uleTafkidim Meyuḥadim (Hebrew: המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים‎, meaning "Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations"; Arabic: الموساد للاستخبارات والمهام الخاصة‎ al-Mōsād lil-Istikhbārāt wal-Mahāmm al-Khāṣṣah), is the national intelligence agency of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with Aman (military intelligence) and Shin Bet (internal security).

One report stated that a team of elite Israeli "Shaldag" special-forces commandos arrived at the site the day before so that they could highlight the target with laser designators, while a later report identified Sayeret Matkal special-forces commandos as involved.

Sayeret Matkal (Hebrew: סיירת מטכ"ל‎, General Staff Reconnaissance Unit) is a special forces unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). First and foremost a field intelligence-gathering unit, conducting deep reconnaissance behind enemy lines to obtain strategic intelligence, Sayeret Matkal is also tasked with counter-terrorism and hostage rescue beyond Israel's borders. The unit is modeled after the British Army's Special Air Service, taking the unit's motto "Who Dares Wins". It is directly subordinate to the IDF's Directorate of Military Intelligence.

The continuation of the Operation Orchard video.