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Faux FrumkeitStacey Solomon 22

What Does Jimmy Want?Hannah Reich Berman 29

Defining Death DownRabbi Avi Shafran 30

MindBizEsther Mann, LMSW 31

Yitzhak Ahronovitch, ahRabbi Yair Hoffman 75

Where The Time Goes

Mordechai Ben David (center) and members of the Mikimi Cheer-upSquad paid an unexpected visit to the Woodmere Rehabilitation and

Health Care Center and lifted the spirits of the residents with their livelysinging and dancing. See Page 59

MBD Music Therapy

B Y S A M U E L S O K O LISRAEL CORRESPONDENT

In a joint operation with theGSS (Shabak) last Friday night,the Israeli Air F orce successfully targeted two terror tunnels lead-ing from the northern andsouthern Gaza Strip towardsIsrael The tunnels originated

IAF Targets

TerrorTunnels

Continued on P age 5

CAN THEY CHANGE?

A Different View On TheRecent YU Debate

B Y D R . N O R M A NG O L D W A S S E R

While reading the variousaccounts and debates over therecent Yeshiva University panelabout those of a definitively non-Torah orientation, I realized

Howard Kopel, the first Orthodox Jew elected to the Nassau County Legislature since its inception in 1996, being sworn in on Monday at theCradle of Aviation Museum by U.S. Congressman Peter King as Mr. Kopel

began his term as a member of the new Republican majority.See Page 61

Continued on P age 13

B Y L A R R Y G O R D O N

When it comes to airlinesecurity, says Yehuda Dafna,America is backwards. Dafna, aresident of Woodsburgh and amember of several Five Townsshuls, is the president andfounder of ISS Action, Inc., and

speaks from two decades of extensive experience with air-line security.

The ISS offices are located atJFK Airport, and the company employs more than 150 peopleand provides security consult-ants to scores of airlines around

the world.Our talk with Yehuda Dafna

about security at airports and onairlines was of course precipitat-ed by the events of December25, when a lone terrorist, pur-portedly a functionary of Al

Qaeda, attempted to set off explosive materials on an airlin-er approaching Detroits interna-tional airport. The terroristpassed through screeners at air-ports in both Nigeria and

Shidduchim: Not So Fast Dear Editor,Welcome to the shidduch

scene. (Matchmaker, Match-maker, Heard in the Bagel Store,January 1). I hope your son findshis bashert quickly. And, on thesubject of speed, Id like to dis-cuss your notion that the entirecourtship itself usually takesabout three to four weeks. Theobvious response is, have youheard about the high rate of divorce in frum circles? Whilethere has been no study correlat-ing this increased divorce rate

with length of courtship, logicwould have us insist that a cou-ple really get to know each otherwell before committing. We canall cite examples from the secu-lar world where couples livetogether, marry, then divorce.

Yes, getting to know someone very well does not precludedivorce. But logically, if a couplewho know each other well for along time can end up divorcing,does it mean that we shouldthrow caution to the wind and

Continued on Page 15

B Y L A R R Y G O R D O N

I was just a boy not so longago, and then this Waterfordcrystal ball dropped in TimesSquare the other night and it was2010. Its always mildly challeng-ing to adjust to the change in thenumber assigned to identifyingthe year. However, if I writeenough checks over the nextweek or two I will rapidly growaccustomed to the new decade.

I know this to be truebecause thats the way it was in1970, 1980, and 1990. And, of course, as Y2K approached, whowould have thought we wouldever get used to the idea of anew millennium on top of theadjustment required in dealingwith a new decade?

When the decade changes itprovides an additional jolt to

Continued on Page 12Continued on Page 6

CANDLE LIGHTINGJan. 8 4:27 PMJan. 15 4:34 PM

SECURITY THREAT

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

SKA Gift of Shabbos.See Page 57

VOL. 10 NO. 15 22 TEVES 5770,una ,arp

JANUARY 8, 2010$ 1.00 WWW.5TJT.COM

INSIDE FROM THE EDITORS DESK

HEARD IN THE BAGEL STORELetters to the Editor

See Pages 3, 4, 5

Bat Mitzvah of AyalaSchwartz. See Page 72

Giving life and hope:recipient meets donor.

See Page 48

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2/35 TOWNS JEWISH TIMES January 8, 2010 5

from a distance of approximately onekilometer from the Gaza security fenceand were intended for infiltrating intoIsrael and executing a terror attack againstIsraeli civilians and IDF soldiers.

According to the Israeli military, theattacks were in response to the firing of arocket at the city of Netivot last Thursday evening.

Also, in a joint IDF-GSS operation thisTuesday, the IAF attacked a group of ter-ror operatives planning to fire rocketsfrom the southern Gaza strip into Israel.

Accurate hits were identified.Since the end of Operation Cast Lead

an IDF incursion into the Hamas-ruledGaza Strip in January of last year in retalia-tion for several years of rocket attacks onIsraeli civilians in the Negev Desertmorethan 280 rockets and mortars have beenfired at Israel. Throughout 2008, prior toCast Lead, over 3,300 rockets and mortarswere fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip.

In a statement released to the foreignpress, the IDF declared that Israels defenseestablishment will not tolerate the firing

of rockets by terrorist organizations atIsrael and will continue to respond againstany attempt to disrupt the calm in Israelssouthern communities.

The IDF statement did not explainwhy the attack on the tunnel was under-taken only in response to a rocket attack,if the intended purpose of the under-ground passage was to facilitate terroristactivity against Israeli civilians.

There are several hundred smugglingtunnels running under the Philadelpi cor-

ridor between the Sinai Peninsula andGaza. Despite numerous sorties flown by the IAF against the tunnel system, many Israelis consider it impossible to halt theuse of the tunnels without a boots-on-the-ground operation. During Cast Lead,the upper echelons of the defense estab-lishment decided against a move on theEgyptian-Gaza border.

According to a report in Al-Ahram , theofficial Egyptian state newspaper, thereare currently around 1,200 such tunnels.

Some 70,000 residents of Gaza are report-ed to be involved in digging the tunnels,which can cost up to $50,000 to excavate,but which can bring in profits of up to$184,000 in goods on a daily basis.

Hamas is an offshoot of the MuslimBrotherhood, a radical Islamist organiza-tion active in Egypt. Hamas operativesinvolved in tunneling operations haveopened fire on Egyptian soldiers, and

Terror TunnelsContinued from Front Cover

Continued on Page 18

The IDF statement did

not explain why the

attack on the tunnel

was undertaken only

in response to a

rocket attack.

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3/318 January 8, 2010 5 TOWNS JEWISH TIMES

Egypt blames the tunnel network forfacilitating attacks on its people.

In response to the popularity of Hamason the Egyptian street and the threat thatradical Islam, as represented by Hamasand the Brotherhood, poses to the secu-

lar-nationalist leadership of Egypt, thecountrys army has reportedly begun con-structing a steel barrier that will rununderground along the border, in anattempt to halt the smuggling.

Khalid Meshaal, Hamass leader,issued a statement from Damascus, call-ing the barrier a new war against

Gazans. Intelligence officials, speakingbefore the Knesset Foreign Affairs andSecurity Committee in August,announced that Hamas has used thesetunnels to smuggle in new-modelKassam rockets believed to be capableof reaching Gush Dan, the area encom-passing Tel Aviv and its suburbs.

Palestine Today , a Gaza City-based

news website whose stated goal is toprovide focus on the Israeli terrorismagainst Palestinian people, recently posted pictures of Gazans preparing forthe festival of Eid al-Adha, which show abustling and full marketplace, contra-dicting reports of widespread hunger inthe strip. O

Terror TunnelsContinued from Page 5

Smuggling tunnels such as this one are used to bring into Gaza everything from Russian- and Iranian-made missiles and rockets to grain and even luxury goods.

B Y T Z V I B E N G E D A L Y A H U

The Israeli Air Force on Tuesday bombed a rocket-launching cell thatwas preparing to launch a missile onsouthern Israel following a Kassamrocket attack several hours earlier. Oneterrorist was killed and three otherswere wounded, one of them critically.

IDF spokespersons said the retalia-tion was carried out in the area of Khan

Yunis, located in south-central Gaza andnear the sites of destroyed Jewish com-munities in Gush Katif. The PopularResistance Committee terrorist organi-zations Nasser Brigades branch said itsmembers were in the rocket-launchingcell.

The same group, along with Hamasand the al Qaeda-linked Army of Islamterrorists, was responsible for the 2006attack at the Kerem Shalom checkpointthat resulted in the death of two sol-diers and the kidnapping of IDF soldierGilad Shalit.

Foreign media reported that the Gazaregion has been mostly quiet since theOperation Cast Lead counterterroristcampaign last year. However, the IDFnoted that since the end of the three-week battle, which ended with a cease-fire, Hamas and allied terrorists haveattacked Israel with nearly 300 Kassamand Grad missiles in addition to hun-dreds of incidents of sniper fire androadside bombings.

A Kassam rocket exploded near theGaza separation barrier earlier thisweek, and two more-powerful andlonger-range Grad rockets exploded inthe town of Netivot last week. The Al

Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an arm of the

Fatah faction headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas,

took responsibility for the attack, inwhich one person was treated forshock. The Popular Front for theLiberation of Palestine (PFLP) also saidit was behind the attack.

Following that attack, the first onNetivot in several months, the Israeli AirForce bombed smuggler tunnels thatterrorists intended to use to stage a mas-sive attack against Israeli civilians in thewestern Negev. (Arutz Sheva) O

Air Force Strafes Rocket Terrorists

The retaliation wascarried out near

the sites of destroyed Jewishcommunities in

Gush Katif.