NOVANEWS
WAR AND POLITICS FROM A LEFT-CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE: DIMONA GETS A SYNAGOGUE
There’s a new god being worshipped in Israel—the god of nuclear weapons.
The Zionist state has built a new synagogue. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary there, you might think—other than the fact that the Israelis have chosen to put their new house of worship in a rather peculiar place: smack dab in the middle of their Dimona Nuclear Facility. Yes, folks, UN weapons inspectors can’t get in to inspect the place for nuclear weapons, but on Tuesday of next week a premiere inauguration ceremony will be held at the site featuring special invited guests who will get to oooh and ahhh over the unveiling of a Torah scroll. It kind of reminds me of the title of a book published several years ago by Mark Gaffney: Dimona: The Third Temple?
According to the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, the initiative to build the synagogue began roughly a year ago when the Israeli Rabbi David Abuhatseira contacted American Jewish billionaire Ira Rennert about the lack of any appropriate worship facility for employees at the plant.
“The rabbi claimed that having a synagogue at the reactor would reflect a combination of tremendous holiness and power, which is very important”—so says an unnamed source quoted in the story. “The rabbi asked us to make the preparations as soon as possible and construction of the synagogue was completed only recently. The building, located inside the reactor, is brand new, very fancy, and contains some 300 places.”
Thousands of people work at the plant, some of them there even during holidays, and up until now there was no synagogue, the newspaper goes on to report.
Just to connect a few dots here: Israel Hayom is the newspaper owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the chief funder of the Mitt Romney campaign, while Ira Rennert got rich dealing in junk bonds and buying up companies, many of them in bankruptcy. Today, with a net worth of approximately $5.9 billion, he has holdings in mining and metals, including lead smelters and coal mines. According to Wikipedia:
Rennert caused controversy among his neighbors by building a beach front home in Sagaponack, New York considered one of the largest occupied residential compounds in America.[33] The house outraged locals, who claimed Rennert originally planned to use it as a spa, a hotel, or a religious retreat. Rennert denied such allegations, and the local paper later issued an apology.[34] Rennert named his home after the adjoining body of water, Fairfield Pond. The house faces theAtlantic Ocean and its grounds measure 63 acres (250,000 m2). The buildings, which total over 110,000 square feet (10,000 m2), including the 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m2) main house, have an Italianate facade, 29 bedrooms, and 39 bathrooms. The house has a dozen chimneys and a Mediterranean-style tile roof as well as a 91-foot (28 m) long formal dining room, a basketball court, a bowling alley, two tennis courts, two squash courts, and a $150,000 hot tub. Its property taxes in 2007 were $397,559.00. Based on these taxes, the home is currently valued at $198 million[22] making it the most valuable home in the United States. Besides his house in Sagaponack, Rennert owns a duplex apartment on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, a home in Israel, and a Gulfstream V jet.
Rabbi David Abuhatseira (also spelled Abuhatzeira) is described here as “one of the most prominent kabbalistic rabbis in Israel,” and is also recognized as “the spiritual leader of Chesed and Misgav” (a Jewish charity in Israel). The same site also informs us that “Chesed and Misgav is proud to have the support of Judy Shalom Nir-Mozes as the chairman of the board.”
During a three day Israeli bombing of Gaza back in March of this year, Shalom Nir-Mozes, an influential media personality in the country as well as the wife of former Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, called for an escalation of the attacks to include even the “passive residents” of the Palestinian coastal territory.
