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Singer Calls Trip to Israel a Success

Went with Gov. Christie as part of official delegation

 

April looks to be a very busy month for State Sen. Robert Singer. Not only does he plan to end the month by moving into a new district office on the border of Lakewood and Howell, he started it as a member of the Jersey to Jerusalem Delegation with Gov. Chris Christie to Israel. 

Singer said that while he has been to Israel several times, the recent trip was his first in an official capacity. "He had asked me to go knowing I'd been to Israel six or seven times before," he said.

In the past the longtime senator said he has worked with Middle East country on topics like biotechnology and higher education, two of the focus areas of Christie's trip. 

While Israel and New Jersey are geographically separate, Singer said economically they are very much tied together and this trip was designed to strengthen those ties. He said there are currently 60 Israeli companies that operate in New Jersey, calling them a "large trading partner."

"Technology is something they're exporting at a very high rate. We want to be the recipient of that since a lot of their technology is geared to the pharmaceutical industry," Singer said. "It fits right in with the strength of New Jersey."

One of the more memorable parts of the trip for Singer was a trip to the Better Place Electric Car Company. Using the latest technology the company has developed a vehicle that can travel 120 kilometers without needing a charge.

In a country where Singer said gas costs $11 a gallon, that kind of innovation can go a long way in helping people's wallets. "That's a unique aspect of things when we're looking at how to solve the gas crunch in this country," he said. "When you talk about saving 25 percent of your gas bill that's a huge amount of money."

Not all of Singer's interaction with Israel has been for such a positive reasons. His last trip there was almost nine years ago when his daughter Sarri was injured in a bus bombing. With this trip happening under better circumstances Singer said he felt "comfortable" travelling the country with the governor. 

Not only did the trip provide him with a chance to get to know the governor better, Singer also got to interact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres

Even a seasoned veteran like Singer said it was hard to not get star struck around such well-known personalities. "It was exciting," he said. "I'm meeting people that we read about, we see in the news and getting to shake their hand and talk to them, to have the opportunity to do that is always exciting."

For as excited as he was to meet people halfway across the world, Singer said the feeling was mutual for people over there meeting Christie. "We went to the Wailing Wall and every tourist knew who we were," he said of the delegation lead by the governor. "When he travels around the world people do notice him."

During the trip the governor signed three trade agreements with different Israeli companies and, Singer said, laid the foundation for more cooperation between the two entities. "If there's a question about a company or something they want to do they can pick up the phone," he said of other Israeli companies. "He knows who to call and they know him."

Now that he has returned Singer said he can focus on representing the new district following his re-election in November. "Ocean and Monmouth County are so close its never been a big thrust," he said. "It was more difficult representing Burlington County than it was representing Monmouth because of the closeness of things," he said. 

As he gets to know some of the towns that were added to his district in the last election Singer said he enjoys working with new people as well as those he has known in the past through various interactions. "The connections with Monmouth County are strong," he said. "The district is a fabulous district. I enjoy representing the shore again and I thin that the three of us really have a handle on what's going on in the district."

Singer said he believes the new office as well as the current office in Wall help him and Assemblymen Sean Kean and David Rible to work with the people they represent. "I think that accessibility is so important to everybody," he said. "People should know that if they want to come see us they can. They can see any of us in either office."

As he begins a new term in Trenton Singer said it is important to him to represent the people across the 30th District at home and in the Capitol. "Letting them know that I'm their legislator and if they want to see me, if they want to talk to me, they want to write to me and I'll respond back to them is something that's key to everything and the key to our district," he said.

The senator also said he believes his trip with the Gov. Christie can only help the residents of the district as well. "It helps our working relationship for things I would like to do in New Jersey and having that kind of entre into the governor was good."

Related Topics: Howell and Sen. Robert Singer

Jenny Triana

1:48 pm on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

He went to the wailing Wall, how about the Separation Wall? Israel is a modern, first-world apartheid state, does that cause him any concern? Instead of working for AIPAC, maybe he can try to represent the residents of New Jersey, including those who believe that Israel's 40 year old occupation and repression of Palestinians is morally as well as legally wrong..

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Mattie

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

So Christie is known all over the world, huh? Everyone was just star-struck, right? Please....
There are people 100 miles south of NJ who have no clue who Christie is and wouldn't look twice at him if he walked right up to them in a 7-11. This Singer guy is practically drooling over Christie. What a joke.

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

In Israel, these Greek Philistines dwelled in five city-states along this sea before later disappearing entirely in 604 BC when Nebuchadnezzar II, the Babylonian ruler comply conquered, enslave and destroyed what was left of their culture
The Jewish people’s history is one of resistance to occupation, oppression and unyielding determined survival. For your edification, occupation as defined by the United Nations, is the complete dominance of a society: their schools, their work, their The First Jewish-Roman Wars began around 65 AD resulted in about a 900,000 part-time Jewish insurgents (under Bar Kachba’s and others’ leaders), being brutally crushed by Rome. Per Josephus, Eusebius and other contemporary writers, when Hadrian became emperor of Rome, he was frustrated and angered at these unrelenting Jewish insurrections; these continuous wars’ were financially costly and humiliation, having forced Hadrian/Rome’s constant deployment of most of all Roman legions/armies into this land then known as Israel and Judea, especially the most dreaded Tenth Legion. CONTINUED BELOW

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

Alas, a person of little knowledge and even lesser amount of ability to read, think for themselves, and research what she says before she says it. Is her wrongly stated position just ignorance or is it propaganda and thus scatological (a psychological condition when a person speaks/writes about something that they know is false but speaks falsely anyway).
Here is the history that Ms. Triana and many others failed to learn, consider or even have the capacity to understand:
At the beginning of the Iron Age, about 1175 BCE, a great Greek people dominated the entire Mediterranean coastal cultures and people. History and the Bible call these Greeks “Philistines” from the Hebrew word “Plashteem”, literally “invaders” (Incidentally, for you’re your edification, there is no “P” sound in Arabic). These Greeks alone--the ‘Microsoft of their age’--had mastered and jealously guarded their secret technologies in iron tools, weapons creations and of their maintenance. The business relationships formed by these Mediterranean agricultural farm societies was based upon profit and ease: these iron implements producing five times as much produce from their five pronged iron plows compared to single row of heavy wooden plows pulled laboriously by farm animals. These Mediterranean agrarian cultures/peoples were happy to split their robust farm bounty with these Greek Philistines implement owners. CONTINUED BELOW

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

Part of Hadrian’s suppression efforts to these unrelenting uprisings, was to rename this entire land after the Philistines—the Jew’s nemesis when the Philistines became despotic, not just merchants with superior iron technology-- in order for Hadrian/Rome to intentionally offend humiliate and dishonor Jewish guerrilla fighters and the Jewish people. But the Jews-- thereafter called Palestinians--survived and, as a result, were then known among whole western world as “Palestinians”.

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

Palestine and Palestinians were the names respectively of this Jewish land and its people, From Hadrian’s time onward until 1948 at Israel statehood’s founding. When Jews fought together with/for the British Army in World War II, Jewish warriors were known as the British Palestinian Expeditionary Forces; multitudes of similar usages regarding only Jews as the only Palestinians and of their land-- Palestine--exists and abound throughout world history-- not just Jewish history. There is no history at all of Greeks, let alone Arabs called Palestinians, recorded as existing in world history before 1969.
In 1948, the UN General Assembly (with UN Security Counsel concurrence) passed Resolution 242 by a 33 to 13 vote thus dividing/partitioning this British protectorate since the Ottoman Empire’s demise after WWI; Palestine became two states, one a Jewish State and one an Arab State, with the Jordan River to be the UN designated border for these two states. Israel, the Jewish state, survived its 1948 War of Independence fought against it by 23 Arab nations--without Arab state of Palestine—and with their 23 experienced standing armies, and 50 times the Israeli Jewish population seeking the complete annihilation of Israel (without a standing army) and death to all Jews who had survived Nazi attempted annihilation.CONTINUED BELOW

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

At this war’s truce/end, Jordan (the Arab created state under partition) had usurped complete dominion over the land west of the Jordan River After the 1967 Six Day War started by Arab states, however, Jordan’s dominion of this usurped land--called ‘The West Bank’ by Arab States and the West, and, ‘the Shomron’ by the Israelis—properly became Israel’s dominion. In 1988, Jordan’s King Hussein abdicated all Jordanian claims to both the former Jordanian land called “the West Bank’ and Jordan’s rule over the former Jordanian Arabs living there--who thereafter called themselves Palestinians. Under Yasser Arafat, these “Palestinian” then claimed all of Israel for its own country, but publically in English only, they just claimed the land Jordan abdicated. Arafat, however, was quoted often in Arabic as to how eventually Arabs would destroy the Jewish Israelis: “there are three Arab countries here: the Arab state of Jordan, the Arab state of Palestine, and eventually, the Arab state of Israel”.
Well today, these Arab people—not Greek-- who now call themselves Palestinians, falsely claim that they have an ancient historical basis to the land dating prior to 1969, as if they’re the ancient Philistines—the invaders of the Jewish homeland
CONTINUED BELOW

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

Considering that the Jews have throughout all of the ages lamented or rejoiced in their connection, their link, to The Land-- even before the hordes of subsequent conquerors including Philistines, Phoenicians, Jebusites, Amalekites/Aggagites, Medians, Assyrians, Egyptian Pharaohs, Babylonians, Persians, Hellenists, Romans, Arabs, Caliphate Potentates, Crusaders, the Kurds, Ottoman Turks, and the British-- perhaps you should look at archeology, history and the writings throughout these periods to determine whether Jews existed in the land or whether present day Arab (not Greek) Palestinians did. Perhaps one should look at these periods of revolutionary beneficial world accomplishments by the Jews--versus present day Arabs calling themselves Palestinians--to see who gave the world more, or anything, and which people’s individuals and collective productivity history constantly spoke for its people’s yearning and longing for The Land in supporting its eternal claim. Please note the absence of Arab ‘Palestinians’
CONTINUED BELOW

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

Maybe you might want to take a real moment and read the Oslo Accords (presuming Ms. Triana can read), which sets out three areas in the "West Bank", the newly named so-called "occupied Palestinian Territories" and see that Area C was entirely to be Israel and Area A was to be entirely part of a Palestinian Arab state. What was to be divided was Area B, not the destruction of Israel.
Any peace agreement, like all agreements in general, requires two parties with capacity to undertake certain responsibilities over a specific period for consideration. If you listen to the lunatic expression of Abbas'e ego and those who wish to engage in his fantasy and false propaganda that all of Israel is Palestine, then you may understand what why there is no peace and no suicide by Israel and why Israel will not and should not stop building in Area C. That is, if you believe the Palestinian Authority should be held to keeping its agreement in the Oslo Accords. But I guess reason may be beyond your capacity or you are either eternally ignorant or just plainly scatological.

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MBenFaivol

5:38 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

Paragraph 1 and 2 are reversed

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Mattie

12:48 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

So Christie is known all over the world, huh? Everyone was just star-struck, right? Please....
There are people 100 miles south of NJ who have no clue who Christie is and wouldn't look twice at him if he walked right up to them in a 7-11. This Singer guy is practically drooling over Christie. What a joke.

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MBenFaivol

10:10 pm on Thursday, April 19, 2012

Alas, Poor Mattie, you knew them not well. Perhaps those who are more than 100 miles from Jersey have such a limited awareness of the world that they need to move to Howell and become more sophisticated and educated--maybe you could help them--and then they would see the Goodness and Greatness that is in our fair state.

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