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June 2005 Archives

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Applauding the destruction of Joseph's Tomb at Columbia?

An emailer forwards the following review of a highly political book on Israeli archaeology by a (what else?) Columbia University (Barnard College) professor. Most interesting, no shocking, is that apparently the book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, includes a chapter in which the destruction of Joseph's Tomb -- carried out by a rioting Palestinian Arab mob after the site was turned over to PA control -- which resulted not only in damage to the site, but loss of life as well (see here, here and here for more information) is lauded.

Shocking, coming as it does from an archaeologist employed by a major American University, but not so shocking when one realizes that the author, Nadia Abu el-Haj, is only part scientist and the other part polemicist, as so many modern university dwellers seem to be, not only endorsing the destruction of archaeological sites in her work, but also using her position as a political platform (she's name #1 on this Columbia divestment petition, as well as a signatory to the absurd letter released just before the Iraq War blaming Israel in advance for taking the opportunity to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians -- something it had neither the intention nor plans to do -- the letter was more of an indicator of the nature of the fevered minds responsible for it). If the following review is accurate, and any indication of the quality of the scholarship that lands one a job at a major American university, I think politics are only part of the problem.

Currently, this review, by Aren M. Maeir, is only available to an academic audience, but my emailer believes it should be available to a wider audience, and I agree, so here it is:

This book is a deceptively well-written, well researched monograph that superficially bears all the signs of a state-of-the-art contemporary social science study. Facts on the Ground is ostensibly meant to study the practice and the role of archaeology in modern Israeli society; the author, using a distinctly postmodernist, postcolonialist perspective, attempts to demonstrate how archaeology was and still is fundamentally used and misused as a nationalist tool, with the aim of furthering Zionist colonial/expansionist ideologies and policies. At a cursory glance-or through the eyes of a reader who is not intimately familiar with many of the archaeological, anthropological, and contemporary political issues that are broached-the study appears to be of impressive breadth and insight, incorporating a wide array of field data and library research and exhibiting a seemingly impressive control of the right buzzwords and jargon, with quotations from all the "right" academic luminaries.

Alas, a detailed reading reveals that this book is a highly ideologically driven political manifesto, with a glaring lack of attention both to details and to the broader context. In part, this perspective can be explained as the product of a postmodern/postcolonial deconstructionist approach to the social sciences. In this review, I will try to focus on several points that I believe point to three cardinal weaknesses of the book: the anti-Zionist/anti-Israeli agendas that taint its very foundations; a glaring misunderstanding and lack of intimate knowledge of details; and the exasperating "tunnel vision" that assumes that Zionism and the State of Israel exist in a vacuum...


Continue reading "Applauding the destruction of Joseph's Tomb at Columbia?"

Manhattan Imam: The Zionists control the government, the politics, the economy, and the media in the U.S.

Before MEMRI, people could give these kinds of interviews abroad and no one would ever be the wiser. While still not broadcast widely, at least now there's a chance of people wising up.

MEMRI: Head of Islamic Center in Manhattan: Many Americans Believe 9/11 was Fabricated to Enable the Forging of a "New World Order"

Dr. Ahmad Dewidar, imam of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan and a lecturer on Islamic studies at Manhattanville College, has recently been referred to as "the face of the next generation of Muslims in America" [1] and is considered a prominent Muslim leader in New York having met with President George W. Bush, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York State Governor George Pataki [2] and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. [3]

On Muslims and 9/11:

"To conclude, I would like to say that American society – without relating to any given government position – is an active society that loves life and is quick to forget. It will get over the events of 9/11 easily, on condition that we offer them proof that we are innocent of this crime, and on condition that through our Islamic conduct, we remove the doubt and suspicion in American society that were aroused by this event."

On Jewish control of the US:

The Zionist community numbers only three million, but they control the government, the politics, the economy, and the media in the U.S. At the same time, the Islamic community numbers 11 million, but its influence is weak...

Question: "Are the only obstacles that prevent the organization and influence of the Muslim community obstacles related to its internal affairs?"

Dewidar: "Of course not. Many are interested in preventing our influence in society – first and foremost the Zionist lobby, which influences the media at present, so that we cannot spread our ideas and spotlight our leaders and our successful models. Even when a Muslim tries to work in the media, he has to contend with five million media employees who are controlled by the Jews. If he is a genius, and they are forced to employ him, he works behind the camera, not in front of it...

On American goals and the influence of the "despicable" Natan Sharansky:

As for the American policy of controlling the region... The American regime believes in a [certain] ideological or religious program, which is like the New Testament for it. [This program] is the result of a great intellectual effort by a man who is powerful and influential among the intellectuals, who is called Sharatsky [sic; apparently referring to former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky] – a Jew in origin. [His idea] boils down to the claim that in order for America to live in security, it has to change the perceptions in the Middle East regarding the [people's] sense of participation in the political process, and regarding freedom, democracy and education. This, [according to him,] is because the oppression of these [Middle Eastern] societies leads to extremism, which is ruining their countries and America... This Jew has despicable goals, and we see their effects today in America's actions in the region, imposing its opinion and its outlook on democracy, education, and political involvement on our [Arab and Islamic] countries.

What's interesting here is that Imam decries the goals of democratization and openness, the fears of ordinary Americans and the administration about the goals and behavior of Muslim citizens, then he turns around and says, "Of course we need to moderate ourselves, and we should be improving our societies..." He's so bigotted, he can't admit to hearing the truth when it comes from non-Muslims.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

An Offer for Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick of the PC(USA)

In light of the following article, I have an offer to make. (Hat Tip: emailers)

Targeted Caterpillar boosts PCUSA holdings by $737,548

It's just days shy of a year since the 2004 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) approved a resolution to begin a "phased selective divestment" of denominational funds in corporations that do business with Israel.

The bull's-eye on the divestment target was Caterpillar because its machinery has been used to clear a path for the separation barrier that protects Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers.

Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick said recently that Caterpillar is still on the target list, although no final action on divestment has been taken.

But Caterpillar also produced a financial windfall for the PCUSA during the year. The per-share value of Caterpillar stock rose from $77.98 on July 2, 2004, the date of the divestment vote, to $97.86 at the close of the New York Stock Exchange June 28.

That means the PCUSA's 37,100 shares have increased in value by $737,548 - from $2,893,058 to $3,630,606. The gain is 25.5 percent, five times the 5 percent gain of the Dow Jones Industrials.

Now, in light of your Church's holdings in this oppressor-enabling corporation, and in light of your clearly very strong feelings on the subject (see below: Is Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick of the PC(USA) Giving a Wink and a Nod to Terror?), I have an offer I'm sure you can't possibly refuse, and that will end up serving us both very well.

I have no doubt that the weight of all this ill-gotten gain, these dirty spoils, this filthy lucre, has you up at night trying to scrub the blood from your hands.

I can help!

Here is my offer, and I assure you, it is made in all sincerity. Are you ready? Here it is. I will buy ALL of the PC(USA)'s stock at the exact price you paid for it. I'm serious. I can make it happen. Think of it! No need for guilt. No need to stay up at night worrying over your complicity in all those razed homes! You will have profited not at all, and the church will not have lost anything, either. I'll even accept any of the dividend amounts your organization has received!

I know, I know, no need to thank me. My contact information is in the right side-bar. Have your people get in touch. We will make this happen.

Peace of mind is just an email away.

Uh...Could I Get My Ring Back?

Robert Kraft seems to have found himself in the middle of a bit of an international incident. Seems that Kraft, in Russia for a conference on foreign investment, let Vladimir Putin "see" his diamond encrusted Super Bowl ring...and Putin pocketed it.

There's something metaphorical in this.

Boston Globe: For Putin, it's a gem of a cultural exchange

It could be an international incident of sorts, a misunderstanding of Super Bowl proportions. Or it could be a very, very generous gift.

Whatever the case, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is out one championship ring, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia has scooped up some very flashy bling.

At a meeting of American business executives and Putin on Saturday in Russia, according to Russian news reports, Kraft showed his 4.94-carat, diamond-encrusted 2005 Super Bowl ring to the Russian president, who, after trying it on, put it in his pocket and left.

It was unclear yesterday whether Kraft intended to give Putin the ring. It was just two weeks ago that he presented this year's championship baubles to Patriots players at his Brookline manse. A Patriots spokesman said yesterday that Kraft was still traveling overseas and could not be reached for comment.

While gifts to heads of state are customary, a token of this magnitude would be highly unusual because of its cost, one specialist said.

''That's sort of something that's outside the box," said Walter C. Carrington, Simmons College professor and a former US ambassador to Senegal and Nigeria. ''A personal thing, a piece of clothing or a ring like that, that is sort of unusual."

This year's ring, billed as the heaviest in Super Bowl history, is studded with 124 diamonds, including a marquise for each of the three Vince Lombardi trophies depicted on its face. Under Kraft's ownership, the Patriots have won three of the last four Super Bowls. Each year's ring, which the team helps design, has been more glitzy than the last. The team would not disclose the value of Kraft's 2005 ring, saying only that it is ''a lot more" than $15,000...

Update: Bob Kraft has released a statement saying it was intentionally given as a gift. Very diplomatic, either way.

At the end of a very productive three-hour business meeting with President Putin, organized by my good friend Sandy Weill, I showed the president my most recent Super Bowl ring. Upon seeing the ring, President Putin, a great and knowledgeable sports fan, was clearly taken with its uniqueness. At that point, I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin. I have ancestors from Russia, so it added significance for me to know that something so cherished would reside at the Kremlin along with other special gifts given to Russian presidents. It was truly an act of serendipity and one that I am honored to have experienced. It touched me to see President Putin’s reaction to the ring and I felt, emotionally, that it was the right way to conclude an exceptional meeting.

Iran's New President

Update: I was concerned whether this was real or not at first (it was forwarded to me in email without explanation), but it sure looks like the real thing. See here, here and here for more.

Update: The Jawa Report has a comprehensive link round-up and even more photos. Do have a look.

It’s All About 9/11

Andrew McCarthy on the predictable screams that the President had the audacity to speak the truth -- that the effort in Iraq is inextricably linked to 9/11 and the greater War on Terror (hat tip: mal):

NRO: It’s All About 9/11, The president links Iraq and al Qaeda — and the usual suspects moan.

President George W. Bush forcefully explained last night — some of us would say finally forcefully explained last night after too long a lull — why our military operations in Iraq are crucial to success in the war on terror.

It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against terror. Specifically, against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans — as their leader put it in 1998, all Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world where they could be found.

It is not the war for democratization. It is not the war for stability. Democratization and stability are not unimportant. They are among a host of developments that could help defeat the enemy.

But they are not the primary goal of this war, which is to destroy the network of Islamic militants who declared war against the United States when they bombed the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, and finally jarred us into an appropriate response when they demolished that complex, struck the Pentagon, and killed 3000 of us on September 11, 2001.

That is why we are in Iraq...

Worth reading it all as a reminder.

EU Parliament President: EU is not an altruistic player in the Middle East

Here's an example of some rare candor that's worth passing on. It's one thing when right of center blogs and publications point this out, quite another when it comes from the horse's mouth.

From the JPost article EU asks to host event in PA post-pullout

...Israelis are often suspicious of Europe because they fear it is not an impartial player in the Middle East, he said.

"They tell you, the approach is not a balanced one," said [EU Parliamentary President Josep Borrell Fontelles]. "But our position is very well known. We have said, 'yes' to the state of Israel, 'yes' to the state of Palestine, both living within secure borders. And 'yes' to a viable Palestinian state with contiguous territories. Our position is very clear," he said.

The EU, which provides the Palestinian Authority with half of the $1 billion in European aid, is not an altruistic player in the Middle East, said Borrell.

With its growing Muslim population, Europe is finding that violence in the Middle East leads to unrest within its own borders, he said.

"The conflict in the Middle East is dangerous for us. We are not just here, as the good guy who says, please do not fight between you. We need this conflict to be finished because of its impact on life in Europe.

"As European society faces the problem of xenophobia, it can destabilize our society," said Borrell explaining that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fuels anti-Semitism, "Islamophobia," and anti-globalization feelings.

Borrell denied charges that Europe was making political overtures to Hamas, adding that Europe's attitude toward the organization had not changed.

The EU may claim that they have an official position of supporting the existence of Israel, but the people they have given billions to do not. The EU pays appeasement cash to people who actually work contrary to their own stated goals...and when the recipients of the EU's largesse are done with the Saturday People...what will become of you, Mr. Borrell?

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Is Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick of the PC(USA) Giving a Wink and a Nod to Terror?

I believe after reading the exchange below that he is. Reverend Kirkpatrick is the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) -- the guy in charge at the PC(USA).

According to Will Spotts at the Truth in Love Network in a post entitled Curiouser and Curiouser, a group of Houston Presbyterians, concerned over the anti-Israel Divestment plans of their church organization, sent a letter to Rev. Kirkpatrick and several other high-ranking PC(USA) directors, outlining a series of issues following a tour in Israel to view things for themselves.

You can read the letter (Warning: PDF File!) Here. As Will says, "The writers make a sound argument."

They received a fairly detailed response from Rev. Kirkpatrick, which you can read here:

A Letter from the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly

Among other things, Rev. Kirkpatrick's letter displays an utter contempt for Israel's legitimate concerns concerning their construction of the Security Fence. For instance, he fails to acknowledge that the wall is concrete to prevent people shooting through it or cutting it -- the latter an act performed by what the Reverend refers to as "enterprising youth" -- and defends the characterization of the fence as "electrified" by stating is "[has], at times, been charged with enough electricity to harm or even kill those who try to breach or climb them." Well, of course if you cut an electric cord, you may be shocked by it. If that makes a fence "electrified," then I am surrounded by electrified fence even as I type this. (Send help!)

This is all the usual and the expected -- Israel's security concerns are not real (a mere product of "fear" as the Reverend characterizes it -- with an irrational overtone), and in any case are a product of their own doing...

He also recommends that next time, the group gets a different perspective on the ground by being shown around by some different organizations, among them what is sometimes called the "one man NGO" of Jeff Halper's Israeli Committee Against Housing[sic] Demolitions -- an individual with a loose grasp on the truth and, to be charitable, an ambiguous at best attitude toward Palestinian terror.

All of that is frustrating, but, I'm sorry to say, somewhat de rigeur and expected at this point. What is not so expected, and what is not so excusable, is the creeping ambiguity toward violence in Rev. Kirkpatrick's reply. In his blog post, Will says, "I cannot help but think that Rev. Kirkpatrick mis-spoke:" and includes a quote from the reply. I have included an extra paragraph I thought also relevant, to wit:

The ability to be "fair" and "balanced" rests upon the recognition that at present, things are grossly out of balance with respect to issues of power, economic stability, living conditions and even the issue of daily survival. Until that imbalance is acknowledged and addressed, rather than exacerbated, there will be no resolution. Indeed, as Phillips remarked: "I returned with two others who were with me, believing that in the name of security, Israel is destroying security."

I believe that we, along with most Presbyterians, long for the same outcome for the people of the region, which is a secure future for both Israelis and Palestinians within viable, internationally recognized borders, in which there is no justification or need for violence, one against the other. Or, as the Bible puts it, "…neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall all sit under their own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid." (Micah 4:3-4)

Says Will of this:

He cannot have meant to imply that at the current time violence is both justified and needed in the Middle East as a plain reading of this paragraph indicates. At least, I can't fathom that being his intended meaning. However, such a reading would explain the number of groups and individuals we as a denomination support and endorse who themselves practice and encourage violent struggle.

At any rate, this serves to illustrate the quagmire of our policies toward the Middle East -- in which, as Christians, we appear to be endorsing violence.

He is being understandably diplomatic. I do not have any such compunctions (at least, not many). Palestinian "resistance" takes one form and one form only and I will not bother to repeat to my audience the form that that terror takes. Those who provide justification and excuse for Palestinian violence must face the natural and obvious consequences their words have. I believe the tone of the note, the finger of blame it points, the excuses it makes, the organizations it turns to for authority taken in toto point very clearly to providing a justification for Palestinian violence. You do not write and reason as Reverend Kirkpatrick has and then get away with an "oh by the way" tip of the hat to non-violence. The words and their meanings say otherwise. Their consequences are well known.

Update: Here is a link to a new article in the Presbyterian Church's unofficial paper, The Layman, which contains some of the text of the letter to Rev. Kirkpatrick, as well as the names of the signatories: Presbyterian group says PCUSA falsely portraying Israeli-Palestinian conflict

This is what Nelson died for? A Pretty Stupid Idea.

How do you mark the anniversary of a famous sea battle without offending any of the participants' decendants? Easy, identify them by color, not nationality...

Britain Marks Anniversary of Sea Victory

PORTSMOUTH, England -- Two hundred years ago a daredevil naval hero by the name of Horatio Nelson led the British to a glorious victory over France and Spain. But that might not be clear from watching Tuesday's re-enactment of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Wary of offending European neighbors who enjoy a close but sometimes testy friendship with Britain, organizers decided to dispense with details such as who won and who lost. Instead of depicting the battle as a contest between countries, they assigned the fleets colors -- red and blue -- and left it up to the spectators to figure out which was which.

Nelson's great, great, great granddaughter called it a "pretty stupid" idea. [emph. mine. -Sol]

"I am sure the French and Spanish are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle," said Anna Tribe, 75. "I am anti-political correctness. Very much against it. It makes fools of us." [indeed!]

The Battle of Trafalgar was one of the most spectacular naval successes of all times. Nelson routed Napoleon Bonaparte's larger French and Spanish fleet and ensured that Britain ruled the waves for more than a century. Though the battle cost Nelson his life, he didn't lose a single ship...

So if we're supposed to be moving into a post-national-EU-based reality, why would anyone be offended by the inclusion of those quaint old representations of gauche nationalism...flags? Sounds like someone's worried not everyone has moved on.

Here's an idea. Let's just let history be history, and show the colors as they were. I think that's respectful to those who fought and died -- winners and losers -- bravely for them, and it's respectful to ourselves, too.

'Muslim clerics shun interfaith forum in Qatar after Israeli scholars invited'

So much for peaceful dialogue, and guess who one of the boycotters is? Why, none-other than hater-about-town, Livingstone and Galloway-pal, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi. According to the Reuters report at Haaretz:

DOHA, Qatar - Two prominent Muslim clerics are boycotting an interfaith forum in Qatar after Israeli Jewish scholars were asked to take part, organizers said yesterday.

This is the first time Jews have been invited to take part in what was previously an Islamic-Christian conference held for the past two years in the Gulf Arab state.

Organizers said Egypt's Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, one of the Sunni Muslim world's most respected clerics, and Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, an outspoken Egyptian Sunni cleric, were boycotting the forum, which starts tomorrow in Doha.

"They said they would not attend the conference due to political reasons. ... Opposition is not to Judaism, it is a protest against Israeli aggression against the Palestinians," said Aisha al-Manai, head of the organizing committee...

The cold-shoulder approach that the Israel-rejectionists have exercised since Israel's founding, and particularly since 1967, has been the chief and most visible (and legitimate) justification for every Israeli "unilateral" action since. You can't negotiate anything with people who won't even talk. Instead, you do what you have to do to go on living, including taking unilateral police action and building real walls to represent the figurative ones other people have already erected.

Please, for the love of all that's holy, someone tell John Kerry he lost

Why oh why is John Kerry writing op-eds on the very issues -- Iraq and the War on Terror -- that people most firmly rejected him on? And not just an op-ed, but an "If I were President..." speech. Well you ain't. Time to moooove on. Puh-thetic. I thought there was nothing worse than Jimmy Carter, the pathetic ex-President, but John Kerry has discovered it...the pathetic ex-candidate.

New York Times: The Speech the President Should Give

Update: Fergahdsake, John, they're laughing at you all the way over in Egypt. Surely you didn't intend that!

Separation of Church and State

When I was in public elementary school, the choir sang Christmas carols. When I graduated from High School, a minister blessed the even in the name of Jesus Christ. It's not easy being a person with a minority belief - religious or otherwise, and both things still strike me as having been inappropriate for a public school. But neither strike me as worth making a Federal Case over.

Here's George Will on some of the recent attempts by the courts to please everyone.

High Court hairsplitting

A backgrounder on how — and why — we've arrived at this point in church-state separation

The Supreme Court on Monday rendered two more hairsplitting, migraine-inducing decisions about when religious displays on public property do and do not violate the First Amendment protection against "establishment'' of religion.

In a case from Texas, where a Ten Commandments monument stands outside the state Capitol, the court, splintered six ways from Sunday, said: We find no constitutional violation. The second case came from Kentucky, where the Commandments displayed in several courthouses are surrounded by historical symbols and documents — e.g., copies of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Star Spangled Banner — to comply with the "reindeer rule,'' more about which anon. On Monday the court recoiled from Kentucky's displays, saying, they are unconstitutionally motivated by a "predominately religious purpose.'' Not enough reindeer?

Never mind the court's minute reasoning about the finely tuned criteria it has spun over the years. Instead, consider — as the court should have done years ago, when it began policing religious displays — a few facts about the era in which the Establishment Clause was written.

In 1789, the First Amendment was drafted by the first Congress — after it had hired a chaplain. Although President Jefferson's religion was a watery deism, he regularly attended Christian worship services, often with the Marine band participating, in the hall of the House of Representatives. The House was used because of the shortage of suitable venues in the newly founded District of Columbia. Jefferson, who coined the metaphor "wall of separation'' about relations between church and state, also allowed the War Office and Treasury to be used for religious services that were open to the public. The Supreme Court chamber also was used for services...


Inside the mind of a "martyr"

A very interesting interview in Time with a young man who claims he will soon be an Iraqi suicide bomber. Most of those who blow themselves up (Time, I note with approval, actually uses the term "suicide murderer.") are foreigner, so he is an exception.

Was he suffering and under-privileged? No.

...Marwan's journey toward suicide murderer began just a few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Before the war, he had been one of Fallujah's privileged young men: his father's successful business earned enough--even during the difficult years when the West imposed economic sanctions on Iraq--to provide a good life for Marwan and his six brothers and four sisters. In high school, he was an average student but excelled in Koranic studies at the local mosque.

Unlike many other Sunnis in Fallujah, Marwan had little love for Saddam's Sunni-led regime. Yet once the dictator fell, he turned against the Americans...

Are the Jihadis not true Muslims?

For the deeply pious Marwan, his colleagues in Attawhid are now closer to his heart than his family or former friends. "The jihadis are more religious people," he says. "You ask them anything--anything--and they can instantly quote a relevant section from the Koran." Like them, Marwan works Koranic allusions into his speech. He has also embraced the jihadist worldview of one global Islamic state where there is, in Marwan's words, "no alcohol, no music and no Western influences." He concedes that he has not thought deeply about what life might be like in such a state; after all, he doesn't expect to live long enough to experience it. Besides, he says, he fights first for Islam, second to become a "martyr" and win acceptance into heaven, and only third for control of his country. "The first step is to remove the Americans from Iraq," he says. "After we have achieved that, we can work out the other details."

Don't worry, Marwan, there are a plethora of Western "Intellectuals" coming up with all sorts of justifications for what you do.

Are suicide bombers made on their own initiative -- a spur of the moment decision of desperation? No, there's an infrastructure to support them.

...According to TIME's contacts close to insurgent groups, the bombers have little or no say in planning their operations. The logistics--choosing targets, checking out the site, preparing the bomb-laden vehicles or vests--are left to field commanders and explosives specialists. It is not unusual for a bomber to be told about the details of a mission mere minutes before launching the attack...

They view themselves as Freedom Fighters, though, no?

..."I AM A TERRORIST" Marwan seems certain he is on a "pure" path. Unlike many other insurgents, who reject the terrorist label and call themselves freedom fighters or holy warriors, Marwan embraces it. "Yes, I am a terrorist," he says. "Write that down: I admit I am a terrorist. [The Koran] says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim." He quotes lines from the surah known as Al-Anfal, or the Spoils of War: "Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy."...

I have been very hard on the press and their closeness to the terrorists. Even this article talks about Time's "contacts close to insurgent groups" -- they can't even call them here what they call themselves...terrorists -- if the reporters have such contacts, why don't the authorities who might be able to do something about it? Well, anything for a good story.

There it is: Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber

Davids Medientkritik Protests Schroeder

I like these blogger-organized protests. Ray from Davids Medienkritik was in Washington with a bunch of other sign-holders to protest the anti-Americanism of the current German Administration. They have pics.

Monday, June 27, 2005

What's going on at the SOAS?

I bring your attention to a lovely comment left in this old post from London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)...a school plagued by allegations of anti-Semitism and general hostility to Jews -- a charge hardly dispelled by this ambassador.

Sounds like it's been an ugly Student Union election at SOAS...

[None of it is anything I particularly want on the front page, but you can go to the link to see what's about.]

Justice at work

An IDF soldier has just been found guilty of manslaughter by a military court for the death of ISM activist Tom Hurndall.

Haaretz: IDF soldier convicted of manslaughter of British activist

A military court on Monday found former Israel Defense Forces soldier Taysir al-Heib guilty of the manslaughter of British activist Thomas Hurndall, who he shot in the head in the Gaza Strip two years ago.

The IDF court also found al-Heib guilty of obstruction of justice and giving false testimony.

The incident took place in the Rafah refugee camp, where Hurndall, a student, was photographing the work of International Solidarity Movement activists. ISM members often place themselves between IDF troops and Palestinians in an effort to prevent military operations...

It's a sad situation, but let me emphasize several things: Israeli. Military tribunal. IDF defendant. Guilty.

It's too damn bad that this soldier's actions end up giving a sympathetic air to a group (the ISM) that doesn't deserve it.

Reuters: Schindler's List is "pro-Zionist"

Gaijin Biker finds this jaw-dropper in an otherwise only moderately interesting Reuters report on an upcoming new Spielberg film (is Spielberg going to "Leftify" the story of the Munich Olympic Massacre?).

Says GB:

Unbelievable. Apparently, to Reuters, a movie is pro-Zionist if some Jews are still alive at the end.

Here.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

The Bishop Who Honored the Suicides

You may have read in the New York Times and elsewhere that the Anglican Church is now considering -- like the Presbyterians, Methodists, United Church of Christ and the World Council of Churches -- to "selectively" divest from companies doing business with Israel that in any way support the occupation of the disputed territories.

NYT: Anglicans Consider Divesting in Solidarity With Palestinians

LONDON, June 24 - The Anglican Church's international advisory body voted Friday to urge the church to consider withdrawing its investments in companies that support the occupation of Palestinian territories.

The move, presented as a message of solidarity with Palestinian Christians, immediately came under attack by Jewish groups, with some calling it ill timed and predicting a likely chill in Anglican-Jewish relations.

By voting to support the divestment measure, the Anglican Consultative Council, the church's most representative advisory group, recommended to its 38 provinces that they support a September 2004 report by the council's Peace and Justice Network. [Uh oh, there's that 'J' word again. - Sol]

That report, which condemns Israel's treatment of Palestinians, calls on the 75-million-member church to challenge and exert moral pressure on companies in its investment portfolio that support the occupation. The report's authors said the step should be considered only as a last resort, and the recommendations were strictly voluntary.

The council advised the provinces to "take appropriate action" regarding financial investments that bolster the occupation or that lead to "violence against innocent Israelis," through, for example, the acts of suicide bombers.

It is unclear how much weight the decision will carry. Last month, the Church of England's Ethical Investment Advisory Group opted not to withdraw a large investment in the Caterpillar Group and is unlikely to change its position. Caterpillar bulldozers have been used by the Israeli Army to raze Palestinian homes.

Before the vote, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, who helped lead the effort, talked about the occupation's effect on Palestinian Christians. He urged council members to support the resolution, saying it would send a strong message of disapproval to Israel.

Canon James Rosenthal, the council's communications director, said the remarks, and those by others, resonated with group members...

Now this is where things get interesting. Who is this Bishop Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal who's serving as the driving force behind this effort? That's a picture of Bishop El-Assal there.

He looks so kind, like a big teddy bear, really. But looks can be deceiving, no? In fact, Bishop El-Assal (or Abu Asal) is a political monster. Not only is the Bishop a peddler of the "Jenin Massacre" myth, but the Bishop has truly compromised his faith for Dhimmi politics in a most astounding manner -- by going to Ramallah and praising Palestinian "martyrs." According to Come and See, "The Christian Web site from Nazareth":

Anglican Bishop:"Eternal Life for all martyrs of Palestine" Posted on 14 February, 2003

According to Riah Abu Asal, Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, martyers receive eternal life: "Do not consider those that were killed for the sake of God as dead, but alive with their Lord".

Fasl Al-MaQal, Feb 6, 2003

"Greetings of appreciation to all martyrs that were killed on the Land of Palestine". These were the words used by Riah Abu Asal, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East, in the opening of lecture in Ramallah two weeks ago.

Bishop Abu Asal added that all martyrs receive eternal life and they "live in the Kingdom of Heaven". He supported that statement by quoting the Koran verse: "Do not consider those that were killed for the sake of God as dead, but alive with their Lord".

Bishop Abu Asal was speaking about the Christian Arabs and their unique role through History within the Arab World. The lecture was given in the Arab Anglican Episcopalian Center in Ramallah. The crowd included several religious and community figures from the town.

Witness here the direct spread of the virus of the ethic of suicide, terror and death. The leader of a besieged Christian minority panders to his audience's politics, and that pandering habit, that expedient, based not on consistent Church teaching or brotherly love, but on pure cynical politics, reaches all the way up to the top levels in a country that should know better (England) and infects the teachings of what should be one of the great pillars of moral structure -- the Anglican Church.

This is one of the things that Dexter Van Zile's Judeo-Christian Alliance has been crying out about and crying over (see here, here and here) -- the compromise of divine principle for politics.

We see it in operation everywhere, this viral creep, this moral rot. Witness the media's inability or unwillingness to judge, even to the point of their infamous wrestling over the use of the word "terrorism." Instead, they split the difference. So on one side you have the depraved morality of the "liberation struggle" through the act of suicide murder as a virtue, and on the other you have the actions of people doing their best to protect themselves and practicing an ethic that we should be identifying with. Now along come the members of the Fourth Estate, they who claim not to judge, and the narrative they attempt falls somewhere in between these two sides...and thus our public tolerance for pure evil slips further and further over the fevered moral abyss.

And so a spokesman and leader of one of the world's great religions -- a religion in which suicide is one of the great sins -- can be heard in praise of the "martyr," and he maintains his place as one of the shepherds of the Anglican conscience.


Telegraph: 'My dream was to be a suicide bomber. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews. Yes, even babies'

So says Wafa Samir al-Biss, the would-be suicide bomber noted in the post below. Who's case does she cite as an excuse for her lack of remorse for trying to kill children? "The Doura child." Muhammed al Dura -- the enduring blood libel of the intifada. The media's (particularly France 2's) complicity continues to claim lives. I suggest you read the whole piece as there is much here of interest. Also of note is the indication here of the motives of some of the suicide recruits -- they often have little to do with issues of politics, and much to do with cultural flaws...honor and the like.

Telegraph: 'My dream was to be a suicide bomber. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews. Yes, even babies'

...That afternoon, on June 21, the 21-year-old, Wafa Samir al-Biss, was brought before the press by Israeli intelligence. Her neck and hands were covered with scars caused by a kitchen gas explosion six months earlier. The ugly scars - which had been treated in a hospital in Israel - had probably helped turn her into the perfect would-be huriia (virgin), the ideal martyr, since they would make it difficult for her to find a suitable husband...

...According to the Israeli doctor who attended Wafa at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, she received blood transfusions during her treatment. "I told her, with a laugh, that now she has Jewish blood in her veins," he said, adding sadly that she had "seemed so nice - we got a lovely thank you letter from her family.''

Wafa had been sent on her mission by the Abu Rish Brigade, the small militant faction with links to Fatah. She did not, she said later, regret it, though she stressed that her decision had had nothing to do with her scarring. "My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''

Asked whether she had considered the consequences of her planned attack, that it might have now precluded access to Israel for Palestinian patients who meant no harm and needed special medical treatment that could be achieved only here, she answered: "So what?" With a flat look in her eyes, she said: "They pay you the cost of the treatment, don't they?"

And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"...

(Hat Tip: Mal)

Saturday, June 25, 2005

No Limits

This one goes in the categories of "No good deed goes unpunished," "Why there are roadblocks," "The reasons the Palestinians have trouble - they do it to themselves" and many others. Here is a photo sequence showing attempted suicide-bomber Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss as posted at Roger L. Simon's blog. Click the photo for the larger version and to be taken to his entry on the subject.

My friend Allyson Taylor sent me the sad photographs below with the following accompanying note: Here is the series of photographs taken by the security camera at the crossing from Gaza recording the attempt of last week's homocide bomber to explode herself. They go from right to left (this is Israel). She arrives in traditional dress. Disrobes and searches for the button. Attempts to detonate and realizes she's still alive and in trouble.

This blog tends to focus on the very negative, but here is a statement in the Jerusalem Post by a Gazan doctor that can only be described as brave. Unequivocal denunciations like this are rare.

Gaza doctor fumes over bomb plot at Soroka by Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish

As a Palestinian doctor who has worked at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba for eight years, I was outraged at the cynical and potentially deadly suicide bombing attempt by Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss.

On Monday, she was was caught at the Erez crossing from the Gaza Strip wearing explosives stitched to her underwear and admitted that her goal was to kill dozens of people at the hospital, including as many children as possible.

I conduct research at the hospital's Genetic Institute, and Soroka has become my home away from home. I have built warm and professional relations with my colleagues in the obstetrics and gynecology department and other units.

I make a point, whenever I'm at the hospital, of visiting Palestinian patients. I also schedule appointments for other Gaza residents, and even bring medication from Soroka to needy patients in the Strip.

I have nothing but praise for the doctors, nurses and other medical staff at Soroka Hospital. They show compassion, sympathy and kindness. I was therefore extremely shocked and upset to hear that Wafa Biss, from the Jabalya refugee camp, was wired with explosives to blow herself up at Soroka, a place where she had been treated with kindness and mercy...

Update LGF has a link to video, as well as to this surreal headline that singularly demonstrates why so many of us are so utterly unconcered with international/ist opinion of any type in light of this incident: World powers urge Israel to ease checkpoints

Continue reading "No Limits"

Caroline Glick - Masterful as always

Column One: Irrelevant visions (hat tip: mal)

During his meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Rice that the PA had ceased all incitement activities against Israel. Yet on the same day that they met, the PA's official news service WAFA "reported" that Israelis were sending hordes of wild pigs to Palestinian villages around Hawarah village in the Nablus district to attack them and destroy their fields.

The PA's official news service even interviewed Hawarah Mayor Mansour Dmaidi, who backed these ludicrous and incendiary statements.

It is not surprising that Abbas brazenly lied to Rice about PA-sponsored incitement against Israel. After all, he lied to her about everything else. Most importantly, Abbas told Rice that he is opposed to terrorism. And yet, Abbas fervently supports terrorism.

Abbas complained to Rice – as he complains to anyone who will listen – that Israel's actions to defend its citizens against terrorism make it impossible for him to fight terrorists. This is a logically unsupportable statement. If Abbas opposes terrorism, then he should support Israel's counterterrorist operations...


Who is Teaching Our Christian Neighbors?

With a growing number of Christian denominations here in the US considering divestment procedures against Israel, there are also a correspondingly growing number of Christians decrying this politicization of their Churches. United Church of Christ member and founding director of the Judeo-Christian Alliance Dexter Van Zile is joined by UCC Pastor Robert Everett in this op-ed in the effort to "tie the bells" around some of the groups and individuals responsible for corrupting Protestantism's long-held effort to maintain a separation between the Church and the temporal political movements of the moment. This is important work, and important to read so that you can understand who these people are, what their motives are, how they are corrupting hard-fought Jewish-Christian relations, and so that you can understand that there are voices -- maybe a majority of voices, though the power is, for now, held elsewhere -- that are available to reach out to. (See here for another friendly voice, for instance.)

JPost: Reawakening the teachings of contempt

For the past few years, liberal Protestant theologians have warned Israelis and American Jews of the alleged anti-Semitism inherent in the end-time scenarios offered by evangelical Christians in the US. Evangelical love for Israel, we are told, is not rooted in regard for the Jews, but is merely a byproduct of their desire to witness the Second Coming of Christ, an event some Christians believe was hastened by the establishment of the State of Israel.

While the end-time scenarios offered by some evangelicals, are indeed disturbing for Jews – and many Christians – the hostility toward Israel encouraged by liberal Protestants poses a much greater near-term threat to Jews than anything the evangelicals espouse.

Despite repeated assertions that they have removed all traces of anti-Semitism from their theology, the leadership of mainline Protestant denominations in the US have helped breathe new life into the teachings of contempt for Jews in their indiscriminate support for Palestinian theologians such as Naim Ateek, a former Anglican canon who serves as president of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. Ateek is regarded as a "peacemaker" in the US even as he recycles the deicide charge against the Jews and directs the hostility it arouses against the Jewish state.

For example, in December 2000, Ateek wrote that Palestinian Christmas celebrations were "marred by the destructive powers of the modern-day "Herods" who are represented in the Israeli government."

In his 2001 Easter Message, Ateek wrote: "The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull." And in a February 2001 sermon, Ateek likened the Israeli occupation to the boulder sealing Christ's tomb.

With these three images, Ateek has figuratively blamed Israel for trying to kill the infant Jesus, crucifying Jesus the prophet and blocking the resurrection of Christ the Savior. The use of such images is not the language of peacemaking, but part of an inexcusable effort to breathe new life into Christian theological hostility toward Jews and focus its vile energy on the Jewish state...


Staying the Course

George Bush still gets it. I subscribe to CNN alerts on keywords like "Iraq" and "Middle East," so I get a good feel for what a news outfit like CNN puts out for stories and headlines -- for what they feel is important to emphasize and what spin they put on it. The stories are, surprise, surprise, overwhelmingly negative. "When are we getting out?" the only important question. The only good Republicans those who cross the lines and start questioning the mission. They are the heroes in CNN's world. That's what I like to call the "Vietnamization" of the Iraq War -- the media's drum-beat to get us out before the job is done and to fulfill their own prophesy that it all just wasn't worth it, and if it would have been worth it, why, they'll do their best to be sure it wasn't.

CNN: Bush rejects timetable to pull out of Iraq

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush struck back Friday against growing calls to schedule a U.S. pullout from Iraq, vowing there would be no timetable to withdraw troops.

To do so would be "conceding too much to the enemy," Bush said at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the White House.

"This is an enemy that will be defeated."

Bush said the insurgents were trying to scare Iraqis and Americans into giving up their efforts.

"We are there to complete a mission, and it's an important mission," he said. "A democratic Iraq is in the interests of the United States, and it's in the interests of laying the foundation for peace."

Al-Jaafari also said now isn't the "time to fall back."

"We owe it to those who have made sacrifices to continue toward the goals they fought," he said. "I see from up close what's happening in Iraq, and I know we are making steady and substantial progress."...

Maybe some of the doom and gloomers should take a lesson from little El Salvador (Hey, I thought that was one of the countries that was supposed to hate us because of our bad past!)

CNN: El Salvador's leader: Troops to stay in Iraq

PARIS, France (AP) -- The president of the only Latin American country with troops in Iraq said Friday he will not pull them out until democracy is in place there.

"Why should we leave Iraq now when the basic conditions have not been met?" El Salvador's president, Tony Saca, said in an interview with The Associated Press in Paris, where he met with President Jacques Chirac at the end of a three-nation European tour.

Saca said a president, a constitution and a public police force need to be in place in Iraq before his troops will leave.

"I believe that what we begin, we have to finish correctly," Saca said.

He said he would decide in August whether to send a contingent of replacements for the 380 Salvadoran soldiers operating in Iraq mainly in humanitarian roles or leave the current force in place.

"The elections are not enough; democratic processes take time. When the moment comes, I will have to make the decision about pulling out," he said.


Allah: The Arnold Horshack of Divine Beings

A love note from an ISP in Egypt (as far as I can tell) left as a comment to this post translates to me something like, "When you least expect it...expect it..." Ah, the memories of growing up in the 70's.

You know! You know how liar and mean you are But, nevermind , You are going to ee, whether it was you or your grand- grand children, the day of your (Jews) end You know what , Allah told us in our Holy book that you are going to reach your supreme twice, this is the second one . ene shsaa allah you ae going to witness the day when the stone or the tree itself guides muslims saying "there's a jew hiding behing! come and kill him! and you know what i don't write that to prove anything but to remind you if you are really aware of your history and state; what about killing prophets, what about worshiping calf,what about asking for seeing God, what about those who turned to be monkeys and pigs, what about Aldorra, what about Gennin, What about your mascaras every now and then, hat about your treachery for Prophet Mohamed, What about and what about >>> never mind close your mouth and memorize these words, " May be it's not the time now, but, take care of being there on the day of your defeat>" And i am full of satisfaction that , inshaallah you are going to taste the bitterness of your crimes sooner or later, because allah is the just!ALLAH IS THE JUST

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Bahrain...moderate Arab State

From the ADL:


OK, I've seen a lot of these things, and I gotta admit, I'm not 100% clear on this one. I see the Jew in the background. He's responsible, I know that. The Jew is always running things. And the Jew is always putting up barriers to keep people apart -- especially to isolate and make life miserable for the cartoon-world Arab, who is always rendered miserable through no fault of his own in these things. Common themes all.

This time, though, I dunno. Bush seems to be pointing to the guy's beard. Is he telling him to shave his beard off? Is that the barrier he's referring to? I know facial hair can be very important. Remember the whole "Curse be upon your mustache" thing? And then, there's the Jew who gets to keep his beard, which is like, so totally unfair. So it's the whole double-standards thing. Is that it? I know there's some freaky hate going on here, but I'd like to be in on the joke, too.

Still Missing



Have you seen this painting?

One of my favorite places in Boston. One of the greatest art heists in history. Isabella Stewart Gardner is still missing some of her stuff. Where is it? Was Whitey involved? Fifteen years later and no one knows for sure. There's five million big ones in it if you figure it out, though, and one guy thinks he's onto it. Interesting story at Smithsonian Magazine.

I can't imagine that if the paintings are ever recovered that they will be in anything like their original condition. Shame.

Ripped from the Walls (And the Headlines)

At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, as St. Patrick's Day stragglers wobbled home for the night, a buzzer sounded inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. One of two hapless museum guards answered it, saw what he thought were two city policemen outside the Palace Road entrance, and opened the door on the biggest art theft in U.S. history.

After handcuffing the guards and disarming the museum's video cameras, the intruders, who had apparently stolen the uniforms, proceeded to take apart one of this country's finest private art collections. Painstakingly assembled by the flamboyant Boston socialite Isabella Gardner at the end of the 19th century, the collection had been housed since 1903 in the Venetian-style palazzo she built to display her treasures "for the education and enjoyment of the public forever."

But less than a century elapsed before Mrs. Gardner's high-minded plans for eternity began to crumble. During their 90-minute assault on the museum, the thieves managed to make off with three Rembrandts (including the Dutch master's only known seascape, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee), a much-loved oil by Johannes Vermeer titled The Concert, a Govaert Flinck landscape, a bronze Chinese beaker from the Shang era, five Degas drawings, the bronze eagle finial from a flag of Napoleon's Imperial Guard and a jaunty oil portrait of a man in a top hat, titled Chez Tortoni, by Edouard Manet. By some miracle, they left what is possibly the most valuable painting in the collection, Titian's Europa, untouched in its third-floor gallery.

Fifteen years later the case remains unsolved, despite wide-ranging probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assists from Scotland Yard, museum directors, friendly dealers, Japanese and French authorities, and a posse of private investigators; despite the Gardner Museum's promise of a $5 million reward; despite a coded message the museum flashed to an anonymous tipster through the financial pages of the Boston Globe; despite advice from psychics and informants; despite oceans of ink and miles of film devoted to the subject. It is as if the missing stash-now valued as high as $500 million-simply vanished into the chilly Boston night, swallowed up in the shadowy world of stolen art. Or has it?...


Holding the Saudis Accountable

Robert Spencer on the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005:

Ending the Saudi Double Game

...In September 2004, the State Department added Saudi Arabia to its list of the most religiously intolerant nations in the world. But this didn’t stop the Spring 2005 crackdown on Christians in the Kingdom; nor did it lead to more calls for accountability from Washington. In April 2005, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz described U.S.-Saudi relations as “excellent.” He praised “the good relations and the will of cooperation between the two countries to serve Saudi interest first of all.”

Indeed, both countries seem intent on serving Saudi interests first of all. That’s the problem. But the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005 could change all that. It calls upon the Saudis to take genuine anti-terror steps, including to cooperate openly and fully with American anti-terror efforts; to close all “charities, schools, or other organizations or institutions” both inside and outside the Kingdom that aid in terrorism anywhere around the world, “including by means of providing support for the families of individuals who have committed acts of terrorism.” And it calls for sanctions to punish noncompliance. Such measures are the only way that Saudi Arabia could today become a genuine ally of the United States. Senator Specter and the other senators who sponsored this bill are to be commended — and every American should hope that their efforts bear fruit.

I am not one of those people who believes there's some deep secret plot among the Bushies to play cozy with the oil ticks -- our relationship with SA goes back long before the Bush's and has been based on access to oil and stability for a long, long time. The policy is ingrained in the non-elected (and less accountable) portions of the executive branch. The Administration has to walk a tight-rope. You want to see the War on "Terror" turned into an outright war with Islam? Just turn Saudi Arabia into an overt beligerant. One thing at a time, please. Set up the pieces (like Iraq), then start applying pressure.

I do think it's important, however, to keep the spotlight on, and make use of the shortcomings of the Apartheid, racist, anti-Human Rights nature of Saudi Arabia as a rhetorical bludgeon. I'm not sure if this act goes too far or not, but it does not strike me that it does.

Fisking the well-meaning

Wizbang Blog has a very nice "fisking" of a well-meaning commenter who believes what the Jihadis really need is a little more understanding. Well done.

In my piece the other day about the Palestinian woman who attempted to blow up an Israeli hospital, commenter Maria brought up a lot of interesting points. Now, I respect and appreciate her contributions, but I feel the only way to properly answer her is to use the classic "Fisking" technique, of doing a bit-by-bit rebuttal. However, I will attempt to be considerably less brutal than that style is customarily known for...

Khalidi Plagiarism Issue Spins Into Print

Today's edition of Boston's The Jewish Advocate features an article authored by Shira Schoenberg on the issue of Columbia's Rashid Khalidi and the article which appeared for a long period of time under his by-line at what was then the American Committee for Jerusalem. Readers of this blog and others are well familiar with the issue by now. The previous relevant posts are (in chronological order):

Rashid Khalidi...a Case of Plagiarism?
Rashid Khalidi's scholarly standards
Divergence of Treatment
Update on Khalidi
Khalidi's Side

The Advocate is print only, although you can read the portion of the article which appears on the front page at the link above. This blog is mentioned, so welcome to Jewish Advocate readers who manage to Google in (the name of the blog is given, but not the URL). This blog has, as a major portion of its focus, its eye on issues involving Israel, the War on Terror and the world-wide wave of anti-Semitism we've all watched develope over the past few years, among other things--things which include whatever strikes my fancy on any given day.

Here is the article, with thanks to Shira Schoenberg and The Jewish Advocate. [Emphasis is mine, which should be obvious.]

The Jewish Advocate: Dershowitz levels plagiarism charges at Arab studies professor by Shira Schoenberg

Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz this week supported allegations of plagiarism against Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, after a popular blog raised questions about the origins of a four-year-old article that appeared under Khalidi's name.

The article in question, entitled "Jerusalem, A Concise History," appeared on the website of the American Committee for Jerusalem, an organization of which Khalidi was founding president, that aimed, according to its website, to "present an Arab-American consensus position on Jerusalem." The organization has since become the American Task Force on Palestine, a Washington-based group that "aims to articulate the national security interests of the United States in establishing a Palestinian state."

The report provides a history of Jerusalem, arguing that the majority of native Palestinians today are descendents of the Canaanites, a tribe that inhabited Jerusalem in the second millennium BCE, making the Palestinians "the historic people of the land."

A Columbia historian doing Internet research discovered that from a total of 14 paragraphs in the article, significant portions of approximately seven paragraphs were nearly identical to material that appeared in a 1994 piece published by K. J. Asali in the Arab Studies Quarterly, entitled "Jerusalem in History." Although the historian has remained anonymous for fear of professional repercussions, the charges were picked up by the blog Solomonia in a June 8 post and by Rick Shenckman and Ralph Luker of History News Network...

The rest of this entry may be read by clicking the link below.

Continue reading "Khalidi Plagiarism Issue Spins Into Print"

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

The Real Gulag, Part 7

Gulag, pp. 398-399:

One of the standard methods of criminal escape involved cannibalism. Pairs of criminals would agree in advance to escape along with a third man (the "meat"), who was destined to become the sustenance for the other two on their journey. Buca also describes the trial of a professional thief and murderer, who, along with a colleague, escaped with the camp cook, their "walking supply":

They weren't the first to get this idea. When you have a huge community of people who dream of nothing but escape, it is inevitable that every possible means of doing so will be discussed. A "walking supply" is, in fact, a fat prisoner. If you have to, you can kill him and eat him. And until you need him, he is carrying the "food" himself.

The two men did as planned--they killed and ate the cook--but they had not bargained on the length of the journey. They began to get hungry again:

Both knew in their hearts that the first to fall asleep would be killed by the other. So both pretended they weren't tired and spent the night telling stories, each watching the other closely. Their old friendship made it impossible for either to make an open attack on the other, or to confess their mutual suspicions.

Finally, one fell asleep. The other slit his throat. He was caught, Buca claims, two days later, with pieces of raw flesh in his sack.

Although there is no way of knowing how often this type of escape occurred, there are enough similar stories, told by a wide enough range of prisoners, from camps from the early 1930s to the late 1940s, to be certain that they did take place, at least from time to time. Thomas Sgovio heard the death sentence pronounced on two such escapees--they had taken a boy prisoner, and salted his flesh after murdering him--when he was in Kolyma. Vatslav Dvorzhetsky was told a similar story in Karelia, in the mid-1930s.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Sunset on Mars

Rafsanjani: Obey the rules...or else

It's so much easier being the head of a totalitarian Fascist state than it is to be a real politician.

Rafsanjani: Those who oppose our rules must be punished

Iran Press News: In response to a call by the Student Movement, for the unconditional freedom of all political prisoners in Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the cruel, duplicitous and corrupt Mullah said: "Those who oppose our rules (the Islamo-fascist canons) must and will be punished."

Rafsanjani showed up at Tehran University in order to confront a gathering of students. In response to one student's query about the regime's authoritarianism, unconditional freedom of all political prisoners, a moritorium on shutting down newspapers, freedom of speech, Rafsanjani simply stated that: "everything must take place within the framework of our rule otherwise those who oppose it will pay the price."

Students became enraged after hearing Rafsjani's comments and began loudly chanting slogans:

"Unconditional freedom for all political prisoners,
Freedom of though, always, always,
Fascism must be destroyed."

Following the chanting of the slogans, they began singing the highly popular anthem "Ey Iran."


Hiawatha on the warpath

Hiawatha Bray continues his campaign for accountability on the part of Newspaper Guild editor, Linda Foley, for the scurrilous charges she has leveled against our troops. Did you know that they're intentionally murdering journalists? Neither did I.

At a time when the public's trust in the journalistic profession is at all time lows, the head of one of their major unions is doing her level best to dig the hole deeper.

Read Bray's latest here.

(via Instapundit)

The Carnival of the Vanities #144

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

The Real Gulag, Part 6

Gulag, pp. 246-247:

At about the same time, Dalstroi set up a punishment lagpunkt [small work camp], which became, by the late 1930s, one of the most notorious in the Gulag: Serpantinnaya--or Serpantinka--located in the hills far to the north of Magadan. Carefully placed in order to receive very little sunlight, colder and darker than the rest of the camps in the valley (which were already cold and dark for much of the year), Dalstroi's punishment camp was more heavily fortified than other lagpunkts, and also served as an execution site in 1937 and 1938. Its very name was used to frighten prisoners, who equated a sentence to Serpantinka with a sentence to death. One of the very few survivors of Serpantinka described the barracks as "so overcrowded that prisoners took turns sitting on the floor while everyone else remained standing. In the mornings, the door would open, and the names of ten or twelve prisoners would be called. No one would answer. The first people that came to hand were then dragged out and shot."

In fact, little is known of Serpantinka, largely because so few people emerged to describe it. Even less is known about punishment lagpunkts set up in other camps, such as Iskitim, for example, the punishment lagpunkt of the Siblag complex, which was built around a limestone quarry. Prisoners worked there without machines or equipment, digging limestone by hand. Sooner or later the dust killed many of them, through lung disease and other respiratory ailments. Anna Larina, Bukharin's young wide, was briefly incarcerated there. Most of Iskitim's other prisoners--and Iskitim's dead--remain anonymous.

They have not, however, been forgotten altogether. So powerfully did the suffering of the prisoners there work on the imagination of the local people of Iskitim that, many decades later, the appearance of a new freshwater spring on a hill just outside the former camp was greeted as a miracle. Because the gully below the spring was, according to local legend, the site of mass prisoner executions, they believed the sacred water God's way of remembering them. On a still, freezing day at the end of the Siberian winter, with a meter of snow still covering the ground, I watched parties of the faithful trooping up the hill to the spring, filling their plastic cups and bottles with the clean water, sipping it reverently--and occasionally glancing, solemnly, into the gully below.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Teaching the children

Are the Arabs ready for peace? Just watch what they're teaching the kids.

The latest from Palestinian Media Watch:

PA Encouragement of Child Martyrdom (Shahada) Continues

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Click here to see clip

Introduction

Promotion of Shahada, or death for Allah, has been the backbone of the Palestinian Authority's messages to its children since the start of the terror war in September 2000. Although the number of these messages has been reduced in recent months, the promotion and glorification of child Shahada continues nonetheless, as seen this week on PA TV.

This week's Shahada promotion was seen during the broadcast of The Palestinian Diaspora, a series presented as a factual dramatization of history that has been shown daily on PA TV in a prime time slot for the past month. Throughout the series, Israel's creation and ongoing existence has been presented as injustices that must be fought.

Click here to see clip

This episode was set in 1956, as Arab's mourn Israel's existence. A 12-year-old refugee reads his uncle a story he wrote. The scene has two explicit messages.

1. A child should be willing and anxious to fight and die in order to destroy Israel.

2. Arab 'refugees' can never resettle, but must 'return' to Israel.

The following is an excerpt from the scene

Boy: "His mother cried and said, 'My son! Swear to me! Don't leave me alone...! I'm afraid you
will be killed.'

"Her son said to her, 'Don't cry, my mother! Let me go and fight for the sake of the homeland. The enemy stole our beautiful land... We all must fight in order to redeem the lost paradise... We lived in joy and happiness, until the foreign enemy [Israel] came and expelled us from our land, and we became refugees in tents. But we will return, by Allah's will!'

"His mother told him, 'Farewell, my son. Allah be with you.' He kissed her and left to fight, and fought until he became a Shahid [martyr for Allah]."

Uncle: "...Let me ask you, if they come and tell you, we will give you a very big house, a car,
land and money, just resettle! Would you agree?"

Boy: "No!"

Uncle: "...the homeland is greater than individual possessions."

[PA TV, June 16, 2005]

It's important to note that the segment opens with the boy's friend writing "I shall return" over a map he drew of 'Palestine' - which removed Israel's existence.

Khalidi's Side

HNN has updated their entry on the question of plagiarism and Rashid Khalidi with his response. Basically, he's saying he contributed to the piece, but did not write it and it was attributed to him improperly.

HNN piece here.

Previous posts here, here, here and here.

Update: Todd Gitlin, in the comments to HNN's post, is on the war-path over "anonymous charges." He sounds vindictive and angry that the issue should be brought out in the first place--thereby inadvertently reinforcing the concerns in the mind of the source that caused them to wish to remain anonymous in the first place.

We all should be concerned and skeptical of charges made anonymously, particularly when anonymous sources bring forth evidence who's provenance thereby becomes impossible to confirm.

Such is not the case here. The anonymous source in this case is simply pointing out the issue. All of the evidence is publicly available and equally accessible by all, allowing each to make his or her own decision. The identity of the source in this case is meaningless one way or the other to the question of plagiarism or how serious a case it is. Whether presented by a university president or an anonymous poster on a message board, the issues remain the same.

Monday, June 20, 2005

The Real Gulag, Part 5

Gulag, p. 332:

The maloletki--"juveniles"--inspired little sympathy among their fellow inmates, "Hunger and the horror of what had happened had deprived them of all defenses," wrote Lev Razgon, who observed that the juveniles gravitated naturally toward those who seemed the strongest. These were the professional criminals, who turned the boys into "servants, mute slaves, jesters, hostages, and everything else," and both boys and girls into prostitutes. Their horrifying experiences failed to inspire much pity, however, on the contrary, some of the harshest invective in camp memoir literature is reserved for them. Razgon wrote that whatever their background, child prisoners soon "all displayed a frightening and incorrigibly vengeful cruelty, without restraint or responsibility." Worse,

They feared nothing and no one. The guards and camp bosses were scared to enter the separate barracks where the juveniles lived. It was there that the vilest, most cynical and cruel acts that took place in the camps occurred. If one of the prisoners' criminal leaders was gambling, lost everything and had staked his life as well, the boys would kill him for a day's bread ration or simply "for the fun of it." The girls boasted that they could satisfy an entire team of tree-fellers. There was nothing human left in these children and it was impossible to imagine that they might return to the normal world and become ordinary human beings again.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Not your average drawings on the refrigerator door

And you thought it was only the Palestinian school system that was teaching crazy stuff to its kids? Well they have nothing on these Korean kids (OK, none of the Korean kids has blown him or herself up yet, but still...). Take a look at this post at the Marmot's and follow the links (the captions are good, too).

We all inhabit the same world...

...it just seems that some of us are here for different purposes.

MEMRI: Syrian Historian Georgette Attiyya: The Womb of the Palestinian Woman - A Factory that Produces Fighting Children

Dr. Attiyya: The Palestinian woman's womb is a factory for the conflict; it produces fighting children. After this fighting child is produced, he is taught: "This is your land, this is your country, you will fight for it, stand on it, and die for it." Therefore, a very important connection exists between motherhood, land, and blood.

Via LGF where you can see the video.

Girls gone wild, Palestinian style.

No good deed goes unpunished. Also, more Koran flushing.

YNet: Palestinian woman tells interrogators she intended to blow up at southern hospital

GAZA – Major attack thwarted: A 21-year-old would-be suicide bomber was detained by security forces at Gaza’s Erez crossing Monday morning...

...Gaza resident Wafa Samir Ibraim Bas, 21 was carrying more than 10 kilograms (more than 22 pounds) of explosives and was picked up thanks to electronic anti-terror means utilized at the crossing.

Army officials said the woman surrendered only after attempting to detonate the charge at the crossing itself.

The woman was scheduled to arrive at Soroka hospital in the Southern town of Be’er Sheva for some tests Monday, and was hoping to take advantage of the medical appointment to carry out a suicide attack.

During her interrogation, the would-be bomber said she was sent by the Fatah’s al-Aqsa Brigades. The group sought to utilize the humanitarian permits issued to the woman and instructed her to carry out the attack at the hospital, she said...

I wonder what the excuse will be (the horrors of roadblocks, the humiliation of having a brother who's a terrorist?).

Also, more copy-cat Koran flushables. At least Koran pages don't expand when they get wet and clog the pipes. This one's at Jewish Telegraphic Agency. I can't figure out how to do a permalink for it.

Koran scandal lives on

A Palestinian woman jailed in Israel was caught flushing pages of the Koran down her toilet.

Sunday's incident at Shikma Prison, which comes as the Prisons Service says Palestinian charges that guards desecrated prisoners' Korans are fabricated, ended when a guard fished the torn pages out of the water and confiscated them. Reports of Koran abuse at U.S. prisons have been linked to deadly global protests by Muslims.


Sunday, June 19, 2005

Boston Celebrates Israel

Another year, another Boston for Israel rally. No big report this year--check out last year's multi-part entry here, complete with photos of Bus 19 and transcripts of some of the speakers. That was a much more political event, this year was just fun.

I actually took my wife and daughter, and we did the full day, starting at the big gathering at Copley Square, and then marching with the parade the one and a half miles to City Hall Plaza. As I mentioned no speeches this year, just fallafel sandwiches and music, provided by...uh, some Israeli group "Mashina," of whom, of course I had never heard. They were quite good, though. A couple guys played an accoustic guitar (well, one played, one just sang) as the warm-up act. Also very good, although they were on for a long while--long enough so that after we arrived at City Hall, we went down to Faneuil Hall for something more to eat and when we came back they were still on, but whatever.

I'd say turn-out was excellent, as these photos of the march (looking in front of us and behind us) and then the crowd watching the music attest.

Yes, there was the usual collection of moonbats, haters and freaks. Same crew, same signs as last year ("We support the resistance," etc...) They were allowed very close to where the marchers were entering the plaza (there was a security check), and were screaming at people as they filed in. They were lead by someone with a megaphone and, unlike last-year, the cops let them keep it. Also unlike last-year, however, the set-up was much better, with the concert around the corner of City Hall from where the "protesters" were, so the entire afternoon wasn't a shouting match between the entertainment and moonbaticus odiferous. Also, it appears that, as this picture shows, the cops actually pushed them much farther back later and they were completely surrounded by riot cops by the time we left (we didn't stay for the whole show). Sorry (or not), but you have to be completely fucked in the head to still be screaming slogans three hours after you start, and not only that, but screaming into the faces of whole families (it was a family activity with face-painting, balloon animals and all that, so there were many children present) as well. Way to show the Jews and whatever other part of the world that takes notice of these things that we still need to be vigilant. BTW, the six clear sort of "towers" in the picture above are part of Boston's Holocaust Memorial.

[Edit: I wanted to add one more thing here. Every time I've been to one of these things where there were protesters present, the same pattern emerges. On the Israel side there is a multiplicity of voices present. There were people carrying signs against the disengagement, and people who were "Pro-Israel, Against the Occupation"--hell, there was even a contingent of Jews for Jesus. There was one main theme aside from the celebration of Israel, and that was "peace"--uneqivocally. The contrast with the so-called "pro-Palestinian" side could not be more pronounced. The protesters were a single-message group, and there was no message of peace among them. There were no signs of reconciliation, two-state solutions, hands open to others...the only signs of peace I see are signs like "No Peace Without Justice," and that "Justice," as I noted in this earlier post, is purely the retributive type that has nothing to do with real peace. Not to mention that their favorite chant is "Shut it down!" referring to Israel.

Another side-note: The only side that carries the American flag at these things (I exclude the Nazis here) is the pro-Israel side, and they were distributed along with Israeli flags to the marchers.]

And, of course, the usual half-dozen White Supremacist/Nazi/whatever they are guys were there. Barely worth a mention, but always worth a look:

Anyway, we had a nice time, and the march was nice exercise. My daughter had a good time riding my shoulders and waving her little Israel and American flags and being part of a "parade." She also enjoyed the police horses and the police escort. Here's a shot of a few of the horses:

See you next year. Am Yisrael Chai.

Update: Jewish Russian Telegraph has a report along with a transcript of one of the kick-off speeches.

Boston Globe report here.

Friday, June 17, 2005

The Real Gulag, Part 4

Gulag, pp. 305-306:

Solzhenitsyn tells the story, repeated in various forms by others, of a group of religious sectarians who were brought to Solovetsky in 1930. They rejected anything that came from the "Anti-Christ," refusing to handle Soviet passports or money. As punishment, they were sent to a small island in the Solovetsky archipelago, where they were told they would receive food only if they agreed to sign for it. They refused. Within two months they had all starved to death. The next boat to the island, remembered one eyewitness, "found only corpses which had been picked by the birds."

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Why they hate us

They hate us for our freedoms! Especially our debauched freedoms. I hate Megan Mullally for her freedom to do what others can only imagine.

USA Today: No raised eyebrows

In the days of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance never would have dreamed of doing what Will & Grace stars Debra Messing and Megan Mullally did at Friday's 2005 Women in Film Crystal/Lucy Awards.

After Camryn Manheim introduced the pair as the new Lucy and Ethel, Mullally playfully fondled her friend's breasts...

What else are friends for?

I don't hate Debra Messing, BTW. I like Debra Messing, but I do hate her nose. I have one word for Ms. Messing: Rhinoplasty.

Via Southern Knight, who is not amused. More and larger pictures here, at The Superficial.

Update on Khalidi

Further on my entry Rashid Khalidi...A Case of Plagiarism?, Elizabeth O'Neill at History News Network has put up a post recapping the facts and includes reaction from Khalidi himself.

The Complaint Against Rashid Khalidi

(The article gets my url wrong, BTW. It's "solomonia.com," not "Solomnia.com." At least, I hope it isn't.)

Update: They fixed it.

Update2: More here.

Horrors of the Occupation

Crusader Zionazi Storm Troopers play bizarre game of cat and mouse with innocent Palestinian children.


Israeli soldiers play soccer with Palestinian boys at the centre of West Bank city of Hebron June 16, 2005. The Palestinian militant group Hamas disclosed on June 16 that European Union diplomats had held talks with some of its members, an apparent shift in EU policy that drew sharp criticism from Israel. (Nayef Hashlamoun/Reuters)

And what's this? BOYCOTT CATERP...oh...


A Palestinian police officer stands guard as a bulldozer runs over an unregistered vehicle in the West bank city of Jenin June 16, 2005. The Palestinian militant group Hamas disclosed on June 16 that European Union diplomats had held talks with some of its members, an apparent shift in EU policy that drew sharp criticism from Israel. (Saeed Dahlah/Reuters)

Interesting Shirt



Yassmeen, an Iranian woman holds her passport after casting her vote at the Iranian embassy in the Jordanian capital Amman June 17, 2005. Iran holds a presidential election on Friday under international scrutiny over its nuclear programme, its rocky relationship with the United States and the direction the Islamic Republic will take after the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji

A wider view:


So many groups to watch, so little time...

Exposing the real agendas of some of the groups running about masquerading as being about "peace and justice" can be a full-time job. It's doable, but never-ending. Fortunately, there are some people who make it a point of doing so. One of those is Dexter Van Zile of the David Project's Judeo-Christian Alliance. Dexter sent me the text of a letter he has sent to the Jewish Journal, a Jewish newspaper covering Boston's North Shore. The letter exposes the agenda of a group called Sabeel, who's leaders have shared the stage with many of members of the clergy during "peace conferences" held at venues around the Boston area.

This may seem like a story of local interest, but this story is the same around the country, so I post Van Zile's letter in full in the extended entry for those interested in the issue. The letter is currently on the paper's Opinion page, here, and I also recommend the letter below it written by a Mark Nystedt as also being worth your time.

Continue reading "So many groups to watch, so little time..."

Images of Peace?

Here's the latest from Palestinian Media Watch:

PA TV Culture:
Israel established through theft of land and murder of infants; Palestinians hold "key" - ownership of Israel

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

Introduction

While the Palestinian Authority (PA) focuses on the West Bank and Gaza in international forums, to its own people delegitimizing Israel's existence as a state continues to be the cornerstone of its ideology. Two recent broadcasts on official PA television reinforced this hate message, presenting Israelis as killers and thieves who "stole" Arab land to create the state, and promoting the symbol of the "key" - the claim to be the rightful owners of all of Israel.

The first is from a so-called "historical" TV series depicting events before and during Israel's War of Independence in 1948. The daily broadcasts distort history, presenting Israelis as well armed evil soldiers fighting with British support against valiant Arabs defending their villages. The seven Arab armies that attacked Israel are not shown. In one of the many vicious libels in the series, actors portray Israeli soldiers murdering an infant in cold blood after destroying his family's village. See picture above.

To see this video online, click here

The second is through a cultural program in which dancers carry giant "keys" on their backs. Though burdened by the weight, they slowly dance. The "key" symbolizes the PA's claim to ownership of all of Israel and its plan to "return". See picture below.

To see this video online, click here


Hamas is running for office - what are they about?

Let's make sure everyone understands. In a press conference the other day, Jack Straw was asked if Britain would drop Hamas from its list of terror organizations if they did well in the Palestinian elections.

Straw answered that an organization was put on the list on the basis of specific criteria, and added that such an organization's participation in an election would not stop it from being a terrorist organization. Straw made it clear that Hamas would remain on the British list of terrorist organizations until it renounced its policy of violence and its charter calling for the destruction of Israel

What was Hamas' reaction?

Hassan Yussuf, a senior Hamas terrorist in the West Bank, rejected Straw's demands and noted that they “were unjust and unbalanced, because he was only looking at the actions of the resistance [sic] and not at the killing and destruction of the Israeli occupation” ( Agence France-Presse , June 8, 2005). He was also quoted as saying, “We will not drop our moral, religious and national constants just to have an audience with Straw and the likes of Straw”

Mahmoud al-Zahar, senior Hamas terrorist in the Gaza Strip, said that “in the first place, we have to remember what Britain is. [Its] current leadership is conspiring with the United States to harm Arab and Islamic interests in the area, for instance in Afghanistan and Iraq…Hamas will never change itself or its rhetoric or its strategies. Its position is clear. This is occupied land which must be liberated… We will not be [counted] among those who would give up so much as an inch of Palestine…We think all of Palestine belongs to us

Mushir Al-Massri, Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip , said that the movement would not give up the option of resistance [i.e., violence] and would not dismantle its military wing . Anything in the media supporting such a view, he said, was baseless

Sayyid Siyyam, a top Hamas official in the Gaza Strip , said that Hamas did not need a good conduct certificate from Straw, and that the movement would not renounce its principles

And we always looked at 'taking a principled stand' as a good thing, didn't we? I guess it all depends on what your principles are.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Real Gulag, Part 3

Gulag, pp. 293-294:

If the politicals were not necessarily political, the vast majority of criminal prisoners were not necessarily criminals either. While there were some professional criminals and, during the war years, some genuine war criminals and Nazi collaborators in the camps, most of the others had been convicted of so-called "ordinary" or nonpolitical crimes that in other societies would not be considered crimes at all. The father of Alexander Lebed, the Russian general and politician, was twice ten minutes late to work for his factory job, for which he received a five-year camp sentence. At the largely criminal Polyansky camp near Krasnoyarsk-26, home of one of the Soviet Union's nuclear reactors, archives record one "criminal" prisoner with a six year sentence for stealing a single rubber boot in a bazaar, another with ten years for stealing ten loaves of bread, and another--a truck driver raising two children alone--with seven years for stealing three bottles of the wine he was delivering. Yet another got five years for "speculation," meaning he had bought cigarettes in one place and sold them in another. Antoni Ekart tells the story of a woman who was arrested because she took a pencil from the office where she worked. It was for her son, who had been unable to do his schoolwork for lack of something to write with. In the upside-down world of the Gulag, criminal prisoners were no more likely to be real criminals than political prisoners were like to be active opponents of the regime...

Part 1
Part 2

New England Conference of the United Methodist Church joins PC(USA) in Infamy (Updated)

The New England Conference of the United Methodist Church has voted to divest from companies that "support the occupation" in a resolution that mirrors the Presbyterian Church for its one-sidedness and empty hat-tip to Palestinian terror. The resolution recycles the canard of blaming Israel for the decline of the Christian population in the territories -- in fact, Christian populations are down across the Middle East, but have quadrupled in Israel proper since 1949. (It's not the Israelis they're running from.)

Illegal this, illegal that, the wall, the terrible (life-saving) wall...it's all there. I won't belabor the thing, read it for yourself.

This is cute:

...Whereas we embrace the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses, which forbid stealing, coveting the land of one’s neighbor, and taking human life,...

I must have been sleeping through the part at Hebrew School where they covered that "coveting thy neighbor's land" business.

Update: I understand that Virginia has followed-suit, but I do not have a functioning web link yet.

Update2: Here is a link to a PDF File report. Warning PDF file.

Divergence of Treatment

Mediacrity takes note (hat tip also to my emailer) of the divergent reaction to the plagiarism allegations against Columbia's Rashid Khalidi, and a commencement address delivered at University of Missouri:

...A reader points out the contrast between the media indifference to this scandal and the furor that erupted over a similar transgression involving a commencement address by Bryan Le Beau of the University of Missouri. The latter has swept over academia like a tsunami, picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education and newspapers, while Khalidi has gotten no attention at all. Makes you wonder, this reader notes, what the media is afraid of. Good point.

Perhaps there are lower expectations for some people, or perhaps it's just the venue.

Iran on creating Plutonium: 'Yeah, we lied..."

...but trust us, it's no big deal...

New York Times: Iran Said to Admit Tests on Path to Atom Arms

VIENNA, June 15 - Iran has admitted that it conducted small-scale experiments to create plutonium, one of the pathways to building nuclear weapons, for five years beyond the date when it previously insisted it had ended all such work, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to report Thursday.

In an oral statement to be delivered at a meeting of the nuclear watchdog agency's board, the agency's deputy director, Pierre Goldschmidt, will say Iran made the admissions after being confronted with the result of laboratory tests conducted on samples collected from an Iranian nuclear site...

..."From what I understand of the report, which I haven't seen, it doesn't say as much about a new capability or intention as much as it says about Iran's lack of candor so far," Corey Hinderstein, deputy director of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research organization that has been critical of Iran, said in a telephone interview.

"It shows that Iran has yet to come clean about its nuclear program," Ms. Hinderstein said. "Each new revelation that they haven't told the truth, especially at this late date, increases questions about what else they're hiding."

But an Iranian negotiator interviewed in Vienna, Cyrus Nasseri, denied that the disclosures regarding plutonium experiments indicated any effort by Iran to conceal activities.

"What difference would it make for us to say these tests were made 13 years ago or 10 years ago?" he said. "It would make no difference at all, so there cannot be any motive of concealment." He said the disclosure of new dates reflected the time required to examine the record rather than concealment.

"I can understand that some might want to make a big story out of this," he continued, "but I'm sorry, it's not a big story."...

Nothing to see here. Move along, move along...

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

The Real Gulag, Part 2

Gulag, pp. 319-321:

...Against everything that has been written about the selfishness, the venality of the women who bore children in the camps, stands the story of Hava Volovish. A political arrested in 1937, she was extremely lonely in the camps, and deliberately sought to give birth to a child. Although Hava had no special love for the father, Eleonora was born in 1942, in a camp without special facilities for mothers:

There were three mothers there, and we were given a tiny room to ourselves in the barracks. Bedbugs poured down like sand from the ceiling walls; we spent the whole night brushing them off the children. During the daytime we had to go out to work and leave the infants with any old woman who we could find who had been excused from work; these women would calmly help themselves to the food we had left for the children.

Nevertheless, wrote Volovich,

Every night for a whole year, I stood at my child's cot, picking off the bedbugs and praying. I prayed that God would prolong my torment for a hundred years if it meant that I wouldn't be parted from my daughter. I prayed that I might be released with her, even if only as a beggar or a cripple. I prayed that I might be able to raise her to adulthood, even if I had to grovel at people's feet and beg for alms to do it. But God did not answer my prayer. My baby had barely started walking, I had hardly heard her words, the wonderful heartwarming word "Mama," when we were dressed in rags despite the winter chill, bundled into a freight car, and transferred to the "mother's camp." And here my pudgy little angel with the golden curls soon turned into a pale ghost with blue shadows under her eyes and sores all over her lips.

...

One nurse was assigned to seventeen children, which meant that she had barely enough time to keep all of the babies changed and fed, let alone cared for properly:

The nurse brought a steaming bowl of porridge from the kitchen, and portioned it out into separate dishes. She grabbed the nearest baby, forced its arms back, tied them in place with a towel, and began cramming spoonful after spoonful of hot porridge down its throat, not leaving it enough time to swallow, exactly as if she were feeding a turkey chick.

Slowly, Eleonora began to fade.

On some of my visits I found bruises on her little body. I shall never forget how she grabbed my neck with her skinny hands and moaned, "Mama, want home!" She had not forgotten the bug-ridden slum where she first saw the light of day, and where she'd been with her mother all of the time...

Little Eleonora, who was now fifteen months old, soon realized that her pleas for "home" were in vain. She stopped reaching out for me when I visited her; she would turn away in silence. On the last day of her life, when I picked her up (they allowed me to breast-feed her) she stared wide-eyed somewhere off into the distance, then started to beat her weak little fists on my face, clawing at my breast, and biting it. Then she pointed down at her bed.

In the evening, when I came back with my bundle of firewood, her cot was empty. I found her lying naked in the morgue among the corpses of the adult prisoners. She had spent one year and four months in the world, and died on 3 March 1944...That is the story of how, in giving birth to my only child, I committed the worst crime there is.

In the archives of the Gulag, photographs of the type of camp nursery Volovich described have been preserved. One such album begins with the following introduction:

The sun shines in their Stalinist fatherland. The nation is filled with love for the leaders and our wonderful children are happy just as the whole young country is happy. Here, in wide and warm beds, sleep the new citizens of our country. Having eaten, the sleep sweetly and are certainly dreaming happy dreams...

Part 1 is here.

Bookish

OK, I'm overdue on providing my responses to the latest Book Meme thing, with thanks to Lynn B. for the invite. For my answers to the other book quiz, see here.

I find these things very difficult, because I can never decide on an answer to any of the questions that require a judgement call, and those always depend on where I am in time and tastes. Some of the stuff that might have been influential when I was younger, like Stranger In A Strange Land, or The Once and Future King, or even Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, are fading somewhat from my memory and I'm forgetting to a large extent what it was that I loved so much about them. Sooo...my policy for "filling this out" is to twirl in my chair, look around at what's on my shelves now and pick out my answers without too, too much agonizing over the answers.

Here we go...

Number of books I own: I'm guessing around 700. Not sure, really.

Last book I bought: I think it was John Adams: Party of One -- sort of an impulse purchase at BJ's Wholesale. No, really. I like Adams and find him a very sympathetic figure. A Massachusetts man of enormous accomplishments, curmudgeonly, always feeling unappreciated and worried that history wouldn't recognize him as it should (he was right).

Last book I read: Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.. I'm looking forward to renting the movie when it's released on DVD. I'm given to believe I'll regret it.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

OK, here's where I spin the chair and look around.

The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror by Natan Sharansky: An intensely important book for understanding the world as it is today.

Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen: All about understanding and facing history as it was, not as we'd like to excuse it.

CITIZEN SOLDIERS : The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany -- June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945 by Stephen Ambrose: Read about what our fathers did and what they sacrificed.

Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey by David Horowitz: Horowitz's personal story of his journey from Left to Right is an important story for anyone no matter where they are now on the ideological scale -- but especially if you're on the cusp of a similar move.

Downfall : The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank: I call this the book with the redundant title. This is another book that's all about "appreciating our Fathers." It's a detailed, amazingly researched work that serves as a great primer for what you need to know about the allied effort in the Pacific War.

Now, I'm going to be a bit of a bastard and not pass this on. I did that the first time and I just don't like putting it on people to post something if they don't want to (which is not to say I mind being asked myself...bring 'em on!) -- I also don't want to leave anyone wondering, "Hey, why didn't he pick me?." SO! If anyone out there would like, I leave it to you to pick up the stick and post your own answers. I'll update this post with the links.

Edit: I hate the way the new Amazon links add an extra space. Sorry 'bout that.

An Egyptian Neo Con

Stefania of Free Thoughts has a very interesting interview with the Egyptian fellow who blogs at Rantings of a Sandmonkey. It seems that just as there are a lot of Americans who's outlook too a new turn after 9/11, there are some Egyptians who did the same after the Taba bombing.

3) Why and when have you decided to start your own blog?

Well, it was last December. I had just returned from the US a few months earlier and I was finally starting to grasp what the whole "War on Terror" thing was all about. You don't get to see it when you are in the states really, because of the polarizing effects of American politics and Media have on the discussion. It was right after I escaped the Taba bombing and witnessed the reaction of the Egyptian media (They blamed Israel for the actions of the Palestinian bomber that killed Israeli tourists and Egyptian nationals (that could've included me and my friends) on our own soil) that I fully realized that there is something sinister really going on in the media of middle-eastern countries in their attitude regarding Israel and the US. It's also when I fully realized that the whole "You are either with us or with the terrorists" thing is actually true and that Bush is right: You can't be passive against people who want you dead and you can't have tolerance for people who excuse their actions either, because those are the people who tolerate intolerance and defend those who want to kill you. It's either us or them, and I chose us.

Bearing that in mind, I realized that the terrorist apologists have total control over the media here, which in turn influences the public opinion of the average Egyptian and/or Arab. This isn't a coincidence or out of shared ideological beliefs amongst our media elites, but rather part of the Arab rulers/ dictators plan to misdirect their masses. They use their media to foster and feed anti-american sentiment in their countries in order to give their people an enemy to focus their hate and frustration on. They tell you that as long as the poor brave palestinains are getting slaughtered by the evil Zionist jews under the sanction of their evil American puppets, you can't complain about your life or your problems or the fact that you live in a tyrannical society where you have no freedom...

Read on.

Cancer Juice

Here is more of the same pattern I noted in a previous post (Some People Will Believe Anything) about the amazing nonsense that the Palestinian Authority is proclaiming and that others who should know better are either passing on uncritically or making themselves complicit in by ignoring (a sin of omission they would never commit if the perpetrator were any responsible Western government).

The latest whopper from the PA is that Israel is distributing cancer-causing juice to Palestinian children. See this JPost article:

PA: Israel sells us 'carcinogenic' juice

Israel has been flooding the Palestinian market with carcinogenic juice and "suspicious" computers used by its Defense Ministry, the Palestinian Authority claimed Tuesday.

Such allegations, which were common under Yasser Arafat's rule, have resurfaced in recent weeks in the Palestinian media.

PA officials have also accused Israel of dumping toxic chemical waste in some areas in the West Bank with the intention of causing severe damage to the health of Palestinians.

Last month, PA-controlled newspapers claimed that Israel was using wild pigs to destroy crops and agricultural farms in the West Bank. The papers claimed that settlers and IDF soldiers were seen setting loose many wild pigs near Palestinian villages as part of a campaign designed to destroy the Palestinian economy...

Again, these are not conspiracy-theories being passed around on the Gaza streets, but come straight from the highest levels of the PA government from named sources:

...The latest charge was made by Dr. Youssef Abu Safiyeh, chairman of the PA's Environment Authority, who told Palestinian legislators in Ramallah that the PA security forces had recently seized a number of shipments from Israel that included canned juice containing a carcinogenic substance.

"These drinks are specifically produced for Palestinian consumers in the Gaza Strip," Abu Safiyeh said.

He also claimed that the Egyptian authorities last March intercepted two Israeli trucks carrying children's toys that included carcinogenic and radioactive substances. The trucks were seized at the Rafah border crossing, he added...

See also this report from Honest Reporting pointing out this story as well as the fact the Google News passed it on.

Add these many nonsense pronouncements together and you get an Israeli electorate that might rightfully ask why they're bothering to make concessions for peace with people who are obviously making no effort on their part to do the same. Not only are they still refusing to take steps to disarm the terror gangs leaving the Israelis to do it themselves (see: LGF: Teenage Death Cult Gang Busted among many, many other examples), but the highest levels of government in the PA continue to spew this incitement -- and incitement is what it is, for what would you do to someone who was trying to intentionally give cancer to kids?

Why should Israelis bother trying to build bridges, why should anyone bother building bridges when those bridges are thrown back in our faces? Even Palestinian NGO's refuse to agree to ensure the money they receive is not used for terrorist activities, they call cooperative efforts with Israeli groups -- even groups of the "Left" -- a sort of trap, as this letter from a long list of Palestinian groups opposing such cooperation attests to.

This unusually well-done report from the IDF -- Security Crossing Improvements in Judea and Samaria -- describes the efforts that Israel has made to not only decrease the number of checkpoints, but make them more comfortable and fast-moving. What do they get in return? More conspiracy-nonsense about Israelis trying to irradiate border crossers -- see: Israel Limits Rafah Radioactive Screening After Protests. The radiation device in question, BTW, was an American device that uses RF radiation and doesn't even penetrate human skin. Not using it wouldn't save anyone. In fact, it ensures people carrying weapons and bombs have an easier time getting through. Thank you, conspiracy-theorists.

Hand it to the Palestinian Arabs -- they have their talking points straight. From the PA itself, to the terror gangs, to the NGOs, the teachers and the doctors in the hospitals, the cult of victimhood, the conspiracies, the refusal to compromise or cooperate is the enforced party line. In a fear-based non-free society, where dissent is not tolerated and uniformity of thought is not tolerated (or at least channelled - in other words, you can dissent about x or y, but a difference on z is not allowed) it is impossible for those who wish to buck the dominant paradigm to organize themselves, and that's a key problem. If only the haters are allowed to combine their voices, it doesn't matter how many "moderate" individuals there are. Ten organized people can control thousands of individuals.

Change is simply not on the march inside Palestinian Arab society. It's where PA society interfaces with the outside world -- in the realm of their press-releases as a start -- that there is an opportunity for change. It's only when they are held responsible for these childishly irresponsible pronouncements by those on the outside -- when we stop humoring them and coddling them and treat them instead like real adults -- that they will start acting in the responsible way adults are expected to act in.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The Real Gulag

From Anne Applebaum's Gulag, p.277:

Lev Razgon...gives an account of a conversation between Colonel Tarasyuk, then commander of Ustvymlag, and a camp doctor, Kogan, who made the mistake of bragging to Tarasyuk about how many patients he had "plucked from the grips of pellagra," a disease caused by starvation and protein deprivation. According to Razgon, the following dialogue ensued:

Tarasyuk: What are they getting?

Kogan: They are all receiving the anti-pellagra ration established by the Gulag Health and Sanitation Department (and he specified the quatity of proteins in calories).

Tarasyuk: How many of them will go out to work in the forest and when?

Kogan: Well, none of them will ever go to work in the forest again, of course. But now they'll survive and it will be possible to use them for light work within the compound.

Tarasyuk: Stop giving them any anti-pellagra rations. Write this down: these rations are to be given to those working in the forest. The other prisoners are to get the disability rations.

Kogan: Comrade Colonel! Obviously I didn't explain clearly. These people will only survive if they are given a special ration. A disabled prisoner receives 400 grams of bread. On that ration they'll be dead in ten days. We can't do that!

Tarasyuk looked at the upset doctor, and there was even a sign of interest in his face. "What's the matter? Do your medical ethics prevent you from doing this?"

"Of course they do..."

"Well, I don't give a damn for your ethics," said Tarasyuk calmly, and with no indication whatsoever of anger. "Have you written that down? Let's move on..."

All 246 died within the month.

Such conversations were not unique, nor apocryphal, as archives show...

Today is the Centenary of the Mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin

Klocek Files Slander Suit

DePaul Profess Thomas Klocek has finally filed his inevitable lawsuit against the University (see multiple entries on this case by doing a search at left). Marathon Pundit has the details:

Marathon Pundit exclusive: Thomas Klocek files slander lawsuit against DePaul

Good luck to Tom Klocek.

Rashid Khalidi's scholarly standards

My previous post on Rashid Khalidi was superficially one of a question of plagiarism, but the real question this gateways into is how rigorous of an academic standard does Khalidi live up to? Michael Rubin begins to address that question in today's Frontpage.

Academic Standards, R.I.P.

University continues to consider hiring embattled Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi for its newly-endowed Robert Niehaus chair in Contemporary Middle East Studies. Khalidi, a specialist on Palestinian politics and history, has become controversial for his highly politicized mix of polemics and history. He has sought to rebut criticism, arguing that questioning his scholarship infringes on his first amendment rights. Speaking at Columbia University on April 4, 2005, for example, he said, “Freedom of speech and academic freedom are particularly necessary for unpopular and difficult ideas, for conventional ideas, for ideas that challenge reigning orthodoxy.”

Khalidi is right about the importance of freedom of speech, but he misses the point. Academic freedom is meant to protect scholarship, not replace it. For any history professor, the core of scholarship is the ability to uncover and interpret primary source material. High school students might select sources uncritically in order to prove their thesis, but history professors must evaluate not only what the source says, but also its veracity and perspective. Judgment matters. Next to plagiarism—of which Khalidi has also been accused recently—deliberate omission, failure to judge sources, and eschewing primary source and field research are the greatest academic sins a professor can commit.

In 2004, Khalidi authored Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East in which he argued that U.S. government officials had entered into the Iraq conflict ignorant of Middle Eastern history. Unlike others academics and critics of Bush administration policy, Khalidi refused to travel to Iraq to conduct his research. Instead, he made Iraq a template upon which to impose his theories. His failure to engage Iraqis is reflected in his ignorance of Iraqi history. His narrative failed to mention Saddam Hussein’s murder of tens of thousands of Shi‘i Marsh Arabs, and the ethnic cleansing of cities like Kirkuk and Sinjar. Polemics may forgive sins of omission, but scholarship should not. Worse, while his narrative ignores Saddam’s chemical weapons attack on Kurdish civilians, in the Iraqi equivalent of Holocaust denial, he questions Saddam’s complicity in a footnote...


It's Never Enough

Hassan Nasrallah is mouthing off about he need to lop off chunks of Israel again. Most people understand, and the article makes clear, that this is just a tactic by Hizballah to remain relevant and prevent disarmament. And here I thought Hizballah was all about hospitals and social services. Yet somehow whenever they feel they need to project their raison d'etre, it's not clinics and welfare payments they shout about, it's guns, bombs, resistance and fighting "Zionists" they scream.

YNet: ‘Israel must cede more land’

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah says seven villages inside Israel belong to Lebanon; expert says rhetoric comes in framework of terror group’s efforts to avoid disarmament

Seven Arab villages currently in northern Israel belong to Lebanon and should be ceded, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an election rally in Lebanon Thursday.

Nasrallah’s demands regarding the villages have been voiced before and mark the latest attempt to deflect growing calls for the Hizbullah to disarm, Arab affairs expert Eyal Zisser told Ynet in response to the report.

“Nasrallah mentioned this several times in the past, including prior to the IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon,” he said. “It should be viewed as a tactic in an attempt to… avoid disarmament.”

Nasrallah looking for excuses?

Meanwhile, political sources said Nasrallah’s remarks are an effort to extend the group’s “resistance” efforts, after other disputes with Israel on the Lebanese border have been resolved.

The villages in question were annexed to what is today Israel prior to the state’s establishment through agreements between France and Britain, but Nasrallah chose to provide his own reasoning for why the area should in fact be considered Lebanese territory...


Monday, June 13, 2005

How's the pollen count?

The A/C was out of commission at my office today. Sweat city. We haven't had rain for several days, in spite of the overcast skies and the thunder I heard rumbling in the distance yesterday. And get this, while performing my morning ablutions, I look out the bathroom window and see...smoke. Is there a fire? Is that mist? No, I literally watched a cloud of greenish/yellow pollen blow through my back yard. Freaky. Absolutely everything is covered in a thick coat of yellow dust -- plants, cars...the grass. Everything. Good thing I don't have allergies.

AUT Debate

Norm has a report on the debate on the AUT's boycott of Israeli universities. Sounds like things went quite well.

Congratulations Norm!

Zionist Tombstones

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Robin's Nest Redux

Last year I posted pics of a robin's nest (also here) that was built in one of the shrubs outside our house. It was actually visible when sitting at the couch inside. I missed the birds getting much bigger than in the pics -- they either got eaten or grew up real fast and flew off.

Anyway, this year the nest has been recycled and there's a new batch of babies. Funny, I've looked in there a couple times because I've seen the robin collecting nesting stuff and food on my front lawn and flying in and out of the shrubs, but I didn't see anything in the nest. The birds (and eggs) must have been hunkered down in there and I must not have looked that closely. Tough to miss now.

Got worms?

The AP's immoral moral equivalence

The Washington Times reports on the admirable effort by an Israeli-Arab man to set up the Arab World's first and only (as far as I know) Holocaust education center.

Washington Times: Muslim in Nazareth takes on Holocaust

NAZARETH, Israel -- No one talked to him at a recent family wedding, Khaled Mahameed says. Neighbors curse him at the supermarket. A relative accuses him of unwittingly playing into Israel's hands.

The reason: This Israeli Muslim has embarked on a lonely mission to teach his fellow Arabs about the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany put to death an estimated 6 million Jews.

Mr. Mahameed's newly opened Holocaust institute in the biblical town of Nazareth is a modest operation, with occasional lectures. About 60 photos documenting the genocide mounted on the walls.

But the effort is highly unusual if not unique in the Arab world, where the Holocaust often is played down or even denied.

One photo shows a Nazi officer pointing a gun to the head of a Jew who squats at the edge of a mass grave.

"Men like this man settled our land," Mr. Mahameed told five Arab visitors recently. "We have to understand the very deep trauma of this man."

Mr. Mahameed, 43, thinks that learning about the Holocaust could help Arabs understand Israel better and ultimately resolve the Middle East conflict.

A few of his neighbors have expressed support for his museum, but it has provoked strong opposition among Palestinians who say Israel used Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's genocide as an excuse to take Arab land.

Underlying this dispute is competition over victimhood, said Tom Segev, an Israeli author on the Holocaust.

"Arabs often feel that if they acknowledge the Holocaust, they give up their claim of being the real victim of this conflict," Mr. Segev said...

I first posted about Mr. Mahameed's efforts back in March, here. It appears to be a promising, though potentially flawed (no one need have taken, or "settled" anyone else's land as a result of the Holocaust) effort.

The same cannot be said of the AP's report (reprinted by the Times) which is an example of moral equivalency and Holocaust minimization rolled into one. The report goes on:

...Arab attitudes on the Holocaust are mirrored to some extent by an abiding Israeli indifference to the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians as a result of Israel's creation.

That indifference also has begun to fracture: A five-part documentary airing on Israeli television delivers a blunt indictment of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...

The inclusion of the words "to some extent" accomplishes little here. Although it indicates some amount of self-consciousness in the comparison, the author, Kristen Stevens, is drawing a clear equivalence between the Holocaust and the "nakba" -- demonstrating a horrible, though not unexpected from the AP, moral blindness. That would be understandable from an Arab reporter, where knowledge of what the Holocaust really was is low -- hence the need for Mr. Mahameed's project and the fact that it's a story in the first place -- but coming from a Western reporter the comparison is inexcusable.

Stevens stretches to make the well-known and wide-spread phenomenon of Arab Holocaust denial equivalent to Israeli insensitivity to the "nakba" including an all-too-obvious and supremely odious comparison of the murder of millions of Jews to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza -- lands it only occupies as the result of winning a defensive war against an avowedly genocidal enemy and continues to occupy only as a defense against one of the most blood-thirsty and savage campaigns witnessed in the modern era.

Someone may also wish to point out to the author that the supposed events of the nakba and the occupation are some two decades separate and have little to do with one another in any case. The only connection is in some sort of vague stew of 'Arab grievance' which only continues to have appeal because Western reporters like Stevens continue to humor it. She implies that this documentary she mentions is the beginning of a fracturing of the Israeli inability to self-examine and self-criticize, but anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Israel's free society should know that one thing the Israelis don't lack for is internal critics. Free, even condemnatory voices come from both Left and Right, and the Israeli Left is and has been for many, many years particularly vociferous in its questioning of everything - up to and including the State's right to exist. Where are the equivalent voices among the region's non-Israeli Arabs? Hanging with their throats cut in Ramallah, or sitting on Abbas's death row as collaborators.

To compare the murder of millions with the displacement of hundreds of thousands is bad enough, and again, we might expect it from the Palestinian Arabs who have made great efforts to co-opt the Jewish narrative and make it their own, but this equivalency also leaves out the agency of the event.

There was no catastrophe because of the Holocaust or because of Israel's creation, at least there need not have been. The catastrophe occurred because of Arab rejectionism, the inability to compromise, the inability for Muslims to accept a non-Muslim state in the Middle East and the resulting failed attempt at an avowed war of genocide by the armies of every one of the new state's neighbors. They wouldn't accept the state they were given, wouldn't accept the state given to someone else (in which they had every right of citizenship), lost the resulting war they started and still blame others for their problems.

There's a very good reason that Israelis are less sympathetic to the nakba than they expect others to be about the Holocaust - they're not the same thing.

I will point out one more thing, particularly to those who think that elevating and respecting the nakba does some good, that somehow by honoring this we show our humanity to the Other and can expect some reciprocation in return - this "catastrophe" is not the result of an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a volcanic eruption. This catastrophe is a product of human agency, and the presence of a human agency means that there's someone to blame. And who do they blame, you Israelis, you friends of Israel (however tangential)? They blame you. They...blame...you.

And having someone to blame means having someone to place guilt upon, it means having someone to place your own guilt upon -- a highly effective way of relieving a burden -- and it means someone to go to to demand restitution...and justice. Justice is a harsh word, and one that means many things to many people. Best get to know the person wielding the word if you want to know its meaning, and most people in the Arab Middle East who talk about Justice don't generally mean a conciliatory, peaceful style of resolution -- they mean by this type of Justice that people deserve to be punished for their transgressions. The worse the sin, the harsher the comeuppance. Beware justice in human hands.

How harsh a comeuppance does the perpetrator of the equivalent of a Holocaust deserve? Certainly one tougher than a little understanding, a furrowed brow and statements of "I feel your pain" can buy off.

As I write this, I am sensitive to the fact that Mr. Mahameed's project is an important one, and that he is a special person for starting it -- whatever nits I have to pick with it, and they are nits in this context. His project appears to be a start (I can't read the Arabic to know or analyse what's really going on), and a worthy one, but that doesn't excuse the AP their moral and historical blindness, nor me from saying what I believe is important to be said about it.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

The Priest who sold land to Jews

As an adendum to the post below about the PC(USA), a commenter points to this piece from Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post (well worth reading the non-quoted parts as well):

Our World: In our eternal, undivided capital

...The newest victim of the PA's power grab is not an Arab at all, but the recently excommunicated Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, Irineous I.

Since the PA was established, it has worked diligently to bring all the various Christian sects under its direct control. In the 1990s this involved terrorizing priests and nuns into submission. In Jericho and Hebron, the PA took control of the convents and churches of the White Russian churches and transferred them to the pro-PLO Red Russian church. In 2002, Fatah terrorists laid siege to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and held the priests hostage for weeks while ostentatiously desecrating the holy site.

Until the sacking of Irineous last month, the Greek Orthodox Church was the only church operating in Israel and the PA that retained its independence from the PA. Before Easter, Ma'ariv published a report that Irineous had committed the "crime" of leasing church property by the Jaffa Gate of the Old City to Jews. Seeing an opportunity, the PA immediately pounced on Irineous. As columnist Nadav Haetzni reported in Ma'ariv on Friday, PA ministers and militia commanders, equipped with Israeli VIP travel documents, descended on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and organized attacks against Irineous, who was immediately condemned as a "traitor" and a "collaborator."

Irineous was summoned for an interrogation by PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei. His lawyer's arm was broken and his financial adviser was brutally beaten. Under the gun of PA intimidation, the church's Holy Synod convened and excommunicated Irineous last month. The PA took over the church's finances and incited an international scandal which brought Greece's deputy foreign minister to Ramallah, where he apologized to Qurei for Irineous's terrible crime.

As all of this was happening, Israel's government sat quietly on the side and did nothing. The attacks against Irineous were organized by a PLO-sponsored Arab Israeli priest, Theodosius Atallah Hanna. Hanna has repeatedly glorified suicide bombers and, indeed, called for Palestinians to become bombers in interviews to the Arab press. He is positioning himself to become the first Arab patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church since the 16th century.

Aside from the fact that the current Arabization of the Greek Orthodox Church will signal the complete takeover of all Christian churches by the PA, it also has strategic significance for Israel's national security...

The degree to which Christian Churches in the Middle East are tethered to and bridled by the demands of Arab politics and the effects of their Dhimmi status is a vastly underreported phenomenon.

All Reason Gone - Sensenbrenner brings the gavel down

I hear some people are concerned about aspects of the Patriot Act, but given a chance to call witnesses to make substantive arguments about whatever problems there are with it, Democrats took the opportunity to invite people to rant about Guantanamo Bay and the evils of the Bush Administration. This included representatives of "the Gulag of our times" Amnesty International, and James J. Zogby of the Arab American Institute. The committee chair, James Sensenbrenner, after repeated attempts to get the witnesses to stick to the subject, finally gaveled the meeting to an early close ("showing his pique" as the Washington Post puts it).

WaPo: Panel Chairman Leaves Hearing - Sensenbrenner Ends Patriot Act Meeting as Democrats Plug On

After repeated criticism of the Bush administration, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday gaveled a hearing to a close and walked out while Democrats continued to testify -- but with their microphones shut off.

The hearing's announced topic was the USA Patriot Act, which granted broad new powers to federal law enforcement after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Republicans had presented several witnesses at earlier hearings who supported the administration's call for reauthorizing the legislation. But yesterday, when four witnesses handpicked by the Democrats launched into a broad denunciations of President Bush's war on terrorism and the condition of detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) showed his pique.

He urged witnesses to "wrap it up" and repeatedly told committee members that their time for questioning had expired.

"We ought to stick to the subject," the chairman scolded at the end. "The Patriot Act has nothing to do with Guantanamo Bay. The Patriot Act has nothing to do with enemy combatants. The Patriot Act has nothing to do with indefinite detentions."

"Will the gentleman yield?" Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) asked.

"No, I will not yield," replied Sensenbrenner, 61, the heir to a paper fortune who is known for a brusque insistence on decorum. He completed his reproof of the witnesses and left the Rayburn House Office Building hearing room amid a cacophony of protests from Democrats seeking to be recognized...

Is there no serious opposition left in Washington? Has the Democratic Party finally drowned itself in the Michael Moore school of government? The Patriot Act is a serious matter. What to do with enemy combatants is a serious matter. Where are the rational alternatives? Where is the serious discussion ? I understand that electoral politics and posturing infect everything in Washington, and conflating the Patriot Act and Gitmo is becoming a favorite demagogic sport, but there must be limits somewhere. It's sad the limits can't be found before the gavel needs to fall. Kudos to Mr. Sensenbrenner for trying to keep things on track. For this he will be vilified.

Buyer's Remorse

Democrats are complaining that Howard Dean is a distracting figure (imagine!), and blaming...the VRWC.

Washington Times: Durbin blames 'right wing'

The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate yesterday blamed "the right wing" and elements of the press "in service to it" for repeating Howard Dean's remarks about Republicans and inflating them out of proportion.

"I think we all understand what's happening with you all," said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal-ethical woes.

"The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody's got the agenda. It's all about Howard Dean. You've bought into it," Mr. Durbin said.

"You can't let up on it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

Mr. Dean, who took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee four months ago, has caused a stir with a string of public statements that he "hates the Republican Party and everything it stands for" and that its members are "liars," "evil," "corrupt" and "brain-dead."

Senate Democrats emerged from a Capitol Hill meeting with Mr. Dean, a former Vermont governor, yesterday touting their message of the day: Change the subject...

Howard Dean perfectly represents so much of what's wrong with today's Democratic Party -- shrill, thrashing -- and the reaction to him in the party is the other side of the coin -- a demonstrated inability to look inward and be honest about their own problems, instead pointing and blaming other for having the audacity to point out their obvious issues.

Speaking of which, see Michelle Malkin: Reporter Challenges Dean; MSM Horrified!

Some in the Washington press corps and on Capitol Hill are in a huff because Fox News Channel anchor/reporter Brian Wilson was too aggressive with DNC chair Howard Dean at his press conference with Sen. Harry Reid yesterday.

Awwwwww.

Wilson raised his voice. And he didn't wait his turn. And he didn't ask "substantive" questions. Translation: He didn't genuflect before the Democratic leadership or the Beltway journalistic elite, and he asked exactly what viewers wanted to know...


Friday, June 10, 2005

From the PC(USA)'s Mission Yearbook

If I believed like this, I'd boycott, too:

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in the land where we have been made strangers?” is the plaintive cry of our Christian sisters and brothers in Palestine, now imprisoned in their already occupied native territories by a giant wall built mostly on their confiscated land. The Wall, standing 26.6 feet high, isolating Palestinian towns and villages of the West Bank, separating families, disrupting livelihoods, and effectively creating communal prison cells, has become a new “Wailing Wall.”

Security from suicide bombers is ostensibly the reason behind the Wall. As we wrestle with a God of justice and compassion in prayerful contemplation, we acknowledge that security for Israel is extremely important. We abhor suicide bombings as acts of desperation that accomplish nothing more than to generate fear, anger, and further alienation. But is the Wall the answer? If God, for the sake of a few righteous ones, had been willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, should Israel (whose name means “wrestling with God”), for the sake of some evil acts, destroy an entire people?...

I wouldn't exactly call that a sympathetic view of people trying to protect themselves from genocidal terrorists. A people who 'wrestle with God' can expect no less I suppose.

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Rashid Khalidi...a Case of Plagiarism?

Rashid Khalidi is the 'Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies' at Columbia University. The chair has provoked much controversy, starting with the controversial nature of the academic it is named for and the suspicion that it will serve as a highly political position -- exacerbated by the fact that Columbia at first refused to release the names of the donors behind the chair. Finally, after doing so under great pressure, the controversial nature of some of the donors was revealed -- including one donation from the government of the United Arab Emerates.

Khalidi himself has been no stranger to controversy, having come under criticism for his own views:

...Stephen Schwartz, a journalist and author of "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror," told the Sun Mr. Khalidi is a "typical representative of the ideologized majority in the Middle East field. "

"His rhetoric is intemperate and extreme," Mr. Schwartz said. "I think the very idea of an Edward Said chair speaks for itself." ...

He was recently dropped from a plan to have him instruct New York City public school teachers in a class on Middle East issues.

This post presents what may be a new controversy involving Professor Khalidi -- a charge of plagiarism.

I will leave it to the reader to decide how serious this matter is. Upon first examination of the facts, it does seem that the case is one of fairly classic academic plagiarism. On the other hand, the piece in question is not an academic one, but instead is a fairly short piece appearing on a web-site. Should that matter for an academic of Khalidi's stature? You be the judge...

Continue reading "Rashid Khalidi...a Case of Plagiarism?"

Stay Tuned

I know, I know, you hate those "sorry for not posting" posts. Nevertheless, here's one, 'cause even though I've been way busy, I'm jumping out of my skin to post at least a few links to some of the stuff that's been making an impression on me and I don't want you to think I don't care...sniff. On a side note, hits are way up here since Google seems to have found and linked an image search to the one naughty picture I posted round here (odd, since you can't get to it without being referred from this site or putting in the url directly due to my htaccess settings).

Anawho...working on a couple of interesting posts, and then it's back to normal. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

The people of Iran

Big Pharaoh has an interesting post about a friend's trip to Iran that's well in keeping with what Nicholas Kristof reported in his series from Iran -- that the only negativity he encountered as an American was from a group of Europeans in an Iranian teahouse -- as well as with Natan Sharansky's remark that a friend of his told him that Iran today is just like the Soviet Union before the wall came down, where the government hated America and the people loved it.

The Big Pharaoh: My friend just came from Iran

I bumped into an old friend yesterday. Well, I won't call him a close friend because he leads such a lousy lifestyle. Anyway, he informed me that he just came back from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"What the hell were you doing there man, you turned into a Shia?" I asked laughingly.

"No, I went there on a business trip. We had a meeting with a number of Iranian businessmen who are going to import our products. My American colleague John (not his real name) came with me. Man, I was scared to death before going there. I mean here I am an Egyptian guy accompanied by an American on a trip to Iran. You sure know that relations between Egypt and Iran are not so good, not to mention the US!! I was also afraid lest I break some religious rule and regret it! Or we get arrested because of John" he said.

"So, tell me about it" I asked.

"Well, I stayed there for 5 days. I got drunk in the first 3! Man, there ain't a house or an office I entered that didn't have a mini bar in it full of smuggled booze from Smirnoff vodka to Heineken beer! I was shocked. Everyone drinks there. Their private life is the complete opposite of what you see on the street. We went up a mountain with a group of Iranians and had all the fun there. When they knew that John was American, they were like flies around him. They took his email, phone number, and stuff" he said...

(via Daily Scorecard)

Can Nations Atone for Their Pasts?

Diana Muir suggests that the genocide in Darfur is a perfect opportunity for Germany and Turkey to take the moral leadership and do just that. The odds, of course, are not good, especially in the case of Turkey which recently cancelled an academic conference on the Armenian Genocide (attention AUT!).

HNN: The German-Turkish Solution to Darfur

Last week week a group of Turkish academics was expected to gather at the Bo gaziçi (Bosphorus) University to hold a conference on "Ottoman Armenians in the Period of the Empire's Collapse."

The day before the conference was scheduled to convene, the Turkish Minister of Justice, Cemil Çiçek, rose in Parliament to denounce it, "This is a stab in the back to the Turkish nation... this is irresponsibility… We must put an end to this cycle of treason and insult, of spreading propaganda against the [Turkish] nation..."

With Turkish academics being accused of treason by the Minister of Justice, the Rector of the Bo gaziçi University felt compelled to cancel the meeting. The contrast with Germany’s encounter with its past could not be greater...

Can nations atone? Can the World? Not yet.

Monday, June 6, 2005

Calling Amnesty International...Come In, AI...

Haaretz: Israel works to prevent PA execution of 50 collaborators

Israel has gone to great lengths to prevent the Palestinian Authority from executing approximately 50 Palestinians convicted of collaborating with Israel. Along with its appeal to senior PA officials, Israel approached U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer on the matter, and went ahead with the release of Palestinian security prisoners last Thursday only after the PA said it did not intend to carry out the sentences.

Three months ago, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) authorized the execution of the 50, who had been convicted of aiding Israeli security forces. Shortly thereafter, the head of the PA military tribunals, Saib al-Kidwa, said that 15 of the convicted men would be executed in the following weeks, after their sentences had been vetted by the senior religious authority in the PA, Sheikh Akrima Sabri...

Still searching for signs of the possibility of a secular, binational future state where human rights are protected I keep hearing about...

Rocks are no jokes

Haaretz: Soldier hit by stone during anti-fence protest loses eye

An Israel Defense Forces soldier has lost an eye after being hit by a stone during a demonstration against the separation fence on Friday.

Hundreds of local Palestinians, extreme leftist demonstrators, and Palestinian activists from Fatah, Hamas, and the National Front took part in the protest in the West Bank village of Bil'in, near Ramallah.

Military sources argued that the soldier's wound testified to the IDF's need to use controversial crowd control methods such as gas grenades and rubber bullets. According to the sources, it is common to see MKs and Israelis standing in the front lines of protests, creating a barrier between the soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators, some of whom exploit this barrier to throw stones...


Max Baer on Max Baer

This for the I'm always the last to know department. Jethro, of Beverly Hillbillies fame is Max Baer, Jr., son of the famous boxer, Max Baer (Sr.).

He's not very happy about the way his father is portrayed in that new movie. Can't say as I blame him.

Moral Blindness in Spain - Who is teaching the teachers?

I know, what else is new? Anyway, here's a little controversy over a teacher's manual.

JTA: Barcelona controversy flares over comparison of fence to Holocaust

Educational authorities in Spain have promised to review a high-school teacher’s manual that claims Israel’s West Bank security fence bears “many similarities to the Nazi genocide.”

But Marina Subirats, director of the Barcelona Municipal Institute of Education, or IMEB, avoided any explicit apology for the comparison, nor did she commit herself to any specific changes in the text.

“The only intention of this book was to render homage to the victims of the Holocaust and Nazism, and to preserve the historical memory of these events,” she said in a statement...

One might think that rendering respect to the memory of such events would entail not trivializing those events with bad comparisions.

... Subirats said the book was meant to give educators instruments to teach “a reality which until know has been rather unknown” — the incarceration of Republican prisoners from the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War in Nazi concentration camps.

As for the security-fence analogy, she said, “This obviously relates to the authors’ own opinion. It is not the criteria of the IMEB in such cases to exercise censorship.”...

How about a little editorial control over bad scholarship?

However, Subirats said she would “reopen the text to incorporate enriching contributions.”

In its current form, the manual reads, “Of all the problems in the world at this moment, there are two … which bear many resemblances to the Nazi genocide, with the ghettos created by the Nazis to isolate Jews from other people and with the humiliations and indignities received by the Spanish Republicans and Catalonians and the rest of the prisoners in the concentration camps.

“These are the construction of the ‘wall of shame’ in Palestine, and the detention of the Taliban prisoners at the military base that the United States has on the island of Cuba, at Guantanamo,” the text says...

Someone needs to teach these teachers about the differences between a fence surrounding a Warsaw Ghetto and a fence designed to keep suicide murderers away from buses and pizza parlors, and between a death camp designed for mass-extermination and a POW camp for violent Jihadis who's holy book is provided to them in 16 different languages.

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Another day, another Sox game - also, Queer Eye and Michael Moore Hates America

Yes, today I went with my father to another Red Sox game. Beautful day for baseball, and we had good seats, Grandstand Section 20, second row - behind home plate not too too far up. Damn, I always forget how unfomfortable those seats are. You've really got to get familiar with your neighbors. Anyway, I kept score, and the Sox won. Yay. Even Foulke had a quick ninth inning. Add in more clutch hitting from Ortiz...yahoo.

There's been a mini-controversy in sports radio, btw, since during Spring Training the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy guys showed up to film and had a couple of the Sox players in. That episode is scheduled to air Tuesday night, and some people have been bitching about it. I have to say I'm a little surprised. They're not there to get married kids, they're just there...being gay, which is what they are. I know some people don't like it, which I can understand I guess, but some of the commentary has been ignorant and mean-spirited beyond what I would have expected in this day and age. That means you, Gerry Callahan.

Someone should remind those chumps about the excellent episode the Queer Eye guys did to kick-off last season in which they set up a US Army guy who was shipping out to Iraq. They fixed that guy up with a great wedding, re-did his house, set up his wife and child, set him up with stuff to take with him, then capped the episode with a sort of PSA on the things to send to our troops overseas to help them out. Not one word about politics. No judgement. They just took care of the dude in style. Extreme style.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that as a promo, the Queer Eye guys were there to throw out the first pitch!

That's Carson Kressley in the pink Red Sox shirt. Who else? The other two are Kyan and Thom. My favorite, Ted (the cooking guy), wasn't there, and Jai sang a very good National Anthem.

Speaking of first pitches, I mentioned in my last Red Sox post that an Iraq War vet who lost both arms had thrown out the first pitch last time. Turns out that was Sergeant Peter Damon of Brockton, and I know that because I saw him last night when I watched Michael Moore Hates America -- which is finally available from Netflix -- and recognized his name. Sergeant Damon is the guy who appears in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in his hospital bed at Walter Reed and he's not happy about it. He's since made appearances in FahrenHype 9/11 (another good film I recommend) and Michael Moore Hates America telling Moore he can stuff it and trying to undo the damage Moore did using his image without Damon's permission.

Despite the name, Michael Moore Hates America is not mean-spirited, and I'm giving it a strong recommend for rental.

The filmmaker, Michael Wilson, sort of performs a reverse Roger & Me, chasing down Michael Moore for an interview he never grants, and in the mean time, exploring some of the distortions Moore put in his films, interviewing some of Moore's subjects (like Sergeant Damon) and giving them the chance they never had - to have their say back to Moore. Along the way he interviews some ordinary folks and some punits, portraying a much more positive view of the good ole US than Moore does -- he also finds himself wrestling with some of the ethical issues documentary film makers face. His struggle against going over to "the dark side" are some of the most interesting segments in the movie.

The film is a nice antidote to some real poison.

Saturday, June 4, 2005

Sound Cannon Gets Its Groove On

The focused sound device I posted about over a year ago (I assume it's the same device) has gotten a work out in Israel. Neat.

JPost: IDF uses 'The Screamer' on protesters

After years of research and experimentation, the IDF on Friday finally employed its latest secret weapon: a non-lethal acoustic cannon it used to disperse violent demonstrators rioting against the construction of the security fence near Jerusalem.

Military sources confirmed soldiers used the sound gun, which emits a painful burst of sound at a special frequency making it uncomfortable for protesters to remain in the area.

The IDF used the new weapon on Friday to disperse hundreds of protesters at the village of Bil'in near Har Adar in the Jerusalem corridor. A soldier lost an eye when hit by a rock during the protest.

IDF sources said the decision to use the non-lethal acoustic cannon represented a significant turning point in dealing with demonstrations.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Saturday, an IDF officer confirmed that soldiers operated "the Screamer," a small white box attached to a jeep that transmits the high-pitched sound waves...

...The high-pitched "voice frequencies" it emits are not only hard on the ears, but can cause some to feel nausea, "a little like sea sickness," the officer said. He stressed that the army would only use it in violent demonstrations and when soldiers were positioned a safe distance from the protesters. "The last thing we want to do is harm the soldiers," he said...

Damn straight.

The officer noted that the device was used in many countries to disperse violent demonstrations, and the army had come under criticism for failing to use it in such instances...

...The IDF Spokesman on Saturday issued a statement saying the new acoustic weapon "caused minimal injuries" to protesters while "dispersing them efficiently." The IDF has long tested various non-lethal weapon systems, but had always refrained from using them because there was too much uncertainty about injuries they could cause. One major barrier had been their effect on children who may fall into the path of the weapon...

Take note.

...Pentagon papers have described an acoustic gun that vibrates the insides of humans to a point where it would "liquefy their bowels and reduce them to quivering diarrheic messes." There were no reports of such effects during Friday's test...

Thank God!

Racist Defamation, Part Deux

The story about LeMonde being found guilty in a French court for "racist defamation" is finally getting a little bit wider play. At the time I posted about it below, it was only a brief item at JTA, and a Google News search turned up no other matches. In fact, a search of "Le Monde racist defamation" still only turns up one hit...and that's to a blog.

Haaretz has an article with a little more deapth here (also noted by a commenter in the previous post): Le Monde editor found guilty of defamation against Jews, Israel

Further, Norm has posted a lengthy excerpt from the pay portion of the Wall Street Journal that covers this and more ground. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here's quick snip:

..."Israel-Palestine: The Cancer" was a nasty piece of work, replete with lies, slanders and myths about "the chosen people," "the Jenin massacre," describing the Jews as "a contemptuous people taking satisfaction in humiliating others," "imposing their unmerciful rule," and so on.

Yet it was no worse than thousands of other news reports, editorials, commentaries, letters, cartoons and headlines published throughout Europe in recent years, in the guise of legitimate and reasoned discussion of Israeli policies...

...[A]lthough the French court ruling - the first of its kind in Europe - is a major landmark, no one in France seems to care. The country's most distinguished newspaper, the paper of record, has been found guilty of anti-Semitism. One would have thought that such a verdict would prompt wide-ranging coverage and lead to extensive soul-searching and public debate. Instead, there has been almost complete silence, and virtually no coverage in the French press.

And few elsewhere will have heard about it. Reuters and Agence France Presse (agencies that have demonstrated particularly marked bias against Israel) ran short stories about the judgment in their French-language wires last week, but chose not to run them on their English news services. The Associated Press didn't run it at all. Instead of triggering the long overdue reassessment of Europe's attitude toward Israel, the media have chosen to ignore it....

Abusing Books

I haven't said much about the Koran controversy, but I understand that the inmates themselves were three times more likely to have messed around with their own Korans than the guards.

This rant at Captain's Quarters is tough to beat.

Update: A surf around the headlines, most of which seem to boil down to "See, there really was Koran abuse!" is really regurgitation inducing. I'd like to say that it's hard to remember such a blatant display of media self-justification at all costs, but it's not really hard at all is it? That seems to be most of what the MSM does these days - justify themselves, their biases, their errors and their bad spin - then when they get called out on it, their gyrations of justification just dig them deeper.

The Secret Jew

Guess who?


Al-Ittihad, May 28, 2005 (United Arab Emirates) President George W. Bush is depicted as a Jew in disguise. Caption: "(Palestinian President) Abu Mazen complains about Sharon to Bush."

From the ADL.

Friday, June 3, 2005

Squirrel

Sorry for the light-weight blogging lately. Busy, yadayada, etc...

Here, have a couple of pictures of a fuzzy squirrel chowing down at my bird feeder (taken through the glass, hence the hazy look)...

Also, as an update to my earlier post about the Canada Goose nest behind my house, we had a spate of very rainy days with no let-up, and I was sure the little spit of land the geese had their nest on would be flooded (it does flood over when the rain is intense), so during a let-up in the wet I went down to take a look and found that the area of the nest was still dry, but the geese were gone and the eggs were broken and flat. I *think* they must have hatched, as the shells themselves were in pretty decent shape, not all shattered as I might expect if a coyote or something had gotten to them and given them a munch. I didn't get a picture then, but I did snap this photo about a week later (the shells had been in better shape before):

The worrisome thing is that the geese were not around, and I'd be surprised if the gosslings got big enough to go far so quickly, so maybe the end was not so happy after all.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Camp David 2000 Backgrounder

The excellent web site, Peace with Realism, has a very good backgrounder on the Camp David negotiations of 2000, here. The author has sourced his essay well, and explains in sufficient but not choking detail just how much Arafat passed up five years ago.

Has anything changed?

At the ball game

Had a nice day at the Red Sox game today. I managed to get Green Monster seats (the newish seats built on the top of the left field wall) - front row, though way out in the center field area. Very neat seats. At 100 bucks a piece they better be! We had two, so I took my father and daughter. That's the second time I've taken my four-year-old to a game without her own ticket and the staff hasn't questioned it at all. That's one thing that's a huge change since the new ownership has taken over - in addition to the cleaner feel of the place, the attitude of the staff is completely different. It used to be that everyone there was like a life-long T or Amtrak union employee who knew someone who knew someone so they could do anything without worrying about their job. The attitude is now more Disney than anything else, and that's a big and positive change.

My daughter's usually very shy, but she saw a guy making balloon hats and wanted one, so she actually answered the man's questions ("How old are you?" etc...) and held still to get the hat. He was doing this for tips only, BTW.

Pretty comfy seats for Fenway:

Just about directly under the flag and penant. Everyone was looking at us during the National Anthem! (A veteran who lost both arms in Iraq threw out the first pitch. Very emotional. Very class. Standing ovation.)

Not a bad view for high up in the air:

We stayed through the seventh inning. It was a perfect day for a ball game, but sitting with a 4 and an 82 year old is not conducive to lasting out the full nine, so we missed the ninth inning heroics. A good day, though.

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Event: Talk on Ethnic Cleansing of Egyptian Jewry

This is happening tonight. Sounds interesting. I don't think I'll be making it, but I thought those of you in the Boston area might like to know about it.

SUBJ: Talk on Ethnic Cleansing of Egyptian Jewry

Sorry about the late notice about this fascinating talk. Also, JAT will soon be announcing the establishment of a separate JAT list, JAT.Boston, for messages like this one that are of interest exclusively to people in the Boston area.

The Boston Israel Action Committee presents The Ethnic Cleansing of Egyptian Jewry: History and Personal Experiences"

Rami Mangoubi & Eli Roditi

Eli Roditi and Rami Mangoubi will talk about their experiences growing up and living as Jews in Egypt, and will connect these experiences with the history of the Jewish community in that country.

Wednesday, June 1st, 8:30 PM Congregation Beth El - Atereth Israel 561 Ward Street Newton Centre

Co-sponsor:
The David Project

Background:

The Ethnic Cleansing of Egyptian Jewry: History and Personal Experiences

Eli Roditi and Rami Mangoubi were born in Cairo to Jewish families that had lived in Egypt for generations. When Rami was a sixth grader, on the first day of the Six Day War, the Egyptian authorities knocked on his door, and took away his brother who was of college age. He was needed for ten minutes at the police station, they were told. Elie Roditi was also sumoned to his neighborhood's station for ten minutes.

The ten minutes lasted 6 months for Eli and 3 years for Rami's brother, during which Eli, Rami's brother, and nearly all Jewish adult males residing in Egypt, some up to 80 years old, were incarcerated in the notorious detention camps of Abu Zaabal and Tura, near Cairo. Detainees experienced torture; some were forced to walk on broken glass, humiliated. Some of the younger, fair skinned detainees were molested...



Continue reading "Event: Talk on Ethnic Cleansing of Egyptian Jewry "

Blogger Needs Cash

That's a funny way for countries that are at peace to behave...


Ha'aretz: Egypt blocks prominent playwright from entering Israel to receive honors

Egypt has blocked Egyptian playwright and satirist Ali Salem from entering Israel to receive an honorary doctorate Wednesday from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Salem, considered one of Egypt's most prominent contemporary playwrights, thanked the university for the honor and apologized for not being able to attend the ceremony.

University President Prof. Avishai Braverman said in response: "I don't understand Egypt's conduct in not permitting the well-known writer Ali Salem to come to Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva to receive the honorary doctorate, especially after every effort was made to enable his coming."

The university is involved in numerous projects to promote peace between Israel and its neighbors and has nurtured ties with Egypt since the peace treaty with Israel was signed. Anwar Sadat visited the campus in May 1979, accompanied by Hosni Mubarak, to receive the Star of Peace along with Menachem Begin. In 1995 the university bestowed an honorary doctorate on Egypt's then-ambassador to Israel, Mohammad Bassiouni...

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