The 'Professional Left'

Obama does not like the "professional left".

Like in:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.

Professional? Like they make a living out of this?


- - -

Volume Reduction - First Step to Jewish-Arab Coexistence

The sound from the mosque loudspeakers won't be that loud.

Between you and me and the local Arab villagers,

a) it's really the odd hours that those loudspeakers go off that irks and bothers and disturbs

and

b) the wedding parties during the summer are much louder.

- - -

Ashton Kutcher Goes "Territorial"

Jameel of the Muqata informed me that Ashton Kutcher not only dipped in a Gush Etzion mikveh 151 times and learned about the area but that some way-out Israelis lefties are going bonkers that Ashton visited in Samaria as well and even was photographed wearing a cap with the symbol of the IDF's Efraim Brigade (in Hebrew but the picture speaks even in English).

He was even in Hebron!

Can you imagine that? A Hollywood celeb dares to visit a hot spot.

The "territories". The occupied administered liberated territories that were in 1922 to become part of the reconstituted Jewish national homeland,

They are apoplectic. He can't do that. It's political.

It might even allow others to see the other side of the conflict and even gain understanding.

Oh, well, who said the liberal left really believed in freedom of expression, freedom of information, freedom to get acquainted with all issues.


- - -

Difference Between Jews and Muslims

Remember that Great Neck incident of antisemitism?

When, in the face of an upcoming protest, Jewish and other officials pleaded for the Jews to ignore the self-described anti-Semitic and anti-gay group from Kansas that was coming to shout and scream?

My wife reported on it at her Shiloh Musings.

Well, Muslims respond differently, a bit, to a very similar situation:

Muslims Ask for Protection as Ramadan Approaches

Muslim leaders in Connecticut are asking police to ensure that they can worship without being harassed after a group was confronted on Friday.

Worshipers at the Masjid An-Noor mosque in Bridgeport were confronted by about a dozen members of Texas-based Operation Save America last Friday and the protesters left after about an hour.

"This is a war in America and we are taking it to the mosques around the country," Flip Benham, of Dallas, Texas, organizer of the protest, said, yelling at the worshipers with a bullhorn, the Connecticut Post reports.

Dhaouadi says he doesn't want to see worshipers caught in situations where things might escalate.

Operation Save America posted a response on its Web site calling articles about the protest “lies.”

"Things might escalate"?

Was that an intimation of a threat of violence by the Muslims?



- - -

The Sadness of the Irrational

These are the opening two line from Heinrich Heine's Die Lorelei:-

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin;

which translates as:

I don’t know what it may signify
That I am so sad;

I think I have a reason for a certain sadness.

This op-ed which claims that "There is no rational argument against withdrawing from the West bank". It's by Zvi Bar'el from, of course, the Ha-Ha-Haaretz.

The essence of his thinking posturing:

But withdrawal from the West Bank, especially the eastern parts of Jerusalem, is a completely different story.

...The West Bank runs alongside Israel...The West Bank can be used as a launching pad for missile attacks on Tel Aviv or Ben-Gurion International Airport...But it's not the well-worn security argument that blocks Israeli withdrawal...When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows concerns about developments on the eastern front, he is referring to Iraq and Iran, not Ramallah, a West Bank town heaving with shopping centers and discotheques. There is no oil in the West Bank, which does not provide us with foreign workers. The West Bank has stopped serving as Israel's economic hinterland, a role it played in the 1970s and '80s. So no economic argument is at play here.

Nor can the danger of a collapse of the governing coalition serve as a viable excuse for not withdrawing, because even when center-left coalitions were in power and had the option of withdrawing, a pullout from the West Bank was not on the agenda. In other words, no rational argument is left to block a withdrawal.

Israel's refusal to pull out is rooted in another dimension - the dream of Greater Israel has never disappeared...a psychological complex of power and bury a dream.

This is the core of Israel's schizophrenia, the reason the country has moments of lucidity during which it sounds reasonable, amenable to direct negotiations, and even eager to engage in peace talks...But most of the time Netanyahu and his government are captive to an illusion; they are kept in thrall by the psychosis of a dream.

The Likud government and extreme right are not the only ones who suffer from this disease. Most of the public succumbs to it...

First, again, the Left permit themselves what they scream about if the Right employs the same. I am referring to the term "disease". As I pointed out recently, with the term "virus", our liberal progressive camp-to-the-left are hypocrites. And, secondly, they do not tell the truth and the truth they pervert.

He disdainfully dismisses any security threat from a possible, yea probable, Hamas-dominated Judea and Samaria in the near future if what we all know can happen will happen. Ramallah is just a hot spot for tourists for Bar'el not where Arabs torture each other on occasion or where they plan to shoot at Jews to kill them. Or a territory that will make itself available for a Jordan that itself has become subverted by its own Hamas to enter in some form of a security pact. That's a rational thought.

Any coexistence is rejected as there is no...oil in them hills. But, of course, there is olive oil and wine. So maybe agriculture can united us. That's rational.

That even left-of-center coalitions refused to yield and withdraw doesn't mean they were irrational but that there was a very good rational set of arguments not to surrender Jewish rights in its historical homeland.

Echoing James ("dream of Greater Israel") Baker, Bar'el prefers the irrational: a 'psychological complex of power' is at work, as if for 90 years the Arabs have not continuously sought Jewish deaths and the eradication of any Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, as if there were no pogroms, riots and terror, no refusal to agree to any compromise by Arabs, - all this before Israel, a la Bar'el, became an "occupier", and found itself, as a result of, again, Arab aggression, in possession of those areas of our Jewish national homeland that Jordan illegally occupied for real.

All this history, which I have telescoped, is not unknown to Bar'el. He just ignores it all. And he thinks I am part of the schizophrenia he bewails? I am in an illusion with most of the Israel public?

That is why I am sad.

Because Bar'el is sick.

And last: it is not psychotic to hold proud nationalist ideals, to seek to fulfill them, to hope you are protecting your culture, your religion, your ethos so that they will exist for centuries (well, at least until the coming of Messiah) and to believe that all of the previous works for the good, is a positive influence, can contribute to peace if only the Arabs would realize their inherent problems.


(Kippah tip: BPO)
- - -

Providing Visibility On J Street

I'd like to recall to you what went down back in December out on the West Coast when Jeremy "J Street" Ben-Ami got a bit laid back:

J Street Chief: Yeah, We'd Support Obama if He Cut Aid to Israel

BY Michael Goldfarb
December 10, 2009 5:36 PM

Before J Street's inaugural conference, the group's director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, gave an interview to Jeffrey Goldberg in which he stated flatly that U.S. aid to Israel should not be used as leverage in peace negotiations. "Military aid should not be on the table -- this is an absolutely essential aspect of Israel's security, and it's an essential aspect of the U.S.-Israel relationship," Ben-Ami told Goldberg...

...Last month, a letter to the editor appeared in the Bay Area Jewish newspaper j. The author, Larry Goldberg, explained:

Recently I attended a small J Street meeting in San Francisco with Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J Street, as the main speaker. As a 50-year supporter of AIPAC, I was interested in how Ben-Ami described his organization and his policies to an otherwise sympathetic audience.

The two elements that he emphasized over and over were that the group had been formed to support the Obama policies affecting Israel and that J Street was an integral part of the progressive movement.

The stress on their being part of the Obama support team was so strong, that my direct question to Ben-Ami in the Q&A was whether J Street would follow Obama if he decided to either cut or eliminate foreign-aid funds to Israel. His answer was yes.

...Goldberg now lives in San Francisco with his "progressive" wife, who gets invited to a lot of events. "I tag along sometimes," Goldberg told me.

At this particular event, Goldberg said there were just "19 people in a conference room at a law firm" in San Francisco. Goldberg seated himself "directly across from Jeremy," he said, "I had my hearing aid in so everything was set." Ben-Ami pitched J Street as "part of the Obama team," Goldberg said, and when the question and answer portion of the event came around, Goldberg asked Ben-Ami an obvious question: "If Obama wants to put pressure on Israel by cutting aid, would you support him?" According to Goldberg, "the first answer was vague," so he pressed Ben-Ami, "If Obama asked J Street to support it, would you?" According to Goldberg, Ben-Ami answered directly: "yes."

After Goldberg wrote the letter to the editor above, Ben-Ami called him to discuss the matter. Goldberg says that Ben-Ami "didn't call me a liar or say that I misheard him -- it was a 20 to 25 minute conversation and he never said I was lying." Neither did Ben-Ami accuse Goldberg of lying when he wrote his own letter to the editor of J Weekly. responding to Goldberg:

Larry Goldberg gets my positions and those of J Street completely wrong in his letter ("J Street on wrong road," Nov. 13).

First, J Street would never automatically support any decision - either by President Obama or by any elected official or politician - vis a vis Israel. We will support policies and decisions that advance the long-term security and health of Israel as a Jewish democracy, the interests of the United States, and a two-state solution and regional comprehensive peace. We are not a rubber stamp for any administration or president.

Second, let me be clear: J Street is unequivocally opposed to the U.S. cutting military aid to Israel. We believe that it is neither necessary nor productive to put such aid at risk, and that the mere threat of doing so would likely undermine any hope of achieving a two-state solution.

Goldberg has no reason to lie, and Ben-Ami never suggests that he has lied -- but for the very public forum of a Jewish newspaper in Northern California, Ben-Ami has opted to restate J Street's public position as he laid it out for Jeffrey Goldberg back in October. It seems obvious, though, that J Street is saying different things to different audiences, just as his communications adviser Matt Dorf has counseled him. The question, then, is where does J Street really stand on the question of aid to Israel?

Larry again repeated the essence of his meeting the Ben-Ami in an e-mail I received:

...My wife was invited to a breakfast meeting of major donors to J Street and I went along because of my obvious interest. She had registered my name and I was also there as a guest. The meeting was held in a conference room of a law firm and I counted 19 people around the conference table. I sat directly opposite Jeremy and I could, therefore, hear what he said very clearly.

He emphasized the fact that J Street had been organized to support the policy of the Obama administration affecting Israel and he stated that they were part of the "Obama Team". He also emphasized their strong connection with the Progressive movement.

My question to him was whether J Street would go along if the Obama administration decided to either eliminate or cut foreign aid to Israel as a way of pressuring Israel and his initial response was that it was very unlikely to happen. I then pressed him to respond in the circumstance where the effort was made by the Obama people and his answer was simply "yes".

Although the meeting occurred around September 14th, I waited until November in order to find the right timing for my letter which was printed by the J Weekly (our community newspaper) on November 13 of last year and is attached.

On the following Wednesday Jeremy called me at my office and we had an extended but courteous conversation. I listened carefully as to whether he would accuse me of lying or mistaking his words but he never said anything like that. He told me that I misunderstood the policy of J Street and I listened to his explanation. He asked me why he would say something ,as I had reported, because it was contrary to published J Street policy. I responded that the audience was familiar with J Street policy and wanted to hear "inside information" as to Jeremy's thinking. He also said it would be " devastating " in Israel if the J Street position was as I had reported it.

On November 20th the J Weekly published Jeremy's letter which is also attached and you will notice that he never accuses me of lying or misspeaking but repeats what he said in his phone conversation about my not understanding J Street policy.

It would have been very simple for Jeremy to reach out to one of his supporters who were also in the room to testify that he had not responded as he did but nothing like that has been ever forthcoming. The irony of this account is that I believe he spoke the truth when he answered my question in the affirmative because that response is consistent with everything else that he said that morning.

I would be happy to repeat my account in any venue...

And he continues to do so:

From: Lawrence Y. Goldberg
Date: Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 3:01 PM
Subject: Revelation from J Street Executive Director
To:

...I found the admission by Jeremy Ben Ami very surprising because I had not seen it publicly but it does fit with the rest of the remarks that he made in that same meeting. It was very much a group of insiders here in the Bay Area and Mike Goldfarb agreed that it was significant enough to form the basis of a posting which I have also attached to this e-mail.

For some unknown reason the item was not picked up by other media but I believe that it is as important today as when I heard Jeremy Ben Ami speak. Recently J Street has advocated a diplomatic initiative by the administration to "persuade" Israel in the current discussion about peace negotiations. One of the strongest pressure points against Israel would be a threat to cut or eliminate the three billion dollars of yearly foreign aid funds. It seems to me that Ben Ami's remarks should be considered as part of that context.

Perhaps you or your friends have some way of getting further visibility for my statement which I stand by unequivocally. If I can help in any way to accomplish this, please let me know.

Best regards, Larry

Clinton Cluck-Clucks

Recently, humanitarian workers, some of whom were Americans, were killed in Afghanistan and here is an excerpt from Sec'y of State Hillary Clinton's remarks and I have highlighted certain words and terms that I will relate to afterwards:

We are heartbroken by the loss of these heroic, generous people. And we condemn in the strongest possible terms these vicious murders. We also condemn the Taliban’s transparent attempt to justify the unjustifiable by making false accusations about these aid workers’ activities in Afghanistan.

Terror has no religion, and these acts are rejected by people all over the world, including by countless Muslims here in our country, in Afghanistan, and everywhere else. As President Obama said in Cairo, the Quran teaches that taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity, and saving one innocent life is like saving all humanity. With these murders, the Taliban have shown us yet another example of the lengths to which they will go to advance their twisted ideology. Their cruelty is well-documented. Members of the Taliban have assassinated tribal elders, thrown acid in the face of young girls on the way to or from school, and earlier this summer, they accused a 7-year-old boy of being a spy and then hanged him.

....as we mourn the loss of these brave aid workers, we will continue with our own efforts, and we will be inspired by their heroism, their compassion, and their love for the Afghan people.

Somehow, when American citizens were killed in Israel, victims of Fatah, Hamas or whatever Arab terror, I can't recall that same sort of outrage, on the one hand and on the other, such effusive praise and admiration for the dead.

Heroism.
Brave.
Generous

And on the other hand,

Condemn
Unjustifiable.
Twisted ideology.
Vicious.
Cruelty.

Somehow, that language doesn't resonant with what I recall being said in the context of the Arab terror and intifada campaign against Jews.

I also find the use of the Quran as a source for the Talmudic Mishna statement: WHOSOEVER PRESERVES A SINGLE SOUL OF ISRAEL, SCRIPTURE ASCRIBES [MERIT] TO HIM AS THOUGH HE HAD PRESERVED A COMPLETE WORLD a bit insulting.


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Voices From Yesha, Part 3

Starring your favorite husband and wife bloggers:-




And the video clips can now be found at a web page.



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Discussing Terror, Nazism, Islam

Islam, Nazism and anti-Semitism caught here:

At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, stands an exhibit that is for some more unsettling than the replicas of the Warsaw Ghetto or the canisters of Zyklon B gas used at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next to blown-up photographs of emaciated corpses from the death camps there is a picture of the grand mufti of Palestine, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, reviewing an honor guard of the Muslim division of the Waffen SS that fought the Serbs and antifascist partisans. The display includes a cable to Hajj Amin from Heinrich Himmler, dated November 2, 1943: “The National Socialist Party has inscribed on its flag ‘the extermination of world Jewry.’ Our party sympathizes with the fight of the Arabs, especially the Arabs of Palestine, against the foreign Jew.” There is also a quote from a broadcast the mufti gave over Berlin radio on March 1, 1944: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This is the command of God, history and religion.”

As the Israeli historian Tom Segev suggests, “the visitor is left to conclude that there is much in common between the Nazis’ plan to destroy the Jews and the Arabs’ enmity to Israel.” Paul Berman’s new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, makes the connection even more explicit. Although defeated in Europe, the virus of Nazism is, in his view, vigorously present in the Arab-Islamic world, with Hajj Amin the primary source of this infection. Instead of being tried as a war criminal, Hajj Amin was allowed to leave France in 1946, after escaping from Germany via Switzerland. A trial, Berman suggests, might have “sparked a little self-reflection about the confusions and self-contradictions within Islam” on matters Jewish, comparable to the postwar “self-reflections” that took place inside the Roman Catholic Church.

Isn't Tom Segev a bit of a stuck-up pretend intellectual there?

But it is the reviewer in this NYReview of Books article, Malise Ruthven, that is really into pretend in his attempted take down of Berman despite his use of Islamofascism already in 1990:

...Berman makes the preposterous claim that most of the Islamist organizations with terrorist reputations are descended from al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood, either directly, like Hamas, or schismatically, like al-Qaeda. Berman attacks Ramadan’s claim to represent nonviolent values—for not owning up to his grandfather’s engagement in violence, and for not addressing his admiration for Hitler and reverence for the grand mufti: “On the topics of the SS, the Holocaust, Hitler, and the Nuremberg trials, someone reading Ramadan’s account of the mufti and the mufti’s debt to al-Banna would learn nothing at all.”

And he goes further on the issue of Yesha:

Berman locates the “entire tragedy” of Palestinian Arabs, who have come to look upon their struggle with Zionism as a religious affair, in the idea of “violence as a sacred principle.” This development must indeed be seen as tragic, given that conflicts rooted in religious absolutisms tend to be less susceptible to negotiated settlements than conflicts defined in purely secular terms.

What is astonishing, however, is the absence of any recognition on the part of Berman that the same corrosive religious and ideological processes have been at work on the Israeli side, and that armed settlers, inspired by the Torah and funded in some cases by evangelical Christian sympathizers, have mounted terrorist actions against Palestinian civilians along with illegal appropriations of territory and water. Yigal Amir, who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, claimed rabbinical sanction for his act; while Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred twenty-nine Muslim worshipers in Hebron, is revered as a hero and martyr by Israeli zealots.

Well, being able to get to two in his count of "Jewish terrorists" is an accomplishment. And perhaps there were a few more. But can that be compared to the construct and activity of the Arab society? Is Ruthven's reading correct and unprejudiced?

He balances out one "sacred violence" which is massive, culturally (and not only religiously) ingrained and has resulted in 90 years of terror directed almost exclusively against civilians against an insignificant violence that was mostly defensive and reactive. And that is an immoral approach and intellectually bankrupt.

Actually, it is astonishing.


And it gets worse. Ruthven seeks to protect the Swiss-norn grandson of the Moslem Brotherhood founder, Hasan al-Banna, Tariq Ramadan, by asserting an equivalency between Arab terror and that of the Irgun and Lechi:

Berman, who claims that Ramadan reveres Qaradawi, makes no reference to Ramadan’s condemnation of terror. For him the Brotherhood’s violence is primordial, a manifestation of its totalitarian inclinations, although he chooses the word “fascist” for being more suggestively pungent.

Berman never suggests that this term can be sharply double-edged. After Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat in 1993, demonstrators belonging to the Likud party, currently governing in Israel, held up effigies of the prime minister dressed in Nazi uniform [the work of a GSS agent provocateur]. In December 1948, after the massacre of some 240 Palestinians [no massacre; and no 240] in the village of Deir Yassin by irregulars of the Irgun Zvi Leumi (IZL) led by Menahem Begin, a future Israeli prime minister, a number of prominent Jews, including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, wrote to The New York Times protesting against Begin’s forthcoming visit to America and accusing his Herut party of having “the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a ‘Leader State’ is the goal.” [so what? they were wrong]

In due course the IZL was absorbed into the Haganah (now the Israel Defense Forces) and Begin’s Freedom Party—Herut—now forms part of the Likud. While some of Israel’s more vociferous critics will argue that a “fascist” predisposition toward violence exists, a more generous reading would be that what Ramadan calls “state terror” (evidenced by a policy of disproportionality [??!] in response to Hamas provocations [??!]) is the outcome of calculations that are strategic, tactical, and rational [Hamas terror is rational?](which does not mean to say that they are not dangerously misguided or counterproductive).

In the Israeli political process the extremist tendencies exhibited by the IZL and the Stern Gang—its irregular cobelligerents—have been subjected to the rigors of democratic politics. Berman, however, will not grant that the Brotherhood or its offshoots are capable of a comparable evolution in response to changing circumstances.

Hamas, is he saying, can become democratic?

Okay, here's the punchline: Ruthven, British, of aristocratic stock (his brother is an Earl), is Cairo-born and an Arabist. Does that explain it?

- - -

Left, Liberal, Lost

Spotted at those demos at the Shimon Hatzaddik neighborhood where Jews are not allowed to live, according to the lost left liberals of Israel:-




That reads:

There is no sanctity in a city that is occupied.


What's in a mind that is "occupied" by Arab propaganda and post-Zionist claptrap?



Source

Sound Familiar?

- - -

Hamas Horror

Remember the "first they came for the ____" wisdom?

Well, my Gaza reading of this story is "first they came for the Jews, and then they came for the Christians, and after they came for the collaborators, and now they have come for their own".

Hamas - the horror:

Hamas on killing spree in Gaza

Distressed Hamas in midst of massive hunt for collaborators, spree of executions in Strip

News stories about bodies found at sea are occasionally published by Gaza newspapers. The number of such bodies isn't huge, yet not all those drowning victims chose to go swimming voluntarily...Some of them were shot in the head before being sent on their swim...All of the victims were designated as traitors by the secret service of Hamas' military wing in charge of counter-espionage and executed as collaborators.

...Gaza's streets are teeming with rumors. Stories of people who disappeared at sea or elsewhere stay on the agenda. The whole of Gaza, as if amok-stricken, takes part in the hunt. Posters urging a war on collaborators hang in the streets; the issue is discussed on the radio and during sermons at mosques. In the upcoming school year, the topic will be added to the curriculum, with Gaza children learning about the dangers inherent in collaborators. Teachers will be asked to explain what good, suspicious children do: Turn in their parents.

...In late May, three people were publically executed after spending long months in jail and being accused of collaboration with the Shin Bet. Shortly thereafter, Hamas announced "40 days of mercy"...The 40 days ended on July 10th. Hamas granted the undecided another 24 hours, and immediately after that – and up until now – embarked on a major campaign of arrests and manhunts for the people blacklisted by the counter-espionage unit. This unit, which reports directly and exclusively to Ahmed Jabari and Mohammad Deif, comprises professionals who were trained not only in Syria and Iran...

This is definitely not good for those who seek an accommodation with Hamas.


- - -

Could It Be A Simple State Dept. Error?

The Onion satire site has a video clip up reporting a fake but very believable story about the US State Department misidentifying the country of Andorra as if it were a poor country located in Africa and transferring to it $3 billion worth of foreign aid charity.

Maybe that type of thinking is the reason for the support extended the so-called "Palestinians".

A simple error. A plain mistake. A basic misunderstanding.

They have been taken in by the "victim" portrayal. The "refugees". Israeli "war crimes". "Human rights violations". Oppression. Occupation.

It's all a result of a slip-up.

It couldn't be that there are mean-spirited people who cannot accept Jewish nationalism, Jewish rights, Eretz-Yisrael, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Or could it be?


- - -

A George Soros Advice: Plan Ahead

George Soros Interview on 60 Minutes transcript, December 20, 1998

When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.

(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)

KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros' friends and neighbors.

(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) You're a Hungarian Jew…

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…

(Vintage footage of women walking by train)

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

(Vintage footage of people getting on train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) …by–by posing as a Christian.

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.

(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)

KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.

Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.

KROFT: In what way?

Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and–and anticipate events and when–when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a–a very personal experience of evil.

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't–you don't see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c–I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets–that if I weren't there–of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would–would–would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the–whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the–I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

(Kippah tip: Here)

- - -

Voices from The Other Side, Part 2

The second clip in the series, "The Other Side", voices of those residing in Yesha:




Part 1 here.


I also know Anat from our shared activity in Tehiya.


- - -

Listen to the Other Side, The Side of Yesha

A new video series is developing, "The Other Side", allowing the voices of Yesha to be heard.

The first installment:



Cynthia is a good friend. Her daughter, Rachel, and our daughter, Chandi, went to school together and are still the best of friends.


- - -

Positive Optimistic Demographics

The demographics of Judea and Samaria in December 2008:-

The population growth among West Bank settlers was three times higher than that of the rest of Israel during the past 12 years, according to a report by the Ariel College Center of Samaria.

The statistical annual report shows that the Jewish population in the West Bank more than doubled during that time, with a growth of 107 percent. The report also shows that the settler population has surged from 130,000 in 2005 to 270,000 by the end of 2007.

Meanwhile, the entire population of Israel grew by 29 percent over the same period.

This population trend has continued over the past three years, with the West Bank settler population growing by 5 percent annually, compared to a 1.7 percentage growth in the entire country.

No other region in Israel has grown in numbers so drastically.

The report further notes that the West Bank settler population is a generally young one, its median age being 20.6, compared to 28.7 in the rest of Israel.

A year earlier there was this demographic report:-

The settler population is growing twice as fast as the rest of the country every year, and the ultra-Orthodox community is responsible for approximately half its annual growth, according to Haaretz's analysis of Interior Ministry figures for 2006. In the last year, the settler population has grown by 5.45 percent, from 260,932 to 275,156.

Without the ultra-Orthodox community the West Bank settlements' growth is 3.7 percent, only a little more than the natural growth the settlements would see, which stands at 3.5 percent.

The growth rate in the ultra-Orthodox Beitar Ilit and Modi'in Ilit is higher than most places in Israel. Modi'in Ilit's population, some 40,000, grows annually by about 11 percent (this year it has grown by 12.5 percent).

Beitar Ilit's population, some 35,000, grows annually by some 10 percent - five to six times more than Jerusalem and Tel Aviv's population growth respectively and twice as much as the growth of many other settlements.

By the end of June, 72,106 people - more than a quarter of the West Bank settlers - were concentrated in Beitar Ilit, Modi'in Ilit and Kochav Yaakov [actually, Tel Tziyon], another ultra-Orthodox settlement, according to Interior Ministry figures.

Demographic vision from this March:-

Jewish settlement of the West Bank could triple to one million people despite Western pressure to curb the growth of enclaves in occupied land, says a leader of the Israeli settlers' council.

"It's totally viable to envisage a million Jews living in Judea and Samaria," said Naftali Bennett, using biblical names for the West Bank, where 2.5 million Palestinians aspire to create their own state, along with 1.5 million in Gaza.

There is this demographic report which is explained here in "Defusing the Demographic Time Bomb".

All of the above would point to no reason for demographic despair.


- - -

In Zion, Despairing

Over at the Wilson Quarterly, Walter Reich has a conversation.

That conversation resulted in "The Despair of Zion".

It started off with a meeting with a friend in a coffee shop in an old Jerusalem neighborhood when he heard this: “I want my children to emigrate.”

Reich claims his friend’s despair is shared, in one way or another, by many of the Israelis with whom he's spoken:-

It’s a despair based largely on what they believe is a realistic assessment of Israel’s situation in the world and of the ultimate intentions of many, and probably most, Palestinians.

To be sure, lots of Israelis don’t share this despair, don’t talk about it, or use every coping mechanism they can to set it aside and live a normal life. Yet it’s a feeling that, at some level and to some degree, permeates all things in much of the population, and that has frequently emerged in the many conversations I’ve had in recent years with Israelis.

American officials in past administrations have tried—sometimes, as one of them put it recently, religiously, and often blindly and self-deceptively—to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. But the failure of each effort has deepened Israeli despair.

...To be successful, those who want to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace—one that lasts more than a few weeks or months—will have to be able to glimpse the world through Israeli eyes. They’ll have to understand the beliefs and fears that are the sources of much Israeli despair—and take them into account no less than they take into account the sources of Palestinian despair. Ten of these beliefs and fears seem particularly salient.

I left this comment there:

This opinion: "Israelis understand that an endless status quo could result in a one-state solution—a state in which they would be politically dominant but demographically a minority. The Zionist dream of a democracy of Jews in the land of their people’s birth would be destroyed." was addressed in Chapter Four in a book entitled "A Stranger in My House". That book was published in 1984, over thwenty-five years ago. Essentially, none of the data and statistics have changed in a dramatic way. Jews will not be a demographic minority. Democracy will not be destroyed. Of course, if Arabs increase their recent propensity for spying for Israel's enemies, engage in terror-in-support-of-"Palestine", seek status as an ethnic autonomous group, proceed to undermine Israel as a Jewish, Zionist state, there may be negative demographics for Arabs. This view is backed by studies, by the experience of the past 25 years and indeed 43 years. It is a strawman argument.

And that book, "A Stranger in My House"? It was written by Walter Reich. I know. I am the person quoted in Chapter Four.

- - -

Help Needed From Lebanese Bloggers

A friend, Elliot G., suggested to me, based on some research that

the "village" of Adeisseh does not function as a real village. Rather it is a stage set village concealing shooting platforms, fortifications, etc.

If so, perhaps the location was ideal for the Hezbollah/Lebanese army to carry out an ambush.

The sniper positions perhaps were already set up. All they had to do was to get UNIFIL to get Israel to delay the tree-clearing operation. Which was a mistake on Israel's part. There were several hours of delay which allowed the Hezb./Leb. army to bring in snipers, journalists, TV photogs and their cameras, etc.

Can any Lebanese bloggers confirm this?

December 1851 - Jew Murdered Near Western Wall

Remember the Arab claim of peaceful relations between Jews and Arabs until the 'Zionists' came along and spoiled everything? For example, here.

Well, here's something I found by chance, while waiting on line at the Jerusalem Municpality's Archives to xerox some material.

It's from the reports of James Finn, Britain's Consul-General in Jerusalem:



and it tells the sad story on one Gershon ben Avraham who disappeared on the eve of the Shabbat. He had money owed him by a Muslim or perhaps Muslims.

And his body was found in a well, actually a cistern I presume. The body displayed evidence of stabbings and of "horrible" injuries due to torture:

So was the tranquil coexistence between Jews and Arabs - before Zionism.


- - -

My New JPost Blog Post

Over at my Jerusalem Post blog, Greenlined, I deal with Chas Freeman.

The guy who couldn't get the job as head of US Intelligence analysis who thinks Israel is a liability for the US.



- - -

Waging A Rearguard Action

Makor Rishon reports, in Hebrew, on the story about females being sexually harassed and attacked by Arabs while participating in activities as part of the "popular struggle" against the "occupation". For example, while running away from a tear gas cloud, one woman found herself being groped by an Arab who used the cover of the cloud. Quite original that.

Here's my post on the incident of rape of an ISMer.

They mentioned a blogger, Amitai Sandi, whose post I could not locate.

I found this one, though, Dubi Kangiesser, which basically repeats something I post recently: that the demand for women to come to the Sheikh Jarrah demos in modest attire should not be something that interferes with the feminist struggle. Here is the statement (in Hebrew).

Dan Merchav in 2009 blogged (in Hebrew) about an Israeli journalist, Netta Achitov, who was almost raped by a senior PA official.

Something is rotten in "the struggle".

Christians also suffer:

Of all the abuses Christians are forced to endure, the treatment of their women is the most egregious. They are subjected to verbal sexual harassment and rape “perhaps the most blatant denial of basic human rights of religious identity.” Compounding the problem is that in the Middle East, a female who has been violated is regarded as having been sullied and “unfit for marriage.” Rather than bring shame to the victim, the rape is not openly acknowledged. Furthermore the victim must prove she has been raped. If not, a court can convict her of having had extra-marital relations.13

Raping a Christian woman often has fewer consequences than raping a Muslim one. The rapist knows that under a Muslim- controlled PA there is a greater chance of not being prosecuted. If the victim is Muslim, the perpetrator has to contend with members of her extended family, 14 who are obligated to obtain compensation or revenge. Each member is responsible for the welfare of individuals in the group. When one member is attacked, the group unites to protect themselves. They do not expect government agencies, officials, police, courts or any other institutions or persons to intervene on their behalf. 15

Raping of Christian women is also used to reduce the Christian population by ensuring that Christian men will not marry these women and have children. Another method to lower the Christian populace is to force Christian women to marry Muslim men in violation of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states, “Marriage shall be entered in only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.”16

And this all while there's a campaign to portray, in a sense of projection, that Israeli s the real guilty party.


Seems there's a human rights problem being ignored.


- - -

Holocaust Deniers? Who? Iran?

The NYTimes' Lede reports:

Holocaust-Denying Cartoonist Finds a Home Online

An Iranian news agency has announced the launch of Holocartoons.com, devoted to the work of Maziar Bijani, a Holocaust-denying Iranian cartoonist.

- - -

An IBA Interview With Me

For one day only, if you go here at the IBA site, at 11:30 minutes, you can watch me being interviewed on the destruction of an 'illegal' outpost, Mitzpeh Avichai near Hebron.

It lasts about three and one-half minutes.


- - -

Israel Should Learn This Media Lesson

“Be first with the truth.
Beat the insurgents and malign actors to the headlines.”

Is that Israel's Spokesperson's Office motto?

Not quite.

That instruction came from Gen. David H. Petraeus, of the US Army.


- - -

From Dawson Creek to Tel Aviv - Van Der Beek's Odyssey

CNN reported

(PEOPLE.com) -- When it came to formally announcing his wedding this weekend, James Van Der Beek chose Twitter.

Of his bride, Kimberly Brook, the former "Dawson's Creek" star, 33, Tweeted on Sunday: "The woman I love did me the honor of became my wife today [sic] ... I look forward to earning her for the rest of my life."

An hour earlier, all he had Tweeted was a brief tease: "Best day of my life so far ..."

But where was this wedding?

US has it:

Update: the actor's rep gave more details to UsMagazine.com: "James Van Der Beek and Kimberly Brook were married on Sunday, August 1, 2010 in Tel Aviv, Israel in a small spiritual ceremony surrounded by a few close friends and teachers. The couple met in Israel last year," the rep says, adding that the groom wore an Armani suit, and the bride donned "a vintage creation by Shareen."

That's a long way from Dawson Creek.

Ynet even has him wearing a kippah.



(Kippah tip: Ilana)


- - -

We Demand An International Investgation

Some of my blogger friends discussed the ramifications of yesterday's incident of the ambush by the Lebanese Army of Israelis soldiers.

So, where is the international investigation?

You know, like the one after Operation Cast Lead.

Like the one after the Gaza Flotilla. And it needn't be 'criminal'.

Even like the fake one in southern Kyrgyzstan.

Or the one the US sponsors following Colombia's call for an international panel to examine its charges that left-wing Colombian FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas are operating from Venezuelan territory.

Nu, world, let's hear it: we demand an international investigation!



- - -

What Is An "Excess Death"?

New Book out, called:

The Plight of the Palestinians. A Long History of Destruction

“The Plight of the Palestinians. A Long History of Destruction”, edited by Professor William A. Cook (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010) is a collection of articles about the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by about 3 dozen variously eminent humanitarian writers from around the world.

Genocide???

Wait for the figures:-

...in 1880 there were about 500,000 Indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine and about 25,000 Jews in Palestine, of whom about half were Jewish immigrants. In 1917 the British betrayed the Arab people [no they didn't; there was agreement] by promising Palestine as a Homeland for Jews in the hope (not to be realized) that the Russian Zionists would succeed in keeping Russia in the First World War. [that wasn't it; it was would American and British Zionists help out Britain]

However the 1917 Balfour Declaration had a condition that there was to be no detriment to either Jews or Indigenous Palestinians – a condition to be grossly violated by racist British, racist American and racist Zionist perfidy. [it was simply this: 'it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine']

In 1948 0.8 million [much less] Palestinians were driven from their homes by racist Zionist terrorists (the 1948 Nakba) to be followed by a further 1967 Nakba in which a now nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel seized all of the Holy land plus parts of Lebanon and Syria and Egypt, imprisoning several million more Palestinians.

The last 43 years has seen a worsening Palestinian Genocide by Apartheid Israel: post-invasion non-violent and violent excess deaths total 0.3 million; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million;

Besides being laughable, and a sorry level of propaganda, what is an "excess death"?

Is that when there are more than normal death rate for disease and old age? Are natural disdasters figured in? How?

Numbers-wise, this is ridiculous.


- - -

Summertime, And The Vacationing Ain't Easy

The Hareidi-style vacationing, that is.

These two wall posters announce restrictions and warnings about hotels and beaches that are permissible or prohibited for the Hareidi population:


"Tour Plus" company is on the outs:

Walking From Shchem to Jericho

August 8-9-10, a hike from Shvut Ami to Jericho via Mitzpeh Yosef and Migron:

The Honenu Release on Perlman

Shabak, Israel's Internal Security Agency Continues to Torture Perlman to Obtain a Confession

Honenu has recently taken on a high profile case. Chaim Perlman, age 30 who was once hired by the Shabak to provide information has enraged his handlers by releasing 20 hours of taped conversations to the public showing how the Shabak incited him to commit crimes against Arabs.

Perlman is being charged with a 1998 killing of two - four Arabs. Pearlman denied all the allegations and said in an interview recorded two days before his arrest and aired on Channel 2 that he was being framed. Perlman claimed the Shabak was taking revenge on him because he taped their conversations. His lawyer claimed that the Shabak has no evidence linking the crime to Perlman. In order to save face, the Shabak needs to obtain a confession. Many times in Israel, a confession is proof of guilt even if there is no evidence corroborating the confession and even if the evidence contradicts the confession. The Shabak denied Perlman a basic right, a meeting with his lawyer. It was 10 days after his arrest that Perlman was finally able to meet with his Honenu lawyer due to Honenu intervention and a ruling of Justice Edmond Levy. Perlman confided to his attorney of the torture he was enduring ie: being handcuffed for 18 hours a day, beatings etc. Now after 19 days under Shabak interrogation, Honenu is once again charging the Shabak with continued abuse.

Jewish Statistics Via the "Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics"

At 11:14 on August 3, 2010, WAFA released that the

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) reported that the number of settlers in the West Bank reached 517,774 by the end of 2009.

I stress the hour because in our community, the Kremer Family just welcomed a new baby girl this afternoon, so these figures are fluid.

More info:-

According to 2009 data, the number of settlements in the West Bank totaled 144, the majority of which located in Jerusalem Governorate (26 settlements), and 16 of them were Annexed by Israel.

Available data indicate that the number of settlers in the West Bank reached 517,774 settlers by the end of 2009; the majority of whom live in Jerusalem Governorate (267,325 settlers); while 201,273 settlers live in (J1). In addition, (92,625 settlers) live in Ramallah & Al-Bireh Governorate, (57,325 settlers) in Bethlehem Governorate, and (31,404 settlers) in Salfit Governorate. The minimum number of settlers, live in Tubas Governorate (1,340 settlers).

The report shows that the number of settlers who live in Israeli Settlements in the Palestinian Territory increased by more than 40 times during the period 1972-2009...

The end of the year 2009 data indicate that the settlements in the West Bank were distributed into four strips; eastern strip includes 28 settlements, mountain strip includes 31 settlements, western hills strip includes 48 settlements, and the greater Jerusalem strip includes 37 settlements.

As I have emphasized, Jews may think "settlers" are those across the Green Line. But the Pals. know better.


- - -

Where Was Israel's Media Presence?

As we know now, the landscaping operation on the northern border was pre-arranged with the Lebanese and with UNIFIL.*

So, the other side was all ready and, it would seem, had their correspondents and photographers in place.

So, if the IDF attempted to make sure all was okay, why were our media people left out? Why was it a secret of one side only?

If Israel's mainstream media were observing, there would have been pictures and film and a story in almost real time.

This wasn't a secret raid.

We could have done better, media-wise.



________

* from the official IDF release:

Earlier today during the mid-day hours, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) fired at an IDF position along the Lebanese border in northern Israel. The force was in Israeli territory, carrying out routine maintenance and was pre-coordinated with UNIFIL. The border area is east of the Israeli town Metula. The incident occurred west of the internationally recognized "Blue Line" (the border between Israel and Lebanon) and east of the security fence, thus lying in Israeli territory.

Excavations at Tel Shiloh - Cont'd

Digging out a portion of the Canaanite Wall and rummaging around, in and behind and under:



Like this:



And searching for pottery, implements and coins and jewelry:

Go On, Guess

Anyone want to guess how many local Israeli or Jewish abroad human rights groups will report on this and even seek to find him justice?

Police: Palestinians beat cabbie, steal cab

Israeli taxi driver says three passengers forced him out of cab, beat him before stealing vehicle

Palestinians are suspected to have beaten and robbed an Israeli taxi driver who drove them to Hawara, in the West Bank, on Monday.

The driver was moderately injured and treated by paramedics at the scene before being hospitalized.

The man picked up the three passengers in central Israel, near Petah Tikvah. He claims they asked him to drive them past the West Bank settlement of Ariel and after they had passed the city, before reaching Hawara checkpoint, removed him forcefully from the cab and beat him with a blunt object before fleeing in the vehicle.

Nu, how many?


- - -

Downtown Jerusalem Construction

These are the excavations for the new luxury apartment complex at 7 Rav Kook Street:



That's the Ticho House in the background.

UPDATE

Here's the sales poster:



- - -

Thoughts On Temple Mount Architecture

At Huffington Post, Robert Eisenman writes:

...let me observe that, while we Jews - 'we' in Israel and 'we' abroad - are expert at giving awards or commemorating our tragically obliterated and long-departed dead...we totally lack or are deficient in creating memorials...

I speak now of the Temple and Temple Mount...the Jews - perhaps because they have been so preoccupied by political matters - have not commemorated their return [to Israel as a sovereign nation]. They have not given it a living a symbol...

This is what a Temple, even if only a monumental one (because we as Jews would never be able agree on anything - in particular, what such a building or monument could or would be or do), would mean. Oh yes, one knows the arguments for and against, the "dos" and "don'ts", the difficulties, talking points, religious injunctions, commandments, absurdities - the whole subject being fraught with nuance pro and con. These I would not even attempt to sort out as they are far beyond my abilities...But twenty-five years ago, when a colleague was Minister of Science, I was invited to participate in assistantship capacity. As a Professor at a California University, the logistics prevented me from doing so in any formal way; but I gave an answer, when asked for new ideas which could be promoted by such a Ministry, with a proposal for an International Architectural Competition (much like the one ultimately held in Berlin and later in New York to commemorate and replace the destroyed World Trade Center) fifteen years before the Millennium. This would be called:

"Temple Mount Two Thousand: Holy to Three Faiths," announcing a utopian architectural competition and outlining a call to all the great architects of the world to participate (which would, of course, have included my brother, the present Wolf Prize recipient - a little nepotism here for which I am not either embarrassed or apologetic. But he had no hand in the suggestion, which was purely my own, or even any knowledge that I was making it, either then or now).

This is the way these things are traditionally worked out. This was the way it was done in Berlin (in fact, it was done twice before final designs were decided upon); this is the way it still should be done today. The best minds of architects, city planners, sculptors, memorialists, artists - even archaeologists - should be invited to participate and contribute models, suggestions, and designs for how to deal with the situation on the Temple Mount in its totality (which has not changed very much since then, except for the emotions and political agitation surrounding it) from any perspective they wished - what to construct anew, what to add, what to bridge, what to reconstruct - building, monument, or sculpture. Again, I emphasize the word "utopian" or even "academic."

This would not be beyond them to envision in one way or another and, from my perspective, this was the way to move forward. The proposals, of course, would be completely theoretical or utopian and no promise of any actual building, engineering activity, or sculpture was or would be attached - just innovative ideas for arranging the enormous space involved. Still I knew people would participate both then and now. People would not be able to resist the call to help solve the burning issues inherent in a reconstruction of or on the Temple Mount incorporating in its locale a monument, Temple, or field of sculpture that would express the ideas a new Judaism or Post- Holocaust 1948 Jewish People would need for commemoration, not of the dead but to inspire the living.

Now, that is indeed an idea.


- - -

Slave Society Symptoms?

This has been a recurrent story theme of the Arab world: immigrant women being abused, oppressed and treated a step above slavery.

Today, in the NYTimes:

Immigrant Maids Flee Lives of Abuse in Kuwait

...Rosflor Armada, who is staying in the Philippines Embassy, said that last year during Ramadan, she cooked all day for the evening meal and was allowed to sleep only about two hours a night. “They said, ‘You will work. You will work.’ ” She said that she left after her employers demanded that she wash the windows at 3 a.m.

The existence of the shelters reflects a hard reality here: With few legal protections against employers who choose not to pay servants, who push them too hard, or who abuse them, sometimes there is nothing left to do but run...human rights groups say the potential for mistreatment is acute in several countries in the Middle East, especially those with large numbers of migrant workers who rely on a sponsorship system that makes employers responsible for the welfare of their workers.

That system is particularly entrenched in Kuwait, where oil riches allow many families to have several servants, human rights advocates say. And conditions for some workers here are bad enough that the United States Department of State in a 2010 report singled out Kuwait, along with 12 other countries, for failing to do enough to prevent human trafficking.

The report noted that migrants enter Kuwait voluntarily, but “upon arrival some are subjected to conditions of forced labor by their sponsors and labor agents, including through such practices as nonpayment of wages, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and restrictions on movement, such as the withholding of passports.”

...The perils faced by many domestic workers were brought into sharp focus in recent weeks, when the local news media reported that a Sri Lankan maid who fled to her embassy said she had been imprisoned by her Kuwaiti employers, without pay, for 13 years...Also last month, the news media reported that a Filipino maid was allegedly tortured and killed by her employers, who the media said ran over her body with a car in the desert in order to make her death look like an accident.

Human rights advocates say the problem of abuse persists because it is rarely punished...In 2009, embassies in Kuwait received more than 10,000 complaints from domestic workers about unpaid wages, long working hours and physical, sexual and psychological abuse...Alida Ali, a 22-year-old from the Philippines, described a different kind of punishment. She begged her agency to move her from an abusive family, and when her employers found out, she said, they threw her out of a third-floor window, breaking her back...

Stories from Lebanon.

From Pakistan.

In Jordan.

In Israel, it seems local men are marrying the immigrant domestic labor force.

Is that another form of abuse?


- - -

Outing Ottoman Jewish Cuisine

The New York Times Dining & Wine Section has a story on a new chef, Ms. Silvena Rowe, that also stars the Ottoman Empire:-

...she set out to “trace where the Ottomans had been, the food they brought with them and the food they took away with them.” At its apogee, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire controlled most of southern Europe, northern Africa and western Asia. Mrs. Rowe immersed herself in research on the culinary legacy of that realm, spending time in the Arab world and Turkey. She had fallen in love with Istanbul 10 years ago but had never traveled to Syria. Damascus swept her off her feet.

“I’ve never ever been to a city where you walk and feel its beating heart,” she said. “Basically you wake up a day younger every day. It’s a magnificent feeling.”

There she consulted with chefs from the restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel, who gave her recipes for kebabs with walnuts and pine nuts, and sautéed monkfish with rose petal salt. She traveled to the ancient Syrian village of Malula, where Aramaic is still spoken, and picked up a recipe in a cafe for butter beans with feta and za’atar. She visited the Greek Orthodox Saint Thecla monastery and orphanage, where she watched a nun prepare grape leaves stuffed with salt cod, tarragon and rice in a kitchen carved out of a cave.

She spent time in Turkey...

You noticed this: "you wake up a day younger every day"?

Only that in Damascus too many people don't wake up at all after a good night's torture.

And it seems she never made it to the Jewish centers of the Ottoman Empire nor to Jerusalem. There was good cuisine there, too.

She could have used this book for research.

Or reviewed this:

Sephardic Jewish Food and Cooking

Sepharad is the Hebrew word for the Iberian peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal. Jewish cooking would need to adapt to these circumstances.Jews lived in Spain long before the Visigoth (Germanic) tribes invaded in 412, however after the Moorish invasion of Spain in 700, there was a large influx of Jews immigrating to Spain. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Spanish Judaism flourished under Muslim rule, producing poets, scholars, and courtiers - what is known as "the golden age of Jewry." By the mid-thirteenth century, however, the Christians controlled all of the Peninsula except for a small area from Granada to the Mediterranean. In March, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Many Jews converted or left while others went to Portugal, where Judaism could still be practiced freely. But Portugal expelled its Jews in 1497, and the tiny kingdom of Navarre followed suit in 1498. Judaism could be practiced openly nowhere in the Peninsula. Driven from home, the Sephardim established their own congregations in such places as Morocco, Italy, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, the Land of Israel, and elsewhere.

With plenty of herbs and sometimes generous use of spices, Sephardic Jewish cooking is aromatic. They use a lot of lemon, garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, cumin with turmeric and more. Sephardic Jews are known for their love of cooking vegetables, from salads to vegetables stuffed with fragrant meat and rice, and pies or Burekas which often have feta cheese, spinach, or potato fillings. Sephardic Jews from Morocco and other North African countries enjoy cumin, ginger, and saffron & chilies. Jewish cooks from the eastern end of the Mediterranean have adapted their food and cooking as well and make heavy use of cinnamon in their cooking, so much that they use it as a savory accent for meat dishes The kebabs, pilafs and dolmades (stuffed vegetables) of Turkish Jewish cooking are still some of the most recognizable Sephardic dishes. Fruits, vegetables, spices, and grains were plentiful in the Mediterranean climate, and thus plant foods figured heavily into Sephardic Jewish cooking.

After all, as this makes clear:

...Ottoman cuisine was unified and refined in imperial Istanbul, but its ultimate origins are less clear.

It is a matter of mere speculation whether the origins of this imperial culinary legacy are to be traced back to Greek antiquity, the Byzantine heritage, or the ingenuity of the glorious Turkish and Arab nations, not forgetting Phoenician and Jewish traditions; nowadays you may find support for any of these claims in various countries in the Balkans and the Near East.

One too many cooks makes a mess.


- - -

At Least He's Covered

That's Mark (Jewish) and Chelsea (Methodist) and that's a kippah he's wearing.


- - -

Gordon Goes

From Evelyn Gordon:-

Like the Jews, Palestinians have a large Diaspora. Also like the Jews, parts of that Diaspora are well-educated and well-off, with estimated assets of $40-80 billion.

But there the similarity ends — because overseas Palestinians evidently have no interest in doing for the PA what overseas Jews did for pre-state Israel. If they did, their hospitals wouldn’t look as Essa described.

Moreover, Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. But there are 22 Arab states and 56 Muslim states, many of them among the richest in the world. Had they any interest in helping their Palestinian brethren, they could easily build hospitals rivaling anything in Israel. But they don’t.

Finally, there are the international-aid organizations that claim to care so deeply about the Palestinians, like Turkey’s IHH, which sponsored May’s flotilla to Gaza. But it turns out most of the medicines they donate are expired and must be tossed: According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, only 30 percent of donated medical aid is actually usable.

With friends like these, Palestinians don’t need enemies. But that’s precisely why, 17 years after the PA’s establishment, they still need Israel so much.

And try this one too on the same general subject.

New Haveil Havalim

Number 278.

Here.


- - -

Abukhater Doesn't Know His History And So Neither Do the Readers of the LA Times

In his LATimes blog, Maher Abukhater reports on this story headlined:

JERUSALEM: Jewish settlers occupy Palestinian
house in the Old City

"Palestinian"?

Well, yes, there were "40 Palestinian residents of the building [who] were attending a wedding celebration" and yes, "the Qirrish family [are] longtime inhabitants of the site" but "the building had been purchased by the Jewish settler group Ateret Cohanim...from its original Palestinian owners".

However, who built the house originally? The first owners?

Well, the AFP news service, one of the top five and quite accessible by Internet, makes it clear who built the house originally:-

He added that the house had originally been built by a wealthy Jewish family in the 19th century and said the latest acquisition was part of a "return" of Jews to the city.

So, it really was a Jewish house that was lost to the Arabs when they ethnically cleansed the Old City all through the late 1930s during the Revolt and in 1948, when the Jordan Legion illegally occupied the city.

And Abukhater is a failure as a journalist.



P.S. His story is a virtual plagiarized copy of this one.


- - -

So Subtle and Sophisticated

Actually, not really.

How the Nazi imagery is exploited by Arab and pro-Arab proppagandists, usually Jews:-

Source

We've Been There: Targeted Assassinations

America decides to go the route Israel did:-

Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan

And the policy is explained:-

...what has turned out to work well is an approach American officials have talked much less about: counterterrorism, military-speak for the targeted killings of insurgents from Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Faced with that reality, and the pressure of a self-imposed deadline to begin withdrawing troops by July 2011, the Obama administration is starting to count more heavily on the strategy of hunting down insurgents. The shift could change the nature of the war and potentially, in the view of some officials, hasten a political settlement with the Taliban.

Maybe Bibi really has won over Obama?



- - -

Would This, in Hebrew, Go Over Well in Israel?

- - -

The New Israel Fund Blog and Blogroll

Get your left, radical, progressive, outlook right left here:-


Blogroll

•Bernard Avishai
•Coteret
•Dan Sieradski
•Dimi's Notes
•Failed Messiah
•Haaretz
•Half & Half
•Ill Will and Everything Else
•Israel Policy Forum
•IsraLeft
•Jewcy
•Jewesses with Attitude
•Jewschool
•Joseph Dana
•Judaism Without Borders
•Lisa Goldman
•Magnes Zionist
•Makom
•Meretz USA Blog
•New Voices
•Peace Now Blog
•Promised Land
•Rabbi Andy Bachman
•Rabbi Brant Rosen
•Rabbi Brian Walt
•Realistic Dove
•Religion and State in Israel
•Religious Action Center Blog
•Shalom Hartman Institute Blog
•South Jerusalem
•Tikun Olam
•Velveteen Rabbi
•Yedioth Ahronoth
•Yuval Ben-Ami

Jewish Social Justice

•American Jewish World Service
•Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps
•Hazon
•Jewish Council on Urban Affairs
•Jewish FundS for Justice
•Jewish Organizing Initiative
•Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
•Jews United for Justice
•Keshet
•Mazon
•New Israel Fund
•Progressive Jewish Alliance
•Rabbis for Human Rights – North America
•Repair the World
•Shalom Center

Gut Shabbes or, Close But Not Quite

Reports JTA:-

Rabbi James Ponet, head of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, was joined by Rev. William Shillady, a Methodist minister. Clinton and the groom, Marc Mezvinsky, reportedly were married under a chuppah, in a ceremony that featured friends and family reciting the seven traditional blessings and a ketubah, the traditional Jewish wedding contract. The event took place Saturday night before the end of the Jewish sabbath.

Mezvinsky, who is Jewish, wore a yarmulke and prayer shawl.

Ponet, a Reform rabbi, has been the Jewish chaplain at Yale since 1981

For my readers unfamilair with Jewish law, no weddings take place on the Shabbat.


Like her father's and mother's politics, a bit of a fraud.



Photo found here.
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