Never Been To Umman?

Here is a set of 18 pictures from this year's event.

Guardian's Gaudy and Shoddy Journalism

Here's the latest Dershowitz piece:-

'The Guardian' at the crossroads
Alan Dershowitz


The Guardian, which used to be a liberal British newspaper, has become the full-fledged Pravda of the British hard Left, especially when it comes to its one-sided bashing of Israel. Like Pravda, it will not publish alternative points of view, even when the alternative point of view seeks to correct willful mis-statements of fact. It's gotten to the point where a reader simply cannot trust the credibility of the reporting.

Two recent incidents, in as many months, regarding total distortions of my own writing simply serve to illustrate a much larger problem. I have heard similar stories from others.

Most recently, The Guardian published an op-ed devoted to an article I had written. The writer turned virtually everything I had argued on its head. Before we get to the specifics, let's get to the Der Stuermer-like characterization of my appearance that became a centerpoint of the articles. The author of the article, Henry Porter, claimed that he saw me on television in 2001 "looking like Animal, the wildman drummer from The Muppet Show." What Porter did not know is that I have been clean-shaven with short hair for a decade, thus undermining Porter's claim that he actually saw me on TV. But I suppose I'll always be, to people like Porter, the stereotypical hairy, wild-eyed Jew.

Porter then writes that, although I say I am against torture, I really am all in favor of torture. Apparently, despite the hundreds of times that I've written and said publicly and clearly that I am against torture, Porter believes that he knows better - that he can read my mind or discern my views from my Animal-like face.

His third point was that "Dershowitz doesn't understand that [i]f governments are given powers, they will almost always find a way to abuse them." In fact, not only do I make this cautionary point, but it is a large part of my article. I write: It would also be relatively easy to combat terrorism if our government had earned more of our trust over the years. But most governments - even most liberal democracies - have tended to abuse extraordinary powers given to them during emergencies. And then I launch into a list of examples, with suggestions as to how to prevent them recurring.

Significantly, Porter manages to contradict himself in the span of less than half a page. First he takes me to task for setting up a straw argument against "liberal fundamentalists," when he insists that he "cannot think of one who believes that all rights are unqualified, that all freedoms are absolute." And then he concludes his rant by himself advocating the fundamentalist position that "[f]reedom is the thing which patrols and constrains government and that is why it is not amenable to compromise."

I WAS compelled to write a letter to the editor correcting the many inaccuracies and pointing out the inappropriate ad hominem attack on my appearance (or rather, the appearance that the author assumed I have). The Guardian refused to print my letter.

The first incident, which took place in June, occurred when the Guardian published a review of my most recent book, Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways. I should say from the start that it was not the negative tone or conclusion of the review that bothered me. I write, on average, a book every year, and I have been an outspoken Jew and criminal defense lawyer for decades. Therefore, having a thick skin is a prerequisite of everything I do. What amazed me about this article, though, was the fact that the reviewer simply lied about what was in my book. She made things up. She said the book was about something it wasn't about. She said I took positions when I explicitly wrote the opposite in my book.

Why would a book reviewer go to such great lengths to defame me and to falsify what I wrote? After all, I am a liberal Democrat and have spent my career as a law professor, author, and defense lawyer fighting for civil liberties and the rights of the accused. In fact, my book is precisely about how to take the lessons of liberal democracy marked by transparency and accountability and apply them in a world that increasingly relies on preventive and preemptive criminal justice procedures and international military interventions. One would think that these credentials and this topic would endear me to the Guardian.

But I am also, as I wrote above, an outspoken Jew and Zionist, and I wrote a section in my book about Israel. It was supportive of some, and critical of others of Israel's preemptive military actions. And it is just this sort of balanced assessment of Israel's behavior coupled with a refusal to demonize the Jewish state that sends Guardian writers into apoplectic fits. Liberalism and Zionism are not considered mutually exclusive in America. In fact, they are complementary. The prevailing view at the Guardian is to the contrary.

LETS LOOK at what the Guardian actually said. The reviewer of my book, a woman named Louise Christian who claims to be a lawyer but who demonstrates none of the requisite analytical skills of the profession, immediately seized upon my section on Israel and focused on it for the majority of her article.

She characterizes the book as "an attempt to justify the Iraq war and even the actions of the state of Israel" (which the author, a Harvard law professor, obsessively admires) [emphasis added].

First, notice the "even" before Israel, showing that the author assumes the actions of Israel to be particularly indefensible. Second, I do not try to justify Israel's actions. I analyze its actions, and I conclude that some of them were justified and beneficial, while others were wrongheaded and unnecessary.

Finally, had Christian read the book, she would know that I opposed the war in Iraq. She apparently assumed that because I support Israel's right to exist, I also supported America's war in Iraq. It's a telling assumption.

Not only does Christian mischaracterize the topics of my book and my positions. She goes right ahead and lies about what I say. For example, she writes, "In its concluding chapter the book goes so far as to suggest that theories of chromosomal abnormality should be pursued as predictive of violent crime to justify long-term detention."

In fact, I say just the opposite. Christian is referring to an appendix in which I reproduce an article I published in 1975. The whole thrust of the article is categorically against the use of the XYY chromosome to predict violence, since I demonstrate conclusively that the XYY karyotype is not predictive. Here is what I say: "Nor is it likely that the XYY karyotype, even in combination of other factors, could be used to predict violence. There is simply no hard evidence establishing that any combination of factors can accurately spot a large percentage of future violent criminals without also including an unsatisfactorily number and percentage of false positives."

How on Earth could Christian transform my strong opposition to using chromosomes as criminal predictors to support? She simply reversed my position. This cannot be a simple mistake. It is plainly a willful deception of her readers.

A MENDACIOUS review is one thing, but what's worse is that The Guardian refused to correct its mistake. When I wrote a letter to the editor refuting Christians's blatant lies, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, responded that he could not publish my letter. The reason he gave was that my letter was too long. And so I responded that I would cut my letter to any length he asked. But The Guardian persisted in refusing to let me set the record straight.

It would be unthinkable for an American or Israeli newspaper to publish a full-blown attack on an individual without at least extending the right to reply in the letters page. The Guardian did precisely that to me, and twice in a single summer.

Perspective is one thing, but there's something very wrong with any paper that would publish and then stand behind factual inaccuracies in the service of a political agenda. That sort of cavalier attitude toward the truth is more fitting of a Stalinist newspaper than of Britain's liberal newspaper of note. It's discouraging to see such a prominent and previously honorable publication abandon its standards so readily.

I challenge The Guardian to defend or even explain its journalistic decision to stand by the demonstrable falsehoods and defamations of its writers.

Good Reading

The publication of a new issue of NATIV ONLINE – in English, is announced.

You are welcome to visit the ACPR website, and read the latest issue (No. 9) of NATIV ONLINE.

This issue contains articles by Moshe Sharon, David Bukay, Arieh Eldad, Raphael Israeli, Paul Eidelberg and more…

Go here.

Is This Fence Kosher?

Yikes! Another fence:-

"Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with plans to build a fence to block terrorists from crossing its 560-mile border with Iraq -- another sign of growing alarm that Sunni-Shiite strife could spill over and drag Iraq's neighbors into its civil conflict.

The barrier, which hasn't been started, is part of a $12 billion package of measures including electronic sensors, security bases and physical barriers..."

(Kippah tip: IJM)

Hell?

The section above appears on page 7 (ז) of a new book on Kabbalah for beginners and initiates entitled Petach Sha'ar Shamayim/Binyan Ari'al composed by Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Hillel of the Jerusalem Yeshiva Ahavat Shalom (it's located just behind and below Lichtenstein's Bookstore up above Kikar Shabbat).

The Yeshiva's publishing house is called Yad Samuel Franco (here's another book and another they published so you can see their imprint and that they really exist).

Anyway, getting back to the scanned Hebrew text. Among other things, it reads, in part,

"And behold, opposed to them [those within the last 150 years immigrated to Israel who desired a holy life of Torah] arose the gang of Zionists, and mixed up and fuzzied up all areas of activity, until they established for themselves a state of hell to fulfill thereby [the verse] 'and the House of Israel shall be as all the Nations'"

The Hebrew word used for hell is gehenna.

I think that's a shame to write such things. I wonder if the book's sponsor, one Eliyahu ben Esther and his wife, Varda bat Suzy, are aware that their money is being spent this way.

Why Don't You Comment?

Go over the Jameel at the Muqata at this post and read the verbal contretemps between me and someone who refers to himself as "Truth".

You can join in too.

Something Totally Different: Cavier Prices

BROWNE TRADING COMPANY Portland, Me., (207) 775-7560 or (800) 944-7848; brownetrading.com. Tsar Nicoulai, $76 for 28 grams; German, $64 for 20 grams; Italian, $71 for 28 grams; and Bulgarian, $102 for 20 grams.

CAVIAR RUSSE 538 Madison Avenue (54th Street), (212) 980-5908 or (800) 692-2842; caviarrusse.com. French, German and Italian, $55 to $75 for 28 grams.

FAIRWAY Four locations around New York City, fairwaymarket.com. Sterling and Italian, $49 an ounce.

PARAMOUNT CAVIAR 38-15 24th Street, Long Island City, Queens; (718) 786-7747 or (800) 992-2842; paramountcaviar.com. French and Italian, $62.50 an ounce; Bulgarian, $80 an ounce.

PETROSSIAN 911 Seventh Avenue (58th Street); (212) 245-2217 or (800) 828-9241; petrossian.com. Sterling, $63 to $133 for 30 grams; Bulgarian, $214 to $233 for 30 grams.

RUSS & DAUGHTERS 179 East Houston Street (Allen Street); (212) 475-4880 or (800) 787-7229; russanddaughters.com. Sterling and Tsar Nicoulai, $109 for 50 grams; Uruguayan, $125 for 50 grams.

STERLING CAVIAR (800) 525-0333; sterlingcaviar.com. Sterling, $63 to $80 for 30 grams.

ZABAR’S 2245 Broadway (80th Street); (212) 787-2000 or (800) 697-6301 (outside New York City); zabars.com. Sterling, $90 for 50 grams; Italian, $90 for 50 grams; German, $95 to $125 for 50 grams.

Source: NYT


P.S.

Is caviar kosher?

No, caviar is not kosher.

Real caviar is the roe (eggs) of the sturgeon fish, which has no scales.

There is kosher "caviar" made from salmon roe. (and see here and here)

Political Humor

The advert below appeared in Haaretz on Monday.

You need to understand that the traditionl greeting during the week after Rosh Hashana in Hebrew is "G'mar Chatima Tovah" which means may you merit a laudable sealing in that the imagery at this time is that G-d seals man's fate and it would be best to be sealed in the book of life in a favorable fashion.

However, the Hebrew word, Chakira, which rhymes with Chatima, means investigation.

The advert signed by Hoss and Samuel is addressed to the President of Israel, its Prime Minister, the Government, the Knesset, the Police and the IDF and wishes them a good investigation.

Robust [follow up]

Follow up on this previous post of mine.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon yesterday to act on what she termed “a very robust” mandate approved by the United Nations that grants international troops authority to challenge anyone who attempts to block their mission, and to use force if necessary.

“The language says that anything and anyone who keeps them from fulfilling their responsibilities is to be challenged on that, and they even have the right to use force if they need to,” Ms. Rice said. “That mandate was written in a very robust fashion.”

She acknowledged, however, that “it’s always a matter of how it’s interpreted.”

(Source)

Condi, less bust, as in
bust2  /bʌst/
–verb (used without object) 1. Informal. a. to burst.
b. to go bankrupt.
c. to collapse from the strain of making a supreme effort

and more ro - as in rough 'em up.

Dear Ilan Pappe

I know this is long but I just had to reprint it in its entirety.

To: Ilan Pappe (background in Hebrew) (in English see this, this and this)

Sir:

The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem has informed me that you are committing slander against the holy state of Israel and its holy Jewish people and are engaged in other reactionary activities violating the terms of your Israeli citizenship.

A review by our investigations unit of the evidence submitted in your dossier clearly reveals that the views and opinions you are expressing in your writings, published by the enemies of Israel, are perverted and obscene. We have also taken note that you have prostituted yourself for many years as a stooge of the Arab terrorists, engaging in anti-Israel tirades for the sole purpose of demonizing the only Jewish state in the world so that it should be destroyed, Heaven forefend!

I want you to realize that your damaging behavior is unforgivable. Israel is a micro-state surrounded by 21 Arab countries dominated by a jihadist, imperialist culture. Along with the Palestinian Authority, these Arab regimes daily incite their oppressed populations to support their quest for the politicide of Israel. They have now been joined by the Persian Shi'ites of Iran and the Hezbollah Shi'ites of Lebanon in this goal.

Your active support of these Hitlerites is a result of your absorption of the nefarious neo-comm ideology which has hypnotized the bourgeois intellectual classes into supporting the Islamist fundamentalists in the Holy Land and their terrorist masters in Damascus and Tehran. This is utterly repulsive.

We have also found that you do not demonstrate any originality in your ludicrous assertions that the Arabs of the Land of Israel, who have conducted pogroms of extermination for three centuries against the indigenous Jews of the Holy Land, are victims rather than aggressors. You merely parrot the propaganda myths invented by the Arab League and recycled by the Palestinian Arab war criminals in Ramallah and Gaza.

Everyone knows that the homeland of the Arabs of Palestine is Arabia. In 638, they stole by force the Holy Land from the aboriginal Jews living there. In quick order, they installed the worst apartheid regime the world has ever known against Jews and Christians. Untold thousands of Jews were massacred in Safed, Tiberias, Hebron and Jerusalem over the centuries by these barbarians. Even Karl Marx reported on these events in the 1850s. The Turkish and Syrian archives are overflowing with details of these genocidal massacres committed by the fellaheen Arabs of Palestine.

Furthermore, the remaining Jewish survivors, especially in Nablus, Gaza and Tulkarem became the objects of a wholesale ethnic cleansing campaign until the Western Powers intervened on their behalf. Finally, in collusion with the British imperialists during World War I, the Arabs were allowed to steal 78 per cent of the Holy Land and rename it Jordan, leaving the Jews with 22 per cent. In their war of aggression in 1947-8, the Arabs sought 100 per cent of the Holy Land but were repulsed. However, their goal to this day remains 100 per cent.

In addition, the brutal Arabs of the Holy Land convinced their brethren in the nearly two dozen other Arab countries to massacre and ethnically cleanse their lands of Jewish inhabitants who lived there before the Arabs ever came on the scene -- nearly a million Jews were cruelly tortured and expelled from their homes. These refugees were never compensated and the right of return was denied to them. In light of the above, it is therefore concluded that the "facts" you adduce in your writings and presentations to justify the atrocities committed against the Jews of Israel are patently fictitious and malicious fabrications. You have also disgraced yourself in your distorted analysis of Israel's defensive war in Lebanon. You write that the Hezbollah Shi'ite imperialist aggressors are welcomed as a legitimate resistance movement by all Lebanese. Everyone knows that this stance is for consumption by the naive Western news media. Christian Lebanese are already preparing to bring Hezbollah terrorists to account for destroying their country. The Cedar Revolution ousted the Syrian occupiers who for 30 years imposed their jackboots on Free Lebanon and on Beirut, the Paris of the Levant, and it will do the same to the Hezbollah Shi'ites.

Who can forget their rampaging slaughter during the Lebanese civil war when they eviscerated Arab Christians and Druze, mutilated their bodies and

stuffed their testicles and breasts in their mouths? Thousands of Christian Arab corpses are buried in Tal al-Zatar in this foul condition.

The Palestine Arabs did the same to the defenceless Jewish Holocaust survivors in Israel during 1947-8, as Uri Avnery has so well documented.

Your denial of the genocidal intentions and covenants of the power-drunk Hamas fundamentalists and their PA henchmen is futile. The world can read the blood-soaked goals of these monsters in their published documents, which seek to slaughter every man, woman and child in Israel that has a Jewish name. There already is a Palestinian state in Jordan, where the majority of the population is Palestinian. The greedy, pathological Arabs in Gaza and Judea/Samaria are now pursuing a land grab for Israel itself.

Truly progressive forces the world over understand that the Palestinian Arabs are a key component of Islamic imperialism, which today is waging a global war to reconquer and recolonize the world it once occupied by the sword.

After Auschwitz and the numerous other concentration camps, no person on this earth is permitted to calumniate the holy Jewish people and their land with impunity. The holy Jewish people will never again be martyred by bestial fanatics wherever they may reside or whatever title they carry or whatever gender they proclaim.

Persons like you that willingly serve as running dogs for Arab terrorism cannot escape responsibility for such Hitlerite collaboration in today's world. Certainly, there is no denying the culpability of the Palestinian Arab masses in supporting the genocide of 200,000 African Blacks in Darfur, Sudan, controlled by like-minded Islamic Arab butchers.

On the basis of the above evidence, it is my solemn duty to inform you that our ecclesiastical court has issued an verdict inscribing you as a SLANDERER OF ZION and an ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

This means that our disciples are hereby empowered to facilitate your removal from your place of employment, to arrange for your exit from the Holy Land, and to have the European and American authorities declare you persona non grata. Your family, friends and colleagues will be notified of this indictment and paid advertisements will appear in the American, European and Middle East print media to this effect. A boycott of your publications will be undertaken in cooperation with library networks and sanctions will be imposed on all the publishing houses which currently, and in the future, disseminate your writings. Failure to abide by our ruling will lead to a shareholder divestment campaign against these publishers.

This sentence is a Category One certification, indicating the utmost severity of your actions. It is accompanied by the Old Testament verse found in Genesis 12:3 in which the Lord says of the Jews:

"I will bless those who bless you I will curse those that curse you All the nations of the world Shall be blessed through you.

May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Son of Mary, have mercy upon you."

You may wish to exercise your right to have this decree set aside. In such case, you are invited to submit an affidavit renouncing your calumnies against the holy Jewish state, circulating a statement of support for the victory of the holy Jewish people in the Holy Land against their enemies to all your affiliated organizations and publications, whether online or offline, and paying our court costs of $US 1675.

* His Eminence The Very Rev. Charles J.Edgbaston, D.D., Ph.D. Chair, Christians for Moses Inc. and Rector, Zion College of Canada Penticton,

B.C.

* Author:

Christians and Jews Under Apartheid Policies in Arab Palestine The Arab Usurpation of the Holy Land Three Centuries of Arab Pogroms against Jews in Palestine Mufti: The Nazi Collaboration of the Palestine Arabs (forthcoming)

Of Course Israel Bests Islam

How do I know?

I found this item (here):-

Kismayo, one of the largest cities in Somalia, fell to Islamic forces without a shot on Monday — but then the trouble started.

After the city’s warlords fled and hundreds of Islamist fighters poured in, demonstrators took to the streets and hurled stones at the Islamists.

Islamist troops responded with machine guns, opening fire on the demonstrators and killing at least one teenage boy, witnesses said.

Now, would we shoot with machine guns?

Pre-Yom Kippur Smile

One minute and 50 seconds. Enjoy.



and if you want another, longer clip, even funnier, try this.

Amos Elon: Dumb and Dumber

Amos Elon, expatriate Israeli living the life of Riley in Tuscanny, had an article in the New York Review of Books that required a bit of fine-tuning.

Here's the letter:

AVIGDOR & VICTOR
By Eve Fleisher, Reply by Amos Elon
In response to What Does Olmert Want? (June 22, 2006)

To the Editors:

In reference to the article "What Does Olmert Want?" [NYR, June 22], the head of the Israel Beitenu party is not Victor Liebermann—his name is Avigdor Lieberman—and the Hezbollah is not a Palestinian organization; it is based in Lebanon.

Eve Fleisher
Jerusalem

But Elon is too stuck-up and full of himself. He erred? Never.

So here's his reply:-

As far as I know, Lieberman is known under both names, Avigdor being Hebrew for Victor. Hezbollah may be based in Lebanon but its bombs kill Israelis in Israel.

Well, as far as I know, Lieberman was not and is not known as Victor but his nickname is Ivette (the "I" prounounced, as in Russian, as "ee").

And as for that Pal. bit., that's BS.

a) If a Brit kills Israelis, as in Mike's Place in Tel Aviv, is he Pal.?
b) Just because bombs kill Israelis, it does not have anything to do with "Palestinian" unless, of course, Israelis are Pals. according to Elon (which very well might be his esteemed opinion).

What a peacock (emphasis on last syllable).

P.S. I looked again at Elon's June 22 article and found this sentence there:-

Olmert plans to evacuate within two or three years some 70,000 settlers from the more remote or isolated settlements, leaving the rest— more than 400,000 settlers—where they are.

As far as I know, in order for there to be 400,000 revenants residing in "settlements", the eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods would have to be included. Now, I have always argued that Jews and others who seek to identify with the Arab claim that "settlements" are illegal and must be evacuated, should understand that this includes Ramat Eshkol, the Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew University, Giloh, etc., etc.

I understand, then, that Elon is a complete concessionist.

Is that why he resides in Italy?

Goldberg Reveals

Jeffrey Goldberg has done reporting for The New Yorker. His first book, "Prisoners", tells of his stint as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. In the recent issue of the magazine, he talks to Blake Eskin about reporting from the Middle East and the power of honest dialogue.

I have been interviewed by him and left out of the pieces he was doing. Either I was a poor subject or, hopefully, too good of one as his ideological position, I think, gets in the way of his reporting.
Excerpt:-

How did those four months at Ketziot [prison] change you?

On an intellectual level, it was fascinating, but I have to say that, on an ideological level, it was very troubling. I thought that the Israeli response to the first uprising was idiotic. Since I’d grown up in a left-wing Zionist-socialist movement that saw the inevitability and the morality of the creation of a Palestinian state, I thought that it was ridiculous to put these people in prison for demanding what I would have demanded for my own people. I thought that Israeli society had gone off track in some significant way, and Ketziot was the epitome of that problem.

Let me not cast it as an entirely negative experience. It was hopelessly exotic for me. I mean, I’m from the South Shore of Long Island, and then all of a sudden I’m in the Negev Desert, by the Egyptian border, as a prison guard in what’s probably the largest prison in the Middle East, guarding the future leaders of Palestine. It was pretty exciting. Also, it made me insatiably curious about Islam and Islamism and the essential divide in Palestinian society between the secular nationalists and the Islamists. In the fifteen years that followed, until now, it’s been my main preoccupation, this universe of issues—Islam and Judaism and Zionism and Israel’s role in the world and terrorism. I think I got jump-started there.

Did you keep a diary at Ketziot?

I secretly kept notes. You weren’t allowed to write things down. I’m a note-taker, anyway—I take notes on more banal events in my life, too. But this was important to record, I felt, because it was, in a way, ephemeral. Even then, I had an extremely strong feeling that the people I was guarding would one day be the leaders of Palestine. This was 1990, 1991—the Gulf War. There was no communication at all between Israelis and the Palestinians. Probably the only place in the world where we were talking, in any kind of way, was at this prison camp.


You’ve exposed yourself here—not only your service in the Israeli Army but your intellectual and ideological development—the thinking that led you to Israel as a young man. How do you think this is going to affect you as a reporter?

I don’t think truthfulness about who you are and what you’ve done and where you come from can hurt. I mean, it can hurt in some specific ways—there may be some people in the Muslim world who will read this and decide, I can’t talk to the guy. I doubt it, to tell you the truth, because my experience in a dozen different countries in the Middle East is that my Jewishness is an advantage, not a disadvantage, because even for the most hard-core Islamists there’s an attraction-repulsion dynamic that takes hold. They think about Jews all the time. So when one shows up on the doorstep it’s actually sort of fascinating to them.

I do believe—my most naïve side believes—that stories like the stories in this book will help people understand the Middle East and its seemingly impossible problems. I’m not Pollyannaish; I’m not one of these people who believe that you can just take a bunch of Israeli teen-agers and a bunch of Palestinian teen-agers to a retreat somewhere in Sweden or the Catskills and make peace. That, I’ve learned, requires a kind of brutal honesty with each other about the differences. Look, it took Rafiq and me fifteen years to get to the point where we could acknowledge to each other—and I really feel this—I hope for his continued safety and happiness. I think he hopes for my continued safety and happiness. As individuals. And he says—and he’s not a journalist, he’s a statistician; he’s a by-the-numbers guy in many ways—he says, “If this could be done between a million different people, then the situation would be a lot different.” That’s why I think that you can’t underestimate the power of honest dialogue. Honest dialogue means not conceding your position before you begin, or not avoiding a subject like Jerusalem, say, because it’s too hot.

It’s sort of the opposite of the diplomatic approach.

It’s the undiplomatic approach. There’s a word in Arabic, dughreh—straight. Just be straight. I can’t say that Rafiq and I have always been straight with each other. I’m sure he trims, I trim. That straightness also, by the way, goes to the question of journalism and the way the Middle East is covered. Don’t flinch from the raw reality of a place. And Gaza—I’ve been optimistic; now I’ll be pessimistic—is a place where a large number of fathers and mothers are willing to sacrifice their children, to turn them into suicide bombers, in order to achieve something that the Palestinians have failed completely to achieve in the past fifteen years. That’s bad. In the book, I deal with Ketziot as an unpleasant reality, as what Israel shouldn’t have been but became. So you have to just look things in the face. The problem with the Oslo process was it kept pushing off issues. Palestinians didn’t know where it was going; Israelis didn’t know where it was going. Then, when the issue was forced at Camp David, it fell apart because too much had been left unsaid until that moment.

Your last piece for The New Yorker took you back to Gaza. Written in the wake of the fighting in Lebanon, it was called “The Forgotten War.” Where do you think things are headed?

It’s been said that the antidote for Islamism is Islamism. I think the Palestinians are beginning to see some of the pitfalls of electing an Islamist government. Again, this goes back to my low threshold for optimism: I came out of Gaza in this last piece feeling better about the situation than I did going in, because, partly through some of the people I knew from the prison, I still found plenty of people there who are thinking about a two-state solution and, more to the point, do not want to see their sons become suicide bombers. I really felt that I could see a seed, or at least a hint, of a future that was not as bleak as the present, simply because many people there are less concerned with getting to Heaven immediately than with building some sort of life for themselves on the ground. It doesn’t mean that when this group of Palestinians sits down with whatever group of Israelis is in charge that the talks aren’t going to fall apart on any number of issues. But the story of Gaza now is not the story of the triumph of Islamism. It’s still the story of a people struggling to figure out who they are and how much they can compromise with their enemy.

Catholic Driving Through a Muslim Neighborhood

Post-Pope Benedict Period

Letter in National Post, Canada

I have a letter in Canada's National Post (but I cannot retrieve the link at present as I am not a registered user. Hopefully, someone will send it soon). Exactly what day, I am not sure but here's the text I sent:-

Sirs,

Gershom Gorenberg's article, "Chronicle of a quagmire" (Sept. 21), is less than comprehensive and therefore is prejudicially misleading on the issue of Jewish residency in areas, which since 1967, have been administered by Israel.

The true starting point must be the international legality awarded to the right of Jews to live in their patrimony by the Supreme Council of the League of Nations in 1922 following the decision of the San Remo Conference of April 24, 1920 . The Mandate charged Great Britain, as part of the recognition given to the "historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country", to facilitate Jewish immigration...(and)... encourage...close settlement by Jews on the land (Article 6). Moreover, no Palestine territory "shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power" (Article 5). I have full rights to reside in my home in Shiloh.

After undergoing partition, which the Arabs rejected and after becoming victorious in several wars of agression designed to eradicate the country and its population, there is nothing wrong or evil in the building of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Jewish willingness, mistaken in my opinion, to concede land for peace, is ineffective and only increases Arab terror. Gorenberg's complaint is a result of his skewed ideological and political position, not a tennable legal proposition.

Here's the actual published text:

Mr. Gorenberg's column is prejudicially misleading on the issue of Jewish residency in areas which since 1967 have been administered by Israel.

The true starting point must be the international legality awarded to the right of Jews to live in their patrimony by the Supreme Council of the League of Nations in 1922, following the decision of the San Remo Conference of April 24, 1920. The Mandate charged Great Britain, as part of the recognition given to the "historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country," to facilitate Jewish immigration and encourage "close settlement by Jews on the land" (Article 6). Moreover, no Palestine territory "shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power"(Article 5). I have full rights to reside in my home in the Israeli settlement of Shiloh.

After undergoing partition, which the Arabs rejected, and after becoming victorious in several wars of aggression designed to eradicate the country and its population, there is nothing wrong or evil in the building of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Jewish willingness, mistaken in my opinion, to concede land for peace, is ineffective and only increases Arab terror. Gorenberg's complaint is a result of his skewed ideological and political position, not a tenable legal proposition.

Yisrael Medad, Shiloh, Samaria, Israel.

If you want Gorenberg's article, drop me a line: yisrael.medad@gmail.com

=============

UPDATE

Okay, here's the link. Please note that you need to register with the National Post in order to access certain on-line items, this being one of them.)


And here's another letter there:

It is a tour de force to discuss the origins of the "settlements," the "West Bank" and the "Green Line" without mentioning the core legal document that addressed these issues. Following the San Remo Conference, the Mandate for Palestine was adopted in 1922 by a majority vote at the League of Nations. The Mandate made the status of Palestine, west of the Jordan River, quite clear by recognizing "the historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and ... the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country," and by encouraging "close settlement by Jews, on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes." The provisions of the Mandate have never been abrogated.

Former Israeli PM Levi Eshkol was misguided by the ill-conceived legal opinions of Shapira and Meron who pronounced all settlements illegal and advocated a return of the "West Bank" to the Arabs. But 40 years later, Mr. Gorenberg's omission of the Mandate -- the fundamental Middle East document of international law -- is simply unforgivable.

Salomon Benzimra, Toronto.

Bonging Tonge

Not a bad letter about some idiot posing as a Liberal Democrat and a Baroness the one who, when speaking to a pro-Palestinian lobby, said of Palestinian suicide bombers: "If I had to live in that situation - and I say that advisedly - I might just consider becoming one myself."


Offensive words

Sir, We condemn the comments made by Baroness Tonge in a meeting at the Liberal Democrat Party conference on Wednesday.

Baroness Tonge evoked a classic anti-Jewish conspiracy theory when she said: “The pro-Israel lobby has got its grips on the Western world, its financial grips. I think they have probably got a certain grip on our party.” In addition, she repeated her past comments of sympathy for suicide bombers living in the Palestinian territories.

Two weeks ago the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism reported a disturbing rise in anti-Semitic incidents and discourse in the UK. Baroness Tonge’s remarks demonstrate the reasoning behind the report’s concerns about the creeping acceptance of anti-Jewish prejudice within mainstream politics and media. The report warned that anti-Israel discourse evolves all too quickly into anti-Semitic rhetoric. We believe that the language deployed by Baroness Tonge, as a member of the House of Lords, was irresponsible and inappropriate.

Everyone has the right to disagree with all or some of the policies of the Israeli Government, as do some of the signatories of this letter. That should be a mature debate, in considered, robust and responsible political language. It should not be done by purveying myths, or by deploying offensive language.

LORD CAREY OF CLIFTON
LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW (LD)
LORD FEARN (LD)
LORD JACOBS (LD)
BARONESS LUDFORD, MEP (LD)
LORD ARCHER OF SANDWELL (Lab)
LORD CLARK OF WINDERMERE (Lab)
BARONESS DEECH (Crossbench)
LORD FOULKES OF CUMNOCK (Lab)
LORD HARRISON (Lab)
LORD HASKEL (Lab)
LORD HOGG OF CUMBERNAULD (Lab)
LORD JANNER OF BRAUNSTONE (Lab)
LORD KALMS (C); BARONESS MILLER OF HENDON (C)
LORD MITCHELL (Lab)
BARONESS O’CATHAIN (C)
BARONESS RAMSAY OF CARTVALE (Lab)
LORD STERLING OF PLAISTOW (C)
LORD TAYLOR OF HOLBEACH (C)
LORD STEINBERG (C)
LORD TURNBERG (Lab)
LORD WEDDERBURN OF CHARLTON (Lab)
LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN (Lab)

(Kippah tip: Harry's Place)

Comics: The Jewish Angle

Trying not to overreach, Rabbi Weinstein cut out a passage that likened Batman’s bat cave to the Machpelah, the so-called Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the Bible says Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are buried.

What?

From what was the passage above cut out?

This:-

Religion and Comic Books: Where Did Superman’s Theology Come From?
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Excerpts:-

...Rabbi Weinstein’s study of the classic superhero comics, infuses a new book, “Up, Up and Oy Vey!” The volume, which has nearly sold out its first run of 5,000 copies, contends that writer-artists of the classic comics, many of them Jewish, were influenced by their religious heritage in devising characters and plots.

“I feel queasy when I read people who use pop culture to try to proselytize,” said Rabbi Weinstein, a member of the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect who is the campus rabbi at Pratt Institute. “And I didn’t want to enforce my own fantasy.

“But I knew the writers were Jewish. That’s a historical fact. And when I bought all the comics, and gave them my rabbi’s reading, I saw something there. Judaism is filled with superheroes and villains — Samson, Pharaoh. And it’s a religion rich in storytelling and in themes of being moral, ethical, spiritual.”

That thesis made sense to another expert in the field, the author David Hajdu. “Many of the important early comic-book creators were barely adults when they started working,” said Mr. Hajdu, whose coming book, “The Ten-Cent Plague,” explores the comics craze of the postwar years. “Nor were they worldly, nor very well read or educated. They drew, literally, from what they knew. That is, the culture of their homes and their neighborhoods, which were mostly Jewish.”

“Up, Up and Oy Vey!” arrives as the classic comics are being treated far more seriously than anyone might have imagined in their heyday. A major exhibition on comics is on display at the Newark Museum in New Jersey and the Jewish Museum in Manhattan. The reconsideration began in the late 70’s, when Will Eisner, creator of “The Spirit,” put the form to literary purposes in a memoir of his childhood in a Jewish immigrant household in the Bronx, “A Contract With God.”

...“This book came out of midnight conversations over wine and chicken soup around the Shabbos table,” said Rabbi Weinstein, 30.

In his research, the rabbi delved into the biographies of comic-book greats...Along with those examples of Judaic influence, “Up, Up, and Oy Vey!” offers instances like the name of Superman’s father, Jor-El, with “el” being the suffix to many biblical names and the common use of masks and false identities, akin to the heroine Esther in the Purim story, who goes by an alias in Persian society.

The NYT Shocked Me

I found this cogent sentence here in a story on the Shabba Farms area and who owns it:-

Of course, there is no guarantee that Hezbollah will disarm if the Shabaa Farms area is transferred to Lebanon.

So succinct, so pithy , so true.

So elementary and obvious about Arab political designs.

What has happened to the New York Times?

Does This Intimidate You?

I met Abdelaziz Eljaouhari, the son of Berber Moroccan immigrants and an eloquent Muslim political activist. He talked with fluent passion, in perfect French, about the misery of the impoverished housing projects around Paris—which, as we spoke, were again wracked by protests—and the chronic social discrimination against immigrants and their descendants. France's so-called "Republican model," he said furiously, means in practice "I speak French, am called Jean-Daniel, and have blue eyes and blond hair." If you are called Abdelaziz, have a darker skin, and are Muslim to boot, the French Republic does not practice what it preaches. "What égalité is there for us?" he asked. "What liberté? What fraternité?" And then he delivered his personal message to Nicolas Sarkozy, the hard-line interior minister and leading right-wing candidate to succeed Jacques Chirac as French president, in words that I will never forget. "Moi," said Abdelaziz Eljaouhari, in a ringing voice, "Moi, je suis la France!"

And, he might have added, l'Europe.

Earlier this year, I visited the famous cathedral of Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris. I admired the magnificent tombs and funerary monuments of the kings and queens of France, including that of Charles Martel ("the hammer"), whose victory over the invading Muslim armies near Poitiers in 732 AD is traditionally held to have halted the Islamization of Europe.[1] Stepping out of the cathedral, I walked a hundred yards across the Place Victor Hugo to the main commercial street, which was thronged with local shoppers of Arab and African origin, including many women wearing the hijab. I caught myself thinking: So the Muslims have won the Battle of Poitiers after all! Won it not by force of arms, but by peaceful immigration and fertility.

Read it all.