State of Israel

Have you seen the Report on Global Anti-Semitism?

2005-01-07T19:07:00.000-08:00

Released by the U.S. Department of State in 2005

The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue.

Global anti-Semitism in recent years has had four main sources:

* Traditional anti-Jewish prejudice that has pervaded Europe and some countries in other parts of the world for centuries. This includes ultra-nationalists and others who assert that the Jewish community controls governments, the media, international business, and the financial world.
* Strong anti-Israel sentiment that crosses the line between objective criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitism.
* Anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by some in Europe's growing Muslim population, based on longstanding antipathy toward both Israel and Jews, as well as Muslim opposition to developments in Israel and the occupied territories, and more recently in Iraq.
* Criticism of both the United States and globalization that spills over to Israel, and to Jews in general who are identified with both.

PLO Arabs

2004-12-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

Israellycool

After months of blogging, I have decided to change my policy of referring to the Arabs who claim to be "Palestinians" as "palestinians".

Where possible, I shall now refer to them as "PLO Arabs."

I strongly encourage all other right-wing bloggers to follow suit, since even the word "palestinian", with no capital letter, somehow aknowledges their claim that they were a distinct national group living in what was then known as Palestine. But the more I learn about the history of the time, the more I realize that the only group referred to as "Palestinians" were the Jews living there at the time.

As Alan Dershowitz (by no means politically right-wing) states in his excellent book The Case for Israel:

..the small and decreasing Arab-Muslim population of the area was also a transient and migratory population, as contrasted with the more stable, if smaller, Jewish population. The myth of a stable and settled Palestinian-Arab-Muslim population that had lived in villages and worked the land for centuries, only to be displaced by the Zionist invaders, is simply inconsistent with the recorded demographic data gathered not by the Jews or Zionists but rather by the local authorities themselves.

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Sites for younger Jews:
JewSchool
JewLicious

Zionism thread from metafilter

2004-12-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

Gives you a disturbing glimpse into how some people thinks...
Jews Against Zionism

Jews for Conservative Politics

2004-12-09T10:53:00.000-08:00

American Jews have been a bedrock of the Democratic Party for centuries, a trend which we believe is not only naive and misguided, but unwise. Liberals take the Jewish vote for granted in elections, and they should, because they are right. Such arrogance on behalf of the left and blind adherence by the greater Jewish community was the motivating factor behind the establishment of our organization.

Jews for Conservative Politics exists to work in educating not only American Jews, but all Americans, and all Jews, to recognize the other perspective, while at the same time attempting to bolster the ever growing Jewish base within the political right.

Through speaking events, dinners, and associations, JCP is attempting at Harvard to build and grow conservatism on campus, while expanding our efforts to other college campuses at the same time.

We are affiliated with Harvard Hillel and the Harvard Republican Club. While much of our leadership serves in some capacity within the HRC, our members are of all identifications and backgrounds, but all share a common goal: to spread the truth.

Anti-Semitism

2004-12-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

One in Four Americans Believe Jews Were Responsible for the Death of Christ and more resources about Anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism, Pure and Simple

2004-12-06T17:03:00.000-08:00

Anti-Semitism, Pure and Simple By Abraham H. Foxman National Director of the Anti-Defamation League

This op-ed originally appeared in Jerusalem Report magazine on May 5, 2003.

The saying goes, "if it looks, like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be duck." So why is it when anti-Jewish statements are made they are not seen for what they are - expressions of anti-Semitism - but are explained away as merely offensive or ignorant?

That question has been particularly pertinent in recent weeks, during the run-up to and the early stages of war in Iraq. In America for the most part, those questioning US military action made thoughtful arguments against going to war. But not everyone has engaged in rational debate of the issues.

While there have always been the likes of the Pat Buchanans, the Joseph Sobrans,
and anti-Semites, what is disturbing today is that those extremists are being joined by a voices in the antiwar movement and the media, on the left and the right, who are promoting a canard that America's going to war has little to do with disarming Saddam, but everything to do with Jews, the "Jewish lobby" and the hawkish Jewish members of the Bush Administration who, according to this chorus, will favor any war that benefits Israel and the Jews. The accusation about Jews and Jewish interests is being aired almost daily, on the airwaves, in the nation's editorial pages and from a range of pundits who want to pin the blame for this war on the Jews. The spread of this new lie is not surprising, because it is really not so new. In times of crisis, in times of uncertainty, at times nations face danger, Jews continue to be a convenient and tempting option for scapegoating.

This "Blame the Jews" phenomenon has now moved far beyond U.S. Rep. James Moran's notorious statement that, "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this." Moran has since apologized - but by repeating an anti-Semitic canard that had previously been heard only on the margins of the debate, Moran moved blaming the Jews into the political and media mainstream. A whole chorus of accusations followed his.

Who are the purveyors of this anti-Semitic charge? In a recent interview, Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball," was asked what he believes is driving
America's policy in Iraq. His response: "Well, the right-wing policy with regard
to Israel - the people who don't want to deal with Arafat, who don't want a Palestinian state - the whole sort of right wing view is consistent with the
view toward Iraq. It's the same policy and the same people."

James O. Goldsborough, a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune, wrote on
March 3, 2003 that the idea to go to Baghdad is "to serve Jerusalem," that
Bush's war "has nothing to do with peace and security," but is the "brainchild
of a handful of neo-conservatives … who have argued that Iraq was the main
threat to Israel." The neo-conservatives he mentions - Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas
Feith, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, David Wurmser - are all Jews. No mention of
the Rumsfelds and the Cheneys.

Robert Novak has called the conflict, "Sharon's war." Liberal writer Ian Burama
cites "Jewish-American hysteria." And others, including Paul Schroeder in the
American Conservative, Georgia Ann Geyer and Alexander Cockburn have referenced
the canard of Jewish and Israeli influence.

Almost as disappointing are the writings of respected journalists such as Bill
Keller (The New York Times) and Richard Cohen the (Washington Post), who in
their attempt to show the absurdity of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories missed
an opportunity to provide a teaching moment - to educate about the roots, the
history and the impact of such charges against the Jewish people.

At the same time we have seen a proliferation of columns and articles by respected mainstream commentators who insist that all of this is not really anti-Semitism, but simply ill-informed statements. But to suggest that it is something other than anti-Semitism is a grave mistake. Even in America, where Jews are more at home and secure as equal citizens than anywhere else in 2,000 years, the unsettling fact is that fully one-third of Americans still accept the notion that Jews have "dual loyalties." This was apparent in the Anti-Defamation League's June 2002 survey of Anti-Semitism in America, which also found that 20 percent of the American public agrees that, "Jews have too much power in the U.S. today."

We have full faith that Americans, whether they are for or against the war, will
reject this latest anti-Semitic conspiracy charge. Yet that charge reminds us that anti-Semitism has a life of its own when crisis and anxiety erupt -- and must be denounced and rejected for what it is.

So much for apartheid -- the release of Azzam Azzam

2004-12-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

But there is more. At a time when some are damning Israel as an apartheid state, when an academic conference is being held in London bashing Israel as a racist and fascist country, Azzam -- not a Jew – tells Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "I love you very much," and adds "I am fortunate and proud to have been born in Israel."

So much for apartheid.

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

2004-11-26T14:56:00.000-08:00

America's Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership

To destroy "gun control" and to encourage Americans to understand and defend all of the Bill of Rights for everyone.

Those are the twin goals of Wisconsin-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO). Founded by Jews and initially aimed at educating the Jewish community about the historical evils that Jews have suffered when they have been disarmed, JPFO has always welcomed persons of all religious beliefs who share a common goal of opposing and reversing victim disarmament policies while advancing liberty for all.

Making Firearms Safety Fun

U is for UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations is a very bad organization made up of foreign countries who do not want you to be free. The United Nations doesn’t like your Bill of Rights, and they are trying to destroy freedom in America. Brasco Buddies™ are smart and they don’t believe the lies of the United Nations. If you believe the things the United Nations tells you, you will never know the fun of a gun.

More CAIR and its' links to Hamas

2004-11-24T17:15:00.000-08:00

David Frum: The Question of CAIR

Two weeks ago, the National Post and I were served with a notice of libel by the Canadian branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR. The Post and I are not alone. Over the past year, CAIR’s Canadian and U.S. branches have served similar libel notices on half a dozen other individuals and organizations in the United States and Canada. Each case has its own particular facts, yet they are linked by a common theme: That we defendants have accused CAIR (in the words of the notice served on me) of being "an unscrupulous, Islamist, extremist sympathetic group in Canada supporting terrorism."

Lawyers for individuals and newspapers served with libel notices will normally urge their clients to avoid any comment on the matter--to avoid even any acknowledgement that they have been served. This is usually good advice. A notice of libel is not a lawsuit, but a warning of a lawsuit to come. If the potential defendant keeps quiet, the potential plaintiff will often drop the suit altogether. But wise legal advice often comes at a cost, a cost in public information. So I was heartened that the National Post’s lawyers have encouraged the paper and me to continue with this important story.

CAIR is understandably protective of its reputation. Until recently, it has had considerable success winning acceptance in the United States and Canada as something close to an official spokesman for local Muslim communities. CAIR has been influential in advocating for a sharia court to arbitrate divorces and other family-law matters in the province of Ontario. CAIR’s strong criticisms of Canada’s anti-terror legislation have won respectful hearing in Ottawa. Any reporting or commentary that cast doubt on CAIR’s carefully cultivated image would deeply threaten the group’s mission.

What is that mission? The public record offers some clues:

CAIR was founded in 1994 by alumni of an older group, the Islamic Association for Palestine. The IAP, founded by senior Hamas figure Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, calls for the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamic state under Islamic law in Israel’s place. (In 1996, CAIR would condemn the U.S. government’s decision to deport Marzook as an "anti-Islamic" act.)

CAIR’s first executive director, Nihad Awad, publicly declared himself a supporter of Hamas at a 1994 forum at Barry University in Florida.

One of CAIR’s original advisory board members, Siraj Wahhaj, served as a character witness for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Rahman is the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks. CAIR described Rahman’s conviction as a hate crime.

CAIR’s founding chairman, Omar Ahmed, also an IAP alumnus, is said to have declared at a public event in California in July, 1998: "Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." Ahmed has since disputed the accuracy of the quote--five years after it was reported by a California newspaper.

After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, CAIR’s Web site featured a link titled, "Donate to the NY/DC Disaster Relief Fund." The link connected to the Web site of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity closed down by the United States three months later as a Hamas front.

Over the past 10 years, CAIR has grown rapidly. It now claims a total of 29 affiliates, including CAIR Canada. CAIR’s media savvy won it much official attention after 9/11. With that attention, however, also came a higher degree of scrutiny.

Since 9/11, three CAIR associates in the U.S. have been indicted on terrorism-related charges.

In September, 2003, CAIR community relations director Bassem K. Khafagi, pleaded guilty on immigration and bank-fraud charges, in Detroit. Khafagi interestingly co-owned a print shop with another man who has since been charged with illegally sending goods into Iraq.

Randall Todd Royer, a communications specialist at CAIR’s Washington headquarters, pleaded guilty in January, 2004, to belonging to the Kashmiri Lashkar-i-Taibi terrorist group and illegally acquiring firearms and explosives in order to train for terrorist missions against India. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

A founding member of CAIR’s Texas chapter, Ghassen Elashi, was convicted of conspiracy and money-laundering charges in connection with the shipment of high-technology items to Syria and Libya in July, 2004.

This record has drawn increasing notice in the United States. CAIR officials were invited to join President Bush at his September, 2001, visit to Washington’s mosque, but were omitted from the invitation list to the 2003 and 2004 White House Iftar dinners (an Iftar meal is the fast-breaking at the end of a day in Ramadan). New York Senator Chuck Schumer has charged that CAIR members have "intimate links to Hamas." Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, a political leader noted for his sensitivity to Islamic concerns, has said that CAIR is "unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its association with groups that are suspect."

CAIR Canada describes its relationship with CAIR as "close but distinct." It is not clear what this means. On its Web site and in its publications, CAIR lists CAIR canada as one of its local affiliates, giving it the same stauts as a state or regional CAIR chapter. CAIR Canada has its own board; so do many of CAIR’s local chapters. It should of course be stated that no criminal charges have ever been filed gainst CAIR Canada or any of its officers.

These are the facts behind the commentary that the National Post and I have published. They are facts that the Canadian public and Canadian officials are entitled to know. The National Post and I are confident that Canada’s courts will agree that no proper interest would be served by suppressing them.

Neo-Coms and Neo-Cons

2004-11-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

StateofIsreal supports the neo-con new wave of conservative thought.

Neo-con site discusses Middle east.

Taking On The Neo-Coms, Part I

Taking on the Neo-Coms, Part II

In Favor Of Israel

2004-11-18T15:45:00.000-08:00

In Favor Of Israel

Pilar Rahola

When Hermann Broch, in the bloody madness of the Hitler era, launched this terrible assertion: "The indifference of Europe is the worst of the crimes", he was building something else than just a historical statement. In fact, he was trying to throw a dart to the core of the European conscience, obliging it to look in the mirror in order to meet itself. The result of this introspective look, if it had been taken place, would have had the same effect as the picture of Dorian Gray: monstrosity was not only far away from the European conscience, but it was born in itself. Europe was indifferent on the surface because it felt guilty within, in that inner abyss where for centuries it had looked after and fed the egg of the snake. Judeophobia was not a historical contingency limited in time and space, but a background culture that could explain the entire history of Europe. Somehow, Europe was founded by the hate of the Jews: they were its most remarkable co-founder. That is why Broch was wrong when he launched this desperate cry: Europe was not indifferent, Europe was the problem. Precisely for that same reason it never did a truly introspection, for historically it had managed to minimize its own guilt. Hitler? Hitler was just the last link of a growing destructive process of the Jewish soul that built the European soul; a destructive process that, in turn, was necessarily a self-destructive process. As Benjamin Netanyahu said, seriously affected, during one of his last official visits to the USA representing Israel, "Europeans wanted to exterminate us once in the past". That is to say, it was Europe that intended to exterminate the Jewish - and in fact it succeeded in exterminating many layers of their hard skin - and it is Europe again which, somehow, pleads for its extermination.

Is this true? Unfortunately I am convinced of it, and it is this belief that makes me write these lines. The conviction of taking part of a European entity that has committed the worst crime against humankind, the industrialized extermination of an entire culture, and despite of it, it has never gotten vaccinated to fight its hate. Europe had gotten rid of the Jewish, but it has not gotten rid of its Judeophobia.

This explains its uncritical Pro-Palestinian hysteria, its ferociously anti-Jewish left, its macabre trivialization of the Shoah - that "death of the human soul" that Lanzmann has turned into a close combat against oneself -, and its pseudo-intellectuals so fond of liberty that they have periodically been fond of all the dictators throughout history: Mao-Tse-Tung, Stalin, Pol Pot, and now Arafat. This explains the new ideological construction of anti-Semitism, adapted as anti-Zionism - and which Bernard Henry Levi considers as the most purified modern version of racism, although its origin had been a classic within the Soviet way of thinking...-, and it also explains the fascination that gets to inflict, among certain European intellectuals, any form of fascism that includes anti-Americanism as one of its totalitarian phobias. Saramago¹ would be the best example of what August Bebel typified in 1884 as "the socialism of fools". For one person can be a wonderful writer and still think as an idiot...

Europe is Kafka. And Heine (considered as too Jewish in Europe and too "European" among Jews), and Freud, and Marx, and even Einstein. Nevertheless, as Kafka himself, Europe not only ignores its identity, but it also denies and destroys it, so exiled from itself that has made self-hate a type of reaffirmation. Europe's relationship with the Jewish, natural and weird at the same time, has always been the chronicle of a planned hara-kiri, up to the point of reaching a historical nonsense: Europe cannot be explained without the Jewish, and, at the same time, it has always been explained against the Jews; that is, against itself. Its collective conscience is formed via the different ways that Judeophobia invents, and there it is the origin of it. Just as its pathological anti-Americanism, so disloyal to the thousands of American men who lost their lives trying to rescue it from its deepest miseries, its anti-Semitism is pathological as well. Finally, after over five thousand years of attempts, it has succeeded in destroying its Jewish soul. By doing so, it has degraded so much that, somehow, has died. For this reason, the remains of Europe after the Holocaust are so similar to the esperpentos of Valle-Inclán²: the splendid epic hero is reflected in the concave mirror. Distorted. Stupefied. Lacking all kind of greatness.

I write in favor of Israel because, first of all, I am European and cannot forget the direct responsibility of Europe in everything that affects the Jewish society. Europe is responsible for the creation of the State of Israel. Europe creates the conscience, the need of state as the last hope for survival. Europe writes "Der Jüdenstaat" in 1896 through Theodor Herzl; In 1906 Europe sends Yafo, a young man from the Russian Poland, legendary David Grin, later named Ben Gurion in Hebrew. As sons of the Progrom, the regular dispersion and the destruction of its people, Europe sends thousands of young men to that "land without people to provide it with people without land". Young men who at the beginning wanted to be French, German, Polish, Russian, Hispanic, but who were obliged to be only Jews; Europe created the Jewish nation, making their people the only people in the world intended for total extermination; Europe builds the Ausschwitz terminus; Europe turns the creation of Israel into the very last solution... Can Europe provide itself with an ethical role in the conflict of the Middle East without bearing in mind its radical, monstrous, huge historical immorality? Perhaps that is the key to understanding the attitude of its official way of thinking: with its Manichaeanism and its uncritical fondness for the Palestinian victims, Europe redeems its guilt, it denies it and makes it vanish. It is not about being indifferent, as Broch denounced. Now it is about being the accuser, a nice way to stop being guilty ...

The trivialization of the Shoah is part of this same process of extermination. And regarding this subject we must be very clear: the perverse use of the memory of the Holocaust as a point of view in the conflict of the Middle East is a radical degradation of morality, and, undoubtedly, it is the spearhead of a deeply reactionary way of thinking. The irony that this way of thinking succeeds, especially among liberal intellectuals, lefty leaders and human rights organizations, is not surprising. After all, this irony historically defines a "so truthful" left that has sometimes been the executor arm of the most reactionary postulates. Since these movements are well settled on what Glucksmann calls "the black holes" of our collective memory - Vichy, the war of Argelia, the Soviet Gulag, the prosecutions against the Jews - they rewrite history as to tend to deny it. And only from this denial, from an overwhelming denial of the European conscience, the Holocaust can be used as a throwing weapon against Israel. This has got nothing to do with belonging to the Hasbara, or with being fond of the principles of information beyond propaganda, or with wishing to be reporters of the truth and not of the hate. It has got to do, above all, with respecting the victims of the industrialized crime. For someone must tell all the Saramagos in the world that trivializing the victims of the Shoah is like killing them again. As somebody said once, historical rigor is not only a scientist requirement; in the face of the holocaust it is a moral requirement.

By the way, and with the permission of Joan Culla, who used this reasoning in one of his articles: if the 52 Palestinian victims of Jenin (counted by a not suspecting NGO as is Human Rights Wath), plus the over 23 Israeli victims - or are they not important? - are comparable to the Holocaust, what can the nearly half a million people killed during the bloody Islamic process of Sudan, or the 20,000 victims of the revolts in the city of Hama in Syria by Hafed the Assad; or the 100,000 victims whose macabre responsible is the Argelian Islamic terrorism be compared to? And, would it not be compared to the regular destruction of Christian Lebanese settlements at the hands of Palestinian factions? Would it not be compared to the slaughter of Palestinians that the good Hussein of Jordania carried out in his particular black September?

However, all this seems unimportant for a left that, bearing in mind data, does not get indignant with the Muslim victims, with its legendary Third-World aureole so appreciated by these reactionary liberals, but only with those Muslim victims hit by Israeli bullets, in the middle of a conflict that in fact is a war. That is to say, the same left who is unable to remember that the communists were the main responsible for the death of communists throughout history, does not show any interest in knowing that Palestinians have killed more Palestinians than the Arabs themselves.

Why should they care about numbers, when the facts that promote indignation, planned protest, media scandal and claim to the always friendly and caring UN - which had this nice Nazi named Kurt Waldheim as president-, are exclusively connected with the Jewish guilt? Here are the roots of the immorality of Saramago, the roots of these lefty reactionaries, so concerned for the human rights, those who even consider the fall of the Berlin Wall as a tragedy. The left involved in Stalinist totalitarianism, and which on the other hand only recalls the guilt of fascism...; the same left fascinated by a local Third-World able to minimize and even comprehend fundamentalist totalitarianism; the same left that hates America because it actually hates, not its mistakes, but the values it stands for; the same left that hates Israel because it represents the most resistant and real rationalism. To state this among military news, terrorist attacks, and invasions would seem an inappropriate daring. However, only a state based on rational values could bear over 50 years filled with attempts of destruction. But still, the same left that has found in the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank the perfect excuse for channeling its anti-Semitism...

Obviously I cannot forget a key aspect: ignorance. The Middle East is the most mentioned subject in any distinguished group. But it is not very well known. The amount of lies has come to be so important, continuous and accurate that it has been able to create a parallel truth. A parallel reality.

Therefore, I write in favor of Israel because I am sick of the perverse use of the Holocaust, the pornographic trivialness used to play with the memory of the worst tragedy of humankind; and because, if I am Kafka, and Heine, and Freud, I am also each one of the victims who were killed in the final solution... Being European implies this terrible and unavoidable duality: either you are on the side of the victims, or you are on the side of the executioners. The indifference Broch highlighted cannot exist: no one who is not a victim turns out to be innocent.

The denial of the Holocaust leads naturally to the very process of distortion, the denial of the Palestinian violence. So, while Israeli victims do not exist, since they are made inevitable contingency, Palestinian victims are wrapped in an epic aureole that makes them greater beyond suffer. As if they were the chronicles of martyrdom, of this new religion that is, for some, the Palestinian cause. For this reason little Lea Schijverschunder, nine, who got seriously injured and lost five members of her family does not exist. A bomb-man... Galila Bugal, eleven, does not exist, or Shani Avi-Tzedek, fifteen, two of the victims of one of the buses crowded with civilians that bomb-men made explode. The dozens of children victims of the Bar Mitzva that a bomb-man decided to celebrate on his own way do not exist. Or the 23 people killed during the celebrations of the Pesaj, or the 8-month pregnant woman killed during the same terrorist act where among others, a baby was killed. Jews refugees do not exist either - a concept not even admitted by UNHCR- despite the fact that over 800,000 of them have had to leave the Arab countries, over 95% in many cases. Israeli victims to not exist because they are Jewish and, for that reason, they are responsible for their own death, a fatal destiny for those who have been born in the land chosen... for the extermination. Within the official Manichaeanism that dominates European media grammar, the victims can only be Palestinian; and the murderers can only be Jews. Any information that might twist this perfectly drawn duality is simply ignored.

This is how we create a new language for a new epic, since we lack old epics. The fanatical Palestinian murderers are called militiamen, a nice concept of old romantic resonance. They are not, then, madmen with hate in their soul and shrapnel in their stomach, they are resistant fighters. The indiscriminate bombs, designed to kill civilian victims and cooked in the kitchen of total hate are called fight acts. The very hate, planned from the Palestinian authority and perfectly structured as a collective way of thinking - hate at schools, at parties, in songs, in life - that old hate that led Golda Meir to pronounce a historical statement: "Peace will come when Palestinians love their children more than they hate Jews"; that is not hate, it is just simple and reasonable resentment.

A violent and totalitarian Arafat does not exist either, although his biography as a terrorist is as big as the hundreds of dead people he has left on his way. That blind leader that has been destroying every possibility of peace, who has cheated each of the Israeli leaders he has treated and who, above all, dynamited the big white hope of the Oslo Treatments; that man who embraces the Palestinian cause and who at the same time is allergic to a Palestinian state - a very significant nuance, since state means logistics, contradictions, trouble, and maybe liberties...- that character who never wanted a pact with Israel, but the extermination of Israel, and who deserved Clinton's contempt as he felt betrayed, just as the entire Israeli left; that leader of violence, main responsible for the current wave of terrorist attacks - and for many others - and whose love for the life of his people is quite slim. "We can survive Sharon but, can we survive Arafat?" said a Palestinian not long ago; that man who accumulates as many civilian deaths as historic mistakes, violent totalitarianism and corruption, and whose unique ecosystem is war: that man does not exist. For the Europe of the new morality before the Jews, he is seen as a poor and old resistant fighter, the last chance to fall in love again with a dictator. He is not a strategist, he is a terrorist. But we have decided that he is our terrorist, just as when our pirates were not pirates, but corsairs. As when Kissinger said about Pinochet: "He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch".

All despite the fact that European media, those that write scandalized about Belen or Jenin or Gaza, could have had a feast after Palestinian violations of Oslo Agreements. And despite the fact that the accusations against Arafat for corruption of European aid, have been published even in Kuwait. And despite the fact that, if willing to demand trials for crimes committed again humankind, Arafat carries some bloody suitcases on his shoulders. Wouldn't the extermination of 30,000 Christian Libanese, some 10,000 at the hands of Arafat's militia, be a very nice headline? And despite the millions of petrodollars given to the Palestinian terrorism, and not to the schools and hospitals, or to infrastructures. That would be a great object of analysis. Despite the fact that when Gaza and the West Bank were under the control of the Arabs no one suggested a Palestinian state there, a nice debate subject ... And despite... But the media that determines that the occupation of the basilica of Belen by 150 heavily armed terrorists who put up to 40 bombs on the walls of the basilica is not a terrorist occupation, but the siege of the Israeli army against a sacred place... in that type of media, how important is information, rigor, truth and impartiality? Especially impartiality, after having chosen a comfortable and cathartic "pro-Palestinian impartiality".

In the bottom of this conscious or unconscious distortion of reality there is no room for a new way of fascism, the Islamic fundamentalism. There is only a justified fight. The fact that Hitler's Mein Kampf or the disgusting "Protocols Of The Learned Elders of Zion", created by the czarist secret services, are best-sellers in the Arab world might be a reasonable symptom of the civilized logic of things... It might also be reasonable that some Nazi European groups have celebrated the collapse of the World Trade Center and consider Bin Laden as a new Fürher: everything makes sense. Everything except that Europe is making the same mistakes again - "they are betraying us once more" can be heard in the streets of Israel -, unable to stand the Jews even now that they are no longer among them. How was that? They first said: "You cannot live among us as Jews". Then, "you cannot live among us". Eventually, "you cannot live". You cannot even live in Israel, a state created by Europe itself. That is the reason why Israel has to apologize for its acts, even if it is right. And it can never, ever, make mistakes.

Just as it can never lose. For after an Arab defeat another war comes, and another one, and another one. But the first Israeli defeat would lead to its absolute disappearance. "If somebody says that they want to destroy you, believe them", said Menahem Begin; and ten years after his death, this statement is truest than ever. Even among the most dogmatic sectors of the European way of thinking, there is something very clear: among the collective Israeli way of thinking, the irreversibility of a Palestinian state lies underneath, sooner or later. Its requirement is not the territory, it is peace. Let's think, for example, about the return of the entire Sinai to Egypt when peace with this country succeeded. "It is just desert", told me one of these ignorant intellectuals I have mentioned above.

He did not know, or wanted to know, that the Sinai was certainly a desert when it was occupied by Israel, but it was taken back with urbanized villages, hospitals, schools, and... petrol! The petrol Arabs did not even know that they had, and bearing in mind that Israel has no petrol. By the way, it was Sharon in person who obliged the colonists who had settled on the Sinai to return. Israel's obsession is security, and consequently, peace. Therefore, the continuous Arab defeats in the wars against Israel have a price: the price of Israel's security. In the collective Israeli way of thinking, and beyond some perfectly minimized radicals, there is no denial of the Palestinian right. Israel wants to live safely as a state, and it is precisely from security that it interacts with the environment, which has been completely aggressive so far. Among the collective Palestinian way of thinking, on the contrary, the will of making Israel disappear is what lies underneath while nearly nobody accepts the existence of two states. "After 32 years, where is the Palestinian movement called "Peace Now"?, tryingly wondered Mario Wainstein, co-founder of the movement Shalom Ajshav and active militant for the Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. "Where are the Palestinian intellectuals who show their condolences for our victims in terrorist attacks, like the twenty remarkable Israeli writers who went to the homes of the Palestinian victims to show their condolences?" Without ancient roots, lost within the great magma of the Arab identity - the very unreal myth of the Palestinian people was invented as an excuse for the Arab occupation - Palestinian identity is not only a recent phenomenon but it is, above all, built on hate of Israel. That is to say, if Europe can be explained in turn by its Jewish component and by its hate of the Jews, as if they were two sides of the same coin, Palestinian identity can essentially be explained only by its anti-Jewish component. It is for this reason that the Palestinians have such difficulty putting an end to their violence. Not only due to the irresponsibility of violent leaders like Arafat, or the close connection between the petrodollar and fundamentalism. There is a more subtle fact, maybe less tangible: If the Palestinians renounced their hate of the Jews, they would at the same time lose a significant part of their identity. In other words, they would have to reinvent themselves. But, are they ready to do such a thing? It does not seem so... So, Menahem Begin, if somebody says that they want to destroy you, believe them...

I write in favor of Israel, therefore, because I do not want to take part in the deliberate, continuous, and dangerous distortion of reality carried out by the European media, with very few exceptions. They are so close to the Palestinian cause that they even feel bad when they have to report something whose responsibility does not fall on Israel. Even the dead Israelis are reported as victims of Israel itself. As if Israel, actually, killed them. In favor of Israel, therefore, because I do not accept the use of defense of the Palestinian cause as a pretext for a new epidemic of anti-Semitism. Because I truly dislike the blindness of a left, my left, which is still based on its most retrograde habits, and which, led by its Judeophobia - never admitted but still perfectly proved - is unable to foresee the enormous danger of the new face of totalitarianism: Islamic fundamentalism. Glucksmann warned the Arab world on this situation not long ago: "Islam either manages to stop the madness of its militias, its young fighters of God, or will start its own ending once it falls in the hands of fanaticism, as it happened with other totalitarian ideologies in the 20th Century".

And adds, regarding the indiscriminate deaths of civilians: "Just as you cannot sleep with whoever you want to, you cannot kill whoever you want to either. Religion and culture must put the limit to his homicide nihilism in order to rule the warrior violence. When everything is permitted, God and tradition die; if everything continues to be permitted, society secular order also dies". Hate is legitimated when everything is permitted. When something is legitimated in the name of God, it reaches madness. As I am writing these lines, I hear about a new terrorist act: this time in the cafeteria Frank Sinatra, crowded with students from the Monte Scopus Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So far seven young people who were studying for their exams have been killed, while other 74 are injured. The headless nails inserted in the suicide bombs in order to increase the destructive power have no pity... The news arrive in the form of a bloody headline, but once again, the grammar is full of ideology: "Palestinian militiamen", "expected revenge", and "resistant"... Eventually, they will make us believe that Sharon has killed these young students. The legitimization of hate...

In favor of Israel, therefore, because, not forgetting the Palestinian cause, I can and I want to understand the Israeli cause as well. Does understanding mean accepting everything, justifying everything, assuming the many responsibilities it also has in the conflict? Obviously not, but I will not make the mistake committed by all those who, like me, express themselves in terms of comprehension towards Israel: I will not justify myself. The long series of multiple excuses, congratulations and justifications we have to write; all those who shyly raise our hands to say that Israel is also right is one of the most clear and exasperating processes of degradation of the opinion of our times. No one who writes in favor of the Palestinian reasons, although they show an abhorrent simplistic Manichaeanism, need to explain themselves. Universal reason is on their side even beyond reason. Nevertheless, the simple fact of trying to recover some of the pieces of this broken mirror that truth is and trying to recall that Israeli reasons, victims and pain also exist, implies a suspicious gesture by nature, a gesture that immediately makes us accomplice of terror. We almost have to prove that we are democrats, sometimes before long time democrats who do not feel ashamed when they defend acts of totalitarian terrorism. Within this coarse context of criminalization of the opinion that is not intensely pro-Palestinian we can find what many Jews call "Europe's current guilt" and which can be summarized in the statement that a Catalan Jewish, Ari Elijarrat, wrote to me in an e-mail: "the intense pro-Palestinian position of Europe is an enemy for the peace in the area". I am convinced of it, so I am going to put in words a real provocation: The European and the Palestinian meet in a common place full of connection and symbols, and that is why they are so close: their meeting point is Judeophobia. Europe is the main responsible for feeding it inside, for permitting it outside and for the fact that, at the moment, peace is not even in the far horizon... The Palestinians feel legitimated in their hate because Europe legitimates them day after day. By saying this I am not excluding the fact that Europe legitimated the reasons of the Palestinian cause, an appropriate and legitimate attitude. What I am denouncing is the legitimization of hate, which differs hugely.

A nice picture, a picture containing the pieces of the puzzle: Europe destroys an entire nation, it sends the rest of the wreckage far away from home convinced of its low value - the surprising Israeli victory in the wars to which the Jewish people were abandoned to are still recalled in the offices of Europe's power -. Then they deny the right to use the land they were thrown to, that piece of desert which everyone disregarded. Hence, the victorious Jewish is now again an uncomfortable and indigestible character, and, in addition, notoriously unpleasant, as unpleasant as the permanent vision of the own guilt. From the victorious Jewish we move on to the prosecutor Jewish, a much more digestible concept and in addition linked with our glorious past: Is it not the contemporary reappearance of the evil, monstrous usurer Jewish of our Middle Ages mentality? What a wonderful way of finding ourselves again! Even Elizabeth the Catholic, the one who is going to be made saint, was probably right!

I am and I feel of the left, although after reading this, Maruja Torres³ will have kicked me out of the Olympus, for in Spain the left is pro-Arab or otherwise is not... But, leaving gender subjects aside, being a lefty is, for me, something else than just an ideological label, it is, above all, an existential position toward life, toward society, toward the way of thinking. Being of the left implies exercising the dialectical sense, the critic and the self-critic, and the wish of transgressing reality in order to improve it. I have never understood why when this position turns into ideology, at times it becomes an excuse for channeling uncritical dogma, a simplistic Manichaeanism, indeed racism. Or directly, for verbalizing nonsense. Anti-Americanism, for instance, a huge nonsense owned by the way of thinking of the left that does not think too much. Or Judeophobia, never admitted but always present. Or anti-Zionism, an umbrella used to comfortably protect old anti-Semitism. Or... That is the reason why I write in favor of Israel, because a left that does not follow propaganda must exist, a left that embraces causes without killing others', a left that loves Palestine because it also understands and loves Israel. A left, in any case, that when reading about 'refugees camps in Jenin' - refugees? In Jenin? - starts laughing instead of crying hurt by the betrayal that information suffers in the hands of reporters. A left that feels accomplice of the Israeli left, and it looks for and cannot manage to find the Palestinian left... A left that can defend a cause, but that will never accept the fact that a cause can do anything; indiscriminate death, for instance... A left, after all, which feels guilty as European, and is not willing to betray again its Jewish soul. Does it exist? I claim it for me and for many others, despite of being aware of the minority within the uncritical Pro-Palestinian magma that covers us. I say this in case I have not made myself clear enough: its defect is not its Palestinian complicity. Its fault is its uncritical position.

Therefore: In favor of Israel, the most intelligent, reasonable, cautious and honest way of being in favor of Palestine.

"Am Israel jai be-Israel" ("The people of Israel live in Israel"). It was on the 14th of May 1948 and this statement, uttered by Ben Gurion, closed a cycle of thousands of years full of dispersion, prosecution, death, and resistance. Nevertheless, nothing kept Palestinian people from living as a neighbor. People who arrived massively in the deserts of Judea precisely because Jewish did... Over 50 years later, Palestinians have not yet understood the fact that Israel is entitled to exist. However, and despite the camaraderie they receive from their European allies, their only chance to win is by understanding...

Positive News and Volunteering

2004-11-17T18:06:00.000-08:00

Positive News
21c: A Focus Beyond the conflict

Volunteering
Volunters For Israel

2004 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion

2004-11-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

American Jewish Committee

2004 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion

F. Anti-Semitism

35. Do you think that anti-Semitism in the United States is currently a very serious problem, somewhat of a problem, or not a problem at all?

Very serious problem	27
Somewhat of a problem	67
Not a problem at all	6
Not sure	0

36. Do you think that anti-Semitism on American college campuses is currently a very serious problem, somewhat of a problem, or not a problem at all?

Very serious problem	24
Somewhat of a problem	56
Not a problem at all	12
Not sure	8

37. Looking ahead over the next several years, do you think that anti-Semitism in the United States will increase greatly, increase somewhat, remain the same, decrease somewhat, or decrease greatly?

Increase greatly	9
Increase somewhat	33
Remain the same	45
Decrease somewhat	9
Decrease greatly	2
Not sure	3

38. In your opinion, what proportion of each of the following groups in the United States is anti-Semitic—most, many, some, very few, or none?


	Most	Many	Some	Very few	None	Not sure
a. Asians	2	4	38	41	9	6
b. Muslims	36	29	26	5	1	3
c. Hispanics	4	7	52	28	4	5
d. Blacks	7	16	55	17	2	3
e. Evangelical Protestants	10	14	46	18	5	8
f. Catholics	4	11	60	18	3	4
g. Mormons	5	8	40	31	8	9

39. I am going to name some countries in Europe. In each case tell me whether anti-Semitism in the country is currently a very serious problem, somewhat of a problem, or not a problem at all.


	Very serious problem	Somewhat of a problem	Not a problem at all	Not sure
a. Germany	25	65	6	4
b. Great Britain	4	60	31	4
c. France	64	29	5	3
d. Italy	4	64	24	8
e. Spain	8	63	21	8
f. Russia	25	64	6	4
g. Belgium	6	49	33	13
h. Holland	4	42	45	10

40. In your opinion, what proportion of each of the following groups in Europe is anti-Semitic—most, many, some, very few, or none?


	Most	Many	Some	Very few	None	Not sure
a. Catholics	7	13	59	13	2	7
b. Muslims	43	29	21	3	1	4
c. The far Left	13	13	43	15	3	14
d. Protestants	4	10	60	16	2	8
e. The far Right	21	20	37	8	1	12

41. Do you think that anti-Semitism in the Muslim world is currently a very serious problem, somewhat of a problem, or not a problem at all?

Very serious problem	72
Somewhat of a problem	22
Not a problem at all	2
Not sure	2

42. Looking ahead over the next several years, do you think that anti-Semitism around the world will increase greatly, increase somewhat, remain the same, decrease somewhat, or decrease greatly?

Increase greatly	19
Increase somewhat	42
Remain the same	31
Decrease somewhat	6
Decrease greatly	1
Not sure	2

Current Affairs

2004-11-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

Maven Search

(MEPF) The Middle East Political Forum
You are cordially invited to join the Middle East Political Forum's email list. The Middle East Political Forum, in its third year is an organization with a substantial membership, which reaches out to Jews and others who express a deep-rooted love for Israel and her people. Our goal is to educate; to disseminate information about Eretz Israel, both historically and on current events. You are encouraged to post any relevant information as well as interact to the posts you read.
http://groups.yahoo.com/members/MEPF/

A Time To Speak
A monthly presentation of a theme relating to Israel and the Middle East -- past and present. The contents include current events, history, commentary. and excerpts from other published writings.
http://www.israel.net/timetospeak/

Ask Yenta - let's talk.
The purpose of this website is to allow interesting, fun, and informational interaction with everyone. Please feel free to share your wisdom, criticism, and ideas.
http://www.askyenta.com/

Boycott Watch
Detailed Information about boycotts against Israeli and Jewish products.
http://www.boycottwatch.org/

CRISIS: ISRAEL
CRISIS: ISRAEL offers a forum for diverse viewpoints on the current conflict in Israel.
http://WWW.CRISISISRAEL.COM/

Cross-Currents: A Journal of Torah and Current Affairs
Free Torah and current affairs journal. Original essays on timely topics, plus reviews of Jewish, news, scientific, political journal articles - presented in a Torah context.
http://www.cross-currents.com/

Current Viewpoint
Sister site to 'JewishComment,' this site examines Jewish affairs as well as Anglo-Jewish and Anglo-Israel relations. It also reports from the United States and comments on the Middle East. It features review of books and films and has an excellent link list to other Jewish-Israel-American current affairs sites. Its Editor, Carol Gould, is an accomplished TV producer and writer.
http://www.currentviewpoint.com/

Dei'ah veDibur - Information & Insight
A window into the Jewish chareidi world in Israel and around the globe. News, comment and features about the issues that are at the forefront of current concern, the topics that are the focus of current debate and discussion.
http://www.shemayisrael.com/chareidi/

GAMLA News & Views from Israel
Top political and military commentary on what is really going on in the middle east
http://www.gamla.org.il/english/

Gilah Yisrael: End Bias Against Israel
A free, moderated organization which provides extensive resources and direction to activists dedicated to ending bias against Israel in World media.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GilahYisrael/

Hesitation Before A Syrian Peace
Israel and Syria are back at the negotiations table. What do Israeli citizens think of the chances for Peace?
http://israeliculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa121399a.htm

If I Forget You, O Jerusalem!
Inspiring articles encouraging Aliyah. A Jewish 'call to Arms' and prayer.
http://agiwodiweb.com/yerushalayim

More...

Anti-Semetism

2004-11-16T06:09:00.000-08:00

Maven Search Anti-Semetism

Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism laid out in Aish HaTorah's eye-opening online seminar.
http://www.anti-semitism.com/

Anti-Semitism
In Depth Look at World Anti-Semitism; "Jew-Hatred"; Anti-Zionism; Anti-Jewish and
Anti-Judaism Attitudes and "Beliefs"
http://antisemitisms.blogspot.com/

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism
Documents related to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Anti-Semitism_&_Anti-Zionism.html

Antisemitism and Christian Relations
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/judaism/reading-lists/antisemitism/faq.html

Anti-Semitism and the United States
Documents related to anti-Semitism in the United States.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/usanttoc.html

Antisemitism in the World Today
on-line updated country-by-country report on antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia worldwide.
http://www.jpr.org.uk/antisem/index.shtml

Anti-Semitism on the Campus
Documents related to anti-Semitism on the campus.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/antisem1.html

Anti-Semitism on the Internet
Documents related to anti-Semitism on the Internet.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/internet.html

Black-Jewish Relations
Documents related to Black-Jewish relations.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/black1.html
Centre for the Study of Historical Christian Antisemitism
The Centre for the Study of Historical Christian Antisemitism was formed in 2002 and is comprised of both Jews and Christians. Its members have dedicated themselves to the study and dissemination of information regarding Historical Christian Antisemitism. For far too many years, there has existed a wall of misunderstanding, distrust and fear between the Jewish Community and the Christian Community. The Centre for the Study of Historical Christian Antisemitism is committed to the task of breaking through this wall and assisting in the reconciliation between Jews and Christians.
http://www.hcacentre.org/

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

2004-11-16T06:06:00.000-08:00

What is the Council on American-Islamic Relations? by Daniel Pipes

CAIR is particularly worrisome because it claims to be nothing but a mild public affairs organization promoting "interest and understanding among the general public with regards to Islam and Muslims in North America," and is widely seen as such. In fact, it is radical to the core; to quote its chairman, Omar M. Ahmad (as reported by the San Ramon Valley Herald in July 1998), "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

CAIR's record includes the following unpleasantries:

* Apologizing for killers such as Hamas (a group associated with the murder
of 7 Americans) and Usama bin Ladin (charged with the devastation of September 11, 2001).

* Helping promote terrorism: In the words of Steve Pomerantz., a former Chief of Counterterrorism for the FBI, "CAIR, its leaders, and its activities, effectively give aid to international terrorist groups."

* Intimidation of patriotic Muslims who disagree with CAIR's militant agenda: In one case (Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani), the FBI has looked into charges that he received death threats after renouncing the chauvinists. In another (Khalid Durán), CAIR's attack on a writer led to a death edict against him - which CAIR has never denounced. (For details on this latter case, see http://www.danielpipes.org/article/384.)

* Associating with terrorism: Siraj Wahaj, a potential unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, sits on its advisory board.

* Bias against women: When a prosecutor in Cleveland argued that two Muslim men had engaged in the "honor killing" of their female cousin, CAIR accused him of "ethnic and religious stereotyping" and demanded he be investigated.

* Sponsorship of blatant antisemitism: At a May 1998 rally at Brooklyn College co-sponsored by CAIR, one speaker referred to Jews as "descendants of the apes."

In short, CAIR represents not the great civilization of Islam but a radical utopian movement originating in the Middle East that seeks to impose its ways on the United States. Americans should consider themselves warned: a new danger exists in their midst.

CAIR also has a history of vituperation and aggressiveness against anyone who opposes its Islamist vision for the United States. In my case, it has sent out nearly a hundred tirades impugning my reputation since July 1999. These have landed everywhere from the op-ed page of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to the hands of street picketers in Washington, D.C. and Cornell University.

Global Jewish Times

2004-11-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

Global Jewish Times

Internet Resources on Israel

Project For the New American Century

2004-11-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington, DC based think tank. The group was established in spring 1997 as a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting American global leadership.

SUBJECT: ICJ's Ruling on Israel's Fence

Letter to President Bush on Israel, Arafat and the War on Terrorism,

April 3, 2002
The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We write to thank you for your courageous leadership in the war on terrorism and to offer our full support as you continue to protect the security and well-being of Americans and all freedom-loving peoples around the world.

In particular, we want to commend you for your strong stance in support of the Israeli government as it engages in the present campaign to fight terrorism. As a liberal democracy under repeated attack by murderers who target civilians, Israel now needs and deserves steadfast support. This support, moreover, is essential to Israel’s continued survival as a free and democratic nation, for only the United States has the power and influence to provide meaningful assistance to our besieged ally. And with the memory of the terrorist attack of September 11 still seared in our minds and hearts, we Americans ought to be especially eager to show our solidarity in word and deed with a fellow victim of terrorist violence.

No one should doubt that the United States and Israel share a common enemy. We are both targets of what you have correctly called an “Axis of Evil.” Israel is targeted in part because it is our friend, and in part because it is an island of liberal, democratic principles -- American principles -- in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and hatred. As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has pointed out, Iran, Iraq, and Syria are all engaged in “inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing” against Israel, just as they have aided campaigns of terrorism against the United States over the past two decades. You have declared war on international terrorism, Mr. President. Israel is fighting the same war.

This central truth has important implications for any Middle East peace process. For one spoke of the terrorist network consists of Yasser Arafat and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Although your critics in the United States, Europe and the Arab world suggest that you and your administration bear some responsibility for the lack of political progress between Israel and the Palestinians, they are mistaken. As Secretary of State Powell recently stated, the present crisis stems not from “the absence of a political way forward” but from “terrorism…, terrorism in its rawest form.” That terrorism has been aided, abetted, harbored, and in many instances directed by Mr. Arafat and his top lieutenants. Mr. Arafat has demonstrated time and again that he cannot be part of the peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He demonstrated it in July 2000, when he rejected the most generous Israeli peace offer in history; he demonstrated it in September 2000, when he launched the new intifada against Israel; and he demonstrated it again these past two weeks when, despite the hand you offered him through Vice President Cheney, he gave sanction to some of the worst terrorist violence against Israeli citizens.

It is true that the United States has a leading role to play in the Middle East and, potentially, in resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But it is critical that negotiations not be the product of terrorism or conducted under the threat of terrorist attack. This would send a most dangerous signal to our adversaries that civilized states do not have the necessary courage to fight terrorism in all its forms.

Mr. President, it can no longer be the policy of the United States to urge, much less to pressure, Israel to continue negotiating with Arafat, any more than we would be willing to be pressured to negotiate with Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. Nor should the United States provide financial support to a Palestinian Authority that acts as a cog in the machine of Middle East terrorism, any more than we would approve of others providing assistance to Al Qaeda.

Instead, the United States should lend its full support to Israel as it seeks to root out the terrorist network that daily threatens the lives of Israeli citizens. Like our own efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Israel’s task will not be easy. It will not be accomplished quickly or painlessly. But with fortitude, on our part as well on the part of the Israeli people, it can succeed in significantly reducing the risk of future terrorist attacks against Israel and against us. And, in so doing, we will give the Palestinian people a chance they have so far not had under Arafat’s rule -- an opportunity to construct a political culture and government that do not marry their national and religious aspirations with suicide bombers.

Furthermore, Mr. President, we urge you to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As you have said, every day that Saddam Hussein remains in power brings closer the day when terrorists will have not just airplanes with which to attack us, but chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as well. It is now common knowledge that Saddam, along with Iran, is a funder and supporter of terrorism against Israel. Iraq has harbored terrorists such as Abu Nidal in the past, and it maintains links to the Al Qaeda network. If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors. Moreover, we believe that the surest path to peace in the Middle East lies not through the appeasement of Saddam and other local tyrants, but through a renewed commitment on our part, as you suggested in your State of the Union address, to the birth of freedom and democratic government in the Islamic world.

Mr. President, in that address, you put forth a most compelling vision of a world at peace, free from the threat of terrorism, where freedom flourishes. The strength of that vision lies in its moral clarity and consistency. In the war on terrorism, we cannot condemn some terrorists while claiming that other terrorists are potential partners for peace. We cannot help some allies under siege, while urging others to compromise their fundamental security. As you eloquently stated: “Our enemies send other people’s children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today.”

Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight. Israel’s victory is an important part of our victory. For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism.

Sincerely,

William Kristol

Ken Adelman Gary Bauer Jeffrey Bell William J. Bennett

Ellen Bork Linda Chavez Eliot Cohen Midge Decter

Thomas Donnelly Nicholas Eberstadt Hillel Fradkin Frank Gaffney

Jeffrey Gedmin Reuel Marc Gerecht Charles Hill Bruce P. Jackson

Donald Kagan Robert Kagan John Lehman Tod Lindberg

Rich Lowry Clifford May Joshua Muravchik Martin Peretz

Richard Perle Daniel Pipes Norman Podhoretz Stephen P. Rosen

Randy Scheunemann Gary Schmitt William Schneider, Jr. Marshall Wittmann
R. James Woolsey

Where We Stand On Israel

2004-10-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Resolution Adopted by the CCAR

Israel's Right to Exist
In addressing the current conflict, we affirm Israel's right as a Jewish State to live in peace and security within recognized international borders. There is no other nation on earth whose right to exist continues to be laid open to question after over fifty years of statehood arrived at through international recognition. The lessons of history have shown only too clearly that the Jewish People has the right, the need, and the justification to return to its ancient land after nearly 2,000 years of statelessness and powerlessness and to be allowed to live in peace.

Read the rest of it at CCAR's Web site. It's somewhat weak for my taste.

We are deeply pained by the growing poverty and hunger within the Palestinian community. The current dire situation of Palestinians is largely a bi-product of Palestinian terror but the long-lasting occupation has contributed to the Palestinians' plight.

Boo hoo. Occupation? I have problems with that term.

This following is more to my liking.

We are also conscious of the fact that the plight of the Palestinians has repeatedly been exploited by various Arab states and potentates for their own political ends. Frequently, oil rich nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, have been prepared to finance terror against Israelis while doing little to better the lot of those they term their brothers.

The Principled President

2004-10-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Bush has taken the heat in ways that American Jews can appreciate.

Jews, as a group, tend to worry, and right up there on the current angst chart is the American election. Unfortunately, the visceral distress is justified.

President George W. Bush's foreign-policy record is plain. He was the first American president to sideline Yasser Arafat and to state unequivocally that support for terrorism could no longer coexist with the status of peace partner and entitlement to American largess. In a speech on June 24, 2002, the president said: "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror."

President Bush made it clear that the Israeli fight against terrorism is not a
localized dilemma but rather part of the same war being waged by Americans against global terrorism. On March 27, 2002, the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations was made to include for the first time the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, the generic name for all of Arafat's Fatah field operatives, including Tanzim.

The greatest threat to Israel's security, Iran, was named by President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union Address as part of an "axis of evil" and hence a central enemy of the United States and world peace. On May 6, 2002, President Bush withdrew President Clinton's signature from the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court. The court's statute takes direct aim at Israelis by omitting terrorism but including settlements in its definition of the world's most egregious crimes, and by grabbing jurisdiction over nationals of countries that are not party to the treaty.

In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 21, 2004, the president looked leaders from all Arab and Muslim states directly in the eye and said: "Arab states should end incitement in their own media, cut off public and private funding for terrorism, and establish normal relations with Israel."

Throughout his tenure, President Bush has been under serious pressure to cede
greater control over the Middle East peace process to the European Union and the U.N., and to buy into their familiar refrain that the Israeli occupation is the root cause of anti-Israel terrorism. The EU and U.N. seek American support for the view that the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" is the greatest challenge to international order (as British foreign minister Jack Straw told the Labour party's recent annual conference), and American help in pushing Israel into major concessions while under fire.

President Bush has responded by telling the U.N. and EU members that they've got
it backwards. The greatest challenge to international order is the absence of democracy, and the breeding grounds for terrorism that result. Moving forward means — in the words of the president's recent U.N. speech — that "we must take a different approach" from that of tolerating and excusing "oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability.... Commitment to democratic reform is essential to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace will not be achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate opposition, tolerate corruption, and maintain ties to terrorist groups."

President Bush's stand has not been without political costs. As he pointed out in the second presidential debate: "You know, I've made some decisions on Israel that are unpopular. I wouldn't deal with Arafat, because I felt like he had let the former president down, and I don't think he's the kind of person that can lead toward a Palestinian state. And people in Europe didn't like that decision. And that was unpopular, but it was the right thing to do."

It is not surprising, therefore, that Israelis prefer President Bush to Senator
Kerry 50 to 24 percent, according to a Haaretz poll released October 15, 2004.

On the other hand, a Pew Research Center survey released in March of this year showed large majorities of Pakistanis (67 percent), Jordanians (96 percent), and Moroccans (90 percent) hold unfavorable opinions of the president. A poll released by the Arab American Institute in May shows that the vast majority of Arabs in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates view American policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unfavorably. The Iranian Tehran Times proclaimed in June, "Kerry is exactly what the U.S. needs right now." Israeli military intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Zeevi told Israeli cabinet ministers in July that "Arafat is waiting for the month of November in the hope that President Bush will be defeated. At the same time, the Pew and Zogby data show that sizeable portions of the Arab populations surveyed are favorably disposed to Osama bin Laden.

Where does all this leave American Jews who have traditionally voted overwhelmingly for Democrats? Some are primarily guided by one part of the Jewish sage Hillel's teaching that "If I am only for myself, what am I?" They reason that a Democratic president would better serve the interests of minorities and the little guy, and that there is something inherently wrong about thinking of their own well-being first. Others think, "I'm a minority too and we little guys need to stick together." Still others don't care about Israel, or at least not enough to make it a deciding factor; other issues, such as the state of the ozone layer and the Kyoto protocol, top their agenda.

One might think 9/11 should have been a turning point for the 1.5 million Jews in New York City, along with the rest of American Jews, even if they hadn't noticed that Israel has been on the front lines of the war against terror for a lot longer than they have. Now that America and Israel more clearly face a common enemy, American Jews might feel less guilt-ridden about the other element of Hillel's admonition: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"

In a world in which the future of freedom-loving little guys everywhere depends on whether America understands the fight against terrorism to be a global war, violent Islamic fundamentalism and a nuclear Iran to be global threats, and winning European and U.N. friends by serving up Israel to be pouring fuel on the fire, one presidential candidate has a courageous and principled record. The other scores debating points.

So the question for American Jews deciding whether to vote for a Republican president, in Hillel's words, is, "If not now when?" If the answer for most American Jews is never, then make no mistake about it: No Democratic president will ever feel that protecting the state of Israel is necessary to win Jewish votes — and no future Republican president will ever take the heat as President Bush has done.

Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America

2004-10-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

Jewish Recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor
World War II to the Present
1900 to World War II
From Colonial Times to 1900

Why The Jews? The Reason for Anti-Semitism

2004-10-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

Why The Jews? The Reason for Anti-Semitism
by Dennis Prager

The 2003 version of this book, which is similar to the 1983 original has a new introduction, a number of minor changes and includes a useful new 16-page chapter called "Eight Lies about Israel."

# Paperback: 272 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.71 x 8.40 x 5.45
# Publisher: Touchstone; (August 2003)
# ISBN: 0743246209

A President Kerry would be a disaster for Israel

2004-10-18T07:45:00.001-07:00

A President Kerry would be a disaster for Israel

(Martin Peretz, a Jew, is editor-in-chief and chairman of leftist The New Republic)

Then he found out — why he didn't know this is another matter — that both Carter and Baker are deeply distrusted by the Israelis, and by American Jews. There was no mystery as to why. Carter (well, how does one say this?) is not exactly a friend to the Jewish nation and, besides, his favorite politician in the Middle East was the mass murderer Hafez Assad, the late president of Syria. A huge beneficiary of Saudi business, Baker was adept at pooh-poohing concerns about Israeli security. So we are left with Kerry's other putative designee, Bill Clinton, whose national security staff was so mesmerized by the mirage of a quickie Israel-Palestinian peace at the end of his term that, according to the Sept. 11 commission report, it couldn't be bothered take out Osama bin Laden after the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole. Clinton succeeded in squeezing Israel into the extravagant Camp David and Taba formulas but failed to get Arafat to go along. At least for Israel, these proposals are now toast.

President Bush Signs Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004

2004-10-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

“I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their freedom. I believe women want to live in a free society. I believe that moms and dads want to raise their children infreedom and peace. I believe all these things, because freedom is not America's gift to the world,freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world.Extending freedom also means confronting the evil of anti-Semitism. Today I signed the GlobalAnti-Semitism Review Act of 2004. This law commits a government to keep a record of anti-Semitic acts throughout the world, and also a record of responses to those acts. This nation willkeep watch; we will make sure that the ancient impulse of anti-Semitism never finds a home in the modern world.For all Americans, these years in our history will always stand apart. There are quiet times in thelife of a nation when little is expected of its leaders. This isn't one of those times. This is a timethat requires firm resolve, clear vision, and a deep faith in the values that make us a great nation.”

2004 Political Destinations

2004-10-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

Non-Partisan

Vote Smart
FactCheck
Polling Report

Partisan

Right
Real Clear Politics
Free Republic.com
Red State
Command Post
Election Projection
RNC

Left
Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
Campaign Desk

Godwin's Law

2004-10-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

Many people have extended Godwin's Law to imply that the invoking of the Nazis as a debating tactic (in any argument not directly related to World War II or the Holocaust) automatically loses the argument, simply because these events were so horrible that any comparison to any event less serious than genocide or extinction is invalid and in poor taste.

Ralph Nader

2004-10-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

An article from the Washington Post:

"The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes to the United States and meets with the puppet in the White House and then proceeds to Capitol Hill, where he meets with hundreds of other puppets, should be replaced."

"Bush also repeated the catch-phrase . . . 'committed to the security of Israel as a Jewish state,' which is repeated almost word-for-word again and again by Israel's sycophants and Capitol Hill puppets."

Which of the above quotations is lifted from the Web site of the white supremacist National Alliance and which was uttered this summer by independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader? It's a tough one. After all, both play on the age-old anti-Semitic stereotype of powerful Jews dominating politics and manipulating hapless non-Jewish puppets for their own ends.

I went to Nader's site to read his pathetic response and found this drivel:

Perhaps The Post could point to the US government's failure to oppose human rights violations of Palestinians, Israel's demolitions of thousands of homes of innocent Palestinians, Israel's repeated violation of UN resolutions, the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians, assassinations of Palestinians, or the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Perhaps The Post could explain why a tiny country the size of New Jersey gets more foreign aid than the continent of Africa with its poverty, starvation, disease, and military conflict? Not just more?ten times more!

Nader will not back down on this issue. Visit our web site to see the discussion he is in with the Anti-Defamation League on this issue as well. Nader realizes he will take criticism for standing up to the extreme pro-Israel lobby but he sees it as critical to world peace, justice and human rights ? as well as critical to the people of Israel and Palestine. Indeed, if he is successful in making the special relationship" we have had with Israel for fifty years an issue ? a special relationship that has failed to result in a secure Israel, or peace in the Middle East ? doing so will make running for president (and all the hardship that has entailed) worth it.

Why foreign aid to our ally, democratic Israel? Where to begin?. Easy for you not to mention that with a land area 649 times bigger, a population 49 times bigger and despite the fact that many Arab countries have world's richest oil resources, most Arab countries do little to combat poverty, starvation, and disease in Africa. What islamofascist Arabs are good for is ethnic cleansing, Ralphie boy. Why don't you focus on Darfour? You must have missed Witnessing Genocide In Sudan.

It's all about the Palestinians isn't it Ralphie boy? Easy for you not to mention Palestinian homicide bombings killing innocent Israeli civilians, many of them children. Easy for you not to mention Qassam rockets killing toddlers, you self-righteous bastard.

What can Jews be thinking?

2004-10-12T08:15:00.001-07:00

I am embarrassed as a Jew to report that a recently released poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee shows that 69% of American Jews are voting for John Kerry and only 24% for George Bush. What can Jews be thinking? What Jew who has his or her head screwed on straight, who understands that Israel's chief enemies in the Middle East were Saddam Hussein and Yassir Arafat, and that George Bush removed both of them, risking his presidency to do it, could vote for John Kerry? Think about it: the entire Jew-hating world, be it Arabs or Frenchmen -- joined by the entire terrorist world -- are rooting for John Kerry. Why are American Jews unable to grasp these obvious facts? David's Blog

This is exactly how I feel about it. If you call yourself a Jew, and have looked at the information presented here at State of Israel, what is your problem?

Israels' Security

2004-10-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

Basic Facts You Should Know

The Palestinian refugee problem originated as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when five Arab armies invaded the State of Israel just hours after it was established. During the ensuing war as many as 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the newly created state. Many of the Palestinians who fled did so voluntarily to avoid the ongoing war or at the urging of Arab leaders who promised that all who left would return after a quick Arab victory over the new Jewish state. In some cases, Palestinians were forced to flee by individuals or groups fighting for Israel.

Of the Palestinians who left, one-third went to the West Bank, one-third to the Gaza Strip, and the remainder to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Syria. The Arab nations refused to absorb these Palestinians into their population and they were instead settled into refugee camps. Only Jordan's King Abdullah agreed to confer citizenship on the 200,000 Palestinian living in Jordan and the Jordan-controlled West Bank and East Jerusalem. In 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was created to oversee the economic integration of the refugees into these Arab countries. The Arab governments refused to consider integration, insisting that it would undermine the refugees' "right" to return to their home in Palestine. UNRWA continues to operate, providing relief, healthcare, education and vocational training to the refugee populations in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

During the 1967 Six Day War, another estimated 250,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank and Gaza Strip with the arrival of Israeli forces. Some of these were people who had left their homes in Israel in 1948. These individuals are considered by the international community to be displaced persons, not refugees.

A Jewish refugee problem was also created with the establishment of the State of Israel. From 1948-1951 as many as 800,000 Jews were expelled from their native Arab nations or forced to flee as a result of state-sponsored anti-Zionist violence. As many as 500,000 of these refugees fled to Israel from Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Libya and Morocco and were immediately and fully absorbed into the new nation.

Tallying the number of individuals considered Palestinian refugees today is a matter of debate. UNRWA, which registers Palestinian refugees, claims that refugees and their descendants (as of June 2000) number about 3.7 million, including those that left Israel in 1948, those that left the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, those that were already abroad but were subsequently not allowed to return to Israel, and their descendents. Israel, however, believes this number is exaggerated, and that the true figure is approximately two million. Israel also strictly distinguishes "refugees" from "displaced persons" and from "expired permit Palestinians" who were abroad at the time the conflicts ensued and had not been allowed to return. The Palestinian Authority insists that the figure is closer to six million when taking into account those refugees who are not registered with UNRWA, or live outside of the area where UNRWA operates.

Palestinians' insistence that refugees must have a "right of return" to their former homes inside Israel, and that this "right" is founded in international law, is rejected by Israel. Israel denies that there is any foundation in international law for a Palestinian "right of return," and that the non-binding international resolutions on the issue call not for a "return" to Israel, but for a just resolution of the refugee problem. Israel also argues that a "return" is not viable for such a small state, given that the influx of millions of Palestinians into Israel would pose a threat to its national security and upset the country's demographic makeup. Finally, the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees was a rallying cry in the decades that the PLO did not recognize Israel's right to exist and actively sought to bring about Israel's downfall and replace it with a Palestinian state. In 1993, the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist and committed to a negotiating process to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. Palestinian refugees should rightly be resettled in the Palestinian state, not in the State of Israel.

Israel says it is not responsible for the Palestinian refugee problem since it is the result of a war forced on Israel by invading Arab armies, but on humanitarian grounds has nevertheless agreed to be part of an international effort to resolve the situation. During negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel agreed that any Palestinian refugee who wished to do so could emigrate to the newly established state of Palestine. Israel would also cooperate in international efforts to resettle and compensate Palestinian refugees, and would consider individual cases of family unification.

Worthwhile Destinations

2004-10-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

Jewish Refugees

Israpundit Tons of links

Yourish Female view.

Yuppies of Zion Another Female view.

Debka File Hard facts, deep coverage.

FrontPageMag

Daniel Pipes Met him in person.

Jewish World Review

PowerLine Blog

National Review Online

2004-06-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

Neo-conservatives

Neo-Conservative: This is a frequently misused term. Here's the actual definition of the phrase, "Michael Harrington, the big-hearted socialist, coined the phrase to describe a bunch of "renegade" liberals and leftists who were moving right. It wasn't meant as a compliment. Indeed, in a very real sense, neoconservatism was from the beginning a more useful word to describe a phenomenon rather than a school of thought." Source: Jonah Goldberg. So for example, while David Horowitz and I may have fairly similar ideological beliefs, he is a neo-Conservative while I am not. That's because Horowitz was once a lefty and I never was. http://www.rightwingnews.com/special/jargon.php

So who are these "scary" neoconservatives I hear people on the left ranting about?: "Neocons" are often portrayed as shadowy figures (usually Jewish) who're somehow manipulating America towards war in order to help Israel or just to stoke their bloodlust.

But in reality, the term neocon was coined simply to describe left-wingers who moved to the right. Because there are a number of hawkish Jews who fit that description, neoconservatism has been identified with Jewishness and hawkishness, although neither is a requirement to be a neocon. Neocons do not have a universal set of beliefs, nor do the prescriptions of prominent neocons for the war on terrorism seem to differ significantly from those of the "average conservative".

Neocons = Conservative Jewish Hawks To The Kooks?: I probably wouldn't even bother to comment on this article from "Arab News" entitled, "Protocols of the Elders of Neocons" if I hadn't seen the sentiments in it slipping into mainstream leftist and Paleocon thought. But, since there are some people out there who buy into this sort of garbage (probably more so than many of them are willing to admit in front of a camera), I thought it was worth shooting down. Here's the opening paragraph that gives a good general idea of what the writer is trying to get across...

"In this weekly telephone report Paul Wolfowitz expressed his anxiety to Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister about the situation in the Middle East. "How are you doing?" asked Wolfowitz. "OK, OK," answered Sharon, "but you must go to Syria." Wolfowitz pondered, "this will be tougher to get the president's okay on." Sharon could not help but scream, "He does not know Damascus from Des Moines, Iowa. Move it Paul. You can always tell him that this man of peace thinks it's kosher," concluded Sharon with a hysterical laugh."

The idea here is that these "neocons" have an insidious influence on the Bush administration. Their goal? To manipulate Americans in general and the Bush administration in particular into doing Israel's dirty work. Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle are the two most often cited although I've on occasion heard David Frum & Douglas Feith's names mentioned. You even hear some people get all skittery about the influence of pundits like Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol.

I have no idea how rational people can buy into this cockeyed theory. If you look at the big four players in Bush administration foreign policy, you'll find three hawks (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice) & then there's Colin Powell who is a bit more dovish. Then there's the President himself who seems to work out of the Ronald Reagan cowboy diplomacy playbook. I could add that more than 70% of the American people supported the invasion of Iraq in the last poll I saw including a majority of Democrats. So how can anyone look at this overwhelming support for an invasion, pick a handful of Jews and go, "you caused this to help Israel!" It's just ludicrous.

Furthermore, I hate to break this to Pat Buchanan, Arab News, the French, the anti-war movement, etc, but Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Jonah Goldberg, etc, have mainstream Conservative views on foreign policy. The overwhelming majority of American Conservatives are hawkish, Pro-Israel, and strongly supported using the military to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, the majority of all Americans would have supported invading Syria in the last poll I saw so I'm sure the numbers among Conservatives are probably 70%+ there as well. So again, there's nothing unusual about the positions taken by the prominent Jewish Conservatives who kooks think are somehow manipulating the President into settling scores for Israel. Just how do you look at foreign policy position supported by almost every prominent Conservative in the US from Rush Limbaugh to Ann Coulter and go, "See! See! There are some Conservative Jews who support it too! That means it's all a plot the Jews have come up with to support Israel!" Of course, that makes no sense whatsoever.

That's why I always suspect anti-semitism when I hear someone ranting about "neoconservatives" (by which they usually mean Jewish Conservatives) influencing Bush administration foreign policy. There's simply nothing to distinguish the views of people like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle from their superiors other than their Jewishness. So to pick that out and spin conspiracy theories about it says more about the person doing the spinning than the "neoconservatives" they're speculating about...
http://www.rightwingnews.com/archives/week_2003_04_20.PHP#000876

2004-06-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

The Religious Sources of Islamic Terrorism

Shmuel Bar writes "The Religious Sources of Islamic Terrorism" in Policy Review. Serious, but quite readable. He argues that the religious-ideological factors which are deeply embedded in Islam ("Islam is, in essence, both religion and regime.") as a cause of terrorism have to be understood--even at the risk of being branded bigoted and Islamophobic--if we are to have an effective long-range strategy against terrorism.

2004-05-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

Nick Berg Beheading

Nick Berg Beheading 5 meg

2004-05-21T14:46:00.000-07:00

Republican Jewish Coalition
The Southern California regional office of the Republican Jewish Coalition recently moved to 11845 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 755, Los Angeles, CA 90064. The new phone number is 310-478-0752. The new facsimile number is 310-478-0111. Mr. Greenfield's email address is lgreenfield@rjchq.org.

Larry Greenfield
email: socal@rjchq.org
phone: 310-478-0752

2004-05-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

Yet Another Circular Firing Squad

Idiotarian
noun. A term of abuse for an advocate of what are deemed to be irrationalist and subjectivist values that have very little reference to the workings of the real world. Idiotarians are often socialist (quintessentially Noam Chomsky), but can also be paleo-libertarian or paleo-conservative. The defining phrase of idiotarianism is "it is all the fault of the United States": this is usually applied to geopolitics but is sometimes encountered with regard to cultural issues, economic issues, environmental issues, the weather, socks lost in the laundry etc.

The term is obviously highly partisan but is in quite widespread use by many blogs. However it is not a term used exclusively by the neo-conservative 'right wing' and many well left of centre or libertarian blogs have used it describe the more surrealist wings of their particular branch of political thought.

Anti-Idiotarian
noun. Someone opposed to a whole raft of political values which are derived from a fundamentally irrational meta-context (world view). Anti-idiotarians can be found across a wide section of the political spectrum and are primarily characterised by vocal rational judgmentalism, generally hawkish sentiments and transcendent loathing of Noam Chomsky.

Usage: "Like most anti-idiotarians I cannot but marvel as the sight of the Palestinian leadership forming yet another circular firing squad at the first grudging sign of reasonable behaviour by the Israeli government"
- Perry de Havilland.

2004-05-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

CAMPUS WATCH A project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds.

2004-05-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

Middle East Quarterly
Since its founding in 1994, the Middle East Quarterly has become America's most authoritative journal of Middle Eastern affairs. Policymakers, opinion-makers, academics, and journalists turn first to the Quarterly, for in-depth analysis of the rapidly-changing landscape of the world's most volatile region. The Quarterly publishes groundbreaking studies, exclusive interviews, insightful commentary, and hard-hitting reviews that tackle the entire range of contemporary concerns – from politics to economics to culture, across a region that stretches from Morocco to Afghanistan.

2004-05-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Israel Size Comparison Maps
People commonly perceive Israel to be much larger than it really is. As a result, they fail to understand how difficult and painful it is for Israel to withdraw from land it holds.

Maps of Arab countries and Israel

2004-05-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

Arab countries versus Israel
The Arab nations are represented by 21 separate countries. There is only one Jewish nation with a tiny country, Israel. The combined territories of Arab countries is 650 fold greater than Israel. Their population is 50 fold greater than Israel. The average per capita GDP in Arab countries is $3,700 versus $18,000 for Israel. This despite the fact that many Arab countries have world's richest oil resources.

Israel became a nation about 1300 BCE, two thousand years before the rise of Islam. The people of modern day Israel share the same language and culture shaped by the Jewish heritage and religion passed through generations starting with the founding father Abraham. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

2004-05-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

Dumb and Dumber Conventional ignorance about the present war (NR)
THE SO-CALLED NEOCONSERVATIVE CONSPIRACY
In a variety of subtle ways, it is alleged that the war is part of a neoconservative (read, Jewish) plot to force us to fight Sharon's battles. This conspiracy theory usually unfolds with preemptive — and often angry — disavowals that the suspicion is not at all anti-Semitic. Then it proceeds to round up the usual suspects: Perle, Wolfowitz, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, etc.

Yet if we choose to concentrate on individuals rather than on the American public (which is 98 percent non-Jewish and living outside New York and Washington, and is being polled weekly), there are really five people who are preeminent in crafting American foreign policy: George Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Three of them may be WASPs; the other two are African American. None are Jewish. All have a track record of being testy and independent, and hardly willing to be railroaded by anyone. And past history suggests that American successes in the Middle East usually lead to pressure on, not a free hand for, Israel.

There Will Never be a Palestinian Democracy (NR)
But it's unrealistic, I think, to expect anything like democracy in the southern half of the Middle East any time soon — and a dangerous illusion to expect a Palestinian democracy ever. Look, first, at Egypt, the population giant of the south. Most Egyptians still see Nasser — a megalomaniacal thug, much like Saddam Hussein — as a hero. Most still blame the same scapegoats Nasser blamed for Egypt's poverty, backwardness, and oppression: America and Israel. Egypt's current dictator, Hosni Mubarak, pretends to be our ally, but his government-controlled media is still pumping out the same old lies and excuses, still demonizing us, still pretending that Egypt's half-century of stagnation is our fault, still goading his people to channel their blind rage at us and at Israel. And what is true for Egypt is true for other southern Arab states as well.

Maimonides on War (NR)
Maimonides identifies two categories of justifiable warfare. There is the war which is a divine "commandment," including to save the nation "from the hand of the enemy that has come upon them." This requires no approval from other branches of government. There is also the category of war called "optional," driven by a need to ensure the future safety and prosperity of the country. The Talmud depicts the Biblical King David as making war against corrupt neighbors to provide his country, in danger of starvation, with sufficient sustenance (tractate Berachot, page 3b). This is not theft, but a matter of survival.

Terrorists at the Gate? War in Iraq and the escalating Palestinian rhetoric toward the U.S. (NR)
However, in the months leading up to the current U.S.-led war in Iraq, leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have issued a chilling series of statements calling for holy war against American targets in and beyond the Middle East. This rhetoric, which unequivocally advocates the use of terrorism and violence, goes even beyond the anti-American sentiments that have exploded in the region.

Getting Syrious A lifeline to the remnants of Saddam. (NR)
With its "Arab" seat in the Security Council, Damascus managed to foment division in the West. Bashar Assad is not his father, but his technique is inherited from Hafez: Divide and rule. Jaques Chirac was conquered by the young dictator, and proceeded to enlist his German colleague, Schroeder. Syria's promise to the Rhine axis was as enticing as the one made on the Russian Volga. The coalition of the unwilling was built on Syro-Saudi promises of fat contracts. Better then pitting NATO's nations against each other, the Baathist elites of Damascus reconciled their Baghdad brothers with their Wahhabi financiers. The picture of Iraq's vice president embracing the Saudi crown prince immortalized the moment. Bashar Assad was like a new Nasser, or thought he was. In short, Syria had started the political battle before the U.S. started the war.

Appease Process Reporters disregard history
(NR)
So reads the beginning of an Associated Press story last week that passes for objective but betrays the kind of insidious bias that permeates most mainstream news reports from Israel. This particular story is certainly no worse than many, and may in fact be better than most, which makes it useful as an example of what's wrong with the usual reportage.

2004-05-15T08:20:00.001-07:00

Anti-Semitism in the Arab World (ADL)
The current profusion of anti-Semitic literature in the Arab world is far from a new-born phenomenon, having deep roots that go back to the rise of Nazism in Germany and the period following the Arab defeat in the 1948 war against Israel.

Islamic Anti-Semitism in Historical Perspective (ADL)(Requires Adobe Acrobat)

Damned If You Do Historians dare to criticize Islamic dhimmitude at Georgetown and pay a price (NR)
dhimmitude — the state of formal discrimination historically imposed on Jews and Christians living under Islamic occupation.

Arafat’s Legacy A case study in terror funding (NR)
The use of the illegal drug trade as a weapon was developed by the former Soviet Union as part of its unconventional warfare doctrine. The PLO simply added illicit drugs to its arsenal as another excellent source of funding. Other terrorist organizations — such as the IRA, the Basque ETA, Colombia's FARC, and radical Muslim organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda — have understandably followed suit.

Terror TV MEMRI brings English-speakers the world of Arab hate (NR)
MEMRI's website, which is updated daily, and their pamphlets and other materials, are invaluable, and should be read by every Westerner. Examplr: A woman from Muslim Woman Magazine interviews an Egyptian preacher, who tells mothers to "suckle their children . . . on stories that will sow hatred and loathing of Jews in the hearts of the next generation."

The Humanity Gap Palestinians and human dignity. (NR)
What Shawa does not seem to understand is that Palestinians cannot close the democracy gap before they close the humanity gap. Democracy is built on a fundamental respect for human dignity. It cannot coexist with the dehumanization of Israelis, which is what the justification of baby-killing is. Before Palestinians can recognize our right to exist as a nation, they must recognize the humanity of our children.

Telling It Like It Is The only process for peace. (NR)
Israel is not occupying Palestinian land. It is occupying disputed territory to which it has a substantial claim and which was never under Palestinian sovereignty, while trying in good faith to negotiate about the disposition of that land as required by Resolution 242.

2004-05-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

The Truth About the Mideast Fourteen fundamental facts about Israel and Palestine. (NR)
The population of the Jewish state — a state envisaged in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate, and confirmed by the U.N.'s 1947 decision — is now roughly 6,500,000, of whom roughly 20 percent are Arabs (120,000 Christians), Druze, and Bedouin citizens of Israel. Of the more than five million Jewish citizens, about one-half are those Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and their descendants, who fled or left their ancient homeland when massacres, arrests, and ostracism made life impossible (a further 300,000 emigrated to Europe and the Americas, where they number over a million).

Today, a tiny, vulnerable Jewish remnant — scarcely 5,000 persons — remains in all the Arab world, less than half of one percent from the near million who were there in 1948 (this does not include the 50,000 in Turkey and Iran, left of about 200,000 in 1945). These are the forgotten Jewish refugees from Arab lands, from countries that will soon be totally judenrein just as Jordan has been since 1922.

The 22 Arab League countries cover a global surface of over six million square miles, over ten percent of the land surface on earth. Israel, by contrast, covers barely 8,000 sq. miles.

Sandstorm (Martin Kramer)
Offering an alternative reading of the history and politics of the Middle East.

The Genocidal Hamas Charter Yasser Arafat & co. (NR)
The 1988 Hamas charter (an acronym for "Islamic Resistance Movement" in Arabic) is both political and genocidal — yet the United Nations has never denounced it. It claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in Egypt in 1922. Hamas is against any Middle East peace process: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors" (Article 13).

Why Invade? The truth about Iraq. (NR)
et me tell you the truth about our reasons for invading Iraq. We are not invading Iraq to protect the credibility of the United Nations. We are not invading Iraq to bring democracy to the Arab world. We are not invading Iraq to save the Iraqi people from poverty and oppression. The reason we are invading Iraq is to prevent Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Ray of Hope? The future for Palestinian reform. (NR)
The PLO is a conglomerate of terrorist organizations. Its core, Fatah, monopolizes the claim to represent Palestinian national aspirations. Even after the Oslo agreements were signed in 1993 — in essence establishing a government, the Palestinian Authority (PA) — the PLO was not dissolved. In fact, the PA remains subordinate to the more powerful PLO.

The PLO is an unelected body governed by primary documents enshrining violence and the destruction of Israel. One man, Yasser Arafat, is both the president of the P.A. and the chairman of the PLO. The role of the PLO in Palestinian politics mirrors the distorted condition of the Soviet Union, where state institutions were subordinate to an omnipotent Communist Party. Arafat's extra-constitutional role could be compared to the role of powerful party chairmen for whom the law was a mere tool.

The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (Book)
"One of the most important books on American foreign policy in years. There is no greater strategic challenge than Iraq, and nobody better qualified to tackle it than Kenneth Pollack. To have such comprehensive, high-quality professional analysis available publicly and in real time is simply extraordinary. From now on, all serious debate over how to handle Saddam starts here."
-Gideon Rose, Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs

2004-05-15T08:19:00.001-07:00

Twenty Facts about Israel and the Middle East (Jewish World Review)
The world's attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are confronted daily with scenes of carnage and destruction. Can we understand such violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with a solid grounding in the facts of the matter—facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they were learned. Below are twenty facts that we think are useful in understanding the current situation, how we arrived here, and how we might eventually arrive at a solution.

Arafat’s Purse What it funds. (NR)
At least $4.5 billion in international aid has been given to the Palestinian Authority since 1994. According to the March World Bank study, the lion's share, $1.1 billion, was given by the U.S. to help build a civil society, establish the necessary infrastructures, and provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. Had all the aid money reached the Palestinian people as originally planned, every Palestinian could be living in his own little villa with at least a Ford in his garage. Instead, the PA leadership got richer even as the rest of the Palestinians remained poor — or became poorer — and terror became the law of the land.

Beyond KowtowingThe future of American foreign and energy policy. (NR)
There is no one birthplace for terrorism, but there are places where extreme ideologies flourish. In Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi clerics have a strangle-hold on freedom. The institutions of Church and State are one entity. Women live as third-class citizens. Textbooks teach hatred and disdain for the United States. Young men genuflect to jihad as they are indoctrinated into a bastardized religion of terror. The result is a absence of democracy. The result is 15 of 19 September 11 hijackers were from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Revenge and Competition Why the Palestinians keep terrorizing. (NR)
In this atmosphere, the main sources of continuing terror attacks are emotional and irrational demands for revenge and competition for leadership and power. The vengeance resulting from deep hatred and anger cannot be eliminated through negotiated agreements, but requires intensive security measures to destroy the explosives and unravel all of the terror networks. Arafat has never moved in this direction, and the competition between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other militias is likely to grow until all these groups are dismantled by Israeli security.

Iraqi Interrogatories The usual questions about Iraq. (NR)

Balancing the AcademyThe West stakes a claim on campus. (NR)

Won’t Get Fooled Again Same story. Different season. (Some) much wiser. (NR)

2004-05-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

9/11 (PBS)
"America Responds" is a snapshot of PBS's coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This Web site was maintained in the months immediately following the attacks, and now serves as an archive of related resources, analysis and discussion from that moment in time.

Librarians Index to 9/11 (LLI.org)

Palestinian Lies & Western Complicity (NR)

Vae Victis (Woe to the vanquished) (NR)

We Didn’t Start the Fire An anniversary. (NR)

Jihad and Jihadist Bombers (NR)

Behind the Hate The enemy’s problem. (NR)

2004-05-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

America’s Unspecial Relationship A cold look at the Saudis. (NR)
Until recently, the official position of the government of Saudi Arabia was that it remained unproven whether there were any Saudi citizens involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. They meant "unproven" not in the sense that anyone really doubted that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, but in the sense that the Saudis would really have preferred that no one take notice of that fact. The Saudi reaction to every terrorist attack against the U.S. to which the kingdom has had a connection in recent years has been a mixture of avoidance, dishonesty, and passive aggression.

Joseph’s Inheritance (NR)
For those familiar with the Bible, Shechem should ring a bell. It is the city where Joseph, son of Jacob (named Israel by God), was buried (Joshua 24:32) and where his tomb stands to this day. It is also the city where Levi and Simon, two other sons of Jacob, took vengeance for the rape of their sister Dina by a local chieftain, killing all the men of the city (Genesis 34). Despite its biblical identification with the city of Shechem, the modern city in the area is regularly referred to as Nablus in the general media. In that regard, Shechem is a symbol, a test case, of the subtle attempt, through the use of language, to disconnect Israel, the land, from the history of Israel, the nation.

Flunking with Flying Colors Failing the moral test of our times. (NR)
Palestine, in contrast, is a Potemkin democracy, with the sham facade of elections and republicanism but the dreary reality of an uninterrupted dictatorship since its inception under the Oslo accords. Arafat's initial election was rigged and the absence since then of a real opposition, parliamentary debate, and an independent judiciary proves that — along with the creation of a corrupt clique of hangers-on and often-murderous sycophants. The nature of the Palestinian Authority in and of itself lies at the heart of the entire crisis. Of course, there are sober and responsible leaders in Palestine, but they have no chance to come to the fore through a democratic and legitimate process.

Topple the House of Saud Worse than Saddam. (NR)
"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec told the Defense Policy Board last July 10. "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," he continued in remarks to this advisory panel of former elected officials and security experts. He blamed Riyadh for "a daily outpouring of virulent hatred against the U.S. from Saudi media, 'educational' institutions, clerics, officials — Saudis tell us one thing in private, do the contrary in reality."

2004-05-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

The American Jewish Committe-A Brief Guide for the Perplexed
As the order of magnitude of the horrific events of September 11 sinks in and our nation implements its multifaceted military, diplomatic, and economic response, greater public attention is once again being paid to the Middle East – in the media, on college campuses, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, much of this discussion is misinformed and lacks historical context. This paper provides some perspectives and talking points, both historical and contemporary. It is not intended as an exhaustive examination of the subject matter. The case to be made on behalf of Israel is as strong today as ever. When presented with the facts, sensible people should instinctively grasp:

Israel’s 53-year-long quest for lasting peace and security

The real dangers faced by Israel, a tiny country no larger than New Jersey, in a tumultuous, arms-laden neighborhood

Israel’s unshakeable commitment to democracy and democratic values
The common enemies of extremism and fanaticism faced by Israel and the United States

Israel’s impressive contributions to world civilization in such fields as science, medicine, technology, agriculture, and culture – contributions that are even more remarkable given the country’s relative youth and its heavy defense burden.

Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon Board (Washington Post)
A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.

Understanding Palestinian Terrorism
"When they will love their children more than they hate us, then there will be peace" - Golda Meir

Repubican Jewish Coaltion
The U.S.-Israel alliance is of tremendous importance to both countries. Israel is the only democracy in a region that is unstable and where rogue countries continue to be hostile to America. Israel is also the U.S.’s strongest ally in the War on Terrorism, and is in a unique position to facilitate the war effort in the Middle East, as well as share her extensive experience in battling terrorism domestically, militarily, and diplomatically. The evil and vicious September 11th terrorist attacks against the U.S. are indicative of the sort of terrorism Israel experiences every day.

Union of American hebrew Congregations-For the Love of Israel
News Sources-Activist Organizations-Educational materials
Example: Terror Victims

2002-07-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

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