Fitna and Free Speech

If you have been living under a rock you may not have heard about the imminent release of Geert Wilders film Fitna. While I personally do not see the utility in deliberately offending a group of people, I agree that we need to vigorously defend our Right to Free Speech.

As Peter Hoekstra, a native of the Netherlands and the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wrote in a Wall Street Journal article:

I do not defend the right of Geert Wilders to air his film because I agree with it. I expect I will not. (I have not yet seen the film). I defend the right of Mr. Wilders and the media to air this film because free speech is a fundamental right that is the foundation of modern society. Western governments and media outlets cannot allow themselves to be bullied into giving up this precious right due to threats of violence.

No Civilians Killed in Tibet

It is good to see that based on the news reports we are receiving, NOT ONE Tibetan civilian has been killed by Chinese forces. Contrast that to the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza where it seems that almost everyone killed was a "civilian".

Reuters, which has been particularly clear that Israel primarily kills "civilians" apparently does not believe that the Tibetans who have been killed are, in fact, civilians:

Tibet's self-proclaimed government-in-exile said up to 80 people had been killed in total, but Qiangba Puncog put the figure at 13.

Tsegyam, head of the Tibet Religious Foundation of the Dalai Lama in Taiwan, told reporters that more than 100 people had been killed and about 1,000 injured in the rioting.

The BBC reports that some people have "died". It's not immediately clear if they had a heart attack or succumbed to fright:

The exiled Tibetan government says at least 80 protesters died in the Chinese crackdown.

The According to the Washington Post bodies were "seen". It's not clearly if they were part of a public art performance or injured, or dead. Certainly, it is not clear if they are "civilians":

The Dalai Lama's exile organization, headquartered in Dharamsala, India, since his flight from Tibet in 1959, said Tibetans reported by telephone and Internet that they had seen about 80 bodies after the violence Friday, identifying them as Tibetans killed in the disturbances.

Actually, the only time the news reported that "civilians" were killed was when quoting the Chinese spokesperson who accused the Tibetan protesters of killing civilians. Do you think that this is so that they could justify the mayhem that they have unleashed? I guess that this is to be expected when you allow precisely those people from the places that do not have and do not believe in press freedom to control the message.

Multiculturalism & Dueling Discriminations

You gotta love Mark Steyn - not only does he get it, he writes in an inimitable verve and style that is hilarious and smart. Here is an excerpt from an article about the competing guilts surrounding Clinton and Obama's campaigns:

Surveying the Hillary-Barack death match, Maureen Dowd wrote: “People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny? Do even Democrats really talk like this? Apparently so. As Ali Gallagher, a white female (sorry, this identity-politics labeling is contagious) from Texas, told the Washington Post: “A friend of mine, a black man, said to me, ‘My ancestors came to this country in chains; I’m voting for Barack.’ I told him, ‘Well, my sisters came here in chains and on their periods; I’m voting for Hillary.’ ” When everybody’s a victim, nobody’s a victim.

Poor Ms. Gallagher can’t appreciate the distinction between purely metaphorical chains and real ones, or even how offensive it might be to assume blithely that there’s no difference whatsoever. But, if her sisters really came here in chains, it must have been Bondage Night at the Mayflower’s Swingers’ Club.

On the other hand, Barack’s ancestors didn’t come here in chains either: his mother was a white Kansan, so was presumably undergoing menstrual hell with the Gallagher gals, and his dad was a black man a long way away in colonial Kenya. Indeed, Senator Obama would be the first son of a British subject to serve as president since those slaveholding types elected in the early days of the republic. As some aggrieved black activist sniffed snootily on TV, Barack isn’t really an “African-American” — unless by “African-American,” you mean somebody whose parentage is half-American and half-African, and let’s face it, no one would come up with so
cockamamie a definition as that.

In this article he makes an excellent point about multiculturalism and sharia creep:

In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

By the way, if you are wondering why his hat says "No Gooks", check out this article.

Mi SheNikhnas ...

Just last week I was telling a friend how one of the happiest moments in my life was a Purim celebrated over 20 years ago in the company of hundreds of drunk revelers singing at the top of their lungs and dancing round and round in a large circle. That night, for the first time, I experienced an absolute joyous and expansive ecstasy - a type of out of body experience that you usually need to take drugs to induce. Yet, ironically, it was not that I felt limitless and part of infinity, but rather I lost all sense of my own body and felt as if my consciousness was one with the swirling mass.

That swirling mass is Am Yisrael and that place was Merkaz HaRav.

He Stole the Election

It's funny how history repeats itself as irony and then as farce. I wonder what the Democrats would say if in the general election the Republican candidate won the election because it was decided not to count the votes of Florida and Michigan? What would they say or do if their candidate actually won those states? Well that is what is happening to the Clinton campaign in the primaries. From the New York Times:

Senator Clinton’s advisers were also discussing Wednesday how to add the delegates from Michigan and Florida to her column. The Democratic Party stripped the two states of their delegates after they moved their primaries to January. Mrs. Clinton remained on the ballot in each state (as did Mr. Obama in Florida); she won both.

While Clinton advisers have publicly opposed talk of a “do over” contest in either state, some of her advisers said Wednesday that they were now inclined to support such a vote. They believe that her strength with Hispanics, women and Jewish voters in Florida, and with union workers and women in Michigan, would be enough to overtake Mr. Obama’s advantage with black and young voters in both states.

Mrs. Clinton and her top aides continue to oppose such a do-over, which could deeply split the Democratic Party. The alternative is waiting until July for the party to consider allowing the Florida and Michigan delegates to count at the August convention. But the Clinton advisers who support a new vote said they expected conversations on the issue to intensify in her camp.

Frankly, if the Democrats are dumb enough to choose the candidate that LOST in: California, New York, New jersey, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Texas, Massachussetts and Tennessee (all states with ten or more delegates), then they deserve to lose.

Remember, the general election is based on the electoral college and a winner take all system. Based on my calculation, Clinton already has 253 of the 270 delegates necessary to become the President to Obama's 176. Of course, those states could go Republican, but why in the world would you choose the guy who could not even carry the big states in the primaries?

Lost Innocence

I can relate to Yossi Klein Halevi when he says that he is no longer a "guilty Israeli". Like Halevi, I supported the peace process in the 1990s in the hope that I would see peace in my lifetime. I realized that this was a gamble, but when I argued with friends who were more skeptical and less trusting, I would always trumped them by saying, "You make peace with enemies, not with friends."

Yet eight years ago, after the start of the second Intifada I could no longer pretend that among our enemies there was anyone who was sincerely interested in being a peace partner. Admitting that I was wrong was not easy and in retrospect it was a long time coming. Clearly it has taken Mr. Halevi even longer to reach this point.

For those of you who might think that I am happy about Mr. Halevi joining the ranks of the disenchanted and betrayed, nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, I have long thought that one of the biggest tragedies of the conflict is that the Palestinian single-minded determination to choose violence and incitement over dialogue and concessions has alienated those of us who would be natural allies in finding a just solution and lasting peace.

Several weeks ago, I had an e-mail exchange with a friend who is a member of the ancient religion of Jainism. For those who are unfamiliar with this religion, it is "militantly" non-violent to the point where its adherents cover their mouth and sweep the ground in front of them in order to prevent the possibility of killing any living thing.

When she pressed me on the need for non-violence, I agreed with her in principle that non-violence is always better than violence. In fact, I told her that non-violence must always be the first, second and third choice. Yet at the same time, I noted that it should never be the only choice.

I think that the Talmud best expressed this in the axiom that, "Those who are kind to the cruel, end up being cruel to the kind." (Kohelet Rabah 7:16)

For anyone interested in social trends in Israel the article is a must read. Here are some excerpts:

In the early 1990s, while serving as a reservist soldier in Gaza, I became a guilty Israeli. ... More policemen than soldiers, we found ourselves enforcing an occupation whose threat to Israel's Jewish and democratic values had become unbearable.

Those were the years of the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising, and its great victory was the creation of a substantial bloc of guilt-ridden Israelis ready to take almost any risk for peace. As the Oslo peace process came into being under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the guilty Israeli became the most potent source of Palestinian empowerment. Many Israelis tried to understand for the first time how Palestinians experienced the conflict, in effect borrowing Palestinian eyes and incorporating elements of the Palestinian narrative into our own understanding of history.

By the end of the 1990s, a majority of Israelis were considering previously unthinkable concessions such as uprooting Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and redividing the city of Jerusalem. We moved in this direction anxiously. The Palestinians were already beginning to lose the goodwill of guilty Israelis by then. Under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, their media, schools and mosques inculcated a culture of denial that rejects the most basic truths of Jewish history, from our ancient roots in the land of Israel to the veracity of the Holocaust.

... The result of all this is that today the guilty Israeli has become nearly extinct. Just as we came to realize during the first intifada that the occupation was untenable, so we have now come to realize that peace is impossible with Palestinian leaders for whom reconciliation is a one-way process.

So far, the rockets aimed at Israel have been primitive and mostly terrorize and wound rather than slaughter. But it is only a matter of time before Hamas' allies in Iran and Hezbollah upgrade the rockets' lethal effect. Meanwhile, the psychological damage has been profound: Israelis perceive their government's failure to defend southern Israel as a collapse of national sovereignty. The political fallout has been no less intense: Gaza was a test case for Israeli withdrawal, and the experiment was a disaster. How, Israelis wonder, can we evacuate the West Bank and risk rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?

Gaza's people are being held hostage to a political fantasy. And the international community is abetting the tragedy. The U.N. actually considers Palestinians to be permanent refugees, to be protected in squalid but subsidized camps even though they live in their own homeland of Gaza, under their own government.

And so we move toward the next terrible round of conflict. This time, though, for all our anguish, we will feel a lot less remorse. Because even guilty Israelis realize that, until our neighbors care more about building their state than undermining ours, the misery of Gaza will persist.

Yes He Does!

Not surprisingly, few Western newspapers reported this story because they don't believe that Abbas could really mean what he said.

I believe that this denial stems from several factors: 1) A strong desire for things to work out; 2) An inability to appreciate the fact that not everyone in the world shares our humanistic and enlightenment values. This leads to what Salman Rushdie called "soft prejudice" or the inability to believe that the "other" could really mean what they say. It is prejudice because it stems from a patronising attitude. It is dangerous because it inevitably leads to cognitive dissonance.

This, in turn, leads Westerners to not report these stories or to write them off as sops for internal consumption that should not be taken too seriously.

Yet, the very fact that these statements are most often made in Arabic to Arabic news outlets and not in English to Western audiences should actually set off alarm bells.

For starters, it is much easier to lie in a language that is not your mother tongue. Foreign languages simply do not have the emotional resonance and are not as fraught with meaning as one's mother tongue. Anyone who has learned swear words in a foreign language understands this dynamic.

Secondly, the fact that these statements are primarily for internal consumption suggests that Abbas and others who employ this tactic are aware of what they are saying and how it will "play in Peoria"

So, without further ado, this is what the "moderate" Abbas said to the Jordanian newspaper Al Dustur (emphasis mine):

...Abbas said that he is against an armed conflict at this time, but things may differ in the future.

Abbas, a leading figure of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was quoted as boasting about the fact that he was the one to "fire the first bullet of the resistance" back in 1965, adding it was the PLO that taught many around the world "how to resist, when resistance is most effective and when it is not."

"I had the honor to lead… we taught everyone, including the Hizbullah, the ways of resistance. They were all educated in our training camps."

According to al-Dustur, Abbas does not demand of Hamas to acknowledge Israel, but rather wants it to join a government which will negotiate the recognition.

"I demanded that a unity government be formed, to negotiate with Israel… that is what I told Syrian President Bashar Assad – and he backed me up.

"Hamas entered an election based on the Oslo Accords, which recognize Israel. I am not the only one pushing for such recognition, the Arab initiative – which is a consensus in the Arab and Muslim world – calls for it as well."

The Palestinian president also said he objects to Israel's definition as a Jewish State: "We negated the concept in the Annapolis peace conference and it almost ended because of it… they wanted us to state we recognize Israel as a Jewish State in the closing statements, but we wouldn't hear of it."

So, please remind me what exactly is the difference between Hamas and Fatah? Clearly their differences are over tactics and strategy and not over substance.

Time to Start (Re)Producing

While the Jerusalem Post seems to be heartened by the fact that Jews are the highest earning group in the United States, I think that the findings of the Pew Forum are actually quite discouraging. Jews are now the second most educated group (after Hindus) and Jewish birth rates are the LOWEST for all religious groups.

Aside from the obvious fact that this does not bode well for Jewish continuity in America it brings to mind a group of rich, spoiled people living lavishly in big empty homes.

According to the report the Mormons, followed closely by Muslims are the two groups most likely to have children in their homes. The above photo is of a Mormon family.

Jews are the highest-earning religious group in the United States, with 46 percent of the working population earning a six-digit figure every year, according to a study released this week.

In terms of annual earnings, the only other group to even come close to the average Jewish income was the Hindus, with 43 percent earning over $100,000.

The study, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, also showed that, after Hindus, the Jews were the second most educated religious group in the US. 35 percent of Jews were found to have done at least some graduate work, as opposed to 48 percent amongst Hindus.

The survey found that Jews were aligned with the national averages in terms of marital status and divorce rates, but showed that the Jewish birth rate was the lowest among religious groups, with 72 percent of those polled replying that they had no children.

JTA Reports that "Jews are tied with Mormons as the sixth largest faith group, each claiming 1.7 percent of the country’s adult population." How long do you think that will last?

Not Stunde Null

Stunde Null or "zero hour" is what the moment that the Nazis capitutated is called in Germany. From the German perspective, this reflects the sense that the Nazi era ended and a new era commenced from that moment.

A group of German academics are peddling a "manifesto" that they have written which contends that:

"... German responsibility toward the Palestinians is "one side of the consequences of the Holocaust which receives far too little attention." The paper goes on to argue that it was the Holocaust which Germany perpetrated that brought about "the suffering that has persisted [in the Middle East] for the last six decades and has at present become unbearable."

As I have already argued here in this blog, the notion that Israel was created as a consequence of the Holocaust is historically false. If you are bent on looking for ultimate causes, then the British Mandate from 1922 was set up with the express purpose of establishing a national homeland for the Jewish people. This, in turn, was the result of decades of concerted efforts by many Jews from across the political spectrum to regain our national rights over our land. And this was the result of several hundred years of politcal as well as several thousand years of religious Zionism.

If anything, the Holocaust did two things: 1) It proved definitively that the Bundist notion that rather than run away from our problems it was our responsibility to "Make Europe better for the Jews" was fundamentally flawed and; 2) It added to the sense of urgency on the part of Jews to regain our homeland.

The United Nations, which ALSO passed a resolution creating the state of Israel BASED ON the League of Nations Mandate specifically instructed members not to take the Holocaust into consideration during the deliberations.

So, sorry folks, but this did not start with you, and you should keep your noses out of our affairs.

Dubious Distinction

According to Phillip Jacobson, who recently spent three days in Sderot and reports on the harrowing experience for the Daily Mail:

Sderot has a unique civic claim: on a rocket-per-head-of-population basis, it is the most targeted town in Israel, indeed the world.

It is more than six years since the first rocket was launched from Gaza.

Since then, well over 2,000 Qassams – named after a fiery Muslim preacher – have landed in or around the town killing 13 people (including four children) and injuring several dozen more. Since the beginning of this year, at least 300 rockets have been fired.

While the media has constantly asserted that the source of Palestinian anger is this, that, or some other Israeli action, it never asserts the reverse. When Palestinians were blowing themselves up on a daily basis, the media did its best to understand the phenomenon. Their conclusion? What did Israel expect when Israel was occupying Palestinian lands? What did you expect, when Israel had so "humiliated" the Palestinians?

Well, since then Israel ended the occupation and an entire Israeli population has had their homes turned into a battlefied. Where are the apologists now? Why is no one prognosticating dire warnings about what this may lead the residents of Sderot to do? Will anyone defend the residents of Sderot if they take the matter into their own hands? Or do they deserve what is happening to them and thus do not even deserve our compassion and comprehension?

The fact that almost no Western reporter has bothered to do what Mr. Jacobson did - spend three days in the line of fire - sadly leads me to the conclusion that this is, in fact, what most reporters think.

Hands-On Judaism

One of my best Friday night Shabbat meals ever was in Thane, India about 5 years ago. After prayers at the local synagogue, I was kindly invited to dinner and had the unrivalled opportunity to learn more about the small Indian Jewish community.

Even better, I had the chance to eat delicious curried goat! When I asked where they had gotten Kosher goat meat, I was told by my host that he had shechted (ritually slaughtered) it himself earlier in the day.

Now that is what I call hands-on Judaism!

Here is a nice recent article on the Indian Jewish Community in the United States.

Here is an article Indian theater production of Fiddler on the Roof in Hindi!

Have You Heard?

Here is something that will never make the evening news. From the website Ya Libnan:

The state-run National News Agency reported that Abbas Abbas, 13, was shot and seriously wounded by Syrian border guards ( Hajanah) at the Grand River borderline in north Lebanon. He died later from his wounds at the hospital in
Akkar.

Apparently, Lebanon is trying to get Syria to demarcate their mutual border and the Syrians are not too keen to do so. In fact. only yesterday Syrian troops invaded Lebanon:

The Syrian intelligence forces and Syrian border guards invaded Lebanon yesterday and stormed the house of Hussein Ali Aldedda and fired three bullets at him wounding him in his hand, elbow and hip, before withdrawing back to the Syrian territory according to the Arabic daily Al-Nahar

Aldedda ( 41) lives in the Bekaa region , inside the Lebanese territory near the Syrian border. No explanations were given for the Syrian actions.