Kesher Talk: 02/10/2002

Piracy on the high seas... by the U.S.: "While the focus on the naval anti-terrorist war is concentrated in the Arabian Sea, the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet is quietly interdicting Syrian shipping in the Mediterranean to the point where the Foreign Ministry in Damascus has summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires to protest "acts of piracy." The level of stop and search is so intense that some shippers are avoiding Syrian ports for the time being. Last week the Capitaine Mohammed and Hajji Rahma, sailing from the Turkish port of Mersin to Syria, were stopped by American naval vessels. After a thorough search of their citrus cargoes, they were allowed to proceed on their way. The weekly al Iqtissadiya calls the American naval actions "a blockade." " (UPI hears, Feb. 11)

Jewish Porn Strikes Again! California synagogue Beth Ami has stepped into the pornographic era. Set to debate Rabbi Mark Blazer on February 19 is veteran porn star Nina Hartley, star of such artistic films as "Debbie Duz Dishes" and "One Size Fits All."

Nina is, ahem, excited. "Sexual knowledge is sexual knowledge, and one way you learn it is when you do it... And most people haven't done it as much as I have. They want to hear from me because I'm a professional."

When asked how he would explain that to a Jewish mother, Rabbi Blazer, replied "Oh, my mom will be there... My mom was very open about sex and from that I learned the importance of sexuality as an important component of a good marriage."

Now, to be frank, to discuss sex in an adult education class is not outlandish in the slightest. Judaism has lots of strictures regarding sex, but certainly does not frown on it. Jewish law sees sex as a vital part of marriage and failure on the part of a husband to provide for a wife's sexual needs is grounds for divorce.

But a porn star in a synagogue debating kosher sex? Sheesh.

Read more in the Long Beach Daily News

Caleb Carr unabated: Fresh from his appearance on the Today show, Caleb Carr's book on terrorism is reviewed in the Christian Science Monitor. The reviewer feels it necessary to conclude that war is not the answer...

Well, I guess the plans are off now: It seems that Iran is opposed to America taking the war on terrorism to Iraq. Oh no! Does that mean we get to slam Iran first?

More Anglo anti-semitism: In the Independent, David Aronovitch declares, "If the editor of the New Statesman, Peter Wilby is an anti-Semite, then I am a gefiltefisch." And Andrew Iain Dodge is back at it today, discussing a peculiar article in the Spectator on Christian anti-semitism.

Funding the enemy: "Egypt won pledges today for more than $10 billion in aid and loans over the next three years to support its ailing economy, about twice the amount donors have offered to rebuild Afghanistan." (Washington Post, Feb. 7)

Dealing with the Yasser: Comment from Dispatches:

One other related observation. On “60 Minutes” this Sunday, Wallace was interviewing Yasser Arafat. Wallace, as only he can, continued to ask why the Israeli’s were in occupying Palestinian territory and he really couldn’t, didn’t, or wouldn’t answer-he simply said he didn’t know. I don’t know? So why the suicide bombers? So let me get this straight: the Palestinians are ‘led’ by Arafat and he doesn’t know the score?

The Palestinian-Soviet connection: Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky wrote in the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 8) in response to Arafat's NY Times op/ed in which he called for peace:

Though there are leaders whose vision helps us see beyond the often-harsh reality we confront and points us toward a better future, there are also leaders who use the language of "peace," "justice" and "freedom" only as an ideological façade behind which they mask their true intentions.

Stalin was a perfect example of how a leader with Orwellian flair can employ a beautifully sounding "vision" to cloak the most horrific evil. While many in the free world believed in his promises of peace, freedom and justice in an age of universal brotherhood, Stalin was using communism to justify the murder of tens of millions of people.

Religion in Academia: Alan Wolfe wonders if religion is returning to campus. "No aspect of life is considered so important to Americans outside higher education, yet deemed so unimportant by the majority of those inside, as religion." But that "may be changing, however, as a wide variety of social and intellectual trends converge."

Wolfe reviews several new academic books on religion and American society.

Speaking the unfortunate truths: A sociologist Steven Cohen, speaking at the first joint meeting of five major organizations of Conservative Judaism, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, that American Jews "have adopted a more consumerist orientation to Jewish institutional belonging. They will support and buy into communities, agencies and people where they find purpose and meaning. If not, they are prepared to walk away." (AP, Feb. 12)

Live and Let ...: "George Bush's predecessor accepted a foreign policy modus vivendi that tolerated the existence of regimes and groups actively inimical to America on the grounds that they posed no vital danger. It was not so much a case of live and let live as live and let them kill a few of our Marines. ("War on Bush's Watch," Michael Kelly)

Inside BL: Howie Kurtz shows how an interview with Bin Laden sheds light on his views.

The impending "cakewalk": Ken Adelman writes in the Washington Post about why we should invade Iraq: it will be a "cakewalk." Iain Murray suggests that "Perhaps "cakewalk" should be become the realist's answer to the pessimist's "quagmire"... "

More on the Islamic textbooks: Daniel Pipes has exposed a biased textbook on Islam; now, the publisher defends itself, but not particularly well: "Mr. Pipes did not contact Houghton Mifflin to obtain correct information about Across the Centuries."

As Pipes told Fox News this morning, all he did was read the book - most of the sixth and seventh graders at whom the textbook is aimed are unlikely to talk to the publisher to "clarify" what it says...

Watching the New Statesman fry: Correspondence from Andrew Iain Dodge on the New Statesman's anti-semitism problem:

While I take great pleasure in watching them squirm, it does pain me to Denis Sewell so affected. Denis is an old freind of mine and he does not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. He routinely writes on Catholic issues including an expose and book on how many Catholics are high up in politics in the UK. Funny enough he never complained that anyone went after him because he was being anti-Catholic.

I think that weasle apology was disgraceful. Surely a magazine is suppose to occasionally rankle a few people. It seems the editor is so keen to get on with his fellow left-wingers that has lost his spine. I believe that neither the magazine nor Denis meant to be anti-semitic. That fact that editor does not have the courage to say that and stand by it is pathetic.

True, Andrew. The New Statesman gets facts horribly wrong and pisses people off every week - why all the fuss now?

HFP discovers terrorist trading cards: "Happy Fun Pundit reporters have discovered that Al-Qaida may be turning to new funding methods after having most of their assets seized by U.S. law enforcement."

He has a sample of the new the new 'Osama Bin Laden Trading Card' set.

Yasser's Sanity in Tatters: The old man is losing it. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat pulled a gun and pointed it into the face of his West Bank security chief, Jibril Rajoub, in a meeting at the Ramallah compound Monday night. Arafat began slapping Rajoub and shrieking "He wants to replace me" before being pulled off by aides. The story leaked out from Palestinian sources after Rajoub supporters began to gather at the compound claiming he was being detained and demanding his freedom. The argument began with Arafat complaining that Rajoub should not have let the Hebron mob break into the Palestinian Authority's prison and free 17 militants. This news will disturb CIA Director George Tenet, whose old friend Rajoub keeps a photo of himself and the American spymaster arm-in-arm and beaming on his office wall. (United Press International: UPI hears ...; further stories in the Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz and the New York Post)

Does the left hand know what the right foot is kicking?: Colin Powell just can't seem to make up his mind. Are we at war or not? Today, he says not: "The president has made no decisions . . . and no recommendations on his desk even though as a matter of prudence we should be examining options with respect to all of these countries. But the first instance is looking at diplomatic and political means..."

Nattering Nabobs of New England Negativism: In the Boston Globe (Feb. 13), Robert Kuttner does the dirty deed. "Though the war itself yielded a swift military victory against the Taliban, the aftermath vindicates many of our doubts about policies foreign and domestic." Kuttner is most concerned about Bush's "blunders" in calling the axis of evil an "axis" of "evil," when we have all these evil rich people here in the U.S. we haven't gone to war with yet.

Deterrance: It is an "old school" notion, but one I adhere to. Today, Thomas Friedman, despite his other concerns, decides it is important as well:

Sept. 11 happened because America had lost its deterrent capability. We lost it because for 20 years we never retaliated against, or brought to justice, those who murdered Americans. ... So our enemies took us less and less seriously and became more and more emboldened. Indeed, they became so emboldened that a group of individuals — think about that for a second: not a state but a group of individuals — attacked America in its own backyard. Why not? ... ... America's enemies smelled weakness all over us, and we paid a huge price for that.

Ain't it grand, what a little use of brute force can do? For instance, Yemen is slowly warming to the U.S., and even making a slight effort to help us solve the U.S.S. Cole case.

Anti-semitic graffiti in San Francisco: Temple Beth Jacob is no stranger to vandalism. On Saturday night, vandals sprayed the synagogue with a red swastika, the word ""Nazi,'' and the number "187,'' the penal code for murder.

New Statesman defends itself: After publishing an article on Britain's "Israel lobby," the magazine is in full ass-covering mode.

Jewish Olympians: The Jerusalem Post reports that there are a few Jews that might bring home medals from Salt Late.

But I think they missed somebody! Maurice Rozenthal is playing for the French Olympic hockey team. Anybody able to confirm my suspicions that I have just identified the second-most important male Jewish hockey player?

Canadian navy enters the war: "Canadian television reported Friday that a Canadian warship in the Arabian Sea had seized a tanker suspected of smuggling oil from Iraq, leading many to suspect that the report was a hoax. "You're kidding, right? Canada has a warship?" asked U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Like for war?
(SatireWire)

Mr. Joe Intellectual: Just got an email from out of the past. Guy Brimmel, president of the Men's Group at my alma mater, Trent University. He found my old paper, Mr. Joe Intellectual and the Media, online, and was pleased to see that someone had immortalized his dispute with the university.

Since this if off-topic for Kesher Talk, I won't go into depth here. I was looking at political theory's approach to power and perceptions of power. In hindsight, it is more than a bit simplistic...

Brummel had this to say: "That was an interesting time 1992, hardly a year goes by that I don't get an email out of the blue from someone who hated me then,.. but now still touched by the 'intent' of our exercise writes me to simply say 'I finally got it'. Ten years later I am finding that more and more I was completely right about the state of sexual politics in our post, post modern society. My seven year old daughter is warming me up to the new threats of our post, post, post modern society."

Book source: Just discovered the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. They seem to have lots of interesting Jewish texts...

Sour text: Daniel Pipes examines the second edition of a Houghton Mifflin textbook on Islam, which serves more as one-sided propoganda than education.

In the January edition of Commentary magazine, Pipes asked, "Who is the Enemy?" He said that the situation is grim but by no means hopeless, as long as Americans understand that they are "not involved in a battle royal between Islam and the West, or what has been called a "clash of civilizations.""

I'm one pissed off Jew: The American Jewish Committee, supposedly representing me and my interests at every turn, is still snubbing me. The public relations director, Kenneth Bandler, will not return my calls. Despite AJC promises to send me documents and studies I request, I have not received so much as a form letter. What is wrong with these people?

A pity we did not teach them a lesson two decades back: The New York Times writes about Sergeant Rodney V. Sickmann, a Marine who stood guard at the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

On orders from his superiors, Sergeant Sickmann did not so much as lob a tear gas grenade at the mob coming to occupy the embassy. Now he thinks he and his fellow guards should have started shooting.

"Had we opened fire on them, maybe we would only have lasted an hour," he said. But if he and 51 others had died there, rather than becoming hostages for the next 444 days, "we could have changed history," he said, by sending the message that Americans could not be attacked without cost. Instead, he said, the surrender sent the message that there was no penalty for attacking the United States.

(Courtesy of OpinionJournal's Best of the Web)

The chronicles of "enemy radio":

The Idler looks at how National Public Radio skewered an investigation of their own anti-Israeli bias. The interviews with CAMERA that they taped were turned into a defense of their on-air balance. Enemy radio's biased broadcasts continue unabated.
Jeff Jacoby (Feb. 7) gets more specific: NPR has blacklisted Islamic terrorist expert Stephen Emerson for 3 1/2 years.

Emerson: I was reading Emerson's work a long time ago, and sought a job with him after graduate school. He was keen to know about the anti-Israeli bias of my British professors and the Beeb, but I was not hired in the end. It is a pity, cause I was certainly excited at the opportunity. I hope to offer a review of his new book, "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us," as soon as I have read it.

Splitting Middle Eastern hairs: Bruno Tertrais, a researcher at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, writes a curious opinion in L'Asie Nucleaire, published by the French Institute for International Relations, the country's foremost think tank on foreign relations.

"If ever Iran does choose to go ahead and give itself a nuclear device... then chances are it will be a Persian bomb much more than an Islamic bomb."

And the difference is... what, exactly? Do we distinguish the ethnicity or religious background of weapons these days? A whole new kind of racial profiling is in the works.

Am I supposed to feel better that the U.S. is being threatened by a non-theologically-inspired nuclear bomb?

Cuban Jewry: Now here is a piece of genuine Jewish news: Cuba used to have a ton of us! According to Myles Kantor, "A vibrant Jewish community of approximately 12,000 lived in Cuba before Castro came to power in 1959. Since then, over 90 percent of those people have fled the country."

Aside from running down the obvious evidence that Catro's Cuba has been an enemy of Israel - hey, most countries besides the U.S. fall into this category - Kantor illustrates a Cuba nearly identical to the hey-day of the Soviet Union.

So why haven't Jewish organizations taken up the mantle of "Save Cuban Jewry," the way they campaigned for Soviet Jewry so effectively in the eighties? I presume it is because they just don't think of it that way, given how media attention never focuses on Castro critically.

It seems that some Jewish organizations even undermine the cause of Cuban Jewry by underwriting Castro's regime. "American ORT, for instance, has planned a "Mission to Havana" for March 14-18. The cost of the trip—approximately $2000 per person—includes an "English-speaking guide" and will pour much-desired dollars into the regime. The B’nai B’rith has the chutzpah to feature a photograph of Fuhrer Castro on its website for "humanitarian missions" to Cuba."

Wretched. I sense a potential Jewish grassroots campaign in the making. Where do I sign up?

The Western links: Robert Goldberg argues that a world which will not support Israel, will not support itself.

Implicating Sadaam: John LeBoutillier argues that the Iraqi dictator was behind the terrorist attacks.

Sorry, John, the evidence is not there. But your other point, that we need to tackle Iraq, is much more accurate.

Kesher Talk

Thursday, February 14, 2002

Wednesday, February 13, 2002

Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Monday, February 11, 2002

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