Kesher Talk: 03/17/2002

Friday, March 22, 2002

Questions to answer: My colleague Iain Murray outlines questions that must be answered before we can take on Iraq. We've pretty well already answered them...

Good shabbos: That's enough for today.

Don't expect any postings over the weekend, as our phone lines at home have recently decided not to accept modem usage (if anyone has any clue why, do please let me know).

Why the Chicago Tribune won't call a spade a spade:

it's one thing to recognize a terrorist act, and another for a reporter to label it as such in a news story. The Tribune has no written policy on this, but a practical policy has evolved, and it is very like that of the international wire services.

A computer search of the newspaper's stories containing the word "terrorist" for several recent dates showed a highly consistent pattern: We routinely refer to the attacks of Sept. 11 as acts of terrorism, but withhold that designation from other actions in other places (mainly the Middle East) where some people argue it is warranted.

How to justify the difference? Well--and this is just one journalist's view--the Tribune is an American newspaper written principally for an American audience and owing its existence and independence to the American Constitution. Our perspective is inescapably American (which is not to say it is necessarily the same as that of the U.S. government). Inevitably, as the news of Sept. 11 is reported and interpreted, that perspective is reflected in the product. Indeed, it almost has to be if we are to speak intelligibly on those events to our audience. Our perspective on events in the Middle East also is American, which is to say it is not identical to that of any of the contending parties. To faithfully report and interpret the events there for our American audience, we must refrain from consistently labeling either party as terrorists, because to do so is, in effect, to declare it illegitimate. (Don Wycliff, Chicago Tribune, "Sorting out usage of the T word." Mar. 21)

Media Minded translates: "In other words, the American media, because it is American, has no business commenting on current events in another part of the world. Don't expect us to distinguish between those who blow up innocent civilians and the sometimes harsh military actions undertaken to make those terrorist (there, I said it) outrages stop. After all, there's two sides to the story!"

Who ya gonna believe, asks Grasshoppa, who has found contradicting statements from MSNBC and the New York Times on the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Does Arafat control them or not?

He also pointed me to this Jerusalem Post item: "Distraught that some reservists are refusing to serve in the territories, a reserve company has volunteered for duty in Judea and Samaria."

Polling watchdog slams media coverage of Gallup poll of Islamic world: It is not just me upset by the methodology of the poll and how the news media reported it. The National Council on Public Polls expressed the following concerns:

News stories based on the Gallup poll reported results in the aggregate without regard to the population of the countries they represent. Kuwait, with less than 2 million Muslims, was treated the same as Indonesia, which has over 200 million Muslims. The "aggregate" quoted in the media was actually the average for the countries surveyed regardless of the size of their populations.

The nine countries in the Gallup study do not represent the Muslim world. Gallup never claimed it had a representative sample of Muslim countries. However its findings, as reported by USA Today, claims to be a study of the Muslim world. CNN also reported a single number that represented Muslims. The aggregate figures do not even represent the results across the nine countries. The nine countries in the Gallup study comprise only about 40% of the world's Muslim population. Four of the excluded countries had larger populations of Muslims than many of those that were included. Excluded were India, Bangladesh, Egypt and Nigeria. On the other hand almost two thirds of the Muslims in the nine countries Gallup studied live in Indonesia and Pakistan. (Note: both CNN and USA Today did report results for the nine countries in addition to the aggregate data.)

The surveys were samples of all residents of the countries surveyed, not only Muslims.

Robert Morin and Claudia Deane, in their Washington Post Poll Watchers column today, call the reporting of the Gallup poll "Enron arithmetic." The use of aggregate numbers (which I railed against in my original commentary) is ridiculous unless you weight for the difference in population size between the nations being surveyed.

If the results of the two countries were averaged together, which is what NCPP said that USA Today and CNN did, the result suggests that about 20 percent of these Muslims seemed to view the attack as justified.

But if the results were properly adjusted to account for population, the result is very different: About 5 percent of all Muslims in Kuwait and Indonesia thought the terrorist attacks were morally justified.

Morin and Deane say, "It's as if California and South Dakota each were granted the same number of electoral votes in presidential elections."

So were the reporters guilty of fudging the data? They point the finger at Gallup.

The aggregates were clearly noted in the first fax sent by Gallup to USA Today and CNN, which also included the country-by-country results. "I didn't do the arithmetic," Stone said.

Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, acknowledged that the aggregates were included in the material supplied to news organizations. So that means Gallup itself is partially to blame for the snafu, right?

"I don't know," Newport said.

Newport said Gallup analysts repeatedly cautioned against using the aggregated numbers when the results we re released at a seminar in Washington. But no such warning appeared on Gallup's first release to Stone or to reporters at CNN. And it was this release that reporters used to prepare their stories.

Interesting, since Newport is a VP of the National Council on Public Polls. This was actually as point I've raised with the Council before - how the watchdogs can watch themselves. It appears that they can manage, although it sure takes them a while to get moving!

As Morin and Deane conclude,

None of this should suggest that the headlines from the Gallup Islamic poll would have been dramatically different if appropriate adjustments had been made or if only the country-by-country figures had been used. However you slice and dice the data, the fact remains that many Muslims in these nine countries don't like the United States.

Of course it's easier to report one overall average number than nine separate findings. But in this case, it was also wrong and unnecessary.

And another saga of bad data continues...

Arafat, Fatah and Al-Aqsa: "After seizing Palestinian offices and scouring thousands of papers, Israel says documents show Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat authorized payment to a militant who allegedly had been involved in killing several Israelis. Israel's Public Security Ministry says the documents are important because they indicate that instead of arresting militants, Arafat provided support to fighters in his Fatah movement, which includes a militia responsible for many deadly attacks - including a suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Thursday. The Palestinians said the money was for political and social activities only." (AP)

Talking strategy in the Middle East: The Daily Pundit has some interesting analysis of the U.S.-Israeli diplomatic dance. It does not bode well for Iraq... David Warren has this interpretation of Vice-President Cheney's Middle Eastern meanderings: "Indeed, the message at large to the Arab world from Mr. Cheney comes to this: "Talk is important." If you don't have a dialogue going with the U.S., then you are right to lose sleep. And the way to keep it going is to play straight, for there is no time left for silly lies and impostures."

Lebanese multimillionaire's death stirs controversy: Michael Youssef Nassar, 39, a Lebanese multimillionaire, died earlier this week in Sao Paulo in a gangland-style slaying. Police are stymied not by a lack of suspects, but rather, that there are so many. While there is some speculation that Nassar was silenced by the Israelis because of his involvement with the Lebanese Christian militia's massacres in the Palestinian Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in 1982, a report on the Lebanese Foundation for Peace Web site claims that Nassar and his wife were killed by Hezbollah. Nassar's fiscal dealings were sufficiently convoluted that he was under investigation by the intelligence services of the United States, Britain, France and Israel at the time of his death. His shady dealings during his six years in Brazil attracted the attention of the local authorities, impressed by his 300 percent profits on his real estate holdings. Nassar enriched himself enormously in the aftermath of the end of the Lebanese civil war, when he and his business partner Syrian Monzer al Kassar supplied surplus Falangist weaponry to eager clients ranging from Colombia's FARC rebels to the Taliban. Fleeing Lebanon in fear of his life, Nassar first went to Romania, where he got involved in cigarette smuggling. Brazilian investigators are seeking leads among the country's 7 million Lebanese immigrants, but are making little headway, where the average immigrant admires Nassar's ability to compile a $200 million fortune in his brief 39-year life. (United Press International: UPI hears ...)

From Mike Sultan: Wiping off the important stuff: "The White House has ordered all federal agencies to remove any sensitive information from their websites.

They ordered that all information that might help terrorists be removed from the Web.

For example ... the Presidential Nuclear Launch Code website ... gone ... no longer available."

Looking for "truth"? Give this one a miss: OPPOSITION TOWN HALL _ 6:30 p.m. The New Black Panther Party and the Muslims for Truth and Justice hold a ``National Opposition Town Hall Meeting'' to present a breakdown of what they say is President Bush's U.S. global war against Islamic and African self-determination. Panelists include Atty. Malik Shabazz, chairman, New Black Panther Party; Imam Mohammed Asi, Islamic Center, Washington, D.C.; Tandi Sakupwanya, Zimbabwe Embassy; others. Location: National Press Club.

Getting to the point: H.D.S. Greenaway is an international affairs columnist with no understanding of international affairs. But that is an issue for another day. After a rambling column of nonsense, he gets to his two real points: (1) "For when all is said and done, the Arab-Israeli struggle comes down to occupation, occupation, occupation. And removing it is the best way - perhaps the only way - Israel can be secure within internationally recognized frontiers." ; (2) "And only United States intervention can make that possible."

Like Thomas Friedman, I am coming around to the belief in number 2. But as for number 1, despite Greenaway's usual hallucinations, the Arab-Israeli conflict did not begin in 1967 -- the conflict began before Israel even became a state. The real "occupation" at the center of the conflict is Jews occupying a land that some Arabs prefer was Jew-free as far as the Mediteranean Sea.

UPDATE: Rami Genauer (OpinionNative) had this to say: "H.D.S. Greenway's (sounds like the name of a boat) column in the Boston Globe saying that to restart peace talks, the Palestinians need some incentive for peace (because ending a war of attrition where your side is killed at a ratio of 4 to 1 apparently isn't good enough)."

Some uplifting news: In Toronto, "a group of Mississauga high school students donated their lunch money to a Kensington Market synagogue torched earlier this month. Students of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Secondary School came to Anshei Minsk Synagogue last night to present Rabbi Schmuel Spero with money to help pay for the restoration and replacement of burned prayer books.

A fire was deliberately set to the 72-year-old synagogue on March 11. ... "After hearing what happened we thought we should do something to show our support for the Jewish community," said Grade 11 student Tahreem Arshad, 17. "We made an announcement and collected $611 in one day. It was all voluntary," she added.

"It's really special that you came," Spero told the group. "It's comforting. Thank you." (Toronto Star)

What is this seder to you?

one of the four prototypical children of the Haggada is the rasha, or wicked child. His question, taken from the Bible itself, is "What is this service to you?" (Exodus 12:26). Now why does the author of the Haggada call him a wicked child? After all, "service" can easily refer to Divine service or celebration, and a child who is interested in understanding the relevance or significance of a particular ritual - which is certainly a legitimate way of understanding his words - is to be encouraged and strengthened, not rejected.

Moreover, the Bible itself provides an answer to this question: "And you shall say, it is a thanksgiving offering to the Lord who loved (or passed over) the homes of the Israelites in Egypt, who saved our homes (Exodus 12:27)."

Why does the author of the Haggada disregard this response, and cite instead an alternative response from a later biblical chapter: "It is because of this that the Lord provided for me when I left Egypt" (Exodus 13:8).

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin explains why the mis-named "wicked" child must be brought to understanding. "Insofar as an individual identifies with his Jewish past, he/she participates in eternity. And only those who identify with their past will contribute to - and be part of - a future beyond themselves. In order to be plugged into eternity, your "I" must become a "we." Only by going beyond yourself will you guarantee your future!"

A day for pessimism and disbelief: John Podhoretz laments that "there's nothing like a good U.S. peace-and-cease-fire initiative to ensure that a bunch of Jews get killed and injured."

John Derbyshire does not see a problem with the Israeli settlements. "Possibly there would be some abstract justice in closing down the settlements, I don't know. I don't see it myself, I must admit. Why should Jews not live among Arabs? Lots of Arabs live in Israel, and do very well there. There are rich Israeli Arabs; there are Israeli-Arab pop stars and comedians; there are Israeli-Arab intellectuals, teachers, writers, businessmen, athletes. Why, when the whole thing gets sorted out, should there not be Jews living in Arab territory — as there were for centuries past? What, exactly, is wrong with the settlements? I don't see it."

Algeria says Israelis are like Nazis: Pardon me while I cite long stretches of this one:

Repeated comparisons to Nazi Germany punctuated a vicious verbal attack on Israel yesterday at the annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Algeria's ambassador compared every night in a Palestinian town to a new Kristallnacht, wondered when Israel will open its own concentration camps and spoke in German to cite a Nazi death decree he said the Israelis invoke against Palestinians.

The commission is the UN's principal human rights organ. Its 53 members include countries with poor human rights records, although the United States found itself ejected last May.

... ... ... ... He referred to a "daily repetition of the Night of the Broken Glass and Masadas." The former, also known as Kristallnacht, occurred on Nov. 9, 1938, when the Nazis encouraged window-smashing of synagogues and Jewish businesses, and the beating of Jews. The latter was the stand of Jewish zealots who committed mass suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Romans in the 1st century AD.

Mr. Denbri said Israel had inflicted a new "nacht und nebel" on the Palestinians, a reference to the Nazis' "night and fog" decree that generally spelled death for people who committed crimes against Germans in occupied lands.

He called Israeli soldiers who recently wrote numbers on Palestinian prisoners for identification "disciples of Goebbels and Himmler." The Israeli army said the marking was not military policy.

In a reference to the Holocaust, Mr. Denbri asked, "Should we wait in silence for the establishment of new extermination camps, or new massacres like Babi Yar?" He was referring to the ravine near Kiev where German troops shot 30,000 Jews over two days in September, 1941.

Andrew Srulevitch, executive director of UN Watch, a monitoring group, responded by saying: "With his demonization of Israel and trivialization of the Holocaust, the Algerian ambassador proved that Arab anti-Semitism, so prevalent in the Arab media, continues to plague the United Nations." (National Post)

I won't include the nonsense where the Palestinian delegate says that the U.S. was attacked on September 11 for its oppression of the Palestinians...

Thursday, March 21, 2002

HateFilter: The ADL is offering the latest version of its HateFilter software so parents can block their kids' access to "hate sites -- which includes those run by neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Holocaust deniers."

A good idea? Sure. The amount of crap available on the Internet seems to multiply daily. Children probably can't distinguish authoritative sources from junk. But as I wrote in the Bergen Record last spring, it is not clear that Internet filters work all that well.

And you thought two seders were tough: Here I am all vaklempt about hosting my first Pesach seder and I did not think about what a pain this time of year must be for dedicated inter-religious marriages. As part of an article on buying table cloths online, Michelle Slatalla describes in the New York Times just what a problem it can be.

I used to worry that our household's unusual holiday traditions might confuse the children. But I didn't fully realize the toll they took on the fellow who bags our groceries until one recent day when he held aloft two boxes, one full of matzos for Passover and the other harboring pastel tablets of Easter egg dye, and asked cautiously, "Are these both yours?" Yes, and the lamb shank, the horseradish root and the milk chocolate bunnies. My husband and I have not taken a strong position on God. But technically, he's Jewish, I'm Catholic, and as a result our three daughters observe more official holidays than our plumber does.

Zinni an Israeli "partner"?: "The Jihad spokesman in the Gaza Strip told Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television that "this is just a part of a bill that Sharon and his people must pay," for the crimes they’ve committed against the Palestinian people. .. A top Hamas leader, Abdul Aziz Rantisi also confirmed that such attacks would continue... He also affirmed that having Zinni in the region is of no relevance to Hamas strategy, saying that Zinni is Israel’s partner in killing Palestinians." (The Palestine Chronicle)

American troops in Afghanistan receive Pesach kits:

American troops in Afghanistan will be celebrating Pesach in traditional style next week with matzah, gefilte fish and chicken soup. More than 40 Jewish soldiers serving in the war-ravaged region are preparing to receive special kits courtesy of the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America (JCC). The kosher for Passover packages each comprise of a bottle of grape juice, chicken and a generous supply of Jewish penicillin, while servicemen will be able to conduct seders using the haggadot provided. The JCC has even arranged for a lay leader to lead religious services during the festival.

Meanwhile, the organisation is processing more than 2,500 Pesach aid requests from troops worldwide, including those stationed in Bosnia, Saudi Arabia and Kosova. In Italy, volunteers will enlist the help of a helicopter to seek out Jewish personnel on ships. Rabbi David Lapp told TJ: “We have a responsibility towards those who serve their country and their religion.” (from the British website TotallyJewish.com)

Two dead, 87 wounded in downtown Jerusalem bombing: A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on King George Avenue in downtown Jerusalem shortly before 4:30 p.m., killing two others and wounding 87 people, four seriously and six moderately, Israel Radio reported.

The bomber carried out the attack near the intersection of King George Avenue and Hahistradrut Street adjacent to a pharmacy and a felafel store, according to the Jerusalem Post's Etgar Lefkovits. (The Jerusalem Post)

Kesher Talk in the Washington Jewish Week: Thanks to Doug Fox's Jewish Weblog Project, The Washington Jewish Week discusses Kesher Talk along with its profile of him.

Rabbi told not to pray at home: "An Orange County rabbi faces fines of up to $50 a day if he continues to hold prayer gatherings inside his home, according to Local 6 News. The Orange County Code Enforcement Board ruled Wednesday that Rabbi Yosef Konikov's prayer gatherings are in violation of a county code, according to Local 6 News. Konikov was served with a code violation last March after officials discovered that he was leading ten to 20 Central Florida families in prayer and song. Under the current zoning law, operating a synagogue or any function related to synagogue or church services is not a permitted use in residential zoned area, Local 6 News reported. However, Konikov believed the ordinance violated his religious rights. His attorney, John Stemberger wanted the board to re-write the law to allow all groups to meet and pray in their homes. "All we wanted to do is share my Saturday meals with friends," Konikov said. "All we wanted is to be allowed to practice our sacred traditions in a peaceful manner. I hope Orange County will grant us the freedoms of the Constitution. The freedom to worship, freedom to assemble and the freedom of speech. Konikov must comply with the board's decision by May 19 or face fines." (Local 6)

Are video games inspiring hatred? ABC News reported last night (Mar. 20), "We're going to take 'a closer look' at an ugly new way to encourage hatred. ... It resembles the kind of game favored by many teenage boys. But this one is different. Here, the enemies are specifically Hispanics, blacks and Jews. ... Brian Marcus of the Anti-Defamation League, surfs the net for hatred disguised as entertainment." Marcus was shown saying, "This is something that took hundreds of man hours to make. And the detail shows."

"This game is called 'Ethnic Cleansing.' There are African-Americans in shirts reading, 'Big Nig,' and whose deaths are accompanied by the sounds of screeching monkeys. The hero, in this case a white-hooded Klansman, is hunting the ultimate prey -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. ... Here in West Virginia, at the headquarters of the National Alliance where the game is produced, there is no regard at all for such criticism except to say that it helps create what is claimed to be big demand for this particular kind of stuff. Racist author William Pierce heads the National Alliance, which argues, among other things that Jews rule the media and use it to poison white culture. ... National Alliance member Brian Ringer designed the 'Ethnic Cleansing' game."

Ringer was shown saying, "I just decided to make it New York just because, Jews...New York."

"Other, less sophisticated hate games have been available for free at various Websites. Ethnic Cleansing is the first to actually go on sale, last January, on Martin Luther King Day. The target audience, 15 to 30 years old, white males."

The Zionist-controlled media? Diana Moon (Letter from Gotham) sent me a synopsis of her Nexis search for which Middle Eastern country gets associated with the word torture most often.

Ta-da, the answer is Israel, far more often than Egypt and Saudi Arabia. "Either Israel tortures more and worse than Egypt and Saudi Arabia (doubtful) or there is no Zionist stranglehold on the media. Especially in the US!"

Emulate Sadat: Samuel G. Freedman (author of Jew vs. Jew) writes an op-ed in the USA Today this morning, recommending a course of action for Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.

if Abdullah's initiative is to be more than enticing verbiage, more than a teasing bit of test-marketing, more than an olive branch proffered and snatched back, then the crown prince should risk all in the tradition of Anwar Sadat. He should go to Jerusalem, as Sadat did, and pray at al-Aqsa, as Sadat did, and tell the Knesset, as Sadat did, "Why should we bequeath to the coming generations the plight of bloodshed, yes, orphans, widowhood, family disintegration and the wailing of victims?"

Samuel of course forgets to mention, 'get shot when he returns home, just like Sadat.' Hell, Sadat actually had real control over his country. Abudllah does not have as much leeway, despite the Saudi dictatorship. He is so in hock to Islamist forces that he probably would not survive such a radical move.

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Now you say it... "A German documentary producer who thoroughly investigated the killing of a Palestinian boy a year-and-a-half ago said yesterday it is "much more likely" 12-year-old Muhammad ad-Dura was killed by Palestinian gunmen, and not by Israeli soldiers." (Jerusalem Post)

No end in sight: Hard to be optimistic when Palestinian suicide bombers won't even discriminate between Israelis and Palestinians. Ha'aretz claims that "The bus driver and passengers later said that the terrorist knew the bomb would target Arabs on the bus."

The "dual loyalty" crap: ArabNews contributes some more insanity to the Middle East by claiming that Joe Lieberman is an Israeli puppet running U.S. foreign policy:

So why did Senator Joseph Lieberman convince President Bush to focus on Iraq as a threat? I'll tell you why. It's not the United States that Senator Lieberman is concerned about. We know that Iraq is not a threat to the United States. Iraq is a threat to Israel. Senator Lieberman and other pro-Israelis in Washington don't want anyone else in the Middle East to own Nuclear weapons except Israel. It's Israel, not the United States, that Lieberman is concerned about. And he is willing to risk American lives and American money to insure that Israel is the super power in the Middle East.

Every columnist likes to add statistics and numbers to make his argument seem more authoritative. But this author seems to have brought a spoon to this knife fight. "In just the last 2 days the Israelis have killed 29 Palestinians, and most of them are innocent civilians including children. Iraq hasn't killed anyone since the Gulf War, and that's been 11 years ago." (emphasis added) Big-hearted peace-loving Sadaam Hussein could not hurt a fly, eh?

The author of the piece, James J. David, is a retired U.S. Brigadier General. What the hell are they teaching students at all the military schools he claims to have attended?!

So when Senator Lieberman says that Iraq is a threat to the United States, he really means that Iraq is a threat to Israel. His loyalty isn't so much with the United States; its more with Israel, and that's not right. And you know what? I'll bet most of the people, including President Bush already understands that, but are too scared to challenge him. After all, to challenge or criticize Israel is political suicide. Too many politicians have learned the hard way in that criticizing Israel is like turning the lights off to one's political career. And in the meantime, partly to justify this boondoggle, the United States is embarking on a reckless foreign policy that is more likely to produce war than peace.

"The Suicide of the Palestinians": David Gelernter writes that

The "lesson of appeasement" is not that appeasement is futile. Appeasement is not futile, it is dangerous. Israel's enemies claim that Israel herself provoked the ongoing Palestinian pogrom, and in a sense they might well be right. Outlaws interpret an openhanded offer as weakness, not generosity. They interpret weakness as an incitement to violence. You can goad a dangerous animal to attack by threatening or by shrinking back. Unless you want to fight, the only safe maneuver is to stand still.

What is the difference between Palestinians living in Israel and Israelis living in Palestine? David says that the Palestinians are living in "cities" while the Israelis are living in "settlements."

He sees no reason to keep the "settlements," but little benefit in dismantling them:

But it long seemed to me (as to many other American Jews) that, leaving right and wrong out of it, the settlements were causing Israel more grief than they were worth and ought to be stopped. But everything has changed. Who in his right mind could still believe today that to stop building new settlements (or even to abandon old ones) would appease the Palestinians?

Finally, David praises the Israeli Jews for sticking with the Jewish state:

A large proportion of Israelis have relatives or connections abroad, mainly in the United States, and they could run to safety if they wanted to. Who would blame them? Who would even have the theoretical right to blame them? But overwhelmingly they have chosen to stay and stand fast. The whole population, man, woman, and child, is holding (is refusing to abandon) a dangerous forward position under fire. It's hard for Israelis to praise Israeli courage, but Americans ought to.

Saudi daily newspaper "retracts" blood libel article: "The editor, Turki al Sudairy, said he was upset to discover that while he was in Lebanon, his paper ran a two-part series by a professor that vilified Jews and the holiday of Purim--and embellished a tale dismissed long ago as the product of deeply anti-Semitic thinking. "I went back to the article and found it unfit for publishing because it is not based on any historical or scientific fact but in fact is against every religious ritual in the world, including Buddhism and Hinduism," Sudairy wrote in a column that appeared Tuesday, adding that the article's "credibility is nil." (LA Times)

"while he was in Lebanon"? Couldn't he have thought of a better alibi than that?

Arab journalists and publishers blame Israel, then their readers for anti-semitism in the media: "Adel Hammouda, editor in chief of one of Egypt's most sensational newspapers, Sawt al Umma, said that given the intensity of the Israeli military campaign against the Palestinians, it was only natural that anti-Semitic feelings would spread through the region"

And the editor of the blood-libel-publishing paper strained to make an important distinction. "Sudairy said he learned of the article when his Washington bureau chief, Ahmad Yami, phoned him in Lebanon. Sudairy said the newspaper then severed relations with the author--who couldn't be reached for comment. He said the article was inaccurate and that it attacked all Jews. His column tried to steer his readers back to the distinction between all Jews and what he calls "Zionists.""

So, according to Sudairy, not all Jews kill Gentiles and use their blood to make Hamenstashen - just Zionists. Well, clears up everything, doesn' it?

"Peace Activists Report a Surge of New Support": Almost ten people join in one place in chanting, "America is the Evil One, Huzzah!"

Brit anti-semitism not as bad as the continent: Dodge says, 'don't lump us Brits in with the rest of Europe when you castigate European anti-semitism.'

UN-sponsored terrorist camps: There is some intriguing background to Israel's angry rejection of the letter condemning its attacks on refugee camps from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and to Annan's specific complaint that a U.N. employee, Kamal Handan, had been shot and killed by Israeli troops while escorting wounded from the Tulkarim camp to hospital via ambulance. Israeli military intelligence sources claim to have evidence that al Qaida veterans are running terrorism-training courses at the U.N.-run Ein Hilwe refugee camp for Palestinians in Lebanon. The camp is run and funded by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, 20 percent of whose budget is financed by the United States. The evidence was delivered to Vice President Dick Cheney Tuesday as part of a dossier on al Qaida activity -- with the clear implication that if the United States did not do something about the Ein Hilwe camp, the Israelis would. (UPI Hears)

Mmm, garlic: Perhaps I will try this recipe for garlic chicken for the seder...

And now I know where all the excess matzah will be going this year after Passover: meatloaf.

Because G-d knows, I don't eat matzah longer than I have to do so. I've been lucky in the past to have co-workers who, for some outlandish reason, think matzah tastes good. Only a non-Jew could think that. So I have passed on my leftovers to them, and it gets snarfled up like a stash of Ritz crackers. Silly gentiles... :)

The Encyclopedia of Women in Judaism: An interesting work in progress from the University of Toronto.

Passover humor: Or what pass for it. Bangitout.com offers the "Top ten failed Passover Promotions"

10. US ARMY - "THE ARMY OF 'who knows ONE?"

9. Animal Awareness Passover Campaign - "Frogs are our friends, not a plague."

8. American Red Cross - "This Passover, lets make rivers of blood"

7. Lenox Hill OBGYN - "We won't throw your newborn into the Nile"

6. Adoption Promotion Week - "Drop your unwanted children in a basket in the NYC Reservoir, for less fortunate parents to find!"

5. D'Angelo's Barber Shop: "Free lice check with every haircut"

4. Republic of China's Population Control Agency - Death of the first born commemorative pins

3. Ebay: "Your Afikomen is worth a lot more than that"

2. Radioshack: "You've Got 4 questions, We've Got Answers"

1. Kosher For Passover Ex-Lax, now in new Matzah strength - "Ex-odus"

New Holocaust feeding frenzy to further turn it into a cliche: The trial lawyers climbed all over each other to get a chance to sue on behalf of Holocaust victims, turning righteous grievances into tragicomedies.

Now, Andrew Wallenstein fears that, in the wake of Schindler's List, Hollywood has joined in the popularization of the Holocaust - and it may not be a good thing.

Friedman makes it simple - commit U.S. troops: Thomas Friedman tells us to sit down then gets to the point:

There is no way that the U.S. will be able to garner any sustained support for taking out Saddam Hussein in Iraq unless it can stabilize both Israel-Palestine and Afghanistan. We don't need to make Afghanistan into Switzerland. We just need to make the new Afghanistan into something slightly more stable, slightly more decent, and slightly more prosperous than it was under the Taliban. If we cannot do that minimum, we will have no legitimacy, no credibility and no support for taking apart Iraq.

If we shrink from this task, Afghanistan will revert right back to what it was before Sept. 11, only worse. And this open sore of Afghanistan will dog us, and the U.S. antiterror campaign, forever. The only way to make the new Afghanistan a slightly better place than the old one is with a U.S. troop presence that will bolster the government and serve as the anchor for a wider peacekeeping force manned by our allies. Enough said.

... Israel can kill Palestinians till the cows come home and it will not alter its central dilemma — it can't stay in the territories and remain a Jewish democracy and it can't just leave and stay alive as a Jewish democracy. The only way it can safely leave is if U.S. troops are protecting its borders and those of the Palestinian state. It's also the only way the Palestinians are going to get a state. If American Jews really care about Israel, if Arab leaders really care about the Palestinians, if Iraq hawks really want to get rid of Saddam, this is what they will lobby President Bush to offer.

Occupation a misnomer? Dore Gold says that The "Occupied Territories" Are Not Occupied Territories.

March of the Dead loses its point:

Instituted a number of years ago, the March of the Living, a two-week trip that includes a visit to the concentration camps in Poland, followed by a week's stay in Israel, was to become a panacea for combating increasing assimilation on the part of Diaspora Jewish youth.

Such a powerful trip was designed to enhance Jewish identity and commitment. Yes, a week in Poland and a week in Israel should do the trick. But maybe, that's all it is - a trick.

Now that the March of the Living, or at least some participating groups, has announced Israel will not be included as a part of the program because of security concerns, the trick is exposed, and one is left with a "March of the Dead!"

Indeed, it is truly an irony of history when one determines a visit to Auschwitz is safer for a Jew than a visit to Israel. But such a decision simply demonstrates some Diaspora Jewish emperors (read educators) have no clothes.

Tears shed at Auschwitz for the six million Jews miss the enduring point of a visit to Jewish Europe: The loss was not only of Jewish life, but also the loss of a Jewish culture that was so rich and vibrant for a thousand years. A subsequent visit to Israel for a mere week, filled with mourning ceremonies, hardly does justice to the positive energy Israel can generate, even in the most difficult of times. But such is the underlying educational raison d'etre for the March of the Living program. (David J. Forman, The Jerusalem Post)

Carrots and sticks: The Jerusalem Post insists that, "What matters is not what is offered to Arafat if he does comply with Tenet, but what is promised will happen to him if he does not."

Gone deaf?

Yasser Arafat's health may not be what it once was, but the world seems convinced that he is hard of hearing. "YOU CAN HAVE A STATE," said first Israel, then the US, and now a unanimous UN Security Council. "You can stop fighting now," the world keeps trying to tell Arafat, as if he is an unruly child, having trouble focusing.

The message to Arafat of this week's historic UN Security Council resolution was simple: stop terror and a state is yours. Israel, for its part, is completely on board - not a peep of protest from Jerusalem. So why is it not time to put away the guns and take out the confetti? Why does everyone assume the resolution will make no difference?

Part of the reason is that the Palestinians may be the first nation in history to be offered a state on a negotiating platter and yet insist on launching a war of independence anyway. (Saul Singer, Jerusalem Post)

VOA goes on the offensive: My fiancee agreed this weekend (an occurance that does not come around all that often) that one of the most important foreign policy goals for the U.S. should be a concerted PR offensive worldwide, especially in the Arab world. The best tool? The Voice of America (VOA).

I was interviewed on VOA radio last Friday about the Gallup poll of the Islamic world and was pleased to find the interviewer reasonably receptive to reality. Even more pleasing is a FOXNews report that "A Monday editorial broadcast on Voice of America, an international multimedia service funded by the American government, called for Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments to stop media reports that foster a hatred of Jews."

An armed seder: No one will be carrying weapons to my family's seders, but in Israel this year, it will be different. Of course, we can presume that, unlike in Israel, no one is trying to blow me up while I suffer through a meal of matzah. The AP reports that "Israel's rabbis have agreed to allow several worshippers to be armed in every synagogue during upcoming holidays, making an exception to Jewish laws because of fears of terror attacks, officials said Tuesday."

Gallup poll of the Muslim world: Yes, we're still bantering about the Islamic world poll. Gallup has finally posted a basic outline of their methodology, at least.

And today, NationalJournal.com (subscription required) has an interview with Gallup's director of international research, Richard Burkholder, who conducted the poll.

Q. Had you ever done polling in any of these nations before?

A. Market research, yes. Sensitive political opinion polling, no. My background at Gallup -- I've been there 18 years now -- I've been involved with dozens of international projects. But as far as interviewing on sociopolitical issues, on sensitive political issues, personally, no. The entities that we chose to do the data collection for us were all local research firms whose business typically is predominantly market research. So they are familiar with the issues of drawing a representative sample, a good sample design, covering urban areas and rural areas, and all of those things, but the application is usually in the field of market research. The techniques are precisely the same in terms of a good sample design and good questionnaire design. It's the content that differs.

Actually, it is the content that is key. It is one thing to ask people under a dictatorship what kind of soap they buy (assuming they can afford to do so). But asking them their opinion about the West, when they are told to hate us? Get real!

Q. Did you find that people were willing to talk to you?

A. Actually, the cooperation rates on average are better, I would say, than the norm for some forms of telephone interviews in the States. We had very few refusals -- no higher than about one in four or one in five in the most extreme cases. So yes.

I think there is a process where people aren't used to being interviewed, where you have to engage them, as I said, and ask a lot of questions first about their general interests in life, the importance of things to them -- family, reading behavior, media habits, lots of things -- so that they do get a sense that there aren't any right or wrong answers and you are sincerely interested in learning about them. But in general, once people had that rapport established with the interviewer, I watched an awful lot of interviewing in the field, and the rapport was quite good and the cooperation rates were very high.

Again, in a dictatorship, you are afraid NOT to cooperate with this kind of endeavor because it MUST be state-approved.

Q. We've read that some of the poll's questions couldn't be asked in some of the countries because of censorship. Do you think that these restrictions affected the poll's findings at all?

A. Well, obviously to the extent that we didn't ask the question it wouldn't affect that. But there were four or five questions, perhaps, out of an hour-long interview, that were just either too direct or too sensitive for us to feel we would have gotten a good measure on them.

So in the process of clearing this with authorities and also judging it ourselves and what worked in the field, we might get away with asking a question like, "Who do you think was behind the attacks?" But pre-listing who those people were wouldn't have worked. In other cases, it's a question of wording the question in a way that would be not offensive to the respondents.

Let me give you one example that I've given before. If you wanted to ask, "Do you think the September 11 attacks were in keeping with or in contradiction to, the teaching of Islam?" That's a little bit too direct because it puts the respondents into giving us sort of a theological interpretation and also [asks them to comment] directly on their view of what Islam does and doesn't mean to them. But if you said, "I'm going to read you a list of things that can happen, of things that people may do in life, and I want you to tell me whether you think they are completely justifiable" -- this was a five-point scale -- all the way down to "completely unjustifiable," and then you list into that series a whole bunch of things -- divorce, forcing opinions onto other people, exceeding the speed limit and so on, and one of those items is these attacks, they will give you, in the course of that context, a sense of what they think the moral admissibility of those actions is or is not. Within the context of an Islamic society, to say whether or not they believe something to be morally admissible or not, that moral compass essentially comes from their understanding of Islam, with the exception perhaps of the minority in Lebanon who would be Christian.

So question wording was fiddled. Great.

The most interesting part of the interview is Richard Burkholder's commentary on Kuwaiti objections to the Gallup survey.

The criticism that I have heard from the Kuwaitis is that we ought not to have interviewed people who were not formally holders of Kuwaiti citizenship. And I need to explain that a little bit. On official numbers, and these are the Kuwait government's own numbers, 58 percent of the population of Kuwait does not formally hold citizenship. They're called expatriates. Many of those folks were born in Kuwait, may have lived their whole lives there. But they're not descended from families who were residents of Kuwait several generations back. The Pan-Arab Research Center, which itself is based in Kuwait and which conducted the interviewing, has been interviewing there for over a quarter of a century. It's the norm in Kuwait to interview both expatriates and Kuwaiti nationals in doing the survey. Otherwise, you exclude 58 percent of the adult population of the society. So we didn't do anything different in that sense.

Now, we know just from demographic questions we asked whether a specific respondent does hold citizenship or not. And we have done internal analysis to compare the views of those who have citizenship and those who are considered expatriates. And they're not, across the board, all that different, frankly. Sometimes the differences cut in one direction, sometimes they cut in a different direction. If you look at the series, for example, of adjectives that I just read to you about the United States -- whether the U.S. is perceived to be arrogant or aggressive or conceited or ruthless -- on every one of those issues, the differences are statistically insignificant. It's true that Kuwaiti nationals will give a slightly higher overall appraisal of favorability to the U.S. But on a five-point scale, it's a 3.0, and with expats it's a 2.6. So it's really not a significant difference at all. And on some other critical issues, some of the more controversial issues, the views really aren't easily discriminated at all.

So, to be honest, I think some of the criticism has been directed in a way which I think doesn't take proper account of the fact that this is a rigorous sample design of the entire population. It was done in the way it's been done for a quarter-century there, and that was done in-home, in private, in Arabic. So we have confidence in the data that we have from them.

Matzo brei: The Christian Science Monitor offers a recipe for Passover's only real breakfast dish.

Graham's anti-semitism: Buckley comes to Billy Graham's defence.

U.S. policy on Israel: "The administration's policy in the Middle East just took a dramatic turn in the wrong direction. This turn at once marks a concession to terrorism and a violation of principle." (William J. Bennett, Washington Post)

Cragg Hines insists that, "An American president... can never repeat too frequently the United States' historic, moral and strategic links to the only democracy in the region. Israel should not be left wondering whether at some point the United States, even inadvertently, will hang it out to dry."

The Houston Chronicle editorializes that Vice President Dick Cheney "rightly stood firm in his refusal to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before the vice president left Jerusalem on Tuesday. The Bush administration consistently has refused to meet with Arafat until terrorist attacks are halted."

"The militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on a bus in northern Israel Wednesday" that killed seven people, Reuters reports. The worst implication Reuters can think of? The attack was a setback to peace efforts.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Hockey news: Over on my hockey blog, PuckHog, I have all the news on the last minute NHL trades and the first murder by puck in the NHL.

Exodus - why all the fuss? Sara Rigler asks, "Why does Judaism make such a big deal about the Exodus? Of course, on Passover it deserves the limelight. But every Shabbat and holiday, in the middle of Kiddush, apropos to nothing, the Exodus from Egypt is thrown in. Every day in reciting the Shema, we recall the Exodus. Even one of the 613 commandments of the Torah is to remember the Exodus every day. Jewish history is not short on great historical episodes: the sacrifice of Isaac, the revelation at Sinai, the crossing into the Promised Land. Why should the Exodus get top billing?"

"The Children of Israel were slaves to the mightiest dynasty on earth. As the Midrash says, no slave ever escaped from Egypt, surrounded as it was by potent fortifications and daunting deserts. By the laws of nature, there was no possibility for the Israelite slaves to achieve freedom. The whole point of the Exodus was for the Jewish people to see, once and for all, that God runs the show, from the minutest detail to the grandest spectacle. Ultimate caring. Ultimate involvement. "So says God: 'Thus you will know that I am God'" (Exodus 7:17)."

Zionist control of the media? Not quite.: Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has discovered that it is not the Zionists that control the media. It is the Saudis!

Pipes cheers for unilateralism: Daniel Pipes notes as America gets closer to initiating hostilities against Saddam Hussein's foul regime in Iraq, the Middle East is sending out a howl of protest, arguing that (as the Washington Post sums it up) "the risks of an attack . . . far outweigh any threat he may pose."

Pipes contends that "An anti-Saddam strategy... must accept that Washington may basically have to go it alone. This is less than ideal, but it is doable."

Bibi on the web: Former Israeli PM has his own web site.

Hunger strike in Syria: Reuters is reporting that "Six prominent Syrian opposition figures began an open-ended hunger strike on Tuesday, demanding a right to trial after spending more than six months in prison without charge." Not exactly a shocker that Syria would do that, though it is interesting that an action like this elicited international attention.

"The six -- Arif Dalila, Habib Issa, Kamal Labwani, Walid al-Bunni, Fawaz Tello and Habib Saleh -- are human rights activists and leading participants in a wave of political discussion groups that sprang up after the death in 2000 of President Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for 30 years. His son, President Bashar al-Assad, fanned hopes of political liberalisation after assuming power by releasing hundreds of political prisoners and tolerating debating groups that called for free elections and an end to martial law. But he shut down the groups and arrested their leading members last year under pressure from what analysts describe as an old guard of his father's associates who oppose significant change to Syria's authoritarian regime."

But we all have to pity the terrorists in Guantanamo Bay instead.

That damned pro-Israel media bias: Pathetic rantings from the Palestinian Chronicle accusing the Western press of being virulently anti-Palestinian. Examples? Daring to note that Israeli military actions are in reprisal for Palestinian attacks.

Make up your damned mind! Iain Murray wonders about the sanity of a Times columnist whose "argument seems to be that non-nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction aren't particularly dangerous, and so we shouldn't worry that Saddam might have them; besides, if we attack him, he'll use them and cause horrendous loss of life. Pardon?"

Old laws outdated for Russia, still important for Belarus: The U.S. and Russia are battling over old American legislation related to Soviet Jewry which linked trade to their free movement. It is no longer an issue, but the U.S. is taking advantage of the legislation still being on the books.

Meanwhile, they don't seem to be worried about using it for its more obvious purposes. The AP reports that, "A Belarusian Jewish group is urging the US Congress to maintain Cold War-era trade sanctions against Belarus over the demolition of a century-old Minsk synagogue and other anti-Semitic acts. Several former Soviet republics have urged the US Congress to reconsider the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which restricted trade with communist nations that denied Jews and others permission to emigrate."

Mein Kampf for sale in Arab neighborhood: Arabic-language copies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf are on sale at newsstands on London's Edgware Road, which has a large Arab population, and has become a bestseller in Palestinian Authority-controlled territory, the British Daily Telegraph reported.

Palestinians think they're about to win: Mr Sha'ath said: "I think we are winning - meaning there's a chance for a real, fair and reasonable peace. I think we're nearer to getting what we want than we were when peace talks broke down." There was no indication from Palestinian militants, however, that hope of a breakthrough meant there would be a let-up in armed attacks. "Resistance is working. Absolutely," said Marwan Barghouti, head of the Fatah Tanzim militia in the West Bank. "And even if they leave area A (territory under Palestinian Authority control), the resistance will continue. (Financial Times)

Palestinian abuse: "Time and again, Palestine has been used and abused by Arab rulers and their opponents as a political tool to garner public support. It is one of the most important identity issues in Arab politics, which is why competing social forces in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, for example, often distinguish themselves from each other by how they talk about Israel. Genuine local concerns in these countries — problems of modernization, relations with the West, the appropriate social roles of religion, the balance between national and Arab identities — are often defined in relation to Palestine and Israel, as if the problems were really there and not in Cairo or Riyadh. This is without question a dysfunctional way of practicing politics. But it is real enough and cannot be ignored, certainly not if the American goal is to change an Arab regime in Baghdad." (Fawaz A. Gerges, The New York Times, Mar. 15)

Handwringers return: "Dozens of Palestinians have committed suicide in this latest round of terrorist warfare. But no matter what Annan, the pope, or anyone else in the "international community" says, Israel will not itself adopt this macabre model of politics as self-immolation." (The New Republic)

"fig-leaf season in the Middle East": That is how Jim Hoagland describes the diplomatic maneuvers as Cheney makes the rounds in the Arab world.

Palestinian statehood? An editorial in the Manchester Union-Leader advocating against a Palestinian state, at the moment, provides a revealing link to the PLO's website, where a map of Israel calls it Palestine instead.

No options offered: The New York Times offers no interesting alternatives when it says that, "While no one expects Israel to remain passive when Palestinian snipers and suicide bombers kill Israeli civilians and soldiers, this kind of extended military operation is unacceptable."

Super-Baronness: Margaret Thatcher, former PM of the UK, had an article in the New York Times on February 11, trying to steel Bush against going wobbly. She provided a similar boost to the opposition to the EU in Britain this past weekend.

Giving Syria a free pass, like always: The Washington Post reported that Syria is getting away scot-free once more. "The Bush administration, seeking to nurture a growing intelligence relationship with Syria in the war on terrorism, has refrained from confronting Damascus about its illicit imports of Iraqi oil, despite what industry analysts say is a sharp increase in volume. A year after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he won assurances from Syrian President Bashar Assad that his government would not buy Iraqi oil in violation of U.N. sanctions, Syria has boosted its imports, according to industry analysts and administration officials. Syria is now receiving between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels of oil daily through a pipeline it opened in late 2000, paying as much as $1 billion a year to Iraq, these analysts and officials said."

Black woman to become a rabbi: Black woman Alyssa Stanton has entered rabbinical study. If she completes the five year program, she would become the first black woman ordained in a major branch of American Judaism, according to officials of the Reform Jewish seminary where she will study. (courtesy of HolyWebLog)

Ontario Conservative party elections fall on the Sabbath. Observant Jews cry foul:

The Sabbath issue has been simmering within Tory circles since last fall when the party decided it would poll its membership on a Saturday. For a party that says it wants to broaden its base of support, the issue has been, at best, bad optics. At worst, it displays a special talent for driving away people it went out on a political limb to woo.

Despite all the talk about the big tent they are erecting, the Tories have never been the party of choice for most Jews. Tories didn't do themselves any favours when they extended support for Roman Catholic schools 18 years ago but refused to countenance supporting Jewish schools.

But Mr. Flaherty's about-face on the tax credit for private schools attracted a lot of Jewish members, including many Orthodox.

Conservative officials thought they had responded to the concerns of Jewish members by allowing for proxy votes. But Sabbath-observant Jews have been reminded by their religious leaders that a proxy vote solves nothing because Jewish laws forbid someone asking another person to perform a task that is prohibited on the Sabbath. (Globe & Mail)

We're all like Homer?: Juan Gato, in asking "why do they hate us," determines that "They hate us for the same reason Homer Simpson hates Ned Flanders."

Fun at the expense of journalists: Sure, journalists and editorial writers are not hired for their international engenue. But that does not mean we can't make fun of them for their inadequacies. Christopher Johnson of MCJ does just that with an editorial on Zimbabwe in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Here is a small taste (the editorial is in italics, Christopher in plain text):

Fraud and intimidation were the real winners. Independent observers point to voter registration irregularities, a reduction in polling stations and the reported abduction of opposition party polling agents by pro-Mugabe militants. These developments led U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to question the outcome, saying Mr. Mugabe can claim victory "but not democratic legitimacy.

Secretary Powell went on to observe that Saudi Arabia has an extraordinary amount of sand.

What about the Jews in Zimbabwe? "Zimbabwe´s Jews are facing an uncertain future in the wake of the recent presidential elections. With food shortages, the threat of strikes and selected sanctions being imposed added to the country´s myriad problems, the mood among the country´s 700-strong Jewish community is one of bewilderment. ... U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the March 9-March 11 election, in which Mugabe won 56 percent of the vote to challenger Morgan Tsvangirai´s 42 percent, was marked by "numerous, profound irregularities" that thwarted the will of the people. After being sworn in for another six-year term Sunday, Mugabe called on his coutrymen — as well as his African neighbors — to join his fight against Western imperialism." (JTA)

That kind of call to battle usually does not bode well for the Jews in their midst...

W32/BadTrans: Perhaps it is just my bad luck, but I have been sent seven emails (crap, now make that eight) already this morning infected with the old BadTrans worm. Luckily I can delete them before they do any harm.

Deterrence requires credibility: Andrew Sullivan cheers the news that Iran is afraid. "The language these regimes understand is the language of clarity, force and threat. Engaging them in dialogue without the credibility of the potential use of force is pointless." Iran's Leader Backs Effort for Talks With U.S."

Do the Muslims love their children, too? Jonah Goldberg reacts to an old Sting lyric:
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy
There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

We are not threatened by anyone's biology. We are, however, threatened by an ideology which is running rampant in the Arab world and which, like that of the Soviets, radically differs from our own. It glorifies death and rewards the taking of innocent life. If you don't feel strongly enough about your own value system to "judge" this opposing view, that's fine. But you are either a coward or a fool.

It is that ideology we must confront. I take Muslims at their word that this ideology — radical Islam, extreme Wahhabism, whatever the best term for it is — is held by only a small minority of the Islamic community, especially here in the States. But that, too, gets us nowhere if the majority of Muslims aren't willing to do what needs to be done to fight the minority.

The central moral lesson of human history is that merely having goodwill is meaningless if you won't act on it. Who cares if it's only a minority of Muslims who are pushing this death cult — if that minority is the one wielding the power, bullying those of goodwill, and locking the gates on burning schoolgirls?

Christians have much to learn from us: Marvin Olasky does not mean to belittle the anti-semitic rants made three decades ago by Billy Graham, Richard Nixon and John Nash, but feels there are a few more important things right now. "We should not overlook those long-ago incidents, but it's more important to deal with a current error of omission among many Christians. We often hear that that Christians and Jews should be friends, and that's certainly true -- but evangelicals rarely talk about how much Christians can and should learn from Judaism."

Selective criticism: Why does Koffi Annan berate Israel for its treatment of civillians without levelling any criticism on the civillian-targetting attacks made by the Palestinians? ("U.N. Chief Says Israel Has Been Waging Full-Scale War," NYT)

If it is because Arafat has no control over the Palestinians and cannot get them to stop, then why do we deal with him? If it is because Annan would prefer to see Israel wiped off the map, will he please just say so?

More musings on Iraq: The National Post notes Sadaam's shallow learning curve since 1991: "What Saddam didn't understand then, and probably doesn't understand still, is that the West isn't entirely guided by self-interest."

Victor Davis Hanson predicts a quick campaign of annihalation: "If overwhelming force were applied to its key assets, both through air and ground assault, the entire military could collapse in days. Past history, the terrain of Iraq, and breakthroughs in U.S. bombing — as evidenced in Afghanistan — suggest that another Vietnam would be unlikely. In the long run a massive initial attack would invoke less worldwide criticism than months of piecemeal attacks, in which pictures of "millions" of starving Iraq children and U.N. melodramatics could slowly sap even domestic support for the conflict."

Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the leadership council of the Iraqi National Congress tells George Will that "the first step should be to supplement existing ``no-fly zones'' with ``no-drive zones'' from which the Iraqi military would be excluded. That, he thinks, could be done by U.S. air power directed, as in Afghanistan, by U.S. special forces on the ground. These zones should be in Iraq's north and south--and west, where Saddam might expand a war by launching missiles against Israel."

Stephen F. Hayes says, "The reasons for U.S. military action are established. Saddam Hussein continues to build weapons of mass destruction. He has shown a willingness to use them, even on his own people. He unlawfully ended U.N. weapons inspections and has repeatedly violated U.N.-approved sanctions. He attempted to assassinate former president George H.W. Bush. And over the years, Iraqi intelligence officials have met repeatedly with al Qaeda members, including those who masterminded the September 11 attacks. If those reasons aren't enough, here's another one: Iraq recently became the first nation to endorse the September 11 attacks when Saddam's son Uday praised the terrorists in a newspaper interview."

Peggy Noonan summarizes a Council on Foreign Relations debate on what to do about Iraq.

Jim Hoagland says it is time to face the music on Iraq: "For more than a decade, Americans have been told by officials of three administrations that ending the deadly and unique threat that Iraq's Baathist regime poses to U.S. interests was not urgent. This was never true. Iraq is America's most important unfinished business abroad."

Michael Kelly sees a U.S. administration taking charge. "Prior to Sept. 11, U.S. policy toward regimes such as those in Iran, Iraq and North Korea -- regimes that were indeed fundamentally evil, that were avowed enemies of the United States, that aggressively sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction and that supported anti-American terrorist groups -- was this: We can live with them. The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 policy is: No, we cannot. Not anymore, not with 3,000 dead. The reality is terribly changed and we must deal with that change. We must do what we can to limit the threat of a second Sept. 11. And what we can most effectively do is to strike where we can find something to strike at: to destroy or coerce those regimes that arm and support and hide the transnational terrorists who would wage long-term guerrilla war against the United States. Do-nothingism... is no longer an option."

Max Singer wonders if we can really trust CIA information about Iraq.

Michael Feroli ponders what sort of regime will replace Sadaam after we depose him.

Bob Baer reveals PLO-Iran connection in the 1983 bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut: Michael Ledeen discovers a heretofore unnoticed nugget in Bob Baer's CIA expose See No Evil:

Bob Baer was terribly shaken by the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, in which several of his buddies were killed. His obsession for the next 15 years was to figure out who had done it, and how. As he kept looking for the answers, he was astonished that the CIA apparently didn't know very much about it, and didn't seem to obsess about it nearly as much as he did. But he kept at it, and finally arrived at a minor epiphany:

In my last months (at CIA)," he tells us, "I unraveled the...bombing, at least to my satisfaction: Iran ordered it, and a Fatah network carried it out."

So our guys were killed by an unholy alliance between the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The same deadly duo that recently organized the very short voyage of the Karine A, loaded with tons of explosives and weapons from Iran headed for Palestinian territory.

Munich: Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. draws the inevitable parallels between current U.S. policy towards Israel, and the Allies' approach to Czechoslovakia in 1938:

Today, as in 1938, there appear to be more important things to worry about than the security concerns of a small ally which finds itself on the fault-lines of a larger conflict. Then, British and French governments wanted to prevent a war with Germany; today, the U.S. government is, correctly, determined to start one with Iraq.

Monday, March 18, 2002

Ta ta: I'm off to hobnob with some Jewish warhawks. See y'all tomorrow...

What to do with Iraq? Bob Novak warns against action: "Alternatively, a unilateral decision to rid the world of Saddam and his cabal would set the United States on a course that some of Bush's staunchest supporters fear and dread."

William Safire warns against Russia's (and Iraq's) delaying tactics: "The name of their game is delay — to demand evidence of nuclear development while unfettered inspections are forbidden, and to dismiss as a non-meeting the hard evidence of a terrorist connection. Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists race to build the weapons that would blackmail into impotence any power daring to unseat Saddam." The National Post concurs.

Richard Holbrooke has told the BBC that "I do not believe that this administration will go its full course without trying to change the regime. They will take Saddam on." That reliable source the Guardian insists "200,000 US troops" are being prepped to unseat Sadaam Hussein.

The Boston Globe for once does not care, as long as the supposed screen for the invasion of Iraq - our involvement with Mid-East peace efforts - leads to the desired end: "Even if the United States has altered its Mideast policy only to get on with plans to topple Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, there now exists an American-initiated international consensus to end the massacre of the innocents in the Mideast and create, through negotiations, a two-state solution to the conflict. This represents an opportunity that Palestinians and Israelis cannot be allowed to miss."

Ha'aretz ad: "Arafat must continue the terror": Grasshoppa pointed me to this one. IMRA translated part of a large ad from Professor Danny Gur run in the March 15 Hebrew edition of Ha'aretz:

. . .It must be understood that just as Menachem Begin, the commander of the Irgun, stopped his terror against the British only after achieving an arrangement to end the occupation, Arafat also must continue the terror until the problem of the Israeli occupation is resolved, since a cease-fire today on his part would be considered giving legitimacy to the settlements...

WorldNetDaily whackos: My fiancee and I argued for a while last night about retribution in the Middle East. She thinks that someone needs to take the stand that peace is more important than revenge. I am not a firm believer that Israel simply stepping up to peace negotiations will solve the problem, but it might be a start, who knows. I can't rule out everything!

Then I saw today that WorldNetDaily has a vile article which makes Arab News look tame, called "1,000 eyes for an eye." On the Jewish side, it takes retribution to new highs of insanity:

The Israeli government must announce to the world a unilateral ceasefire, balanced by the deadly promise that for every Israeli soldier killed, 25 Palestinian police will die. For every civilian, 100 non-combatant Palestinian adults will be slain, and for every child, 1000 adults.

Sounds like Sean Connery's exposition on "the Chicago way" from the movie "The Untouchables." It worked in the movie! But Vox Day, the author of this article, needs to learn the difference between movies and reality. And the difference between morality and evil.

I was alerted to it by none-other than the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group for whom I have no love. But they flagged this one correctly as so much evil crap...