Kesher Talk: 08/11/2002

Thursday, August 15, 2002

GAZA CITY, Gaza, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Terrorists from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade (linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah) attend an anti-Israeli rally.

Attacking the messenger to undercut the message: This is becoming a favorite tactic of the Guardian. They have nothing with which to battle ideas with which they disagree, so they fall back on character assassination and innuendo.

Some of these efforts, like columnist George Monbiot's attempt to smear good science in the Mexican corn debate (see my column, "Bad Science Never Dies"), can be quite inventive and insidious.

Others, like Brian Whitaker's attempt to impugn MEMRI, are just lame and ineffective.

Pejman recently demonstrated how and why Brian failed so miserably.

Update: HonestReporting, today, chips in with some more damning rebuttal of Whitaker:

In his attack, Whitaker acknowledges that "nobody, so far as I know, disputes the general accuracy of Memri's translations."

So what's the problem?

For starters, Whitaker quotes Ibraham Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who complains that Memri depicts the Muslim world in a bad light. Hardly a valid criticism, considering that Memri merely translates the Arabic media!

Whitaker also denounces Memri for employing three former members of Israeli intelligence. What Whitaker doesn't tell us is that Memri's founder, Colonel Yigal Carmon, and most of his young staff, are on the left wing of the Israeli political spectrum. Carmon was an advisor to the late Yitzhak Rabin and is a supporter of territorial compromise.

Whitaker scoffs at the fact that the names of Memri's staff and office address were removed from their website due to concern of attack by Arab extremists. Whitaker calls this an "over-the-top precaution." One wonders if the Guardian would consider itself "over-the-top" for taking such precautions to protect its own staff from violence.

... Most surprising of all is that while Whitaker spends 1,700 words attacking Memri as a "mysterious organization" and its "air of secrecy," he has forgotten to tell Guardian readers of his own secrets. For in addition to his work as Middle East editor of The Guardian, Whitaker also runs the anti-Israel, website Arab Gateway (http://www.al-bab.com).

Arab Gateway lists viciously anti-Israel "associate sites," such as that of the spuriously-named "Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding" (http://www.caabu.org).

Whitaker's site has pages about non-Arab minorities in the Middle East, such as Berbers and Kurds -- but no page on Jews. The site's section on "maps" lists a "country map of Palestine" (we didn't know Palestine was a country), but upon clicking the link it takes you to a file at the Univ. of Texas archives with a slightly different name: "israel_map.jpg".

See a beaming photo of Whitaker on the "about" page of Arab Gateway at http://www.al-bab.com/arab/about.htm

Sound to us like a conflict of interest.

Comments can be sent to the Guardian:
letters@guardian.co.uk
Editor: simon.waldman@guardian.co.uk
Writer: brian.whitaker@guardian.co.uk

Comments to Whitaker's Arab website can be sent to:
arabgateway@hotmail.com

Thanks to Tom Gross for the above information.

Justin Weitz's Middle East solution:

Do you see the Sinai Peninsula? There's some oil there, beautiful beaches, desert, and few people. Give that to the Palestinians. Move them there, and have the US, EU, and Israel fund it. Create a Palestinian state in the Sinai Peninsula, where nobody will be bothered. Or, for that matter, create it in the land east of the Jordan. Jordan is at least 60% Palestinian. Move the rest of 'em in there, create a Palestinian naiton-state which is separated from Israel by water. Then they can militarize, get foreign aid, have plenty land to grow, whatever they want.

Politicized "political economy": HappyFunPundit examines a new study from Roger Congleton, political economist at George Mason University. Congleton claims the terrorist threat is overblown, tries to quantify it with some dubious data, and concludes that an "interdisciplinary approach" is needed to understand it. Those disciplines we should use? How about blindness and stupidity.

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Iraqi war on hold due to legislative snafu?

A confusing knot of new Iraqi regulations that require "non-resident aggressors" to obtain hundreds of federal and provincial pre-invasion permits and licenses will further delay any attack on Saddam Hussein, said frustrated U.S. officials who have also been told they must publish an "Intent to Overthrow" notice in an Iraqi newspaper of record. (SatireWire)

Mark Shea reflects on "Reflections On Covenant And Mission." Mark thinks out loud about a recent Catholic statement on converting Jews. Scroll down and read several previous posts by Mark and his readers on the subject to get the full impact.

Now, I don't know much about the ins and outs of Catholic theology, so I am in no position to judge:
1) what the letter actually said.
2) if it said what Mark thinks it said
3) if Mark's attempts to fit it into his existing worldview are correct Catholic theology.

But I can say that it is indeed an education to read his thoughts and those of his readers. Boy, do we still have a long way to go. Gee, Mark, is there any way I can point you Catholics at the Islamists who also want to establish their version of God's Kingdom on earth, and you guys can take each other out? Us Jews? Until the dust clears, we'll be hiding out in India or China or Fuji or someplace where nobody's theology is dependent on converting us.

BTW, I read the Texaco article referenced in the last post for several examples of using Christian proselytizing to discriminate. Although Mark Shea isn't technically proselytizing (Meryl has the latest wrap-up of the Abe Zelmanowitz debate here), he is trying to convert someone after death, which is close enough. The Mormons are the worst offenders at this, and it is interesting that a representative of the Jewish community uses almost the exact same words in reply as some Jewish bloggers did to Mark.

The list of names includes many notable Jews of the past century, including Sigmund Freud, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, and relatives of holocaust victim Anne Frank. Weisenthal Center senior researcher Aaron Breitbart says that Jews find the baptism of their ancestors offensive. "These people were born Jews, they lived as Jews and many of them died because they were Jews," Breitbarttold the Salt Lake Tribune Tuesday. "They would not have chosen to be baptized Mormons in life, and there is no reason they would want to be baptized by proxy in death."

European Anti-semitism. Again. This latest incident happened on Wall Street, but it's not a US firm.

Last year, the London-based interdealer broker ponied up more than $100,000 to settle a religious discrimination claim stemming from staffers forcing a Jewish colleague to wear a Nazi uniform because he was late. Now the Wall Street offices of Tullett are the subject of a similar claim . . . Louis Rehberger, who worked his way up from clerk to manager in his 19 years at Tullett, says in his Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint that his "co-workers handcuffed" him "to a chair on Friday afternoons and on Jewish holidays" so he'd be late to observe religious rites; placed ashes on his desk with a note saying they were his "relatives;" and smeared human feces on his microphone and "once" on his "lip.

Unbelievable. I hate to judge when I don't know all the facts, but I also find it unbelievable that Rehberger took this shit for so long. This company sounds worse than Texaco. What could be worth it? He's not a single mom facing sexual harassment at a dead-end low-paying factory job, he's on Wall Street. Would leaving compromise his future in the brokerage industry? Given the number of Jews on Wall Street, I can't imagine there was no one who could help him transition to another position elsewhere.

Mark Shea, your bishop wants to have a chat with you: The Boston Globe reports that

"The Catholic Church, which spent hundreds of years trying forcibly to convert Jews to Christianity, has come to the conclusion that it is theologically unacceptable to target Jews for evangelization, according to a statement issued yesterday by organizations representing US Catholic bishops and rabbis from the country's two largest Jewish denominations."

A spokesman for the ADL makes the same point I did that when you see others as incomplete unless they follow your religious path, persecution often follows:

". . . . " 'The significance is far more than theological, because for centuries it was the refusal of Jews to embrace Christian teachings that legitimized the persecution, and often murder, of Jews in communities throughout Christendom,' said Robert Leikind, New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. 'What the bishops have done here is decisively separated themselves from that history and indicated once and for all that Jews have an authentic relationship with God and an authentic mission in the world, and therefore there is no reason for, or logic in, trying to evangelize Jews.' "

However, the Southern Baptists, bless their hearts, are not budging an inch:

" . . . according to spokesman John Revell. ''The drive behind not just the Southern Baptists but all evangelical Christians is the conviction that Jesus Christ is the only way to have eternal life with God the Father, and anybody who seeks eternal life through any other means will fail,'' Revell said. ''There is a misconception that Southern Baptists have targeted Jews. We haven't targeted Jews. Our focus is to get the good news of Jesus Christ to all people, including Jews.' . . . Eugene J. Fisher, the director of Catholic-Jewish Relations for the bishops' conference, said the document issued yesterday acknowledges the divide between Catholics and evangelical Protestants on the issue."

Thanks, Mr. Revell. I always breathe a sigh of relief when Jews aren't targeted. Gee, a great point of contention for another intra-Christian holy war: Should we evangelize the Jews or not? No offense, but us Jews will all move to India for a while until you guys sort this one out. We don't want to get caught in the crossfire.

Son of Muslim Comedy Night. Since my original post on this subject won't come up in Kesher Talk archives, I am revising and reposting it here, since it's an interesting side-effect of the current world situation that no one else is covering (although Fred over at Rantburg is working up a routine).

I had some links about Muslim comics in my email archives, but lgf's link about one more Hebrew University bombing victim got me thinking about a wonderful eulogy I had just read for Ben Blutstein, one of the Pardes students who was killed, and prompted some comments at lgf on the peculiar humorlessness of Islam.

Please read the eulogy (which is also for Marla Bennett), and think about Ben's loving yet irreverent attitude towards his religion. Although Ben was part of an unusually inventive Jewish movement, intellectual debate is a venerable and divinely sanctioned (according to Talmud) way to engage with sacred texts. Although observant Jews believe that Torah is given literally by God, God very clearly says it's the job of human beings to interpret it. Consequently, when Jews dive under the hood of Torah and halacha and tinker (albeit always with respect for the Word itself and our sages' previous interpretations) we are fulfilling God's will. Thomas Cahill, author of The Gifts of the Jews, describes this attitude well from an outsider's POV :

"I had been reading the Bible all my life--in English, Latin, and Greek--but always with Christians, either Catholics or Protestants. When Christians read the Bible, they tend to look for an authority, a priest or minister or biblical expert, who will tell them how to interpret the passage under consideration. Then, the interpretation delivered, they are anxious to move on to the next passage. Jews treat the Bible like a comfortable old couch (it is, after all, their family history). They don't care about moving on and they are willing to discuss and debate a given passage endlessly. Out of this elaborate give-and-take a different kind of authority arises: a shared authority, a genuinely communal authority."

Cahill was a visiting scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary, but he's describing every Torah study I have ever participated in. Irreverence and tinkering (which go hand in hand) are not threatening when you have that comfort level.

Now. Where do you see this kind of playfulness in Islam? Sufism, and that's about it. And mainstream Muslims have usually wanted to run Sufis out of town on a rail.

So while "Jewish comic" is practically a redundancy, "Muslim comic" is an oxymoron. Well, not quite. There are Muslim comics (all American or Canadian, of course), and in the months following 9-11 they got together with Jewish comics and did some shows. Not only that, according to this article in the Forward, they seem to have adopted "the same vein of nebbishy, underdog humor that became the trademark of Woody Allen and his imitators."

I don't know about you, but I find the idea of Jewish humor infiltrating Islam pretty subversive.

UPDATE: CNN has a report on Jewish-Muslim comedy. This seems to be turning into a trend.

Out-of-state Jewish donors pivotal in race to unseat Cynthia McKinney: Congressional Quarterly reports (8/13) that "Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney´s bid for re-election appears to be getting shakier in the Atlanta-based 4th District." Her opponent, state judge Denise Majette, "has recently received a huge influx of money from donors across the country -- resources that she is using to advance her argument that McKinney, who was elected in 1992, is out of step with the district." The late money to Majette, "much of which appears to be from Jewish donors around the country, will enable her to spread her message and stay on television in the expensive Atlanta market." About 200 donors to Majette "also gave to AL7 Democratic primary winner Artur Davis." In addition, "some prominent Georgia Democrats have stayed quiet in the race. Democratic Rep. John Lewis -- the respected civil rights activist who represents the 5th District next to McKinney´s 4th -- has not come out in support of her, despite endorsing several Democratic contenders around the state. Democratic Sen. Miller called McKinney 'loony' earlier in the year and donated $1,000 to Majette."

While the Majette-McKinney race is of intense interest to me, I don't cover it extensively. For a near-daily dose of Cynthia-smacking fun, be sure to read Scott Koenig, the Indepundit.

Hamas makes itself at home in Canada: As part of the court case against the Hamas-supporting Holy Land Foundation, it was revealed yesterday that "Senior leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were overheard by FBI agents discussing their lucrative fundraising efforts in Canada." The National Post has the story today:

"They also encouraged more fundraising activities in Canada," according to the FBI report, based on secret surveillance of the meeting. "They talked openly about opening an ... office in Canada.

"It was mentioned that [a proposal for] such an office was submitted to the Canadian government three times and isn't approved yet." But donations flowed from Canada nonetheless, the document suggests.

Hamas is a designated terrorist organization in the United States and Britain but not in Canada, where -- almost a year after the Sept. 11 attacks -- the Liberal Cabinet has outlawed only al-Qaeda and six affiliated groups under its new anti-terrorism law.

... The evidence concerns the "Philadelphia meeting," a 1993 gathering of Islamic hard-liners who assembled at a hotel to discuss support for Islamic militancy, particularly against Israel.

"All the participants without exception are Muslim fundamentalists," said the FBI report, an analysis of 16 hours of recorded discussions. The 25 participants came from Washington, Virginia, New Jersey, Mississippi and Canada, the report says.

Fundraising was the major topic of discussion, the report said. "A fundraising organization, an Islamic organization, in Canada collected $214,000 in six months, ending June, 1993.

"It was also mentioned, they, in Canada collected $167,000 during the year of 1992. Another Islamic organization [probably the Holy Land Fund] collected $189,000." Holy Land is an alleged Hamas front. Its leader was present at the Philadelphia meeting.

The FBI claims the participants agreed that money raised in North America should be directed to finance the Palestinian "holy war" against Israel and to undermine the Oslo peace process and the Palestinian Authority.

... The documents were obtained by the Site Institute, a Washington-based research organization headed by terrorism expert Rita Katz. They were filed in support of a U.S. government decision to shut down an alleged Hamas fundraising branch in Texas, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. Last October, the White House closed the foundation, the largest Muslim charity in the United States, charging it was a money-making arm for Hamas terrorists.

... The FBI monitored the Philadelphia meeting because it was spying on its organizer, Abdelhaleem Hasan Ashqar, a Hamas activist accused of transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yasser Arafat's job search: Stephen Sharkansky has found an interesting divergence between the English and Arabic versions of Arafat's resume.

And in other news, the head of Israeli military intelligence, General Aharon Zeevi Farkash, just disclosed that Arafat's personal stash of cash (EU euros and CIA/State Dept. dollars, of course) consists of about 1.3 billion American dollars. Farkash explained this during a meeting of the Knesset's Security and Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

The Jerusalem Post also offers a list of suggestions for "What $1.3b could do" for Palestine.

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

More Muslim Comedy Night. Rantburg is inspired by my links about Muslim comics to try his own stand-up routine:

"Salaam aleikum, ladies and germs. I just flew in from the Gulf and, boy, are my arms tired... My feet are tired, too. I had to cross the Iraqi no-fly zone... My third wife was stopped on the way home from the beauty parlor by the religious police because she dropped her veil. They flogged the staff of the beauty shop... My cousin, Hassan? The one who couldn't get a job? He finally found work. He plays the antiaircraft gun in an Afghan wedding band... We had my cousin Ahmed over the other night. He ate all the goat we had. He leans back and he sez, 'Boy! If I eat another bite, I'm gonna explode.' We called out for more goat and sent him to a disco in Tel Aviv... I know you're out there, I can hear you breathing. Maybe I can't. Is it a gas attack?..."

Oy. Maybe Fred should try out for a guest spot on Only in Israel? (I used to have a link to the whole article.)

Contest Winner! One autographed Arafat babywipe to Ronnie Schrieber, who identified this quote as the refrain of a song by 2 Nice Girls, a late-80s Austin TX lesbian band who were also known in womyn's music circles for an excellent cover of "Sweet Jane." Alumni included Meg Hentges, Gretchen Phillips,and Laurie Freelove.

(The catch is, you can't pick up the baby wipe till Israel deports Arafat and cleans out his bunker. Darn.)

Meg Hentges is a straight-ahead rocker. I have seen both Gretchen and Laurie in concert. Gretchen's patter is wincingly funny and her satirical lyrics are fun the first few times, but political songs usually don't age well. Laurie is spellbinding live, just her and the guitar, meditative. I usually don't like atmospheric singer-songwriters with obscure lyrics, but somehow Laurie has an edge that anchors all that stuff. The reviews on her site liken her to Kate Bush and Marianne Faithfull, but she reminds me of no one so much as Tim Buckley.

Attempts at interfaith dialogue continue. Lynn B has a reaction to Joe K's further comments on Mark Shea, and exhibits her usual mercilessly clear thinking. Ronnie Schrieber also weighs in here and here. I disagree with Ronnie that different religions worship different gods (I know that's one way to interpret some Jewish teachings). Although we take different paths, we are winding our way up to the same peak, which is by definition awesome and unknowable (and at the same time fleetingly accessible now, not just when we die). Every religion with some ethical content that has allowed it to continue for generations provides instructions for glimpsing that peak. But that doesn't mean the same instructions are right for everyone. Mark Shea wanted to superimpose his view of the peak on Abe's journey, which came across to some of us Jews as arrogant and disrespectful.

Joe's error, which Lynn nailed, is the blurring of distinctions in a quest for harmony. Certainly, differences between religious paths can be over-emphasized, but universal truths can only be learned through particular applications. Attempts to jump right to universalism tend to produce spacey faux-Buddhist faux-Native American hippies, or Big Brother.

Speaking of distinctions, over at lgf's comment section some of us try to make one between assigning passages from the Koran to college freshmen and forcing them to sit through a Muslim religious service. No one is yet suggesting that the students are really good Muslims who won't realize it till they get to heaven. But everyone is upset anyway.

Israeli citizens prepare for Saddam. Israeli Guy takes us through the drill if Saddam's missiles strike. Gas mask? Check. Nearest shelter? Check. Bio/chem or conventional attack? Check....

This day in history: 1961 -- East German border guards begin construction of the Berlin Wall.

The wall stood until November 9, 1989.

Saddam's birthday: Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein received a sword -- a big sword, about 2-3 feet long -- for his 65th Birthday.

It tough to buy things for the guy who has everything.

The sword, though, will never match his favorite birthday gift ever. It was for his 55th birthday.

His favorite birthday gift: Kuwait.

courtesy of Mike Sultan

Senseless Census: My latest TechCentralStation column is on the coming changes to the U.S. Census.

Monday, August 12, 2002

This photojournalist's last pictures were recovered from the wreck of the WTC. Via Bruce Hill.

A reader's intro to Northern Virginia's Jewish community...: I received this kind note from Stephan:

... Welcome to the area (in case you are relatively new here). I'm NO expert on the local jewish scene, just watched it expand a bit over the past 15 years. [Moved here from near Lowell MA in '87, although I grew up in North jersey]. At least you are near the JCC as well (I guess) and Gesher (a good friend is on their board) isn't too far away, Chabad is even nearby for a change of pace. And the local Aish HaTorah group is becoming very active.

Thanks to the population boom in the area, there are a number of new and growing congregations. Olom Tikveh is one of the older ones. The late Rabbi Klirs (who passed away several years ago) officiated at my son's brit milah. He was a real gem. Our schul's first rabbi performed one of his first weddings there (The bride was a convert from a VERY evangelical home and she's now one of the MOST comitted Jews I know). We didn't join there because we found out about Beth Emeth and wound up buying a house in Herndon. Schelpping to the Hebrew School is enough from here, Little River Tpk would be murder.

Some people have started calling the area around O-T the "shtehtl" on account of a growing Jewish population (attracted by proximity to OT, Chabad, JCC, and Gesher I guess). The Shoppers on Picket Rd has been stocking more kosher foods I understand, otherwise you're right, off to Maryland. [My wife still prefers to do her Pesach shopping in NJ - the stores near my parents have a better selection than anything in this end of the county.]

I'd still like to find a decent deli (Anna's Deli in Crystal City is fau-NY style, at least they don't grimmace when I order a tounge on rye). I've given up on having a real NY-style bagel. The supermarkes have convinced the population that a bagel is a donut-shaped roll. While I like the convenience of having a bagel 2 days after I bought it remain edible, ITS NOT THE SAME. Trader Joe's probably has the best packaged bagels, for whatever that is worth.

People may be debating if Conservative schuls are growing or dying. Around here, it's growing, although that may just be from an influx of people rather than people feeling more connected or anything.

"Imagine there's no heaven...." Winds of Change is always one of the first blogs I check, and I usually agree with what Joe has to say. But along with Meryl and Lynn, I think his comments on Mark Shea's posthumous insertion of Catholicism into Abe Zelmanowitz's theology is off the mark. Joe's subsequent explanation cleverly subsumes the issue in heartwarming universalism (as befits Joe's approach as an organizational development consultant) (I say this affectionately as someone in a related field. No, really, I do.) with which no one could disagree without coming across as a churl.

But. Joe's "we're all the same in heaven" universalism sidesteps the issue of disrespecting the different paths we take - in this world - to get there. Joe says "For Mark, as a devout Catholic, Jesus = G-d. Given his belief, he sees Abe as recognizing that truth upon reaching heaven. Indeed, unless I deny him the freedom to have his religion there's nothing else he can believe." Would Joe apply this attitude to Muslims who are seriously working to place the entire planet under Sharia? Why pressure Islam to respect diversity but not Catholicism?

Warbloggers are fond of the meme "Islam needs a reformation which forces it to respect other cultures, just like the Protestant Reformation in Europe." This means really accepting - I mean really accepting - the fact that other religions and cultures are going to take a different path up the mountain of spiritual enlightenment than you (not to mention respecting individuals who simply don't think there's a mountain at all). The Reformation taught us that imposing one set of beliefs on everyone (other than a few basic secular rules for everyone to live relatively harmoniously on the same planet , such as don't rape, steal, or pursue an independent state by blowing up teenager in a disco) meant that every group got to take a turn as the persecuted, and that mutual respect might work better for all in the long run.

Thinking your way is superior to others (which we all do, let's not kid ourselves) is very different from refusing to acknowledge another's stated path because you believe only people on your path can be good or heroic. Once you start believing that, you are on the road to treating others as lesser beings. Mark's comments remind me of white Southerners who still say "that's white of you," meaning "you behaved ethically". It is telling that Islam also handles the supposed "paradox" of righteous Jews such as Abraham and Moses by making them retroactively Muslim. To those who think I am being alarmist, I would say that, although attempting to police thoughts is a cure worse than the disease, when the Left points out dehumanizing stereotypes it is operating from an accurate observation about history, which is that attitudes do often lead to deeds. We can all give examples of persecutions which were instigated and inflamed by vicious caricatures of the group in question, from pogroms to lynchings to beatings in the street to systematic denial of legal rights accorded others in society. These stereotypes invariably contain a version of "inherently incapable of true goodness." Mark may not think he's on that road, but a triumphalism that justified centuries of Christian persecution of nonbelievers lurks behind his comments.

For the record, the Jewish position on righteous gentiles, while not completely respecting of "the other," goes farther than the Islamic or Christian ones. Its relative lack of interest in pressing Judaism on others derives from the nature of Judaism itself as well as our often bitter experience as a minority religion. Although, like most belief systems, Judaism contains universal truths which may be adopted by anyone, it makes no claim to be a universal solution. Rather it is the prescribed path for a particular people. Anyone who becomes Jewish explicitly joins the Jewish people. Some think this particularism is bigoted by definition, but it only means that we think the best way to spread our good ideas is through example rather than browbeating people into converting. (That's why there are over 1 billion Muslims, 2 billion Christians, and only 14 million Jews.) Our historical experience is that if your belief system is only complete when everyone in the world signs onto it, sooner or later you will end up dehumanizing and persecuting those stubborn folk who won't get with the program.

Lastly, as Meryl points out, Abe wasn't a secular Jew who felt vaguely proud of his heritage but never went to shul. He was a visible proud Orthodox Jew. That means he knew who he was and what he was about. To posthumously make him into a Christian not only says that his Judaism had nothing to do with his heroism (insulting enough in itself), but also denies the life-long choices of a man Mark claims to respect. If you are impressed by the guy for what he did at the WTC, Mark, why not respect the life decisions that made him the type of man who would do what he did?

"I Spent My Last $10 on Birth Control and Beer..." No one in the blog debate on men and birth control has acknowledged that NO form of reversible birth control is 100% effective, or that many women have unpleasant physical reactions to the pill or are allergic to the sperm-killer in the sponge (which isn't available anymore anyway) or condoms. Vasectomies and tubal ligations reverse themselves (rarely, but it's happened). Condoms break.

Abortions, even safe early ones, are surgery. They aren't pleasant. They aren't like taking a pill. Even RU-486, which is 2 pills (and which the religious right tried to make sure Americans couldn't get) essentially induces a miscarriage. It's safer than surgery, but sitting on the toilet passing gouts of blood from your vagina is scary and painful.

There are screwed-up women who are so numb to their own bodies (probably addicts of some kind or seriously depressed, or both) who aren't deterred by the unpleasantness of abortion, but your average normal female human being would not use abortion as birth control any more than she wants to get a wisdom tooth pulled every few months.

To sum up, most women don't have abortions just because they can't be bothered with the inconvenience of birth control.

PS An autographed Arafat Baby-wipe to anyone who can identify the source of the title quote.

What Occupation? That's the title of a Commentary article (Jul./Aug.) from King's College professor Effraim Karsh. He musters history and numbers to dispell the myths of an Israeli "occupation."

... Neither Egypt nor Jordan ever allowed Palestinian self-determination in Gaza and the West Bank--which were, respectively, the parts of Palestine conquered by them during the 1948-49 war. Indeed, even UN Security Council Resolution 242, which after the Six-Day war of 1967 established the principle of "land for peace" as the cornerstone of future Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, did not envisage the creation of a Palestinian state. To the contrary: since the Palestinians were still not viewed as a distinct nation, it was assumed that any territories evacuated by Israel would be returned to their pre-1967 Arab occupiers--Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. The resolution did not even mention the Palestinians by name, affirming instead the necessity "for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem"--a clause that applied not just to the Palestinians but to the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from the Arab states following the 1948 war.

At this time--we are speaking of the late 1960's--Palestinian nationhood was rejected by the entire international community, including the Western democracies, the Soviet Union (the foremost supporter of radical Arabism), and the Arab world itself. "Moderate" Arab rulers like the Hashemites in Jordan viewed an independent Palestinian state as a mortal threat to their own kingdom, while the Saudis saw it as a potential source of extremism and instability. Pan-Arab nationalists were no less adamantly opposed, having their own purposes in mind for the region. As late as 1974, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad openly referred to Palestine as "not only a part of the Arab homeland but a basic part of southern Syria"; there is no reason to drink he had changed his mind by the time of his death in 2000.

Nor, for that matter, did the populace of the West Bank and Gaza regard itself as a distinct nation. The collapse and dispersion of Palestinian society following the 1948 defeat had shattered an always fragile communal fabric, and the subsequent physical separation of the various parts of the Palestinian diaspora prevented the crystallization of a national identity. Host Arab regimes actively colluded in discouraging any such sense from arising. Upon occupying the West Bank during the 1948 war, King Abdallah had moved quickly to erase all traces of corporate Palestinian identity. On April 4, 1950, the territory was formally annexed to Jordan, its residents became Jordanian citizens, and they were increasingly integrated into the kingdom's economic, political, and social structures.

For its part, the Egyptian government showed no desire to annex the Gaza Strip but had instead ruled the newly acquired area as an occupied military zone. This did not imply support of Palestinian nationalism, however, or of any sort of collective political awareness among the Palestinians. The local population was kept under tight control, was denied Egyptian citizenship, and was subjected to severe restrictions on travel.

There is an untold story of how much Palestinian Arabs have benefitted from the Israeli "occupation":

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world--ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $ 165 to $ 1,715 (compared with Jordan's $ 1,050, Egypt's $ 600, Turkey's $ 1,630, and Tunisia's $ 1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the better-off Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza tell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.

No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.

But since the mid-90's, Palestinian Arabs have not had this benefit...

since the beginning of 1996, and certainly following the completion of the redeployment from Hebron in January 1997, 99 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have not lived under Israeli occupation. By no conceivable stretching of words can the anti-Israel violence emanating from the territories during these years be made to qualify as resistance to foreign occupation. In these years there has been no such occupation.

Karsh concludes his article by debunking the tired nostrum that Palestinian terrorism grew out of the "occupation":

It is not the 1967 occupation that led to the Palestinians' rejection of peaceful coexistence and their pursuit of violence. Palestinian terrorism started well before 1967, and continued--and intensified--after the occupation ended in all but name. Rather, what is at fault is the perduring Arab view that the creation of the Jewish state was itself an original act of "inhuman occupation" with which compromise of any final kind is beyond the realm of the possible. Until that disposition changes, which is to say until a different leadership arises, the idea of peace in the context of the Arab Middle East will continue to mean little more than the continuation of war by other means.

Buy a copy of the magazine and read the whole article.

Continuing to be terrorized by numbers: Aish.com ran a version of my "Terrorized by Numbers" article. I am nearly finished with a version for general newspaper distribution.

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Muslim Comedy Night: No, really. You never heard the one about the Muslim who gets to heaven and .....?

lgf's link about one more Hebrew University bombing victim made me think of a wonderful eulogy I had just read for Ben Blutstein, one of the Pardes students who was killed, and prompted some comments on the peculiar humorlessness of Islam.

Please read the eulogy (which is also for Marla Bennett), and think about Ben's loving yet irreverent attitude towards his religion. Although Ben was part of an especially inventive Jewish movement, this is a mainstream Jewish attitude , which Thomas Cahill, author of The Gifts of the Jews, describes from an outsider's POV :

"I had been reading the Bible all my life--in English, Latin, and Greek--but always with Christians, either Catholics or Protestants. When Christians read the Bible, they tend to look for an authority, a priest or minister or biblical expert, who will tell them how to interpret the passage under consideration. Then, the interpretation delivered, they are anxious to move on to the next passage. Jews treat the Bible like a comfortable old couch (it is, after all, their family history). They don't care about moving on and they are willing to discuss and debate a given passage endlessly. Out of this elaborate give-and-take a different kind of authority arises: a shared authority, a genuinely communal authority."

Cahill was a visiting scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary, but he's describing every Torah study I have ever participated in. Irreverence and tinkering (which go hand in hand) are not threatening when you have that comfort level.

Now. Where do you see this kind of playfulness in Islam? Sufism, and that's about it. And mainstream Muslims have usually wanted to run Sufis out of town on a rail.

So while "Jewish comic" is practically a redundancy, "Muslim comic" is an oxymoron. Well, not quite. There are Muslim comics (all American or Canadian, of course), and in the months following 9-11 they got together with Jewish comics and did some shows. Not only that, they seem to have adopted "the same vein of nebbishy, underdog humor that became the trademark of Woody Allen and his imitators."

I don't know about you, but I find the idea of Jewish humor infiltrating Islam pretty subversive. Maybe VOA should hire these guys to broadcast their routines to Riyadh?

*sigh* Now it's 2 AM, so I'm not going to try to get to minyan this morning. **Grump** See what this blog made me do!

Kesher Talk

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Monday, August 12, 2002

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Navigate this site

Previous Posts

Links

Archives