Interfaith Misunderstandings, revisited. Again. The latest issue of the Forward has
the scoop. Jim Sibley, the Southern Baptists' coordinator for Jewish ministries, slammed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for declaring that campaigns targeting Jews for conversion "are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church." "It is never good for the Jews whenever the Roman Catholic Church fails with respect to the gospel," Sibley was quoted as saying in an August 19 report from the Baptist Press. "When they used coercion, the Jewish people suffered horribly and were hardened against the good news of their messiah. Now, in singling out the Jewish people for evangelistic exemption, they are withholding the hope of Israel. There can be no more extreme form of antisemitism."
War is Peace. Lies are Truth. Arbeit Mach Frei. Refusing to target Jews for conversion is . . . . anti-Semitism.
I am almost speechless. But not quite.
Reverend Sibley, thank you for explaining it all to me. Clearly 3500 years of Jewish civilization, surviving and adapting and growing through centuries of persecution, spawning scientists, statesmen, novelists, poets, musicians, philosophers, and social activists all out of proportion to its numbers, inspiring such intense loyalty that secular Jews have forged
a cultural identity to maintain the identification with their people, that generations of
conversos reverted back to Judaism as soon as they could escape from the reach of the Inquisition -- clearly, this ancient civilization (which incidentally spawned your religion's founder and provided most of your scripture) has no right to exist independent of your, um, affections.
To you, our history, customs, accomplishments, familial ties are not the result of real people developing a complex theology and ritual, but are some sort of abstraction ("the Jewish people"), a simple vehicle for
your interpretations of divine intention. This cozy fantasy seems to be threatened when Catholic clergy break rank by actually treating us like people. Real people who have our own definition of ourselves. I can understand, given your paternal concern for "the Jewish people" you so fondly imagine leading to the light, how upsetting it must be to you when some of your fellow Christians come to the conclusion that treating a proud ancient civilization like confused unruly children who don't know what's best for them, well . . . just doesn't make sense.
I think, Reverend Sibley, the difference between you and the Catholic clergy is that they sat for years in
interfaith conference after interfaith conference, with real Jews who are rabbis, teachers, leaders of the Jewish community, and they slowly realized that they were dealing with people who know who they are and what they value, and that they weren't going to make any significant inroads into our community without Inquisitions or Crusades or pogroms to back them up. Being modern people who enjoy the benefits of Western secular democracy, they realized such methods would create many more problems than they would solve. I dare say they may even have repudiated such methods on moral grounds, thereby making a significant break with their forebears. (Okay, I'm being snide here. I'm sorry. Somewhat sorry.)
Also, Reverend Sibley, many of these people know us. After all, the patterns of migration in the US have been such that Catholic (with the exception of Central and South American Catholics) and Jewish immigrants tended to settle in the same locales. In our parents' generation, they
preached lies about us and their kids poured out of church on Sunday afternoon and beat up our kids for "killing Christ," but at least we all lived on the same block.
Out in Southern Baptistland (where I was born and lived for many years), Jews are more of an abstraction. There aren't as many of us, we tend to be more assimilated and have less cultural infrastructure. It's harder to "do Jewish." For example, the magnificent wedding I attended last week, whose celebrations are still going on with multiple rounds of Shabbat dinners and
ufrufs and
tisches and
sheva brachot, with every denomination and several shuls participating (the couple, although observant,
are pretty eclectic and have a wide circle of friends), simply could not have happened in the same way in parts of the country where Baptists predominate. You need generations of people living in one place in an environment rich with customs, ritual, cultural associations, shared history and family ties to create such a critical mass. (Which is why I recently moved to New York, but that's another story.)
So, Reverend Sibley, if you decide to visit the den of iniquity that is Manhattan, I'll take you to the
Carlebach Shul and
BJ, maybe introduce you to
the only Romaniote congregation in the Western hemisphere or the Yemenite community of the Upper West Side. Maybe we'll do a little
learning (you might recognize the source of Yehoshua's sayings), and if you are feeling particularly adventurous, we'll tour
Queensistan. If you come home from that trip still bound and determined to convert us all to Christianity, I'll eat my tallis.
Selach lanu, mechal lanu, kaper lanu. Tonight is the beginning, for Ashkenazi Jews, of saying special penitential prayers called
selichot, (from the Hebrew word for
"forgive me") as an additional preparation for the
Yamim Noraim. (The Sephardic custom is to begin saying them at the beginning of Ellul.) In many shuls Selichot is inaugurated by a late Saturday night service, often combined with a teaching, lecture, or musical performance. This is usually a big performance for the choir, if the shul has one. Selichot begins late because at the end of summer, Shabbat doesn't end until 8 or 9 PM. Shabbat must be over before this service can begin, because it is inappropriate to focus on penitence on Shabbat, which is supposed to be joyful (funerals and mourning ceremonies are not performed on Shabbat). (However, Yom Kippur can take place on Shabbat, and I will let Rabbi Schlomo Riskin
explain how that works.)
Some words on forgiveness from a rabbi:
. . . . Step one is to make peace with those attempting to make peace with us. But what about those cases when the offender does not ask for our pardon or act in any way to make amends? Rava asked: What is the meaning of the first verse of the Haftarah of Shabbat Shuvah: Who is a God like you, forgiving iniquity and passing over transgression? Why does it first say forgiving, and then passing over? And he answers: This verse comes to teaches us: whose iniquity does God forgive? That of the person willing to pass over, to overlook, the transgressions committed against himself.
The prayers in the selichot service take an interesting approach to forgivenss. They do not dwell on human fraility, or on our human inadequacies. They do not attempt to excuse our wrongdoings. Rather they appeal to God's nature as a forgiving God. In this they are following the pattern of the book of Numbers . . . . Over and over the people would do wrong, and each time Moses was left with no recourse, but to appeal to God's mercy and to the revelation of God that followed the incident of the Golden Calf. In asking God to forgive the people, Moses appeals to the thirteen attributes God revealed to him on the mountain, to God's nature as a forgiving God, full of kindness, slow to anger, gracious and merciful. . . . Similarly we need to let go of our resentments of those who have offended us, not necessarily because of their merits, or even because of their inadequacies, but because of our desire to be like God, beings of mercy and graciousness.
Muslim hostages take over B'nai Brith headquarters. Did you know that over 100 people were held hostage
by Muslim terrorists in the headquarters of B'nai Brith in Washington DC?
In 1977?I didn't either.
This article mentions the previous hostage takeover in the context of a recent chemical agent scare:
Last week's threat to B'nai B'rith came to an institution with unusually tight security. After the 1977 siege, when 12 Black Muslim extremists seized the B'nai B'rith building and two other buildings not affiliated with Jewish organizations, B'nai B'rith implemented strict security measures. Of the 134 hostages held in the 1977 attack, 107 were held in the B'nai B'rith building. That siege ended peacefully after 39 hours. . . . "In 1977, we were in an immediate life-threatening situation, with people holding guns to our heads and hitting people with rifle butts and their fists," Clearfield said. "This time we were at our desks, waiting and worrying." Although Jewish hostages were not singled out during the 1977 raid, anti-Semitic epithets were hurled frequently at the group.
This article mentions the takeover in a list of acts of Muslim terrorists against Americans:
March 9, 1977: Hanafi Muslims in Washington, DC, seized the District Building, the B'nai B'rith building, and the Islamic Center, in the process shooting Washington DC city councilman Marion Barry in the chest. The bullet barely missed Barry's heart, and gunfire delayed his transportation to a nearby hospital.
This is the
most complete description I found of this hostage ordeal 25 years ago.
What part of "no" don't you understand?" is a rallying cry against rape and sexual harassment and in favor of basic respect between one human and another. If I repeatedly say, "no, thank you," and you repeatedly ignore my request and continue to press your desires on me against my will, what does that make you? In modern American life, we have learned that obsessive importuning of another person is a sign, not of healthy romance, but of narcissism and loss of touch with reality, and we look askance at that behavior. When it becomes really intrusive, we recognize that the next step may be physical threats, and we call that behavior "stalking."
But as Lynn at In Context shows in the
latest round of the ongoing tedious, scary argument about
convert the Jews, some Christians mistake this obsessive behavior for "love." (Tedious the way a guy is tedious who keeps calling you and sending you flowers and candy after you have told him 15 times that although he's very nice, he's just not right for you, and no thanks, you really don't want to go out with him, scary the way he gets when he starts hanging around your block every day and leaves threatening messages on your answering machine and you find out he did the same to his last 3 girlfriends, one of whom disappeared and was never seen again.)
One of the frustrations that Jews have had to deal with through centuries of rehashing this same argument is that our most basic point is always ignored: Please just leave us alone. Don't tell us what we need. Don't tell us what we want. Don't try to tell us what our Bible really says. Go about your business, in peace, and leave our relationship with God to us. Instead, all kinds of other easily refutable accusations and insinuations are read into our responses that we didn't mean and didn't make. And then (surprise!) they are refuted. Well, this instance has been no exception.
As Bruce Hill would put it: What she said.
If you know the history of Christian treatment of Jews
and the justification for it, my stalking analogy is an understatement, not an exaggeration. At this point in history, in the West, proselytizers are well-behaved, precisely
because we live in a secular society with a enforced protection of individual conscience. When the Church ruled, its
methods were pretty
ugly. Yes, Josh, the Islamists are the ones who want to kill me today, but the onus is on you to show that you are not the ones who will want to kill me tomorrow. After all, you are the ones who wanted to kill me yesterday, using the same justification you are using now. No, I am not being "oversensitive" or "paranoid" or "whiny" to take the track record of your organization into account when I consider your remarks.
Disclaimer: This is not an attack on the tenets of Christianity per se,
if Christianity is viable without stalking Jews (or any other religion, for that matter). Josh seems to think it
isn't. Really. Your whole religious faith and sophisticated theology is irrelevent unless everyone in the world signs on? Hey, you said it, not me. I would assume a 2000 year old religion embracing 1.5 billion people would be more secure in itself, but what do I know? So I am just pointing out how this particular insecurity has been a direct cause of much suffering among my people, and if your obtuseness in recognizing that reality is any indication, may be so again.
PS My earlier thoughts on this topic are contained in several posts
here. (Scroll down to read all of them.)
Holy Weblog, Batman! It really is called
Holy Weblog and I found it via
BeliefNet, one of my favorite sites. if you like following quirky religious news, add this to your blog links.
it was a perfect morning in September . . . . I knew sooner or later someone would suggest
this: We are seeking essay contributors for the site, in order to have it launched by September 11. The essay topics we've come up with so far are:
* Where were you then?
* September 11, one year later
* How did September 11 affect you?
* Where do you see America, and the world, at, September 11, 2003?
The first group of contributors have been very helpful with suggestions -- I'm highly gratful to all of them. What I need now is for people to work on essays and to get the word out. Exact submission proceedures will be announced shortly.
Visit the site and learn how you can contribute.
Lessons learned from the troops in Afganistan. Via Bruce Hill, a
post-mortem of troop provisioning in the recent Afgan war. I love this kind of nitty-gritty "how things actually work" kind of stuff.
He's too heavy, he's my brother. Solly Ezekial
notes that Jordan and Egypt are not exactly overjoyed that many Palestinians fed up with conditions at home want to emigrate to their countries. What happened to Muslim brotherhood, he asks? In contrast, any Jew is welcome to settle in Israel, any time (unless they are a non-Orthodox convert, but that's
an issue the liberal branches of Judaism have been fighting for some years).
It's ironic that - since the beginning of the intifada - the anti-Israel crowd has been trumpeting every case they could find of a Jew moving out of Israel, and meanwhile many more Palestinians are throwing in the towel than Jews. Well, my parents were immigrants, I'm pro-immigration, and I think Palestinians should be able to seek a better life wherever they have something to offer. They are the
most Westernized, entrepreneurial, professional of all Arab groups, and unlike some other Muslims, they assimilate well in the US. Enough of them living overseas for a long enough period of time, and maybe they can influence the fanatics back home.
Meanwhile, back in Montreal . . . . Damian Penny has an
update on the Muslim student group at Concordia U whose website promotes the usual Jew-hating. (I noted his original post
the other day.) One of the books their site promotes is Henry Ford's
The International Jew. (Yes,
that Henry Ford, who was a prominent popularizer of "the international Jewish conspiracy" in his day.)
This reminds me of an incident about 15 years ago, when I lived in a mostly black, poor, inner city neighborhood in Philadelphia. Every year there was a big neighborhood block party with an African-unity race pride theme: vendors of soul food, dashikis, Black Pride pamphlets and books, reggae bands, non-profit organizations of various kinds. That particular year some Back-Jewish tension was in the news - I forget whether the precipitating issue was
Crown Heights, Nation of Islam speakers on campus, Public Enemy rap songs, or what.
I was wandering around with a friend, eating Jamaican jerk goatmeat on a stick, noticing all the anti-Semitic screeds piled on the book tables, and getting increasingly pissed off. Finally I saw
The International Jew and lost it. I picked up the book and began to rant at the disconcerted black woman staffing the table. "You want to be anti-Semitic - fine. You want to be stupid clueless assholes who blame Jews for all your problems, go ahead. But this whole street fair is about Black Pride. Half these books are about self-reliance and telling the White Man to go to hell. So why are you selling anti-Semitic bullshit by a dead white male capitalist industrialist? Why are you letting
fucking Henry Ford, for chrissakes, tell you what to think? You can't come up with your own fucking anti-Semitism, you have to borrow it from stupid white people?"
The woman stared at me, petrified, like she had never seen a pissed-off liberal Jew before. (I guess she hadn't.) My friend led me away, still ranting.
Henry fucking Ford, or godssakes . . . .
What this war needs is some good posters. And ColdFury's got 'em - downloaded WWII propaganda posters tweaked with
a new message. Very well done - check it out.
Abortion: A topic I love to avoid at all costs. I tend to fall in the muddled middle on the issue. My colleague
Iain laid out his views yesterday. The issue is complex and, of course, intractable.
If you want, you can skip to the end of the post, where he tears apart a study claiming to find that women who undergo abortions are significantly more likely to die, from both violent and non-violent means, in the years following the abortion.
The Grand Jewish conspiracy to conquer... Balochistan? Rantburg has the
details...
The Haganah lives, sort of: Instead of engaging in paramilitary operations, it operates now on the Net. A weblog devoted to
battling terrorist websites and their hosts has taken the name.
(courtesy of LGF)
Maccabi Haifa scheduled to be clubbed into submission in UEFA Champions League: You might have read
below that Maccabi Haifa was the first Israeli soccer club to ever qualify for the League's group stages.
Now that the draws have been set, Maccabi's players must be crapping their pants. It was to be expected, given the way teams are "seeded" for the draws, but still, this just stinks.
First up, they play the perennial English Premier League dominating Manchester United on September 18. Then they get to take on the German League's Bayer Leverkusen and Greece's Olympiakos.
Don't expect Israel's team to hang around very long...
Maccabi Haifa becomes first Israeli soccer team to ever qualify for the UEFA Champions League: Maccabi Haifa muscled its way into history on Wednesday night,
clinching a spot in UEFA's Champions League group stages, after holding Sturm Graz to a 3-3 draw at Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium in Graz, Austria. The result of completed a 5-3 aggregate victory for Haifa.
Haifa's coach Yitzhak Schum couldn't hide his delight at becoming the first coach to lead an Israeli side to Europe's top-32 clubs competition.
The draw takes place in Monaco this evening at 5 p.m. (live on Sport 5+).
The Haifaites advanced together with 15 clubs through the qualifying rounds. Defending champion Real Madrid is among the 16 clubs that are already in the hat, after being allocated automatic entry on the basis of their performances in their domestic leagues.
The 32 contestants will be drawn into eight groups of four teams. Each group will contain a team from one of the eight top seeds, plus a team from second, third, and fourth-ranked sides.
The winners and runners-up in each group will advance.
All teams will be allocated to four pots in accordance with the seeding principles, based on the UEFA list of club coefficients.
Teams from the same country will not be drawn into the same group. If two teams from the same association qualify, they will be paired to split their matches between Tuesday and Wednesday.
Real Madrid (Esp), Bayern Munich (Ger), Man Utd (Eng), Barcelona (Spa), Valencia (Spa), Juventus (Ita), Arsenal (Eng), and Inter Milan (Ita) were ranked as the eight top seeds and will avoid each other in the draw.
The eight teams who are ranked as second seeds are: Deportivo La Coruna(Spa), last season's finalists Bayer Leverkusen Ger), Liverpool (Eng), Galatasaray (Tur), AS Roma (Ita), Olympic Lyon (Fra), Borussia Dortmund (Ger) and Feyenoord (Hol).
Haifa who were ranked 41st prior to last night's return leg will also seemingly avoid facing Newcastle Utd who was seeded 26th and placed in the fourth-ranked pool.
Number crunching from the McKinney-Majette race: Ben Smith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offers the following points today about the Denise Majette's primary win over Cynthia McKinney in DeKalb County:
- McKinney bested Majette by more than 2 to 1 in DeKalb's predominantly black precincts.
- 87 percent of McKinney's votes came from predominantly black precincts; 26 percent of Majette's came from those precincts.
- Majette carried seven predominantly black precincts and won slightly more votes in the African-American-dominated city of Stone Mountain. Generally, Majette did better in neighborhoods that have seen a lot of resident turnover in recent years.
- Between the 1996 Democratic primary and 2002 primary, McKinney lost 21 central and north DeKalb precincts. She actually picked up 7,617 votes between the two elections, but the increase didn't correspond with the doubling of the turnout in 2002. McKinney's raw vote total grew by 15 percent between the primaries.
Cynthia McKinney to run for Senate in 2004? Those are the rumblings from her camp now. She would challenge centrist Democrat Zell Miller for the primary nomination.
Look for her to launch her campaign as a race war. The woman who ran out of racial epithets for her black-but-not-black-enough opponent (Denise Majette) in the recently lost primary, and just could not raise enough Arab money, should slip back into the racist groove if she takes up this campaign.
Her father, Georgia Democratic State Representative Billy McKinney, looks ready, having ferreted out what evil forces did in his Cynthia. He revealed the secret to an Atlanta TV station after his daughter lost last week: it was the "J-E-W-S." Will those same evil forces conspire to suport Billy's opponent in the September 10 primary runoff,
John Noel?
For an insider's look at how the anti-Israeli Left (despite what many bloggers think, it is possible to be pro-Israel and Left) wants to spin the defeat, look no further than
Stephen Zunes. Zunes shows that the Left could turn Cynthia into their cause celebre if she ran again. Not because she has a thing against Jews and Israel. He explains that, "Cynthia McKinney would have lost anyway, even without the infusion of “Jewish money” into the campaign." You see, she was a victim of the vast right-wing Republican conspiracy, backed by "big business" and "special interests." At essence, Zunes trades the anti-Semitic conspiracy rantings for Leftist conspiracy ranting. A big step up? Hardly...
And two days after Zunes wrote his article, conspiracy theorist Edward S. Herman replies on the same website that Zunes is missing the big picture -
it is all a Jewish conspiracy, and how dare Zunes say otherwise!
Pomo narrative revisited. American Kaiser has the scoop on a
misinformation campaign aimed at high school teachers. Central Connecticut State University held a workshop to advise them how to teach about the Middle East conflict. It sounds like their main advice was: don't let a few inconvenient facts get in the way of the grand sweep of the Palestinian
"narrative." They passed out maps without Israel on them, and "fact sheets" stating that Israel's official language is Yiddish, not Hebrew, among other egregious disregard for facts.
The president of the university defended the workshop in the name of academic freedom. But there is also an issue of academic competence. You may well ask, why can't a state university do a fact-check within the reach of any seventh-grader? Well, this "university" is so arrogant and out of touch with reality that it doesn't care if its professors come across as idiots who can't even look up something in the school library's encyclopedia. They obviously think high-school teachers are stupid. My guess is that high-school teachers are much less brainwashed by
pomo groupthink than university professors, and I doubt they all went home clutching this propaganda to their bosoms as if it were Holy Writ. And there are a few Jews in Connecticutt high-schools - my crystal ball shows a lot of parent-teacher conferences in the near future.
(via
Meryl)
A Little Nuke'll Do Ya: Charles Krauthammer has a great article in
Time on the reasons why we must not allow Saddam to get nuclear weapons. The first reason is that Saddam might not be as rational as we think, and use nuclear weapons even if it means his death and the death of his people. The second reason is based on the logical doctrine of deterrence. Even if Saddam wouldn't use the nuke, the fact that he even had one would allow him to do all sorts of terrible things to non-nuclear nations using conventional weapons. The world would be powerless to stop him.
Here's my problem. A nuclear strike by Iraq is only irrational if you've got something to lose. Saddam obviously doesn't care about the people of Iraq. The only thing that matters to him is himself. In that way, a nuclear strike is irrational because it would meant the end of his reign, and ostensibly, his life. But with all the talk about Saddam's waning health it is conceivable that there will come a time when he doesn't care about his life or reign either. The limits of Realism in International Relations are being stretched here, because we have never seen a totalitarian ruled country with nuclear weapons. In a liberal democracy, a leader is almost never allowed to rule until his death nowadays. In that case, even a leader who is on the way out of office would refrain from doing something that would get himself killed, head of state or not. In a totalitarian regime, though, a leader who has been given a week to live has absolutely nothing to lose by launching a suicidal nuclear strike.
In Saddam's case, there is an extra worry. He is not merely a totalitarian. He is a a totalitarian with delusions of grandeur, thinking himself the Arab Messiah. If he had a day to live and one nuclear weapon to use, he wouldn't strike America, which while tragic, would be a drop in the bucket. He would attack Israel, which could conceivably lose a quarter of it's population in a single targeted nuclear attack. He would be a Muslim hero and would lose nothing personally. Israel knew it when they attacked Osirak, and America knows it now. More than fearing an irrational attack using nukes or a rational one without them,. we should truly fear any situation where a nuclear strike would be considered rational to the only person that matters; the one with his finger on the button.
Riots in Bradford last year were against non-Muslims: Junius has a quick response to this finally-released report. Riots convulsed the English city of Bradford last summer. At the time, it was couched as an anti-racist uprising, but the new report
throws that notion out the window:
Although partly written by academics and often couched in Guardianese, the facts about the riots are plainly stated and make shocking reading. The report ducks the question of whether the rioters should be called racist, but makes it clear that they were motivated by hostility to non-Muslims as such, and that their action were premeditated. Non-Muslim businesses and establishments serving alcohol were singled out for attack. The report should also be some guide to the merits of allegations that the sentences imposed on the rioters were too harsh.
The report notes evidence of "premeditation" in the violence, the unprecedented "ferocity," and that the violence "was specifically targeted, mostly against non-Muslim premises on the one hand, and against the police on the other."
Hyde wants a "Marshall Plan" for the Palestinians: The Arlington Heights
Daily Herald reports today on
Rep. Henry Hyde's appearance at a local synagogue:
U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde this week reiterated his belief that economic development in Palestine is the key to achieving a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
"Right now, the Palestinian people are without hope," the Wood Dale Republican said Sunday during an appearance at Congregation Etz Chaim in Lombard. "All they do is throw stones, shoot guns, if they can get them, or find more people who will kill themselves for a hopeless cause."
Hyde, who is chairman of the House International Relations Committee, has spent the last several months calling for nations throughout the world, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to invest in Palestine's private sector and help create new jobs.
The concept is similar to the Marshall Plan, the U.S. initiative that brought economic recovery to Europe after World War II.
Hyde said that if young Palestinians have jobs, they will be encouraged to stop the violence.
"The Palestinians can have a future," he said. "They can have an education for their children, employment, factories, jobs - a future."
Hyde also said that the creation of a Palestinian state is a vital part of the peace process.
"It's part of the solution," he said. "If they (the Palestinians) really want it, they are going to be willing to do something for it - and that's stop the violence."
The veteran congressman's comments on Sunday drew praise from some audience members for not pandering to the mostly Jewish crowd.
"I saw him as sensible, even humanitarian, when he talked about the Marshall Plan," said Sheldon Isenberg of Naperville. "I expected to hear more platitudes."
Naperville resident Howard Yokelson said he was impressed with Hyde's responses to questions. "I thought he was informed and candid with what he said," Yokelson said.
Hyde's appearance in Lombard was organized by West Suburban Friends of Israel, a newly formed not-for-profit group dedicated to providing information about events in the Middle East.
Hyde, 78, received a round of applause when said that he believed U.S. support for Israel is stronger now than it's ever been.
"There is a sense of uncertainty and vulnerability," said Rabbi Steven Bob of Etz Chaim. "So that strong expression of his own personal support for Israel and of strength of Congress for Israel is a pick-me-up for our community."
Earth to Mr. Hyde: the Marshall Plan came to Europe after it was decimated by World War II. It followed their near-destruction in a world war. The only reason we were in any position to offer useful aid was b/c we had recently kicked the crap out of the recipients.
Damian Penny notes
yet another anti-Semitic rats' nest at a university campus, this time in Montreal (which already has a bit of a
reputation for
French-style low-grade anti-Semitism). Unfortunately he did not get a chance to archive the site before the rats scurried back into their holes.
Originally Howard invited to me to guest-blog on the ups and downs of Jewish dating in NYC. Okay, here is a
dating story. It's not particularly Jewish, but it
is very New York.
I sweah, Joey, I dint tell 'em nuttin . . ." Today,
NPR reports on the
killing of Ikhlas Yassin and the torture of her son. They quote a Palestinian spokesman who says "no one should be killed without a proper judicial system, a proper trial . . . . This is what we are trying to struggle for, a real independent judicial system . . . " I'm glad we've got that cleared up. Then he accuses the Israelis of "preying" on the starving Palestinians, "to force them to become collaborators." Actually there is some truth in this. The Israelis do the same as undercover cops trying to make a Mob underling rat on his bosses: they find someone with a vulnerable spot and lean on them. It's nasty, but there is a lot at stake. Anyone with a better idea for how to find out where the next homicide bombing is coming from, feel free to make suggestions.
The photos of the kid's welts made the front page of the NY Sun today (but it's not on their website).
Several weeks ago I
linked to a eulogy for
Ben Blutstein, one of the Pardes students killed in the Hebrew U bombing, that painted a vivid portrait of a lively artistic irreverent young man. This is an equally enlightening
hesped for
Marla Bennett. Put away all your UC Berkeley stereotypes, because Marla was a Berkeley grad.
. . . When Bennett arrived at the Berkeley Bayit, a Jewish cooperative household overlooking the U.C. campus, she could barely boil water. Certain kinds of vegetables were a total mystery to her, said Rabbi Martin S. Lawson of San Diego's Temple Emanu-El in his eulogy. But living there had an impact. Bennett "soon became a great cook, preparing meals for her housemates and later, incredible Shabbat dinners in Jerusalem for eight to 10 people without any stress." In 2000, the year she graduated from U.C. Berkeley, Bennett was the first recipient of a Hillel award. Called Hineni, the award went to a student who, "whenever there was something that needed to be done, their response was 'here I am,'" which perfectly exemplified Bennett, said Adam Weisberg, Berkeley Hillel's executive director. . . .
Hillel and Oakland's Temple Sinai will hold a shloshim service to mark the 30-day anniversary of her burial on Tuesday, Sept. 3. Hillel will also be setting up a fund in her memory for students studying in Israel.
Glenna Gordon, a student at U.C. Berkeley, was actually standing in Bennett's old bedroom in the Bayit Jewish cooperative --where the two were housemates during the 1999-2000 school year -- when she heard the news that her "smiley, energetic, curly-haired" friend from freshman year had been killed.
Mutual backscratching . . . mmmmmnnnn that feels good . . . Bill Quick and
Imshin send a little love my way. (Hey, I could get addicted to this. Somebody please remind me that I still need to find a job . . . ) Imshin reminds us
not to pigeonhole Israeli Arabs. Several regular commentors on lgf have also made this point (scroll down for more).
There are
many non-Jews in the IDF. My understanding is that all Israeli citizens must serve, except for Arab citizens, who may volunteer. They are not conscripted because, given the neighborhood, they might end up fighting friends and family. (This was also the policy in the US during WWII, to only send Nisei troops to the European theater.) One of the IDF
MIAs is a Bedouin.
Four Arab IDF soldiers were killed in a Palestinian attack on an Israeli army outpost 6 months ago, three of whom were Bedouin. These articles also describe their mixed feelings about serving in an army in a state where they still do not get the same social services as the Jewish majority, but where they can show their loyalty and advance professionally. It's kind of like African-Americans' relation to the US armed forces.
American Physicians Fellowship for Medicine in Israel is "an organization of North American physicians and health care professionals dedicated to advancing the state of medical education, research and health care in Israel." On their site you can find an
Emergency Medical Volunteer Registry. If you are an anesthesiologist, pediatric ICU specialist, plastic surgeon, dialysis nurse, or one of several other specialities, you can sign up to be on call in case there is a shortage of medical personnel in Israel.
Attacking the Messenger, Part II: In Part I, on
August 15, we saw how Guardian writer Brian Whitaker tried to attack MEMRI, while having to admit that he could not assail the actual message MEMRI relays. He has written since then, trying to impugn think tanks in the U.S. focused on Middle East issues based on the links between them (a game which Pejman called "Connect the Jews").
At least now, the Guardian has given space to Yigal Carmon, President of MEMRI, to
respond to Whitaker's almost-accusations.
Environmentalist SLOP? My data dump column this morning on TechCentralStation analyzes a new "
Online Global Poll" of environmental issues, aimed at influencing the Johannesburg Environment Summit.
Time for another blogburst? September 5th, 2002 is the
30th anniversary of the
massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. This act took international terrorism to a new level, and in some ways set the stage for what we are suffering now. How about another blogburst - a teach-in on the history and growth of modern terrorism, with a focus on the Munich massacre - to commemorate the event? It will also be an excellent lead-in to the 1st anniversary commemoration of 9-11. Email me or comment on this post if interested in participating.
Parking lots for Allah. Many bloggers know that one of my pet issues is the systematic Muslim attempt to destroy all archeological evidence of Jewish history at the Temple Mount.
This is the home site for ongoing news and links about the destruction.
Several bloggers were kind enough to post my links on the subject before I joined Kesher Talk, the most generous being
Tonecluster and
InContext (thanks, Jason and Lynn!).
Lynn took the story and ran with it, asking:
. . . . where is the world's outrage? When the Taliban blew up the ancient giant Buddahs in Afghanistan, people all over the globe justifiably erupted in protest and anger. That atrocity couldn't be prevented because the Taliban ruled the land in which those antiquities resided. But the Waqf doesn't rule the land of Israel. The Waqf doesn't rule Jerusalem and, but for the grace of the Israeli government, the Waqf doesn't even rule the Temple Mount. An outpouring of world support for the protection of Judaism's holiest site would surely alert the Waqf that its actions are unacceptable. The world's silence goes a long way toward confirming the opposite.
Just imagine the outrage if Israel conquered Mecca and proceeded to raze the
Kaaba to build an office tower.
Tal G now links to
the most recent sorry episode. This was instructive:
MK Abdul Malik Dahamshe entered the room one hour into the session [of the Knesset], and began heckling the speakers, claiming the site is completely Islamic. When he would not desist with his interruptions, he was ordered out of the room. After he refused to leave, Orlev called a three-minute break during which he was ushered out. Five minutes later, Dahamshe was permitted back in.
This guy is an Israeli MP. This would be like Cynthia McKinney haranging Congress to declare Plymouth Rock a site sacred to the Southern Baptists, after they built a church on top of it and wouldn't let anyone but Southern Baptists in. Or something. There really is no equivalent.
Lynn reminds us of
yet another example of Arab world's shameless fact-twisting about the Mount for political ends.
I believe this is what is called a "narrative." Tal also mentions
a comment by Israel's recent ambassador to the EU (what a thankless job!) to the effect that that "the new generation of Western European leaders "grew up" on the "Palestinian narrative". They have to call it a "narrative" because it sure ain't history, which is based on, you know,
facts. Then they convince the rest of the world, with lots of help from
pomo humanities professors, that facts are irrelevant and, you know, just not cool. At that point, tangible evidence of a people's cultural history (not to mention its holiest site) becomes marble chips in a garbage dump, certainly not as important as a new parking lot for the mosque.
Memorial for Janice Coulter this Friday afternoon at Sutton Place Synagogue.
The memorial is being planned as American relatives of the Hebrew University bombing victims are sharply criticizing President Bush and his administration for failing to contact them personally to express condolences. Janice Coulter’s younger sister, Dianne Coulter Albert, told The Jewish Week she found it disconcerting that Bush “rushed” to take pictures with the rescued Pennsylvania miners, but failed to make a call or send a card to the families of American victims of terror, or dispatch a White House representative to the funerals.
That's funny, you don't surf Jewish . . . The Forward is chock full of good stuff this week. Famous Jews featured include Einstein and
Gidget.. . . . when most people think "Gidget," they think sun, sand and virginity — in other words, Sandra Dee, who played the surfer girl in the 1959 movie. Most don't know that Gidget was based on a true story — the story of a young Jewish girl who spent her tender teenage years learning how to "hang ten" and be one of the boys.
And not only is she Jewish, she's a
Reconstructionist! Yes!
How to be a real freedom fighter. Marek Edelman, a cardiologist, human rights activist, and oh, by the way, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, called upon Palestinians to reject terrorism. His
letter, published in a Polish daily and
Le Monde, drew interesting reactions:
The letter prompted an angry rebuke from the Warsaw office of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which replied in Gazeta Wyborca that Edelman had unfairly saddled the Palestinians with the bulk of the blame for the continuing violence in the Middle East, ignoring Israel's role as an occupying power. Shortly afterward, Edelman told the Forward, he was visited at his home in Lodz by the chairman of the Polish-Arab Friendship Society, Omar Faris, who praised him for his initiative and offered to help move it forward.
