Les amis de Chirac. Stratfor digs up the dirt on Chirac and Saddam, as reported by
Bill Herbert. I assume Bill didn't give the original link because it's subscription-only, but he quotes huge chunks, for example:
. . . Chirac and Hussein formed what Chirac called a close personal relationship. As the New York Times put it in a 1986 report about Chirac's attempt to return to the premiership, the French official "has said many times that he is a personal friend of Saddam Hussein of Iraq." In 1987, the Manchester Guardian Weekly quoted Chirac as saying that he was "truly fascinated by Saddam Hussein since 1974." Whatever personal chemistry there might have been between the two leaders obviously remained in place a decade later, and clearly was not simply linked to the deals of 1974-75. Politicians and businessmen move on; they don't linger the way Chirac did.
Ten years later, when Chirac was running for office, he said,
"It wasn't me who negotiated the construction of Osirak with Baghdad. The negotiation was led by my minister of industry in very close collaboration with Giscard d'Estaing." He went on to say, "I never took part in these negotiations. I never discussed the subject with Saddam Hussein. The fact is that I did not find out about the affair until very late."
Unfortunately for Monsieur Chirac,
there is incriminating
evidence.
Go East, young man. This
essay by Charles Krauthammer, from last August, is timely as we watch the balance of power in Europe sway.
Our friend Iran. According to Imshin,
Iran is not going to be a problem. Her evidence is anecdotal, but there is still a sizable Jewish community in Iran, and the dissident student movement has stated its contempt for the Israel-scapegoating of the ayatollahs, so this rings true to me:
On my favorite radio program, the International Hour on Reshet Bet, this afternoon, they spoke to someone from Kol Yisrael (Voice of Israel) in Persian. I didn’t catch it all, because I was at work and someone came in for some help with something. What I managed to catch was this guy telling Reshet Bet listeners about a regular call-in program they broadcast in Persian. He said they have many Iranians, living in Iran, calling and speaking on the program, and even giving their real names. He said some of them have expressed the hope that when the USA finishes liberating Iraq they will keep on going and liberate them, as well. He said that when Ilan Ramon went up into space they had warm words of congratulations and when he was killed, with his fellow astronauts in the Columbia disaster, they said they were very sad with the people of Israel. He said that during the days that followed, everyone who called up began the conversation by offering sincere condolences for the people of Israel.
Myths Revealed! Sort of... Another addition to the very nice discussion we've been having here about secular-hareidi politics in Israel. This column by
Jonathan Rosenblum makes some arguments that even I (a moderate hareidi defender) had never thought of. His last few paragraphs are comparatively weak, but it's a worthwhile read for those interested in this kind of thing.
As an editorial note, I am now living in Washington DC, near Georgetown. Expect a new job announcement in the near future.
Even more good news - is this a good day, or what? Well,
not entirely. Still: it looks like
MAFDAL and
SHINUI have been able to reach understanding on several issues, including military service for yeshiva students, civil marriages, and subsidies for large families. Historically, MAFDAL has been the most progressive religious party in Israel. The party was led for many years by Yosef Burg (father of Avraham Burg, member of the Labor party), who was one of the most admirable figures in Israeli public life.
Hopefully, this will signify the beginning of new understanding between the moderates on both sides. (
IBA radio)
The good news department - again: after 20 year-long deliberations, the
Judea Desert area was finally declared a nature preserve. It is an amazing place. One can still find fish fossils lying on the ground, as the whole area was covered by sea in prehistoric time. (
IBA radio)
Bringing Ethiopians to Israel: On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet
approved Interior Minister Eli Yishai's plan to immediately bring some 20,000 Falashmura from Ethiopia to Israel.
About 80,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, many of them brought over in massive airlifts during times of crisis in Ethiopia in 1984 and 1991. The Falashmura are Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity, while maintaining some Jewish traditions. Unable to prove their Jewish roots, most of the Falashmura were not allowed to immigrate to Israel, even though many have family ties to the Jewish state. In recent years, some 18,000 Falashmura have left homes in outlying regions of Ethiopia in anticipation of moving to Israel, and have rented mud huts near two compounds run by immigration activists in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and in the northern city of Gondar. Some Falashmura have immigrated to Israel, either by proving they have a Jewish grandparent, or under reunification laws if other family members had proved eligible for immigration.
One year anniversary of Daniel Pearl's murder. Everybody, especially if you are in the LA area:
January 23, 2003 marked one year since the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan. On February 20th, 2002 he was brutally murdered by his captors. In the hope that the values of humanity that guided Daniel Pearl in life will ultimately triumph over the forces of hate and religious bigotry that took his life and threaten world peace, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights agency, will observe Daniel’s yahrtzeit (annual memorial for a loved one) with a month long Internet campaign (www.wiesenthal.com) encouraging people of all faiths to send a message of solidarity to the Pearl Family and to light a virtual candle in Daniel’s memory. “Daniel Pearl was kidnapped because he was an American journalist, he was murdered because he was a Jew,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Center. “It is our hope that at this pivotal time in history, people the world over will stand in solidarity with the pain of one family to remind them and all victims of terrorism that they are not forgotten.”
In addition, the weekend of February 21-23rd, the Center is also asking clergy and their congregations to remember Daniel in their services and to forward their sermons on the meaning of his life and death to the Wiesenthal Center, which will be then be forwarded directly to the Pearl family.
On Thursday evening, February 20, 2003, at 7:00pm the Center will host a community-wide memorial program at its Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Please call Lorraine Sais at 310 772-2452 for reservations.
On Monday, February 24th at Congregation Beit Tzedek in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Judah Pearl, Daniel’s father, will speak at both events.
For more information, contact the Wiesenthal Center's Communications department, 310-553-9036.
Additional information on organizing a local neighborhood memorial service can be found at The Daniel Pearl Foundation Web site www.danielpearl.org.
UPDATE:
Meryl comments on some online memorial essays in her own sweeping yet meticulous style.
Lynn B points to an article on how
Palestinians target Israeli reporters for assassination. Danny Seaman, director of the Government Press Office, confirms that the new phenomenon of threatening the lives of journalists is well known. "The past two years have seen the rules of the game change," says Seaman. "Only a week ago, the vehicle of the Al-Jazeera bureau chief inthe West Bank was blown up. The atmosphere in the territories is unfavorable towards anything that is incompatible with the media propaganda messages of the Palestinian Authority. I know that there are threats to the lives of journalists, the situation in the territories is terrible. As a result the IDF Spokesperson has had to limit entry of (Israeli) journalists. Luckily, Israeli journalists have an extraordinary talent for improvisation, and they succeed in relaying updates from there despite the limitations. This is a badge of honor for us. The Israeli journalists work under a regime of 'media terror,' but they pass the test in a praiseworthy fashion. Regrettably, the foreign press does not stand up and protest this. They feel no moral obligation towards their Israeli colleagues, and prefer to remain silent." [emphasis mine - JW]
A senior source in the GPO chooses to express severe criticism of the collegiality displayed by the foreign journalists in the territories: "We discovered that Hamas and Islamic Jihad members, employed by the foreign news agencies, confronted Israelis working there in order to prevent a particular story from being aired. We came across such cases more than once at Jerusalem Capital Studios. The PA succeeds, with the assistance of the foreign media, in creating a situation where the information relayed abroad is convenient for it. Those who remain isolated in this media arena are the Israeli journalists, and they are the ones who are now forced to deal with this massive pressure that is only worsening."
A
Jewish-born French Catholic archbishop whose mother died in Auschwitz is leading a delegation of French priests on a tour of Jewish NY. To get them in touch with their theological roots? To help dissipate French anti-semitism? Not explicitly.
His stated intention may be even more important in the long run :
The cardinal cited three New York Jewish communities he visited last year —“homogeneous in their spiritual and practical choices” — as models for how religion can successfully integrate modernity.
“Their fervor and strict observance obviously did not prevent the members of those communities from taking part actively in contemporary culture and modern life, insofar as they considered this compatible with their religious commitment,” Cardinal Lustiger said. “Those Jews have managed to offer an answer to the fundamental question that both Christian and Jewish communities have to face worldwide. This question is how to articulate the history and geography of our communities with the history and geography of modernity. Nowhere else perhaps than here in New York has a better answer been experienced.”
Asked later by The Jewish Week to which communities he was referring, Cardinal Lustiger said “Yeshiva University, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Lubavitch.”
Yeshiva University is the flagship modern Orthodoxy, the Jewish Theological Seminary trains Conservative rabbis and cantors, and Lubavitch is the chassidic ultra-Orthodox group with the aggressive outreach program. All very different, but in my personal experience the Cardinal nailed it. All those groups are fully engaged with modern life and respectful of secular people, and at the same time deeply love traditional Jewish life.
As part of the continuing Jewish-Catholic discourse, next month the North American Boards of Rabbis will participate in a two-day dialogue in Paris with the leadership of the European Catholic Church, hosted by Cardinal Lustiger, to address the rise of anti-Semitism in France and throughout Europe.
And thus are attitudes shifted and alliances made.
Lefty military cliche Dept. Jeanne d'Arc walks the nitty-gritty global political beat that no one else on the blogosphere covers with her combination of elegant prose and obscure URLs, but too many of her posts tend to be content-free, like
this one, where she tries to leverage the death of political cartoonist Bill Mauldin into a pro-draft argument.
Let me see if I can follow the reasoning here:
Mauldin's characters were scruffy, salt-of-the-earth reluctant soldiers because they were draftees, implying that professional soldiers are - what? Snobbish intellectual fashionistas?
Donald Rumsfeld disparages the value of draftees, so he is on the side of the fashionistas of the remodeled US Army which is the most racially integrated organization in the US, which produced a Secretary of State who grew up poor and black in the Bronx, where people of color can rise higher faster than in any corporation. But this is bad, because . . . Donald Rumsfeld thinks it's good! The only other reason given is the totally unsupported idea that draftees talk back to the Man (and why this is a Good Thing isn't specified), but volunteers kiss ass.
I have to admit it's a novel departure from the usual complaint that a volunteer army takes advantage of poor, scruffy, minority kids who risk their lives for a steady wage and an education, who don't dare rebel because they are so desparate. In Jeanne's world, that volunteer army is full of shiny well-tailored corporate clones who don't rebel because they must have sold their souls to volunteer in the first place. It seems to me that a military of
highly-educated highly-trained technical experts is by definition a military where soldiers talk back, or they would not be able to do their jobs.
The evolution of plastic car fish. Although the NYTimes may have lost their way on international politics, you can always count on them for
cute stories like this.So what exactly are people thinking when they stick these things on their cars? Dr. Tom Lessl may be the only one who knows. Dr. Lessl, who studies the use of symbols, is a professor in the speech communication department at the University of Georgia. He has undertaken a study of car fish, and wore out two pairs of shoes walking the nation's parking lots in search of them. Every time he found a Darwin fish, he left a survey form on the car. . . . Dr. Lessl says such marriages of science and religion have been a familiar refrain since the days of the Enlightenment, one continuous intellectual movement that has led through the writings of Francis Bacon in the 17th century on up to plastic fish.
And of course, it's in the Science section. Read the whole thing.
(via
Holy Weblog)
The Good News department: two Israeli scientists have developed and patented an effective and safe pesticide, that occurs naturally in three kinds of mushrooms common in Israel. The substance is derived from the mushrooms and used in a form of a spray. For an Israeli like me, who also mostly uses organic foods (and yes, occasionally hugs trees), this is great news. (
IDF radio)
Is War with Iraq Morally Justified? BeliefNet has a
number of articles on
the war from religious leaders of all stripes, plus some discussion forums. Military chaplain Donald Sensing links to a
very thoughtful essay on pacifism and just war by Sojourner's founder Jim Wallis.
Hasbara has posted a petition protesting the recent
Belgian court decision. I don't know if these petitions have any real impact, but I feel that this is the least I can do to have my opinion heard. You can read the petition and sign it
here.
The London conference, which discussed possible reforms in the Palestinian Authority, came to a close today. The participants have agreed to transfer 700 million dollars to the PA. I want to reform, too! (
IDF radio).
"Havel havalim, hakol havel!"** Did I mention that Kesher Talk is hosting
Carnival of the Vanities next week? This week it's at
The People's Republic of Seabrook. My my,
this weekly compendium of self-submitted best-of-the-blog gets longer and more chock-full of bloggy goodness every week! This time around I see many posts about France - I wonder why that is . . . .
Our post date is
February 26th - I've already gotten a few submissions, and I'll be posting reminders.
Send a URL link to me - Judith Weiss - at the email address in the column on your left. It can be any single piece of writing you've posted recently on your blog that you would like to reach a wider audience. You can also send me a (short!) blurb if you'd like your piece described a certain way. Please email before 9 PM Monday night, February 24th.
(Carnival host schedule
here. )
** "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." The Hebrew word
"hevel" is one of those words that doesn't translate readily into English. It is usually translated as "vanity" or "futility" in English versions of
Kohelet, but it is primarily a word connotating
transience, or impermanence without the judgemental frustration that "vanity" or "futility" imply. In his small book
The Way of Solomon, Rabbi Rami Shapiro translates it as "emptiness," "moments," and "breath," and
claims that Kohelet was actually Judaism's version of
Lao Tze. ("Hevel" - usually pronounced as "Abel" in English translations - is also the name of Adam and Chava's son, which has inspired a certain amount of
interpretation)
The face of the antiwar movement Dept. I have occasionally linked to especially addled and hate-filled comment threads of
No War Blog, so you can observe the antiwar movement talking amongst itself. Well, here's
an equally mindless antiwar comment thread from Brendan O'Neill. Take a deep breath and hold your nose before wading in.
PS. Lots more pro-Iraq-invasion people
showing up on No War Blog lately. It must be the
Cross-Blog War Debate bringing them in. I may be biased in favor of their position, but they seem to be more rational, polite, in touch with reality, and have much better arguments than the antiwar side. But you decide.
The perfidy of France. Blogs of War reminds us of how the Vichy government actively supported Hitler.
Emergency appeal for Canadian flood victims. Email from
Newfie blogger Damian PennyHi, guys. As some of you might have heard, the town of Badger, in central Newfoundland, had to be evacuated after a major flood late last week. No one was hurt, but the flood waters have turned to ice, and it might be months before the residents are able to return to their homes.
The Canadian Red Cross has launched an emergency appeal for donations to help the flood victims. I'm sure the people of Badger would really appreciate it if you provided a link on your site.
You got it, Damian. Folks?
Who's got the WMDs? Who? Are they
cruising around the Indian ocean on unmarked vessels? Or are they
buried somewhere in Syria? (via
LGf comments)
A very interesting Lebanese anti-Syrian and anti-terrorist
site. The site is a joint effort by
The Middle East Forum, and the
USCFL. I am not familiar with the latter, but the former has people like Daniel Pipes and Bat Ye'or on its staff, a fact that lends the site at least some credibility.
Lebanon is a very interesting and unusual country, especially against the backdrop of the Middle East. It is probably the most religiously and culturally diverse in the Arab world, and it has managed to stay diverse against all odds. Although its diversity brought it much trouble, it also is, as it was in the past, very conducive to development. It is probably one of the major reasons that made it possible for some of its citizens to support Israel, although at this point in time I seriously doubt they can do so openly in Lebanon. Still, this is one of the Arab countries with the greatest potential for development and democratization. Hopefully, after the domino effect of the war in Iraq finally reaches Syria, this potential will finally get a chance of being realized.
Students for War. A
new campus political group makes its debut. (via
Silent Running)
UPDATE: The founders of one of their chapters (and
beloved bloggers)
made the big time.
Error message. Very clever. (via
Oxblog)
Straight Shooting. The Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram
interviews Colin Powell. He sounds a bit testy to me. I think the days of good cop, bad cop are over. (via
Haggai)
Innocent Islamic youth perverted by filthy Western infidel love holiday! Iranian Girl reports on a crackdown on Valentine's Day:
I saw all shops that sell valentine card, chocolate, dolls & the stuff open, & also full of young girls & boys, just like other years...so, I don't know, perhaps this cracking down started today! or it is a little bit bombastic!...anyway, no matter what they wanna do, but Iranian boys & girls, do not obey them to be different from other young people...valentine will be held here in Iran.
Civic nationalism and the Left. This essay in
Dissent got me a bit teary-eyed. I'm having a hard time summarizing it, but it castigates leftists for their contempt for simple patriotism and "religious belief as a civic wellspring." The author has tremendous respect for the power of Jewish scriptural myth, which you don't see much of on the Left these days.
. . . American civic strength relies on balancing a general expectation of religious faith without any imposition of doctrine. There is a genius in this that conservatives understand but abuse and that Marxists and some liberals haven't grasped: We non-believers find far better protection in the interstices of a balance between the Enlightenment of Locke and the Lord of the Covenant than we would in some postmodernist free-for all, which would really be a Hobbesian free-for-none. . . .
. . . More than a few leftists, too, may need Maoist-style rehabilitation in corporate workplaces. Instead of huddling in a few cozy neighborhoods and posturing before undergraduates and imagined communities of magazine readers, let them work awhile for large, bureaucratic corporations (not just drop by "on assignment" for glossy magazines). They might learn how to balance conservative cultural and religious strengths with liberal opportunities.
Read the whole thing.
Blog round-up. Talking Dog features refreshingly non-partisan short reviews of
many blogs. Head Heeb is keeping up with the news on Zimbabwe and other African hot spots.
Start here and scroll down for more. He also links to a
blog by an American journalist in Uzbekistan. And I predict a glorious future for
Michael mindfucking the peace weenies, but it may take a little time before anyone catches on.
Cynthia McKinney still might go Green: When the party’s presidential exploratory committee put out feelers to Greens around the country about whom they wanted to run for president,
the number of recommendations Cynthia McKinney received was second only to those for Ralph Nader. The anti-American and anti-Israeli McKinney, a former Democratic US representative from Georgia who lost to Judge Denise Majette in a primary challenge last August (Majette eventually defeated Republican Cynthia van Auken in the general election), has yet to change her party affiliation or indicate she’s willing to run as a Green. But the Greens want her. Her name was high on a list of potential candidates compiled by the national Green Party (other names included MSNBC talk-show host Phil Donahue, actress Susan Sarandon, and filmmaker Michael Moore).
It is true that the Greens run anti-American and anti-Israeli anyway. But that they would make this issue more important to them than environmental issues... well, let's say it doesn't make them look any better than they already do...
(For more background on Cynthia McKinney and the successful campaign to oust her from Congress, look in Kesher Talk's
Subject Index under "Defeating Anti-Israelis in Congress")
New PR initiative from the IDF. Captain Sharon Feingold is a spokeswoman for the Israeli Defense Forces, which has realized it has to present its case to the international community as well as fight a war. 31-year-old Sharon is clearly up to the job.
“Reporters are getting more answers now from the army,” she says. “I educate my soldiers to get back to reporters quickly. I think it’s quite remarkable … that these top journalists who have covered every war possible call my office and the person on the phone is a 19-year-old woman in charge of giving the response.”
. . . These days, when Feingold meets people she used to know in Europe and they can’t believe “I’m serving in the Israeli occupation army, I tell them, ‘Then you didn’t know me very well.’ I’m doing what I can for my country and my people,” she says, “and if you have a problem with that, then tough.”
You go, girl.
Weather report. It's
snowing buckets here in mid-town Manhattan. Must be at least a foot already. Should I walk 10 blocks to Central Park and throw snowballs at strangers, or cuddle by a warm crackling computer screen in my bathrobe and fluffy slippers with a hot toddy?
UPDATE: It's snowing again. I don't have a car so I am kind of enjoying this. Lots of people walking around, very few cars. A cab parked across the street with a drift up to the door handle (probably a result of the snowplow - none of the other parked cars are that buried).
BTW I took the bathrobe option, but I can see all the pretty widdle flakes from my windows. I know - I'm a wimp.
Ma'ariv aravim. I think
this is way cool because it's my favorite Jewish prayer. The original that is. But most of the shuls where I daven use the siddur that Rabbi Harlow edited.
BTW his daughter Ilana is the
Official Folklorist of Queens, NY, "most ethnically diverse county in the nation." Two vignettes from
Queensistan: Immediately after I got the job, I ran into an English acquaintance of mine on the subway. I told him I got a job as the Queens folklorist. He looked stunned: "Wot? Why’d they hire an American?" So now when I tell people I’m the Queens folklorist I quickly add, "The borough, not the lady."
. . . people from neighboring countries on distant continents are now literally neighbors in New York. For instance, a relatively new Turkish community has settled smack in between a Greek community in Astoria and an Armenian community in Sunnyside and Woodside. You could superimpose a map of Greece, Turkey, and Armenia and the settlement pattern here would roughly align with the map. This baffled me considering the political history of those three countries. After pondering how to phrase the question delicately, I asked a young man in the Turkish grocery store in Sunnyside, "Isn’t it hard for you to be living between these two communities?" He replied, "Well, you know it’s like when you break up with your boyfriend—you still want to know what’s up with him."
Animal cruelty and kashrut: Canadian Jews and Muslims are fearful that proposed animal cruelty laws up north will open kosher and halal butchers to
legal prosecution.
The morning after. I'm going to stop using the title "The Judenrein anti-war Left" because, Baruch haShem, it isn't anymore, at least in NYC.
I got an email from Arthur Waskow, about the march:
Thank God a gutsy, menshlich, Jewishly committed Jew was there on this amazing day to speak with a passion for truth, with a vision rooted in Jewish teachings, and with a Jewish prayer. Ruth [Messinger] is president of American Jewish World Service, former Borough President of Manhattan, and former Democratic Party candidate for mayor of New York. She was joined by tens of thousands of Jews - we saw them, many of them saw us and cheered our Aserot Dibrot/ Ten Commandments banner -- on the streets of New York yesterday. May the day soon come when the official "leaders" of those Jews run to catch up with them. . . .
Messinger's speech at the prayer service (nice that they had one)
LET US PRAY. [Caps in original email - JW]
MAY WE HAVE THE STRENGTH TO STAND STRONG AGAINST THIS CULTURE OF VIOLENCE, AGAINST THE FIERCE DRIVE TO WAR AND THE SPREAD OF FEAR THAT ARE SAPPING THE STRENGTH OF OUR PEOPLE. MAY WE WORK IN THE WORLD TO INVEST THE DOLLARS BEING USED TO MAKE WAR TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF OUR OWN CITIZENS, TO FEED THE 30,000 CHILDREN IN THE WORLD WHO DIE FROM HUNGER EVERY DAY.
LET US NEVER RETREAT TO THE CONVENIENCE OF BEING OVERWHELMED. WE ARE POWERFUL. WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
MAY WE STRIVE TO MATCH THE ACTIONS OF OUR NATION WITH THE PASSION AND SPIRIT OF HER PEOPLE, WITH THE COMMITMENT TO COMPASSION AND JUSTICE, AND THE YEARNING FOR PEACE THAT ARE SO VISIBLE TODAY ON THE STREETS OF THE WORLD.
YIHI RATZON MILPANEHA ADONAI ELOHEINU VELOHEI AVOTEINU V'IMOTEINU SHTULIHEINU L'SHALOM, V TATZIDEINU L'SHALOM, V TADRIHEINU L' SHALOM.
MAY IT BE YOUR WILL, OUR GOD AND GOD OF OUR ANCESTORS, TO LEAD US TO PEACE, TO DIRECT OUR STEPS TO PEACE, TO GUIDE US TO PEACE.
AMEN
I won't paste in her speech at the rally, because it was nothing but the usual earnest cliches, but she did quote
Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose writings and influence on both the
post-war Jewish community and the civil rights movement deserve to be more widely known. I hope some of the crowd were asking each other
"Abraham who?"Arthur also notes:
In San Francisco today, three rabbis who are both deeply committed to Israel and critical of the Sharon government - if anything, slightly less intensely critical than Rabbi Michael Lerner - are speaking at the invitation of the antiwar movement.
They were invited before the explosion over whether Lerner should speak, so they were not a "make-up" token. (One of them heads the rabbinic association devoted to Jewish renewal; one leads a social-activist congregation in Oakland; the third is rabbi of a major Reform congregation in San Francisco.)
So - although I think it was a mistake for the coalition/s there not to invite Lerner -- I do not think it was a simple matter of his being blackballed because he is committed to Israel. I think it was much more complicated than that. And I am very sad that his not being invited became much more noticed in the Jewish world than the fact that Ruth Messinger wsas invited.
I'm glad the rabbis were invited to speak, and I wouldn't be surprised if Lerner's personality contributed to his problems. However, the fact remains that A.N.S.W.E.R. stated that they would not have a pro-Israel speaker on the platform. The fact also remains that Lerner spoke out against A.N.S.W.E.R.'s Israel-bashing, and I assume these rabbis didn't, or they wouldn't have been invited.
Meanwhile, Jim Henley acts like a very model of a principled anti-war activist
in response to the Michael Lerner flap, unlike
some of the regulars at No War Blog. Thank you, Jim. I hope the anti-semitism in the antiwar movement has peaked and the grownups are taking charge.
I stayed home all weekend (it was 8 DEGREES! as I glanced at the big time/temperature sign walking from the bus stop back to my apartment with groceries about 2 PM today). From my perch in mid-town West I neither saw nor heard any sign of the antiwar rally, but
plenty of blogs have
reports and photos.
A lesson from the 1930s. Jewish Week looks back to American Jewry's conflicted feelings about removing Saddam, er, Hitler.
While most Americans found Hitler’s totalitarian ways distasteful, they could not yet see any compelling reason to consider going to war against Nazi Germany, which seemed to be just one in a vast and ever-increasing array of unsavory regimes. Gallup polls during 1940-41 found only about one-tenth of Americans willing to go to war for any other reason than to fend off an invasion of the United States itself.
. . . the American Jewish Committee, declined to sponsor a U.S. speaking tour by Winston Churchill in 1937, fearing that its involvement might be seen as evidence of a plot “to involve the United States in the European mess,” as one AJCommittee official put it. Palestine Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion, visiting the United States in 1940, was disappointed to find Jewish leaders reluctant to speak out. One told him: “If I stand up and demand American aid for Britain, people will say after the war that the dirty Jews got us into it, that it was a Jewish war, that it was for their sakes that our sons died in battle.”
Sound familiar?
But the position of Hollywood was decidedly different.
. . . those favoring action against Hitler established the Fight for Freedom committee, which soon attracted the support of numerous prominent Americans. Fight for Freedom’s supporters included many Hollywood figures, such as Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, Burgess Meredith, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and such prominent Jews as Irving Berlin, Ethel Merman, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Oscar Hammerstein, George Jessel and Ben Hecht.
And back to the present, where one of my favorite actors, John Cusack, follows in the hallowed tradition of Sean Penn and Viggo Mortensen and makes an
ahistorical ass of himself.
