...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Like something out of Madame Tussaud's: Condi Rice meets the waxworks of KISS.
Power, explained: How do we do it? How, when there are so few of us, do we Jews continue to “dominate the world”?
A Hamas official has the explanation: we do it through “sexual depravity”.
Well, duh.
The dog days of liberty?: From the New Criterion:
Last month, The New Criterion and the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies hosted a conference in New York on “Free Speech in an Age of Jihad.” Many who have commented on the event characterized it as a conference about “libel tourism,” the practice of jihadists to use and abuse libel laws to muzzle criticism. But as several participants in the conference made clear, libel tourism is but one weapon in the multifarious armory of militant Islam. The unhappy truth is that the threat to civilization in the West comes not only from our enemies but also from within. This was a theme that Mark Steyn developed with his characteristic blend of humor and admonitory insight in his luncheon talk, “The Dimming of Liberty: Legal Jihad and the Criminalization of Resistance.” Steyn’s talk ranged widely, but its central message, he noted, was summed up by the historian Arnold Toynbee. Most civilizations, Toynbee wrote, die from suicide, not murder. We in the West preen ourselves on our high standard of living, our freedoms, our pleasures. But what beliefs, what backbone, undergird those material triumphs? Radical Islam is a fanatical, often a murderous, faith. The welfare-state liberalism of the West is less a faith than a perpetual grievance.
In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek, hearkening back to Tocqueville’s analysis of “democratic despotism,” noted that “the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of a people.” The nature of that change was partly an enervation, partly an effeminization. The Islamofascists have a fanatical belief that theirs is a holy mission, that incinerating infidels is their bounden duty. For them, suicide is a gateway to paradise. For us, suicide is just that: suicide. The question is whether we believe anything with sufficient vigor to jettison the torpor of our barren self-satisfaction. One part of the purpose of “Free Speech in an Age of Jihad” was to describe the threat that radical Islam, in its more bureaucratic and legalistic avatars, poses to the West. Equally important was the effort to remind us that the threat to Western civilization lies as much with our response—or, rather, our lack of response. Western democratic society is rooted in a particular vision of what Aristotle called “the good for man.” The question is: Do we, as a society, still have confidence in the animating values of that vision? Do we possess the requisite will to defend them? Or was the French philosopher Jean-François Revel right when he said that “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it”? The jury is still out on those questions. How we answer them will determine the fate not just of Western journalism but of Western civilization itself.
We know how Canada’s Jewstablishment is answering them: Up with HRCs and their “thought crime” sections; down with free expression, a pre-requisite for Western civ.
Damaged goods: A used car is known as a “pre-owned” vehicle. But what do you call a “used” (as in a no longer hymenally-intact) woman? How about a “non-virgin”? From the times online (my bolds):
The annulment of a young Muslim couple’s marriage because the bride was not a virgin has caused anger in France, prompting President Sarkozy’s party to call for a change in the law.
The decision by a court in Lille was condemned by the Government, media, feminists and civil rights organisations after it was reported in a legal journal on Thursday. Patrick Devedjian, leader of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement, said it was unacceptable that the law could be used for religious reasons to repudiate a bride. It must be modified “to put an end to this extremely disturbing situation”, he said.
The case, which had previously gone unreported, involved an engineer in his 30s, named as Mr X, who married Ms Y, a student nurse in her 20s, in 2006. The wedding night party was still under way at the family’s home in Roubaix when the groom came down from the bedroom complaining that his bride was not a virgin. He could not display the blood-stained sheet that is traditionally exhibited as proof of the bride’s “purity”.
Mr X went to court the following morning and was granted a annulment on the grounds that his bride had deceived him on “one of the essential elements” of the marriage. In disgrace with both families, she acknowledged that she had led her groom to believe that she was a virgin when she had already had sexual intercourse. She did not oppose the annulment.
Critics ran out of superlatives to condemn what they depicted as a dangerous aberration. Valérie Létard, Minister for Women’s Rights, said that she was “shocked to see that today in France the civil law can be used to diminish the status of women”.
Elisabeth Badinter, a philosopher and pioneer of women’s legal rights, said that she felt shame for the French justice system. “The sexuality of women in France is a private and free matter,” she said. “The annulment will just serve to send young Muslim girls running to hospitals to have their hymens restored.”
Although officially discouraged, the 30-minute operation is in increasing demand from Muslim women who fear the consequences of being unable to prove their virginity on their wedding night. Numerous agencies offer services for surgery trips to north African nations. One is offering a “hymenoplasty trip” to Tunis for €1,250 (£980). Internet sites and blogs are full of would-be brides in fear of the test of “the blood-soaked sheet”.
While ministers fulminated against the Lille decision, a different stand was taken by Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister, who has Moroccan and Tunisian parents. The law had, she said, protected the bride. “Annulling a marriage is a way of protecting the person who perhaps wants to undo a marriage. I think this young girl wanted . . . to separate quite quickly. The law is there to protect vulnerable people,” Ms Dati said.
The annulment was defended by Xavier Labbée, the lawyer who acted for Ms Y. The decision was justified by the bride’s deception, not her sexual history, he argued. “Quite simply it is about a lie,” he said. “Religion did not motivate the decision . . . but it is true that religious convictions played a role.”
Requests for annulments have risen sharply to nearly 2,000 a year in France, but experts could recall no case involving non-virginity.
Sharia: shortly to supersede the Napoleonic Code?
Waiting for Goddard: Film director Jean-Luc Goddard who was associated with the Nouvelle Vague and made some unwatchable but critically acclaimed movies back in the '60s, was supposed to attend a Tel Aviv film festival. At the last minute he decided to pull out "for reasons beyond his control."
In other words, the anti-Zionists got to him.
Two questions: Why did the inveterate old Marxist agree to go in the first place? And: You mean Jean-Luc Goddard is still alive?
AIDS "cure": In a now infamous sermon, Bambi Fauxbama's former mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, insisted that the U.S. government has been purposedly infecting black Americans with the AIDS virus. Wright never explained, of course, how such a thing was possible. But then, the whole point of conspiracies is that they can be as loopy and implausable as all get out, so long as they have resonance with the audience listening to them.
Good news for the good folks of Trinity United. What the U.S. has giveth, an African leader claims to have taken away.
Immoral equivalence: Recently, a French court pretty much determined that Israel was not responsible for the death of Mohamed al-Durah. It held that it was far more likely that the young Palestinian boy was killed in one of those staged Pallywood productions that go over so well with the gullible international media. As far as the Toronto Star’s Oakland Ross is concerned, though, the question had yet to be settled definitively, and neither side can claim to have the inside track on the truth.
Bollocks, said I (more or less) to the Star’s editor:
There is something very distressing about Oakland Ross’ statement that the beliefs about who is responsible for Mohamed al-Durah’s death “are probably unshakeable, no matter what evidence may yet turn up.” It makes it sound as though the truth is irrelevant. And the truth is that, as that French court held, a preponderance of evidence points to the fact that the event was staged by Palestinians for the purposes of blackening Israel’s reputation.
Had that French court found that Israelis had indeed been responsible for the young Palestinian boy’s death, Israel would have had no problem owning up to its culpability; indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Israel was quite prepared to apologize for it.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the other side. It is far more concerned with perpetuating what amounts to a modern-day "blood libel"--and cynically using the death of a child as a blunt propaganda tool--than in coming to terms with the difference between the truth and an outright fabrication.
Slimi among the dhimmis: The article in the Canadian Jewish News about the interfaith dinner featuring the colourful comments of Imam Hamid Slimi is somewhat less “colorful” than the piece that appeared in the Jewish Tribune. The CJC report, for instance, omits any reference to the bizarre pissing Bedoin anecdote, as well as the imam’s assertion that synagogues and churches in dar al-Islam have never, ever, not even once in history, been torched by Muslims.
TORONTO — Imam Hamid Slimi, RIGHT, made history on May 14 as the first imam to speak at a Neighbourhood Interfaith Group dinner.
The 22nd annual dinner, which was hosted by Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, brought together members of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities for a night of food, drinks and conversation.
“It’s good that [we] gathered together to break bread and listen to one another in the spirit of grace,” said Rev. Peter Holmes of the Yorkminster Church. “Gatherings like this are a sign of hope and a beacon of light to this world.”
Imam Slimi, who has been an imam for 11 years, is the founder of the Faith of Life Network; the imam of the International Muslims Organization of Toronto; and the chairman of the Canadian Council of Imams.
“We did extensive research,” said Bryan Beauchamp, one of the organizers of the event and the chairman of the Interfaith Group. “We wanted a moderate, progressive, well-educated and well- spoken person. [Imam Slimi] is the ideal guy.”
In his speech titled “The Golden Rule,” Imam Slimi spoke about Islam and its beliefs.
“Islam is very simple. There’s one God in heaven and God is merciful,” he said. “There is this unfavourable thinking of Islam and Muslims. I can’t deny that there are extreme thoughts – it happens in every religion.”
During his speech, Imam Slimi, who was born in Morocco, addressed the misconception that all Muslims are taught to hate the Jewish community.
“Everyone is loved by God,” he said. “I grew up in a district where we had Jews and Christians. We were never taught to hate [them.] The prophet said that [Muslims] can marry Jews and Christians, who are the people of the Book.”
The imam was invited to speak at the dinner because of a comment made by Rabbi Erwin Schild four years ago. While addressing the gathering at the 18th annual interfaith group dinner, the rabbi said that the group’s next challenge was to engage their Muslim neighbours.
During this year’s dinner, Rabbi Schild spoke about the first murder documented in the Torah.
“It was one brother killing another,” he said. “The murderer [thought], ‘I can’t be responsible for my brother.’ In the course of time, we’ve learned that we are our brother’s keeper – what we haven’t learned yet is who is my brother. We are responsible for all religions.”
This sense of responsibility led Beauchamp to become involved in the interfaith group, which was founded in 1986.
‘This is my calling,” he said, motioning around the room. “Our mission is to achieve respect and appreciation for the religious beliefs of others.”
The group includes 14 churches and synagogues, and one private school in midtown Toronto. There are no mosques in the community that the group serves, but Beauchamp plans to continue inviting Muslim speakers.
“We’ll have a three-year cycle,” he said. “Next year, we’ll have a Roman Catholic archbishop, and in 2010 we’ll start the cycle again.”
Beauchamp, who is an Anglican, tries to seat people of different religions at the same table to encourage a dialogue.
“We spread Muslim guests among the room. We try to put four Christians and four Jews at each table,” he said.
Beauchamp says the key to uniting different religions is to concentrate on similarities rather than differences.
“Rather than sitting together and discussing whether Jesus will return to Earth we focus on ‘love thy neighbour as yourself.’”…
That “Golden Rule” again. Too bad its presence is notably absent in one of the Abrahamic faiths.
Update: When Brian Beauchamp describes the imam as being "moderate" and "progressive," he apparently means that, in matters pertaining to the U.S. and Israel, he and the imam are in synch. A cursory glance at the imam's Faith of Life website reveals some of the "progressive" thinking--links to a Guardian video about suffering in Gaza, a clip about how povery in the U.S. will never be alleviated while the "military-industrial complex" continues to be industriously military (i.e. keeps fighting in places like Iraq and Afghanistan), and how the media are spinning the Sadr City "success".
The imam seems to be "moderate" and "progressive" in the hard-leftist/moonbat sense of those words.
Update: Further exploration of the Faith of Life site turns up David Liepert, the network's founding Director, exposulating on a timely subject:
Quite a few authors and media darlings have been making their fortunes off the idea that Canadian Muslims secretly support Osama bin Laden. They support their clash of civilizations theory with sensational quotes from the fanatical fringe, while ignoring and even denouncing the notion of Islamophobia. However, according to the United Nations, 'Islamophobia is now more widely accepted as normal in the West, not only among the common people, but also, and more openly, among certain elites, who at times seemed to adopt it as an ideological or even aesthetic position.'
It would be nice if that weren't true of Canada . In Ontario last year, the right to faith-based arbitration in family disputes was taken away from everyone (even though it had been in place for decades) simply to ensure Muslims didn't get it. The idea of public support for private religious schools is suffering the same fate. A hate-speech complaint against a prominent magazine has even prompted a federal private members' motion to remove laws against hate-speech from the books! Apparently Muslims can't be trusted with that right either.
Canada's commentators seem unanimous: an individuals' right to stereotype and misrepresent a distinct minority is protected in Canada . But where are the supposed limits that prevent us exercising our rights to the detriment of others? When a prejudiced perspective becomes so endemic that it begins to promote systemic prejudice has it not gone too far?
There is a wide gulf between those commentators' dystopic maunderings and what is actually being taught in Canada 's Muslim Houses of Worship. There we learn that Islam is a peaceful religion that promotes equality and rights for all. It's a shame that's not the way it's practiced everywhere, but it's a shame we all share. Our situation is not unique: all ideological communities struggle against members using their beliefs to justify abusing others. But it is only on the pages of a few right-wing media outlets that we hear the constant outcry that the Muslim community is singularly challenged. Often, their conclusions are based on faulty interpretations of obscure scholars and a handful of fanatics few Muslims know about. Funnily enough, it seems that right-wing media outlets and Osama Bin Laden are on the same page...
Yup. Sounds very "progressive" to me. Here's more on Liepert the "revert".
Today's Steyn song: With apologies to those "folkie" lads, the Kingston Trio:
Well, let me tell you of the story of a scribe named Steynie
And his battle with the thought police.
He went and mentioned things “offensive” by a Norwegian mullah.
And got hauled before some HRCs.
But will he ever return?
No, he’ll never return,
And his fate we soon will learn.
He may write for others,
For Maclean’s, no longer.
He’s the man who’ll never return.
When he arrived at the courtroom
Judge he went through the motions
Of pretending what he should do.
But since the verdict was decided long before the hearing
It was clear that poor Mark was through.
But will he ever return?
No, he’ll never return,
And his fate we soon will learn.
He may write for others,
For Maclean’s, no longer.
He’s the man who’ll never return.
Now, you citizens of Canada
Don’t you think it’s a scandal
How the thought cops can do as they please?
Fight the loss of freedom! Make ‘em fire the censors!
And get rid of the HRCs!
But will he ever return?
No, he’ll never return,
And his fate we soon will learn.
He will write for others
But, alas, no longer for
The true north “strong” and “free”.
For the true north "strong" and "free".
Political scandals: Why Israel has them, and it's neighbours don't.
Bombs away: The mad mullahs live up to their name.
Who gets the Golan?: Not the chinless Baathist who's the mullahs' catamite.
Understatement of the day: Abbas anger at Bush over acceptance of Jewish state bodes ill for peace.
Song for Steyn: Here's another revised standard from the American songbook to mark the approach of Mark Steyn's show trial (it commences Monday in Vancouver):
All of it.
They’ve taken all of it.
Have a fit
That free speech is a goner.
Curb your thoughts:
They aren’t fitting.
Channel “nice”:
Your “crimes” aren’t unwitting.
HRCs
Make you wheeze,
And give you a pain now.
They’ve made a breech
In what was free speech
And they’ve taken all of it.
They're baa-ack: A FrontPage Magazine symposium examines a Nazi-esque 'toon and the implications of Arab Jew-hatred. A line that resonated: "Holocaust denial is the expression of a hidden lust for another Holocaust."
In Ahmadinejad's case, though, it's not so hidden.
The oldest affliction: Blogging was light yesterday because my mother’s husband passed away, and we had his funeral. He came into her life ten years ago—the same summer my son was born. We were very fond of him, as he was of us. The only spot of light in an otherwise dreadful day (aside from the weather, which was glorious): a conversation about “autism” between my son and two nephews—one aged 10, the other eight going on 30—in the backseat on the way to the cemetery. It went something like this:
Son: Autism is when people hate you for no reason.
Nephew: No, it’s not. It’s when there’s something wrong with your brain, and it makes you act crazy. You hit your head on the wall.
Son: Oh, I meant anti-Semitism.
Autism, anti-Semitism--I get them mixed-up, too. (That Jimmy Carter is so autistic!)
Traction action: Finally, a sex scandal Canadians can get excited about. Sharp-dressed but relatively inexperienced Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier (a man chosen more for his provenance--the provenance of Quebec--than his C.V.), was cashiered for leaving classified documents lying around his well-endowed lady friend's condo. The lady friend, to add piquancy to the tale, previously dated macho biker gang types.
The media have been looking for a Harper scandal that'll have traction, and this one seems to be it. I couldn't resist reducing it to rhyme:
Maxime Bernier, who lacked expertise,
Chose a hot biker babe as his squeeze.
Her colourful shmattas
Barely covered her ta-tas.
And now he’s stuck in the deep freeze.
Here we go again: The union of British university professors is once again about to weigh the matter of an Israeli boycott. The renewed calls to put the Jews in Coventry (so to speak) is said to be due to the ongoing "humanitarian crisis in Gaza," which the academics' blame on the Jews. (Well, they would, wouldn't they?)
Political opportunist: Now that Olmert’s in serious hot water, his heiress apparent, Tzipi Livni, is doing her best to distance herself from the bounder. A tall order, indeed, since she is so closely identified with him. Tzipi figures, though, that if she sounds all moral and high-minded, people will see her that way. From the Jerusalem Post:
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni led a memorial service Wednesday afternoon for former Etzel commander David Raziel, and sent a clear message to Prime Minsiter Ehud Olmert that the country is not only about physical survival, but also about values.
Referring to Raziel and the Etzel fighters, Livni said that public servants would not be faithful to their jobs if they believe that the establishment of the state was the "beginning and the end."
"The state is not just a technical matter of borders and citizens, and independent is not an empty word," she said, "and it is not just symbols and a flag and an anthem."
The foreign minister went on to say that "the state has a vision and values that obligate its citizens and obligate its leaders."
Livni, without mentioning Olmert by name, said that "before we can be a light unto the nations, like we would want, we must first work inwards and sow lights."
Sorry, Tzip. It’s the Jewish people who are supposed to be “a light unto the nations,” not the Jewish state. Putting that kind of burden on Israel—expecting things of it that are not expected of other nations—is not only unfair, not only idiotic, it is suicidal.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure you can’t “sow” lights. You can, however, sow the wind, whereupon at some point in the future, you will reap the whirlwind.
Survival mode: Ceeb ranter Rick Mercer goofs on the Dion Libs.
Free-thinker, feather-ruffler, wave-maker, boat-rocker: In a country (Canada) where the Jewish establishment and others are actively working to thwart free speech so that a tyranny of "niceness" may prevail, these words by French Jew, Phillippe Karsenty, who refused to remain silent and fought back against the al Dura blood libel, are especially powerful. From Pajamas Media via the Jewish Tribune:
Today (last Wednesday), a French court ruled that I did not defame France 2 when I said that its news report was a hoax. Because I refused to be brainwashed, I was sued for defamation.
Our victory today was a victory for freedom—the freedom to think and to speak one’s mind; the freedom to question what one is told; and the freedom to disbelieve the solemn pronouncements of others when the individual concludes that his reasoning is correct, and that the state and all the state-run media—and all of the institutions they represent—are wrong…
The right to think, to speak, to evaluate, to accept and to reject the conclusions of others goes to the very heart of what it means to be free…
A person who’s willing to defy the establishment and speak truth to power—like Ezra Levant, like Mark Steyn, like Phillippe Karsenty—is a true hero.
Oh, that Zbig: How’s this for black humour? A purveyor of the Big Lie about a super-powerful Jewish cabal, er, lobby, manipulating U.S. foreign policy accuses “some” Jews—those with genuine concerns about Fauxbama—of “McCarthyism”. From the Telegraph:
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, said that the pro-Israel lobby in the US was too powerful, while the slur of anti-Semitism was too readily used whenever its power was called into question.
Presenting a solution for the Middle East, he listed historical compromises that had to be made by Israelis and Palestinians but accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) – the largest and most influential Jewish lobby group – of obstructing peace efforts.
He said: "Aipac has consistently opposed a two-state solution and a lot of members of Congress have been intimidated and I don't think that's healthy."
He added that other country-specific lobbies, such as the Cuban-Americans, the Armenians and the Irish, had also exerted undue influence in Washington.
Mr Brzezinski, who served under President Jimmy Carter, was a key player in the 1978 Camp David Accords and remains an important voice in the US foreign policy establishment.
An active author and analyst at 80, he is close enough to Mr Obama that his remarks may feed fears in the American-Jewish community that the senator would soften America's traditional strong pro-Israeli stance if he became president.
This perception has been created in part by Mr Obama's professed willingness to talk to Iran and partly by other foreign policy associates.
In recent weeks, Mr Obama has courted the Jewish vote and, on Israel's 60th anniversary, underlined the need for the US to show "unshakeable" support.
Mr Brzezinski has been accused of being "anti-Israel" by some Jewish academics, writers and bloggers after criticising Israel for excessive use of force and unwillingness to compromise.
Last year, censure of him reached new heights when he defended John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two academics who had criticised the pro-Israel lobby and were accused of questioning the right of the state of Israel to exist.
Mr Brzezinski said "it's not unique to the Jewish community – but there is a McCarthyite tendency among some people in the Jewish community", referring to the Republican senator who led the anti-Communist witch hunt in the 1950s…
Apparently, there’s a McCarthyite tendency among “some” decrepit anti-Zionists, too.
Update: Might these be "some" of the Jews Zbig is talking about?
Update: Paul on powerline comments:
Brzezinski, according to Ed Lasky [of the American Thinker site], is an outspoken supporter of Walt and Mearsheimer. This doesn't prove that Brzezinski anti-Semitic, but it certainly makes him someone best left on the sidelines when it comes to influencing America's foreign policy with respect to Israel, at a minimum. Unfortunately, Brzezinski (along with Samantha Power) is one of Barack Obama's foreign policy mentors. Obama calls Brzezinski "someone I have learned an immense amount from." Supporters of Israel should be very afraid about the content of Brzezinski's lessons.
What a very "McCarthyite" suggestion.
Saudis take a page from the Canadian playbook: Look what I found embedded in an Arab News piece about "women’s rights" in the Magic Kingdom:
Women have also called for representation on the Shoura Council so they can influence change and development. Others have also asked for inclusion on the board of the newly established Human Rights Commission in order to ensure women get the rights that their faith guarantees and their faith-based government also should guarantee.
Good luck getting your “rights,” Saudi chicks. Everyone "in the know" knows that Human Rights Commissions—whether Wahhabi, UNi or Canucki—are in the business of removing rights, not granting them.
UN leaps into action: Dizzy Des Tutu’s on his way to Gaza to “probe” Jewish (and only Jewish) malfeasance. (Hey, Des: While you’re in the neighbourhood, how ‘bout looking into those rockets being hurled every frikkin' day at Israeli civilians in Sderot?) From the New York Sun (my bolds):
JERUSALEM — Archbishop Desmond Tutu is planning to enter Gaza today to conduct a U.N. investigation into the killing of 19 Palestinian Arabs by Israeli shells.
After 18 months of being denied a visa by Israel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is expected to cross the border at Rafah via Egypt.
The archbishop is intending to visit the scene of the incident, in which Israeli forces fired an artillery barrage into the Gazan town of Beit Hanoun early one morning in November 2006.
The first shell hit a house, causing members of the Athamneh family to run out into an alley, where they were cut down by further shells. Almost all the dead were from the same family, the youngest an 8-month-old girl.
The Israeli army carried out its own investigation but found earlier this year that the incident was an accident, and held no individual to account for the deaths. Palestinian Arab human rights campaigners were incensed by the finding.
Mr. Tutu's trip represents a major showdown between the Jewish state and the U.N. Human Rights Council, which commissioned his inquiry weeks after the incident.
The Israeli authorities gave no explanation for the visa delays but it is known Israel has problems with the human rights council because of its constant focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli government sources have said the council is politicized and biased for ignoring other human rights violations such as Darfur, while repeatedly censuring Israel.
Quel understatement.
Ehud and Tzipi’s despicable adventure: Hillel Halkin explains once again why the idea of “giving back” the Golan is sheer lunacy. From the New York Sun:
Every few years another supposed Israeli-Syrian deal of this sort hits the headlines; every few years I write another column against it; every few years it fades away until the next time.
So what's left to say now that the next time has again become this time? That one can only hope that this time, too, it will soon become last time?
That all the reasons for not surrendering the Golan that have been valid in the past are more valid than ever today, especially when the Syrian regime has just been caught trying to develop clandestine nuclear weapons and is successfully in the process of helping Hezbollah take over Lebanon and the president of America thinks that yielding to its demands would be a bad idea?
That offering to give up the Golan would therefore be the most unpardonable act that could be committed by a government whose leader, Ehud Olmert, has close to a zero approval rate from the Israeli public and will soon have to resign, and possibly go to jail, because of his crooked finances? Or that this same public has shown itself when polled, time after time, to be against ceding the Golan and currently opposes doing so by 70% to 30%?
Let's talk about this public and the paradox it represents in terms of the Golan. It's no secret that every Israeli government that has offered to return the Golan has been heavily influenced by high army officers who have supported such a move and that this is true of the Olmert government, too. Nor is it a secret why the army's general staff has tended to take this position.
This is not because the Golan has no strategic value in the army's eyes. It is because the army fears that, should war with Syria break out over the Golan, or over some other issue like Iran, this value will be offset by the rain of Syrian missiles that will hit Israeli population centers, panicking their inhabitants, causing massive casualties, and forcing Israel to sue for a ceasefire before it can press its military advantage.
Is the Israeli public unaware of this danger? If it was before the 2005 war against Hezbollah, it certainly isn't any longer. It knows what happened then, and it knows that what would happen if the Syrians were to emulate Hezbollah's tactics would be far worse. If it doesn't agree with the army, this is because it has more faith in itself and in the army than the army does.
It has more faith in the army, because it believes in the army's deterrent power, which could pulverize Damascus if the Syrians attacked Tel Aviv or Haifa. (The army, apparently, does not believe that any Israeli government would allow it even to threaten pulverizing Damascus, let alone to do such a thing.) And it has more faith in itself because it believes that even if Tel Aviv and Haifa were attacked, it could hold out long enough for the army to do its job.
This is not to minimize how grim a worst-scene scenario might be. No one in Israel wants to see thousands or tens of thousands of Israeli casualties, or for that matter, hundreds of thousands or millions of Syrian casualties. It is simply to say that the Israeli public, besides justifiably feeling that the Golan is by now part of Israel and should remain so, is more realistic than either its army or its government.
It knows not only what the price of risking a war with Syria might be, it knows what the price of not risking one would be. Once the Arab world understands that Israel does not believe it can fight or win another war, and will not fight one to hold onto its own sovereign territory (which the Golan has been since 1980), Israel might as well go into receivership immediately, because it will in any case be ripped apart piece by piece, each time yielding another bit of itself to the latest Arab ultimatum…
Well, isn’t that the whole point of the endless “peace in our time” efforts—to eat away at the Jewish state bit by bit until it’s no longer viable?
(B)arf!: A British prison guard has caught heck for supposedly naming his pooch after the Big Kahuna. From Netindia123 (h/t J.B.):
Naming his sniffer dog "Allah" has resulted in in prison officer Chris Langridge, 28, being shifted out of Britain's top Belmarsh high-security jail.
Though Langridge insisted that his labrador was called Ali, and not Allah, a Muslim inmate filed an official complaint against the the (sic) dog handler, and he was promptly shifted.
One Belmarsh officer said: "This is political correctness gone mad."
Belmarsh houses some of Britain's most notorious extremist Muslims, including hook-handed Abu Hamza. It also has the highest proportion of Muslim prisoners of any jail in Britain.
"Muslims don't like dogs and it would have been an insult to their religion if the dog had been called Allah, which is sacred to them. It is disgraceful the way the management kow-towed to them despite Chris's denial," The Sun quoted a source, as saying.
Langridge and his dog are now working at the Swaleside jail on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. (ANI)
Reminds me of that old joke about the dyslexic agnostic: He sat up all night trying to figure out if there really was a Dog.
Dhimmi daze: The cleric who heads up the Canadian Council of Imams spoke at an interfaith dinner—a first for the group—and weren’t all the clueless dhimmis tickled pink? By Atara Beck in the Jewish Tribune:
The interfaith group of 14 midtown churches and synagogues and a private school invited a Muslim spiritual leader as the guest speaker for the first time.
Moroccan-born and educated Hamid Slimi – Imam of the International Muslims Organiation of Toronto, founder of the Faith of Life etwork and chairman of the Canadian Council of Imams – delivered a talk, It’s All About the Golden Rule.
His method of illustrating the importance of “doing unto others as you would have others do unto you,” however, was unprecedented in that interfaith community and included, for example, an anecdote about a Bedouin urinating in a mosque.
According to Bryan Beauchamp, chair of the interfaith group, “although the examples used were shocking, the point [he was trying to make] will be remembered.”
Imam Slimi, introduced by Rabbi Frydman-Kohl of Beth Tzedec Congregation as “a good friend,” and “a man of great kindness and integrity stressed that the most basic aspect of religion is to help those in need.
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“We’re all brothers and sisters in humanity,” he said, adding that the Islamic community poses no threat to
As for politics, “I can’t solve the
He spoke of the prophet Mohammed’s “respect for Christians…Jews have prospered in