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Saturday, 31 January 2009
I AM A ZIONIST
At a time where Zionism is defamed and slandered, this article sets out the truth. Shabbat Shalom.
From YNet, by Yair Lapid:
I am a Zionist.
I believe that the Jewish people established itself in the Land of Israel, albeit somewhat late. Had it listened to the alarm clock, there would have been no Holocaust, and my dead grandfather – the one I was named after – would have been able to dance a last waltz with grandma on the shores of the Yarkon River.
I am a Zionist.
Hebrew is the language I use to thank the Creator, and also to swear on the road. The Bible does not only contain my history, but also my geography. King Saul went to look for mules on what is today Highway 443, Jonah the Prophet boarded his ship not too far from what is today a Jaffa restaurant, and the balcony where David peeped on Bathsheba must have been bought by some oligarch by now.
I am a Zionist.
The first time I saw my son wearing an IDF uniform I burst into tears, I haven't missed the Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony for 20 years now, and my television was made in Korea, but I taught it to cheer for our national soccer team.
I am a Zionist.
I believe in our right for this land. The people who were persecuted for no reason throughout history have a right to a state of their own plus a free F-16 from the manufacturer. Every display of anti-Semitism from London to Mumbai hurts me, yet deep inside I'm thinking that Jews who choose to live abroad fail to understand something very basic about this world. The State of Israel was not established so that the anti-Semites will disappear, but rather, so we can tell them to get lost.
I am a Zionist.
I was fired at in Lebanon, a Katyusha rockets missed me by a few feet in Kiryat Shmona, missiles landed near my home during the first Gulf War, I was in Sderot when the Color Red anti-rocket alert system was activated, terrorists blew themselves up not too far from my parents' house, and my children stayed in a bomb shelter before they even knew how to pronounce their own name, clinging to a grandmother who arrived here from Poland to escape death. Yet nonetheless, I always felt fortunate to be living here, and I don't really feel good anywhere else.
I am a Zionist.
I think that anyone who lives here should serve in the army, pay taxes, vote in the elections, and be familiar with the lyrics of at least one Shalom Hanoch song. I think that the State of Israel is not only a place, it is also an idea, and I wholeheartedly believe in the three extra commandments engraved on the wall of the Holocaust museum in Washington: "Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."
I am a Zionist.
I already laid down on my back to admire the Sistine Chapel, I bought a postcard at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and I was deeply impressed by the emerald Buddha at the king's palace in Bangkok. Yet I still believe that Tel Aviv is more entertaining, the Red Sea is greener, and the Western Wall Tunnels provide for a much more powerful spiritual experience. It is true that I'm not objective, but I'm also not objective in respect to my wife and children.
I am a Zionist.
I am a man of tomorrow but I also live my past. My dynasty includes Moses, Jesus, Maimonides, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Woody Allen, Bobby Fischer, Bob Dylan, Franz Kafka, Herzl, and Ben-Gurion. I am part of a tiny persecuted minority that influenced the world more than any other nation. While others invested their energies in war, we had the sense to invest in our minds.
I am a Zionist.
I sometimes look around me and become filled with pride, because I live better than a billion Indians, 1.3 billion Chinese, the entire African continent, more than 250 million Indonesians, and also better than the Thais, the Filipinos, the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the entire Muslim world, with the exception of the Sultan of Brunei. I live in a country under siege that has no natural resources, yet nonetheless the traffic lights always work and we have high-speed connection to the Internet.
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I am a Zionist.
My Zionism is natural, just like it is natural for me to be a father, a husband, and a son. People who claim that they, and only they, represent the "real Zionism" are ridiculous in my view. My Zionism is not measured by the size of my kippa, by the neighborhood where I live, or by the party I will be voting for. It was born a long time before me, on a snowy street in the ghetto in Budapest where my father stood and attempted, in vain, to understand why the entire world is trying to kill him.
I am a Zionist.
Every time an innocent victim dies, I bow my head because once upon a time I was an innocent victim. I have no desire or intention to adopt the moral standards of my enemies. I do not want to be like them. I do not live on my sword; I merely keep it under my pillow.
I am a Zionist.
I do not only hold on to the rights of our forefathers, but also to the duty of the sons. The people who established this state lived and worked under much worse conditions than I have to face, yet nonetheless they did not make do with mere survival. They also attempted to establish a better, wiser, more humane, and more moral state here. They were willing to die for this cause, and I try to live for its sake.
taken from : For Zion's Sake
THE USE OF FORCE CAN BE POSITIVE
Says Michael Gerson at the Washington Post, and explains the logic of the recent Gaza operation. It's an unusual piece for the way it flagrantly flies in the face of "accepted wisdom". (Nitpicking: Interestingly, Gerson doesn't know what Operation Defensive Shield was. As I keep saying, most people who write about the Mid East don't have their facts down pat, including the ones who do see the general picture).
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
IT'S NOT ONLY JOURNALISTS AND PUNDITS...
It's even the President of the United States who could benefit from a bit of cramming.
Amir Taheri looks into Obama's comment about how things were better between the US and the Arab world 20 or 30 years ago. This was of course a peculiar statement, and Taheri fleshes out how so.
It is far too early days to know what the Obama administration will or won't succeed at, in the Middle East or anywhere else. So far they're engaging in cheap and painless gestures and symbolism, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that: symbols sometimes can effect reality, especially when they nudge reality in a direction that already had potential. Nor is there anything intrinsically right with it, either: sometimes reality is immune to symbols, especially when they try to nudge reality in directions with no potential. The tricky thing is to get it right, to chose only the symbols that will be beneficial, and none that will have adverse effects.
How do you know the former from the latter? Two ways. The first, rather reliable though not foolproof, is to have the benefit of hindsight. Alas, that's not a good method for people who have to make decisions in the present. The second method to tell useful symbols from neutral ones from destructive ones, is to know a lot about the situation you're trying to impact. According to all reports Obama is an unusually intelligent man, widely read. The fact that his first pronouncement on the recent history of the Middle East could have been refuted with ease by anyone who's been reading newspapers and remembering their content for the period he's pronouncing on, is mildly worrisome.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
Friday, 30 January 2009
WHO PUTS A MEZUZAH IN SPACE ? - A JEWISH ASTRONAUT
U.S. astronaut Dr. Garrett Reisman speaking to children at a Ramat Gan school on Tuesday.(Dan Keinan)
Who puts up a mezuzah in space? A Jewish astronaut
By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent
If Dr. Garrett Reisman did not exist, then Mel Brooks or Woody Allen would have had to invent him. The veteran astronaut, who spent three straight months in space, looks like a character from a comedy about Jews in space: He is short, an engineer and full of self-deprecating humor that is often missing in astronauts.
Reisman, a native of New Jersey, is the first Jew to have lived in the International Space Station.
"The mission went pretty well, I did not break anything that was too expensive," he says.
When he got to the space station, via the space shuttle Endeavor, he was quick to put up a mezuzah in the bunk where he slept.
"I did not consult any rabbi, so I hope I did not get into any trouble," he says.
Reisman is in Israel for the fourth Ilan Ramon International Space Conference, which is organized by the Science Ministry and the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.
The NASA delegation will make a presentation on progress in its most ambitious project: sending humans to Mars. Its schedule is for a manned mission to Mars by 2030.
However, at this stage, there are still problems to be resolved. The round trip is expected to last at least three years and will require enormous amounts of food, water and fuel.
No less troubling is how best to assure the health of the crew while millions of kilometers from earth.
Dr. Johnston Smith, a medical officer at NASA, who is also visiting Israel, is one of those dealing with this challenge. "If someone experiences a standard medical problem, like appendicitis," he says, "a decision will need to be made on what to do. Therefore, on the voyage to Mars one of the crew will be a doctor and will have the means to undertake simple surgery."
Those traveling to Mars will also be away from family and friends for years. According to Johnston, the missions to the International Space Station are meant to build up experience in dealing with psychological dilemmas. Thus, for example, a year ago, NASA had to inform astronaut Daniel Tani, who was at the space station, that his mother had died in an accident.
"Every astronaut decides before a mission whether they want to know [such news] immediately or not. But on a voyage to Mars these questions will be more significant, and we need to think about how to deal with them," Johnston says.
Related articles:
Astronaut Ilan Ramon's diary put on display in Jerusalem
NASA delegates to visit Israel to remember astronaut Ilan Ramon
Israel to NASA: Ready to provide first astronaut since Columbia disaster
taken from haaretz.com (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1059409.html)
UNIVERSAL TORAH : BO
UNIVERSAL TORAH: BO
By Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum
Torah Reading: BO Exodus 10:1-13:16Haftara: Jeremiah 46:13-28
G-D ALWAYS HAS THE UPPER HAND
"Who then is able to stand before me?
Who has given Me anything beforehand, that I should repay him?
Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine" (Job 41:2-3).
In the story of the Exodus, it is obvious who is the villain: obstinate Pharaoh, who will not bow to G-d until his very first-born and those of all his people are smitten. But who is the hero of the story? Can we say it is the Children of Israel? They certainly responded with faith when they heard the good news of their imminent deliverance (Ex. 4:31). They were willing to hear, listen and obey. "And the Children of Israel went and did as HaShem commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did" (Ex. 12:28). But otherwise, the role of the Children of Israel's was mainly passive in the unfolding drama in which Pharaoh's power over them was broken. They were the slaves, and they were released: not the most heroic of roles. They were almost devoid of all merits. The very memory of it should induce humility.
Then is Moses the "hero"? It is true that "also the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt in the eyes of Pharaoh's servants and in the eyes of the people" (Ex. 11:3).
With the unflinching courage that his true prophecy conferred upon him, Moses, with his brother Aaron, played the central role in heralding the awesome and terrible signs through which the redemption came about. Yet it was not Moses who "liberated" or "saved" the Children of Israel. Moses was the greatest of all prophets, but he was still "the MAN Moses". Moses could say that the first-born would be smitten "ABOUT Midnight" (Ex. 11:4). But G-d alone could make the plague actually happen "AT midnight" (Ex. 12:29) -- at the exact moment.
G-d alone is the "hero" of the Exodus. "And I shall pass through [Targum = I shall be revealed in] the land of Egypt on this night" (Ex. 12:12) -- "I and not an Angel; I and not a Saraf; I and not a messenger." (from the Seder Night Haggadah, commenting on "And I shall pass through / be revealed").
The whole purpose of the Exodus was not to glorify a man or a nation, but to reveal G-d's absolute power over all creation. As Moses reminded the people forty years later, at the end of his ministry:
"For you are a holy nation to HaShem your G-d; HaShem your G-d chose you to be His treasured nation out of all the nations that are on the face of the earth. Not because you were more numerous than all the nations did HaShem desire you and choose you, for you are the smallest of all the nations. But because of HaShem's love for you and through His guarding of the oath that He swore to your fathers, HaShem took you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slaves, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know that HaShem, your G-d -- He is the G-d, the Power, who is faithful and guards the covenant and shows kindness to those who love him and who guard His commandments for a thousand generations. And He pays those who hate him in their face, to destroy them; He shall not delay to the one who hates him, He will repay him to his face." (Deuteronomy 7:6-10).
* * *
THE REAL START OF THE TORAH
In Rashi's opening comment on the Torah (Gen. 1:1), he indicates that the real "beginning" of the Torah is in our present parshah of BO. "Rabbi Yitzchak said: the Torah should have started from 'This month will be for you the head of the months' (Ex. 12:2) since this is the first commandment that the Children of Israel were commanded." [See Rashi on Gen. 1:1, where he explains that the account of the Creation and the ensuing history recounted in Genesis are proof of the Children of Israel's G-d-given right to the Land of Israel.]
In other words, the "real" start of the Torah is when we read it first and foremost as a message about our obligations rather than one about our rights. Having been passively freed by G-d from servitude to man, we have obligations to the "hero", the only true Savior. If anyone lays claim to any lien on us, G-d's lien always has priority.
The first mitzvah of the Torah to the Children of Israel is that of "sanctifying the month" (KIDDUSH HACHODESH). This involves counting the months of the year from Nissan, the month of redemption, and, when the Sanhedrin sits in the Land of Israel, taking testimony from witnesses who have sighted the new moon in order to declare the start of the new month. Marking time from the point at which the moon, having briefly disappeared from sight, begins to wax and grow, is a sign of constant regeneration and vitality. The sign of the crescent was taken over by Islam, but the unique power of the crescent of the new moon as a symbol of renewal is known only to the Children of Israel, who observe the commandment of Sanctifying the Month. Alone among the nations, the Children of Israel possess the Secret of IBBUR (literally "pregnancy"). This involves the method of reconciling the Lunar year (of 354 days) with the Solar year (of 365 days) through the insertion of an extra month in certain "leap" years (= SHANAH ME-UBERET, a "pregnant" year of 13 instead of only 12 months). It is to this and the related astronomical and mystical wisdom of the Children of Israel that Moses alluded when he said: "For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations" (Deut. 4:6, see Shabbos 75a).
The month of Nissan is governed by the astrological sign of Aries (T'LEH, the Ram), called the "head" or first of the constellations, since this is when the annual "regeneration" of the world begins in springtime. The Egyptians, who were masters of astronomy and astrology, worshipped sheep (see Gen. 46:34 and Rashi there). The commandment to the Children of Israel to take young sheep, ritually slaughter and eat them, was indicative of the destruction of the Egyptian religion through the Exodus and its replacement with a completely new and revolutionary way of coming to know G-d.
This commandment applied to those who went out of Egypt (PESACH MITZRAYIM) and it applied in later generations, when festival pilgrims would bring the Paschal lamb sacrifice to the Holy Temple (PESACH DOROS, "Pesach offering of the generations"). After its slaughter and the offering of its blood and fat on the altar on the afternoon of 14th Nissan, the lamb would be taken by the pilgrims to their lodgings in Jerusalem, roasted and ceremonially eaten with Matzah (unleavened bread) and bitter herbs as the centerpiece of the Seder Night commemorating the Exodus. Our present parshah of BO contains the laws of both PESACH MITZRAYIM and PESACH DOROS (Ex. Ch. 12 verses 3-28 and 43-49).
"And you shall say, This is the PESACH sacrifice for HaShem, who jumped over (=PASACH) the houses of the Children of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians and He saved our houses" (Ex. 12:27). Rashi (on Ex. 12:23) states that the Hebrew root PASACH in this passage carries the twin connotations of "had mercy" (as translated in the Targum here) and "leapt over". In other words, G-d's mercy for the Children of Israel was expressed in the fact that He "leapt over" and spared their houses while striking at the Egyptians.
The Torah contains numerous negative prohibitions (such as the incest prohibitions) whose infringement carries the penalty of KARES (physical and spiritual excision). However, there are only two positive commandments in the entire Torah whose willful neglect carries this penalty. These are the commandment of circumcision of all males and that of participating in the Pesach sacrifice (in Temple times). The two commandments are interrelated, for males may eat the Pesach sacrifice only if they are circumcised.
Fulfillment of the two commandments of circumcision and the Pesach sacrifice is integral to membership of the Community of Souls constituted by the Children of Israel, while for the penalty for infringing them is KARES, excision from that community.
Significantly, the laws of the Pesach lamb require that it be eaten in the company of a Chavurah, a group of friends and fellows, in a house. The significance of the house and the use of "domestic" functions such as communal eating as a focus for religious devotion has been discussed in relation to the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob "the House-builder" (see VAYEITZEI).
An indication of the centrality of the Pesach sacrifice in the true Torah tradition may be seen in the fact that the image of the Paschal lamb (like many other aspects of the Torah) was taken over and transmuted by the early developers of Christianity, as if their savior, who by all accounts was executed on 14th Nissan (see Sanhedrin 43a uncensored version), somehow became the paschal lamb. They introduced a new rite of "communion" in which the consumption of the sacrificial lamb was replaced with the eating of the founder's transubstantiated "flesh" (wafers of "bread" = Matzah) and the drinking of his "blood" (wine = "cup of redemption"). This rite could be performed in places of worship anywhere and was, within a generation, opened up to anyone, including the uncircumcised. The purpose was to try to displace the Children of Israel, G-d's true circumcised, from their role in creation, and to displace the Temple in Jerusalem and its sacrificial system, as laid down in the Torah, from their central position in the atonement of man's sins.
None of this can change what is written in the Torah about how man draws close to G-d through sacrifice (see Leviticus 1:1). For "G-d is not a man that He should lie or the son of man that He should change His mind. He spoke -- will He not do it? He pronounced -- will He not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19). "For I am G-d, I have not changed." (Malachi 3:6). Long before Christianity was established, G-d already told us through His true prophets that in the end of days, "Many peoples will go and they will say, Go and let us ascend to the Mountain of G-d, to the House of the G-d of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways and we will go in His paths, for the Torah will go forth from Zion and the word of HaShem from Jerusalem" (Isaiah 2:3).
* * *
AND IT SHALL BE FOR A SIGN.
The lessons of the Torah are not to remain in the mind. "And you shall know (VEYADAATA) today and bring it DOWN TO YOUR HEART that HaShem is the G-d in the heavens above and on the earth below, there is none other" (Deut. 4:39). The Exodus was the greatest ever revelation in history so far of DAAS -- the "knowledge" that G-d governs this world. The institution of the religion founded upon this event is marked in our parshah with the giving of the first practical commandments through which we keep this knowledge alive from generation to generation and make it palpable and literally tangible in our lives.
The highly tangible act of eating the Pesach sacrifice (or celebrating the Seder night) from year to year keeps the memory of the Exodus alive, stimulating questions from little children, giving the adults the opportunity to hand down the tradition and grow themselves in the process. A farmer's cow or sheep gives birth to a first-born, which he presents to the priest in memory of the saving of the Israelite first-born. A first-born boy is born and must be "redeemed" from the priest. First thing in the day, the Israelite takes leather straps, symbols of bondage, and uses them to bind himself to G-d and literally bind G-d's words and wisdom to his very body, with the Tefilin. "And it shall be for a sign on your hand and for frontlets between your eyes that with strength of hand HaShem brought us out of Egypt" (Ex. 13:16, closing words of the parshah.) Through practical acts of devotion, we bring the knowledge of G-d into our hearts. This is our part in displacing Pharaoh.
Shabbat Shalom!
Avraham Yehoshua Greenbaum
--AZAMRA INSTITUTEPO
Box 50037 Jerusalem 91500 Israel
Website: www.azamra.org
INTERNATIONAL LAW, WARFARE, AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH
I'm not much of a fan of applying law to political issues, which is what the International Law Brigade is so busy doing these past decades. I spelled out my position here, back in 2007.
A few days ago Haaretz ran a long story about the International Law Department in the IDF, and how it fits into the picture. It's a fascinating article, especially if you set aside the newspaper's agenda (They're horrified by their findings). Among many interesting things in the article is the description of the inevitable result of turning warfare into a legal question: the army hires good lawyers, and they find loopholes. That what lawyers are for, after all, irrespective of whether you like Israel or not. The moment you start measuring actions of war with legal tools, you'll start measuring the actions of war with legal tools.
This of course emphasizes the utter silliness of all those pundits and journalists who chatter on and on about what is or isn't illegal in wartime: they mostly have no legal training, those folks, and even the few who do aren't using it in their reports, because if they were, the reports would inevitably resemble legal briefs, and no-one would read them except other legal types - not what the media outlets want.
Another thing about legal systems is that they develop. They evolve. They adapt. In short: they change. International law isn't good at this, because it lacks many of the trappings of a normal legal system such as a soverign, an elected legislature, law enforcement forces who are subordinate to elected executives and so on. Even so, however, they have to adapt somehow, so apparently they do so by a process of getting used to reality:
The dilemma of the gray areas and ILD's attempts to discover untapped potential in international law may perhaps explain the unit's great enthusiasm for providing legal advice to the army and the glint in advisers' eyes when certain terms roll off their tongue: "proportional equilibrium," "legitimate military target," "illegal combatants." "What we are seeing now is a revision of international law," Reisner says. "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries. If the same process occurred in private law, the legal speed limit would be 115 kilometers an hour and we would pay income tax of 4 percent. So there is no connection between the question 'Will it be sanctioned?' and the act's legality. After we bombed the reactor in Iraq, the Security Council condemned Israel and claimed the attack was a violation of international law. The atmosphere was that Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive self-defense. International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal moulds. Eight years later it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."
Did the attacks of September 11 influence your legal situation?
"Absolutely. When we started to define the confrontation with the Palestinians as an armed confrontation, it was a dramatic switch, and we started to defend that position before the Supreme Court. In April 2001 I met the American envoy George Mitchell and explained that above a certain level, fighting terrorism is armed combat and not law enforcement. His committee [which examined the circumstances of the confrontation in the territories] rejected that approach. Its report called on the Israeli government to abandon the armed confrontation definition and revert to the concept of law enforcement. It took four months and four planes to change the opinion of the United States, and had it not been for those four planes I am not sure we would have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the present scale."
After Haaretz published this article in last weekend's magazine, a number of law professors at Tel Aviv University realized, to their utter horror, that the commander of the International Law Department, Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, is about to leave the army and join them on the staff of the law department; worse, she's going to be teaching impressionable young students about international law and its applications. They launched a public campaign to block her appointment, obviously fearing that some of her students may grow up to think that it can be legal to wage war, or some similar apostasy. They've been writing letters to the dean, and publicizing their opinions in the media (well: in Haaretz), and they're generally scandalized. Which is fine. I'm pretty scandalized by them, too, but I recognize their right to poison the minds of their students if the students are foolish enough to let this happen, and can't balance their professor's silliness with common sense. That's what democracy is about, you'd think.
Today Haaretz weighed in with the full force of it's editorial column. As usual with Haaretz, they don't translate some of the more interesting stuff into English, so you'll have to learn Hebrew to see how far Haaretz has come from the days when it was a liberal (European meaning) broadsheet championing democratic values. Their thesis: This Pnina lady is a criminal, she authorized crimes, and the last place she should be is at a university.
Freedom of speech is for the speech we like.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
Thursday, 29 January 2009
ISRAEL IS TO BLAME FOR BRITAIN'S WOES
The Guardian is quick and expansive to report that the top British anti-terror official says Israel's actions in Gaza are fueling hatred against the West, and specifically against the UK.
Let's assume for the moment, merely for the sake of the argument, that the UK really were fully on Israeli's side, to the extent that anger at Israel could be legitimately directed also at them, and that this affinity was wholly altruistic and could be terminated at a moment's notice if so wished. And let's also assume that the hatred of the Islamists rises even higher than it already is because of anything Israel does or doesn't do. Just for the sake of the argument, mind you.
Now, the Islamist murderers threaten the UK for its position. There seem to be two over-arching responses one can think of:
1. "This is our way of life, we're proud of it, we'll never change it because of you bastards, on the contrary, bugger off or we'll crush you."
2. We must throw Israel to the dogs, because they're endangering us, the bastards.
Do you begin to see, at least dimly, why Israelis like America, and have but minimal trust in the Europeans when it comes to the essentials?
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
ANTISEMITISM IS ANTI-RATIONALISM
Frank Furedi has a long and depressing article about the rise of antisemitism and its interconnectedness with Israel. As the good folks at Achse Des Guten note, the article starts out rather poorly, but then gets more serious.
I'm merely indexing for future use. One quick comment, however: to my mind, the fusion of antisemitism with anti-Zionism is a fine thing. (I'm not talking about legitimate criticism of Israel). Zionism is the most important expression of Judaism in something like 1,800 years, and you can't be against it without being against what the Jews are about. Not even if you're Jewish yourself, by the way.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
SHAME - (1)
So, here they are agin.
Once more they are back to defy our patience and to abuse of the civil liberties, to spread their hate.
Next Saturday a nazi gathering is about to take place, as it seems, at the Lisbon region (the location was not revealed, as usual, only a meeting point). Announced in advance in the internet, for this meeting is expected the presence of guests from others neo-nazi movements from America and Europe.
The gathering intends to celebrate the 4th. anniversary of the portuguese hammerskin section (chapter).
There is a certain irony in all this.
It was the violent actions of this group the reason of the police raids in the month of April 2007, that lead to the trial of 36 skinheads last year (October).
Then, authorities assured they had disbanded the group. As it seens they had done a very lousy job.
Really, this is a SHAME !!!
For those who can read portuguese there's a link to this in the daily newspaper Correio da Manhã, online edition : http://www.correiomanha.pt/noticia.aspx?contentid=F0EA90F8-5B20-423A-A844-1DA9BE7253B2&channelid=00000010-0000-0000-0000-000000000010
THE HOLOCAUST DID NOT BEGIN IN THE GAS CHAMBERS...
The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers - it began with words
By IRWIN COTLER
On this United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day, words may ease the pain, but they may also dwarf the tragedy. For the Holocaust is uniquely evil in its genocidal singularity, where biology was inescapably destiny, a war against the Jews in which, as Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel put it, "not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims."
This year, in the immediate aftermath of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international Magna Carta of human rights born out of the ashes of the Holocaust, and the Genocide Convention - the "Never Again" Convention which has tragically been violated again and again - we should ask ourselves: What have we learned, and what must we do?
Lesson 1 - THE IMPORTANCE OF HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE
The first lesson is the importance of remembrance itself. For as we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust - first defamed, demonized and dehumanized, as prologue or justification for genocide, then murdered - we have to understand that the mass murder of millions is not a matter of abstract statistics. For unto each person there is a name - unto each person there is an identity. Each person is a universe. As both the Talmud and Koran teach us, whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe - just as whoever has killed a single person, it is as if they have destroyed an entire universe. And so the abiding imperative: that we are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other's destiny.
Lesson 2 - THE DANGER OF STATE-SANCTIONED INCITEMENT TO HATRED AND GENOCIDE: THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PREVENT IT
The enduring lesson of the Holocaust and the genocides that followed is that they occurred not simply because of the machinery of death, but because of a state-sanctioned ideology of hate. This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other - this is where it all begins. As the Canadian Supreme Court recognized, in words echoed by the international criminal tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers - it began with words. These, as the courts put it, are the chilling facts of history. These are the catastrophic effects of racism.
Sixty years later, these lessons not only remained unlearned, but the tragedies have been repeated. For we were all bystanders during a growing state-sponsored hate in the Balkans, Rwanda and Darfur that took us down the road to genocide.
At present, we are witnessing yet another state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide, whose epicentre is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran - denying the Nazi Holocaust as it incites to a Middle Eastern one.
This constitutes a direct violation of the overriding prohibition in international law against the direct and public incitement to genocide, and a clear legal trigger for the international community to intervene in fulfilment of its obligation to prevent genocide, as established in the Genocide Convention.
As one involved as Minister of Justice in Canada in the prosecution of Rwandan incitement, I can state that the aggregate of precursors of incitement in the Iranian case are more threatening than were those in the Rwandan one.
Lesson 3 - THE DANGERS OF SILENCE, THE CONSEQUENCES OF INDIFFERENCE: THE DUTY TO PROTECT
Indeed, the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of a culture of hate and an industry of death, but because of crimes of indifference and conspiracies of silence. And we have witnessed an appalling indifference and inaction in our own day which took us down the road to the unthinkable - ethnic cleansing in the Balkans - and down the road to the unspeakable - the preventable genocides in Rwanda and Darfur. No one can say that we did not know. We knew, but we did not act in Rwanda, just as we know and do not act in Darfur, ignoring thereby the lessons of history, betraying the people of Darfur, and mocking the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
And so, it is our responsibility to break down these walls of indifference, to shatter these conspiracies of silence - to stand up and be counted and not look around to see who else is standing before we make a decision to do so; because in the world in which we live, there are few enough people prepared to stand, let alone be counted. Indifference always means coming down on the side of the victimizer, never on the side of the victim.
Let there be no mistake about it: indifference in the face of evil is acquiescence with evil itself - it is complicity with evil.
Lesson 4 - COMBATING MASS ATROCITY AND THE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY: THE RESPONSIBILITY TO BRING WAR CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE
If the last century - symbolized by the Holocaust - was the age of atrocity, it was also the age of impunity. Few of the perpetrators were brought to justice; and so, just as there must be no sanctuary for hate, no refuge for bigotry, there must be no base or sanctuary for these enemies of humankind. In this context, the establishment of the International Criminal Court must be seen as the most dramatic development in international criminal law since Nuremberg. But it requires active support to prevent it from being another opportunity for impunity.
One need look no further than the case of Ahmed Haroun, the Sudanese Minister of the Interior indicted for his direct role in the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur, who was then cynically rewarded for this indictment by being appointed Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs and made responsible for hearing the human rights complaints from the very victims he had assaulted.
LESSON 5 - THE TRAHISON DES CLERCS
Nazism succeeded, not only because of the "bureaucratization of genocide," as Robert Lifton put it, but because of the trahison des clercs - the complicity of the elites: physicians, church leaders, judges, lawyers, engineers, architects, educators and the like. As Elie Wiesel put it: "Cold-blooded murder and culture did not exclude each other. If the Holocaust proved anything, it is that a person can both love poems and kill children."
Those of us to who have been entrusted with the education and training of the elites should ensure that Elie Wiesel is studied in schools of law and not just in classes of literature; and that the double entendre of Nuremberg - of Nuremberg racism as well as the Nuremberg Principles - is as much a part of our learning as it is a part of our legacy.
CONCLUSION
We should reaffirm today that never again will we be indifferent to racism and hate; that never again will we be silent in the face of evil; that never again will we ignore the plight of the vulnerable; that never again will we acquiesce in the face of mass atrocity and impunity. We will speak and we will act against racism, against hate, against anti-Semitism, against mass atrocity, against injustice - and against the crime whose name we should shudder even to mention: genocide.
May this day be not only an act of remembrance, which it is, but a reminder to act, which it must be.
The writer is the former Canadian minister of justice and attorney general and is a law professor (on leave) from McGill University. He has written extensively on international human rights law and genocide prevention.
taken from : The Jeruralem Post (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1232643755764&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
WHERE DID THESE SO-CALLED JOURNALISTS GET THEIR TRAINING ? THE GESTAPO ?
Just Say No!
Shevat 1, 5769, 26 January 09 11:02
by Arlene Peck
(IsraelNN.com) When are they going to learn to just say, "No"?
A few years ago, I clandestinely went into a local mosque, just to see what they were talking about. It was a visitors day and I visited.
I do those things sometimes. Usually to my own detriment, such as when I was picked up by the KGB in Russia in 1976 and accused of bringing prayer books and mezuzahs to the synagogue. Once, I even snuck into Gaza with an Arab pretending to be a Christian women's newspaper writer to get the real story. I got it. But, that's another column. Anyway, this time I went only a mile or so from my home to the neighborhood mosque. And today I see in Gaza the results of what I learned there. The people inside weren't the screaming fanatics that you see shouting, "Jihad!" In fact, they were well dressed and articulate.
What interested me was a comment made by one of the fathers who rose that day to speak to his audience. He said, "Our children are now in the universities. We have done well. Now, we must direct them into the right fields. We must encourage them into three fields: education, media and, of course, politics."
Maybe that was on my mind too much during the presidential campaign, when I first heard the man with the Muslim name, Barack Hussein Obama, was running for president. Yet, so many of my wealthy Jewish neighbors, and especially my friends from Israel, seem to have complete faith in his leadership. I hope they're right. I keep thinking of The Manchurian Candidate.
My perception also was exacerbated, I suppose, because Ayn Rand, the brilliant author of Atlas Shrugged, was my mentor during my college years and her writings made such an impression on me. She was totally against the welfare state and believed that once socialism is the law of the land, communism isn't far behind. It frightens me that we have just voted in socialism.
So that, folks, is why, when I read the obvious hostility against the Jewish state in the Los Angeles Times I'm not too surprised. In fact, I check to see the names of those writing the articles and most times they are, surprise, Muslims. I think it's so cute that after all these years, they still refuse to refer to the savage terrorists as what they are and they write about the Hamas murderers as "fighters". The murderers who bomb are still suicide bombers and never homicidal killers. I just read a column that stated, "The military wing of Hamas attacked an Israeli tank." Good heavens, see how semantics can form an opinion? I would have written, "The Islamic savage terrorists, etc."
The newspapers are filled with human interest stories about how the hospitals across Gaza remained overwhelmed with dwindling supplies and patients stacked in crowded rooms. They lamented how difficult it was for severely wounded Palestinians to be transported outside the hospital enclave for treatment. Wonderful. Where did these so-called journalists get their training? The Gestapo?
One would think that during their extensive articles about how big bad Israel is putting the Arab children and hospital patients in danger, they might mention now and then that the Hamas leaders, like roaches, hide under schools, hospitals and kindergarten playgrounds. When they send out a rocket, these vermin plan it at a time that they know the Jewish children will be on their way to school. The papers don't mention Hamas targeting Israeli children and civilians.
I recall the numerous times that I watched CNN set up scenes to cast the Jewish State in any negative light possible. Now, they are crying that Israel kept the press out? Good! Because liberalism has taken over, I believe, in good part thanks to Muslim writers who have been trained to go into the three fields I mentioned earlier (media, education and politics). The Israelis are smart to keep the battlefields closed. All wars have incurred a degree of media control.
I watch the evening news of Barbie dolls and talking heads who couldn't find Israel on the map, and only know about it from flash cards and teleprompters that they read from, while they intone, "Both sides must stop fighting." Thank this culture which truly never misses the opportunity to miss an opportunity that they are still insisting that Israel open its borders to enemy traffic, while the enemy continues to lob their rockets into Israeli towns.
Any other country is allowed to respond to danger to their citizens. Israel, too, I suppose, as long as their response isn't longer than a week, or two. We Americans have been in Iraq how long? Seven, eight years? And the end still isn't in sight. Yet, ten minutes after Israel's response, the anti-Semitic State Department, coven of Islamic and leftist officials, is meeting for emergency sessions to figure out how to end the war. For G-d's sake, when are the government and people of Israel going to stop acting like a banana republic?
It's time to realize that the only friends Israel and the Jewish people have that they can truly count on are themselves.
I know that there are a great many good Christians out there who truly love Israel, but I've seen how little help they extend to their own people. I remember being in Lebanon in 1982 and watching the Lebanese Christians being rescued by the Jews. I didn't notice their Christian brothers rushing over to save them when they were being slaughtered by the Muslims.
So, when are they going to learn to just say, "No"?
Despite touting otherwise, Bush and Company were not our friends, and I fear the situation is going to be even worse when the new team gets started. At least Bush never announced that he would sit and negotiate with a terrorist organization and give them the credibility of a real state.
Maybe Obama should just go sit down with the Taliban first and give them a hug.
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taken from : B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)
TRAGI-COMIC RELIEF, AGAIN
The BBC is in major trouble since the top honchos there decided not to broadcast a call by various so-called human rights organizations to help the populace of Gaza. The Guardian is FURIOUS, and since many of the staff of the BBC read the Guardian as their paper of choice (hmmm...), the fury is apparently expressing itself in internal clashes at the BBC. The New York Times tells the story in a comparatively calm tone, here.
According to the NYT, the BBC has in the past broadcast similar appeals for the victims of genocides in Rwanda, Darfur and Congo. A curious line-up, don't you think? Was the operation in Gaza a genocide? Why not broadcast similar humanitarian pleas for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri-Lanka, Kashmir, Thailand, Burma, Nahr-el-Bared in Lebanon, Somalia, and all sorts of other places where the number of civilian victims in armed conflicts in 2008 all significantly surpassed those in Gaza, without being genocides? I know, I'm becoming tedious, sorry.
Of course, the real debate is about the impartiality of the BBC: everyone agrees it isn't, but different people think it isn't in different directions. Some think the BBC is anti-Israel, others think it's controlled by the Elders of Zion. Which is interesting, because a few years ago the BBC ran an internal investigation into precisely this question, and has never agreed to publish its results.
Personally I think that if the BBC were scrupulous about telling the truth, there wouldn't be a problem in broadcasting this particular plea for assistance: in a world in which everyone knew the realities of the Israel-Arab conflict, because the BBC reported on it well, there wouldn't be any problem in a call for aid to the civilians who suffered so severely (they really did) from the most recent round of violence, which was carefully planned and then provoked by Hamas which booby-trapped thousands of homes that now need to be replaced by tents.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
OBAMA'S AN IMPERIALIST
And, seen from the perspective of the Guardian, a worse epithet is hard to come by.
I wrote about this pathology of many European intellectuals a while back. Today, upon completion of the first week of the Obama administration, one of the Guardian stalwarts, Richard Seymour, piles his venom on the new president and lots of other people these past two centuries for thinking that perhaps some communities and nations may not be capable of English-style democracy on their own, and castigates them for thinking anything they might ever do would have any positive effect anywhere. Reading him you sort of get the feeling what he really wants Western powers to do is just go dig themselves holes and die.
Amusingly, Mr. Seymour's e-mail address is leninstomblog@gogglemail.com, and if you wonder where that comes from, it leads you to his blog, titled Lenin's Tomb; he signs his posts as Lenin. I spoof you not.
Reality check: the only reason Lenin is not near the very top of the list of mass murderers of the 20th century is that he died young, and his horrendous regime was eventually taken over by the even worse Stalin, who then didn't die young.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
Monday, 26 January 2009
SLAVE LABOUR UNDER THE THIRD REICH
German government pays for shocking Holocaust survivor testimonies to be published online
By Allan Hall
The videotaped testimony of Nazi slaves has been published online for historians and students to learn of their ordeal.
Six hundred forced labourers pressed into the service of the Third Reich’s war machine give their testimony in a multi-million pound project paid for by the German government.
They form a small part of the 12million enslaved by the Nazis to toil for the state while Germany’s male population fought in the armed services.
The Nazis were different from other slave-owning societies, like the ancient Romans or the plantation owners of the deep south in America, in that their slaves were not valued commodities but units to be abused, starved and often worked to death.
The 341 men and 249 women featured in the videos tell of working in concentration camps or munitions plants under gruelling conditions for little or no pay, miserable living conditions and exposure to hunger and disease.
'Their suffering should not be forgotten,' said Guenther Saathoff, the head of the Remembrance, Responsibility And Future foundation managing the £4.1billion fund.
Some 1.66million people from nearly 100 countries received compensation from a German government fund between 2001 and 2007.
Saathoff said the online video project was launched because the former forced labourers were seeking more than reparations.
'The victims did not want only money that was owed to them - they also wanted to tell about things that no one wanted to hear about for decades,' he said.
In one account, a Hungarian Jew called Henry Friedman in his 80s who has lived in Atlanta, Georgia, since the war's end said he was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
Friedmann told of being beaten and how he was forced to work at a huge arms factory in Budapest in 1944, before he was assigned to transports for German troops fighting the Russians in the countryside.
'We were taken by the Germans to an outpost, and we were given orders that every day we would assemble at 3am and would climb the mountain and would be over there from between three till five, six the next morning,' he said.
'At that time, in the mountains, it was maybe 40 below zero. No clothing, not the right clothing. When we finished supplying the hot food, we brought down on stretchers the wounded or dead Germans to the base of the mountains. That would be our job.'
He said Jews suffered particularly brutal treatment among the workers.
'In case someone gets hurt, don't even ask for any kind of bandage or anything because you're a Jew - you're not entitled to - which meant that if you're lost or hurt, you have to freeze to death or bleed to death,' he said.
The documentary project began in 2005.
Survivors ranging in age from 65 to 98 were recorded on video primarily in Eastern Europe but also in the United States, Israel and South Africa.
A third of them, mostly Jews or Roma, were forced to work in concentration camps in particularly degrading and frequently life-threatening conditions.
A former slave labourer, Felix Kolmer, said the online archive would make increasingly rare personal accounts of the Nazi programme available to researchers, teachers and students.
'Victims will finally get the public recognition and attention for which they have often waited in vain over the last decades,' said Kolmer, who is also vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, a Holocaust survivors group.
The project can be viewed at: www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de
taken from : Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1126971/German-government-pays-shocking-Holocaust-survivor-testimonies-published-online.html)
MORE ON RACHEL IMENU
Posted by Mordechai Friedfertig
Did Rachel Imenu really reveal herself in the war or not? In other words, who is obligated to prove it – the one who claims that she did appear or the one who claims that she did not appear? The simple answer is based upon the halachic principle: "Ha-motzi me-chavero alav ha-ra'ayah - The burden of proof rests upon the one who demands the money," i.e. the burden of proof rests upon one who makes a claim which veers from the usual. The usual is that Rachel Imenu does not appear in war. Rachel Imenu was not in our first war when Yehoshua bin Nun waged war against Amalek. She was not in the war of Moshe Rabbenu against Sichon and Og. She was not in the war of Yehoshua bin Nun to conquer the Land of Israel. She was not in any of the wars of the Judges. She was not in the wars of King Shaul and of King David. She was not in the wars of any of the Kings of Israel. She was not in the war of the Hasmoneans. She was not in the war of Bar Kochba. She was not in the War of Independence, the Six-Day War or the Yom Kippur War. She was not in any war. The presumption is that she does not go out to war. Now, there are those claiming that she was there. It is possible, but it must be proven. How? We need to hear from the soldier who claimed that it happened. We need to question him before a Beit Din according to the Halachah: Do you really see her? Maybe it was an Arab woman? Maybe it was a Jewish woman captured by the Arabs and she was reminded that she was a Jew? Maybe you imagined it? As long as it has not been investigated, it has not been proven. Up until now, I have not heard anything.
I was therefore happy when a friend told me what he saw with his own eyes. During the war, a bunch of reservists were sitting around a fire on a freezing-cold night with warm jackets which they brought from home. A few regular soldiers arrived and they were frozen to the bone. The reservists did not hesitate to take off their jackets which were almost more precious to them than their weapons and gave them to the other soldiers. This is Rachel Imenu! Rachel Imenu gave up Yaakov - who was the most precious thing to her – for her sister. I am not saying that a jacket and a spouse are comparable, but this act at its source comes from Rachel Imenu.
In David's lament for Yonatan, he says: "Your love was more wonderful to me than the love of women" (Shmuel 2 1:26). The Targum (the Aramaic translation) says: "the love of two women." A Chasidic Rebbe once asked: Who are these two women? His answer: Rachel and Leah. David was saying: "Yonatan, your love for me in which you were willing to forego the kingship flows from the love of two women - when Rachel was willing to forego for Leah." Giving up a jacket is obviously not like giving up the kingship, but it is still flows from Rachel Imenu.
And Rashi explains at the beginning of Parashat Va-Yechi (Bereshit 48:7): Why wasn't Rachel buried in the Cave of Machpelah or even in Beit Lechem, but by the side of the road? So that when we were on our way to Exile she would be an aid for her children, as it says: "A voice is heard in Ramah. Rachel cries for her children…there is a reward for your actions and your children will return to their border" (Yirmiyahu 31:14-16). But couldn't she be an aid from Ma'arat Ha-Machpelah – it is only a little farther away?! I heard one Rav explain that for the sake of her children Rachel gave up being buried in Ma'arat Ha-Machpelah. We see that Rachel Imenu was willing to forego and we must do the same. The Exile was on account of "Sinat Chinam – Baseless Hatred" and the Redemption will be on account of "Ahavat Chinam – Baseless Love." In this way, Rachel is an aid for her children. She teaches us "Ahavat Chinam – Baseless Love." Every soldier who entered the Gaza Strip did so with self-sacrifice to save other Jews. This is not a jacket, a spouse, the kingship or a spot in Ma'arat Ha-Machpelah, it is risking one's life. Therefore, Rachel was there. She was with every soldier who entered with self-sacrifice for the sake of his brothers. It truly was Rachel!
For more on this issue see:
Past Post by Rav Aviner:
www.ravaviner.com/2009/01/rachel-imenu-our-foremother-rachel-in.html
Ha-Rav Mordechai Eliyahu:
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3659308,00.html
Ha-Rav Ovadiah Yosef:
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3661283,00.html
taken from : Torat HaRav Aviner (http://www.ravaviner.com/)
WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T UPSET THE MUSLIMS
It seems lately as if all our laws can be reduced to one single law, "Whatever You Do, Don't Upset the Muslims."9/11 proved that defending ourselves against terrorism takes a backseat to Muslim sensitivities. The cartoon controversy proved that for the West, Freedom of Speech takes a backseat to offending Muslims, whether by censorship or by self-censorship. The Citibank bailout proved that we will spend 25 billion dollars to bail out a company whose two biggest shareholders are a Saudi Prince and the UAE government-- the same folks who financed Al Queda.
Sure we could have shown some backbone. Sure we could have done the right thing in all 3 cases, but it was more important not to upset the Muslims.
For Europe that attitude is almost understandable. Having filled European country after country with Algerians, Moroccans, Pakistanis and Turks, emptying the rest of the ugly bag of Muslims and Mohammeds across countries where people once reasonably expected to be able to walk through their own neighborhoods without coming across a Mosque preaching "Death to the Infidels" in screeching accents, you have two choices, drive them out or tiptoe softly past them.
The sound you hear next is hundreds of millions of people in Europe tiptoeing very softly to avoid annoying Mohammed who's busy beating his wife while listening to taped lectures from his favorite Imam on how to beat your wife right, the Quranic way. Except the wife he's beating is actually that woman that artists like Delacroix used to draw to represent the values of liberty and the soul of the republic. It's a metaphor that Muslim rappers themselves are eager to articulate, particularly in France, symbolized by a woman and despised for it by the cockroaches infesting France's banlieues.
Europe imported its Muslims and then tried to integrate them to become one big happy family. Now Europe has accepted that it won't be wearing the pants in this marriage, and Mohammed is bringing in a horde of relatives to take over the formerly gracious manor, filling it from top to bottom with squalor, violence and hate. Drug dealing on the front porch, a car theft ring in the garage, prostitution out back, rape in the basement, burglary in the living room and a mosque in the attic reminding them all to go to prayers. That is the real face of the New Britain, the New France and the New Europe.
While Europeans occasionally dare to speak about a Muslim problem, they won't for long. If you let the cockroach problem in your house get bad enough, you stop having a cockroach problem, and the cockroaches start having a people problem. Soon enough Europe won't have a Muslim problem, Muslims will have a European problem... and if anyone wonders how they will take care of it, a short look at the way Sudan, Indonesia, not to mention most of the Middle East have taken care of their Christian problem should answer that question. Men may have qualms about killing cockroaches, but cockroaches have no qualms about killing men.
America however which still has a Muslim problem, instead of Muslims having an American problem, has imported this international case of Stockholm Syndrome. No Muslims had to riot to insure that the Danish cartoons would never appear in the American press, unless censored in a way usually reserved for obscene images. The press did it themselves, bowing their heads to Mecca and following that supreme law which has now displaced court and constitution, Thou Shalt Not Offend the Muslim.
Stockholm Syndrome or A Bad Case of the Dhimmis, means that anyone who offends a Muslim is at fault. Take a Muslim off a plane when he acts suspiciously, and it's the fault of the airlines for not wanting their planes to be run into New York landmarks. Draw a cartoon a Muslim doesn't like, and it's a clear case of provocation. Hang an Israeli flag in your window while a bloodthirsty mob of Turks bays for Jewish blood in Berlin, and the police will come in and take it out. Because it isn't the Muslim mob that's at fault. You are.If mobs of white men and women gathered in major American cities holding up posters and chanting "Kill All Jews" and "Go Back to the Ovens", there would be nationwide outrage and condemnation. But when Muslims do it, the press has nothing to say about it, except that Israel fighting terrorists inside its own borders and working to rescue its own soldiers held hostage, is to blame.
Before All Else, Thou Shalt Not Offend the Muslim. Even when he's trying to kill you. Especially when he's trying to kill you.
It isn't just in Berlin, or Paris. It's in New York City too.
"I went back to my apartment where I met my boyfriend who had also just returned from the second Pro Israel rally on 39th Street & 7th Avenue. We walked outside the building and across a major midtown avenue on the West Side to buy some groceries. He was still carrying the Israeli flag and we were both wearing baseball caps with the American flag and USA on the brims. A large number of Muslims were milling around since it seems that their rally had reached its end point and was dispersing. Six Muslim men were being photographed with posters with the words, "Praise Hamas and Hezbollah, Reopen the Ovens" and were taking photos of themselves and their posters. Seeing us with the Israel flag, they began screaming, “You’re assholes, Kill the Jews, We are going to kill you, This is OUR country," etc."
That's the West Side, not Oslo or London or a suburb in France. But it's not just New York City. It's also Charlotte, North Carolina.
"On Sunday, January 11, 2008 a portion of my daughter's youth group from church attended a Christian concert festival called "Winter Jam" at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was expected to be a great time and it was once they entered the building. Unfortunately the group of ten to twelve year old children paid for their moment of fellowship and worship with every step they took towards the entrance."
When the youth group tried to enter the event, they were surrounded by a group of "Palestinian" protesters against Israel. The protesters surrounded the American children, screamed profanity and called them horrible names such as "baby murderers," while waving signs of what was portrayed as "mangled" children from "Palestine." In order to enter, the children had to be surrounding by adult chaperons and pushed through.
Instead of the police department honoring my request, I was left on the phone and bounced from one employee to another. I eventually landed on the phone with a police representative who called himself "Dante" and refused to give a last name. In lieu of filing a report, "Dante" talked to me like a two year old and declared that the protesters where "well within their rights" and that it was "their freedom" to do these things. I was eventually bounced on to another person by "Dante" before my telephone finally went dead."
And it's Ft Lauderdale, and all across America. The latest round of fighting in Gaza has given Muslims a chance to show off their hate, and to test how far they will be allowed to go. So far the message they've been given is "Clear Sailing".
Our advantage over Europe is that we have more time to prepare. But time is a finite quantity. In spirit and in their pocketbooks, America's leaders have already bowed their heads to Mecca. As Europe has demonstrated, the rest quickly becomes a legal formality.Watch the immigration floodgates open, as the Democrats work to solve the Red State problem by importing the Third World into formerly conservative states. Wait a few years until Obama nominates Noah Feldman, the architect of the Iraqi constitution, and America's biggest promoter of Sharia law, to the United States Supreme Court, to replace his mentor Justice David Souter. The worst is yet to come, and it's happening because we refuse to be offensive, we fear to shout the truth and stand up to the political thugs who have seized control of our culture and are leading us and our civilization in a Death March toward the sea.
Free people do not fear giving offense, because freedom of speech is one of the core freedoms that any open society values. It is slaves who learn to fear giving offense, who carefully watch their masters, learning what they can say and what they cannot. When free people learn to fear their words, they learn to be slaves.
Whatever you do, don't just upset the Muslims... make them mad as hell.
taken from : Sultan Knish (http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2009/01/whatever-you-do-dont-upset-muslims.html)
REVEALING AN EVIL STATE OF MIND
One evening during the fighting a young man from Sderot came up to Jerusalem and gave a talk at a public forum. He told about the debilitating effects of living under fire for eight years. How suppliers of his grocery store preferred not to make deliveries so the locals needed to go to the large supermarket outside town because they were better stocked. How he did his best to fire no-one after an employee who could have been his father burst into tears when informed there wasn't enough income to keep him on the books. How families broke apart under the never-ending strain. How his twins aged five, who have never known a life free of sirens panicked when on a trip to the quiet north they heard a distant ambulance and didn't have their safe protected corner to escape to.
It made his audience embarrassed for having lived their lives disregarding all this.
Gideon Levy published another screed on Friday. You don't have to go read it; it's the usual jumble of inaccuracies, facts strung together in the opposite chronology from reality, lots of ideology and hatred... the usual. But he did have a revealing slip, one that his editors in the Hebrew paper version promoted from the text to the caption under the picture. Describing the Hudna period of semi-calm since last summer, he tells
The fact that the residents of the south experienced a period of calm, almost without Qassam rockets, was blurred....Yes, there were Qassams and mortar shells - few, unnecessary, barren - which should have been forgiven with wisdom.
Perhaps the single most important thing about the operation we just waged is that we finally roused ourselves form our cruel lethargy and made it clear that there's no such thing as an acceptable level of violence against some of us that the rest can overlook and pretend not to see. We're responsible for all of us.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
Sunday, 25 January 2009
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