Thursday 8 January 2009
COLE PLUMBS NEW DEPTHS : ISRAELIS TO BLAME FOR 9/11
I have a low opinion of Professor Juan Cole, but he has earned it with the sweat of his brow. I even have a special tag for him (Juan Cole), so if you really want to spoil your afternoon feel free to click on it. Today he has another long and wearisome post generally on a par with his standard scholarship. I wouldn't bother you with it were it not for the first few paragraphs:
In 1996, Israeli jets bombed a UN building where civilians had taken refuge at Cana/ Qana in south Lebanon, killing 102 persons; in the place where Jesus is said to have made water into wine, Israeli bombs wrought a different sort of transformation. In the distant, picturesque port of Hamburg, a young graduate student studying traditional architecture of Aleppo saw footage like this on the news [graphic]. He was consumed with anguish and the desire for revenge. As soon as operation Grapes of Wrath had begun the week before, he had written out a martyrdom will, indicating his willingness to die avenging the victims, killed in that operation--with airplanes and bombs that were a free gift from the United States. His name was Muhammad Atta. Five years later he piloted American Airlines 11 into the World Trade Center. (Lawrence Write, The Looming Tower, p. 307: "On April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque.l It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged,and by filling out his last testamentd during the attack he was offering his life in response." ).
On Tuesday, the Israeli military shelled a United Nations school to which terrified Gazans had fled for refuge, killing at least 42 persons and wounding 55, virtually all of them civilians, and many of them children. The Palestinian death toll rose to 660. The Israelis say they took fire from one of the schools. Was it tank fire?
You wonder if someone somewhere is writing out a will today.
Let's assume for a moment, merely for the purpose of the intellectual exercise, that what he has just written is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Bear with me, just for the moment.
What Cole has just told us is that his mind can live with the explanation that Mohammad Atta murdered thousands of people in New York, because five years earlier he'd been absolutely and totally furious at an Israeli killing of one hundred people in Lebanon. Moreover, Cole implies, it is well likely that another act of Israeli killing today will have a similar result sometime down the road. Furthermore, he then goes on, he's telling us this because the Obama administration must stop the way Israel is purposefully putting Americans in danger merely because Israelis are that kind of people.
In 1348 Europe was stricken by its first wave of Bubonic Plague, in which about a third of the entire population perished. Among the millions of dead there were entire communities of Jews, but they didn't have time to die from the plague; they were murdered by their neighbors who were convinced they must be poisoning the wells. Eventually the rampaging murderers desisted, when they managed to notice that when left alone, the Jews were dying from the plague just like everyone else. In spite of their terror and hate, they were able to observe reality and make rational judgments - well, after a while. In the 15th century.
In the 21st, Professor Cole doesn't have the terror, ensconced in Ann Arbor Michigan, he's got only the hate. But then, neither does he have the ability to observe reality and make rational judgments.
Not to mention moral ones.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
ISRAEL'S SPIRITUAL MIGHT
Written by: Avital
As our boys defend our homeland, possibly with their lives, in the Gaza strip, we all must stop and take a few minutes to say Tehillim for them, or add a personal prayer for them into our daily routine. For the skeptics who don’t see how prayer can help such a situation, allow me to offer an example that might illustrate the power of prayer.
A friend related this short Dvar Torah to me today, and it struck a chord with me: Two of the most well known celebrations in the Jewish calendar are Purim and Chanukah. On Purim, we remember how Haman tried to wipe all the Jews in the Persian kingdom off the face of the map. He did not care if this Jew was assimilated or didn’t believe in Judaism, he wanted to physically kill out every single trace of Judaism he could. On Chanukah we remember how the Greeks tried to assimilate us. Our life was not their desire, just our culture. As long as we acted as Greek as we could, they were happy. They wanted to destroy Judaism not physically, but spiritually. On Purim, we combated Haman’s physical threat to our existence with prayer, fast and a slew of spiritual acts. On Chanukah, the Maccabim raised their weapons and waged war on the Greeks.
In both stories, the Jews were not destroyed. After all, here we are, reading Tzipiyah.com! Interesting to note that in both stories, the Jews successfully overcame their enemies with the force opposite that of the threat. When we were physically intimidated, we fought back with prayer, with spirituality. When we were spiritually intimidated, we fought back with war, the physical.
As a physical war wages on in the Middle East, as our boys put their lives on the line to protect those of the citizens of Israel, perhaps what we need to gain an edge is the force opposite that of the threat. Perhaps, to combat the physical attacks on our lives, we need some spirituality. Some prayer?
And, on another spiritual note, we are about to commemorate Asarah B’Tevet, the day that the Babylonian army laid siege to Jerusalem, eventually leading up to the destruction of the first Holy Temple. We commemorate this day spiritually, with fast and prayer. Over the course of the day, every time you get a pang of hunger, a desire to break the fast, if it really isn’t an emergency, think of our boys, risking their lives, and in their merit, overcome the hunger! Persevere as they are trying to do for us. A few hours without food is comparatively a small gesture for us to do for them.
May we soon see the end of this hardship, and may we merit seeing the light pierce this heavy, heavy darkness. May we witness the coming of Mashiach, Bimhera BiYamenu, Amen!
taken from : Tzipiyah.com