Tikkun Olam

Tikkun Olam

A number of readers have posted thoghtful questions over the past few weeks, to which I haven't related, mostly for lack of time. I have however made myself a list of comments I should respond to by and by. Here's one.

A reader asked me what my position is on Tikkun Olam, the Hebrew term which literally means "fixing the world", and which has become a recognized term in English, at least in broad circles of progressive thinkers in America but perhaps also beyond; I expect Richard Goldstone sooner or later will tell us he's engaging in Tikkun Olam.

Judaism is a very (very) old religion, and it pre-dates all the major ideological fault lines of the modern world by two or three millennia. So in that context, it's meaningless to speculate what "traditional Judaism" thought about the role of government in redressing the woes of society, for example. The Bible says nothing about health care one way or the other, and the Talmud has no position on international law. True, some of the most visionary and uplifting sentiments in human history come from the Bible - the aspiration to a world without war, and a world ruled by justice (until you begin to look closer and it turns out mercy may trump justice). Yet the same Bible - sometimes, the very same prophets - also contains some extraordinarily harsh sentiments about the fate of evil people and evil nations.

Anyway, traditional Judaism as developed by the Pharisees - the only group that culturally survived the cataclysm of the destructions of the first and third centuries - was a practical culture, and mostly shied away from visionary meta-schemes. Tikkun Olam is a perfect case. It's a Talmudic term, and as I've explained here, and also here, it doesn't mean what the English language thinks it means. Tikkun Olam in Talmudic tradition is a legal mechanism for resolving some kinds of complications which can arise from pedantic readings of the law.

So you've got some Biblical prophetic statements that contain a yearning for a theoretical perfected world (but no program to reach it). You've got the earthy rabbinic scholars who don't worry about perfection of the world and focus on the here and now. To be fair, in the middle ages there are once more Jewish voices that talk about perfecting the world, indeed, perfecting all of existence; some of those strains of thought then made their way into Hassidic Judaism, three hundred years ago - but I really don't think there's much affinity between those ideas and the ones of rabbi Lerner at Tikkun Magazine. The contemporary Tikkun Olam thinkers may not be earthy and pragmatic, but they're hardly religious mystics in the meaning of the Kabala.

Where did the modern usage of Tikkun Olam come from? I don't know. If any reader wishes to point us at some way of finding out, be my guest. I expect that if someone were to trace the lineage, it would be something like 18th century Enlightenment, French Revolution, then the more radical parts of the French Revolution, from there to the utopian strands of 19th century European thought -and about that time, newly enlightened Jews leaving their ghettos and joining the general European discussion, liking one of the camps and going back to their own sources to prove that Judaism said the same thing - which it probably didn't, but that was irrelevant.

This is a subject worthy of more than a blog post, but that's what I'm offering at the moment.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Israel Matzav: Bill Cosby as Noah

Israel Matzav: Bill Cosby as Noah

Israel Matzav: Breaking: Ex-NASA scientist charged with trying to spy for Israel

Breaking: Ex-NASA scientist charged with trying to spy for Israel

In what Israel Radio described a few moments ago as a 'sting operation,' an ex-NASA scientist has been arrested and charged with attempting to spy for Israel.

According to a statement by the department, the suspect, Stewart David Nozette, is a Maryland scientist who once worked in varying capacities for the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The department said Nozette, 52, was contacted via telephone by an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI (UCE).

"During that call," the statement said, "Nozette agreed to meet with the UCE later that day at a hotel in Washington D.C. According to the affidavit, Nozette met with the UCE that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence."

The complaint, unsealed Monday, does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law. Nozette is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday.

Not only is it not alleged that the government of Israel violated US law, according to Israel Radio, the second paragraph of the FBI release specifically states that the government of Israel did not violate US law and had nothing to do with this.

Israel Radio reported that Nozette asked for significant sums of cash - monthly payments of $10,000 or more. He also asked the UCE for an Israeli passport to 'make things easier.'

The real question here is not whether anyone was spying for Israel, but why the FBI and other US security services seem obsessed with the idea that someone IS spying for Israel. I don't have an answer to that right now, except the most simple one: anti-Semitism. But I can't really prove that.

The picture at the top is Larry Franklin (an interview with him is at the last link in this post), the Pentagon analyst who went to jail on a plea bargain in the case where AIPAC employees were charged with spying. The case against the AIPAC employees was dismissed earlier this year.

UPDATE TUESDAY 12:04 AM

The US Department of Justice release on the case may be found here.

Here's the substance of the complaint:

According to the affidavit, on Sept. 3, 2009, Nozette was contacted via telephone by an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI (UCE). During that call, Nozette agreed to meet with the UCE later that day at a hotel in Washington D.C. According to the affidavit, Nozette met with the UCE that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence.

Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information. Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The UCE explained to Nozette that the Israeli intelligence agency, or "Mossad," would arrange for a communication system so that Nozette could pass information to the Mossad in a post office box. Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information to the UCE and asked for an Israeli passport

According to the affidavit, Nozette and the UCE met again on Sept. 4, 2009, in the same hotel. During the meeting, Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that, although he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall the classified information to which he had been granted access, indicating that it was all still in his head. In the meeting, Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, specifying that he preferred to receive cash amounts "under ten thousand" so he didn’t have to report it. At the conclusion of this meeting, Nozette allegedly informed the UCE, "Well I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me . . . they don't expect me to do this for free."

On or about Sept. 10, 2009, undercover FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box for Nozette. In the letter, the FBI asked Nozette to answer a list of questions concerning U.S. satellite information. The undercover agents also provided a $2,000 cash payment for Nozette. The serial numbers of the bills were recorded. Nozette retrieved the questions and the money from the post office the same day.

On or about Sept. 16, 2009, Nozette was captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the designated post office box in the District of Columbia. The next day, FBI agents retrieved the sealed manila envelope that Nozette had dropped off and found, among other things, a one-page document containing answers to the questions posed by the undercover agents and an encrypted computer thumb drive. One of answers provided by Nozette contained information classified as Secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. In addition, Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

Also on or about Sept. 17, 2009, undercover FBI agents left a second letter in the post office box for Nozette. In the letter, the FBI asked Nozette to answer another list of questions concerning U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000 in the post office box. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money from the post office box later that same day.

On or about October 1, 2009, Nozette was filmed on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. Later that day, FBI agents retrieved the manila envelope left by Nozette and found a second set of answers from him. The answers contained information classified as both Top Secret and Secret that concerned U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

It's not clear why the FBI ever suspected this guy in the first place. As I noted earlier, what bothers people here is why the FBI is looking for spies for Israel under every rock. After Jonathan Pollard, Israel promised there would be no more spies, and other than Franklin's guilty plea (which probably was a mistake in retrospect) no one has been convicted of spying for Israel in the US since Pollard.

Hmmm.

Israel Matzav: Breaking: Ex-NASA scientist charged with trying to spy for Israel

Israel Matzav: Border policeman admits beating revenant

Israel Matzav: Border policeman admits beating revenant

Israel Matzav: Fatah to resume suicide attacks?

Fatah to resume suicide attacks?

Haaretz reports on Israeli fears that the 'good terrorists' from Fatah may resume suicide attacks.

Sultan Abu al-Ghneim, who represents Fatah in the refugee camps of Lebanon, gave a speech last week at a Ramallah rally and called on Fatah to resume suicide bombings against Israel, according to the report in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi. But how reliable the report is remains unclear.

Abu al-Ghneim reportedly called on Fatah to use the "doom's day weapon" that the group used at the peak of the second intifada and has not employed for the past three years.

Palestinian sources in the West Bank could not confirm it. The statement being attributed to Abu al-Ghneim is just the latest of a series of statements by Fatah members, some more important than others, who threaten to resume the armed struggle. Similar ideas were heard during the sixth Fatah conference in Bethlehem in August, and also in recent talks between Fatah and Hamas. Such talk is certainly a subject of concern for Israelis.

The threat of a third intifada, which was discussed at length during the Sukkot holiday and the troubles at the Temple Mount, incited by third-rate activists of the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic Movement in Israel, apparently died down as the clashes ebbed. There are still plenty of reasons for concern, mainly because of the dead end in which the two sides have found themselves.

They go on to give five reasons why Fatah may resume suicide bombings against Israel. Could it happen? Sure. Contrary to what the fools in the West believe, Hamas has never given up terror as a weapon. Will it happen? I hope not. But if God forbid it does, you can bet that with this government in power, the IDF will be sent in quickly to stop it.

Israel Matzav: Fatah to resume suicide attacks?

Israel Matzav: Surprise! US won't use Security Council veto on Goldstone

Surprise! US won't use Security Council veto on Goldstone

We all saw this coming, didn't we? It's all but official: The Obama administration will not use its Security Council veto to stop the Goldstone Report.

Senior diplomats in New York, meanwhile, said the United States would prefer to support a moderately-phrased resolution on the Goldstone report by the UN Security Council, rather than use its veto power to nix such a resolution.

The Human Rights Council recommended that the report be discussed by the Security Council, but it remains unclear whether this will happen. The White House said on Friday that both Israel and the Palestinians should study the report.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Surprise! US won't use Security Council veto on Goldstone

Israel Matzav: Interview with the 'Palestinian' Minister of Uncontrollable Rage

Israel Matzav: Interview with the 'Palestinian' Minister of Uncontrollable Rage#links

Israel Matzav: Answer this, Judge Goldstone

Answer this, Judge Goldstone

Writing in the JPost, Haviv Rettig Gur poses some hard questions for the indignant Judge Goldstone.

So Goldstone owes Israelis an answer to a basic moral question. In the words of one Israeli observer: "Are you in the habit, Judge Goldstone, of accepting commissions whose political agenda you must first expunge so that the mandate meets the most elementary standard of fairness?"

Some day, international law may hold the key to human dignity and happiness. But in using the terminology of law in a clear situation of biased political wrangling, that day is being pushed farther away.

Israelis and many Jews would like to know, Judge Goldstone, if by the time this is all over, you feel your contribution - your reputation and Jewish name - was helpful or detrimental to the goals of international peace and a lawful world order.

Or have you, with shocking naivete, allowed your Jewishness and judicial prestige to be abused by bodies whose motivations amount to thinly veiled bigotry?

Read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: Answer this, Judge Goldstone

Israel Matzav: Goldstone writes an op-ed

Goldstone writes an op-ed

Richard Goldstone has an op-ed in Monday's Jerusalem Post which, according to a friend with inside sources at the Post, was not solicited by the Post. Apparently, according to the source, Goldstone is feeling the heat from all the criticism, and asked the Post to publish an op-ed in a bid to deflect some of the criticism. He did not succeed. Let's start with the first paragraph of Goldstone's op-ed:

Five weeks after the release of the Report of the Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance. It has been fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do so too often by making personal attacks on its authors' motives and those who approve it rely on its authors' reputations.

That's patently false. Someone asked me earlier today to write a summary of my Goldstone posts for another blog. I did a quick search. I found 136 posts on Goldstone, 126 of them written since the report was published on September 15. Admittedly, I have not attempted to come to grips with the entire 575-page report. But I have attempted to come to grips with a lot of it. I am not alone.

Along with several other serious pro-Israel bloggers, and under the leadership of Boston University Professor Richard Landes (who debunked the al-Dura fraud), I have been part of a group of bloggers who have created a web site that confronts the Goldstone Report head on. If any of you have not yet been to that website, I strongly suggest that you check it out. Our eventual goal is to respond to the Goldstone Report line by line. We're not there yet, but we're getting there, and it will take you days to figure out what we haven't addressed yet.

The problem is that to Goldstone, the only way to 'come to grips with the substance' of his report is for Israeli heads to roll - for IDF officers to be placed on trial for 'war crimes' and convicted. And hopefully that won't happen at all unless the IDF's pending investigations conclude that it ought to happen.

Goldstone whines about all the flack he is taking:

Israeli government spokesmen and those who support them have attacked it in the harshest terms and, in particular my participation, in a most personal and hurtful way.

There is good reason for those attacks. Goldstone accepted a mandate that presumed that only Israel committed 'war crimes.' He worked with a panel in which three out of the four panelists had signed a letter before the panel's hearings started deploring the destruction in Gaza (only), and on which the fourth panelist signed a letter during the war accusing Israel of war crimes. He then rejected a petition presented by UN Watch to remove that panelist from the panel.

Goldstone claims to have dealt with Hamas' war crimes, and yet the sheer volume of the material against Israel makes it appear as if Hamas has done nothing. The fact that Hamas has greeted the report with approval and glee probably says it all. And although he claimed that his panel was not 'judicial,' it made findings of fact and drew conclusions of law as a court would and it is now holding its 'recommendations' over the State of Israel (the idea that Hamas will 'investigate' anything is too laughable to even consider) like a sword of Damocles. Yet its evidentiary standards were non-existent: The panel believed everything Hamas told them.

Yes, a lot of the recent criticism is personal to Goldstone. It didn't start that way. In the days leading up to the report, when our group was forming, we agreed that we would attack the message rather than the messenger. That has changed because facts have come out during the course of our investigation that point to Goldstone's blind ambition (to be UN Secretary General), carelessness (during the Yugoslavia investigation, he actually had a fictitious person indicted), duplicity throughout his career in South Africa, and disingenuous responses to how the report was used.

Also, while we would have preferred to target only the message, Goldstone's use of his own Jewishness as a shield against attack has forced us to attack him personally as a means to discredit the report.

When I started to write this post, I determined that I was not going to 'fisk' the article (respond line by line). There are two reasons for that. One is that Richard Landes has already fisked the entire article and I urge you to read his response. The other is that the JPost carried a response from Alan Baker, former legal counsel to the foreign ministry, and that also deserves a few words without this post spreading down an entire column.

First, for those of you who thought that Israel totally ignored the Goldstone Commission, Baker says that was not the case.

While indeed the mission heard, saw and was persuaded by the very one-sided picture elaborately staged by Hamas in Gaza, including hand-picked witness testimony and internationally televised and web-circulated public hearings, Goldstone's complaint that they were not provided with input from the Israeli side is simply untrue to the point of being ridiculous. Several prominent Israeli and other international lawyers (including myself) and Jewish organizations forwarded to the mission and to Goldstone personally, vast amounts of information, including the official papers issued by Israel's Foreign Ministry, legal opinions, facts and media cuttings regarding the Hamas rocket barrages, violations, ambulance hijackings and the like.

I appeared before the mission in Geneva, together with a senior delegation of Magen David Adom (MDA), in an attempt to persuade it of the seriousness of the terrorization of Israel's southern population by the Hamas rockets, and the psychological effect on the public. The delegation detailed the wide-ranging activities by MDA in treating those affected - including Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. Others, including representatives of Israeli families harmed by Hamas, appeared before the mission.

But obviously all this was to no avail, since Goldstone and his team chose, for whatever reason, to ignore this extensive information in favor of a Hamas-organized production and some very selective Israeli and foreign non-governmental organizations known for their criticism of Israel.

Indeed. Goldstone also could have gone through and found the same videos that my colleagues and I found that present the Israeli case (most of them came from the IDF, are on YouTube or LiveLeak and are publicly available). But the Commission had no interest in hearing the Israeli side of the story. Perhaps the most significant proof of that assertion is the Commission's refusal to hear British General Richard Kemp, who was heard by the 'Human Rights Council' for about three minutes on Friday, long after the game was over. In fact, one Israeli witness who testified before the Commission has claimed that Goldstone fell asleep during his testimony.

But here's where I break with Baker:

THE ISRAELI government cannot ignore the call by Goldstone and everyone else, to institute an official governmental inquiry. If indeed Israel has the substantive answers to the accusations levelled by Goldstone, then there is no reason to delay any further the establishment of such an inquiry. It would not, as has been claimed, be perceived as submitting to terror or caving in to international pressure, and would not be seen as lack of faith in our soldiers and officers.

Considerable damage has been done by the Goldstone accusations. Such damage cannot be repaired by hasbara, which has proven itself to be utterly useless, or by repetitive, weak statements by Israeli ministers and deputy ministers.

Israel must act to control that damage by establishing an inquiry manned by a prominent retired Supreme Court justice and serious military and legal experts. Such a move would instantly neutralize and deflate international criticism; it would provide a viable claim of non-admissibility to any attempt to prosecute Israel or Israeli leaders before international or national courts and tribunals.

The implication of those statements is that the IDF is not capable of self-examination and that the more than 100 investigations that have been opened since the war ended are insignificant and unimportant. I cannot buy that. The world wants blood from the Goldstone Report - Israeli blood. All the investigations in the world will not suffice unless and until we give them the blood of IDF soldiers and officers. And by Jewish law, we are prohibited from doing that. If an enemy comes and insists that we hand over a certain number of people for no reason, we are prohibited from doing so. Are we to keep handing over more and more IDF soldiers and officers until the world's blood lust is satisfied? The thought is absurd.

Let the IDF conduct its investigations (the results of which, in any event, may be appealed to the courts). And if those investigations conclude that there were no war crimes, then so be it. To date, nearly all (and maybe all) of the 36 incidents cited in the Goldstone Report have been debunked anyway.

Israel Matzav: Goldstone writes an op-ed

Israel Matzav: Hamas more popular than Abu Mazen, some await Arafat's resurrection

Hamas more popular than Abu Mazen, some await Arafat's resurrection

A new survey of 'Palestinians' reports that Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh is now more popular in Judea and Samaria than 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen. And a dead man is still the most popular leader among some 'Palestinians': Yasser Arafat.

“Now support for Hamas is higher in the West Bank than it is in Gaza,” said Wafa Amr, a Palestinian analyst in Ramallah. “The Hamas rhetoric of dignity and resistance resonates in the West Bank, where they don’t have to live under Hamas but they see only weakness on the part of Abbas’s authority.”

The reason Abu Mazen's popularity has plummeted is that the 'Palestinians' are unhappy with his handling of the Goldstone Report.

Abbas’s inept handling of the issue — he managed to anger not only the United States and Israel but also many of his own voters — could result in defeat in the forthcoming elections, sources said yesterday.

Here are the details.

The survey released on Sunday by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre (JMCC) indicates that if an election were held today, Abbas would receive just 16.8 percent of the vote, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh 16 percent. A similar percentage said they would vote for Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is currently in prison in Israel.

Public confidence in Abbas dropped to 12.1% from 17.8% in another JMCC poll in June. Confidence in Haniyeh held steady at 14.2%.

The level of confidence in caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad increased to 4.5% compared with 2.1% last October.

But here's the best part of all: Some 'Palestinians' still trust Yasser Arafat, who died five years ago, and who stole all of their international aid money and deposited it in Swiss bank accounts.

Yasser Arafat, who led hundreds of terrorist attacks against Jews, is the most trusted personality among [some] Palestinian Authority Arabs even though he died nearly five years ago, according to a new poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media & Communications Center.

Answers to the open-ended question, “Which Palestinian personality do you trust the most?” also revealed that de facto Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is more popular than PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. In third place is Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison for involvement in several terrorist attacks that killed dozens of Israelis.

Arafat was more trusted than Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas minister and trailed behind Khaled Mashaal, the Syrian-based leader of the Hamas terrorist movement, by less than one percent.

Here are the poll results on that question:

Q19. Which Palestinian personality do you trust the most?* [The three numbers are total, 'West Bank' and Gaza. CiJ]

Total West Bank Gaza
n= 1200 n= 760 n=440
Ismaeel Haniyeh 14.2 10.0 21.4
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) 12.1 12.9 10.7
Marwan Barghouthi 11.9 12.8 10.5
Salam Fayyad 4.5 5.7 2.5
Mustafa Barghouthi 3.4 4.2 2.0
Mohamad Dahlan 3.1 0.7 7.3
Khaled Mish’al 2.5 2.1 3.2
Ahmad Sa’adat 2.0 2.6 0.9
Yasser Arafat 1.9 1.4 2.7
Mahmoud Al Zahhar 1.1 0.9 1.4
Others 3.9 3.7 4.3
Don’t trust anyone 31.3 34.7 25.5
No answer 8.1 8.3 7.6

Elections are now scheduled for January 2010. What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Hamas more popular than Abu Mazen, some await Arafat's resurrection

Israel Matzav: Undermining Netanyahu from within

Israel Matzav: Undermining Netanyahu from within

Israel Matzav: Karl Rove has the Obama White House pegged

Israel Matzav: Karl Rove has the Obama White House pegged

Israel Matzav: Russia: 'We'll veto Goldstone referral to ICC'

Russia: 'We'll veto Goldstone referral to ICC'

Although Russia voted in favor of referring the Goldstone Report to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Israel's foreign ministry says that it has received messages from Russia indicating that it will use its veto in the Security Council to prevent the report from being discussed in the Security Council or referred to the International Criminal Court.

The remarks were made in a meeting between Russian Ambassador to Israel Peter Stegney and a Foreign Ministry official. The ambassador relayed messages from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Ministry sources said.

...

Stegney noted that Russia had voted in favor of passing the report to the UN headquarters in New York "because it had no choice," and even blamed European Union countries. According to the ambassador, the EU tried to ease the resolution's wording, but failed "due to the stance of Western countries."

Stegney stressed that Russia believes Israel should investigate itself. "The most important thing is that the peace process won't suffer," the Russian ambassador said.

State officials said that Stegney had slammed the Goldstone Report, saying that "it includes statements that do not relay on facts, but rather on subjective estimations."

Russian denial coming in 4, 3, 2, 1.....

No, I don't trust the Russians. The only real motivation they have to vote against Goldstone is that it could be used against them some day in Chechnya (or Georgia or Ukraine, although the latter two countries don't have terrorists and the Russians are bullying them). If that were to happen, I believe the Russians would just ignore it or get the OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) and the 'non-aligned' countries to bail them out.

Another motivation the Russians may have - which I don't regard as real because its effect is an illusion, but which is likely to be the price Israel will pay for Russian support in the Security Council - is to make Israel show up at Russia's 'peace conference.'

One official said the Moscow conference may be in peril now, not because Israel is trying to punish Russia, but rather because the diplomatic process - as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned - would be harmed as a result of the Palestinian Authority's pushing the Goldstone Report forward.

"This is not a threat, just a statement of fact," the official said.

...

Russia has been trying for nearly two years to put together a Middle East conference as a follow up to the November 2007 Annapolis conference, but so far to no avail. Israel had up to now not objected, but just wanted to ensure that the timing was right and that the meeting would be more than just a photo opportunity.

The Middle East Quartet, made up of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, reaffirmed at its meeting last month its call for a conference in Moscow.

Israel ought not to show up for that conference anyway.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Russia: 'We'll veto Goldstone referral to ICC'

Israel Matzav: The 'lovely' Saraa: Learning the language of the 'enemy'

The 'lovely' Saraa: Learning the language of the 'enemy'

On Hamas' al-Aqsa television on Friday, Tomorrow's Pioneers hostess Saraa Barhoum, the niece of Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, encourages a child to learn English because it's the 'language of the enemy.'

Let's go to the videotape. A transcript and more will follow.

Here's the transcript.

Child host: "What do you want to be in the future, Allah willing?"
Child caller: "A teacher of the English language."
Host: "Why do you want to be specifically an English teacher?"
Child: "To teach children the language of their enemy." [Child host smiles.]
Host: "Very nice. A great field. It is not enough for us to know our own language… We also want to study the language of our enemies, to know how to have contacts with them, and so that we can convey the message of Palestinian children..."
Nassur: "Like me! Just like I know the Zionist enemy’s language."
Host: "Really?"
Nassur: "Hebrew."
Host: "Okay, speak [in Hebrew]."
Nassur: "I can't." [laughing].

[Al-Aqsa (Hamas) TV, Oct. 16, 2009]

Maybe if they learn enough English, Hamas can start a game show like this one (Hat Tip: Soccer Dad).

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: The 'lovely' Saraa: Learning the language of the 'enemy'

Israel Matzav: John Bolton on Obama and Goldstone

John Bolton on Obama and Goldstone

In Monday's Wall Street Journal, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton argues that the Goldstone Report shows that the Obama administration was wrong to join the 'Human Rights Council' and that it ought to correct the mistake by withdrawing (Hat Tip: Atlas Shrugs). Of course, the odds of that happening are somewhere between slim and none.

The U.N. General Assembly created the HRC on March 15, 2006, to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, which had spent much of its final years concentrating on Israel and the U.S. rather than the world's real human rights violators. The Bush administration voted against establishing this body and declined to join it, believing, correctly, that it would not be an improvement over its predecessor. President Barack Obama changed course, and the U.S. won election to the HRC in May. Mr. Obama argued that engagement would be more effective than shunning the HRC and attempting to delegitimize it.

The Goldstone Report thus provides a stark test of Mr. Obama's analysis. Predictably, the administration blamed the report's underlying mandate and its stridently anti-Israel tilt on America's earlier absence from the HRC when the investigation was authorized and launched. Yet the new administration's diplomacy had no discernible impact on the HRC's disgraceful resolution.

...

Five didn't vote at all, including Great Britain and France. Press reports indicated that London saw its inaction as a "favor" to Israel, a position simultaneously inexplicable and gutless. It is hard to know just how much real politicking the Obama administration did before this vote, but the loss of key allies is telling.

The Goldstone Report has important implications for America. In the U.N., Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the U.S., particularly concerning the use of military force pre-emptively or in self-defense. Accordingly, U.N. decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the U.S. Mr. Goldstone's recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel's head—or, in the future, to America's.

Mr. Obama has now met the new HRC, same as the old HRC, thus producing a "teachable moment," a phrase he often uses. Quasi-religious faith in "engagement" and the U.N. has run into empirical reality. When the administration picks itself up off the ground, it should become more cognizant of that organization's moral and political limitations.

But it won't. President Obama has a quasi-religious faith in the power of multinational organizations. Withdrawing from the 'Human Rights Council,' rather than 'engaging' it to the point of absurdity (as he has done with Iran and North Korea), goes against his very nature. President Obama rejects the concept of American exceptionalism and has 'ended' the war on terror and therefore has difficulty of conceiving of a situation where the United States might find itself faced with the kind of battle Israel faced in Gaza.

And besides, he hates Israel and he hates Jews.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: John Bolton on Obama and Goldstone

Israel Matzav: The Rock Obama

Israel Matzav: The Rock Obama

Israel Matzav: Devastating open letter to Richard Goldstone from South Africa

Devastating open letter to Richard Goldstone from South Africa

The following open letter to Judge Richard Goldstone appeared in a South African Jewish paper over the weekend (Hat Tip: Russ H)

In case you cannot read it, here is the full text:

Dear Richard

I have long withheld a little-known fact, fearing its disclosure may be misconstrued as self-serving. I feel it should now be told.

In the final gasps of the apartheid regime, the Wiesenthal Centre discovered a German neo-Nazi money trail to send hired killers to South Africa. You were prominent among the eight names on the hit list, though it was too late for ANC/Communist leader, Chris Hani.

In 1993, you hosted me to a thank you dinner at the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg. I know regret that lost opportunity and my lack of foresight to point out to you how the term apartheid could never be applied to Israel, and any attempt to do so would constitute an identity theft of South Africa’s own tragic narrative.

But you knew all this from your Zionist affiliations.

Richard, you are the golden goose of the financial crisis for psychoanalysts throughout the Diaspora. Jews lie on their couches, ubiquitously mouthing the world “Why?”

Some think you are a prisoner of the “Stockholm Syndrome”, intimidated by the Carter-Tutu gang. Others see a narcissists dream Of Goldstone for UN Secretary-general.

Richard, if that were so, the anti-Semites would surely perceive your report as part of the Jewish conspiracy, for you to eventually defend Israel from the General Assembly podium.

But I fear the worst, that as an apostle of the Human Rights theological curia, you are convinced that you are right. This would mean that you had lost the capacity to distinguish between the nuances of war. Israel committed errors still under investigation.

You, however, took the testimony of tainted witnesses as gospel for a report that was predetermined as self-fulfilling prophecy.

Perhaps unintended, but the consequences of your presentation to the UN Human Rights Council, through the infinite repetition of the Internet, carry the potential for toxic repercussions not only for Israel but, by association, further attacks on Jew globally.

When Simon Wiesenthal was asked: “What was a Jewish Kapo?” he responded simply, “A Kapo”. The same sense of abandonment applies for the loss of every Israeli turned anti-Zionist or any example of Jewish deviance – and there have been many in our history.

I am gratified that we once had the opportunity to assist you in an hour of danger, and pray for you to swiftly recant in order to return to the ranks of your people.

Shimon Samuels
Director for International Relations
Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Paris

Hmmm. I guess I'm not the only one who thinks he's a Kapo. But Samuels and Simon Wiesenthal are much bigger experts on the subject than I am.


Israel Matzav: Devastating open letter to Richard Goldstone from South Africa

Love of the Land: Terra Incognita: History, memory and utopia

Terra Incognita: History, memory and utopia

Seth Frantzman
JPost Column
17 October 09

History is subject to our own modern judgments based on what we value today. History can also serve to tell us something about the future. If we choose to emphasize and romanticize certain aspects of the past it is because we imagine a future that will embody those aspects.

In the case of Jewish history and memory two periods stand out for praise in popular secular Jewish assessment. One is the "Golden Age" of Spanish Jewry from the eighth to 15th centuries. The other is the epoch of the Jews of Germany from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The Jewish interest in this history has also affected Western perceptions of these periods.

Thus Muslim Spain has come to embody all sorts of positive traits that the humanistic West intends to want to revive for the future. Similarly there is no period in German history that is viewed through such a positive light as that of the short-lived Weimar Republic which existed between the two world wars.

As evidence of just some of the perceptions of the importance and greatness of these two periods we must look no further than several popular history books such as the 2003 books Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Menocal and Amos Elon's much celebrated The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch.

IN THE wake of the September 11 attacks and a backlash against Muslim immigrants in Europe both books seemed to be suggesting that Europeans examine the history of tolerance that had existed in Germany before the Holocaust and Spain before the "Reconquista."

Some of the pathos that makes the history of Spain and Germany fascinating to Jewish scholars is that the Jewish communities in both places met a terrible end: The Inquisition and expulsion from Spain and the Shoah. But just because things end in communal destruction doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that the society that predated the catastrophe must have been a utopia. Furthermore even if it is logical to want to commemorate a community that was destroyed there is no reason to emphasize how tolerant the community that destroyed it had been.

But in fact this is exactly what comes down through history.

Spanish Jewry created legions of brilliant scholars and fostered the minds that helped mint the Zohar and other essential texts. Among the great names are Meir Abulafia (and his brother Joseph), Isaac Abravanel, Yehuda Alharizi, Joseph Karo, Moses de Leon (purported compiler of the Zohar), Maimonides and Nahmanides among others. German Jewry too was seemingly overflowing with great minds, secular and, to a lesser extent, religious. These include Karl Marx, Walter Rathenau, Leo Baeck, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Heine, Albert Einstein, Moses Mendelssohn, Leo Strauss, Rosa Luxemburg, Robert Aumann and many others.

The sheer weight of the evidence seems to contradict any attempt to downplay the importance of these communities. But this too leads to the second question; just because the community included numerous great minds, does that necessarily mean that the society around it must have been some sort of utopia of tolerance?

IN FACT there was nothing great to admire about the "Golden Age" of Spain or the epoch of German Jewry. This is a controversial statement but one that is worth making. German Jewry was highly assimilated and had the highest rate of intermarriage in Europe. Many of its great minds were converts to Christianity. This "Jewish culture" was on the verge of disappearing. Weimar Germany was a highly politicized and violent society teetering on the brink of collapse. Outwardly liberal and tolerant, it was full to the brim with bigotry, political extremism, terrorism and a weak state that eventually betrayed it and its Jews to their deaths.

Few of those who want to emphasize the Golden Age of Spain and how it was a land of "tolerance" want to recall that Maimonides and his family were forced to leave Spain in 1148 because the fanatic Muslim rulers, known as the Almohades, gave Jews and other non-Muslims the choice of conversion, exile or death.

Yet this expulsion was never remembered. Is this the place of "humanistic beauty" that Western scholars want us to recall? Was this the "bastion of culture, commerce and beauty"? Western historians have presented this as "the intellectual community which the northern [European] scholars found in Spain was so far superior to what they had at home that it left a lasting jealousy of Arab culture."

Most have forgotten that this Arab culture in Spain was one that included slavery. People speak of Spain as a "Convivencia" or coexistence society. This coexistence society we imagine as a utopia resembles the American antebellum South, with slavery and large wealthy estates.

Jews prospered there too and that exquisite culture produced Jefferson and Madison. But it's no model for today. The myth of Muslim Spain and Weimar Germany and the use of the flowering of its Jewish culture is one that harms the West and Jewish culture to this day, presenting a false picture of the past and determining a false hope for a utopian future based on a faulty model that will lead only to failure and self-destruction.

The writer is a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Love of the Land: Terra Incognita: History, memory and utopia

Love of the Land: Israel, the U.S. and the Goldstone Report

Israel, the U.S. and the Goldstone Report

Joining the U.N. Human Rights Council was a mistake Obama should correct.

John Bolton

Wall Street journal

18 October 09

The U.N.'s Human Rights Council (HRC) voted overwhelmingly on Friday to endorse the recommendations of the lopsidedly anti-Israel Goldstone Report. The report, named for former South African judge Richard Goldstone, who chaired the underlying investigation, concluded that Israel's 2008-2009 military campaign against the terrorist group Hamas was actually aimed against Gaza's residents as a whole. Thus it was an illegitimate exercise of "collective punishment," an extraordinarily amorphous legal concept.

The report alleges numerous specific human rights violations by both Israel and Hamas. But by attempting to criminalize Israel's strategy of crippling Hamas, the report in effect declared the entire antiterrorism campaign to be a war crime. Mr. Goldstone recommended that Israel and the Palestinians should each conduct their own investigations, failing which the Security Council should refer the entire matter to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution.

In the month since the report's release, it has roiled the Middle East peace process. An Israeli spokesman said "it will make it impossible for us to take any risks for the sake of peace," perhaps foreshadowing Israeli withdrawal from negotiations while the report remains under active U.N. consideration.

The HRC resolution endorsing the report's recommendations repeatedly lacerated Israel, leading Mr. Goldstone himself to cringe, saying he was "saddened" the resolution contained "not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report." A U.S. State Department spokesman conceded that the adopted text "went beyond even the scope of the Goldstone Report itself."

The U.N. General Assembly created the HRC on March 15, 2006, to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, which had spent much of its final years concentrating on Israel and the U.S. rather than the world's real human rights violators. The Bush administration voted against establishing this body and declined to join it, believing, correctly, that it would not be an improvement over its predecessor. President Barack Obama changed course, and the U.S. won election to the HRC in May. Mr. Obama argued that engagement would be more effective than shunning the HRC and attempting to delegitimize it.

The Goldstone Report thus provides a stark test of Mr. Obama's analysis. Predictably, the administration blamed the report's underlying mandate and its stridently anti-Israel tilt on America's earlier absence from the HRC when the investigation was authorized and launched. Yet the new administration's diplomacy had no discernible impact on the HRC's disgraceful resolution.

Twenty-five of the Security Council's 47 members voted for the resolution (including Russia and China), six voted against (Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine and the U.S.), and 11 abstained (Japan, South Korea and several European governments among them).

Five didn't vote at all, including Great Britain and France. Press reports indicated that London saw its inaction as a "favor" to Israel, a position simultaneously inexplicable and gutless. It is hard to know just how much real politicking the Obama administration did before this vote, but the loss of key allies is telling.

The Goldstone Report has important implications for America. In the U.N., Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the U.S., particularly concerning the use of military force pre-emptively or in self-defense. Accordingly, U.N. decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the U.S. Mr. Goldstone's recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel's head—or, in the future, to America's.

Mr. Obama has now met the new HRC, same as the old HRC, thus producing a "teachable moment," a phrase he often uses. Quasi-religious faith in "engagement" and the U.N. has run into empirical reality. When the administration picks itself up off the ground, it should become more cognizant of that organization's moral and political limitations.

Although it will be hard for Mr. Obama to swallow, the logical response to Friday's debacle is to withdraw from and defund the HRC. Otherwise the Goldstone Report will merely be the beginning, next time perhaps with Washington as its unmistakable target.

Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Love of the Land: Israel, the U.S. and the Goldstone Report

Love of the Land: Even Perfidy is Now Gutless in Albion

Even Perfidy is Now Gutless in Albion

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
19 October 09

It appears that these days Albion doesn’t even have the courage to admit to its perfidiousness.

The UN Human Rights Council last week voted overwhelmingly to condemn Israel for war crimes on the back of the Goldstone report. This was hardly a surprise, given that Goldstone – whatever his protestations since – was given a brief by the Israel-bashing UNHRC specifically premised on the advance condemnation of Israel for committing the war crimes the evidence of which his ‘fact-finding mission’ was ostensibly supposed to discover.

As has been detailed in previous posts, his report was a travesty of justice, recycling as fact the unverified propaganda of Hamas and its patsies in the NGO world, ignoring the most heinous crimes of Hamas while giving a spurious air of even-handedness by condemning it just a little, and most disgustingly of all accusing Israel of deliberately trying to harm the civilian population of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Having thus obtained its objective, the demonisation of Israel in Gaza, the UNHRC duly voted to endorse the Goldstone report and send it on to the UN Security Council.

Now look at what the former British commander in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, told the UNHRC about Israel’s actions in Cast Lead:

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizbullah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents. The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas's way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets. And I say this again: The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Thank you, Mr. President.

Now look at how Col Kemp’s own British government behaved in the UNHRC vote on Goldstone. It had not wanted to support Israel, but to abstain. The reason it wouldn’t support it was that it said it took Goldstone’s allegations of war crimes seriously. But it also apparently thought the UN resolution was unfairly biased against Israel. Indeed, even Goldstone himself thought so, complaining that it

‘...includes only allegations against Israel. There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas, as we have done in the report’.

After all the trouble he had gone to in order to massage his hideously loaded brief, the UNHRC went and stuck to its terms! Tsk!

So the Brits decided to abstain. But then, as theTimes reported – horror of horrors:

But that position began to unravel yesterday morning when it became apparent that other European members on the council, including Italy and the Netherlands, were planning to vote against. That would have left Britain and France looking exposed and out of step with the rest of Europe.

British officials said that Mr Brown and President Sarkozy of France decided to back Mr Netanyahu if he would move on three concessions that they believed could help to rescue the peace process: a freeze on all settlement activity, an independent Israeli investigation and an immediate lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

Those last-minute efforts, however, were thwarted by Egypt, a co-sponsor of the resolution, which refused two French appeals for a two-hour delay, forcing a vote before any concessions could be wrung from Israel. Britain and France therefore failed either to cast a vote or abstain.

The Goldstone blood libel is part of the UNHRC’s strategy of delegitimising Israel to soften up the world for its eventual destruction. In the teeth of the opinion of one of Britain's most senior military experts in asymmetric warfare that Israel had done

more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare

the British government, whose own record in Afghanistan most certainly does not reach Israel's standards for protecting civilians, not only refused to support Israel against this demonisation of its defence of its own citizens but didn’t even have the bottle to register that it was abstaining in that disgusting vote. It simply ran away.

This shocking episode demonstrates with crystal clarity that in the great civilisational war now in progress, Britain is on the wrong side – as it has been in the Middle East, in fact, for the past nine decades.

Love of the Land: Even Perfidy is Now Gutless in Albion

Love of the Land: Major water sources drying up as rain season begins

Major water sources drying up as rain season begins

Ehud Zion Waldoks
JPost
18 October 09

At the end of the 2008-2009 hydrological year which ends in October, the level of Israel's major water sources - including Lake Kinneret and aquifers - were down almost a meter compared to last year, the Water Authority said Sunday based on initial estimates.

A complete report is due out soon.

Those numbers do not bode well at all for Israel. The past five years have been very dry years. The fact that the aquifers and Lake Kinneret are down compared to last year is another indication that the situation is dire. The Water Authority has predicted that the black lines - which are even lower than the red lines - will be reached this year sometime in December. If this happens it signals irreparable damage to the environment.

The Water Authority decided to tackle the scarcity by targeting household use after cutting water for agriculture in previous years and implementing lawn watering restrictions as well. They imposed a drought levy earlier this year despite fierce objections. The Knesset is set to discuss the drought levy again on Monday.

The El Nino effect might have an impact on rainfall in the region, but it is unclear whether it will bring more rain or exacerbate the drought. Rainfall since September has been sporadic but hard when it does arrive. However, the situation is still critical.

Lake Kinneret dropped another 18 cm. to -1.24 meters below the red line and the Dead Sea dropped another 1.19 meters in 2008-2009.

In the coastal aquifer, the average water level in the southern part is down 0.6 meters compared to last year. However, the western part is down around 0.9 meters. Nevertheless, the central and northern parts of the aquifer actually rose 0.1 meters this year. Initial estimates indicate the aquifer provided 22 million cubic meters (mcm) of water in 2008-2009.

The mountain aquifer was also down an average of 0.90 meters compared to last year. The water level in the southern part was 13 cm. below the red line - a new low for the aquifer. The central part was down 67 cm. below the red line, and the northern part was 26 cm. above the red line.

While unable to make up all of the significant shortfall, the 100 mcm desalination plant in Hadera is set to come online in coming months. That 100 mcm. would join the roughly 150 mcm. to be produced this year from the Ashkelon and Palmahim plants after both plants agreed to increase their output this year.

A 150 mcm. plant at Sorek is in the planning stages. The goal is to reach 600 mcm. by 2013 or so, and to reach 750 mcm. late in the coming decade. The 750 mcm. roughly corresponds to total household consumption at present.

Love of the Land: Major water sources drying up as rain season begins

Love of the Land: Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood: Connecting the Dots

Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood: Connecting the Dots

Backspin/Honest Reporting
19 October 09

My antennae are still twitching over a report in The Guardian about Hamas efforts to impose religious law, and Gazan efforts to resist. This was a rare occasion where a Western reporter connected the dots between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Reporter Rory McCarthy writes:

The Hamas campaign was not inevitable. Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a broader Islamist movement present in most Arab and Islamic countries, which generally believes in winning over supporters by encouragement and debate one mind at a time, rather than by imposing decrees from above.

You can't understand Hamas without also understanding the Brotherhood. Consider the following:

• Since the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, "Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mahdi Akif has been serving as a replacement Hamas spiritual leader."
• Several key positions in Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood are held by Hamas personalities, not Jordanians.
• The Brotherhood even has a branch in Israel called The Islamic Movement. Its leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, was recently arrested for inciting Palestinians in Jerusalem. The arrest, according was a message to Hamas not to further inflame tensions.
• The FBI has been asked to investigate whether George Galloway's recent visit to U. California-Irvine illegally raised money for Hamas. It's worth asking whether the Muslim student groups hosting Galloway have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a US branch.
• President Obama didn't help his popularity in Israel when Brotherhood membersreceived invitations to his Cairo speech.

The Hamas charter clearly identifies itself as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. So if you wonder why I'm skeptical when people talk about Hamas moderating itself, it's because global movements like the Brotherhood don't drop their ideology very easily.

I'm impressed that The Guardian noted how Hamas ordered shopkeepers to get rid of mannequins displaying lingerie, how women are banned from riding motorbikes, and the resistance female lawyers raised when they were told to wear full lenth gowns and a hijab in court.

Is this misogynist government an example of what we'll see if the Brotherhood seizes power in the 16 countries where it already has official branches?

Love of the Land: Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood: Connecting the Dots

Love of the Land: Iranian Hacker: We Work in Cooperation with the Regime

Iranian Hacker: We Work in Cooperation with the Regime

Media Backspin/Honest Reporting
19 October 09

Memri flagged an Iranian hacker's startling admission:

Behrouz Kamalian, head of a 15-member Iranian hacker group called "Ashyaneh," stated that the group works in cooperation with most of the government and military organizations in Iran, and that during the Israeli attack on Gaza and on 'Qods Day' (September 18, 2009), the group hacked 1,500 Israeli websites, as well as hundreds of Danish websites in retaliation for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Linking hackers to official state actors is next to impossible because identifying the attackers is hard enough. The admission that a government is involved behind the scenes -- either sponsoring, coordinating or ordering the attacks -- is simply startling.

Related reading: Gadi Evron on Cyber Warfare

Love of the Land: Iranian Hacker: We Work in Cooperation with the Regime

The Torah Revolution: No tax no representation. Remember?

The Torah Revolution: No tax no representation. Remember?

Book Recommendations

Book Recommendations

One can't read only the Goldstone Report from cover to cover without respite; there have to be other readings to balance it. So here are three quick recommendations about books I've been reading.

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes. This is a rather revisionist look at the New Deal of the 1930s, so it's relevant reading as we watch President Obama revamp the American economy, or not. Shlaes starts with the non-controversial, indeed straightforward fact that for all the fine things Roosevelt's New Deal accomplished, it didn't pull the American economy out of the recession. World War II did that. Her thesis is that it didn't, because it did the wrong things, encouraging various statist experiments while interfering with the power of the free market and especially innovators and industrialists to do it on their own.

It's a provocative thesis, and yes, it's oh-so-very-relevant. Alas, however, she doesn't do much to prove it. She's a fine storyteller, she consistently keeps us engaged in her flowing descriptions. She's convincing that Roosevelt was a master politician, but we already knew that, just as we knew the New Deal wasn't a careful application of a fully consistent economic world view. She likes Wendell Willkie, the head of an electric company who eventually ran against Roosevelt as a Republican in 1944, and she positions him as a counter-Roosevelt figure. (Interestingly, Willkie was almost the last Republican presidential candidate ever to be endorsed by the New York Times, but that's a different story).

The problem is that for her thesis to carry weight, not merely to intrigue, it would have had to offer a lot more economics than it does. The book probably would then have been a much slower read, and less fun, but it would have been more convincing, or at least more challenging. As it is, it's more a book of jounalism than economic history. I do recommend it though, for its interesting perspective and cast of fascinating characters and events.

In a dramatic leap we turn to David A. Kessler's The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Kessler is a physician, lawyer, and top FDA bureaucrat who in spite of being as well informed as anyone, didn't manage not to be fat. So eventually he went looking for the science behind this, which he presents in this book. It's almost 300 pages long, and he could have written it in 30 - but again, as with Shlaes, those 30 would have been intense and demanding (and wouldn't have counted as a book). This way, it's a readable book that can be skimmed with no major intellectual challenge.

Kessler's thesis, in one sentence, is that sugar fat and salt make us want to eat more sugar salt and fat. Whether they understand the science or not, the food industry has cracked this truth and does its best to offer what Kessler calls hyper-palatable food, which means irresistible.

I came away from the book with the conviction that the only food one should eat is unprocessed food. As an acquaintance of mine (who hasn't read the book but gets the message) has been saying all along: I never eat anything that was created in a factory.

Near the end of the book Kessler tries to offer ways to free oneself from the tyranny of industrial sugar-salt-fat. He recommends formulating and applying counter-commands, that will block the imperatives of the enticing food we see all around us. It occurs to me that this really may work. I eat only kosher food, so all those yummy-looking extravagances I see all around me when I'm in America: I've never had them, I have no chemically inbuilt memories of how much I crave them, and were I to reach for one of them, my own repulsion would be stronger. I'll bet they taste heavenly, but I have no urge to eat them. On the contrary.

Finally, let's go to Kazau Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, which just came out a few months ago. It's not his magnificent The Remains of the Day, one of the better books I've read, but it is a very good book. Five short stories, very lightly interwoven, about itinerant musicians (and one itinerant English teacher) and their world.

I liked the way Ishiguro used American English when his narrators are American (or East European), but English English when they're Brits - but maybe that's banal when dealing with a master wordsmith. His depiction of the itinerant's world was new to me: folks who spend their career on the edge of the normative family-work-walking-the-dog-saving-for-retirement world, indeed, they live off that world and encounter it every day, without any apparent feeling of regret for not being in it. Artists who make a living from their art, without high-flying aspirations nor the despondency of not achieving them.

Not that they all live lives of serene contentment: if so, what would the author write about? Most face a flaw in their lives, or several of them; and the stories are not about how they get resolved, either. It being reality Ishiguro would like to comment on, none of the flaws actually go away. At best, they evolve, moving from one state to another. As Jane says in Mr. and Mrs. Smith - hardly a profound cultural creation, that - happy ending are merely stories that haven't ended yet. Ishiguro, however, can be profound, and this is a wistful book, beautifully written, that may well cause you to notice the band in a cafe alongside a piazza in a new way.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations