Soccer Dad

Like Mentor Like Student?

Earlier I posted David Bernstein's comments about the killing Sheikh Yassin:

The Happiest Day of His Life: Yassin: "The day in which I will die as a shahid [martyr] will be the happiest day of my life." So I guess it's win-win.

Well Dr. Rantisi apparently feels similarly:

"It's death by killing or cancer," Rantisi told reporters. "If it's cardiac arrest or an Apache (helicopter), I prefer to be killed by an Apache."

Maybe Israel can grant his wish. With dispatch.
How might that happen? Gregg Easterbrook provides an answer.

Hellfire missiles home on a laser designator shined on the target. Since the strike was accurate, this means Israeli forces either had an agent on the scene with a view of Yassin and pointing a designator toward him, or a small drone aircraft close by. If the latter, an operator miles away would have looked for Yassin through a television link, then controlled a laser designator swivel-mounted aboard the drone. So as not to alert Yassin's bodyguards, the Apache carrying the missiles was either high in the sky and seeming to be passing on its way somewhere else or, more likely, very close to the ground and below the horizon. Helicopters make a lot of noise, plus the Apache has a distinctive loud whine that must by this point be familiar to Hamas; any sign of an Apache coming toward a Hamas figure using standard line-of-sight flight would warn the target to run for cover. The Hellfire was designed to be launched from below the horizon so that Apaches could attack tanks with less danger of return fire; in an urban setting, similar tactics may allow a helicopter to launch missiles before the clamor of its rotors is heard. This page of techno-details shows how a Hellfire can be launched from below the horizon without a direct line-of-sight to its target.

(via Protocols )
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

How to become rich in the 00's

We all know that the way people became rich in the 1980's was to be involved in greenmail. Greenmail was a way of forcing reluctant companies to merge with you and becoming quite wealthy in the process. You'd buy something near a controlling interest in a company and threaten to acquire even more. The management, feeling your threat, would buy your shares back at an inflated price in order to assure its continued presence at the head of the corporation. Everything would be as it was before, just you'd be a little richer and the corporation a little poorer.
In the 1990's it was the IPO. You'd get some early information that a new company was going public. You'd buy lots of the stock. As the hype would push up the price of the stock you'd hold on for a few days until your investment was worth 100 times what you paid for it and then you'd sell. Eventually, demand for the stock would dissipate and it would maintain a more normal price. But the people buying the IPO would be rich regardless of whether the company was viable or not.
In he 00's the way to make a killing is to write a tell all book about the Bush administration. Write it as a former insider. Tell how the administration rejected your wise council to follow the prescriptions of ideologues. (Remember Bush v. Dukakis. Dukakis, trying to shake the "liberal" label argued that the election was about "competence" not "ideology." News that Boston Harbor had a high level of pollution or that Willie Horton an inmate out on state sanctioned furlough raped a woman, made that competence highly suspect. This is just an extension of that argument with successors to each as proxies.)
Then go onto 60 minutes where people can say how honest (and competent) you are. And how tough minded you are because you don't buy into silly, simplistic ideological prescriptions.
Then when the White House responds to deflect your charges say that the White House is out to destroy you.
Then you can watch your book sales go through the roof. That's how it's done this decade. (Kerry argues that another term of Bush would be bad for the economy. I disagree. Think of all the wonderful kiss and tell books that could be written and get promoted by a pliant media. I say re-elect Bush and help support disgruntled former appointees. After all they need Cadillacs too.)

How Holy Could he be?

Amity Shlaes, wonders if George W. Bush is the holiest president the United States has ever had. Her answer:

But when it comes to religion, this president is not unusual, and it would be heresy to argue otherwise.

Nothing special, that is. Well is it that surprising? After all our president is an "enemy of God." How holy *could* he be?

"We knew that Bush is the enemy of God, the enemy of Islam and Muslims. America declared war against God. Sharon declared war against God and God declared war against America, Bush and Sharon," Rantissi said. "The war of God continues against them and I can see the victory coming up from the land of Palestine by the hand of Hamas."

Failure to Appreciate Subtlety

I am apparently incapable of recognizing subtlety. Nicholas Goldberg, op-ed editor of the LA Times and former Middle Eastern correspondent for Newsday, tries to correct my lack of sophistication:

But Israel's inability — or perhaps its unwillingness — to make distinctions among terrorists, to see nuances in Palestinian politics or to take into account the mood of the Palestinian street is worrisome. Yassin's death may or may not be morally defensible — Kofi Annan and many Western leaders called it an unjustifiable, extra-judicial killing in violation of international law — but either way, it is hard to see how it will have any result other than to inflame the population at a moment when Palestinians see little hope for peace.

I don't feel sympathy for Yassin. He was a soldier in a war of his own choosing, and it killed him. But the cause of peace is not served by provocative, macho and arguably illegal moves, and it's hard to see how Yassin's assassination qualifies as anything else. Peace may seem distant, but it is still the goal, isn't it?

It is hard not to admire the fine shadings that Goldberg recognizes here. Yassin died as he lived, by the sword. But that doesn't mean that it was good thing that he was deprived of his sword. No. That is not an enlightened view.
There are others who, like me, are are incapable of understanding such subtlety.
For one there is Larry Miller who writes about the odd nature of spiritual leaders:

AND DR. RANTISI, setting the tone for his first hundred days (and, no doubt, every hundred after that), has used his new bully pulpit to say that "God has declared war on the United States."

Well. Okay, maybe he's right. No, really, it's possible, isn't it? Maybe those folks are right, and all Jews and Americans are the mortal enemies of God, and should be killed anytime, anyplace, the more the merrier.

Anyone want to switch places with Sheikh Yassin right now and find out?

(It's nice that Larry Miller is finally starting to get credit for "Whoever Blesses Them" See Israpundit for an example.) I must have received the article no less than 4 times during the past two years and responded to the sender the real source. Apparently this mistake was quite common as it gained the attention of Snopes.)
Miller is funny, yes, but not exactly subtle.
Then there is Barry Rubin. He is another one who is so lacking in sophistication he can't discern that killing a killer may not be a good thing.

By killing the leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin early yesterday, Israel eliminated the most important terrorist leader waging war against it.

Yassin always made it clear that he was dedicated to destroying the state of Israel and killing its citizens wherever they could be found. He reaped the whirlwind he had created.

The killing leaves Hamas without a central figure to follow. And, it sends a message from Israel that its planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is not a retreat.

Another analyst who could benefit from the wise council of Nicholas Goldberg is Fouad Ajami.

The Gaza sheik was made of different stuff. It is easy to see that he had no mercy for Israelis. But a harder truth can be read into his life: He had no mercy for his own either. Those children, reading their wills and testaments on their way to homicidal missions, are proof of the cruelty and the indifference and the waste of it all.

Dr. Ajami too seems incapable of distinguishing between the different kinds of evil a sophisticate like Mr. Goldberg can. He even suggests here, that the killing of Yassin might help the Palestinians. What a rube!
I truly regret the handicap that I suffer in that I can't appreciate Nicholas Goldberg's sophistication in being able to distinguish between different levels of evil. If I possessed such clarity of thought, I wouldn't think that those last two paragraphs of Goldberg's essay were self contradictory nonsense.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

nissaY

Too many commentators are drawing the absolute wrong lessons from the Israeli killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. I'd say that they got it backwards. In that vein, let's start with the final paragraph of David Ignatius's Machiavelli in the Middle East

It would be fatuous to give the Israelis advice about their security. They live under the shadow of terrorism, and they must find their own solution. But they should consider the evidence of more than two decades that Sharon's approach isn't working. Rather than being humbled into submission, the Palestinians have embraced a strategy of suicidal rage. How will this gruesome cycle of violence end? Today that's impossible to answer. But perhaps both sides could begin by considering the possibility that Machiavelli was wrong. Sometimes it may actually be safer to be loved than feared. An Israel that took risks for peace might find unexpected rewards.

There is so much that it demonstratably wrong in the above paragraph. Again, let's start with the end. When Israel was "loved" that love was taken for weaknewss. The "Aksa Intifada" wouldn't have been possible if the PA and its allied organizations - Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad - hadn't spent the better part of the previous seven years developing their infrastructure and using that infrastructure to acquire weapons.
I know that there are those who attribute the Hadera and Afula terror attacks to the massacre of Baruch Goldstein. But that was when Yitzchak Rabin was Prime Minister and striving to make concessions, and be loved. The terror attacks of February and March 1996 were supposedly in retaliation for the killing of Yihye Ayyash, but they occurred a few months after Israel ceded Tulkarem, Jenin, Ramallah, Beit Lechem, Shechem (Nablus) and Kalkilye to the PA. Again, it's hard to imagine a time when relations between Israel and the PA were better. So terror struck Israel even when it was trying to be loved.
Worse, during those time the PA used its media and educational system to foment hatred of Israel and the Jews inculcating its society with unrelenting, vile imagery that hasn't been seen since the fall of the Third Reich. The "Palestinians have embraced a strategy of suicidal rage" not because of Israeli actions, but because of the hatred that has been taught and validated by every single outlet of the Palestinian Authority.
But since Ignatius says that it would be fatuous of him to give Israel advice on how to provide its own security, let's see if Israel's actions since Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister have been unsuccessful. Here's Austin Bay,
. . . and opportunity

Israel is doing a better job of thwarting terror attacks. Last year saw a third fewer attacks than 2002. Why? Better intelligence, better security tactics and the elimination of Hamas commanders. However, bigger trends prime Mr. Sharon's anti-Hamas offensive.

And more specifically (if slightly outdated, but no less relevant) here's Evelyn Gordon ...
The "Military Solution" Works

The hard data, however, tell a very different story: that while the war on terror is still far from over, it has actually been making impressive progress.

In the intifada's grim second year, from October 2001 through September 2002, Palestinians killed 449 Israelis and foreigners present on Israeli soil, including both civilians and soldiers. Yet for the year that ended last week, this figure was down 47 percent, to 240.

On a monthly basis, the comparison is even more dramatic. Never again has there been a month even approaching the horror of March 2002, the month before Operation Defensive Shield. The 134 Israelis killed that month is more than three times the death toll during the worst month of the past year, and almost 2.5 times the 58 people killed in the second-worst month of the intifada (June 2002, the month after the army withdrew from Palestinian territory following Defensive Shield. It was this renewed surge of killing that persuaded the government to send the troops back and this time, to keep them there).

Furthermore, two of the worst months of the past year were months in which military activity was drastically curtailed: June 2003, with 32 deaths, and August 2003, with 29. June was the month of the road map "peace process," during which Israel largely suspended military operations so as not to disrupt the "momentum toward peace." August was the month of the famous Palestinian cease-fire, to which Israel responded by restricting its own military activity. (In fact, the death toll that August was higher than in 22 of the 34 months without a truce!) One could thus reasonably assume that had Israel maintained the military pressure over the summer, the year's death toll would have been even lower.

The Washington Post's editorial, Mr. Sharon's Solution was no better that the Ignatius column. Two points.

It's true that Sheik Yassin, like Osama bin Laden, oversaw a terrorist organization, but unlike al Qaeda Hamas is also a religious and social movement that holds the allegiance of a substantial segment of Palestinian society. Part of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves inducing the fundamentalist Islamic movement to pursue its agenda by peaceful means, as have similar groups in Egypt and Jordan.

In response, I bring Aaron Mannes:

In the wake of Israel's assassination of Sheikh Yassin, a number of clichés have been predictably bandied about. The first is the reference to Yassin as the spiritual leader of Hamas. Yassin was really the CEO of a terrorism conglomerate. Hamas has weapons-research programs, international propaganda wings, legal and illegal moneymaking ventures, and a social-welfare network — in addition of course to their core competency, mass murder.

and in response to the Washington Post's assertion:

Some Israelis believed Sheik Yassin was inching in that direction; he recently spoke of accepting a long-term truce with Israel if it withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza. His violent death at Israel's hands seems more likely to postpone rather than accelerate any moderation by his followers.

There is no evidence that, despite what "[s]ome Israelis believe" that Yassin was inching towards moderation. Here is the rule: (More on this later.)

In reality, however, Hamas truce offers are not new. Hamas has, in fact, proposed a ceasefire with Israel no fewer than eleven times since 1993. In most cases, these offers have served to deflect massive Israeli retaliation against the group's leadership in response to a Hamas terrorist act.

And if the regular fare of the Washington Post, wasn't enough, the Washington Post included two Q & A sessions with experts to give it's online readers even greater insight. This was how Henry Siegman answered a perfectly sensible question in Hamas Leader Killed:

Quebec, Canada: The only thing Israel should be criticized for is not having done this sooner. I'll never understand why the world condemns terrorism, yet expects appeasment from Israel. As Bush said, you're either for or against terrorism. There is no neutral ground.

Henry Siegman: The equation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to America's war with Al Qaeda in the aftermath of September 11th, is, I believe entirely inappropriate. Al Qaeda is engaged in an ideological war with the West and with its values. That is not the war Hamas is waging. While its national goals, as officially formulated by them, are extremist, the man who served as Sharon's security advisor until this past September, and before that, as head of Israel's Mossad for four years, has said that Hamas's goals are essentially political, and can be resolved in a political process, but not by means that rely on counter-violence only.

As noted above 1) Israel's counter violence has been working and 2) there is no evidence that Hamas had goals that are political.
And there's this response to another reasonable question:

Wheaton, Md.: Is this assassination a sign that Israel is now taking the war on terrorism seriously? Should we expect the same thing to happen to Arafat and other terrorists in the near future?

Henry Siegman: Israel always took its war against terrorism seriously. The problem is that it did not always pursue it wisely. The question is not whether Yassin deserved what he got, but whether Sharon's targeted assassinations make Israelis more or less secure, and whether it brings an end to the conflict closer or makes it even more distant. It is perfectly legitimate, indeed necessary, for Israel to fight terrorism. But it is an entirely futile struggle, as the past three and a half years have shown, if that struggle is not pursued within a political framework that holds out the prospect of viable Palestinian statehood for the Palestinians if they act to stop the terror. This Sharon has refused to do, and instead has encouraged and subsidized expropriations of Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Wisely? Israel agreed to a Hudna last year with Hamas and for its efforts was hit with increased terror in its wake. A Hudna to Hamas means an opportunity to regroup and re-arm. By contrast, from September to December of 2003, when the leaders of Hamas were known to be in Israel's crosshairs there were no fatal attacks by the organizaiton. Hamas will try to strike back. (And have already tried twice, thankfully, unsuccessfully.) But its capacity has been diminished. Revenge is a motive. And it may eventually lead to success, but not without means and opportunity. Israel has, in effect, degraded the means by which Hamas seeks to attack its civilians.
Lest we think the Washington Post would only bring in experts who support its editorial position, they also brought in Fawaz Gerges. He at least uses history to make his argument in Hamas Leader Killed

Fawaz Gerges: If history serves as a guide, the reaction of Palestinians will be bloody indeed. For example, in March 1996, Israeli assassinated Hamas' chief bomb maker, Yahya Ayyash, who was held responsible for the death of dozens of Israelis. Initilaly, Israeli security services boasted about the success of their assassination operation, yet Hamas subsequently retaliated with a wave of suicide bombings, which killed 62 Israelis and injured many others, and terrorized Israeli society.

If Hamas retaliated so brutally to avenge the killing of one of its famous engineers, one can imagine the extent and nature of its response to the assassination of its spiritual leader. Hamas' officials have already promised to avenge his death by killing hundreds of Israelis. It remains to be seen if Hamas can still deliver on its threats. But the writing is on the wall. Ariel Sharon knows full well that Hamas will retaliate and blood will be shed on both sides. Both sides will be worse off.

But history works both ways. Take for example the killing of the Awadallah brothers. This was one of the big successes of the Netanyahu administration:

Six grandiose plans for the carrying out of heinous acts of terrorism, which were at various stages of development by Hamas. This string of terrorist acts, each one more severe than the last, was prevented by the successes of the GSS in Judea and Samaria over the last months. In a series of operations -- most important of which was the liquidation of Adel Awadallah -- the GSS has broken the Hamas military infrastructure in the West Bank. The organization was critically wounded, and the six large-scale acts of terrorism mentioned above were prevented.

Adel Awadallah was responsible for these plans. He was killed on September 10th of this year, together with his brother, at a house in Khirbet a-Taibeh, outside Hebron. The precise details of the killing have, for the most part, remained unknown, but it can now be revealed that in the safe house that they used, a detailed archive was found, which led the GSS to a string of arrests and discoveries, among them of Palestinians whose involvement in terrorism had been unknown up until that point, and allowed investigators to learn many details about the structure and method of operations of Hamas, and also about Awadallah himself.

"The man," said a senior figure in the security services this week, "was the central pivot of Hamas in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. From the point of view of importance to the organization, he was two ranks above Yihye Ayyash or Muhi a-din a-Sharif, and it may certainly be said that he was the most prominent Hamas commander in the West Bank of any period."

In other words, striking the correct person can have a negative effect on the capacity of a terrorist organization to commit mayhem.
I don't know if Israel is likely to be struck by a new wave or terror or not. My guess is that it won't happen soon, because Yassin was a central figure in Hamas. Even the Israeli observation that there were fewer demonstrations than expected suggests that Israel picked the correct target. The naysayers have the burden of proof.
Crossposted Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

2 on Hamas; 1 on terror at NRO

There's so much garbage about Israel and Hamas lately it was great to see two articles at NRO that put Hamas in it's proper perspective.
Matthew Levitt is an expert in terror groups. He gives a sense of the structure of Hamas.

Hamas's "internal" leadership led mainly by Yassin and Abdel Aziz al Rantisi in Gaza appears relatively moderate only when compared to the "external" leadership based primarily in Damascus, including Khalid Mishal, Mousa Abu Marzook, Imad al-Alami, and others. The external leadership has the luxury of sponsoring radical actions from the comfort of their Syrian safe haven without consequence. The internal leadership, however, must consider the crackdowns Israel (and, periodically, the Palestinian Authority) imposes in the wake of terrorist attacks. The internal leadership is also sensitive to the impact of the group's attacks on grassroots support for Hamas among average Palestinians. This relative moderation, however, should not be mistaken for nonviolence. Yassin and the Hamas internal leadership remain committed to the group's terrorist agenda as articulated in the Hamas charter, which declares, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad."

This article is taken from a book that was written before Israel dispatched Yassin, but it seems to be as good an overview as anything available. Levitt says that we won't know if the killing of Yassin will be good or bad for Israel in the long term. Levitt seems optimistic though.
Aaron Mannes debunks some myths (or bad word usage) about Hamas:

The first is the reference to Yassin as the spiritual leader of Hamas. Yassin was really the CEO of a terrorism conglomerate. Hamas has weapons-research programs, international propaganda wings, legal and illegal moneymaking ventures, and a social-welfare network — in addition of course to their core competency, mass murder. Yassin was intimately involved in building Hamas. In 1989 Israel tried and imprisoned Yassin. The trial revealed his intimate involvement in planning operations, and during his imprisonment Hamas began to fall apart. Hamas's number two at the time, Mousa Abu Marzuq, took over — he was based in the United States then — and reorganized Hamas so that future attacks on its leadership would not be as debilitating. Yassin was also a fundraiser extraordinaire. On his release from prison in 1997 he traveled to Iran and the Gulf where he raised tens of millions.

(This article was taken from Mannes' Terror Blog that seems to be a good resource.)
Finally, Jonah Goldberg comments on how peer pressure was used to get Hussam Abdu to suit up with dynamite.

Like most boys, but especially miserable ones, Hussam had daydreams of being a hero. He wanted to meet girls. He wanted to prove the bullies were wrong about him. So, when the offer came to strap 18 pounds of explosives to his body to blow up some Israeli soldiers, Hussam leapt at it.

There have been a number of articles in the past that involve interviews with prospective martyrs. One theme that emerges is that they talk about how they were manipulated. This is, of course, evil. Taking advantage of someone with a limited mental capacity compounds the felony.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Hamas in Transition

The best comment about the recent death of Sheikh Yassin was by David Bernstein over at the Volokh Conspiracy:

The Happiest Day of His Life: Yassin: "The day in which I will die as a shahid [martyr] will be the happiest day of my life." So I guess it's win-win.

The best collection of material about Yassin is at Little Green Footballs. It includes links to Sheikh Yassin a Life in Pictures and I guess what could be called Sheikh Yassin a death in Pictures. (Warning, as LGF notes the pictures are quite graphic and gory.) Or just go to the website and scroll or search.
Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tells us that Yassin wasn't really a Sheikh.
And IMRA reminds us with a series of interviews with Dr. Rantisi that the new boss is the same as the old boss.

IMRA: What do you see ultimately happening to the people who moved into Israel . We have the people who came from Europe , Russia , the Arab states.

Rantisi: I will tell you something. I feel that it is justice for us to do with Jews as they did with us.

IMRA: To let them stay?

Rantisi: In the same way that they dispossessed our people. They killed thousands of Palestinians in tens of massacres and they destroyed homes. So I think it is just to do with them as they did with us.

Dr. Rantisi (did he take the Hippocratic oath or the hypocritical oath?) engaged in a debate with his wife whether his son should be a martyr. I guess that makes him more sincere (and I suppose more loathsome) than most terror leaders who are eager to volunteer other people's children but who, as yet, do not seem to have ever sent their own to the next world.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The Zookeeper is Very Fond of Rum

I just bought "The Best of Simon and Garfunkel" I have to say listening to it is wonderful. While I have plenty of CD's that I enjoy few stand out. This is one. At one point I'd hoped to be completist with Simon and Garfunkel and buy all 5 of their studio albums. I think that this will hold me for awhile.
"Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits" was really a meager offering with 14 songs but "The Best of ..." boasts 20 songs. S & G's last two albums - "Bookends" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" are both very well represented. (Greatest Hits only had Mrs. Robinson, Bookends and America from Bookends. At the zoo and Fakin' it were left out.)
I suppose I would have liked "Richard Cory" or "Leaves that are Green" from Sounds of Silence or "Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" (even if it's an advertisement for some sort of chemical enjoyment) from Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme or Wednesday Morning at 3AM or the acoustic "Sounds of Silence" from their first album. But there's a lot here and it represents Simon's songwriting and together their vocal skills.
Oh and until about April 12, it's only $8.99 at your local Target store (at least in the Balto/DC area.)

Harry Potter Stuff

Penny Stock has brought up a rumor about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - the movie that is.
This past Friday I bought USA Today because I saw that there was an article about "The Prisoner of Azkaban" movie. Indeed Emma Thompson has the role of Professor Trelawney. What I wonder is what will happen when we reach the movie of "The Order of the Phoenix." Have Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh been in the same movie since they divorced? Or would they just skip Gilderoy Lockhart's cameo at the asylum.
I realize this is more Greg's province, but I have my own idea what Harry Potter will do when he graduates Hogwarts. He will become the youngest Professor of Defense against Dark Arts. J.K. Rowling foreshadows just about everything. His unauthorized course in HPATOOTP I think points us to what his professional future is.

A Year Later

Last Friday the NY Times ran an editorial "One Year After" that lamented that the Iraq war might not "... have happened if we had known then what we know now."
Of course if we had know that many of the opponents of the war were compromised by the benefits they received from Saddam's Iraq, their objections and motives would rightly have been questioned. MEMRI has published a list of the many individuals and organization who have received oil vouchers from Saddam. Among those lucky recipients included three individuals reportedly close to Jacque Chirac, including the French ambassador to the UN, Jean-Bernard Merimee; many Arab countries and their leaders; and the Russian state.
Meanwhile Claudia Rosett has reported on the massive corruption of Iraq's oil for food program benefitting, among others, Kojo Annan, Kofi's son.
As the Wall Street Journal observes:

A mountain of evidence has now accumulated to suggest the Iraqi people suffered from shortages of quality food and medicine not because international sanctions were too strict, but because lax or corrupt oversight at U.N. headquarters in New York allowed Saddam Hussein to exploit the system for his own purposes.

Those included rewarding friends and allies world-wide with oil allocations on very favorable terms, as well as extracting large kickbacks from oil traders and suppliers of humanitarian goods. Put more simply, Saddam was allowed to skim off revenue to which the relief program was entitled, while the program was forced to spend the remainder on suppliers chosen by Saddam for reasons that rarely had anything to do with the quality of their goods.

In other words, many of Saddam's defenders were having their palms greased by the Butcher of Baghdad. In return, they and their friends loyally tried to protect Saddam from the Coalition of the Willing. I guess it's encouraging to know that even in this day of ever rising prices that Saddam got his money's worth.

Sean Hannity and Mel Gibson

I was disappointed with Mel Gibson on the Sean Hannity show last Tuesday. Eager to dispel the notiong that the movie "The Passion ..." was antisemitic, Sean prompted Gibson to say that the movie was based on the Gospels and that its critics hadn't seen the movie. (They did not address the 3rd issue as to whether the movie was likely to inflame antisemitism while I was listening.)
The problem is that not all of Gibson's (and the movie's) critics didn't see the movie. Also not everything in the movie was taken from the Gospels. (Gibson in the interview admits to taking 'artistic' liberties with the movie.
In his accusation that the movie was indeed antisemitic, Charles Krauthammer couldn't be dismissed as not having seen it. His harshest charge against Gibson is about Gibson's portrayal of Satan among the Jews. Since these scenes were nowhere in the Gospels, Krauthammer argued that it tarred all Jews by having them associated with Satan. (See "Gibson's Blood Libel"
Alas Sean didn't ask Gibson to address Krauthammer's accusation.
But this was the problem with much of the early criticism of the movie. It allowed Gibson to retreat into a defensive mode and act more sinned against than sinning. This was a problem the Jonathan Rosenblum identified in his "Passion and the Tar Baby". Rosenblum thought it better for Jewish organizations to quietly build support in the Christian community to prevent any negative reactions toward Jews based on the movie. He, in fact, praised the Simon Wiesenthal center for taking such an approach.
Since I haven't seen the movie, not am I likely to, I can't say whether or not it's antisemitic. But I can observe that Jewish and Christian writers have differed quite sharply on the content of the movie. Or more precisely on how they view the content of the movie. (And this is somthing of a generalization.)
Jewish writers (even those like Jeff Jacoby who wrote that the movie wasn't antisemitic) focused on the violence and didn't much like it. Christian writers saw the violence often as a thing of beauty.
The reason for this divergence is one of the central points of departure between Judaism and Christianity. In Christianity, salvation comes through belief. It is the belief that God sacrificed his son as atonement for all sins as a sign of His love for all humanity. The greater the pain of Jesus, the greater love is evident in his (and God's) sacrifice.
But Judaism has no such belief. Judaism believes that a person is punished for his own sins and must repent on that basis.
Sin and forgiveness are not the only points of departure. The fundamental beliefs of each religion are mutually exclusive. A Christian believes that there's a new covenant between God and mankind. A Jew believes that the original covenant is still operational.
Donald Sensing in his "My Last Passion Post" quotes another essay and adds his confirmation:

Your observation that Christians and Jews seem to be viewing two different movies on the same screen is a good one. From my conversations with a few other Jews, it is obvious to me that Jews almost instinctively identify many threads of anti-Semitism that pass right by most Christians. I have either posted or linked to identifications of many of these elements in past posts.

From everything I read, most Christian who viewed the movie focused strictly on the nature of salvation and paid no attention to what Jews would find objectionable.
There is however one person who can't make that claim: Mel Gibson.
Gibson defends himself in part by an appeal to the notion that everyone is responsible for the death of Jesus and that the events leading to his death were pre-ordained. The Jews were only actors in the drama with no choice but to play the role "written" for them. But I don't buy it. As Krauthammer noted:

Gibson contradicts his own literalist defense when he speaks of his right to present his artistic vision. Artistic vision means personal interpretation.

But there's another reason to question Gibson's motives and that is the film is being distributed in the Islamic world. Perhaps if it were being shown only in Lebanon, I could understand it because of the Christian population in Lebanon. But in Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt and Ramallah? (Egypt has a Coptic minority, but I don't think that's whose asking to see the film. ) The Muslim world - unlike the Christian world - still promotes a medieval form of antisemitism. Consider that a year and a half ago Egypt celebrated the holy month of Ramadan with a blood libelous mini-series "A Knight without a Horse" based on the "Protocols of the Elder of Zion." The target audiences of "The Passion" in the Muslim world are not going for a greater appreciation of salvation, they'll be going to see the way Jews killed a prophet of God. (Which is what Jesus was in Islam.)
I am not willing to condemn Mel Gibson's movie. But taking his artistic interpretation along with his decision to distribute the movie in the most antisemitic region in the world, I think, condemns him and, at least, makes his motives suspect.
(Note: I know that Arafat has declared that the film is not antisemitic. I guess I have to abide by his judgment. He knows the subject quite well.)

Burn in Hell

If you're reading this you woke up this morning.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin won't be doing that anymore.

If you have to say something nice ...

Well if it's something nice about President Bush then the Washington Post emphasizes it toward the end the article. The War in Iraq has largely been successful. So how does the Post frame the article? The President got the costs wrong.

But the administration badly underestimated the financial cost of the occupation and seriously overstated the ease of pacifying Iraq and the warmth of the reception Iraqis would give the U.S. invaders. And while peace and democracy may yet spread through the region, some early signs are that the U.S. action has had the opposite effect.

Not everyone is hedging so. Amir Taheri thinks things are going quite swimmingly.

Liberation has also given a new life to an estimated 1.2 million Marsh Arabs, whose villages Saddam wiped out in the 1980s and 1990s. Saddam built a canal to drain the marshes, which were recognized as one of the wonders of nature, so that his tanks could reach the villages unhindered. That criminal scheme is now being scrapped, allowing the marshes to regain at least part of their pristine beauty. Tens of thousands of marshlanders have returned to rebuild their homes, thus helping repair one of the worst environmental disasters of the last century.

It is not surprising that one key word in Iraq today is awadah (return).

Its magic is also felt by hundreds of thousands of Kurds whose villages were razed by Saddam in the murderous campaign known as Al-Anfal. It is unlikely that all the 4,000 destroyed villages will be rebuilt anytime soon. But work on hundreds of them is under way.

It is also "return" time for many aspects of Iraqi life.

I think it's interesting that a year after Milosevic was chased from Kosovo there were no snide "analyses" on the front page of the Post. There was an op-ed, though, by Sandy Berger who asserted confidently (June 10, 2000):

A year ago, Western democracies stood against a rampage of ethnic cleansing that threatened the peace of Europe and the shared values of our transatlantic community. One year later, progress on the ground is significant, but incomplete. Continued progress will enable us to reduce our presence. But we must stay the course. What is at stake is whether, together with the Europeans, we can do over time for Kosovo and Southeast Europe what we did for Western Europe after World War II and Central Europe after the collapse of communism: integrate them into a democratic, undivided Europe where the prospect of yet another European war is unthinkable.

Well things are disintegrating again. It was a super idea to put the UN in charge.

Fontenot and Matos

David Pinto at Baseball Musings has a an item about second baseman Mike Fontenot. Afterwards David credits Terry Crowley for appreciating Fontenot's patience.
In credit to the Crow it's worth noting an article from last year about Luis Matos:

So with the Orioles developing a new math this season, placing a greater emphasis on plate discipline and on-base percentage, Matos has been a quick study.

It would seem that this is a second data point that the O's are starting to realize the value of getting on base.

Stupid editorial: 75 cents; sensible rejoinder: priceless

The New York Times on Tuesday hailed the election of a Socialist government in Spain.

it was an exercise in healthy democracy, in which a change of government is simply that, and not a change of national character.

The editorial, in part, attributed Aznar's defeat to his support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The next day, letter writer Oleg Nekritin (kudos to the Times for publishing it) came back with a sharp rejoinder:

Your conclusion that the outcome of the election was not a victory for the terrorists is proof of why the war on terrorism cannot be waged effectively by those in intellectual circles.

Al Qaeda is results-oriented. When the Socialists are behind in the polls before the attack but win the election after the attack, only one conclusion can be drawn: the election and the foreign policy of Spain were decided by the terrorists.

Ouch!

Where was the chatter?

Question: After 9/11 there were reports of increased terrorist "chatter."

Before Sept. 11, U.S. agencies collected about 30 communications from suspected al Qaeda operatives or other militants referring to an imminent event, but many were false alarms, a U.S. intelligence official said on Monday.

So was there increased chatter prior to 3/11?

He Wasn't Joking

I didn't know how seriously to take Ze'ev Chafets when he compared PM Sharon to Don Corleone. According to Arutz-7 today when Israel leaves Gaza, it will be with a bang:

The goal, as defined in a meeting yesterday with Prime Minister Sharon, Defense Minister Mofaz, Chief of Staff Yaalon, and GSS Chief Dichter, is to eradicate the Hamas leadership in Gaza. "We will not leave Gaza with our tail between our legs, like in Lebanon," it was said. Arutz-7's Yosef Meiri notes that the withdrawal plan has still not even been discussed with the Cabinet or Knesset - let alone been presented for their approval.

Let's take a look at some of Israel's likely targets. While we still can.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Maimonidean Principles

Earlier Greg (Presence) wrote "Orthodoxy vs. Orthopraxy" about an article describing a new book by Marc Shapiro that disputes the notion that Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith are required beliefs for a believing Jew.
I read the article and then checked my copy of Maimonides' principles.
I'll assume that the book in question is more substantial than what was reported, but what was reported didn't seem an accurate representation of Orthodox thought or of Maimonides' views.
Steven Weiss the author of the article asserts:

Orthodox rabbis for decades have rejected Conservative rulings and practices on the grounds that the movement runs afoul of Maimonides's articulation of Jewish doctrine by not believing in Mosaic authorship of the entire Torah.

There are two (possibly three) of Maimonides' principles that may be operative here, the ninth that states that the Torah is of Divine origin and that it was written down by Moses and the tenth that the Torah is immutable and may not be changed. It's possible that the eighth principle that asserts that the level of prophecy of Moses superceded that of all other prophets would apply.
None of them say that a Jew must believe that the Torah was written only by Moses, just that he must believe in the Divine transmission of the Torah. The reason that Orthodox Jews are reluctant to accept the rulings of Conservative Judaism is because Conservatives, generally, reject the idea of the Divine transmission of the Torah. The most traditional Conservative position is to allow that Moses was "Divinely inspired." That is not the same thing as saying that God dictated the Law to him and would appear to contradict Maimonides' ninth principle that states that G-d told the Torah to Moses directly.
By setting up the Mosaic authorship of the entire Torah as the basis for his argument Shapiro (or Shapiro as Weiss has portrayed his argument) seems to be setting up a straw man that leads to a provocative thesis. Since the issue is the Divinity of the Torah and not its human authorship I don't find the argument of the article at all convincing. I'm sure that there's more to Shapiro's book than this one argument. I hope that whatever they are they're more substantial than this one.

James Q. Wilson on Calvin and Hobbes

A few weeks ago Greg (Presence) linked to an Extreme Calvin and Hobbes site. That reminded me of social scientist, James Q. Wilson's farewell to Calvin and Hobbes. So I went back and re-read "Calvin and Hobbes and the Moral Sense: A Farewell." And you thought it was *just* a comic. Read and enjoy.

Palmer on Brady

Jim Palmer recently claimed that Brady Anderson was on steroids when he hit 50 home runs in 1996. True that year was way out of whack with the rest of Brady's career. But that doesn't prove anything.
I think just after I first heard that news item I heard Jim Palmer pitching Joint-Ritis. I realize that glucosamine chondritin - one of the ingredients in Joint-Ritis - hasn't been implicated in any health damaging effects. Yet it seems that it doesn't necessarily do what it's advertised to do.
Can you say quack?

Nirenstein interviews Lewis

via Occam's Toothbrush
Fiamma Nirenstein interviewed Bernard Lewis in the Jerusaelem Post. Among other things Prof. Lewis demolishes the notion that the UN is, in any way, ambivalent about Israel.

In pushing for the right of return, the Palestinians are essentially proposing the elimination of the Jewish state. And the UN has never proven that it differs from the Palestinians on the refugee question. History is very clear. In the last century, millions of refugees moved between war-torn countries. The most important migration was between India and Pakistan in 1947, which involved at least seven million people. In 1945 millions of people moved between Poland and East Germany, and all were resettled.

With the partition [and creation of the State of Israel], 725,000 Arab refugees were relocated, and the UN immediately created a fixed institution, [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], which has literally prevented the Palestinians from resettling.

In 1929, Jews were killed or forced out of Hebron, and in 1948 others were killed or forced out of Jerusalem, but have you ever heard them referred to as refugees, protected by the UN? What about the 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries? The UN never bothered with them.

Excellent questions, great answers. Read the whole thing.
It's worth noting that in the intro the Post writes: "Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis, universally accepted as the world's leading expert on the history of the Middle East ..." The Post, alas is wrong here. Edward Said and his syncophants have successfully demonized Lewis to the point that Prof. Lewis is not universally accepted. The current fashion in Middle East scholarship is to elevate the ideology of the dispossessed over any inconvenient facts. Prof. Lewis believes that scholarship is more important than hurling imprecations at one's adversaries; that makes him out of fashion.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

A Parting Gift?

Ze'ev Chafets compares Ariel Sharon to Don Corleone. No, Chafets isn't disparaging PM Sharon when he calls him the "Godfather." (Although, I'm sure plenty of Sharon's critics will love the characterization.) In "Sharon as Godfather" Chafets thinks he knows what Sharon has in mind as a parting gift to Yassin, Dief, Dahlan etc.

He has to make sure Palestinians understand that Israel is not getting chased out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The most obvious way to make this point is to eliminate the leaders of these groups before pulling up stakes.

Like Michael Corleone, Sharon has a list. Look for it to get shorter and shorter if and when an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza approaches.

I would like to think that this is what Sharon has in mind. But if that really is the case why wait until Israel's pulling up stakes? A few months ago the groundhogs were barely sticking their heads above ground. Apparently they haven't been nearly as scarce recently. Why didn't Sharon keep up the pressure?
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Hoagland's Gaping Hole

I enjoy reading Jim Hoagland. Not because I usually agree with. But because unlike his counterpart, Thomas Friedman at the New York Times, he thinks. He doesn't believe that a pithy comment substitutes for analysis.
I was very disappointed in his column today, "Sharon's Narrow Opening". The premise of the column is reasonable enough. (Even if I don't agree with it.) Hoagland, as I understand him is arguing that PM Sharon's plan for unilateral withdrawal is a result of his concluding that he has defeated the PA.

As Sharon intended when he took power in 2001, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is broken beyond repair and Arafat is a pariah. Moreover, Palestinian cities are imploding under a wave of internal crime and brutality as Arafat's CIA-equipped militias sell off or donate their weapons and protection to ordinary criminals as well as to the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah. The smoldering ruins of Gaza and Nablus will soon be hardly worth occupying.

Even if that analysis holds, I have many problems with the particulars.
For one, Hoagland is arguing that the breakdown of civil society in areas under the PA is a result of Israel's successful military campaign against the PA. But the idea of a civil society under the PA has always been a fiction. To quote the late Michael Kelly in "Promises but never Peace" from two years ago:

This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism. There was never any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals. There was never any real government. No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets. There were only security forces -- many, many of these -- and villas by the sea for Arafat's cronies, and millions of dollars in foreign aid that seemed to always turn up missing, and prisons and propaganda. And in the middle of it all: "President" Arafat sitting in a room -- surrounded by waiting sycophants and toadies and respectful ladies and gentlemen of the press -- and complaining.

The only thing holding Palestinian society together was a common hatred of Israel. It was a hatred incubated by the very institutions that were supposed to nurture peace, love and understanding between the PA and Israel. Arafat sat perched on top of an edifice consisting of hte PA's schools, media and government that together created an unholy alliance that demonized the Jewish state in a complete and unrelenting fashion, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the fall of the Third Reich. Once those institutions were damaged or gone the society regressed to the state of anarchy that existed just below the surface of the official Jew hatred. What Hoagland is observing is a veneer being lifted, not a changed state of existence.
Hoagland writes further:

U.S. officials have made these points repeatedly to Sharon's team in an intensive set of diplomatic contacts over the past three weeks.

The impetus for that effort came from Sharon's failure to answer this practical question: Who will be in charge in Gaza when Israel pulls out? Leaving that wretched territory to its own devices would let the religious killers of Hamas and Hezbollah give new meaning to the concept of a breeding ground for terrorism.

Except what was Gaza under the aegis of the PA? It was a breeding ground for terror. Mohammed Dahlan has been implicated in numerous terror attacks. He has hiddne Mohammed Dief from Israel. And how did Hezbollah get involved in Gaza? Was it under the watchful eyes of multiple PA security organizations? Yes. It happened under the gaze of those watchful and approving eyes.
Hoagland again:

Western diplomats have begun exploring with Egypt an important security role in Gaza if Sharon does withdraw. At a minimum, Egyptian troops would police the Gaza border to prevent arms smuggling to terrorist groups. Ideally, they would move into the territory to support dissident Fatah forces fighting Hamas and Hezbollah in a power struggle.

Over the past several months the IDF has regularly reported on Egyptian complicity (likely even active complicity) in the problem of arms smuggling into Gaza.
In fairness, I get the impression that Hoagland is, at least in part, repeating arguments he hears from American officials. Still I wish he had done a better job of explaining PM Sharon's rationale behind his unilateral withdrawal proposal - even if that's not his job. Nothing Hoagland has laid out makes the Prime Minister's plan any more appealing. And I wish he had laid out his case a bit more carefully.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Spain is occupied Territory

Although Yigal Carmon points to inconsistencies between the alleged Al-Qaeda letter taking "credit" for the massacre of over 200 commuters in Spain and other Al-Qaeda communiques, there is still reason to suspect that the perpetrators were, indeed, Muslim.
James Lileks, in his Bleat writes:

I thought at first it must be Al Qaeda, given the significance of Spain to these horrid farkwits; the whole “tragedy of Andalusia” thing figures large in their menu of grievances. You think: that was half a millennia ago. Move on. But it’s not as if they are stuck in past history. There is no such thing as history for these people. There is simply a condition that must be changed. The world must submit. The aberration of the Reconquista must be reversed. These are obvious truths. They will come to pass. If you oppose these truths, you oppose God. Look at this great hall, full of the proud and the profane, intent on their wordly lives; if only they knew their sins, they would clamor to take your place and push the button themselves.

(His comment: "There is no such thing as history for these people. There is simply a condition that must be changed." is particularly apt.)
Dr. Judith Klinghoffer makes the similar point in her blog:

By the way, its worth noting that Islamist consider Spain just as much an occupied territory as Israel since both lands were at one time under Muslim rule (i.e., Dar al Islam) and no Muslim fundamentalist can permanently relinquish such a land. The same, by the way, is true about the part of Eastern Europe once ruled by the Khalifat, i.e., the Ottoman Empire.

What's clear is that until the past is restored the way the Islamists (and the PLO) demand, there will be no peace. These groups must be defeated not humored.
The fact that 3 Moroccans were arrested certainly gives weight to the suspicion about Islamists.

Egg on my Face

Zalmy has set me straight on something. (See the last comment.)
I was under the mistaken impression that Imclone was a startup and that Sam Waksal had staked his company on Erbitux.
Actually Waksal had been making a good living. It's impossible for me to argue that he panicked.
I'm still skeptical of the role the FDA played. But I don't have sympathy for Dr. Waksal.
It just proves that if you want to write about something, you should make sure that you know what you're talking about. I didn't.

The Religion of Gender Equality

The following is an e-mail I received from Malka Young who attended a film festival at Towson State University:

Freda, I really lost my temper last night at the Towson Film Fest. The film was about a Widow in Tunisia who became a belly dancer. She apparantly was very liberated from this experience. She had a boyfriend from the belly dancing club who it turned out was also involved with her daughter. My first question after the film was
Q. Do you think this realistically portrayed life of a woman in Tunisia- could she have been so freely sexual in manner and dress in her society?
A. Yes, of course! We must break away from the stereotypes we have about women in Arab societies and look at them honestly and with open minds.
Q. But in most Arab societies women could not dress in such Western revealing outfits in the streets, and could not be so promiscuous for fear of being killed by their relatives in honor killings or by the Omams practicing Shariya Law...
A. You are coming here with stereotypes! We want to have an open mind and honest discussion. Women are elevated in Arab society and very protected....

Then a man said
A. I have been to some of those African countries including Tunisia that have islamic populations and I think that the Woman in the film could NOT have been realistic in Tunisia, possibly Tunis, yes only in Tunis, or in certain areas of very big cities, but not in the countryside.

Then I said
A. Most of the Muslim populations in these countries live in lower class conditions in rural areas and the countryside, and even in big cities women must be in the Elite to freely dress and behave as they wish. In most countries such as Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Nigeria where Islamic Fundamentalists have imposed Islamic Shariya Law and suppressed women, denying them civil and human rights, many women are routinely killed for even looking at a man...A bellydancer is not liberated she would be considered a lowly prostitute and shunned...

Then the Moderator and several Black Muslim students shout: THESE ARE STEREOTYPES!! YOU ARE COMING HERE WITH LIES! SHARIYA LAW PROTECTS WOMEN! Women are treated very well...YOU DON"T CARE OR SPEAK OF WOMEN IN AMERICA WHO ARE KILLED DAILY IN RAPES AND BY BOYFRIENDS!

Me:
Q. Of course I care about women in America- here it is ILLEGAL- There are LAWS against killing women- [She cuts me off as I am making the point that in Arab society Shariya law mandates killing these women and honor killing is accepted and men are never punished- while in America the law protects women and "Boyfriends" who kill women are arrested and jailed]

Others discuss how wonderful Arab countries are for women, and how we have to understand the context of the cultures that are different and better than ours. Women in Arab societies in which women wear veils is NOT because it is imposed, rather they lovingly embrace the veil as part of their culture. In fact, the veil was actually forced on Arab women by the ROMANS, and is not really a part of Islamic culture and is NOT mentioned anywhere in the Koran! It was forced upon Arab women by the Romans and has now been lovingly continued because it has become a part of the culture and tradition. Culture and tradition is very prescious in Arab societies and women seek to uphold these honored traditions of their own free will.

Me:
Q. What about the Nigerian black woman who was in the news for being sentenced to death for having a baby...It was the Islamic Fundamentalists who have recently imposed Shariya Law in Nigeria on the Black population there causing terrible suppression of women's rights...

The black Muslim students then angrily shouted:
A. You don't know the facts! These are stereotypes you came here with! That case was not because of Shariya Law! I know the Koran backwards and forwards! That case had nothing to do with Shariya law or Islamic Law!

Me:
A. What are you saying? Of course it did! She was sentenced to death by an Islamic judge who was implementing Shariya law!

Muslim Student:
A. That is a lie! The koran protects women! I know the facts of that case and you are lying! It had nothing to do with Islamic courts!

Moderator to me:
A. We are here to have an open mind and not discuss preconcieved false biases and stereotypes...

Me:
A. But this is a University and this is a History department we want to be HONEST and look at the facts of how women are treated...

A few Students angrily walk out saying I was sabotaging their event...

More Conversation continues:
Ruth:
Q. Do you think that the way the women in this film acted is something to be emulated and aspired to by women? Do you think that Bellydancing is a means for women to be liberated?

A. Oh YES! They were exploring their sexuality and this is very liberating to women to freely express their sexuality!!

Ruth:
Q. But that is not something women should have to resort to to be liberated...Women shouldn't aspire to that...women should have access to equal rights, education, literacy, job opportunities as a means of liberation and advancement in these societies...[Ruth is CUT OFF by the moderator]

Man next to Ruth starts to nod and starts to agree with Ruth about women not wanting to be sexual objects and starts to agree with Ruth but is cut off-

A. Sexual expression is very liberating! These women were exploring their sexuality and that is very inspiring for women!

Ruth:
Q. But in America women want and aspire to more than that for themselves and their daughters: Jobs, Careers, Respect, Education...[CUT OFF]

Moderator:
A. Women in Arab societies are much better off and have better quality of life and opportunity than in America. Arab societies treat women much better than American society. Women in America are far worse off in every way...

Ruth:
Q. [in shock] Excuse me? Women in Arab societies are better off than women in America?

Moderator:
A. Yes!! America treats women terribly! Everyday American women are killed and raped by boyfriends and angry husbands! Thousands of women are killed every day in America! Thousands! America treats women horribly! Women in America have no safety or security, they are routinely brutalized, they have no support system, and nowhere to turn! In Arab societies, women are held in higher esteem, they are protected by the village in which they live, they have a unique support system of all the villagers! If a woman is widowed, the entire village must pay a percentage of that year's harvest to support the widow. Women are venerated in Arab culture...

Ruth starts to mention the terrible abject poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, lack of women's rights in Arab society, and how women in American society have achieved tremendous gains in women's rights and have far more legal and civil rights and access to health, education and welfare support, opportunities for achieving educational and career goals, but is CUT OFF..

Conversation continues... and turns to Israel's terrible treatment of the Palestinians...and the whole session falls apart...

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The Essence of Media Bias

Remember back in November when COS Gen. Moshe Yaalon said that Israel must make conditions more bearable for the Palestinians. This is how the Washington Post reported it:

But in recent days, some of the most vocal dissent has come from one of the country's most powerful figures, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of Israel's armed forces. Frustrated that Sharon had ignored his recommendations to loosen some of the curfews and roadblocks that have paralyzed Palestinian life in the West Bank, Yaalon three weeks ago took his concerns to the Israeli news media. He suggested that government policies were creating more terrorism than they were preventing and accused Sharon's government of having done nothing substantive to support the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned in September.

At the time I expressed some reservations with Gen. Yaalon despite the fact that he's always seemed to be professional.
This week Gen. Yaalon disagreed with PM Sharon again. This is how the Washington Post covered it.

The New York Times gave just as much space to Gen. Yaalon's criticism of the PM's retreat from Gaza plan. Arutz-7, of course, wasn't shy about covering Gen. Yaalon's remarks:

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon continues to object to Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan. "Retreat under fire is no solution," he said last night. He made similar remarks the night before at the Erez Crossing, several hours after the thwarted multi-attack, noting that he cannot rule out the possibility that the current increase in terrorism is "connected with the disengagement plan."

One could read a similar acount in Maariv:

Chief-of-Staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe (Bugi) Yaalon said this morning that it is possible that the recent intensification in terror attacks against Israelis could be related to talk about an impending withdrawal from Gaza.

Even left wing Haaretz noted Gen. Yaalon's dissent:

During a visit to the Erez crossing over the weekend, to examine the scene of a foiled Palestinian attack, Ya'alon indicated that he believes Sharon's announced disengagement plan will encourage more Palestinian terror attacks. He also told a Be'er Sheva weekly that "it will take more than a division to repair the trouble created by withdrawing from one settlement under fire."

If the Chief of Staff publicly criticizing the Prime Minister is news, it's news whether his dissent is something that a reporter agrees with or not. This is as clear a case of bias as anything we've seen. This doesn't have to do with choice of words or use of adjectives. It has to do with an objective standard that was used once and then ignored.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Sympathy for Sam

I suppose not many people have it. But I have sympathy for Sam Waksal. When ImClone System's cancer drug was approved, Professor Bainbridge blogged that Dr. Waksal would be kicking himself. But I think there's another well deserved kick that should be coming (but won't). And that it should be administered to the FDA. About 27 months after the agency's (now notorious) rejection of ImClone's application for approval of Erbitux, the FDA approved the drug.
That suggests that Erbitux was already proven at the time of its rejection. (From what I've seen another successful trial was concluded in Europe in the meantime.)
Imagine, now that you're Sam Waksal. You've staked your career on a drug. Your family, who believes in you supports you and invests in you. You find out that the FDA is about to reject that drug for reasons having nothing to do with scientific merit. What do you do? Do you let your friends and relatives suffer? Or do you let them know that the FDA will reject your drug for unwarranted (to your mind) reasons? Would you lose hope and start dumping your shares too? I'm not going to defend Waksal and say that what he did was legal. It's pretty clear that he violated the law.
What I am asking is:was the reason the Erbutix application legitimate? The FDA claimed that the application was incomplete. If it was, was there some way the FDA could have softened the blow? The FDA does need to be investigated here. It must be established that the FDA was correct in rejecting ImClone's 2001 application. Since Erbutix works there's a measure of vindication here for Sam Waksal. It would suggest that he was running his company successfully and doing good research to have developed a cancer drug. But his skills, for the next seven years, will remain dormant. His skills will help no one because he's in jail. If the world will be deprived of his talent, there better be a good reason for it.

Johnny Walker and the O's

Johnny Walker, a DJ who I used to listen to during the years of my misbegotten youth died recently. The Baltimore Sun's obituary mentions several of the highlights (and lowlights) of his career. But it misses a significant one.
According to the Baseball Almanac, the Orioles' attendance attendance shot up from an average of 13,065 to an average of 21,145 per game. That's an increase of 61%. (The increase from 1991, the last year in Memorial Stadium to 1992, the first year in Camden Yards was only 40%.)
What happened? 1979 was the year that Walker's station, WFBR, acquired the broadcasting rights of Orioles games from the titan of Baltimore radio, WBAL. WBAL, to its shame, used to use Orioles games simply as programming. They did little or nothing to promote the team. But in 1979 (I believe this also the year that Edward Bennet Williams acquired the team and that Jon Miller started calling the games) WFBR started promoting the team.
Johnny Walker (and/or his staff) put together game clips interspersed with game highlights. Nothing quite like hearing a John Lowenstein or Pat Kelly highlight sandwiched into BTO's "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
I went to a game against KC in 1979. The Orioles lost (7-5 I think) but when they rallied late in the game the upper deck of Memorial Stadim shook with people stomping and clapping. That was Oriole Magic. Something in short supply in recent years.
WFBR made Orioles' games into events. It made them exciting. The popularity the Orioles experienced for the next 20 years - until the frustration of the late 90's failures and the success of the Ravens started eroding the team's support - started with 1979. (There were dips even during the next 20 years, but the attendance trended upward during that time.) Johnny Walker and WFBR deserve no small part of the credit.

Unorthodox but Welcome

The Baltimore Sun's editorial position has been consistently hostile to Israel. So it was with great surprise that I read "Unorthodox but essential" this week.

If Israeli intelligence proves correct and the millions in cash are traced to terrorist organizations, it will reinforce the importance of investigating terrorist finance networks internationally. These transactions have a global reach, often beginning in one country and ending somewhere else. The tragic events of Sept. 11 showed us that. But seizing terrorist assets requires cooperation on many fronts and by many partners, from governments to banking institutions to charitable givers. It demands diligence, a long view of what constitutes success and accurate intelligence.

Wow.
The editorial wasn't perfect. But reading these lines in the Sun was as much a surprise as a treat. I don't know when the editors took their blinders off (or how long the blinders will stay off) but I'll appreciate this editorial that supports an Israeli action and understands that it wouldn't have happened if the PA had held its end of the bargains it made with Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

France - Inside and Out

How do French Jews feel about their status in the world?
In a ""A Frenchman or a Jew?" Mary Eberstadt asks a French Muslim about antisemitism.

For Hajiba (who also insisted that her last name not be used), born in Morocco and raised in a housing project in Strasbourg, the current wave of anti-Jewish violence is best understood as the product not of old-country prejudice but of an imported fundamentalism whose arrival in France she herself witnessed. Well before the second intifada and the recent flurry of violent incidents on French soil, she said, fundamentalists transformed the way many French Muslims regarded Jews. A tall, majestic woman with huge eyes like black grapes and an air of intense drama, Hajiba described the changes that took place in her easygoing Strasbourg banlieue in the early 80's.

''After the Iranian revolution,'' she said, ''suddenly radical Islam arrived in France.'' Its growth was made possible by a legal loophole according to which foreign governments -- most notably Saudi Arabia's -- were able, through the medium of charitable foundations, to build their own mosques and appoint their own fundamentalist imams in France, a dispensation that is only just being questioned.

This newly imported Wahhabi-style Islam contained a high-octane dosage of anti-Semitism. ''Until 1980, there was no talk of 'the Jews,''' Hajiba recalled. ''In Morocco, we had Jewish neighbors, although they didn't come to our house the way Christians did.'' It was the fundamentalists who started stirring up an anti-Jewish discourse in the banlieues. Hajiba added, however, that today, both sides, Muslim and Jew, are responsible for inflaming the problem.

The current Jew hatred in France, according to this view, is imported.
Not everyone agrees. When I first saw "Betrayed by Europe: An Expatriate’s Lament" by Nidra Poller, I wasn't inclined to read the article. It was extremely moving, though, and more than a little frightening. Ms. Poller sees the antisemitism of France as being a repeat of sixty years ago.

Paris, January 14, 2004

I’m being treated to a poignant lesson in European and Jewish history. The 30’s: why did they stay? Why didn’t they run for their lives? Couldn’t they see what was happening? I see before me a vivid demonstration of the deep roots we dig to make our lives bloom, the intricate biology of a human life, irrigated with the lifeblood of a community, inextricably connected to a society, born of life to give life to keep life alive. Leaving is not packing up and tipping your hat goodbye. It is tearing live flesh out of a living matrix.

I am, or was, the first American-born generation in a family that fled Europe before World War I: a lesson in the wisdom of leaving before it is too late. Now I am the first stage in the story of a three-generation "French" family. Why don’t people just pick up and go while they still can? It’s always the same. There is an ailing grandmother, a son in medical school, a daughter who just got married, a business too good to throw away and not good enough to sell. There are in-laws and obligations and unfinished business and . . . hope. Hope that it will all blow over. That people will come to their senses, reason win out, normal life resume. And so, blinded by hope, people minimize danger and cling to an imagined stability.

Jews are being persecuted every day in France. Some are insulted, pelted with stones, spat upon; some are beaten or threatened with knives or guns. Synagogues are torched, schools burned to the ground. A little over a month ago, at least one Jew was savagely murdered, his throat slit, his face gouged with a carving knife. Did it create an uproar? No. The incident was stifled, and by common consent—not just by the authorities, but by the Jews.

(Ms. Poller's comparision of antisemitism with anti-Americanism brings to mind the recent Natan Sharansky article, originally in Commentary, but reprinted in OpinionJournal, "On Hating the Jews")
Ms. Poller's diary is excellent and well worth reading. Read it before April. (And get to the Times magazine article before Sunday.)
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The End of the PA

A recent article in the Washington Post declared: "Palestinian Authority Broke and In Disarray: Collapse Is 'Real Possibility'"

The turmoil within the Palestinian Authority is fueling concern that the agency --created almost 10 years ago to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- is disintegrating and could collapse, leaving a political and security vacuum in one of the Middle East's most volatile regions, many of those officials said.
At a time when Israel is constructing a massive barrier complex through and around the West Bank and planning for the possible withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian leaders have offered no political strategy to prevent the authority from becoming marginalized or obsolete, officials and analysts said. Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia's chief of staff, Hassan Abu Libdeh, said the collapse of the governing authority was "a real possibility" and could lead to "a lawless situation" that would play into the hands of radical Islamic groups already competing with the Palestinian Authority for power.
None of the analysts or officials interviewed said they believed a collapse was imminent, and many noted that the key players in the Middle East, including Israel, the United States, the European Union and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, have a strong interest in preventing the Palestinian Authority's demise. However, most agreed that the key issue affecting its survival is a lack of money, and they noted that even on the verge of bankruptcy, the authority has not imposed many of the reforms that frustrated donors are demanding.

Anderson and Moore have a way of making the collapse of the PA sound as if it were a bad thing. If only they'd made the necessary reforms. But that's not the point at all. The point is that the PA is a hopelessly corrupt institution.
Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh wrote in "What Happened to Reform of the Palestinian Authority?" that in addition to PA's loss of authority, there is a reform movement afoot, even if it's not very effective. Diker and Toameh don't view the PA in a favorable light at all.

According to public opinion polls, Palestinians support an end to rampant corruption and lawlessness, which they increasingly associate with Yasser Arafat. A Palestinian poll released on February 9, 2004, revealed that only 27 percent of the Palestinian public expressed "strong support" for Arafat.

According to Israeli and American assessments, Arafat has engaged in "a willing suspension of control" since 1994, following a strategy of "organized chaos" and playing security forces against one another to prevent any one group from becoming too powerful. As a result, the PA has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the public since it has left the control of Palestinian cities and towns to competing armed militants and terror groups.

Since Israel's Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002, there has been a growing chorus of criticism of Arafat by Palestinian legislators, academics, and NGO leaders.

Palestinian reformers have refrained from demanding the complete cessation of violence against Israel. Former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross noted that Palestinian reformers have not offered any concrete suggestions for tackling the problem of Palestinian terror and incitement.

According to Ramallah banker Omar Ibrahim Karsou, who has called for Arafat's ouster and the replacement of the entire PA leadership, Palestinians want first to regain normalcy in their everyday lives. That means an end to violence, full employment including the possibility of working in Israel, and the ability to travel freely throughout the territories.

But was there any real hope that the PA would have turned out differently. The late Michael Kelly, actually was in Gaza when Arafat arrived triumphantly. In "Promises but never Peace," Kelly described what he saw and what it portended:

Arafat's entry into Gaza was an object lesson: a purposely uncaring display of brute power. He arrived from the Sinai in a long caravan of Chevrolet Blazers and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, 70 or 80 cars packed to the rooflines with men with guns. The caravan roared up the thronged roads and down the mobbed streets, with the overfed, leather-jacketed, sunglassed thugs of Arafat's bodyguard detail all the time screaming and shooting off their Kalashnikovs to make their beloved people scurry out of their beloved leader's way.
This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism. There was never any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals. There was never any real government. No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets. There were only security forces -- many, many of these -- and villas by the sea for Arafat's cronies, and millions of dollars in foreign aid that seemed to always turn up missing, and prisons and propaganda. And in the middle of it all: "President" Arafat sitting in a room -- surrounded by waiting sycophants and toadies and respectful ladies and gentlemen of the press -- and complaining.

The truth is that the pathologies of Arafat's government was already well established, even before he entered Gaza. Daniel Pipes wrote "How Important is the PLO?" over 20 years ago. This paragraph summarizes the anamolies of the PLO in hte 70's and 80's nicely.

All in all, the PLO's annual budget in recent years has been estimated at about $1 billion, prompting Time to call it "probably the richest, best-financed revolutionary-terrorist organization in history." Its leaders could enjoy an unusually opulent style of life; on one occasion, three PLO directors lost $250,000 of the organization's money at the gambling tables. If Yasir 'Arafat maintained an abstemious way of life, other of the top PLO brass were notorious for high living; Zuhayr Muhsin, head of As-Sa'iqa, was assassinated while residing in a luxury hotel on the Riviera.

But there's more. A lot more and well worth reading.
The only question I have (to paraphrase a characterization that was popular 20 years ago) is whether Arafat loves fame and wealth more than he hates Israel. Did he fail to create Palestine because he couldn't stand making a deal with the Jewish state that ended the Palestinian grievance against Israel? Or did he love the money and respectability that came his way as a reward for his being a "partner in peace" and fear that actually making peace would diminish his perks? Or was it a combination?
The politicians, diplomats and journalists who excused Arafat's violence and corruption in the name of the greater good of Palestinian rights have simply been Arafat's enablers and accomplices, allowing him to amass wealth and legitimacy as thousands died. I'm glad that many seem to have come around to the knowledge that Arafat is unworthy. I'm hoping that maybe they will also see that Palestinian nationalism, as it now exists, is similarly unworthy.
I won't hold my breath.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The Angler

David Pinto of Baseball Musings graciously credited me with pointing him to a fascinating article from the New York Times about how Mike Cameron patrols centerfield. David noted the same thing that occurred to me:

As a safety on the LaGrange football team, Cameron could watch a quarterback wind up to throw and guess within about a 5-yard radius where the ball would land.

Coming up in the White Sox organization, he played alongside Michael Jordan, and tested better in almost every category. But Cameron failed to reach some flies because he was trying to watch the ball while in full stride.

Cameron has since learned to trust his football instincts. When the ball leaves the bat, he immediately estimates where it may end up. Then he puts his head down and takes full advantage of his speed. Cameron appears faster on the field than on the basepaths because, unlike many center fielders, he hardly worries about tracking the ball when it's in flight.

"I just know where it's going to be," he said. "I have developed a sense of the trajectory of the baseball. The sound of the bat can sometimes be a mirage, but the trajectory gives you an exact sense of where the ball is headed."

The article is written as if it's a primer how to field. I was surprised to read this because my own judgment is that the ability to anticipate where a fly ball will land is not common. It hardly seemed liked good advice.
Apparently, my unscientific judgment was on target. David noted:

The interesting thing is, that's not how it's done normally. There was a very interesting study done that was published in Science in 1995 showing how players follow fly balls. (I believe they attached cameras to the fielders heads.) The summary of the article is here. Cameron appears to be able to figure out this trajectory without looking, which would be a great advantage.

My own experience comes from some 20 years of Sunday morning softball pickup games. During that time I noted that there were no more than three outfielders who could judge where the ball would land right off the bat. It's amazing watching someone take 2 or 3 steps and wait.
True the skill level in our games nowhere approaches the level of major league talent.
Then there's the case of the Orioles' longtime voice Fred Manfra. Presumably his job, like that of an outfielder, is enhanced if he can judge fly balls right off the bat. Over time his skill hasn't improved. I suspect that the skill is not easy to learn and possibly has an innate element to it.
The research that David mentioned, confirms my feeling.