Soccer Dad

Anti-terror success

Last week Elder of Ziyon celebrated A great anniversary. It was the retirement, by hellfire missile of Sheih Yassin three years ago. After noting a number of critics of the Israeli action, Elder of Ziyon observes:

In the three years prior to Yassin's death, approximately 800 Israelis were killed in terror actions. In the three years since, that number has plummeted to about 110.

At the time there weren't just the political and diplomatic types saying that the killing was unjustified, there were a number of "experts" who proclaimed with great seriousness that the killing of Yassin would encourage more violence. I wrote at the time that they were getting it backwards. When the early results of killing Yassin (and his successor Dr. Rantisi) showed a lessening of terror, I offered myself as an expert.

The mistake that the "experts" make in terms of counterinsurgency is that they assume that there is only a motivation that causes terror. They consider neither means nor opportunity. When Israel killed those who had special organizational (and motivational) skills Hamas couldn't operate with the same effectiveness as it had before.

(The surge in terror against Israel in early 1996 shouldn't have been a surpise. Israel had just ceded 6 cities to the PA and, in doing so, had outsourced their security to Arafat who had no interest in doing the job. Hamas wasn't so much trying to "kill the peace process" as the platitude at the time held, it was taking advantage of a new opportunity - an ability to organize and deploy without hinderance from the IDF.)

Blogdigger tags: Sheikh Yassin, Terror, War on Terror, Israel, Hamas.

Fit for lebron

Fit for a king

LeBron James' 35,440-square-foot house under construction in nearby Bath Township is shaping up as a castle fit for a king -- with a theater, bowling alley, casino and barber shop.

Sounds like it has all the comforts of ... a shopping mall. And then some.

But then he is a king.

h/t Jack's Shack.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

NBA, Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James, Mansion.

Why and where we fight

In Which is the Real War? (and here) Charles Krauthammer critiques the war on terror's critics who claim to be mostly interested in the Afghanistan instead of Iraq,

The Democratic insistence on the primacy of Afghanistan makes no strategic sense. Instead, it reflects a sensibility. They would rather support the Afghan War because its origins are cleaner, the casus belli clearer, the moral texture of the enterprise more comfortable. Afghanistan is a war of righteous revenge and restitution, law enforcement on the grandest of scales. As senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden put it, "If there was a totally just war since World War II, it is the war in Afghanistan.''

Al-Qaeda has provided the answer many times. Osama bin Laden, the one whose presence in Afghanistan presumably makes it the central front in the war on terror, has been explicit that "the most serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq." Al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has declared that Iraq "is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.''

UPDATE: (via memeorandum) Red State writes

Not only will Afghanistan take infinitely longer to stabilize and develop it is really unclear what a stable and developed Afghanistan, in isolation, buys us in any meaningful geostrategic sense. Iraq, on the other hand, is a keystone in this war.

QandO observes

Why, pray tell, is the war in Afghanistan the "real" war on terror, and does or doesn't Speaker Pelosi understand that in the big scheme of things, Afghanistan is really only one battle in that war?

It's statements like that which make me doubt that Pelosi has an understanding of what the GWoT entails. And the actions of Democrats recently as it pertains to Iraq and funding that war make me doubt their understanding of the stakes even more.

Also commenting The Moderate Voice and Gateway Pundit

Blogdigger tags: War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Council speak 03/30/2007

The council has spoken. This week's Watcher's Council winner was Eternity Road's Demographics and the Medicalization of Human Existence a reflection on how vanity leads to poor social choices. The winning non-council post was (unsurprisingly) Michael Yon's Tabula Rasa about what motivated him to become an embed. There are some graphic pictures of death so this isn't for everyone, but the writing is amazing.

There were lots of pairs in this vote. Along with the winning post, Bookworm Room's excellent the Scary Nihilism of the Left was about the ideologies that threaten our culture. Second and third place among council members were Rhymes with Right's and Colossus of Rhodey's essays about the legal limits of the freedom of speech students.

Tied for third place was JoshuaPundit's 3 Card Monte, which, like my submission was about the throwing of good money after bad otherwise known as the "peace process."

Finally as we welcomed our new council member Cheat Seeking Missiles with his timely meditation on possible conflicts of interest Speaker Pelosi might encounter while pursuing her political agenda, Nan Fran's Cool Investments. Given Sen Feinstein's recent resignation, the posting could even have been considered prescient. Similarly, recently retired council member Sundries Shack first non-council entry has been rendered even more relevant by the treatment of the British sailors by Iran.

Blogdigger tags: Watcher's Council.

If ... you must 03/30/2007

If you haven't read Aidel Maidel's A plate is broken; you must.
And of course, wish her Mazel Tov.

If you haven't seen Falling Rainbow at Not Quite Perfect ; you must.
Incredible!

If you haven't read Skywalkers aren't just in Star Wars at Suitable for Mixed company; you must.

If you haven't read Dr. Helen's Women, Anger and the Web; you must.
There's a reason for the fury.

If you haven't read The Hedgehog Report's Better Tuition rates for illegal immigrants; you must.
Why should someone with no American citizenship claim a privilege that an American citizen doesn't automatically qualify for? Worse than the bill is the hyperbole that surrounded its passage. From the Washington Post's Maryland Moment Blog

The comments infuriated many Democrats, who rose in their seats to speak for the bill. The most eloquent was Melvin L. Stukes, a Democrat from Baltimore, who spoke with the voice and fervor of a preacher. He compared opposition to undocumented students to the view of slaves that existed in the 1700s: As less than human.

If you haven't read From Riyadh with love at Media Backspin; you must.
Despite originally barring an Israeli reporter, under pressure from Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Saudi Arabia reversed course.

If you haven't read Israel Matzav's Saudis threaten war and try to limit Jewish Immigration ; you must.
If you haven't read Arab league unanimous at Boker Tov Boulder; you must.
Despite the promise, the Arab League doesn't change.

If you haven't read Arab Boycott 1994 at Dry Bones Blog; you must.
There's alway a reason that the Arab world is justified in shunning Israel.

If you haven't read 13 post-graduate female students seeking temporary husbands at JudeoPundit; you must.
For women it's called mesfar. For men it's called muta.

If you haven't read Jules Crittenden's Saudi “King” Thinks “Illegal” US Occupation of Iraq Should End; you must.
Jules writes,

that’s funny, I was just thinking the same thing about the occupation of Arabia for the past 100 years by a tribe of backward thugs.

If you haven't read Elder of Ziyon's Pride, Iran and the British prisoners; you must.
What a difference a year makes.

If you haven't read Meryl Yourish's That's not nice chaps; you must.
We'd really like it if you'd tone down that antisemitism, good fellow.

If you haven't read Deja Vu's the Race for Arctic Resources; you must.
Canada and Denmark - on a collision course?

If you haven't read Maryland Weather Blog's Weird Hexagon on Saturn ; you must.
No. It's not this. But as long as we're considering incredible pictures from the Cassini check out this cold hearted orb that revolves around Saturn.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Temporary Marriages, British Soldiers, English Antisemitism, Cassini Spacecraft, Saturn, Fractal Art, In State Tuition Rates for Illegal Immigrants in Maryland

The missing conventions

Iran Shows Video of Britons as Dispute Heats Up

The dispute with Iran over Britain’s captured sailors escalated sharply on Wednesday when Britain froze all “bilateral business” with Iran, and the Iranians displayed some British prisoners on state television — an act condemned by the Foreign Office here as “completely unacceptable.”

What's missing from the above paragraph?

Do you remember the controversy over the American showing of Iraqi prisoners of war four years ago? In some circumstance displaying captured prisoners can be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. I haven't seen the video of the British sailors but shouldn't the possible violation of the Geneva Conventions be mentioned and not just the objection of the British Foreign Office? Or are the Geneva Conventions only

"...apply to individuals bent on destroying America. Individuals who blow up elementary schools, kidnap children, attack churches and mosques, kill invalids in wheelchairs, plan attacks on skyscrapers in New York, behead journalists, detonate car bombs with children to camouflage their crime, or board jetliners with explosive shoes"

Blogdigger tags: Geneva Conventions, Iran, British Sailors, Media Bias.

If ... you must 03/29/2007

If you haven't read Only Jew in the Village by Toshav Chozer; you must.
I found this absolutely chilling. One would think that in this day and age that a Jew in free country needn't go underground.

If you haven't read YidWithLid's Saudi refugee compromise in the works; you must.
I thought that YidWithLid was giving the Saudis too much credit. After I commented, he sent me a link to a followup post. According to YidWithLid - and backed up by documentation - the Saudis are not inflexible on the right to return for Palestinians. I still have little trust that they are trying anything more than a PR ploy, even if they're demonstrating flexibility here.

If you haven't read Seraphic Secret's UN Human Rights Nightmare; you must.

If you haven't read Solomonia's Sliding towards Somalia; you must.
This is of course nothing new. The only question is why anyone expected anything else?

If you haven't seen Lakewood Venter's Pre Pesach Perfect Picture Post; you must.
I actually think that the first one has made the rounds before. It's still amusing. Sort of like Glatt Kosher Cheese Steaks.

If you haven't read JudeoPundit's Magen David forms in Oatmeal ; you must.
It's gotta be a pre-pesach picture. Oatmeal's Chametz! And pot apparently is kitniyos.

If you haven't read Lebron's Castle at Jack's Shack; you must.
He asks an important question. Maybe the answer is that Lebron wants to host Gilbert Arenas!

If you haven't read We don't know where Pikesville is at CrabLaw; you must.
If you're looking to excuse the Sun, you could argue that from the Beltway to Allenswood road residences have the 655 and 922 Randallstown exchanges but are still serviced by the Pikesville post office. That doesn't explain calling Liberty Road Pikesville, but it might be the source of the confusion.

If you haven't read The beam in the Washington Post's Eye at LGF; you must.
LGF tweaks Howard Kurtz's holier than thou attitude.

If you haven't read Jewish Music Review: Gershon Veroba: Reach Out by Jewish Blogmeister; you must.
In addition to Gershon Veroba, other musicians to come out of TA in Baltimore - my high school - include Etan G and Dean Friedman.

If you haven't the video of Passover 1947 at Thoughts by Seawitch ; you must.
The work of the Joint Distribution Committee as shown in the video is amazing.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Washington Post, UN, LeBron James, Gershon Veroba, Joint Distribution Committee, Pikesville, Saudi Plan, Right of Return, Jewish World.

Graceless, yes. But antisemitic?

I saw the headline CBA coach Richardson suspended for remarks and wondered what happened.

"I've got big-time lawyers," Richardson said, according to the Times Union. "I've got big-time Jew lawyers."

When told by the reporters that the comment could be offensive to people because it plays to the stereotype that Jews are crafty and shrewd, he responded with, "Are you kidding me? They are. They've got the best security system in the world. Have you ever been to an airport in Tel Aviv? They're real crafty. Listen, they are hated all over the world, so they've got to be crafty."

And he continued, "They got a lot of power in this world, you know what I mean?" he said. "Which I think is great. I don't think there's nothing wrong with it. If you look in most professional sports, they're run by Jewish people. If you look at a lot of most successful corporations and stuff, more businesses, they're run by Jewish. It's not a knock, but they are some crafty people."

If he left off the last part I would have had less of a problem with the statements. The earlier statements were certainly graceless, but I don't see them as being antisemitic. He didn't say "people hate Jews because they're crafty" but the other way around. Plus using "Jew" as an adjective is often done in antisemitic rants. While "Jews are crafty" is certainly a stereotype is it necessarily bigotry?

And even the last part when he says that Jews own corporations. He seems to be saying it admiringly. It's a bit awkward for sure. But is it antisemitism? Al Sharpton's said a lot worse and hasn't paid a political price. I don't see why Michael Ray Richardson should be paying a professional price for his statements.

UPDATE: (h/t YidWithLid) On the other hand the ADL thought the suspension was appropriate. I stand by what I wrote before, Richardson's remarks were more careless than malicious. We are not talking about Sharpton or Walt/Mearsheimer territory.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

Blogdigger tags: CBA, Michael Ray Richardson, Antisemitism.

Sewage question

From the Washington Post.

The Palestinian Authority has since been hampered financially after most foreign donors cut off aid to the government following the January 2006 election of Hamas, an armed Islamic movement. Roads, power plants and waterworks across the 140-square-mile strip are deteriorating rapidly. Many are already in tatters.

Given that we now know that someone who was buying the pipes for the PA was instead giving them to the folks making the Qassams, doesn't that justify this decision? At what point do the actions of Palestinians justify the decision - mostly observed in the breach - to cut off their funding? When will any government finally say, "Enough?"

Just asking.

Sewage treatment rant

Sewage Flood Kills 4 In Gaza
Cesspool Rupture Underscores State Of Public Works

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 28, 2007; Page A10

The Palestinian Authority has since been hampered financially after most foreign donors cut off aid to the government following the January 2006 election of Hamas, an armed Islamic movement. Roads, power plants and waterworks across the 140-square-mile strip are deteriorating rapidly. Many are already in tatters.

While the Washington Post reports that a report about Gaza's infrastructure is two years old, the blame for this is limited to the single paragraph pointing to the cutoff in aid to the PA as the culprit for the sewage spill. (Never mind that more money reached the PA in 2006 than in 2005.)

The New York Times didn't have its own report but carried an AP report that gives a bit more information.

A 2004 United Nations report warned that the sewage plant was at maximum capacity and that flooding was inevitable unless a new waste treatment plant was built. It said the effluent lake was a breeding ground for mosquitoes and waterborne diseases, posing a serious health hazard.

Efforts to build a new waste treatment plant were repeatedly hampered by fighting between Israel and the Palestinians. Stuart Shepherd, of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that since the report was published, international money for a new plant had been secured but construction could not proceed because the area was too dangerous.

Umm Naser is about 300 yards from the border with Israel in an area where Palestinians have frequently launched rockets into Israel, and Israeli artillery and aircraft have fired back.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, blamed the international sanctions imposed on the Palestinians after the Hamas victory in elections in January 2006 for the condition of the infrastructure in Gaza. But Mr. Shepherd said the Umm Naser project had not been affected by the boycott.

That's interesting. The boycott didn't affect this humanitarian project. Did anyone tell Scott Wilson?

Reuters places all the blame on Israel.

Local authorities have scant resources. Since the Islamic militant group Hamas came to power a year ago, Western donors have halted direct assistance to the Palestinian government and Israel has frozen most tax revenues.

Hamas said the cut-off in international aid "prevented the government from improving and developing the necessary health and humanitarian services."

An internal World Bank document, obtained by Reuters, said the plant and reservoir were built on high ground, putting the "surrounding area under an imminent threat of possible flooding."

The governor of north Gaza, Ismail Abu Shammala, said the problems started 15 to 20 years ago while Gaza was under direct Israeli occupation.

He said Israeli military operations since the pullout in 2005 and internal Palestinian violence over the last year made it harder to make improvements.

Simply Jews tells us to connect the dots

A brief google shows that complaints about the lack of sewage processing are dated way before the last elections in Palestinian territories that brought about the cutting of foreign aid. No, the problem was known and clear to all. It is just that the powers that be in Gaza could not care less about the well-being of their subjects, when the first and foremost action item on their agenda is to get more and more arms to kill the hated Jooz.

And thus there is a line of business burgeoning in Gaza that has a direct impact on the issue of sewage treatment: the rocket science. You see, to build one Qassam rocket you must have about 2m of pipe. Multiply 1000 (which is roughly the number of Qassams launched on Israel) by 2m and you shall see how the dots connect. Clearly the iron will of the terrorists makes the sewage treatment even more of a pipe dream.

Elder of Zion linked to an article showing that the choice of pipes or missiles was not figurative, but literal.

On February 9, the Shin Bet arrested Amar Zak, 37, at the Erez Crossing. During his interrogation, Zak confessed to purchasing metal pipes from Israeli companies and then selling them to Hamas and other terror groups for the manufacture of Kassam rockets, fired almost daily at Israel. In 2006, 1,700 rockets were fired at Israel.

The pipes that were sold to Zak were intended for civilian use, and specifically for the construction of a sewage system in the Gaza Strip.

The Shin Bet arrested Zak after it received numerous reports in 2006 according to which hollow pipes made in Israel were being used in Gaza to manufacture Kassam rockets as well as shoulder-launched missiles.

Cox And Forkum showed the tradeoff in Cesspool. Dry Bones Blog has an appropriate cartoon too.

In Gee, this is predictable, Daled Amos has the succinct version of events. More comments at Israelly Cool! and Dr. Sanity.

UPDATE: Another relevant post (h/t Carnival of the Insanities) at the Business of America is Business who concludes

The last half of the last sentence holds the key for the Hamas government on this issue and maybe others : "make changes when the agencies... come up short" or you may come up short in your next performance review, i.e. election. Clearly, many of your constituents have a keen eye for BS and are in no mood to put up with it.

I don't know if I agree with the conclusion. Hamas was lionized by a media proclaiming them to be the party of good or effective government. Now that that's been demonstrated false, they'll go back to the old but effective "let's destroy Israel mode."

Blogdigger tags: Gaza, Sewage, Media Bias, Israel, Hamas.

If ... you must 03/28/2007

If you haven't read Do they teach math in J-School at NRO's Media Blog ; you must.

If you haven't read Two young women want washing at Futility Closet; you must.
Sound a lot like Anguished English.

If you haven't read Henry Blake doesn't make it home at I remember JFK; you must.
I agree with this sentiment:

The show definitely took a different turn at that point. It remained a ratings giant as its plots began turning towards a strong antiwar sentiment. An air of self-righteousness began to form, particularly with Alda's Hawkeye character. While the numbers remained strong, this fan found himself longing for the days when comedy was the show's king.

If you haven't read Robert Steps out at Seraphic Secret; you must.
I used to love Lechter's for the variety of wares he describes. Can't find a manual can opener? Try the grocery store instead of a specialty store. But they are much better than the mechanical kind.

If you haven't read What Israel needs: Good Bloggers and Humor at Israelly Cool! ; you must.
That's coming from a good blogger who has a sense of humor.

If you haven't read The Spine's Tensions with Iran; you must.
We wouldn't have had the Ayatollah without American interference in Iran. We'd better not confront them now.

As always, if you'd like to suggest a specific post for consideration in If you must, e-mail a link at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com and If you must in the subject line.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Anguished English, Shopping, Manual Can Openers, Israeli Hasbara, Iran, MASH, The Death of Col. Blake.

Poor old saudi peace plan

Secretary of State Rice is curently making a push for diplomacy in the Middle East. In order to support this effort she's enlisthed the help of the Arab League, which will be meeting in Riyadh this week. The Arab League is expected to roll out the so called Saudi Peace Plan, around which the summit revolved in 2002 when it met in Syrian occupied Beirut.

In short the plan calls for recognition of Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal from all territories it captured in 1967. PM Olmert has expressed qualified support for the Saudi plan. (One of the obvious sticking points of the plan is not just areas of Judea and Samaria that are settled, but even Jerusalem where neighborhoods such as Ramat Eshkol, Gilo and Ramot would apparently have to be ceded according the Saudi plan.)

Israel's hesitations were not being met with a lot of understanding from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia criticised Israel on Tuesday for setting preconditions to Middle East peace talks and urged it to accept an Arab initiative first proposed in 2002 and discuss details later.

"We only hear of conditions from Israel about everything, but no acceptance. You cannot have negotiations like that, you accept the proposals then you talk about this," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said.

"This seems a ludicrous way of doing business," he said at a news conference with visiting European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

A 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut adopted a Saudi initiative offering Israel normal ties with Arab countries in return for full withdrawal from land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

One could argue that Faisal is being principled. But there are details of the plan, and its creation that aren't usually cited. Understanding these details makes the plan - a creation of then Saudi Crown Prince and now King, Abdullah, and NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

In February 2002, the American view of Saudi Arabia was not very positive. 15 of the 19 terrorist who perpetrated 9/11 were Saudi nationals and it looked more and more as if the United States was spoiling for war with Iraq. The plan seemed to be a way to solve both problems at once.

Saudi Arabia could look like a peace maker and the Sunnis could continue dominating the Shi'a of Iraq.

Friedman was not bashful in providing the PR to Abdullah. In his now famous column he wrote:

I am currently in Saudi Arabia on a visit — part of the Saudi opening to try to explain themselves better to the world in light of the fact that 15 Saudis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. So I took the opportunity of a dinner with Saudi Arabia's crown prince, and de facto ruler, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, to try out the idea of this Arab League proposal. I knew that Jordan, Morocco and some key Arab League officials had been talking about this idea in private but had not dared to broach it publicly until one of the "big boys" — Saudi Arabia or Egypt — took the lead.

After I laid out this idea, the crown prince looked at me with mock astonishment and said, "Have you broken into my desk?"

"No," I said, wondering what he was talking about.

"The reason I ask is that this is exactly the idea I had in mind — full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations," he said. "I have drafted a speech along those lines. My thinking was to deliver it before the Arab summit and try to mobilize the entire Arab world behind it. The speech is written, and it is in my desk. But I changed my mind about delivering it when Sharon took the violence, and the oppression, to an unprecedented level.

"But I tell you," the crown prince added, "if I were to pick up the phone now and ask someone to read you the speech, you will find it virtually identical to what you are talking about. I wanted to find a way to make clear to the Israeli people that the Arabs don't reject or despise them. But the Arab people do reject what their leadership is now doing to the Palestinians, which is inhumane and oppressive. And I thought of this as a possible signal to the Israeli people."

Well, I said, I'm glad to know that Saudi Arabia was thinking along these lines, but so many times in the past we've heard from Arab leaders that they had just been about to do this or that but that Ariel Sharon or some other Israeli leader had gotten in the way. After a while, it's hard to take seriously. So I asked, What if Mr. Sharon and the Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire before the Arab summit?

"Let me say to you that the speech is written, and it is still in my drawer," the crown prince said.

Abdullah's all too convenient "it's in my drawer" never convinced me. But apparently it convinced the always skeptical Friedman.

I pass all of this on as straightforwardly as I can, without hype or unrealistic hopes. What was intriguing to me about the crown prince's remarks was not just his ideas — which, if delivered, would be quite an advance on anything the Arab League has proposed before — but the fact that they came up in the middle of a long, off-the-record conversation. I suggested to the crown Prince that if he felt so strongly about this idea, even in draft form, why not put it on the record — only then would anyone take it seriously. He said he would think about it. The next day his office called, reviewed the crown prince's quotations and said, Go ahead, put them on the record. So here they are.

Abdullah apparently got what he wanted - a remade image - and Friedman was well on his way to his third Pullitzer and put Israel on the diplomatic defensive.

But as they say, the devil is in the details.

The problem with the peace proposal is that it is very specific about what it requires of Israel,

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

but it remains nebulous about what the Arab world offers in return for those very real concessions.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

What happened next is interesting the idea didn't really take off right away. Friedman brought up this breakthrough in another column or two and the NY Times reported on its significance.

In the meantime Abdullah toured the Arab world in support of his plan. When he reached Syria he ran into trouble. Bashar Assad found the original meager concessions toward Israel too much and it didn't explicitly mention the return of the Golan to Syria.

Initially, the proposal garnered little attention in the Arab world. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was decidedly unenthusiastic about it, proposing instead that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Arafat come to Egypt to iron out their differences. In the weeks that followed, however, the proposal steadily gained American and European backing, leading Arab-League Secretary General Amr Moussa to endorse the initiative.

The proposal outraged the Syrians for several reasons. First, although Syrian relations with the kingdom have been close over the last decade, Abdullah did not consult or even inform Damascus about the proposal beforehand. Indeed, the Saudis may have chosen the unusual, indirect manner in which the proposal was released so as to avoid prior coordination with Syria. Second, Abdullah did not specifically mention the Golan Heights. The fact that Jerusalem was mentioned, while Syrian territorial claims were not, implicitly gave priority to the Palestinian track of the peace process.

The most far-reaching of Syria's objections to the proposal, however, concerned Abdullah's promise of "full normalization" of relations with Israel, which implied that peace would entail more than just a formal end to Syria's state of war with the Jewish state - Damascus would be expected to sever its ties to anti-Israeli extremist groups, end its boycott of companies trading with Israel, open trade barriers, and perhaps even permit Israeli tourists to visit. Whereas a cold, tense (and hence easily discarded) peace would be acceptable in return for every inch of the Golan Heights, a warm peace would lead dissidents in Syria to press harder for an end to the state of emergency, censorship and other authoritarian practices justified by the regime for national security purposes.

Syria has long refused to accept any association between the concept of normalization and its intermittent negotiations with Israel, despite considerable prodding from Israeli and American officials. During the latest round of talks in Sheperdstown, Virginia in January 2000, Syrian delegates even insisted that one of the four technical committees established to carry on different aspects of the talks be called the Committee on Normal Peaceful Relations, rather than the Committee on Normalization, as the Israelis had requested. Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara refused persistent American requests that he have a private face-to-face meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

But the biggest hurdle that Assad threw into the "peace" plan was his insistence that Israel withdraw from occupied Lebanese territory. Since the UN had endorsed the Israeli withdrawal two years earlier, the Security Council, surprisingly didn't endorse the Saudi proposal after the Arab summit. (It should be noted that the area in question is considered Syrian territory whose disposition should be decided by negotiations between Israel and Syria. Syria the overlord of Lebanon actually ceded Shebaa farms to Lebanon in order to maintain a justification for further Hezbollah activity against Israel.)

The very fact that Abdullah allowed Syria to dictate this, is a sign of his unseriousness. If a Israeli retreat can be declared by the Arabs to be null and void what other future concessions will be declared, post facto insufficient? Surely Friedman knew this and yet didn't raise a protest over the Syrian demand and Saudi capitulation. Nope, he had his "peace" initiative and he wasn't going to spoil the fun.

Because of their promotion of this plan, the Saudis are being characterized as champions of the Palestinians. But Elder of Ziyon points out that there's a limit to their enthusiasm.

So the Kingdom has no problem disenfranchising a half-million Palestinian Arabs, most of whom would undoubtedly be happy to become citizens of Saudi Arabia, to "avoid dissolution of their identity."

If Palestinian Arabs have such a strong identity, why would they need the Arab League to protect it by punishing millions of them, leaving them stateless?

This is no accident as the plan also calls for

4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries

Explicitly, then, this plan that champions the Palestinians also disenfranchises them, except in "Palestine."

And then there's the matter of the "full withdrawal" for "full recognition." Might it not be considered appropriate for the Saudis to offer some "confidence building measures" to show that Israel that it's serious? (Those "confidence building measures" are often asked of the Israelis, but entail risks, such as removing roadblocks where they might intercept terrorists. The Saudis would undertake no such risks.) But even now the Saudis barred an Israeli journalist in the entrouage of Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon from entering. Israel Matzav comments:

Even the Syrians weren't this bad. In 1995, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher traveled from Jerusalem to Damascus. One of the reporters who accompanied him was David Makovsky, then of the Jerusalem Post, traveling on an American passport. Or perhaps, the Syrians were just as bad but Warren Christopher was more willing to stand up for an (American) Jew than was Ban-Ki Moon.

Is Israel really so bad that a country that still beheads people following show trials would be tainted if an Israeli entered? The Saudi non-recognition of Israel is not diplomatic, it's pathological.

Finally there's the matter of assuming that Saudis and the Arab League are sincere, is there any chance that it would work? As Charles Krauthammer wrote five years ago:

That a phantom, undelivered speech--never seen, never published, never even sketched out--should earn the title of "plan" is a measure of the West's incorrigible Charlie Brown gullibility whenever an Arab leader merely breathes the word "peace." That some Israeli leaders have expressed interest in such smoke and mirrors is a measure of Israel's demoralization, its grasping-at-straws desperation in the face of unrelenting terrorism.

Daled Amos refers to Andrew McCarthy who wrote:

In what sense is Abbas a moderate? Abbas, successor of Yasser Arafat, is the head of Fatah. As I noted here a few weeks back, the Fatah constitution still calls for the “eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence[,]” through an “armed revolution” which is to be the “decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence” — a revolution that “will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.”

How does the Times, or, for that matter, our government, ever expect to see the emergence of authentic moderates if it continues to wrap the mantle of "moderate" around those who are anything but?

That is, the biggest obstacle to Middle East peace isn't the lack of support for a cynical plan in the Arab world. It's the failure of the Palestinians (and the rest of the Arab world) to come to terms with Israel's existence. As long as the West tolerates the intolerance of the Arab world these plans will continue coming to grief.

UPDATE: More at SerAndEz.Cublicle King and Meryl Yourish. Why is it that when the Saudis make unconditional demands on Israel it's considered a peace plan and not an ultimatum?

Blogdigger tags: Saudi Peace Plan, Thomas Friedman, King Abdullah.

If ... you must 03/27/2007

If you haven't read UPDATE: Mum Again at Sarah's View; you must.
And if you can include a mention of Gitel Chava bas Pesia in your prayers.

If you haven't read Iran takes a lesson from Hamas and Hizbollah at Daled Amos; you must.
One of the frustrating aspects of the past 14 years is the commonly held (false) assumption that Israel is somehow responsible for Palestinian terror by building settlements or occupying land. Little or no attention is paid to the fact that when Israel ceded terrirtory - be they individual towns or the full Gaza strip - the terrorists were strengthened. Terrorists are rational. If they can keep the level of violence on simmer and suffer no ill effects then they'll keep the violence going. If they are rewarded for it, they'll certainly continue. Now Daled Amos argues that what works for terrorists, works for rogue states. Along these lines also see Carter's Legacy at Jules Crittenden.

If you haven't read White Pebble's Warblers and spring; you must.

If you haven't read Bunny Rabbits at the Dry Bones Blog; you must.

If you haven't read Futility Closet's A new mode of revenge; you must.
If you haven't read JoshuaPundit Move ya big baboon; you must.

No need to encourage these baboons. They're making themselves quite at home with no prompting.

If you haven't read AbbaGav's Don't club baby seals, club baby polar bears; you must.
We must destroy wildlife to save it.

If you haven't read Boker Tov Boulder's Got Mail; you must.
As she continues to confront the trolls.

If you haven't read Gaza Withdrawal filmed at Jewish Current Issues; you must.

If you haven't read the real scandal at the LA Times at Don Surber; you must.
Two words: media arrogance.

If you haven't read Likelihood of Success's Life still unfair; you must.
Two more words: Clinton arrogance.

If you haven't read Clean oops at Simply Jews; you must.

If you haven't read Jules Crittenden's March 26, 2003; you must.

If you haven't read SoxBlog's thoughts on John and Elizabeth Edwards; you must.
h/t Instapundit. And Best of the Web Today.

If you haven't read Monoblogue's Time to quit playing ; you must.
The hedgehog report's Cracking the code is a shorter version of this.

If you haven't read The Hedgehog Report's Who really needs clean dishes; you must.
Read up how the no account Maryland legislature is out to show that green need not be clean to the detriment of state residents.

If you haven't read O Believers at Done with Mirrors; you must.
Do we prefer flawed heroes or flawless mediocrity? Do we have a choice?

As always, if you'd like to suggest a specific post for consideration in If you must, e-mail a link at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If You Must, Maryland, General Assembly, Israel, Iraq, Charlie Parker, John and Elizabeth Edwards.

Juggling carnivals 03/26/2007

Incoming Carnivals

I have posts featured in three recent carnivals.

Dr Sanity included my post about Bill Bennett's unusual past in the latest Carnival of the Insanities. More information here.

Life of Rubin hosted the 4th edition of J-Pix the Jewish photography carnival. To participate in future editions go here. J-Pix is the brainchild of Mr. Bagel.

Most recently, I have a post in the 3rd edition of the Carnival of Maryland at Greenbelt. To check out past and future editions go here. Crablaw is the founder of the carnival of Maryland.

Please check these carnivals out and read the many wonderful links in each.

Other stuff

Though Me-Ander says let's carnival and not compete, I'm still looking forward to the JIB's. However I'd like to pronounce on some of my favorite blog posts or ideas of 2006.

Of Wallets and Wonders at Elie's Expositions. A haunting Pesach story that tells of Aaron's final Mitzvah. (Also appeared in Where, What and When as Not By Chance.)

West Bank Mama's On Holocaust Remembrance Day, M16's, and a New Respect for Veterans was a wonderfully reflective essay on learning to use a gun and what it meant.

It's almost supernatural uses first hand sources to demonstratre that Old Canards Die hard when it comes to assigning blame for the so-called Aqsa intifada.

Meryl Yourish's best might be her takedown of Ismail Haniyeh's op-ed in the Washington Post. It had the added quality of picking up an important point that was revealed later: Haniyeh had American help ghost-writing his op-ed.

For something a lot less serious I'd recommend AbbaGav's classic Family Feud. Fractured game shows are one of AbbaGav's passions, but I don't think he did any better than this one.

In honor of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Daled Amos started an Israel Meme, that led to a number of really fantastic posts. Though Daled Amos rounds them up here a number stand out for special notice:
SerAndEz's "On a hitch and a prayer"
Perspectives of a Nomad had wonderful reflections on Har HaGilboa.
Ocean Guy remembers seeing Israel from a helicopter.
I'm Ha'aretz PhD reflected on the capture of the Kotel.

What Daled Amos demonstrated is that initiative to get a number of bloggers involved need not be organized but can be inspired by a single dogged (or is that Daled?) blogger.

Speaking of initiatives Mere Rhetoric (aside from his generally excellent blogging) created a custom J-blogosphere search engine that allows you to search through the combined wisdom of some of the leading lights of the J-Blogosphere. It's a very handy tool for getting political information about Israel.

Finally, what was my own favorite post from last year? The way back maching and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If anyone has their favorite 5 or 10 blogs from last year, list them and e-mail me a link at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com, or leave a link to it in the comments. That way we can have our own little "Best of ... " without competition.

Blogdigger tags: Blog Carnivals, Blog Competitions, Photography, Insanities, Maryland, Best of 2006.

The ship formerly known as the president warfield

The Baltimore Sun tells what became of the ship once known as the President Warfield

A Baltimore liquor distributor on Hanover Street named Mose Speert and a group of businessmen and Zionist leaders met in New York in July 1945 to discuss what to do about the fate of Europe's displaced Jews. The group played a pivotal role in buying and outfitting the Warfield so that it could carry Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine - despite a British blockade against Jewish immigration. In October 1946, the Warfield was sold for $40,000 to the Weston Trading Corp., a front for Haganah, an underground Jewish military organization.

Idle in Baltimore Harbor, the ship had to essentially be rebuilt to accommodate 4,500 passengers. A Baltimore doctor, Herman Seidel, helped stock the ship, which was equipped with an operating and delivery room. Hundreds of bunks were added. To camouflage its illegal trip, the Warfield would depart Pier 5 in Canton under Panamanian registry and with a reported destination of China. Still, rumors swirled around the "rusty excursion boat."

A dock observer "surmised that the owners had other plans when he noted the supply of life preservers and mess kits on board and the appearance of the crew (all Jewish, except the captain)," wrote Robert Burgess and Graham Wood in their 1968 book, Steamboats Out of Baltimore.

After an abortive attempt to cross the Atlantic the President Warfield took on the identity that would make it famous

Finally in July, the repaired Warfield made its trans-Atlantic crossing and boarded passengers in France. To conceal its identity, the ship was now renamed Exodus 1947. The Old Testament book of Exodus describes the flight of Israelites from Egypt. The ship's new name did not fool the British. The Exodus was soon tailed by British destroyers. But the refugees were undaunted and upbeat.

"They were going to their new homeland. These were idealistic people," Siegel says. "We were the Phoenix rising from the dead and coming into a new life."

Even then the world seemed indifferent to the plight of the Jews.

As the ship headed toward Tel Aviv in international waters, the British rammed and then boarded the Exodus. Crew and passengers fought back with fists, cans of food and even potatoes. A crewmember and two passengers were killed in the skirmish. After overpowering the ship, the British then transferred the refugees onto three navy transports headed back to Europe. The mood of the concentration camp survivors became defiant, Siegel recalls.

The reaction to the forced return of the passengers to Europe and the displaced persons camps helped change international opinion in favor of creating the modern state of Israel.

The impetus for the article is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's search for survivors of the Exodus. The Washington Post has more on the museum's Exodus project. Here are the museum's photo gallery of the Exodus and the museum's brief history of the Exodus.

Blogdigger tags: Exodus 1947, President Warfield, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Displaced Persons.

Palestinian police photo phunnies plus plus

One of the things Yahoo! photos are good for are showing us the intricate training that Palestinian police go through. AbbaGav, Elder of Ziyon and Israelly Cool! have been experts in identifying and highlighting some of the more unusual scenes of Palestinian police training. (Last year there was an odd picture (no longer available) of a policeman lying on a bed of nails with concrete slabs on his chest. A second policeman is breaking the slabs with a sledgehammer. I have no idea what they were training to do.

I'm happy to say that all 3 bloggers have recently returned to this unique specialty.

AbbaGav notes some policemen having the times of their lives.

Israelly Cool! observes a little squirt and a puff of pot.

Elder of Ziyon, in a serious vein, though, wonders why the United States is funding these guys?

Blogdigger tags: Fatah, Hamas, Force 17, Terrorist Training.

21st century (mangy) fox

For awhile now, our neighborhood has had a number of foxes.

Our neighbor accross the street once put her children's muddy shoes out front to dry. They disappeared. They turned up all chewed up. (Our neighbor took them to Nordstrom's to be repaired. In one of those classic cases of Nordstom's customer service, they replaced the shoes free of charge.)

In any case the continued presence of the foxes was of concern to the neighborhood and one family hired an exterminator to set traps to catch the foxes. (The City department of animal control and State department of natural resources wouldn't do anything, maintaining that foxes are nocturnal and afraid of humans so they presented no threat.) The exterminator noticed, though, that the foxes were mangy and posed a possible risk of transmitting mange or other diseases.

One of the traps was set in our backyard. One day when I went to take out the garbage I discovered that something had been caught. There was a rabbit and a squirrel in the cage. The squirrel did not look well. Later, the exterminator checked and opened the trap, the rabbit bounded away but the squirrel didn't. As I guessed, it was dead.

A few weeks ago the exterminator packed up the traps. I guess that they gave up. But the foxes are still around.

I took a picture yesterday. That discoloration towards its back is the mange. Given that foxes are nocturnal the fact that it's out during the day is likely a sign of declining health. And so I was able to get a picture of the fox, in an unlikely urban setting. (A neighbor told my wife that she no longer has rabbits in her yard because of the foxes. Apparently foxes are not conservationists.)

It just might be that nature will accomplish what the exterminator couldn't.

Blogdigger tags: Foxes, Mange, Baltimore City.

Religion as show biz

Newsweek has published a list of America's top 50 Rabbis. (h/t Jewish Current Issues ) The criteria listed were these:

Last fall, Sony Pictures CEO and Chairman Michael Lynton got together with his good friends and fellow power brokers Gary Ginsberg, of Newscorp., and Jay Sanderson, of JTN Productions and started working on a list of the 50 most influential rabbis in America. They had a scoring system: Are the rabbis known nationally/internationally? (20 points.) Do they have a media presence? (10 points.) Are they leaders within their communities? (10 points.) Are they considered leaders in Judaism or their movements? (10 points.) Size of their constituency? (10 points.) Do they have political/social influence? (20 points.) Have they made an impact on Judaism in their career? (10 points.) Have they made a "greater" impact? (10 points.)

This system, though helpful, is far from scientific; the men revised and rejiggered their list for months, and all three concede that the result is subjective.

From my standpoint (Orthodox) assigning 20 out of 100 points to political/social influence and another 10 to media presence is absurd. Few if any Orthodox Rabbis who are known within Orthodoxy are known for their social influence or media presence. (Certainly not their MSM presence. But I doubt that that Lynton, Ginsberg or Sanderson read the Jewish Observer.) That's how Avi Weiss, Marc Scheier, Yitz Greenberg, Abraham Cooper and Marvin Hier made the list. This isn't meant to knock them, I'm just observing that significant portions of Orthodox Jewry in the United States would be unfamiliar with them, much less follow them.

Say we go back 25 years. No doubt the list would have included both Alexander Schindler and Moshe Feinstein. And yet now how influential is Rabbi Schindler? Is he quoted daily by Reform Rabbis and lay people? Does he have a record of his decisions that is regularly consulted by others to determine the Halachah (Jewish Law)? These are true of Rabbi Feinstein. More than 20 years after his death he is still influential and I suspect he will be for decades, if not centuries more. In essence the ranking used secular not religious values for making its judgments. Though one blogger thought the list had Orthodox Rabbis overrepresented (the head of the Kabbalah Center, Orthodox?), the problem isn't with their numbers, but that their main identification isn't as Orthodox Rabbis but as activists. Or friends of the stars.

I like MentalBlog's list better, but where's Rabbi Heinemann?

UPDATE: The Forward, not surpisingly has an article about the list. Rabbi Hier's response, actually was refreshingly frank.

“I don’t think their criteria included learning,” Hier said. “There are so many outstanding scholars who are not on it. I was certainly shocked to hear that I was number one.”

However it's pretty clear that guys who drew up the list really intended it for fun, so it's disappointing that Rabbi Scheier seems to have taken it seriously.

Coming in at number 33 was Marc Schneier, founding rabbi of two New York-area synagogues and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. Schneier said he was dismayed to see that he was one of only two rabbis on the list wearing both a congregational and an organizational hat — a deficiency that he attributes to the rabbinate and not to the list’s compilers.

A Rabbi with a large congregation is the head of an organization too. Of course the organizational "hat" is an extracurricular activity, not the primary function of the Rabbinate. (At least of the Orthodox rabbinate of which he is a member.) It's not a failure of the rabbinate as much as it is Rabbi Schneier reordering his priorities.

Blogdigger tags: Top 50 Rabbis in America, Newsweek, Judaism.

Betting the house

Gilbert Arenas, star of the surprising Washington Wizards, found himself in a bit of trouble with the league.

The NBA warned Gilbert Arenas on Sunday not to repeat his actions of Tuesday night, when he said he made $10 bets with a group of fans during a game against the Portland Trail Blazers.

"We spoke to Gilbert and explained the issue to him," NBA spokesman John Acunto said. "And he assured us he wouldn't do anything like this again."

Arenas was being heckled by Trailblazers' fans so he decided to put up rather than shut up and promised to make a critical shot or owe the fans (apparently he did this with two fans) $10. He was unsuccessful and the Wizards went down 100-98.

And how did he know how to pay up? He asked the fans for their e-mail addresses.

And how did the NBA find out about his antics? Arenas wrote about the incident on his blog.

I understand that leagues have to take a strong stand about betting. It may be that this was done in harmless fun and he was betting to win. But at some point once someone's betting, the possibility that he could be compromised if he runs up too many debts becomes real. There's a need to draw the line someplace. This case was harmless, and, frankly, probably added to the entertainment value of the fans. I understand why the league reprimanded him.

However the league has gone a step further and removed the blog entries referring to the incident from his blog. Now that the story's all over the news, I hardly see the point to that.

Read the blog. Check out his player page.

Crossposted at OTB Sports and Soccer Dad.

Blogdigger tags: NBA, Washington Wizards, Gilbert Arenas, Betting.

Haveil Havalim #111 is UP!

Though his expertise is in the daily study of the Gemora (Talmud) Daf-Notes has produced Haveil Havalim #111 - the final pre-pesach edition of Haveil Havalim the weekly Jewish Blogging Carnival. Thank his wife for letting him do it instead of cleaning the car!

Submit your blog article to the next edition of haveil havalim
using our carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: haveil havalim, blog carnival.

I'd like to thank the wonderful folks at BlogCarnival for this wonderful Blog Carnival Widget that gives information on upcoming hosts and past editions.

Thanks for participating, reading and keeping Haveil Havalim going!

April 1 - Pesach Vacation
April 8 - Pesach Vacation
112 April 15 YidWithLid

However is someone decides that he/she wants to host in the future let me know at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com or use the BlogCarnival Contact form.

In addition to e-mail you may submit entries to Haveil Havalim using the submission form over at BlogCarnival. Or feel free to e-mail me at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

Also if you'd like to host an upcoming edition e-mail me at the above address.

Remember, that while the hosts and hostesses of Haveil Havalim do a wonderful job of editing and searching for interesting posts, they can't see everything. If you want a better chance of being included in Haveil Havalim please submit one or two posts for inclusion.

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

Most recent editions of Haveil Havalim at Blog Carnival
#22 Mystical Paths
#21 Rabbinical Authority Consortium of HACKers
#20 Shiloh Musings
#19 Devarim
#18 Soccer Dad
#17 Mystical Paths
#16 Critical Mastiff
#15 Soccer Dad
#14 Multiple Mentality
#13 IsraPundit
#12 DovBear
#11 Kesher Talk
#10 Biur Chametz
#9 Soccer Dad
#8 It's Almost Supernatural
#7 Bloghead
#6 Willow Tree.
#5 Crossing the Rubicon2
#4 Dov Bear
#3 Biur Chametz

Why abba is fat

Making the cookie.
My daughter used a slotted implement as a stencil for the colored sugar.

Looks good enough to eat.

A whole tray of them.

Other than fattening Abba by appealing to his sweet tooth, this is known as getting rid of extra flour in advance of Pesach. These sugar cookies will be a great Shabbos treat!

Juggling carnivals 03/21/2007

INCOMING

This past Sunday was the Carnival of the Insanities, which included my post on Daylight Savings Time.

Also the Kosher Cooking Carnival was up at Me-Ander.

UPCOMING

This coming Sunday the Carnival of Maryland is being hosted at The Greenbelt.

The upcoming J-Pix is to be hosted by Life of Rubin.

Council speak 03/23/2007

The council has voted and the results are in. The winning Council entry was Big Lizards' The Contranomics of Global Jihad pointing out that it wouldn't be cheap for Iran to continue exporting its Jihad. The winning non-council post was American Digest's Four Years In reflecting on four years of war in Iraq.

Colossus of Rhodey's Muslim Cashiers refuse to handle pork that examines what accomodations were necessary for their employer was the runner up Council entry. The non-council runner up was Gates of Vienna's Muslim Violence - Crime or Jihad.

This was the first vote in nearly two and a half years without the Sundries Shack on the council. Best of luck to him in his soon-to-be redesigned digs. Any blogger wishing to replace him on the council follow the instructions here for consideration. Any blogger wishing to participate in the council voting may follow the instructions here, for consideration.

Blogdigger tags: Watcher's Council.

Dollars (and respect) for Dahlan

Last week, even before The New York Times reported it Meryl Yourish noted that the "embargo" that had caused so much reported hardship for the Palestinians hadn't really been much of a boycott at all.

Meryl noted that the AP reported that last year the PA actually received $200 million more than it had in 2005. So much for the boycott of Hamas.

But if the Palestinians were so impoverished where did all the money go? Well Shiloh Musings has photographic evidence of one place where it was going: to mansions being built north of Jerusalem. Do I know for certain? No. But it's happened before, as the late Michael Kelly wrote in Investing in Yasser Arafat

Everyone had behaved perfectly fine; no one had so much as mentioned the inconvenient London Sunday Times story the day before, which said that the Palestinian Authority had swiped $20 million in British aid intended to build housing for the poor of Gaza, using the money instead to build luxury flats for Arafat's military and bureaucratic elite. After a day of pleasantries, representatives of 43 nations had pledged $3 billion in new aid to the Palestinian Authority, including an extra $400 million from the U.S. president. Arafat saw that it was good. "I am satisfied with the reality of this conference," he pronounced.

One of the people who benefited from this largesse (as well as from a successful monopoly) was Mohammed Dahlan, the one time head of Gaza's "preventive security" forces.

I had long expected that Dahlan, a corrupt thug - though able to project a suave appearance that fooled gullible journalists - would succeed Yasser Arafat. Still even in Hamas controlled Gaza he survives.

But Dahlan, one time an ally of Hamas who shielded fugitive terrorist Mohammed Deif from Israel - maybe preventive security means that he prevents security from being realized - is now a moderate.

Israel Matzav provides an example of Mr. Dahlan's moderation.

TWO KILLED IN ANOTHER TERRORIST ATTACK Miri Amitai, 36, a mother of four, and Gabi Biton, 34, a father of six, are the two Israelis who were killed in the terrorist attack this morning near the Magen Junction in Gaza. Close to 7:30 AM a large bomb, comprised of a 122-mm mortar shell, was detonated on the road as a school bus passed on its way from Kfar Darom to N'vei Dekalim. Eleven were wounded, including two in serious condition. Three terrorists detonated the explosive from a distance of 200 meters. Although the bus was bulletproof, it was not fortified against bombs. The road on which the attack took place had been reopened to Palestinian traffic only a short while before.

Three siblings of the Cohen family from Kfar Darom are hospitalized in Soroka in Be'er Sheva; a fourth one missed the bus and remained at home. Their mother was unable to get to the hospital because the roads are closed. Government minister Rabbi Michael Melchior, a relative of the family, visited them today. The names and ages of the three children: Orit (bat Nogah), almost 12; Tehillah, 8.5; and Yisrael, 7. They are suffering from severe injuries to their limbs, and doctors are struggling to prevent the need for amputations [Note - All three children needed some sort of amputation in the end. One lost both legs. Hashem yerachem.... CiJ].

Funny thing is that 5 years ago an Israeli politician scoffed

Many are placing their new hopes on Gaza preventive security service boss Mohammed Dahlan. Mr. Dahlan, a rising star on the Palestinian stage, is being presented as the man who can unify all of Arafat's security forces and bring order to the PA. Word has it that he just returned from a trip to Washington where he got high marks from the National Security Council. (Mr. Dahlan denies ever going.) Either way, Mr. Dahlan is the man who has presided over an ever-fortified terrorist network. Gaza, the home to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, became a base for some of the most heinous terrorist attacks unleashed against Israel.

On his watch, Mr. Dahlan permitted Gaza to become a safe haven for the hundreds of fugitive terrorists fleeing Israeli forces. Among those being sheltered is his childhood friend Mohammed Dief, a leading Hamas mastermind with the blood of scores of Israelis on his hands. In the meantime, Mr. Dahlan's district became the primary launching grounds for the hundreds of Kessem missiles fired at Israel.

Mr. Dahlan's involvement in terrorism has not been confined to mere nonfeasance but, rather, gross malfeasance as well. Mr. Dahlan, along with his assistant Rashid Abu-Shabak, are the primary suspects in the terror attack on an Israeli school bus in Kfar Darom in November 2000. The bombing of the bus left half a dozen children maimed, and seriously injured an American citizen, Rachel Asaroff. In response to this brutal terror attack on Jewish school children, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak dispatched Israeli planes to strafe Mr. Dahlan's Gaza headquarters.
. . .
Criminals such as Mr. Dahlan and Arafat can never be reformed; they must be eradicated by force.

Never is quite a long time, but apparently 5 years is longer and now the fellow that then mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert advocated killing for his sponsorship of terror is considered a moderate these days and "an old favorite" of Olmert's.

And of course six years ago the President said, "Either you are with us or you're against us." A terror group that targets the West, is against us. But when the President considers the premise (against all evidence) that a Palestinian state is the pre-requisite for peace in the Middle East, he (and his administration) will necessary find someone they deem a moderate; even if the designation is a relative one, not an absolute one.

So for now the money and respect will accrue to Mohammed Dahlan. Who said that terrorism doesn't pay?

If ... you must 03/23/2007

If you haven't read Dear Abby at SerAndEz; you must.
Heh.

If you haven't read The Ignoble Experiment's Shoo away the Paranoia; you must.
In which she enjoys 300 as a movie. With no sub-context.

If you haven't read PsychoToddler's Hail to the King Baby; you must.
Ever feel that you're caught in a bad novel? How about a video game?

If you haven't read JudeoPundit's the world's first Muslim Superheroes; you must.
What about the ones here? Or here?

If you haven't read Boker Tov Boulder's But will he listen?; you must.
If you haven't read AbbaGav's 10 ideas for a five minute post; you must.
Thanks for the mention both of you. AbbaGav here's another idea for a 5 minute post: Find a picture in Reuters and re-caption it.

If you haven't read Pillage Idiot's Maryland Death Penalty Hanging by a thread; you must.
Related Zino.TV's Maryland voters support the death penalty. So who exactly are the abolitionists representing if not their constituents?

If you haven't read Zino.TV's Maryland closing prison where lifers were on a killing spree; you must.

If you haven't read A corporate lawyer's view of Venezuela at Baseball Crank; you must.

One hallmark of totalitarian regimes is that they try to keep people in order. In Venezuela, as in Iran, the laws they try to repeal are the laws of supply and demand. And that doesn't work.

If you haven't read Embargoes: Iraq vs. the Palestinians at Daled Amos; you must.

If you haven't read NY Times Stockholders fight back at NRO's media blog; you must.
Given the threat to the family ownership of the Times due to poor manamgement, you'd think the editors would be somewhat circumspect when pontificating on business issues. You would be wrong.

If you haven't read Secular Blasphemy's The inventor of Fortran died; you must.
Anyone know who invented COBOL? And what rank she achieved?

If you haven't read Seraphic Secret's tribute to Cathy Seipp; you must.
And read this.

If you haven't read Ice and Solace at Glen Spey NY at Elie's Expositions ; you must.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Death Penalty, Maryland, Cathy Seipp, Fortran, Venezuela, Muslim Super Heroes, Embargoes, New York Times, Duke Nukem, 300.

Loss for words

In Sad Devotion to an Ancient Religion, The Loss Column argues that it's silly for Orioles fans to criticize Peter Angelos. And it's sillier yet for them to criticize him for declaring that he nixed a proposed trade of Brian Roberts and Hayden Penn to the Braves for Marcus Giles and Adam LaRoche.

In particular The Loss Column went after Thomas Boswell's excellent critique of Angelos, "Angelos says Plenty." Boswell blasted Angelos not just for what he said, but for demonstrating the Orioles fans can expect no change from the owner.

What rival GM wants to spend his time, especially in trading-deadline situations, working on a complex deal with the Orioles when it's known how often Angelos has erased all the work at the last minute? How will Roberts now feel about Flanagan and Duquette? And how enthusiastic will the Atlanta Braves feel about working up another big deal with Baltimore?

What Orioles star, in his walk year, wants to put his faith in Baltimore's ability to negotiate a new contract during the season? After all, from Rafael Palmeiro to Mike Mussina, the Orioles' owner has dawdled for months on big contracts -- paralyzing all parties -- as his asbestos-wrangling background misinforms him that more time off the clock equals more negotiating leverage.

These are all problems that Dan Connolly pointed out in the Baltimore Sun two years ago. Angelos's recent talk with the Sun confirmed that we can expect more of the same as long as he owns the team.

And why does the Loss Column think that Angelos is right in this case?

The worst part about this — and this is partially the well from which tonight’s thoughts spring — is that not dealing Roberts was the right move. Marcus Giles ended up getting released while LaRoche was subsequently dealt to the Pirates for closer Mike Gonzalez, on whom the jury is decidedly still out. I get the argument that meddling is bad, and it carries a lot of weight. But he is who he is, and we’re stuck with him. We may as well play fair and admit he was right for a change.

Marcus Giles was released because of payroll - not performance - considerations. He was headed to arbitration and the Braves weren't willing to spend what it would take to retain him.

This was, frankly, a perfect opportunity for the Orioles to use some leverage. The Braves were conceding that Giles was lost to them and wanted to get some value in return. The Orioles had an opportunity to ask for additional considerations. The Orioles should have told the Braves that if they didn't want lose Giles for nothing, they'd have to add in a solid AAA or AA pitching prospect. Or offer someone with less perceived value than Hayden Penn.

Instead Angelos nixed the deal.

Giles - though coming off a disappointing season - at his best is likely better than Roberts at his best. Given that Roberts hasn't played like he did at the beginning of 2005 at any other time in his career, it's not reasonable to assume he will achieve that level again. Gile is almost certainly a small step up over Roberts. Adam LaRoche may not be as good as Boswell claims, but he's a step up over the Orioles current first base options. Is upgrading at two positions worth Hayden Penn? Quite possibly.

I've been following the Orioles for nearly 40 years now. I'm still going to listen to their games. But my patience is wearing thin. If they're winning, I might just stick around, but if not, I'm not wasting my time on them.

I'm not wishing for some mythical past. I just want a decent present that I can enjoy. Consider the thoughts of FOX Sports writer, Dayn Perry. On the downside he considers Mike Flanagan one of the GM's on the hot seat.

Mike Flanagan, Orioles
On the job since: 12/4/2002
Cumulative Winning Percentage: 0.452
Winning Seasons: 0
Playoff Appearances: 0
Last-Place Finishes: 0
For the first two seasons of his tenure, Flanagan shared GM duties with Jim Beattie. Beattie was let go following the 2005 season, but increased autonomy for Flanagan hasn't improved the state of the organization. The Orioles of late have been so uninteresting, so decidedly vanilla that their best marketing angle might be something like: We''re Not the Devil Rays!" Of course, once the Rays' exceptional collection of young talent finds its sea legs, they'd have to scrap that slogan. To Flanagan's credit there are some promising youngsters in the Orioles' system: Nick Markakis, Adam Loewen, Bradon Erbe, Pedro Beato, to name but a handful. However, there's just no chance of breaking through any time soon, what with the Yankees and Red Sox in the same division. Flanagan could take the fall if 2007 is anything like, well, the previous nine years.

I feel bad for Flanagan. I really do. I have no idea how good he is as a GM, because he may not be the final word on transactions. But Perry thinks he may be in trouble.

But hey Perry also is looking a the good. He thinks that the Orioles may be one of the surpise teams in the majors this year. Really.

Baltimore Orioles: No way, no how will Baltimore earn a playoff spot in 2007, but they could improve. If the young-ish rotation responds to the tutelage of Leo Mazzone and Nick Markakis continues to exhibit skills growth, then the O's could finish as high as third place for only the second time since 1997.

In other words this year the Orioles are likely to finish somewhere above the Devil Rays and somewhere below second place. About where they've been the past decade. Such a consistent record of failure deserves mocking. Lots of it.

Crossposted at OTB Sports and Soccer Dad.

Blogdigger tags: Baseball, Peter Angelos, Baltimore Orioles.

If we didn't know now what we didn't know 4 years ago

An Iraqi student Ayub Nuri writes that his support for overthrowing Saddam has been A Casualty of War and concludes.

The war has united Iraqis in their disappointment. I ask myself if our expectations were too high. It is hard to answer. But I look back and realize that the fears that I had four years ago were misplaced: If Bush had changed his mind about the war, things might be better now.

I'm not normally a big fan of Christopher Hitchens. His views on the Israeli Palestinian conflict are those of a typical leftist. However his support for the war in Iraq has been consistent and principled. He answers a number of objections to the war in retrospect in So Mr Hitchens weren't you wrong about Iraq? Two of his more important answers:

Should it not have been known by Western intelligence that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?

The entire record of UNSCOM until that date had shown a determination on the part of the Iraqi dictatorship to build dummy facilities to deceive inspectors, to refuse to allow scientists to be interviewed without coercion, to conceal chemical and biological deposits, and to search the black market for materiel that would breach the sanctions. The defection of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law, the Kamel brothers, had shown that this policy was even more systematic than had even been suspected. Moreover, Iraq did not account for—has in fact never accounted for—a number of the items that it admitted under pressure to possessing after the Kamel defection. We still do not know what happened to this weaponry. This is partly why all Western intelligence agencies, including French and German ones quite uninfluenced by Ahmad Chalabi, believed that Iraq had actual or latent programs for the production of WMD. Would it have been preferable to accept Saddam Hussein's word for it and to allow him the chance to re-equip once more once the sanctions had further decayed?

...
Was the terror connection not exaggerated?

Not by much. The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

One of Michael Kelly's final columns before the war was Who would choose tyranny?

Tyranny truly is a horror: an immense, endlessly bloody, endlessly painful, endlessly varied, endless crime against not humanity in the abstract but a lot of humans in the flesh. It is, as Orwell wrote, a jackboot forever stomping on a human face.

I understand why some dislike the idea, and fear the ramifications of, America as a liberator. But I do not understand why they do not see that anything is better than life with your face under the boot. And that any rescue of a people under the boot (be they Afghan, Kuwaiti or Iraqi) is something to be desired. Even if the rescue is less than perfectly realized. Even if the rescuer is a great, overmuscled, bossy, selfish oaf. Or would you, for yourself, choose the boot?

We ripped our masks out of their Velcro-fastened bags and slapped them on, glad we had taken the time to baby-wipe the desert grit out them in the morning just like Sgt. Will said we should, so they wouldn’t rip our faces up. We dragged out our J-List suits and started crawling into them, fumbling with the thin rubber galoshes and gloves. Then we stood around sweating, helping each other adjust our suits. Sweating and swearing.

Lance Cpl. Jeremy Staat is deploying to Iraq. Lance Cpl. Staat was a friend of Pat Tillman.

"The way I look at it, we're spreading freedom, and you have to support the troops and you have to support the war," Staat, 29, told KITV in Honolulu on Tuesday as he prepared to leave from Hawaii. "You can't just tell some Marine who just lost his buddy that we supported you but not the war, because in that case you're basically saying that Marine, his buddy, just died for nothing. We're one team."

If ... you must 03/21/2007

If you haven't read Blog Awards Controversy at It's Almost Supernatural ; you must.
Guess what? It doesn't just happen with Jewish Blog Awards!

If you haven't read Hamas Embarrassed? at Media Backspin; you must.
Embarrassed - and defiant.

If you haven't read Just One Minute's Plame On!; you must.
In which he brings up the possibility that Valerie Plame lied under oath to Congress. (She testified that she didn't suggest her husband in a most improbable manner; but at the Libby trial another CIA employee testified that she did.)

If you haven't read QandO's Talking Past each other; you must.
On the nature of libertarianism.

If you haven't read The Volokh Conspiracy's Who should pay for security at controversial campus events?; you must.
At what point does such a requirement amount to a limit on free speech or give a veto to those who would deny certain viewpoints.

If you haven't read Dr. Helen's Bumper Stickers Personality Alert; you must.
The subject of the bumper sticker that inspired the post had to do with school funding. I once discovered that in Maryland that increases in school funding corresponded with to increases of non-teaching employees.

I hope you enjoyed today's edition of If you must. If you have a blog and wish for me to link to you. Send me a link with the words If you must in the subject line so I can include it in the next edition.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Hamas, Valerie Plame, Bumper Stickers, Libertarianism.

Unifying headlines

March 18, 2007
Palestinian Legislators Approve Unity Cabinet
Hamas, Fatah Diverge in Policy Remarks

March 19, 2007
Israel Rebuffs Palestinian Unity Government

Why wasn't this emphasized in the first headline?

The power-sharing arrangement has, at least temporarily, ended the factional fighting that has killed about 130 Palestinians over the past year. But the new government's platform falls short of international demands that it recognize Israel and renounce violence in return for a resumption of economic aid.

Something like Palestinians rebuff International demands to moderate their position.

And of course instead of actually reporting this, the second account tells us

Most international donors cut off economic assistance after Palestinian voters chose Hamas to run the Palestinian Authority in January 2006 parliamentary elections. Unemployment and poverty have increased in the territories since then, and about 130 Palestinians have been killed over the past year in a violent power struggle between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement.

The poverty hasn't been the result of a cutoff in aid as aid, perhaps unofficially, actually continued. There's another reason for the poverty and that would be malfeasance.

Even the new PA finance minister acknowledges

“A key priority is to try to put the finances of the PA on a more sustainable path . . . to reduce our need for external assistance,” he told The Times during the new Government’s swearing-in ceremony in Ramallah.

It's simple laziness that keeps Scott Wilson from acknowledging that the PA has, itself, been a big source of the financial problems facing the Palestinians. Sure it's much easier to blame the world and Israel.

Blogdigger tags: Israel, Palestinian Authority, Foreign Aid, Hamas, Salam Fayyad.

If ... you must 03/20/2007

If you haven't read How and when Joseph Wilson IV outed Valerie Plame at Sweetness and Light; you must.
h/t Carnival of the Insanities When you have a secret it's better not to be married to a publicity hound.

If you haven't read PostWatch's Brian Becker International Man of Mystery; you must.
If there are two things we can't expect the media to cover properly. One would be Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. The other would be the well financed opposition to the war against Saddam.

If you haven't read Israelly Cool's Kudos from NATO; you must.

If you haven't read Jules Crittenden's Dear John; you must.
It's hard enough being thousands of miles from home. Imagine it compounded by having someone say goodbye.

If you haven't read My Right Word's A Mosque's Sanctity; you must.
If you haven't read Temple Mount Holy Site at Simply Jews; you must.
If you haven't read JoshuaPundit's Hamas: Hey we ain't no sellouts Bubba; you must.
Remember: Jews: not holy; Suicide bombers and artwork featuring AK-47's: holy.

If you haven't read FireAnt Gazette's It's survived by a stream and numerous tributaries; you must.
There's an art to writing - and coloring - headlines.

If you haven't read Likelihood of Success Resiliency Watch Done Defiantly; you must.
There are certain keywords that newspapers use to suggest a kind of nobility.

If you haven't read Colossus of Rhodey's C'mon she said it with a smile; you must.
Have you noticed how some people will make the most offensive comments then say, "But I was just funnin'"

If you haven't read Ocean Guy's Patriotism?; you must.
Riffing off a must read Michael Barone column, Ocean Guy asks if praise can ever be patriotic to some.

If you haven't read ADL Statement on CAIR linked by Little Green Footballs; you must.
This is a bit jarring for those who call CAIR a civil rights organization.

If you haven't read Clarity and Resolve's Religion of Minority Extortion; you must.
Equality achieved through head taxes. It's something that Hamas has planned for Bethlehem.

If you haven't read Apologize to Bernard Lewis at Sandbox; you must.
h/t JudeoPundit I haven't read a lot of Bernard Lewis, but one thing comes through: a deep respect, if not love, for Islam. But his scholarship means little in the academic fashions of today, which follow the decidedly non-scholarly Edward Said.

If you haven't read Meryl Yourish's A year later; you must.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If You Must, Hamas, Bernard Lewis, Islamic Holy Sites, Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, Funny Headlines.

NJDC Hugs The Tar Baby

Israpundit writes about the National Jewish Democratic Council's attack on John Cain when, according to The Des Moines Register Cain:

used the term "tar baby," which is sometimes associated with racist connotations, during a campaign stop in northern Iowa on Friday and immediately expressed regret.

The NJDC quotes from the article in the Des Moines Register with the headline: MCCAIN USES RACIAL SLUR ON CAMPAIGN TRAIL

The NJDC recourse to CAIR-like tactics against Republicans is nothing new.

When Milt Romney kicked off his presidential campaign at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, NJDC jumped:

"NJDC is deeply troubled by Governor Romney's choice of locations to announce his Presidential campaign. Romney has been traveling the country talking about inclusiveness and understanding of people from all walks of life. Yet he chooses to kick off his presidential campaign on the former estate of a well-known and outspoken anti-Semite and xenophobe. Mitt Romney's embrace of Henry Ford and association of Ford's legacy with his presidential campaign raises serious questions about either the sincerity of Romney's words or his understanding of basic American history," said NJDC Executive Director Ira Forman.

Actually, the point that Romney was trying to make may be the same that Clinton made in 1999--without backlash:

Here in Detroit nearly a century ago, as all of you know better than me, Henry Ford set history in motion with the very first assembly line. He built not only a Model T, but a new model for the way America would do business for quite a longwhile. He said he was looking for leaders and thinkers and workers with "an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." People like that came together in Detroit and all across America. They forged America's transition from farm to factory. Detroit led the way and America led the world.

Now John Cain uses the word 'tar baby,' defined as "a situation, problem, or the like, that is almost impossible to solve or to break away from." This of course is the exact context of the word that Cain was using:

For me to stand here and ... say I'm going to declare divorces invalid because of someone who feels they weren't treated fairly in court, we are getting into a tar baby of enormous proportions and I don't know how you get out of that."

Keep in mind that the phrase and its usage comes from the story Brer Rabbit.

If the NJDC wants to make an issue, it should realize that it is clear that whatever pejorative meaning attached to the phrase afterwards, Cain obviously was not using the phrase in that way.

The NJDC should also realize that once again they are going after a Republican for doing what Democrats in the past have done as well. [Hat tip: Wikipedia]

It was reported in The New York Times on August 10, 1992:

Senator John F. Kerry remembers well the advice he got a year ago when he was considering whether to lead a new investigation into the fate of prisoners of war and other Americans who never came home from Vietnam. "Everybody on my staff, everybody I knew thought I was crazy, and said, 'Don't do this,' " he recalls. "They said it's a no-win tar baby."

On October 30, 2001 Molly Ivins, the liberal columnist wrote

It now looks, with 20-20 hindsight, as though he should have taken a few more deep breaths before smacking that tar-baby that is Afghanistan. We're running out of time for three reasons — winter, Ramadan and the prospect of millions of people starving to death.

Israpundit gives other examples from the media and blogs as well.

There is plenty to argue and debate when it comes to the issues, so let's stick to the substantive issues--shall we?

by Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: NJDC and National Jewish Democratic Council and John Cain and Tar Baby.

Hoping for change

In Context wanders One Foot off the Reservation

I don't know. I've always had serious problems with the calls to change Israel's national anthem, as it embodies so beautifully the long-awaited and hard-fought fulfillment of the dreams of the Jewish people after 2,000 years. But I have to admit that even the most patriotic non-Jewish Israeli must have a hard time singing those lyrics. Really, what do they have to do with him, or her?

Shouldn't a national anthem be a banner under which all the citizens of a country can feel comfortable? Of course Israel is a Jewish state and its Arab, Muslim, Christian and Hindu citizens must come to grips with that. But that doesn't solve the problem of somehow tying patriotism to a negation of identity. It's one thing for Israel's Arab and Muslim population to acknowledge, accept and even perhaps be able to celebrate Israel as a Jewish state. It's another thing to ask them to identify with Jewish aspirations, some of which were achieved at their expense. It's another thing entirely as ask them to pay lip service to a Jewish identity.

I have two obejctions to changing Hatikvah - one indirect, the other direct.

The indirect one is that over the years Israeli Arab MK's have shown that though they serve in the country's parliament, they have no loyalty to Israel. As Israel Matzav observes Arab MK's cannot be accused of dual loyalty, because to have dual loyalty, they'd have to be loyal to Israel. In many cases this is just not the case.

I realize that Ghaleb Majadle may not be Azmi Bishara, but I see that accomodating the former will necessarily embolden the latter. (My guess is that an Arab member of the Labor Party will not necessarily be as hostile to the existence of Israel as an MK from one of the Arab parties. I don't know anything about MK Majadle except for his appointment to be science minister.)

My more direct objection to changing the national anthem is that Israel's right to exist does not derive from a reaction to the Holocaust. Israel's right to exist is a historical/religious. It is based on the fact that Israel is a reconstitution of a nation that was in exile for nearly 2000 years. At a time when Israel's "partners for peace" vociferously deny this, it is important not to retreat from this truth in any way.

My Right Word doesn't agree with me and sees no merit to Minister Majadle's request. After rightly knocking down MK Majadle's Morocco comparison he writes:

Come one, no, Majadele, let's be truthful: you're an Arab nationalist who doesn't really believe Israel should be here and you can't stand the implications of HaTikvah.

Blogdigger tags: Ghaleb Majadle, Hatikvah.

The quality of her critics

I envy Boker Tov Boulder. She has caught the attention of a fine specimen of critic.

Horrifically offensive?

How about leading a campaign - something that could be called a blog lynching - against a young man whose infant son died last year under mysterious circumstances. When this terrible story reached the news, there was Boker Tov Boulder's critic out in the forefront demanding that Orthodox Jewish bloggers condemn the young man or stand accused (by him and his dubious moral authority) of aiding and abetting murder.

But the case fell apart. Much of the original reporting turned out to have been mistaken or purposefully untruthful. The young man was exonerated.

The Rabbis compare the public embarrassing of another with murder. Did Boker Tov Boulder's critic do anything to atone for his actions? Did he go to the young man personally and ask for forgiveness? I have no idea, but I'd suspect not. Even if he did his initial reaction revealed his judgment to be severely impaired. He ought to make sure that he has his own passions in order before condemning others.

The critic has been in the news lately. This is from the Forward. I love that he's characterized as a "firebrand." In the case from last year, he was a slanderer and if his personalty is anything like his blog persona, I'd expect that he'd be a bit abrasive. That's a character flaw if you need to raise money. Read this and see that he's both self-promoting and self-righteous.

But it hasn’t been easy. Sieradski, who has developed a reputation of being a bit of a firebrand because of his virulent criticisms of the mainstream Jewish establishment on the blog Jewschool, has been turned down for roughly two-dozen grant applications. As the money runs out from an initial endowment provided by the Providence, R.I.-based Dorot Foundation, Sieradski has had to dig a little deeper to find funding. “I’ve been working out of my own pocket,” said the Jerusalem-based Sieradski, who organizes Israeli-Palestinian hip-hop concerts in his free time. “I’m hurting myself to help the Jewish community, because I believe in what this will do for the Jewish community.”

Though the critic is widely hailed as a brilliant web designer he is a radical leftist. His views hold no interest to me.

What I can't understand is what was so offensive about Boker Tov Boulder's Beware Obama. My own impression of the candidate is not as suspicious. I see no signs of any original thinking or great accomplishment on his part.

But is it wrong to say that we ought to investigate the influences in his life he considers important? Ought we not be making sure of the candidate who aspire to be the most powerful person in the world? That's not bigotry, it's due dilligence.

Blogdigger tags: Barack Obama.

If ... you must 03/19/2007

If you haven't read Oh, to be poor and holy at Daled Amos ; you must.

If you haven't read the Top 10 most expensive board games in the world at Yehuda ; you must.
Is it surprising that most of them are chess sets? Remember the myth of the reward for the man who invented chess? (h/t the Ignoble Experiment )

If you haven't read True Confessions at Baseball Crank; you must.
Thoughts on why some confessions ought not to be taken at face value.

If you haven't read the Hedgehog Report's Newt comes to Maryland; you must.
More proof that he's a very smart man, who should not be President.

Blogdigger tags: Expensive Games, Newt Gingrich, Confessions.

Bennett's odd past

Bill Bennett, the former Secretary of Education and national drug czar had an interesting past. (He had an interesting present a few years ago, when it was revealed that he enjoyed - and lost quite a bit of money - gambling.) Back when he was a graduate student at the University of Texas he had a blind date with - Janis Joplin. Time Magazine put it like this

Many of Bennett's themes resonate with boomer parents who were '60s liberals but now seek an antidote to the antisocial, materialist messages their children are absorbing from popular culture. And as someone who himself played guitar in a rock band, had a date with Janis Joplin, opposed the Vietnam War and campaigned for civil rights in Mississippi, Bennett demonstrates through his personal journey how far America has moved during the past three decades on cultural issues.

Now we learn something else of his past: he gave Charles Schumer a "B"

Schumer was a senior at Harvard in 1971 when he wrote the paper about building a more effective Congress -- and furious when he received a B. His instructor? Conservative commentator Bill Bennett, a Harvard law student who was teaching the undergraduate social studies course. "He went nuts," said Bennett, who was unmoved when Schumer lobbied for a higher grade.

Bennett said the senator still reminds him of the beef every time they meet. "He says, 'I don't know if you remember this . . .' and I say, 'Stop with the grade-grubbing.' "

Of course back then, Bennett probably wasn't nearly as conservative as he was later in the 70's, so the grade can't necessarily be chalked up to different philosphies either.

But still bringing this up 36 years later?

Blogdigger tags: Bill Bennett, Janis Joplin, Charles Schumer.

Snoop's redemption

The very next morning, July 19, 1981, the Sunday edition of the New York Times carried the review of Abbott's new book, In the Belly of the Beast. Reviewer Terrence Des Pres gave a mostly favorable report and expressed gratitude to Abbott's mentor, Norman Mailer. "We must be grateful to him (Mailer) for getting these letters into publishing form and, a job more difficult, for helping to get Abbott out on parole."

"The very next morning?" The night before this literary giant, Jack Henry Abbott had gotten into an argument with a newly married 22 year old waiter.

After he took the order, Adan brought the information to the kitchen. Within a few minutes, Abbott arose from the table to use the men's room. When he asked Adan where the men's room was, the waiter explained that it could only be reached by walking through the kitchen and was off-limits to customers. But Abbott insisted on using the restroom. A verbal argument ensued between the two men, though it was quiet and hardly heard by the other diners. "It was all very low key," an employee later told a reporter from the Times. "You could hardly hear what they were saying before they went out on the street." Abbott told Adan to "take it outside." The two men exited the restaurant onto Fifth Street. The argument continued for only a minute longer. Abbott suddenly pulled out a knife and plunged it into Adan's chest. The blade pierced his heart.

"I'm hurt, it hurts!" he cried, "God, how it hurts!" Blood gushed from his chest as a passerby approached him to give aid. Abbott ran back into Binibon's and shouted to one of the girls, "Let's get out of here! I just killed a man!" The terrified girls left with Abbott and walked a block away. Suddenly, Abbott stopped, turned to the girls and said, "You don't know me!" He then ran off into the night without saying another word. The police arrived within minutes and found Adan dead in the street. Witnesses immediately told police what happened, and the two female students who were with Abbott provided his name.

What reminds of Jack Henry Abbot and the support he got from Norman Mailer? The Washington Post's profile of Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, The Role of her Life.

Snoop, as she was called on the street, is now an actress playing a character named "Snoop." The beginning of the profile plays up her redemption.

What he had in mind was a role on "The Wire," where she plays a coldblooded assassin with whom she just happens to share a name. Among other things.

"They saved my life," Snoop, now 26, says of "The Wire's" producers. "The route I was going was, I was going backwards again. God works in mysterious ways, that's all I can say. Thank God."

Adds her cast mate Andre Royo, who plays Bubbles on the show: "Thank God God watches HBO."

The problem is that "[a]mong other things" that the article subsequently mentions.

April 27, 1995.

It was a Thursday night, a school night, and Okia "Kia" Toomer had just run out to the store. She ended up in an alley around 9 p.m., not far from her house. There, Kia's grandmother, Sylvia Williams, says, and police records agree, "some girls got to fighting."

It's not clear what they were fighting about.

But one thing is clear, according to court records: Felicia Pearson pulled out a gun and fired it. Twice. The crowd scattered. Kia ran, too. But a bullet pierced her left buttock, tearing through nerves, veins and arteries before it exited the other side.

Kia fell down in the alley, calling out to a friend, who lay down with her, right there in the street, and waited for the ambulance, according to her grandmother. She died on the operating table at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

"At 11:02 p.m.," her grandmother says.

Kia was 15.

Snoop was 14.

I'm not going to say that Snoop didn't have a hard life. She was born drug dependent; her parents died when she was a child; the people who became her "family" were thugs. In fact it's pretty clear that for all of his self-pity, Jack Abbot's early life was easy compared to that of Snoop's.

But now Snoop's a star. Her victim is a memory; a painful one to her family.

It's been nearly 12 years since Kia was killed, but the wound is still fresh. Hearing about Snoop on "The Wire" ripped off the scab. One of Williams's daughters saw the show and called Williams, crying.

"She said, 'That girl that killed Kia is on "The Wire." She's still acting violent.' "

Williams can't bear to watch the show. How did this girl get to be on TV? Why are they letting her grandbaby's killer play a killer? As Williams sees it, Pearson didn't do enough time -- "she came out of prison, bragging" -- and now she's on TV?

On one hand the fact that someone with Snoop's background has achieved something in life is encouraging. We live in a society where a street thug can be redeemed. But Snoop didn't just rob and do drugs. In a moment of apparent malice she killed.

On one hand she served her time - even if it was an extremely lenient sentence for manslaughter. Now she should be able to make a go of her life. Also escaping - and staying away from - her former life she will live a full life without having to look over her shoulder all the time. Society can't demand more of her than the law does. But she didn't just get any job. She got a job that made her a celebrity. Somehow that seems inappropriate.

But the bigger problem is what prevents Snoop from going the way of Jack Abbott? Abbott was championed by Norman Mailer and others on the grounds that one who created art at a certain level was incapable of the evil that he would one day commit again.

Why should Snoop be different?

Though I'm no forensic psychologist, I'd suggest one possibility: an author need not fit into society. Sure he's got an agent, but for the most part his art is individual and requires no interaction with others. Abbott could create his art and not change as a person.

An actor, on the other hand, does have requirements. Snoop plays her character in accordance with a script, a director and other actors. She can't be anti-social the way that Abbott could be - even if he lved the life of a celebrity - now that she's seemingly found her calling.

I hope that the producers of The Wire are correct in giving her the break.

UPDATE: Zino.TV objects a lot more strongly.

Blogdigger tags: The Wire, Felicia Pearson, Snoop, Jack Henry Abbott.

Haveil Havalim #110

Welcome to the 110th edition of Haveil Havalim the Jewish Blogging Carnival. We'll call this the "Lesson edition."

From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.'

`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.

`That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.'

This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. `Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?'

`Of course it was,' said the Mock Turtle.

`And how did you manage on the twelfth?' Alice went on eagerly.

`That's enough about lessons,' the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: `tell her something about the games now.'

Welcome to the March 18, 2007 edition of haveil havalim.

BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS learns lessons from her troubles in YEDIDUT NEFESH.

SimplyJews hopes that Israel's new Chief of Staff has learned lessons from the mistakes of the past in Gabi Ashkenazi, Dirt under his fingernails. Warning: profanity alert.

SimplyJews remembers the lessons of Alyiah in Why are we here?

Letters of Thought hopes to lessen his fears when he thinks about Some Evening.

YID With LID wonders if we need to lessen our observences in deference to Islamic claims in PASSOVER AND EASTER CANCELLED: Moses and Jesus Were Muslim .

My Right Word lessens his disrespect for some news organization in Reuters Finally Publishes a Balanced Story .

Crossing the Rubicon3 lessens her respect for The Slanted Economist.

Israel Matzav wonders who's learned the lessons of past releases in 177 Israelis murdered in 30 terror attacks by released 'prisoners' posted at .

Israel Matzav thinks we shouldn't lessen our feelings of horror when we consider A new kind of 'honor killing' in Gaza .

Israel Matzav notes that Arab interest in Jerusalem is not lessening Jordan buying properties around the Temple Mount.

Antisemitism

The Brussels Journal wonders if the Contintent would learn the lesson Why Europeans Should Support Israel.

It's Almost Supernatural thinks the world ought to lessen its hostility toward Israel in ‘From the Nile to the Euphrates’ and Beyond posted at .

Jewish Blogmeister lessens his respect for a historic figure in New York in Hey That Street is Named After Hitler......

Hesder Oleh wonders what will make some people lessen their misplaced priorities in Darfur: The "palestine" of American Jews .

Thoughts by Seawitch's contempt for the UN is in no way lessened in Here We Go Again!.

Seraphic Secret hopes we learn the lesson of Jew-Hatred at Montreal's Concordia U.

Culture

THE TOWN CRIER presents a lesson in controversy Women To Lead Friday Night Davening at New Progressive Orthodox Prayer Group

Daled Amos wants to learn the lesson of what "Palestine" once used to mean in THE PALESTINE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (1937) Time Maga....

History

Shiloh Musings objects to the lessening of the Jewish aspect of the Holocaust in Holocaust of Whom.

Media Backspin's concern about UNESCO is in no way lessened in Mughrabi Gate: UNESCO Weighs In.

Elder of Ziyon does what he does best and brings a lesson of history in The Gaza Arab State of 1948.

Instapundit wonders what people know of the disturbing lesson one of the 20th century's most celebrated men imparted to the Jews in What would Ghandi Do?

Humor

The Muqata جميل في المقاطعة. Holy Hyrax lessens his fears knowing the happy outcome that JAMEEL RESCUED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I am very happy...

Israel

Life in Israel tells us not to lessen our concern for Israel's kidnapped soldiers in an important reminder.

Israellycool can't quite lessen his glee in Israellycool in the News posted at. WestBankMama's also mentioned.

JoeSettler sees a lesson in hypocrisy in Armchair Politics posted at JoeSettler.

Boker Tov Boulder wonders if a news agency needs a history lesson in al Reuters gives terror-tories to ... Jordan?

Mere Rhetoric. sees that unity hasn't lessened the PA's capacity for untrustworthiness in Abbas: Hamas Will Free Shalit Soon. Hamas: No We Won't.

The Ignoble Experiment, a.k.a. Live Dangerously!. hopes that NY State high school students have sufficiently learned their English lessons so they can offer A Chance to Help.

Zionist.com.Ryan Jones argues that the political lessons of the day tell us Why Israeli-Palestinian peace talks need to be called off.

Yourish.com tells us that foreign aid to the PA really hasn't lessened in The poor, poor, rich, rich, pitiful pals.

Shiloh Musings shows the results of the continued aid in Rushing by More Arab Mansions. (And follow the links to the 2 previous posts on the topic.)There is a lesson here.

Life of Rubin Blog thinks there's a lesson to be learned from Israeli Wall Art.

Jules Crittenden thinks that the lessons of Lebanon are being learned too well in Gaza in Shades of Lebanon.

The Volokh Conspiracy.David Bernstein presents More on Kenneth Roth: that can only lessen one's respect for the man.

YID With LID demonstrates a lesson unlearned in PEACE NOW---OOPS WE WE'RE WRONG .

My Right Word makes a point about the moral and ethical lessons to be learned about fighting violence in Reflections on the Pre-state Resistance Violence .

My Right Word gives a lesson to Israel's Post-Zionst Academia about Hevron.

treppenwitz considers the lesson of "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" applied to the news in The value of perspective .

Beyond BT.Ron Coleman presents the reasons that lessen his interest in Aliyah in Hard Time in a Hard Holy Land . (h/t CosmicX, who draws different lessons.)

YID With LID demonstrates lessons unlearned in Olmert STILL DOESN'T GET IT He Is Unpopular Because HE SUCKS !!!!

Jewish music

Teruah - Jewish Music presents The Shema was composed? Really? (h/t Jack's Shack. UPDATE: I don't know Jack. This was submitted by teruah-Jewish Music who is also named Jack!)

Judaism

A Simple Jew doesn't want us to lessen our concerns for the less fortunate in Eizer L'Shabbos Maos Chitim Campaign .

parshablog gives a lesson in why They Should Teach The Ikkarei Emuna In Schools.

Dixie Yid - Thoughts on life and Chassidus gives a lesson in How to daven for one's children.

A Simple Jew learns a lesson in A Tzaddik's Advice To Me.

Heichal Hanegina gives us a lesson to consider in Cured along the Way.

Daf Notes considers the Perils of Smoking. Draw the appropriate lesson.

Life in Israel wonders about the lesson he gets from and I thought I had heard some ridiculous frumkeit!

Life in Israel gives a lesson of shehita at school

A Simple Jew considers the lesson to be learned from the "Torah Is A Smorgasbord'".

The Curious Jew gives a lesson in Tahara: The Last Kindness (h/t The Ignoble Experiment)

Cross-Currents.Rabbi Adlerstein presents lessons learned from Mayer Soloveichik's article in Commentary in Three Approaches to Dialogue.

oyvayblog links to Jewish lessons in Ireland Begosh & Begorrah!

Rabbi without a cause gives us a lesson On the use of blogs for Lashon HaraAn anonymous ... ( h/t Jack's Shack)

BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS gives a lesson wondering Are Blogs Kosher?

Personal

Me-Ander learns a lesson that Driving in the Snow will never be teh same.

Different is not necessarily painful learns the priceless lesson of Hashem's generosity from a Mastercard commercial.

Greetings from the French Hill wonders about life's lessons One Year Older, One Day Wiser.

Nina's Books 4 Israel Project presents Third shipment update posted at , saying, "The frustration of the un-affiliated, trying to deal with the organized Jewish communiy."

West Bank Mama presents a lesson in resilience from David Hatuel in Some Good News For This Rainy Friday Morning.

A bisele babka tolerance for chutzpah is lessened in Never Ending Chutzpah.

Politics

The Moderate Voice presents French Jews Fleeing Into Florida which tells of the lesson that French Jews are learning.

Kesher Talk presents Waskow vs Chesler on the Secular Islam Summit which proves that some people never learn their lessons.

Zionist.com.Ryan Jones argues we must lessen our expectations for Iraq because American democracy will not take root in Iraq .

BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS presents the lesson of TWO SPHERES OF ACTION.

Fundamentally Freund wonders why the PM's concerned were lessened in After Calling for His Death, Olmert Now Praises Dahlan.

Jews For Hillary presents Orthodox Union Commends Hillary Clinton; Colleagues.

Bagelblogger presents Bodgey Bagels Caption Contest Number 19 posted at Bagel Blogger, saying, "Bodgey Bagels 'almost famous' Caption Contest has just began, note the change of Deadlines to Friday, get your entry in if you want any chance of winning the great prize" (Warning BagelBlogger appears to be down at this time. Hopefully he'll be back up very soon.)

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Crazy on you

In Diagnosis:Cheney ( or here), Charles Krauthammer dissects an essay from the New Republic by Michelle Cottle arguing that VP Cheney is crazy.

In a nutshell he concludes

If there's a diagnosis to be made here, it is this: yet another case of the one other syndrome I have been credited with identifying, a condition that addles the brain of otherwise normal journalists and can strike without warning -- Bush Derangement Syndrome, Cheney Variant.

via memeorandum

Betsy's Page writes

Usually, the typical approach to Republican politicians that liberals don't like is to say that they're stupid. But when they're faced with someone is clearly not stupid, I guess the next card to play is mental disorder.

But it's not just the politician, it's the policy too. Krauthammer observes that one of the sources for Cottle's diagnosis was

Longtime associate Brent Scowcroft quoted as saying, "Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."

Krauthammer continues:

Well. After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney adopted a view about fighting jihadism, America's new existential enemy, that differed radically from the "realist" foreign policy approach that he had shared a decade earlier with Scowcroft.

And I'm going to assume that Cheney has a lot more information about the state of the Jihad than does Scowcroft.

Early on Krauthammer observed that the article is "an exercised in compassion." That's because the policies followed by the Bush administration are wrong. So Cottle must either assume that Cheney is evil or that he's crazy. Crazy is the nicer way to classify the politician she opposes. It's all very neat. And more than a little bit crazy.

Blogdigger tags: Dick Cheney, Michelle Cottle, Charles Krauthammer.

9/10 chances

In a typically perceptive column today, A manifesto for the next president, David Ignatius suggests that Zbigniew Brzezinski's most recent book, "Second Chance" would serve as a good blueprint for President Obama. (If the book's wisdom is so profound why not recommend for any other candidate?)

Why use Brzezinski's book as a blueprint?

First, an encomium to Brzezinski: If there's any foreign policy analyst who has earned the right to be taken seriously today, it's this 78-year-old veteran of the Carter administration. Brzezinski was right about Iraq, warning early and emphatically of the dangers of an American invasion at a time when most foreign policy pundits (including this one) were, with whatever quibbles, supporting President Bush's decision to go to war.

So because he was correct on Iraq, he's correct about every other topic in foreign policy. I don't mean to be impertinent, but wasn't he the National Security Advisor in Carter's administration? The administration that saw Afghanistan invaded by the Soviets and the Shah fall to the Islamic revolution?

Maybe he had good ideas in those cases and no one listened to him. But serving in the worst administration in memory is an important part of his resume and suggests that getting one thing correct is not, by itself, a convincing credential.

Nor, is Ignatius right that Brzezinski was somehow going against the tide. There were plenty of naysayers before the war.

"Second Chance" is structured as an analysis of how the past three presidents missed the chance to create a true American superpower after the Cold War ended. He has some interesting, tart things to say about George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Bush Senior was "a superb crisis manager but not a strategic visionary," a president who succeeded brilliantly in coaxing the dissolution of the Soviet empire but who failed to take advantage of the opportunities his policies created. Clinton was "the perfect symbol of a benign but all-powerful America," but he was mesmerized by his vision of a deterministic "globalization."

Brzezinski's criticism of Clinton seems apt. But to what end is that a problem for him? Because he failed to grasp the threat of Islamism until it was too late. That's what I believe. But since Brzezinski obviously doesn't see the same threat that I did and still do, why is Clinton's "globalization" a problem? (Obviously there's more to Brzezinski's views than what Ignatius is telling us. Maybe that disconnect is explained. I just can't tell from the column.)

Of course, for Ignatius, the important part of the book is the criticism of the current administration.

But these are just warm-ups. Brzezinski's real focus is the "catastrophic leadership" of the current president. Regular talk-show watchers know Brzezinski's views, but he lays them out here in blistering language: The war in Iraq "has caused calamitous damage to America's global standing," "has been a geopolitical disaster" and "has increased the terrorist threat to the United States." By Brzezinski's account, what drove Bush's presidency so far off course was a combination of sunny "End of History" optimism about America's ability to impose its values with a "Clash of Civilizations" gloom about the threat posed by Muslim enemies.

That "gloom" as Ignatius puts it (and dismisses) is the major threat against the United States today. A failure to acknowledge that by any candidate for president would be a disqualifying flaw. The terrorist threat against America was always there, even when there was a "... benign all powerful America." The failure of President Clinton to address it is one of the factors that led to 9/11.

The problem with the Ignatius column is that it seems to mistake platitude for profundity.

"The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening," he argues. His worry is that America -- enfeebled by "material self-indulgence, persistent social shortcomings, and public ignorance about the world" -- may not get it.

Human dignity? The Islamists hate us because of dignity? They torture and behead their victims and claim that we're somehow impugning their dignity? Come on. That sentence betrays a "public ignorance" of the world.

Usually when a book deemed important by the chattering classes comes out, some newspaper publishes an excerpt to give people a chance to get the gist of the book's arguments. So far I haven't found such an essay, however the NY Times reviewed "Second Chance."

It's impossible not to notice a bugaboo of Brzezinski's that Ignatius ignored.

In Mr. Brzezinski's opinion, Bill Clinton deserves credit for setting forth parameters for a Middle East peace settlement at Camp David II, for expanding and consolidating the Atlantic alliance and for helping to stabilize the Balkans. But in the end, he contends that Mr. Clinton's ''casual and politically opportunistic style of decision-making was not conducive to strategic clarity, and his faith in the historical determinism of globalization made such a strategy seem unnecessary.''

In the dozen years that followed, the author goes on, perception of the United States' role in the Middle East steadily deteriorated, as America ''came to be perceived in the region, rightly or wrongly, not only as wearing the British imperialist mantle but as acting increasingly on behalf of Israel, professing peace but engaging in delaying tactics that facilitated the expansion of the settlements.''

If human dignity is really the issue why don't the Palestinians have a state. A year and a half ago the Israelis withdrew from Gaza. The Palestinians had a place of their own. Instead of building their own society they attacked another society. Now they complain that they lack the dignity of self determinationl. It beggars belief that someone who reduces the central struggle in today's world to "dignity" is considered an authority.

By now anyone who blames the lack of a Palestinian state on Israeli delaying tactics ought to be disregarded outright. Arafat never was looking to make peace. He said what he needed to say and let others interpret him just as the folks in Washington did for Chauncy Gardner. They heard what they wanted to hear and pretended that peace was at hand. But Arafat never changed.

Finally I just can't get past the claim that American prestige is at such a low point. And perhaps that's why Brzezinski never analyzes the administration of Ronald Reagan. Anyone who lived in the 80's remembers how Reagan was reviled by many of the same folks who now criticize President Bush at every opportunity. Reagan confronted the Soviet Union and that made him very unpopular in the intellectual strongholds of Europe. Ex KGB man Yuri Andropov was considered a more sophisticated mind by those precincts than was the President of the United States.

The problem is that with the fall of the Soviety Union, Reagan's lack of sophistication was vindicated. I believe similarly that President Bush's vision will be vindicated by history, despite the sophisticated naysayers, even if the execution of that vision is flawed.

Those like Ignatius and Brzezinski are still living in the 9/10 world.

Blogdigger tags: David Ignatius, Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Second Chance", Global Politics.

Council speak 03/16/2007

The Council has Spoken nad the winner of this week's vote for Council members is Eternity Road's Serving while Republican about the double standard used in judging the personal lives of politicians. The non-Council winner was Sigmunc, Carl and Alfred's Tenured Deceit about the academic in the LA Times who denied Israel's right to exist.

On the council side runners up were JoshuaPundit's What are Europe's options and Rhyme with Right's I disagree.
The Sundries Shack will be leaving the council after submitting Here are the Moderate Muslims.

The non-council runner up was Right Wing Nation's Tips for new Teachers and Ace of Spades' Obama: No one is suffering more than the Palestinians.

Given the new opening if you wish to join the Watcher's Council check here for nominating yourself. If you'd like to participate but not join on regular basis, here are the rules.

Blogdigger tags: Watcher's Council.

If ... you must 03/16/2007

If you haven't read Saudi Arrogance at Meryl Yourish; you must.
The Saudis consider Israeli objections to their peace plan unreasonable. But doesn't that make "unconditional?" Well "unconditional" doesn't usually modify "peace plan."
Given that the Saudi plan emphasizes specific Israeli obligations and is short on specifics when it comes to reciprocal actions by the Arab world, it's necessary to consider it to be no more than a PR ploy that was meant to distract President Bush from Iraq. Thomas Friedman should be ashamed for being a PR flack for then Prince Abdullah.

If you haven't read Acknowledging Bias at Media Backspin; you must.
Apparently Alan Johnston isn't the sort of reporter the Palestinians want silenced for too long.

If you haven't read America's Newest Civil Rights Group: CAIR at Big Lizards ; you must.

If you haven't read Don Surber's ACLU's man of the year: KSM ; you must.

If you haven't read Roger L Simon's Guantanamo News; you must.

If you haven't read Israelly Cool!'s quote of the day; you must.

If you haven't read Psycho Toddler's I got a lot on my head; you must.

http://www.technorati.com/tag/If+you+must

Blogdigger tags: Guantanamo, CAIR, ACLU, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Alan Johnston, Saudi Peace Initiative.

He who laughs, lasts

According to Secular Blasphemy, humor improves survival A study claims to confirm the old Norwegian saying that a good laugh leads to a longer life.

Perhaps that's why

Claremont Graduate University is offering an unusual doctoral program focusing on what makes people happy.

"Most research on human behavior has focused on what goes wrong in human affairs: aggression, mental disease, failure and so on," said Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee), head of university's Quality of Life Research Center.

"We don't know enough about what makes life worth living, what gives people hope and energy and enjoyment," he said.

So I guess, laugh a little, get a PhD. Laugh longer, live longer.

Blogdigger tags: Happiness, Happiness Studies, Longevity, Doctorate.

Wax-ing and plaming

The Washington Post reports that Valerie Plame will testify before Congress.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs the committee that sought Plame's testimony, has said that today's session will give Plame a chance to talk about the impact of the disclosure, but that his real aim is to determine the White House's role in leaking her name to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists.

For Plame, 43, the repercussions have been intensely personal, including a career cut short. But until now, only proxies -- chief among them her voluble husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV -- have been able to publicly vent the anger and frustration she has expressed privately. "They ruined her whole career," her mother said, echoing a refrain of several of Plame's former CIA colleagues. "She has no job."

(In the next sentence the Post neatly disposes of the pathos by pointing out that Ms. Plame's book deal was for 7 figures.)

Rick Ballard at The American Thinker (h/t KesherTalk) , though, points out:

The primary responsibility for the protection of agents' identities rests with the agents themselves. That is a fact hammered into all CIA employees from the moment they are hired. Valerie Plame Wilson initiated her own ‘outing' by participating in her husband's successful effort to become an advisor to the Kerry campaign. The precise moment in which she abandoned any pretense of being ‘undercover' is difficult to determine, but it is safe to presume it occurred prior to May 2, 2003.

On that day, during a meeting of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, the Wilsons succeeded in inserting Joe Wilson into the electoral political process. They also made contact with New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof.

From Vanity Fair:

"In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him."

In order to give the narrative that Waxman wants, Plame (and her husband) will have to, shall we say, shade the truth. They insinuated themselves into the politics. For Ms. Plame to cry foul now, is hypocritical.

But then if Rep Waxman claims that he wants "... to determine the White House's role in leaking her name to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists," he's not interested in the truth anyway.

ScrappleFace (via memeorandum) has it about right.

Ms. Plame (aka Valerie Wilson) lived such a secret life that when she and her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, appeared in a photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine, she was compelled by CIA covert spy protocol to wear dark sunglasses.

Do you think that Henry Waxman asked her why her husband lied and said that he was sent by the Vice President's office?

Blogdigger tags: Valerie Plame, Rep. Henry Waxman.

You don't need a college education to get times select

... but it pays to be well read.

So the NY Times iis throwing in the towel on Times Select. According to an article in Ad Age, the Times is planning to extend free use of Times Select to anyone with a .edu e-mail address.

"While this is obviously an attempt to get college students hooked on a national newspaper, I think the unintended result will be that college grads like me start giving the $40/year to their alumni association," one blogger wrote on Due Torre. "I'll get a couple of decent lectures, a couple of mediocre advertisements, a free .edu email address and a TimesSelect subscription to boot."

Ad Age continues

Mickey Kaus from Slate linked to that post, saying The Times might not even mind if every college grad in the world started reading TimesSelect without paying.

"For one thing, it will make Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd happy. (They'll get bigger audiences.)" Mr. Kaus wrote. "For another, it gives the paper a graceful way to effectively abandon its whole ill-conceived pay-for-opinions plan while maintaining it as a formal fiction -- just as Bed, Bath & Beyond maintains the fiction that you only get 20% off if you have a coupon (even as it distributes coupons so freely that basically everyone has four or five lying on the floor of their car)."

(via memeorandum)

However, as I've written before all you need to access the online version of the newspaper is a library card in many states. In Maryland for example, if you have a library card you can go to the website of the jurisdiction and check out the Newspaper and Magazine database. The Times only goes back to 2000, the Washington Post goes back even further. You can access articles from the major newsmagazines and even magazines like the New Republic or Commentary. The libraries paid for access to those databases, as a resident of your state your entitled to access the databases.

There are some limitations. Usually there's a day or two lag (or issue or two lag in case of weekly or monthly periodicals.) Also someitmes the access is restricted to the libraries themselves. (To access the NY Times archives in LA you need to be physically in the library. Bergen County NJ doesn't seem to allow access to the databases from home. I don't know if that's the case for all of New Jersey.)

Outside the Beltway writes:

The NYT has decided to make “TimesSelect,” their system of putting their least essential content behind a subscription wall so bloggers won’t read and comment on it, free to university students and faculty. Since I am no longer a member of either of those groups, I’m still out of luck. Or in luck, I can’t decide.

If he wishes to participate, he probably can via his library card. Of course since it's the "least essential content" perhaps he won't avail himself of this opportunity.

Blogdigger tags: Media, New York Times, Times Select.

Cappuccinos for peace?

In Ethiopia a repairman has found a novel use for old mortar shells

In the shadows of his dingy workshop in a northern Ethiopian town, Azemeraw Zeleke stoops over a baffling array of cylinders, tubes and handles.

The 54-year-old inventor and repairman supplies Mekele, and indeed the whole of the hilly Tigray region, with coffee machines. But it is his choice of materials that makes Azemeraw's trade truly unique.

"The farmers bring me mortar shells from the old battlefield," he says, gesturing north where Ethiopia borders Eritrea and the two nations fought a 1998-2000 war.

"The empty tubes are perfect for the coffee machines. Look, the bronze does not rust. And the shape is ideal."

Using the burnt-out mortar shells as the inner barrel of his coffee makers, Azemeraw and his half dozen workers need about a week to make one sophisticated machine capable of turning out the dozen of so different types of coffee drunk in these parts.

"We take these objects of war and turn them into objects of pleasure," says his son Mehany, 22, who works proudly beside his father. "Maybe, this is a message for the world."

I don't know about a message for the world, but what about the Palestinians? Elder of Ziyon noted

OK, let's do the math: half the people live on less than $2 a day, and an M-16 is $13,000. So the money for an M-16 could have supported 100 Palestinian Arabs for two months.

So if instead of building mortars to fire shells into Israel the Palestinians were using the tubes to make coffee machines for export, they'd no longer be threatening Israel and earning some real currency to take care of their humanitarian crisis.

So if the Palestinians are not shooting at Israel and are feeding their people, there'd be no more strife in the Middle East? Right? And to think that we could have peace for the cost of a cup of coffee.

Blogdigger tags: Mortar Tubes, Coffee Machince, Peace.

If ... you must 03/15/2007

If you haven't read Mere Rhetoric's Countless reasons to see 300; you must.
It's amazing how convincing a negative review can be!

If you haven't read The Spine's CAIR package; you must.
Best Line - " ... we've run a few articles warning that this is not the ADL of the Muslims."

If you haven't read Jury's In on NYT's Islam Beat at NRO's Media Blog ; you must.
Here's a hint, CAIR's critics have the adjective "conservative" to describe them!

If you haven't read Bin Laden hunt improves Google Earth images of Pakistan at Secular Blasphemy; you must.
A real world benefit of the government's secret efforts.

If you haven't read Roger L. Simon's "False Flags" all over the place; you must.
Roger looks at some of the information that might be gleaned from Gen. Asgari.

If you enjoy this blog roundup and would like your blog (or anyone's blog for that matter) included e-mail me at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Gen. Asgari, 300, Google Earth, CAIR.

Do ask, do tell

Yesterday Colossus of Rhodey asked

OK, but will Pace -- since he likened homosexuality to adultery when he called it "immoral" -- face protests and demands for an apology from adulterers? After all, I'm fairly certain people commit adultery for what could be dubbed "moral" reasons -- spouse was unfaithful, spouse is abusive, spouse turns out to be a hermophrodite -- so isn't Pace insulting these people, too?

The answer is "yes." Bill Clinton: General Pace owes apology to adulterers.

HEH!

Blogdigger tags: General Peter Pace, Morality.

If ... you must 03/14/2007

If you haven't read Hillary visits a School at SerAndEz; you must.
I don't like Hillary either but isn't this a bit over the top? Very funny though.

If you haven't read The Pope is Catholic, Giuliani is a politician at Likelihood of Success; you must.
Someone else who voted for Clinton in 92 for the same reason I did! I also told myself that GHWB wasn't so conservative either. (He wasn't.) But that doesn't mean that I'm happy about that vote.

If you haven't read A government about nothing at Jules Crittenden; you must.
And in Maryland the General Assembly is focusing on all sorts of irrelevancies too. And I still haven't heard that they have any intention of trying to solve Baltimore's sky high murder rate.

If you haven't read Here's how it's done Amir at Israelly Cool!; you must.
AbbaGav caps this one off.

If you haven't read University of Manchester twinning with Nablus terror college at Elder of Ziyon; you must.
It's interesting when mainstream organizations do something to show their solidarity to a cause but don't think through the implications of their actions.

If you haven't read L'Mashaal at Daled Amos; you must.
Remember the Palestinians preferred Hamas because they weren't corrupt.

If you haven't read The Poverty terror Myth at Solomonia; you must.
When reading articles like this you also ought to read Arafat's Suicide Factory and Arsenal of Believers.

If you haven't read Things I learned about working from home at Meryl Yourish; you must.
A boy was swinging in a swing.
Unfortunately he fell out of the swing.
Fortunately there was a haystack below.
Unfortunately there was a pitchfork in the haystack.
Fortunately he missed the pitchfork.
Unfortunately he missed the haystack.

If you haven't read If ... you must at OyVayBlog; you must.
Not because it refers to me but because of the Sam Levenson trivia!

If you haven't read How green was my red mustang at Don Surber; you must.
Next thing you know people will say that Daylight Savings Time doesn't save energy.

If you haven't read Health food blogging at Dr. Helen; you must.
Sshhhh! I think you've figured out their business plan! With the increasing popularity of stores like Wegman's and Bloom's maybe Whole Foods' appeal is its trendiness not its healthfulness.

If you haven't read Today's Lesson: Steal at Sarcastipundit; you must.
Read til the end to fully appreciate the perversity.

If you haven't read Johnston Kidnap raises questions at Media Backspin; you must.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Health Food, Alan Johnston, Teachers Union, Khaled Meshaal, An Najah University, Sam Levenson, Binoculars.

"Banned" with

A few weeks ago I went to a link that I saw in Haveil Havalim and read an item that upset me. While not directed to me specificially it was a general attack on an aspect of my lifestyle. I took it personally and registered my objection in comment to the post.

In return I received a condescending e-mail about how happy the blogger was to engage in a dialogue on the topic. Our exchanges grew increasingly acrimonious from there.

Realizing that this blogger's views were offensive to me I informed him that I would no longer link to him in the context of Haveil Havalim. I don't dictate to other hosts. I leave editing up to the host.

Or that's what I did until last week. I have access to links for preview through BlogCarnival. One of the links was to a post that was vicious slander. Not only that it was laced with obscenity.

As host of Haveil Havalim, I had previously linked to this blogger against my better judgment. His posts are filled with obscenities but he had been recommended by a respectable blogger so I chose to overlook it as host and issued a "profanity alert."

So I took matters into my own hands and I e-mailed this blogger last week and asked him to submit something else as I didn't think his post was appropriate. He answered that it was his best post of the week and he'd be offended if it wasn't included.

Apparently he's written some unkind stuff about me on his blog as if it mattered. (I won't read his blog.) He's even offered to host Haveil Havalim. I have no interest in his doing me any favors. And he too is now on my personal "banned" list. I hope other hosts will ignore his submissions but I won't ask them to. I do think that they need to flag his stuff because it really is vile.

I didn't want to write this post but I felt that an explanation was in order.

Without an "e"

Today is this not this.

And the Almanac of Miscellaneous Amusement provides us with an appropriate limerick for the day:
If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
And the line's length is "d"
the circumference will be
d times 3.14159 (Mathematical Limericks)

And Fire Ant Gazette has a link to a great computational website that allows you to find your birthday in the digits of pi. Now that's useful. (OK the almanac had that link too and for some unknown reason I informed the Gazette about the calculator.)

I mention these two regular reads of mine because I enjoy them and hope maybe you will too. Though the Almanac of Miscellaneous Amusement is the exact opposite of me in a number of ways - She's blue in a red state from the western end of I-70 and I'm red in a blue state at the eastern end of I-70 - her site is devoted all sorts of fun trivia. The Fire Ant Gazette is filled with interesting observations on the world and culture around him.

Speaking of regular reads I'd like to thank PostWatch for generously linking to me yesterday while he was in the middle of an Instalanche. Like me he enjoys critiquing the Washington Post.

Blogdigger tags: Blogging, National Pi Day.

Daylight wastings time

Comedian Sam Levenson attributed this description of Daylight Savings Time to his mother: cutting the end of a blanket and sewing it onto the other side to make it longer and then cutting it off the other end and sewing back on the original side to make it shorter.

I've been telling this to my children who are amazed at the wisdom of Daylight Savings Time. Especially now that it's 3 weeks earlier.

The Washington Post heartily endorsed the proposal a year and a half ago:

ONE VERY TINY (but very talked about) provision in the energy bill would extend daylight saving time by three weeks in the spring and one week in the fall starting in 2007, conserving energy and perhaps preventing some crimes and traffic accidents.

The logic being that with more light at the end of the day, people will use less light in their homes in the evening thus conserving energy. Of course, this assumption is based on the premise that people won't need lights for a similar amount of time in the mornings.

Well ABC news reports (h/t my wife) that a study was done (with a control too!) in Australia and it found

Kellogg and Wolff came to their conclusion by studying Australia, where several states extended daylight-saving time (DST for short) by two months in 2000 to accommodate the Olympic Games in Sydney that year.

They compared electric demand in the state of Victoria, which extended DST, with its next-door neighbor, South Australia, which did not.

"Our results show that the extension failed to conserve electricity," they wrote.

"If it's dark enough in the morning that pretty much everyone has to turn on the lights," said co-author Kellogg, "what that means is that that increase in morning electricity consumption is going to be so big that it offsets any benefits we get from the extra light in the evening."

It seems that the study making the assumption that extra Daylight Savings Time would save energy was based on a Transportation Department study

Congress's logic was simple. If there's an extra hour of sunlight in the evening, people will turn on fewer lights. The Transportation Department once did a study saying daylight savings reduced America's use of oil by 100,000 barrels a day.

That study, according to ABC, is 30 years old. (And I'm forced to wonder if the methodology was valid or was the study supposed to make the case for extra Daylight Savings Time?)

Given the way the Washington Post blithely dismissed the concerns of opponents of the extended DST

Some critics charge that commercial interests are driving the idea -- but if more daylight means more consumer activity, that's good for the economy. Airlines claim that the move will sting, but they survived a similar shift 20 years ago and there's plenty of time to adjust schedules. Children at school bus stops would be in no more danger than they would be on the dark mornings of December and January. And Orthodox Jews who've protested that a sunrise past 8 a.m. would mean choosing between saying prayers and getting to work on time need fret only if they live in Alaska, western Montana, some parts of Idaho or that detached bit of Michigan.

Maybe it's time for a reconsideration?

Blogdigger tags: Daylight Savings Time, Sam Levenson, Conservation.

If ... you must 03/13/2007

If you haven't read Raven Legend Day at the Almanac of Miscellaneous Merriment; you must.
If you were hoping to read how the Baltimore Ravens will replace Jamal Lewis, you won't find it there, though. Read the sports pages instead. Nevermore.

If you haven't seen the Infinite Hailstone at Not Quite Perfect; you must.

If you haven't read In a word at Futility Closet; you must.
If you like my blog let me know, I'm elozable.

If you haven't read Indian Billionaires shock Chinese at Deja Vu; you must.
In this edition of the Billionaires next door, we learn that freedom is a factor in economic sucess.

If you haven't read Forking at Treppenwitz; you must.
Do you have a child (or children) who does things his (or their) own way, unlike anyone else?

If you haven't read The Democrats Blacklist Fox at Seraphic Secret; you must.
And it's based on their inability to get a joke. Ailes was mocking President Bush not Barack Obama.

If you haven't read Rest in peace, Vuk at 38 pitches; you must.
Curt Schilling isn't just an excellent pitcher, he's a fine writer too. This is a fond rememberance of a coach of his who recently died.

If you haven't read Why there won't be elections in Israel soon at shiloh musings; you must.
She's absolutely right. PM Olmert may not be popular. It's questionable whether he can run the government effectively. But he is clearly a master of the political processes that can keep him in power. Besides just about everyone in this government knows that they're at the end of their political career - at least for the immediate future. Few people cede power willingly. And there are enough members of the government who realize that bringing down the government will be cutting off their own (political) noses.

If you haven't read Everything Hurts Abbas at AbbaGav; you must.

If you haven't read Whitewashing Christian Concerns at Media Backspin; you must.

If you haven't read Vile Reuters at it Again at Bookworm Room; you must.
Anytime you read that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of Israeli oppression remember this:

In fact, the Christian population throughout the Middle East has been in rapid decline. In 1900, Christians comprised 20 percent of the population of the Middle East; now, they are less than 2 percent. While the Muslim population has expanded rapidly in Europe and the U.S., Christians in the Middle East have experienced a negative population-growth rate. The only country noting a positive growth rate for Christians is Israel.

In Israel proper, the Christian population in 1948 was 34,000. Christians now number 146,000, or 2.1 percent of the total population. Projections are that by 2010 the Christian population in Israel will reach 163,000, reflecting an average yearly growth-rate of 1.9 percent. Among non-Jewish students in Israel, the rate of high school graduation is highest for Christians. Employment rates for Israeli Christians remain much higher than for their fellow believers in the Palestinian territories.

If you haven't read March 13, 2003 at Jules Crittenden; you must.
A great story, but there's an obscenity alert here.

Technorati tag: If you must.

Blogdigger tags: If You Must, Palestinian Christians, Democratic Humor, Democratic Boycott, Raven Legend Day, John Vukovich, Mahmoud Abbas.

Juggling carnivals 03/13/2007

Incoming Carnivals
Check out the Purim Edition of the JPix Carnival Part I and the dessert, Part II, at Me-Ander.

It's so amazing that it has J-Pix founder, Bagel Blogger going Ape!

The second edition of Carnival of Maryland is up at Pillage Idiot.

And check out the Pillage Idiot's great new logo for the carnival. I tell you that barbarian is a regular renaissance man. Really. (And he listens to classical music too.)

Do you know how many other state fairs carnivals there are? Carnival of the Ohio Bloggers and Virginia Blog Carnival. Others are listed but have been inactive for awhile. (There are also 2 Southern carnivals listed and a Big Apple Carnival. The last is inactive.)

And, of course, check out the Carnival of the Insanities that features a post from me.

Upcoming Carnivals

Next Kosher Cooking Carnival is March 17 at Baleboosteh. Submit your entries here.

Next Haveil Havalim is scheduled for this Sunday, March 18. Submit your entries here.

Sort of like a carnival
Check out the JIB Awards Website. Life-of-Rubin, Bagel Blogger and Mystical Paths have done a great job! Visit the site and let them know!

Blogdigger tags: Blog Carnivals, Carnival of the Insanities, Kosher Cooking Carnival, JPix, Carnival of Maryland.

Just What Does Jimmy Carter Know About Judaism?

Last week, Jimmy Carter claimed that Israeli polices toward the Palestinian Authority violates the Jewish religion.

Stop and think about that for a moment. What in the world is Carter talking about?

Is Jimmy Carter basing his comment on his study of the Chumash? If so, has he actually read the Tanakh in the original Hebrew or has he been relying on the King James translation of a translation of the original Hebrew? Has he studied Rashi? Is he familiar with the difference between Torah She’Bichtav and Torah She’Baal Peh and why the former cannot be understood without the latter?

Is Carter aware of the fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity: that Judaism is not a religion in the Christian sense, but rather has a legal component--Halacha--that makes Judaism an all inclusive way of life?

Is Carter familiar with Halacha and how Jewish law deals with the topic of Pidyon Shevuyim, ransoming captives, a topic painfully relevant with the kidnapping of Israelis soldiers. Is Jimmy Carter perhaps familiar with the concept of Rodef—a would-be murderer—in Jewish law, with implications for dealing with Palestinian terrorists.

Of course, Jimmy Carter’s ignorance of Judaism is patently obvious—as clear as the numerous errors that have been pointed out in his latest book. (See CAMERA's A Comprehensive Collection of Jimmy Carter's Errors)

In centuries past, when the Church attacked Judaism it would force Jews to present a defender in a debate where the Church itself would declare the winner.

Today, Carter attacks Israel and now is reduced to turning around and denying the ability of Jews to present a defender altogether.

By Daled Amos

Jimmy Carter

It only seemed like two years

Could this have anything to do with this?

UPDATE: Wow, Elizabeth Taylor did it too.

Blogdigger tags: Sleeping, Snoring.

Persistent libels

Last week the Egyptian media reported a television report in Israel claimed that during the six day war in 1967, the Israeli army massacred some 250 Egyptian prisoners.
The problem is that the Israeli program did no such thing. My Right Word in An Israeli journalist comments on Israeli journalism quotes:

Shklar said in a statement that reports about the documentary in the Israeli press - including in Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv - had relied on the Egyptian media.
He said that such publications had not bothered to watch the documentary before reporting about it. Adelist accused the Israeli media of acting with "typical indolence" in quoting the Egyptian media without verifying the validity of the claims.

Meryl Yourish observes the double standard demonstrated in the reaction to this "news."

Funny how when a terrorist blows himself up in a crowded market, the anti-Israel crowd is quick to leap on the term “resistance.” But when Egyptians and palestinians are killed in battle, those selfsame people are quick to scream “MURDER!”

YidwithLid notices that the charge isn't new and that it's been debunked before (along with photos and help from CAMERA)

Twelve years ago that this story (supposedly "broke" on Israeli TV last week) began to filter out of the bowels of the earth, It was investigated and proven false by the Jerusalem Post and supported by (believe it or not) the New York Times. In fact the day this massacre supposedly happened (June 7, 1967) there were reporters embedded with the troops that supposedly killed these POW's.

And while Israel may criticize the rhetorical Egyptian attacks the sad fact is that Israel or more specifically, some Israelis had a hand in resurrecting this libel. That has Fresno Zionism questioning The perverse urge to self-criticism that afflicts way too many Israelis. (This isn't just self-criticism, it's more like self-condemnation.)

Why are there always Israeli documentaries alleging Israeli wickedness? Why are people like Sarid always ready to say the worst possible things to the worst possible audiences?
Before he even knows what the Egyptians are talking about, he knows Israel is guilty: “Sarid told the paper he had not seen the documentary, but that he was aware that Israeli forces had committed such acts [JPost]”!

The answer, unfortunately, is that the freedom to express outrageous opinions is part of living in a free society. Any self examination would never occur among Israel's neighbors.
The problem is that this isn't self-examination.

The outright falsehood is something that was seized upon by Israel's enemies. A blog called the civil platform makes the necessary connection.

At the same time the Israelis were attacking and killing American servicemen aboard the USS Liberty in 1967, they were also busy butchering up to 1,000 unarmed Egyptian POWs and Indian UN peacekeepers along the Sinai coast. Indeed, some say that one of the reasons for the attack on the Liberty was to cover up the slaughter of prisoners taking place, whose actual number has been placed as high as 1,000.* Now Egyptian lawmakers, unlike their American counterparts, are demanding an investigation.

The belief in the massacre of the Egyptian POW's is necesssary because it provides the motive for the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. And this has some level of credence even in mainstream circles. In 2001, James Bamford, a respected author, wrote "Body of Secrets" in which he ties this together. The charge was so explosive that it merited its own news item at the time. James Risen, an intelligence reporter at the NY Times, wrote:

While the Israeli government said the incident was an accident, it did pay modest reparations to the victims and their families. But Mr. Bamford writes that the Israeli explanation is a cover story for a deliberate attack meant to prevent the United States from eavesdropping on its military activities. And the book provides evidence from crew members of an American spy plane that overheard the attack.
While Israeli planes and boats were attacking the Liberty, the American plane, a Navy EC-121 intelligence-gathering aircraft, was far overhead, and recorded Israeli conversations, Mr. Bamford wrote.
And the crew heard Israeli pilots talking about seeing an American flag.

The Times's reporter, reported Bamford's charges straight with no criticism. However the book reviewer for the same paper showed a bit more skepticism. (One of the crew of the Navy plane disputes Bamford's allegations about what the crew heard. Risen wasn't interested.) In an otherwise very positive review, Joseph Finder, who reviewed "Body of Secrets" wrote:

Where ''Body of Secrets'' is weakest, I think, is in its account of the most horrific incident in the N.S.A.'s history, the assault on the spy ship Liberty a few miles off the Sinai peninsula during the 1967 Middle East war. On orders from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the N.S.A. had sent the Liberty into the war zone to collect intelligence on the presence of Soviet troops and weapons in Egypt. On the afternoon of June 8, 1967, the Liberty was attacked by Israeli forces; 34 Americans were killed, 171 wounded. Was it, as Israel maintained, a ''tragic accident''? Or was it, as conspiracy theorists and some of the ship's survivors insist, a coldblooded and deliberate action by the Israelis in order to eliminate evidence of damaging information the Liberty had intercepted?
Rather too credulously, Bamford sides with the conspiracy theorists. He argues that the Israelis were attempting to cover up a gruesome mass murder by Israeli soldiers of some 400 Egyptian P.O.W.'s at the Sinai town of El Arish. Israel, Bamford claims, acted because it was convinced that the N.S.A. ship was recording intelligence on this massacre. ''Israeli soldiers were butchering civilians and bound prisoners by the hundreds,'' he writes, ''a fact that the entire Israeli Army leadership knew about and condoned.'' He charges, too, that the White House and Congress ''covered up'' the facts of the attack. But is it really possible that such an explosive secret could have been kept under wraps for so long by the Johnson administration, the United States Congress and all of the famously fractious Israeli Army leadership?
. . .
It hardly seems plausible that Israel would deliberately attack an American ship, killing dozens of American sailors, risking a confrontation with a superpower and its only ally -- in short, perpetrating one massacre in order to cover up another. Perhaps Bamford's analysis has been skewed by his palpable distaste for the Israeli state: ''Throughout its history, Israel has hidden its abominable human rights record behind pious religious claims,'' he writes. ''Critics are regularly silenced with outrageous charges of anti-Semitism.'' And: ''No one in the weak-kneed House and Senate wanted to offend powerful pro-Israel groups and lose their fat campaign contributions.''

Bamford, a well regarded intelligence analyst and frequent contributor to op-ed pages is a member of the Walt-Mearsheimer "Israel Lobby" club.

In his book, the Liberty Incident, Judge A. Jay Cristol, laid out a minute by minute reconstruction of how the accident took place. The United States never informed Israel that it had a ship in the area. The Israeli intellegence teams tracking the ship changed shifts and the new one had no up to date information on the mystery ship. An explosion - most likely an ammunition dump exploding - on a nearby beach made Israeli troops think that they were being bombarded from the sea. The terrible tragedy was the result of carelessness and miscommunications.

The most telling evidence that Israel didn't specifically target the Liberty according to Judge Cristol is that its planes were not sent out with munitions designated for sinking a ship. Had Israel's intent been to sink the Liberty to prevent it from detecting illicit Israeli activities it would have used 500 pound iron bombs.

Military historian Michael Oren has written an account explaining much of what went wrong, in The U.S.S. Liberty: Case Closed.

(Though Oren's perspective is not on the supposed massacre, but rather Israel preventing the United States from gaining advance information on its intent to attack the Golan Heights. He observes, though,

Like the other claims for Israel's alleged motive in attacking the Liberty, the one linking the assault to the Golan Heights campaign cannot withstand the scrutiny of the newly declassified documents. These confirm that Israel made no attempt to hide its preparations for an offensive against Syria, and that the United States government, relying on regular diplomatic channels, remained fully apprised of them. Thus, on June 8, the American consulate in Jerusalem reported that Israel was retaliating for Syria's bombardment of Israeli villages "in an apparent prelude to large-scale attack in effort to seize Heights overlooking border kibbutzim." That same day, U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour in Tel Aviv reported that "I would not, repeat not, be surprised if the reported Israeli attack [on the Golan] does take place or has already done so," and IDF Intelligence Chief Aharon Yariv told Harry McPherson, a senior White House aide who was visiting Israel at the time, that "there still remained the Syria problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow."

The Sinai Massacre and the Liberty Incident will keep on showing up because Israel's enemies aren't simply interested in being critics, but in arguing Israel is illegitimate.

At Commentary's Contentions last week, Hillel Halkin writing in Israel's war for public opinion

When one debates what “legitimate” criticism of Israel does and does not consist of, such figures need to be kept constantly in mind. No criticism of Israel that further distorts the wildly inaccurate picture of it that prevails in most of the world can possibly be legitimate. Israel is fighting a war for public opinion that is, in the long run, part of the war it is fighting for its survival—and it is being routed. Those who care for it, no matter how much they disagree with its current policies, should think not twice but ten times before they say or do anything that can only make this rout worse.

How much more so for Israeli journalists who so willingly took up the Egyptian claims against their own country giving fodder to their enemies?

Blogdigger tags: Egyptian POW Massacre, Six Day War, Liberty Incident, James Bamford, Michael Oren, A. Jay Cristol.

If ... you must 03/12/2007

If you haven't read In Context's A Philadelphia Area Story ; you must.
After Curt Weldon there's Joe Sestak. Not a step up.

If you haven't read Seraphic Secret's Hollywood goes Quisling; you must.

If you haven't read Don Surber's the Kos-trich party; you must.

If you haven't read Ted Koppel Tells Shocking Truth About Iraq and War on Terror at Newsbusters; you must.
Apparently Ted's no Kos-trich. (h/t Larwyn)

If you haven't read You're not helping at likelihood of success; you must.
Many thanks to the Ignoble Experiment for the pointer!
I really like Rudy Giuliani, but somehow having him expiating the sin of Newt Gingrich's infidelity strikes a sour note.

If you haven't read the Enemy Within at the Ignoble Experiment ; you must.

Technorati tag: If you must

Blogdigger tags: If You Must, Joe Sestak, Ted Koppel, Kos-trich Party, Abdul Alishtari, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich.

If ... you must 03/11/2007

If you haven't read Ask Etymology Ethelwulf at the Volokh Conspiracy; you must.
And if numbers not words are your forte check out What to say to a beautiful mathematician.

If you haven't read A Simple Jew's A winter story I have never told my parents; you must.
Unless you are his parents in which case, move on, there's nothing to see here.

If you haven't read more on the Polar Bear overload at Don Surber ; you must.

If you haven't seen Ice-Fire Silk at Not quite Perfect ; you must.

If you haven't read Sometimes nice girls finish first at West Bank Mama; you must.

If you haven't read the Greatest threat at Judeosphere; you must.

If you haven't read Blogosphere Brawl in Canada at Judeosphere; you must.

If you haven't read Undressing the King at Simply Jews; you must.
It's not about the king; it's about Michael Moore. And no, it's not about literally undressing him. So it's safe to read. If anyone thinks that Moore is committed to truth or free expression you must read about his refusal to publish Paul Berman's critical about the Sandinistas twenty years ago. More here.

If you haven't read Hey Feminists over here at Brain Terminal; you must.

If you haven't read Who cares they have great healthcare and a high literacy rate at the Colossus of Rhodey; you must.

If you haven't read Guess who won the International Kim Il Sun Award this year at Judeopundit; you must.
Is it nepotism if the relative gets something no one else could possibly want?

If you haven't read Secular Blasphemy's Norway's powerful trade union boss falls; you must.

If you haven't read PA turning red ... at the Hedgehog Report; you must.

If you must

Blogdigger tags: If you must, Cuba, Global Warming, Michael Moore, Queen Esther, Fractal Art.

Haveil Havalim #109 is UP!

Life in Israel's Super Mega Double editon of Haveil Havalim #109 is up! I'm scared to imagine what he'd do on April 15. (see below.) It looks great and, as he puts it, "Maybe take a day or two off of work to make some time for it..."

I'd like to thank the wonderful folks at BlogCarnival for this wonderful Blog Carnival Widget that gives information on upcoming hosts and past editions.

Thanks for participating, reading and keeping Haveil Havalim going!

110 March 18 - Soccer Dad
111 March 25 - Soccer Dad
April 1 - Pesach Vacation
April 8 - Pesach Vacation

As of now the next two weeks I'll be hosting. However is someone decides that he/she wants to host on the 25th let me know at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

I don't intend to have Haveil Havalim either the week before Pesach or on Chol Hamoed. If there is anyone who really wants to host it on Chol Hamoed, we can talk, but April 1 is too close and I'm sure preparations will require a lot more of everyone's time.

In addition to e-mail you may submit entries to Haveil Havalim using the submission form over at BlogCarnival. Or feel free to e-mail me at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

Also if you'd like to host an upcoming edition e-mail me at the above address.

Remember, that while the hosts and hostesses of Haveil Havalim do a wonderful job of editing and searching for interesting posts, they can't see everything. If you want a better chance of being included in Haveil Havalim please submit one or two posts for inclusion.

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

Most recent editions of Haveil Havalim at Blog Carnival
#22 Mystical Paths
#21 Rabbinical Authority Consortium of HACKers
#20 Shiloh Musings
#19 Devarim
#18 Soccer Dad
#17 Mystical Paths
#16 Critical Mastiff
#15 Soccer Dad
#14 Multiple Mentality
#13 IsraPundit
#12 DovBear
#11 Kesher Talk
#10 Biur Chametz
#9 Soccer Dad
#8 It's Almost Supernatural
#7 Bloghead
#6 Willow Tree.
#5 Crossing the Rubicon2
#4 Dov Bear
#3 Biur Chametz

Dibiagio's baggage

Thomas Dibiagio's term as U.S. Attorney for Maryland was marked by a number of high profile successes and a number of high profile scandals. Among the successes were the prosecution of Nathan Chapman, a fund manager with close ties to former Governor Glendening and the prosectuon of Maryland State Police Chief Edward Norris. In the latter category was the mysterious death - still unsolved - of one of his prosecutors and a memo in which he demanded high profile convictions.

That last incident led to his reprimand by his highers up at Justice. As the Washington Post notes in an editorial A Vote of No Confidence:

THOMAS M. DIBIAGIO, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, has embarrassed his office and discredited himself by instructing his staff to produce at least three "front-page" indictments for public corruption or white-collar crimes by Nov. 6. His astonishingly inappropriate directives, contained in internal office memos disclosed by the Baltimore Sun, earned him an unusual and deserved public reprimand from his superiors in the Justice Department. In a letter released by the department, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey ordered Mr. DiBiagio to submit "to me for review any proposed indictment in a public corruption matter." In case Mr. DiBiagio missed the point, Mr. Comey added, "You may not bring such a case without my personal approval."

(The Post questions Dibiagio's choice of Nov. 6 as being overtly political because it was just after the election. That makes no sense. If he were trying to hurt Democrats wouldn't he want to get those conviction before the election?)

A few months later Dibiagio's performance was under review and he resigned his position. Now Dibiagio has a bombshell. He was forced out in order to protect then Governor Ehrlich (who was apparently once his friend.)

But as MD Politics Today points out something seems fishy here.

Forgive me for opining here, but something to me really stinks to high heaven when a local former government official does not go to a Baltimore paper or even a Washington paper to discuss their departure. That is why I question the motives of former U.S. Attorney for Maryland Thomas DiBagio. He resigned in 2005 after pressure and controversy.

It's not like the Sun would necessarily have been unsympathetic to such charges. The editors of the Sun actually regretted Dibiagio's resignation. In Dibiagio steps down (Baltimore Sun, Dec 7, 2004)

But if that is what most people remember about Mr. DiBiagio's term, they do him an injustice. Those who know him say that some of his mistakes were made because he wasn't politically savvy. After all, he sparred not only with Baltimore's Democratic mayor over gun prosecutions but also with the Republican governor who nominated him for the job. He wasn't adept at dealing with the media, which may have exacerbated his problems in the courthouse and surely with his bosses at the Justice Department.

If Mr. DiBiagio was eager to prosecute public corruption cases, he did so because such action was overdue. Corrupt politicians are a worthy cause, but after the dust-up over his memo, he had to clear those cases with his Justice Department superiors.

To his credit, Mr. DiBiagio was as aggressive in prosecuting murderous drug dealers who killed for a living and killed more with the poison they sold on Baltimore streets. At the request of city prosecutors, he took on sexual offenders and other predators who brought him no headlines. Mr. DiBiagio's independent, hard-driving style distinguished him in the job, but his desire to accomplish his goals in under four years may have led to his personnel problems. His office put away violent criminals who managed to escape conviction in city court, and that contribution to a safer Baltimore will be long-lasting. He wanted mightily to make a difference in the lives of Marylanders - and that dedication will be sorely missed.

The Washington Post gives a lot of space to Ehrlich's defense against the charges.

The claim is extraordinary in part because of the friendship that DiBiagio and Ehrlich once shared and because Ehrlich, while he was a Republican congressman, had played a key role in securing the prosecutor's post for him. In an interview yesterday, Ehrlich said DiBiagio's comments "really came out of left field."

The former governor denied trying to influence DiBiagio's investigations or seeking his removal. "To try to tie this to slots is just crazy," Ehrlich said, and he expressed amusement over the idea that he would have held enough sway with officials in Washington to have the federal prosecutor removed.

Ehrlich also noted that he was nearly alone in publicly defending DiBiagio in summer 2004, when Democrats were calling for his resignation and editorial boards were questioning his fitness for office. "I've known him for a long time, and I think he should be given the benefit of the doubt," Ehrlich told the Baltimore Sun at the time.

Another factor favoring Ehrlich's interpretation is that the Justice Department official who fired Dibiagio is a 42 year employee of the department named David Margolis. Margolis would thus hardly be the kind of person who would engage such partisan moves. (Not impossible, but unlikely.)

It looks like Dibiagio, aware of his somewhat mixed legacy, went to the Times to make himself look better. Not an especially noble coda to his career.

UPDATE: In fairness to Dibiagio, though, he's been accused of partisanship, he's never been accused of being an outright liar. So while there are plenty of reasons to suspect his story now, it isn't impossible that it's true.

Blogdigger tags: Thomas Dibiagio, Robert Ehrlich, Justice Department.

New look

I got tired of my own color schemes and found a neat one on the internet. Unfortunately it appears that there are quite a few mistake in the template. Any Movable Type experts willing to parse the code for me? I don't know enough.

Please let me know if you like it and if you can read it. Comments below or e-mail me at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

Blogdigger tags: New Theme.

Council speak 03/09/2007

The Council has Spoken and it has determined that JoshuaPundit's Between Iraq and a Hard Place -- Why We Went, How It Got So Screwed Up and Where It's Going -- Part 2 is the council winner this week and Websurdity's Uncomfortable Questions: Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job? was the non-council winner. (Warning: the latter is unbelievably funny.)

The runners-up were Death of a Titan, Right Wing Nuthouse's tribute to Arthur Schlesinger Jr. among the council entries and the non-council runner up was Iraq Trip Report by Small Wars Journal.

Want to get in on the fun? For a limited time only, you too can be a member of the Watcher's Council. There's an opening! If you think you're at least as talented as I am (that's not setting the bar very high, is it?) follow these instructions to apply for membership.

If you like the idea of participating but don't want to participate every week - call it membership with benefits - you may follow the instructions here to get your submission considered in the non-council part of the voting.

Blogdigger tags: Watcher's Council.

If ... you must 03/08/2007

If you haven't read Best Star Trek Movies (in order) at Colossus of Rhodey; you must.
I'd guess that most Star Trek fans would choose the Wrath of Khan #1 and the Final Frontier #10. (My feeling on seeing the trailer for the Final Frontier - wow those 3 jokes were great, unless there's nothing else good about the movie, it'll be great. Well there was nothing else good about the movie and one of those jokes didn't work. Scotty does know the ship like the back of his hand he'd never turn around and walk into a bulkhead. Cheap laugh at the expense of characterization.)
And I agree that the Motion Picture was probably not as bad as first advertised. Sure too much time enjoying the special effects, but the plot was similar to the Changeling. So it wasn't original but it wasn't bad. If it had been shortened it probably would have been great, but then it wouldn't have been a movie. Did you notice how Decker became Riker and the empathic Deltan became a Betazoid?
I'd rank Nemesis lower and Search for Spock higher.
The "nuclear wessels" line in the Voyage Home was funny, but now having a Russian seeking military secrets isn't nearly as comical as it was then. "Dated" is the word.

If you haven't read The definitive 200 at Fire Ant Gazette; you must.
And while you're at it read the Definitive 200 additional thoughts too.
I don't understand some of the selections, but the biggest omission I saw was the lack of any Eric Clapton albums (either alone or in a group.) And while I can understand why it doesn't include greatest hits albums, what are soundtracks doing there? And if there are soundtracks, why not Saturday Night Fever? I'm no fan of disco, but how can you leave that one out? Maybe instead of one the Dixie Chicks albums?

If you haven't read the 50 most important people on the Web at Kevin Dayhoff ; you must.
I can't really comment on the industry folks and while I like Powerline, I just don't see that Powerline is more important than Instapundit. Instapundit is a lot more generous with links. (Even if I haven't rated one in a half year. Hint, Hint.) I also bet that a lot more bloggers started out wanting to be Instapundit than Powerline.

If you haven't read the Loneliest Number at Futility Closet; you must.
I know it's sort of morbid, but isn't it a little interesting?

If you must

Tolerance through humor

In Just a Little Innocent Comedy (or here for a link that won't disappear as quickly) the Baltimore Sun's TV critic David Zurawik profiles two Arab American and one Iranian American comic.

The profile is mostly a lecture about tolerance.

Indeed though progress has been made, more is needed, says Evelyn Alsultany, a University of Michigan professor who since 2001 has tracked TV portrayals of Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Most television roles that call for a person of Middle Eastern ethnicity, she says, fall into one of two "types."

In the first, Alsultany says, an Arab character is unjustly suspected of illegal activity.

In the second type, the character is "good": an Arab or Muslim who aides the U.S. government in its fight against "bad" Arabs and Muslims. In these roles, goodness nearly always is defined as serving the U.S government, the professor adds.

And while I can understand the complaint of the comic with the Egytian heritage, Jobrani

As grateful as he is for the increased job opportunities, Jobrani asks: "Where are the Arab, Muslim or Iranian medical doctors saving lives and curing people on TV? Go in any hospital, and you will see them, but not on television."

I'm not impressed with the overall complaint presented.

First of all, the fact that Islamic entertainers are even more popular after 9/11 demonstrates the tolerance in our society. Why then is tolerance presented as an American burden about which more has to be done?

The Palestinian American comic who seems to be the focus of the article, Dean Obeidallah has his own website deanofcomedy.com and links to his act with a Jewish comedian, Scott Blakeman called Standup for Peace.

Where does this two man show perform?

Blakeman and Obeidallah have received critical acclaim and standing room only crowds at theaters, comedy clubs, Jewish Community Centers, Temples, as well as colleges including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, William and Mary, George Mason University and University of New Hampshire. They were featured on MSNBC and have been the subject of articles in a wide range of publications.

The Zurawik article tells us where Obeidallah has performed his solo act.

In fact, the Fordham University Law School graduate, who in 2002 co-created the New York Arab Comedy Festival, is finding himself in increasingly high demand. In the past year, he has performed his one-man show, I Come in Peace, in clubs and colleges from coast to coast as well as in Ramallah, West Bank; Beirut, Lebanon; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Did you notice what was missing from the list of places where his two man show plays? It makes me wonder who really needs the lecture in tolerance.

UPDATE: Elder of Ziyon subsequently has had two posts about Palestinian humor. The first The Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour talks about

When I was in Israel in January I saw a CNN piece about the "Israeli Palestinian Comedy Tour." There are four comedians, including a Palestinian Arab American, who are evidently doing a bang-up business telling jokes throughout Israel. (In fact, a couple of them were staying at my hotel in Jerusalem.)

I have no problem with this tour, and I wish them the best. But I can't help noticing that Arab countries do not seem to be on their itinerary.

My guess is that it's the presence of the Israeli that makes the tour unpalatable to Arab audiences. But the Arab half of the tour, Ray Hanania is not just a comedian but an op-ed writer. Amazingly he even has been given a perch at Yedioth Ahronot to spout his ahistorical nonsense. Some of it, I suppose, could be funny if it weren't meant in earnest.

Elder of Ziyon followed up with a guest post from one of his readers.

It is unfortunate that the Muslims have not embraced humor in the way that Jews have but it is not very surprising. Humor is a humanizing defense mechanism for those considered to be lower status. It helps them to deal with that situation and it helps them to get past it. Humor is an equalizer. It brings those of (perceived) higher status down to the level of the others, not by vilification but by humanization.

Humor also requires introspection by those to whom it is directed. Rather than demonize, the humorist simply exploits weaknesses, foibles and idiosyncrasies of those objectified, be they from within the community or those outside of it. The mirror of introspection is held for all to see. It requires a degree of strength to survive looking at the mirror.

Blogdigger tags: Arab-Israeli Conflict, Humor, Arab Comedians, Islamic Comedians.

Sorry, I gotta scoot

Right Wing Nuthouse gets the Libby verdict down in a (four paragraph) nutshell

Instead, all they got was Scooter Libby who lied to the FBI and the Grand Jury about who told him what and when about a non-clandestine CIA agent who was married to someone who has been proven a liar by at least two investigations.

What the verdict proves is that you should never lie to the FBI or the grand jury. That’s all. Anything else is fantasy.

Did the Administration deliberately try to discredit loose cannon Wilson? Since the guy was shopping his classified trip to Niger for 6 months prior to his editorial in the New York Times and believed him to be lying through his teeth, the answer is yes. Did they think that revealing the fact that Valerie Plame joined others in recommending her husband for the junket to Niger might discredit Wilson? Again, the answer is yes.

But context is everything. And considering the fact that there was (and still is) a faction in the intelligence community opposed to the Administration’s foreign policy and that this cabal used leaks in order to not only discredit the Bush Administration but also to deliberately interfere in the 2004 Presidential election, one can understand this “push back” by the Bushies while still condemning it.

My only quibble is his implication that he condemns the administration's "push back." He had given all the reasons the "push back" was reasonable. It wasn't just reasonable, the administration was telling the truth when its opponents were lying. And even now, the opponents still lie.

Predictably the editors of the NY Times were crowing.

That is what we know from the Libby trial, and it is some of the clearest evidence yet that this administration did not get duped by faulty intelligence; at the very least, it cherry-picked and hyped intelligence to justify the war. What Mr. Wilson found, and subsequent investigations confirmed, was that there was one trip in 1999 — not “recently,” but four years before Mr. Bush’s statement — by an Iraqi official to Niger and that during that trip, uranium was never discussed.

Of course that wasn't so. The administration had incomplete intelligence and had to react as best it could with what looked like a credible threat. Not to act would have been irresponsible.

(Wilson first published his story in the NY Times in op-ed. The Times therefore has a stake in maintaining the charade that the op-ed is truthful. Isn't that a conflict of interest?)

The Times, being a newspaper, though was concerned with the collateral damage of the investigation.

We also do not understand why the federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, chose to wage war with the news media in assembling his case, going so far as to jail a Times reporter, Judith Miller, for refusing to reveal the name of a confidential source.

While I think that the Fitzgerald investigation was a bit of witch hunt, how else was Fitzgerald supposed to develop a timeline without interviewing reporters who had knowledge relevant to the investigation? Here the Times is asserting that it's good that the administration was called to account, but how would that have been possible without the prosecutor interviewing journalists covering the administration? No doubt the Times's editors would have approved of dunking Mr. Libby - and other members of the administration - into a vat of water to see if they'd float. But we abandoned that method of legal proof a few centuries ago. Short of divination it's hard to see how the Times could want a thorough investigation of the administration and exempt journalists covering it from testifying. That's not waging war, that's conducting an investigation.

(My sympathy level for members of the fourth estate is at a low in this case anyway. After all they're the ones who kept promoting Wilson's narrative even after it was debunked. Any special privileges that accrue to the press come from its supposed independence and devotion to the truth. The MSM, in this case, showed precious little regard for either.)

My buddy PostWatch remembers Susan Schmidt. and uses the solid early reporting of that Post reporter to debunk the politically motivated garbage that's passing as reporting today.

Just one Minute spins Media Matters' counterspin and debunks Kurtz on Russert.

Q and O.Dale Franks feels that Libby was rightly convicted for giving false information, though he acknowledges the possibility that it was the result of innocent confusion. He also does a nice job of explaining Joe Wilson.

There was no hatchet job against Wilson. If anything, it was Wilson who was conducting a hatchet job, and the administration was trying to correct a record that consisted of the bald lies spun by him. They were fully justified in being pissed at Mr. Wilson and, had security classification issues not been involved, would've been justified in going after the lying little wombat with both barrels.

There was no hatchet job against Wilson. If anything, it was Wilson who was conducting a hatchet job.Joe Wilson wasn't a critic. He didn't offer "criticism" about administration policy. He lied about the Administration's policy, and the Administration's senior officials knew he was lying. His credibility exploded when the bipartisan investigation into his claims found that:

1) He did not, in fact, find any evidence to contradict the "16 Words", and his report's conclusions were the opposite of those he wrote about in the New York Times.

2) Despite his denials, his wife, Valerie Plame, did, in fact, recommend him for the Niger junket.

While I'm somewhat more sympathetic to Libby than he is, this is well worth reading.

Finally, there's a nice roundup at Outside the Beltway.

More at Buzztracker.

Blogdigger tags: Libby Trial, Plamegate.

Miserable wealth

Presence in the Logic of Luck and Sweet Rose Ramblings in Lottery Dreams (h/t the Ignoble Experiment) think about the possibilities of winning the big MegaMillions jackpot.

The former is more interested in considering the possibilities and the latter the effects of winning. Still, as I blogged previously, winning the lottery often doesn't bring happiness - or even financial success.

Really what every lottery agency should offer, is not just counseling for gambling addiction, but the services of a reliable financial advisor. Huge sums of money for someone not used to it, becomes like Monopoly money. In one of the stories I linked to, the winner tried to benefit everyone he knew. He was much too generous and ended up in debt.

Yesterday's results are here. If you won and want to share it, I won't object.

Blogdigger tags: Winning the Lottery, MegaMillions.

The most toys (or cash)

I was curious. Given that the 2008 Presidential election is over a year and a half away, do the polls mean anything? Or are the numbers we're seeing simply a "beauty contest" a reflection of name recognition.

So I checked Newsbank for articles on the 1996, 2000, and 2004 elections during the months of March and April of the previous year.
The little I found is striking. More checking needs to be done, as there probably were other factors too.

1999
GORE, BUSH TAKE EARLY LEADS IN RACE FOR CAMPAIGN FUNDS

Boston Globe
April 1, 1999
Author: John Solomon, Associated Press

As is confirmed in this GWU survey, eight years ago the future contenders were also the top money raisers.

And both were the popular frontrunners. Gore wasn't quite as dominant as Bush as his runner up, Bill Bradley was only 20 points behind in April. At the same time Elizabeth Dole (not John McCain was #2 to Gov. Bush, but still 40 points behind.

2003
Kerry Shaded Edwards In Fundraising
Reports Fuel Reassessment
Washington Post
April 3, 2003
Author: Thomas B. Edsall and Dan Balz; Washington Post Staff Writers

The article reports that Kerry, at this time four years ago, led the Democratic field in (overall) fundraising with a slight edge over John Edwards.

Yet at this time four years ago who was the most popular Democrat? According to Quinnipiac University poll, it was Sen. Hillary Clinton. And if she wasn't running then it was Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

Without Clinton, Lieberman gets 21 percent, followed by 17 percent for Gephardt; 12 percent for Kerry; 8 percent for Edwards; 7 percent for Moseley-Braun; 6 percent for Graham; 5 percent for Sharpton; 4 percent for Dean; 2 percent for Kucinich.

So in the three most recent contested races for party nominations the most important factor at this early stage appears to be the amount of money raised by the candidate. I've tried to find out what the story was in 1995 and earlier but haven't come accross that that information yet.

A recent item at WTOP wondered why the Republicans seem better at having their early popularity leaders end up the eventual nominee.

Republicans have picked the early front-runner in seven of the past 10 elections, according to Gallup polling. In the other three elections, Republican incumbents cruised to re-election.

Democrats nominated a former vice president, Walter Mondale, in 1984, and a sitting vice president, Al Gore, in 2000. For those elections, the early polls were more predictable at picking the front-runner.

Why has the GOP been better at predicting winners?

"There is this sense among Republicans _ a belief that it's a certain person's time to run for president," said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution. But the GOP track record is probably due more to chance and the Republicans' success at winning the White House since 1968, he said.

The Northeastern Voice offers explains that the early frontrunner often has the best national organization.

Contributor and editor of the recently published "In Pursuit of the White House 2000", a political anthology that examines the presidential nominating process, Mayer said it is likely that voters will be choosing between Gore and Bush in the general presidential election in November. His prediction stems from his belief that the current primary system generally favors national frontrunners like Gore and Bush, candidates who enter a presidential race with a strong national organization intact.

It might just be then, chance that the Republican with the best national organization (early) also was the frontrunner. (The reason it wasn't the case with the Democrats in 2000 is that Joe Lieberman had the most name recognition but he did not have a strong national organization.)

William Saletan seems to buy into the idea that the candidate with the most money is the frontrunner, but he is uncomfortable with its implications. In The Fraudulent Primary, Saletan writes:

Who's the culprit beneath all this metaphorical muck? The people who write it. Edwards' showing "might slow that tendency" of "the party and the media" to view Kerry as the front-runner, says the Los Angeles Times. Why? Because early FEC reports "are considered an important benchmark, eyed closely by political insiders as one of the first empirical measures of a candidate's viability." Cook agrees: "Insiders will be very impressed." So does Palmieri: "Money begets money, and it's proving the vitality of your campaign to other potential supporters and to the media, frankly, and to voters." Media. Insiders. Us. We don't know through which prism to view the campaign. We don't dare say who's qualified. It's all so complicated. Just give us a number, and we'll keep score.

So is it right that the candidate who raises the most money early gets the nomination? It appears that it is neither right nor wrong, but it is the way things are. So why would it be?

Saletan goes through various rationales regarding the claims of the Edwards campaign four years ago and dismisses them all. But perhaps there is a reason why (similar to what Saletan considers) why raising money fast in the early going is a qualification for being President.

Convincing a donor to give money to a campaign is a more difficult task than getting a voter to vote. In order to convince a potential donor to give of his money to a candidate the candidate has to present the donor with enough information to show that they believe enough of the same programs, policies and positions that the donor will want to help the candidate spread his message. Arguably, the candidate who connects with the greatest number of people will raise a lot of money. Convincing more people to give more money is a preliminary sign of political success. (What if a candidate has raised more money but from fewer people than another candidate? I suspect then, that there'd be a weakness in his position.)

Three years ago the Howard Dean boomlet was of no great significance. Dean polled well. He was the candidate that most reporters were comfortable with and so they created - intentionally or not - a story that Dean had unseated Kerry as frontrunner. I don't believe that ever happened and the results from Iowa confirm that. Dean, not having been in the same league with Kerry regarding money raised, never had a chance of finishing better than Kerry.

(The Hedgehog Report helpfully e-mailed me that figures for the first quarter this year won't be available until mid-April from the FEC unless a campaign wishes to leak them sooner.)

When the FEC releases the financial information of the 2008 Presidential candidates for the first quarter of 2007 in a few weeks, I expect that Giuliani and Clinton will be the big winners money-wise in their respective parties. I also believe that over the next year many sub-plots will be written. Those sub-plots about the election will be nothing more than noise. In the summer of 2008 the Democrats and Republicans will choose Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani to represent their respective parties in November for the general election for President.

Blogdigger tags: Campaing Finance, Democrats, Republicans, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani.

Iced yew

In addition to the crape myrtle we also have some yews up front. I would have liked to get some nice icicle pictures this year, but without the requisite big snowfall that didn't happen. Or hasn't happened yet.

However after last week's ice storm I was able to get some closeups of ice on the yew bushes out front. I liked the shape of the ice in the top picture, but the lower one was much nicer capturing the translucent ice.

Blogdigger tags: Photography, Yew, Ice, Crape Myrtle.

Juggling carnivals 03/06/2007

Incoming Carnivals

The most recent Carnival of the Insanities included an item from Soccer Dad about getting connected to the internet in Alaska.

The most recent Harry Potter Carnival included my post about Thestrals and more. Apparently J. K. Rowling addressed the Threstal issue in an interview. (Yes the answers provided in my comment section were consistent with her explanation.) Check it out.

Upcoming Carnivals

This Sunday Life in Israel is scheduled to host the next edition of Haveil Havalim. If you have an Israel or Jewish related post please submit it for inclusion.

Crablaw's second carnival of Maryland is being hosted at Pillage Idiot this week, March 11. If you've blogged anything from or about Maryland, submit it here.

If you're a Jewish photographer, the next edition of Bagel Blogger's J-Pix is scheduled to be hosted at Me-Ander on March 12.

And in a display of reciprocity the next edition of Me-Ander's Kosher Cooking Carnival is scheduled for March 18 at Baleboosteh.

Did I leave out any carnivals that I'm supposed to mention?

Up and Coming ... not a carnival

Finally It's Almost Supernatural is in the running for 2007 South African blogging awards. They won one category and place in a couple of others last year. I promoted their candidacy and like to flatter myself that somehow the two or three votes I sent their way helped them win the best political blog last year.

Some samples of their better posts (and most are quite good) are:
Old Canards Die Hard - OK, I'm not objective, they quoted me in that one. (But the subject is an important one.)

The Mohammed Cartoon Hypocrisy.

South Africa's Unconditional Support for Hamas.

Pogrund silenced in South Africa again.

Our Contribution to the 2006 Honest Reporting Awards.

Check these out and more. And by all means vote for It's Almost Supernatural.

Technorati tag: Juggling Carnivals

Blogdigger tags: Blog Carnivals, Carnival of the Insanities, Kosher Cooking Carnival, JPix, Carnival of Maryland, Harry Potter Carnival.

Happy (shushan) purim

Given that I'm a luddite (I'm not a podcast person) and a bit slow (I kept on putting off calling in even as the deadline kept getting pushed back) I didn't participate in the Muqata's Purim Podcast.

However I did prepare a couple of Purim Spoofs. (I know, that was last year's shtick. I told you I'm a bit slow.)

One is called Rosenfeld's Ruminations and the other Asara Tephachim.

And check out Elie's Expositions and Daled Amos for Purim.

And while you're at it, the new design of Elder of Ziyon.

Unfair plame

Variety reports that there's a movie about Valerie Plame and her introverted husband in the works.

(via memeorandum)

Warner Bros. is developing a feature on the lives of Valerie Plame and Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the married couple drawn into a D.C. firestorm.

"[D]rawn into?" Joseph Wilson very publicly inserted himself into the firestorm. In fact he reasonably could be said to have created the firestorm. In fact his role was like the kid who calls in a false fire alarm and watches with amusement as the public safety officials rush to take charge of the situation.

For anyone who has any inkling that Wilson might have had a passing acquaintance with the truth in this episode should read this paragraph from the bi-partisan report of the Senate Select subcomittee on intelligence.

(U) The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article (“CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid,” June 12,2003) which said, “among the Envoy’s conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.”’ Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong” when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have “misspoken”to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were “forged.” He also said he may have become conhsed about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

Nice synopsis at PowerLine

And the CIA, far from being a right-wing bogeyman, has been complicit in the Wilson/Plame farce from the beginning: sending the unqualified and politically-motivated Joe Wilson to Niger at his wife's urging, not signing him to a confidentiality agreement, not even getting a written report from him, referring the "outing" of desk employee Plame for criminal investigation, etc. No doubt the truth about the Plame matter will be as AWOL from the movie as it is from Variety's blurb.

Just one Minute greets the news with a sense of foreboding.

Don't kill me now - I want to feel the stake in my heart at the moment the film is announced as the winner of "Best Picture".

Wizbang is hoping there's more of the story to be written.

The Variety piece also says Plame's story was "illegally leaked by the White House." Maybe the movie will include the prosecution of that illegal leak we have yet to see.

And let's go back to producer, Jerry Zucker, in Variety:

"Almost everything that we need for the movie is available from print outlets, and obviously we haven't read the book yet because it hasn't been approved by the CIA," Jerry Zucker said. "Valerie has been incredibly careful with what she tells us, it's almost like she is still working for the CIA. The biggest element of the movie to us is the story of two people who spent their lives in service of their government, and were then betrayed by that government."

"Betrayed by their government"? More like betrayed their professionalism in service of opponents of the elected government of their country.

(My choices to play Wilson and Plame? Harris Yulin and Gwyneth Paltrow. Though the age difference is probably a bit bigger than between the Wilsons.)

Blogdigger tags: Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson, Movie.

By All Means Ms. Rice--Let's Look At Those Polls

One of Condoleezza's main pillars in pursuing her very hands-on approach to pushing through what amounts to one-sided Israeli concessions in the search for a Palestinian state and peace is that this is what Palestinians want. Not the terrorists mind you, but the 'Palestinian people' themselves. Peace.

For example, Andy McCarthy quotes from Rice's interview with Cal Thomas in October of last year:

Well, you can look at any opinion poll in the Palestinian territories and 70 percent of the people will say they're perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace. And when it comes right down to it, yeah, there are plenty of extremists in the Palestinian territories who are not going to be easily dealt with. They have to be dealt with — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories — they're terrorists and they have to be dealt with as terrorists. But the great majority of Palestinian people — this is — I've been with these people. The great majority of people, they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do. ... But also it's — look, if human beings don't want a better future, don't want their children to grow up in peace and have opportunities, then none of this is going to work anyway. But I really believe that the people of the Middle East — not the extremists — want the same things that everyone else wants. [emphasis added]

Very nice. Note however that Rice does not specify a particular poll to back this up. Now compare this Pollyanna-ish dream with the reality of an actual poll that McCarthy points to in an article in FrontPage. There you can find the results of the latest poll by Near East Consulting--a Palestinian research institute--on Palestinian issues and attitudes:

A recent poll of Palestinian children shows a direct correlation between the PA curriculum and Palestinian children's opinions. PMW's newest report on Palestinian Authority schoolbooks warns that because of the PA curriculum, which repeatedly and utterly rejects Israel's right to exist, "The well-meaning (Palestinian) student is left with no logical justification or religious option to accept Israel as a neighbor ..." ...

[A] new poll released by Near East Consulting, a Palestinian research institute, ... asked Palestinians, "Does Israel have the right to exist?"

Among young people ages 18 -25, those who have been most influenced by PA education, an overwhelming number - between 84% - 93% — denied Israel's right to exist. [http://www.neareastconsulting.com/] This was higher than the overall figure of 75% who denied Israel's right to exist. It should be noted that PA teachings denying Israel's right to exist are endemic throughout PA society and media, including among Fatah leaders, which would account for the high levels of denial of Israel's legitimacy throughout PA society. [emphasis added]

This is just one more case where the facts and how Condoleezza Rice presents them--differ.

By Daled Amos

Technorati Tags: Condoleezza Rice and Palestinians and Polls.

Council speak 03/02/2007

The council has spoken. This week's winning council essay was Germany and Iraq Part IV by Done with Mirrors. The best essays I get to see as a member of the Watcher's council are the ones that open up a new perspective on the present or the past. This week's winner did just that. Second place went to Bookworm Room's Means v. Ends, which to reduce it to a song would be "Please don't let me be misunderstood." Of course that greatly simplifies an excellent argument, so read it and don't just take my word for it.

Among non-council posts the winning entry was The Blame Game by From my position ... on the way about the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. (Bookworm Room asks whether the correct person was blamed for the problems.) The runner up was the Augean Stables' Honor Killing, Silence and the meaning of Speaking out. The title says it all.

Blogdigger tags: Watcher's Council.

Green thinking from the red planet

Lead editorial in the Ma'adim Vallis Voice:

It's not often that Terrans speak with clarity and seriousness of David Ignatius who wrote in today's Washington Post Climate Change Precipe:

The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over. A leading international group of climate scientists reported last month that the evidence for global warming is "unequivocal" and that the likelihood it is caused by humans is more than 90 percent. Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, but this isn't a "call both sides for comment" issue anymore. For mainstream science, it's settled.

This is good news for Martians, as we contemplate our own problem with global warming. It is clear that Terran arrogance has only exacerbated a problem.

We have the case of a prominent terran - who used to be the second most powerful man on the planet and is now an honored film maker - who has been contributing over 20 times the amount of carbon to the solar system as the average Terran. (Us Martians use much less, we're more, um, Spartan in our lifestyles.)

Worse he is not just contributing to the growing system warming problem, he is actually profiting from such harmful excess.

But Terran arrogance is componded when it appears that there's an ulterior behind their contributions to system warming. Their expansionist aims are becoming ever clearer.

Moreover, the moon base is not pointless. The shuttles were on an endless trip to the nowhere of low Earth orbit. The moon is a destination. The idea this time is not to go plant a flag, take a golf shot and leave, but to stay and form a real self-sustaining, extraterrestrial human colony.

Sure, Mars would be better. It holds open the possibility of life and might even have water on its surface today. But the best should not be the enemy of the good. Mars is simply too far, too dangerous, too difficult, too expensive. We won't go there for a hundred years.

Nor is it true that there is nothing of use or even of interest on the moon. There are all kinds of materials to be exploited, observations of the cosmos to be made, and knowledge to be gained on how best to live off the land away from Earth.

"Mars would be better" "Exploit" these words demonstrate typical Terran belligerence. First the Terrans will heat up our beloved planet to make it difficult for us to stay. When we clear out to another world or to shelters to escape the ravages of our ever warming planet, they will come and exploit our world for themselves.

If Terran arrogance and threats do not cease, it will be 1938 all over again. And no one wants it to come to that.

Blogdigger tags: Mars, Climate Change, Satire.

If ... you must 03/02/2007

Purim edition

If you haven't read Purim Holiday 1997 at Dry Bones Blog; you must DRINK.

If you haven't read Sderot Fauxtography hits Blog at Backspin; you must DRINK.

If you haven't read Purim Time for Tzedekah at Elder of Ziyon ; you must DRINK.

If you haven't read Holiday Splash at Elie's Expositions; you must DRINK.

If you haven't read Desdendants of Amalek at Pillage Idiot; you must DRINK.

If you haven't read The queen's tail at Seraphic Secret; you must.

If you haven't read The starbuck's memo and Purim at Modern Uberdox; you must DRINK.

My offerings from previous years:
If you haven't read Famous Last words: Agag edition at Soccer Dad ; you must DRINK.

If you haven't read blessed paranoia at Soccer Dad; you must DRINK.

If you haven't read Rebbetzin Esther Ritchie at Soccer dad; you must DRINK.

There's more to add; hopefully (if possible) tomorrow night. If you have your own suggestions, please e-mail me!

And get ready for the podcast.

UPDATE:
If you haven't read Saved by a Purim Song at Heichal Hanegina; you must DRINK.

If you haven't checked A Simple Jew's Purim Links; you must DRINK.

Technorati tag: If you must

Blogdigger tags: If ... you must, Purim.

Salt in wounds

In "Who performed a miracle in this place" Shiloh Musings reflects on escaping a terrorist attack eleven years ago.

It is one that I remmber well too. An Arab-American named Ahmed Hamideh drove his car into a crowd of people (people not settlers) killing a young woman name Flora Yechiel and injuring more than twenty others. Mrs. Yechiel had been in Jerusalem receiving treatments for cancer. She was with her sister, Irit Mizrachi, whose husband had been murdered by terrorist earlier.

I already commented on the awful reporting that followed this attack. Part of the problem was that the Israeli government was trying to play down the terror angle. Hamideh committed his act of terror just after one of the worst post-Oslo terror attacks to that time and the government hoped that it could preserve a small amount of political support for peace moves with the PLO. What I didn't remember clearly is that the Police Chief of Jerusalem quickly changed his position. According to Newsday on Feb 28, 1996 ("Jerusalem Crash Likely No Accident")

Immediately after the crash, police commanders said they apparently were dealing with a terror attack, but then said it was most likely an accident because they found skid marks suggesting the driver tried to stop.

Police later hosed down the road to simulate Monday's rain-slicked conditions, and an officer drove the car at high speed toward the bus stop and hit the brakes. The car came to a stop without smashing into the bus stop, showing its brakes were fine, Amit said. And he said the skid marks were apparently from another car.

"In all likelihood, we are not talking about an accident," Amit said.

In contrast the Washington Post ran a headline for a Reuters story:

ISRAELI AIDE SAYS AMERICAN MAY HAVE INTENDED TO KILL
U.S. RELATIVES CALL SUGGESTION INCONCEIVABLE'

And the next day the Post was worse. The first paragraph of a report titled "PERES: ISRAEL MAY BREAK PLEDGE UNLESS ARAFAT REINS IN MILITANTS" read:

Prime Minister Shimon Peres, his political prospects damaged by Sunday's twin terrorist attacks, is intimating for the first time that he may break Israel's commitment to pull back troops in the West Bank city of Hebron if the Palestinian Authority fails to act firmly enough against armed extremists.

So all the while the PA was failing or refusing to adhere to its commitments only Israel had a commitment that could be broken.

In the intervening years, things haven't gotten much better.

Blogdigger tags: Terror, Media Bias, Israel.

Gilad Schwartz

My mother just told me that a young man in the community, Gilad Schwartz, is seriously ill. I don't know Gilad well but about 10 years ago he was on one of the soccer teams that I coached. What I remember is that though he was a good athlete, he wasn't full of himself like some young sports stars are. It was a pleasure having him on my team.

His father mentioned that this past summer he went to Eretz Yisrael to volunteer. (I forget in what capacity.)

Please daven for Gilad Hillel ben Bracha Mirel.

(A link to the family's website was taken down by request.)

Neither poverty nor ignorance

Brain Terminal has an excellent post Who are the terrorists? in which he argues.

As I said, today’s conflict with the Jihadists arises from a profound cultural difference, not from America’s past foreign policy or failure to hand out even more money around the globe. But for some reason, many of us prefer to point the finger back at ourselves and ignore the real source of the problem. Simply put, finding fault with other cultures just isn’t politically correct.

This is a point Daniel Pipes made in God and Mammon

Even Islamists who make the ultimate sacrifice and give up their lives fit this pattern of financial ease and advanced education. A disproportionate number of terrorists and suicide bombers have higher education, often in engineering and the sciences. This generalization applies equally to the Palestinian suicide bombers attacking Israel and the followers of Osama bin Laden who hijacked the four planes of September 11. In the first case, one researcher found by looking at their profiles that: "Economic circumstances did not seem to be a decisive factor. While none of the 16 subjects could be described as well-off, some were certainly struggling less than others." In the second case, as the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz sardonically put it, the biographies of the September 11 killers would imply that the root cause of terrorism is "money, education and privilege." More generally, Fathi ash-Shiqaqi, founding leader of the arch-murderous Islamic Jihad, once commented, "Some of the young people who have sacrificed themselves [in terrorist operations] came from well-off families and had successful university careers." This makes sense, for suicide bombers who hurl themselves against foreign enemies offer their lives not to protest financial deprivation but to change the world.

What Pipes notes elsewhere in Shakespeare with Sharia, these are people who are alienated from Western culture who, despite everything, are steeped in that very culture.

More broadly, Islamic radicals tend to be well acquainted with the West (the main exceptions are those in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan), having learned its languages, studied its cultures, or lived there. A disproportionate number of them (such as the heads of the Turkish and Jordanian Islamist organizations) are engineers. In a statement from his Manhattan jail cell, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing pointedly cited Newton's laws of physics.

This points to an important, if little known fact: however much Islamists hate the West, they are deeply connected to it. They are not peasants living in the remote countryside, but urbanized, thoroughly modern individuals, often university graduates. As Westernized individuals coping with modern life, they seek the West's learning and admire its efficiency.

As Brain Terminal observes, when the diplomats and politicians look for diplomatic solutions they are misunderstanding the nature of the enemy. That is potentially fatal.

Terror, Islamism, Western Culture

If ... you must 03/01/2007

If you haven't read the Great Asian game is heating up at Deja Vu ; you must.
Also worth reading on Pakistan and war on terror are this, this and this.

If you haven't read Judeopundit's Iran and Zimbabwe two countries with independent stances; you must.
They're independent the same way the non-aligned movement is non-aligned.

If you haven't read Israel and Pakistan at Simply Jews; you must.
There are differences between the two also. For one thing it isn't particularly unsafe to fly a kite in Israel.

If you haven't read Unidentified Vandals at Boker Tov Boulder; you must.
Zhitomir isn't far from the town where my father's family came from.

If you haven't read In Context's A Grim Reminder ; you must.
The Temple Mount is less an issue of outrage than of political opportunism. I wrote about more recent example in the temple dodge.

If you haven't read A proud Israeli Bedouin questions American-Jewish apathy
at Solomonia; you must.

If you haven't read Peretz threatens coalition crisis over Friedmann's court limitation bill at Israel Matzav; you must.
In government inertia often results because change entails risk. In this case Peretz would seem to be a bit myopic - and not because he's still got the lens caps on - as the only reason he remains in power is because no one the coalition - outside of himself - seems to have a political death wish. Most of those in power are practical enough to know that they won't be in power following the next election, so they're not interested in rocking the fragile but unpopular boat. In fact most members of the Labour Party seem to feel that way too. I guess you have to give Peretz credit for putting principles ahead of power then.

If you haven't read Letters from home and Iraq at PowerLine; you must.
h/t Instapundit

If you haven't read Why Hillary can't apologize at Jewish Current Issues; you must.
I found Hillary's "I made the wrong decision because I was duped" argument to be less than convincing. This shows that her support for the war continued until well after the reasons for claiming ignorance were apparent.

If you haven't read Historic and scientific revisionism at CrabLaw; you must.
The human capacity to deny what one sees is amazing isn't it?

If you haven't read Becoming an extrovert at Carter's Adventures; you must.
I'm probably never going to be much of an extrovert. However I did learn to think on my feet a bit by calling into sports talk shows. (I guess that was an early form of blogging.)

If you haven't read the guest who talked to food at Seraphic Secret ; you must.

If you haven't read Lemony Snicket's Judaism at Yourish; you must.
I haven't read the books, but this interview almost makes me want to.

Please keep in mind that if you have a post you think I'd like, please e-mail me at dhgerstman at gmail dot com with "If you must" in the Subject line to be considered. I will try to do If you must, most weekdays.

Technorati tag: If you must

Blogdigger tags: Pakistan, Israel, Zimbabwe, Iran, Lemony Snicket, Temple Mount, Ukraine, Israeli Coalition Crisis, Israeli Bedouin, Revisionism, Extrovert, Hillary Clinton.

Rosenfeld responds

Alvin Rosenfeld wrote an article a few weeks ago criticizing leftist antisemitism. He got criticism from a number of precincts (and was mischaracterized.) KesherTalk has his response taken from the New Republic.

He gives a 3 step process to describe how Israel's critics work:

(1) Spot an Israeli action that can serve as the ground of "criticism of Israel" (e.g., Israel's military incursion into the area near Jenin in April 2002 in response to Palestinian terrorist massacres);
(2) Then "dissent" in the strongest possible terms, for instance by likening the "razing of Jenin" to the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, while anticipating that "powerful" and "repressive" Jewish institutions will try to "silence" the critics by calling them anti-Semites;
(3) When taken to task by more sober-minded critics who find that, contrary to your charge, there was no such thing as "the razing of Jenin" and that the IDF has nothing in common with the SS, cry "foul" and claim their censure perfectly illustrates the point that there really is a Jewish organizational conspiracy to silence "criticism of Israel" by branding the authors of such criticism "anti-Semites."

KesherTalk also brings down a number of responses to other critics of Rosenfeld including (generously) one of mine. It is well worth reading.

Blogdigger tags: Antisemitism, Alvin Rosenfeld,