Soccer Dad

David Gerstman's invitation is awaiting your response

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:39:00 +0000

David Gerstman would like to connect on LinkedIn. How would you like to respond?

David Gerstman

Writer

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Rabbi Shafran's questions

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:13:00 +0000

I am in Israel and don't have the email address for Chukas parsha questions. I have not received them yet. please send. Shabbat shalom

Arnold Cummins

David Gerstman's invitation is awaiting your response

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:18:00 +0000

David Gerstman would like to connect on LinkedIn. How would you like to respond?

David Gerstman

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Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:28:00 +0000

From David Gerstman

Writer

Baltimore, Maryland Area

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- David

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Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:20:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Pieces of time's "peace"

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 03:49 AM PDT

This weeks' Time Magazine has a cover story that explains, "Why israel doesn't care about Peace?"

Israelly Cool dismisses it with:

Real serious journalism here. A provocative title and they've spoken with a couple of Tel Aviv condo salesmen. All in the name of demonizing the Jewish state.

Elder of Ziyon (who is seconded by FresoZionism) writes:

The title on the cover, and the cover itself, are very clearly implying that Israelis do not care about peace itself. The Time editors do not seem to understand basic English. Right now, there is peace, by and large.
On the other hand, Israelis know that the almost automatic result of giving more concessions is terror, not peace.

Hezbollah was not dismantled when its supposed raison d'etre disappeared when Israel withdrew behind UN-drawn borders - on the contrary, it was strengthened. Hamas didn't get weakened by Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - it moved into the vacuum left by an impotent PA, that just happens to be Israel's "peace partner." What person it their right mind would support moving into act 3 of this drama?

Daled Amos questions Time's methodology and JoshuaPundit, its timing.

Mere Rhetoric goes through Time's history of questionable taste regarding israel, and My Right Word shows that the cover echoes a Newsweek one of years' past.

Bret Stephens remembers a rhyme from Time Magazine.

In May 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Israel's prime minister, Time magazine set out to describe the man, beginning with the correct pronunciation of his last name: "Rhymes with Fagin," the editors explained, invoking the character from Oliver Twist. Modern Israeli leader; archetypal Jewish lowlife: Get it?
The magazine's other characterization of Begin was that he was "dangerous." A year later, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt's Anwar Sadat.

Maybe there's something in the magazine's DNA. This week, readers were treated to a cover story by Karl Vick titled, suggestively, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace." That's one way for Time to address the current state of negotiations between the Jewish state and its neighbors, which otherwise barely rate a mention in the article.

Instapundit summarizes VDH's critique as Those Jews Sure Like Money, Don't They?. VDH declares (via memeorandum)

I know it's commonplace to read in the latest issue of Time or Newsweek that Obama is a god, that Islamophobic Americans are collectively prejudiced against Muslims, that the response after 9/11 was overblown and unnecessary (over 30 subsequent terrorist plots have been foiled, and, for some reason, renditions, tribunals, Guantanamo, Predators, intercepts, etc., have all been embraced by the Obama administration), but the recent Time piece on Israel by a Karl Vick is probably the most anti-Semitic essay I have ever read in a mainstream publication.

Ironically, last week's cover story asked Is America Islamaphobic. The article concluded with:

In Sheboygan County, the good old-fashioned American sense of community came through for Mirza, Hamad and the Khans. But when it comes to Muslims and Islam, America's better angels are not always so accommodating.

Which sounds like a disapproving "yes" to me. But when the question "is this publication antisemitic?" Time Magazine seems to be leading the charge to say "yes" proudly.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Mizrachi Jews and new sorties in the "War of Ideas in the Middle East"
The "world is flat" award for the columnist who tries hardest to emulate thomas friedman goes to ...
Fareed must have learned cause and effect from fox butterfield
4 years
Lockport

Mizrachi Jews and new sorties in the "War of Ideas in the Middle East"

Posted: 06 Sep 2010 10:11 AM PDT

As you may know, Martin Gilbert has just published a book called "In Ishmael's House, a history of Jews living in Muslim lands." The book includes what happened to the Mizrachi Jewry after 1948 and Gilbert joins the not terribly large group of historians who have tackled this important subject in any detail. (The Jews of Islam by Bernard Lewis, if I remember correctly, deals with its subject in very general terms.) MondoWeiss excerpts the final four paragraphs from a review of the book by New Historian Avi Shlaim:

Nowhere is Gilbert more strikingly one-sided than in his account of the consequences of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the course of this war, the name Palestine was wiped off the map and 726,000 Palestinians became refugees. In its wake, around 850,000 Jews left the Arab world, mostly to start a new life in the newborn State of Israel. For Gilbert, these Jews are simply the other half of the "double exodus" and he persistently refers to them as "refugees." With few exceptions, however, these Jews left their native lands not as a result of officially sanctioned policies of persecution but because they felt threatened by the rising tide of Arab nationalism. Zionist agents actively encouraged the Jews to leave their ancestral homes because the fledgling State of Israel was desperately short of manpower. Iraq exemplified this trend. The Iraqi army participated in the War for Palestine, and the Arab defeat provoked a backlash against the Jews back home. Out of a population of 138,000, roughly 120,000 left in 1950-51 in an atmosphere of panic and peril.

I was five years old in 1950 when my family reluctantly moved from Baghdad to Ramat Gan. We were Arab Jews, we spoke Arabic, our roots went back to the Babylonian exile two and a half millennia ago and my parents did not have the slightest sympathy with Zionism. We were not persecuted but opted to leave because we felt insecure. So, unlike the Palestinians who were driven out of their homes, we were not refugees in the proper sense of the word. But we were truly victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Despite all its shortcomings, Gilbert's book is an illuminating and a moving account of the history of the Jews in Arab lands. But he is psychologically hard-wired to see anti-Semitism everywhere. The picture he paints is consequently unbalanced.

By dwelling so persistently on the deficits, he downplays the record of tolerance, creative co-existence and multi-culturalism in Muslim lands which constitutes the best model we have for a brighter future.

One has to wonder (and certainly the inquiring minds of MondoWeiss don't inquire in that direction): does Shlaim appreciate his freedom? Does he think he would be free, or as free, to pursue his intellectual interests and speak his mind if somehow the Jewish community of Iraq had survived and he was part of it? What do all those nice distinctions ("victims," but "not refugees in the proper sense of the word") mean? Since he has introduced his own family into the discussion, did they have property? If so, what became of it?

The story of the Mizrachi Jews in Modern times is, in all frankness, not that lachrymose in its ending. The great ugly truth that everyone is too polite to mention is that having one's property looted by one's Arab Muslim overlords is not such a bad deal if the package includes ultimately being free of them. Mizrachi Jews left under various circumstances, as did the Palestinians. And while Mizrachi Jews may ultimately have encountered a happier fate than the Palestinians did, there is no justification for the suffering and injustice imposed on them by an Arab world that turned on its loyal Jewish citizens in a spirit of revenge.

As far as supposed wrongs to the Palestinian people as a whole are concerned, I don't think any serious historians argue that the Yishuv could have acted differently in 1947 and 1948. The New Historians have perhaps corrected an erroneous David-Goliath sense of the relative strength of the two sides, and the more extreme views regard 1948 as the rinse-cycle of the born-in-sin Zionist movement, but in practical terms, non-Goliaths who threaten your existence have to be defeated. The Mizrachi Jews, in contrast, did not threaten anybody.

And Shlaim's conclusion is breathtaking. Muslim "multi-culturalism" is "the best model we have for a brighter future"? Really? Is there a contemporary example of it somewhere we could hold up as a shining banner? If downplaying this supposed "best model" is the book's major shortcoming according to Shalim, I'd say that counts as an endorsement.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

The "world is flat" award for the columnist who tries hardest to emulate thomas friedman goes to ...

Posted: 06 Sep 2010 04:36 AM PDT

Kathleen Parker for her silly Facebook and social media offer the potential of peace column the other day.

At the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sits between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. There is much gray hair among them.
Not far away, at a sidewalk cafe near George Washington University, four college students converse amicably. One is Israeli, one Palestinian, another Syrian, the fourth African American. (One of my young tablemates knows and identifies them.) Their iPhones join flatware among platters of couscous and falafel. They are speaking English, laughing, trading news and barbs.

The scene just described is not rare in the nation's capital or in many other cities where colleges and universities attract diverse populations. I've witnessed variations of the same tableau dozens of times. Different faces, ethnicities and nationalities, but the same dynamic and, for members of an older generation, the same revelation.

Of course they're not in their home countries, so this is hardly telling. But there was this observation.

Meanwhile, evidence mounts that sentiments are shifting among younger people, whose worldviews are broader than those of previous generations. Recent polling by Frank Luntz found that American Jewish college students are more willing than their elders to question the Israeli position. They resist groupthink and desperately want peace.

Jewish college students? Hold on. The academy is one of the places where one is subjected to relentless anti-Israel propaganda. This isn't just a function of student organizations, but often occurs in classes. This is precisely an example of groupthink. Young impressionable people without a full understanding of a situation being led to conclusions by those in authority. As Evelyn Gordon observed regarding the Luntz poll:

But it's also a travesty because it shouldn't be hard for any Jewish leftist to explain why Israel, for all its flaws, is still a far better example of the left's one-time values, such as freedom, democracy, tolerance, and human rights, than any of its enemies.

And of course there was Parker's followup observation.

Might Palestinian youth feel similarly? Alas, I could find no similar polls.

Hmm. I wonder why (not).

Before she finishes with the column she leaves us with this chilling thought.

If I were dictator for a day, I would arrange for every young person to "friend" another in the enemy camp of their choice, creating virtual student-exchange programs in every neighborhood on the map. While the old folks bicker over their sandboxes, the children could begin building fortresses of friendship.

Kathleen Parker as dictator. Yikes! That's a frightening thought.

So like Thomas Friedman, Kathleen Parker believes that technology will bring us all together. She also demonstrates a fondness for dictating to others. Fortunately, unlike Thomas Friedman, she doesn't necessarily pine for Chinese Communism. Unfortunately she betrays a desire to be one herself.

There was a time when I thought that Parker was reasonable. Now that time seems distant.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Fareed must have learned cause and effect from fox butterfield

Posted: 06 Sep 2010 04:36 AM PDT

One of Best of the Web Today's James Taranto's favorite targets is Fox Butterfield of the New York Times. As Taranto summarizes an occasional theme promoted by Butterfield:

It's a little like the old Fox Butterfield fallacy: Prison population growing despite reduction in crime.

Apparently Fareed Zakaria learned the lesson well. (via memeorandum) He writes in What America has lost:

Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden's terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda's best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and teach him to stuff his underwear with explosives.

Since Al Qaeda's not effective now it never was a threat! Brilliant.

Patterico, Political Byline, Powerline and others, have similar takes.

At first I was about to say that with writing like this, it's no wonder that Newsweek sold for $1.The more I think about it, 1 dollar seems like overpayment for this sort of foolishness.

4 years

Posted: 06 Sep 2010 04:12 AM PDT

At 1:15 AM she turned 209 weeks old.

Today, isn't really her birthday. However both she and her now 9 year old sister were born Labor Day, so I chose today to write.

What do you feel when your youngest starts school? (Even if it is pre-nursery.)

Well the carefree days of babyhood are mostly gone. She's not a baby. And she'll tell you that - emphatically - if you tell her otherwise. (Unless, she's in a mood when she wants to pretend that she's a baby so you'll cradle her in your arms.)

Last night before she went to bed she put her own "babies" to bed, explaining that one was sharing her blanket with her two "sisters" - who didn't have their own - so they wouldn't be cold. I was very impressed with the generosity of the doll.

It's been awhile since I've done this because as a child reaches a certain point, she doesn't change so much from month to month. Or at least she doesn't change in obvious ways.

So yes I miss the babyness, though I still enjoy watching the new milestones. Such as starting school.

Or egging the challahs.

She has this habit of reaching into the cookie containers and taking one whenever she feels like it. (Not too long ago when one of her friends visited. She helped him to a cookie. Just pulled up a chair, took a cookie and gave it to him.)

She does seem to adjust to new situations well and she loves following around her big (not her biggest) sister and pretending that she's one of the girls. In fact when her Imma dropped her off at school she chose not to be walked in separately, but walked in with the rest of the bigger girls.

So we no longer have a baby, we have a little girl.

Lockport

Posted: 04 Sep 2010 08:29 PM PDT

Before we visited Niagara, we stopped in Lockport, New York.

Lockport is a stop along the Erie Canal, roughly a half hour west of Buffalo. In addition to seeing some of the locks up close.

(These are the original locks. The Canal's been upgraded with wider locks now in use.)

The real hero of Lockport is a man named Birdsill Holly. Holly was an inventor and entrepreneur. He leased the water power of the canal to build a number of industries in Lockport. Among American inventors, he holds the second greatest number of patents - that's second to Thomas Edison.

Holly's ingenuity led to the creation of three businesses along the canal in Lockport: Holly Manufacturing Company, Richmond Manufacturing Company and Lockport Pulp Company.

All that's left of the Holly Manufacturing Company are the entrance to the tunnels through which the water flowed.

You can enter the what's left of the Lockport Pulp company building and explore the tunnel that brought the water in.

Lockport provided a glipmpse of a fascinating bit of America's industrial history.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:26:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

The wages of cbm's

Posted: 05 Sep 2010 03:56 AM PDT

Last week, in New Chance for Peace the editors of the New York Times observed that:

There are other positive currents. Violence against Israelis is down. Palestinian security forces are increasingly competent at policing the West Bank. Palestinian authorities have clamped down on incitement, including removing imams and teachers who encourage attacks against Israelis. More can still be done.

Last week's terror attack, I think, raises questions about the competence of the security forces. The murders of the Israelis was clearly planned suggesting an infrastructure. Yet apparently the Palestinian police were unaware of the cells or unwilling to take action against the planners. The ability of Hamas to operate even where the PA is nominally in control, is certainly a sobering reminder of the PA's weakness. Nor should we forget that, in the past, the PA police have been responsible for terror.

During an investigation by the Shin Bet security service, the two let it be known that a third person was also involved in the incident: They said that Fadi Jama', also in the National Security organization of the Palestinian Authority, gave them the weapons they used in the attack.

And while the PA may be taking action against some who preach incitement, it's hardly comprehensive. (More likely the PA's taking action against Hamas affiliated preachers and teachers as part of a power struggle.) The leaders of the PA continue to engage in incitement so at best its effort is selective. So when the Times featured a followup editorial maybe it would demonstrate some dampened enthusiasm for the Palestinian commitment to peace. Yesterday, in Another start for peace talks, the editors were even more enthusiastic.

We have long been skeptical that Mr. Netanyahu really wants a deal. But he insisted he had come to "find a historic compromise" that would end the conflict and that he recognizes that "another people shares this land with us." He even told Mr. Abbas, "you are my partner in peace." We will soon see if it was all political theater. Mr. Abbas came to the table reluctantly. He is the weaker party and most at risk of being blamed for any breakdown. Still, he promised to "work to make these negotiations succeed" and said security -- a major issue for Israel -- "is vital for both of us."

It is kind of funny. Netanyahu didn't walk away from negotiations; Abbas did. Maybe that's why Abbas is more at risk for being blamed for any breakdown that may occur. Still the next paragraph is awful.

Predictably, peace opponents tried to torpedo the talks. But Mr. Netanyahu didn't walk out when Hamas rejectionists killed four Israelis near Hebron. And Mr. Abbas not only condemned the attack but his security forces went after those responsible. He didn't walk out when some Israeli settlers began new settlement construction even before a Sept. 26 moratorium is to expire.

A terror attack that killed Israelis is equated with Israelis building new homes. Worse, as David Horovitz noted:

Netanyahu, the security hawk, rapidly outflanked his dovish predecessor Olmert in removing roadblocks and checkpoints and easing freedom of movement for Palestinians in the West Bank - including in the area near Kiryat Arba where four Israelis were murdered on Tuesday night - taking "calculated security risks" to enable the Palestinian economy to flourish, in the hope that "economic peace" would eventually galvanize Palestinian support for the real deal.

Try as they might to ignore it; Israeli CBM's entail real risks. My thinking is similar to Aussie Dave's:

No, actually the goal is to kill Jews. Embarrassing the PA is a bonus at best.

Nor is the main goal it to torpedo peace talks. And yet despite all this what must Israel do?

Sept. 26 is the next flashpoint. The Washington conference would have had far more impact if the two sides announced an agreement to deal with that. Mr. Netanyahu should extend the moratorium.

If Abbas were really committed to peace why should Israeli building of communities in Judea and Samaria be a "flashpoint?" We're not talking about a campaign of violence that Israel, as a matter of course, usually does not respond to, regardless of the toll. Why is it that Israel must offer even more CBM's, when the Palestinians don't observe the basic elements of peace? Crossposted on Yourish.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

If you keep on rejecting a deal it probably means ...

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 03:56 AM PDT

The New York Times features an analysis, Mideast expert fear peace talks are too ambitious. The headline is probably correct as Abbas has no real standing to make any deal. But this paragraph struck me:

But those urging a more modest approach argue that Mr. Netanyahu, the most conservative Israeli prime minister to have embarked on final status talks, is unlikely to offer more than his more centrist predecessor, Ehud Olmert. In late 2008, Mr. Olmert proposed an Israeli withdrawal from about 93 percent of the West Bank and compensatory land swaps. Mr. Abbas, who did not accept that offer, is unlikely to settle for less.

"[U]nilikely to settle for less?" So if having a state is so important why did Abbas reject the 93 percent? Or better yet, if Abbas rejected such a deal, why should he expect better?

Roger Simon:

Now here's the thought experiment part. I'm assuming most of the readers here -- in this case I'd wager 99% of you -- have been in negotiations themselves. When you got 98% or even 88% of what you wanted, did you walk away and start a war... okay, just walk away? And if you did, why did you do that ... when you were so close to making a deal? You could obviously hang around in negotiations and get most, if not all, of what you wanted.
Well, the answer is -- no fair peeking -- because you never wanted the deal in the first place.

Now Abbas didn't start a war. Arafat did that in 2000. But the idea's the same, given that he was so close how could he reject Olmert? The answer must be that Abbas didn't want a deal. Nothing's changed to make him want a deal now. After all, all those sophisticated peace processors have been telling him that Israel needs a deal more than he does, so the failure to reach a deal will never be his failure.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:05:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

If ... you must 09/02/10
Submitted 09/02/10
Tom's slander of rav yosef
Friedman's false history
Great News! "Iran to guard universities against 'plots'"

If ... you must 09/02/10

Posted: 02 Sep 2010 03:56 AM PDT

If you haven't read Eco-Terrorism? at Instapundit ; you must.
Fortunately the only one killed was the hostage taker.

If you haven't read New CNN host bashes Beck's alcoholic past at Don Surber ; you must.
People in glass green rooms shouldn't throw mud.

If you haven't read Obama snitches out Arizona to the UN at Ace of Spades HQ; you must.
Can you imagine how happy that must make the despots there? We kill our political opponents but one of the American states dares to question suspects after they've been arrested for other crimes.

If you haven't read Last word on Tony Judt at Z-Word; you must.
It's not nice to speak ill of the dead. But I think it's OK to write it.

If you haven't read Comment of the Week at the Volokh Conspiracy ; you must.
We wouldn't want rich people supporting conservative causes would we?

If you haven't read George Packer on Iraq at the Future of Capitalism; you must.
Other than that, everything the President said was accurate ... uh or mostly accurate .. or uh ... never mind.

Submitted 09/02/10

Posted: 02 Sep 2010 03:54 AM PDT

This weeks' Watcher's Council nominations are up.

Council Submissions

The Colossus of Rhodey - Islamophobia
Right Truth - Look For Another Lawsuit or Two
Bookworm Room - Zoning, religion, guns and the Bill of Rights
VA Right - NYC Cabbie Slashed by Drunken Nutjob - Left Wing Media Makes Up the Rest
Rhymes With Right - Fisking Bloomberg
Joshuapundit - 'Progressives Need A Palin Of Their Own?'
The Glittering Eye - The Conflict Between Egalitarian Policies and Abandoning Commodity Products
Snapped Shot - Back!
Wolf Howling - Obama Prostrates America before the UN Human Rights Council

Non - Council Submissions

Big Questions Online - Multiculturalism and Its Discontents Submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
Resa Laru Kirkland: War Chick - SHIA TAQIYYA--Freedom from Shari-dum Submitted by Right Truth
Maggie's Farm/Bruce Kesler - I just disinherited my alma mater Submitted by Bookworm Room
RedState - A Free Society And The Muslim Conundrum Submitted by VA Right
Big Government - Judge in Virginia 'Global Warming' Investigation Blocks Inquiry Into...His Wife's Former Employer Submitted by Rhymes With Right
Victor Davis Hanson - The Sources of American Anger Submitted by The Glittering Eye
zombie/Pajamas Media - Ideological War Spells Doom for America's Schoolkids Submitted by The Glittering Eye
Media Backspin - AP illustrates deadly roadside attack Submitted on behalf of Snapped Shot
Fausta's Blog - Is Hugo Chavez a racist? Submitted on behalf of Wolf Howling
Simply Jews - Omar Khadr - not guilty by reason of Genetics Submitted by The Watcher

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

Tom's slander of rav yosef

Posted: 02 Sep 2010 03:34 AM PDT

Thomas Friedman's column had one other major problem.

Because all the extremists are now doubling down. Last week, insurgents aligned with Al Qaeda boasted of killing 56 innocent Iraqis. On Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen murdered four West Bank Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman; Hamas proudly claimed credit. In Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who heads the largest ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, used his Shabbat sermon to declare that he hoped the Palestinian president and his people would die. "All these evil people should perish from this world ... God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," Yosef said.

The parallelism here is obnoxious. First of all, Hamas actually killed people. So to equate the two incidents is intellectually dishonest and offensive in the extreme. Second of all, as Yeranen Yaakov and Elder of Ziyon point out, Rav Yosef was misquoted. So yes it's true, that Rav Yosef wasn't calling for action taken against enemies of the Jews by people but by God, his call was limited to those Arabs who are enemies of Jews. Furthermore as Life in Israel observes Rav Yosef apparently has good relations with some Arab leaders. (Life in Israel asks why he would apparently have been on better terms with Arafat than with Abbas.) And as everyone - except Middel East expert Thomas Friedman knows - Rav Yosef was known for calling for territorial compromise if it would save lives. It doesn't appear that Rav Yosef was in any way referring to the upcoming negotiations.

So in order to demonize another Israeli, Friedman 1) mischaracterized Rav Yosef's remarks as being from his sermon on Shabbat - they were made after Shabbat 2) misquotes Rav Yosef 3) and provides a false context for the Rabbi's remarks in order to compare Rav Yosef to cold blooded murderers.

Nice going Tommy boy!

Friedman's false history

Posted: 02 Sep 2010 02:50 AM PDT

Thomas Friedman - the master of pithy phrase that means nothing and firm believer that there's always one more Israeli concession that's necessary for peace in the Middle East - clearly has experienced a different history from the one I did. Based on his column yesterday, You ain't seen this before, let me try to reconstruct Thomas's counterfactual history.

Friedman's history: In 2003, Ariel Sharon won re-election as Prime Minister in a race against former IDF chief of staff, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, promising to withdraw all Israelis - soldiers and civilians from Gaza.
In reality Sharon campaigned against withdrawing from Gaza in contrast from Lipkin-Shahak who supported a withdrawal.

Friedman's history: In order to build support within his own party, Sharon held a Likud referendum in 2004 on the topic of withdrawal. His arguments carried the day and he received a mandate from Likud to withdraw from Gaza.
In reality the rank and file of Likud rejected Sharon's arguments and voted against the withdrawal. Though rebuffed at the polls, Sharon decided he would withdraw from Gaza, regardless.

Friedman's history: So confident was Sharon of the benefits of the withdrawal from Gaza that when chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon warned of the dangers involved, Sharon thanked him for his concerns and extended his term for as traditionally was done for chiefs of staff.
In reality Ya'alon's warning was not appreciated. Sharon refused to extend his term.

Friedman's history: After disengagement showed that Israel's commitment to peace, Fatah, the party now of Mahmoud Abbas, was strengthened and it won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006.
In reality Hamas won those elections. Years of corruption took its toll on Fatah and Hamas claimed credit for forcing Israel from Gaza.

Friedman's history: Seeing that the way of violence was repudiated, Hamas submitted to Fatah's rule.
In reality, in 2007 Hamas launched a blood revolt against Fatahand took control of Gaza. Gaza then became a launching pad for rocket attacks against southern Israel, putting hundreds of thousands of Israelis at risk.

Friedman's history: Hezbollah too, seeing that Israel withdrew from Gaza just as it had from southern Lebanon, put away its weapons and joined the Lebanese government.
In reality, Hezbollah never abandoned its terror. A cross border raid in 2006 led to a war in which northern Israel was targeted by thousands of Hezbollah missiles.

Friedman's history: Now that violence had been repudiated by Israel's enemies, Abbas accepted a peace treaty with Olmert in December 2008, calling for an Israeli withdrawal from over 90% of Judea and Samaria.
In reality Abbas refused to accept Olmert's offer.

Why do I assume that Friedman experienced the history I outlined above? Because of this argument in his column:

Trust me, this is just the throat-clearing and gun-cleaning. Wait until we have a deal. Even if Israel agrees to swap land with the Palestinians so that 80 percent of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank can stay put, it will mean that 60,000 will still have to be removed. It took Israel 55,000 soldiers to remove 8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza, which was never part of the Land of Israel. Imagine when today's Israeli Army, where the officer corps is increasingly drawn from religious Zionists who support the settler movement, is called on to remove settlers from the West Bank.

Other than acknowledging the murder Tuesday of four Israelis by Hamas, this is the main obstacle to peace that concerns Friedman. Clearly he never saw Sharon betray his mandate; he never saw Hamas take over Gaza; he never saw Hezbollah take over Lebanon; he never saw Abbas repeat the rejection of peace, following in the footsteps of his mentor Yasser Arafat. Supposedly the residents of Gaza threatened Sharon, but Sharon was never attacked. I realize that it's easier for Friedman to worry about "settlers" and "religious Zionists." They make great bogeymen. And believing that "settlers" are the main obstacle to peace, means that Friedman doesn't need to re-evaluate his assumptions.

The Arab side has demonstrated its disinterest in peace over the past seventeen years, pocketing Israel concessions and refusing to make the slightest accomodation for peace. (The only major exception during this time was King Hussein of Jordan.) Instead of rethinking his positions it's easier to blame Israelis.

Most of all, Friedman is intellectually lazy, unwilling to reconsider his deeply held belief that there's always a concession that Israel can make (but didn't) that would bring peace.

Finally, however easy Friedman thinks peace will be if only Israel makes the necessary concessions read Yaacov Lozowick, Here's the risk. Yaacov Lozowick may believe many of the same things that Friedman does, but he lives in the real world not in some fantasy world.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Great News! "Iran to guard universities against 'plots'"

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 11:41 PM PDT

A "liberal democratic environment"--horrors!

Minister of Science, Research and Technology Kamran Daneshjoo says the "enemies" of Iran are plotting a cultural invasion of the country's universities.

"The enemies are making efforts to replace the Islamic atmosphere in [Iranian] universities with their liberal democratic environment," Daneshjoo said Sunday, referring to remarks by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei told a gathering of university students in Tehran last week that higher education institutions had become the main "target" of plots hatched by domineering powers.

The Iranian minister added that Tehran would publish evidence proving the involvement of several foreign spy agencies in efforts to "negatively influence" students, Fars News Agency reported.

Daneshjoo went on to add that neither the nation nor the students would ever tolerate universities that disrespect Islamic values.

On the large-scale emigration of individuals with technical skills or knowledge from Iran, the Leader said on August 22 that "moral and religious" motivation could make expatriate elite return to serve their country.

Threatening family members also works wonders. Iran is currently putting out almost as much blog fodder as it is enriched uranium. Another heartwarming current PressTV headline reads "'World resolute to annihilate Israel.'"

Iran's Association for liberation of the holy al-Quds (Jerusalem) slams Western and US support for Israel, insisting that global resolve to annihilate the Israeli regime has strengthened.

"The US and European Union, as staunch allies of the occupying Zionist regime (Israel), and certain Arab and Muslim governments are openly and covertly supporting the illegitimate Israeli regime and its extensive crimes, particularly the oppression of the Palestinian people," the association said in a statement on Wednesday, two days before the International Quds Day.

Initiated by the late founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Imam Khomeini, the International Quds Day marks the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims throughout the globe are urged to hold rallies in support of the Palestinian resistance against what Imam Khomeini commonly referred to as "the illegitimate Israeli regime occupying Palestine."

The statement also censured US-led efforts to bring "betraying and compromising" Palestinian elements to the negotiating table with Israel . . .

From IRIB we learn that the "Quds occupier," i.e. Israel, is the "main enemy of Islam":

Heidar Jamal, the founder of the Islamic Renaissance Party and the head of the Islamic Committee of Russia says the Quds occupying regime is the number one enemy of Islam and of the world Muslims.

Jamal urged the Muslim world to get united in the face of the Zionist regime.

I thought they were already united. Oh, that elusive unity of the ummah! Evo Morales also puts in an appearance at IRIB, informing us that Iran is the "most revolutionary country in world."

"Superpowers plunder the natural resources of other countries with low price and sell the goods made by the materials to same countries with higher prices," Bolivian President added.

"Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia should coordinate their knowledge, experience and human resources and use the natural resources to expand the living standard of their people," Morales added.

Iran, Venezuela, and Bolivia. El axis del evil? Like Western press agencies, who tend to call them "settlers," IRIB also tends to avoid words like "Israelis" and "people." The IRIB headline on the opening salvo of Operation Flood of Fire: "Four Zionists killed in West Bank"

[...] Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the attack was a natural response by the Palestinian resistance to the enemy's crimes.

Hamas Spokesman Fuzi Barhoum too underlined continuous resistance against the Zionist regime after four Israelis traveling in their vehicle south of the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank were killed on Tuesday night.

"The recent shooting attack against the Zionist settlers shows that resistance would continue until it ends Israeli occupation," Barhoum reiterated.

"Resistance is our main approach for regaining our land. We will not surrender to occupation and will continue resistance," Barhoum added.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement for its part has lauded the al-Khalil operation and called it the first sign of failure in the direct negotiations with 'Israel'.

It has been a common meme in places like Mondoweiss and Mondocole that all Israel has to do to avoid attacks by Hamas is to be faithful in observing cease-fires. I guess they should also avoid peace talks.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:04:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

The New York Times' Confused Attack On The Israeli Victims Of Hamas Terrorism
Where Are The Tapes Of Hamas Training Exercises For Killing Unarmed Civilians?
30 days for being a nuisance
Go back to bed, hosni, you're delusional
The "cbm" imbalance
Interesting but Nonsense, courtesy of the NY Times

The New York Times' Confused Attack On The Israeli Victims Of Hamas Terrorism

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 09:39 AM PDT

What is it about The New York Times and terrorists?

In June 2007, Ahmed Yousef--political adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, who became the prime minister the following year--wrote an editorial in the New York Times about What Hamas Wants.

A few days ago, The New York Times featured an op-ed by Ali Abunimah--described as an author, omitting the fact that Abunimah is the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, a partisan supporter of Hamas.

Abunimah tweeted his reaction to the terrorist attack:

Civilian deaths are always tragic. Israel must stop using civilian settlers as human shields for the land it is stealing

But when not giving a podium to terrorists and their supporters, The New York Times satisfies itself to do their work for them. In this case, they took Abunimah's lead and just blamed the victims:

Killing of Israeli Settlers Rattles Leaders
The killing of four Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman, in the West Bank on Tuesday evening rattled Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the eve of peace talks in Washington and underscored the disruptive role that the issue of Jewish settlements could play in the already fragile negotiations.

In case anyone should miss the point, The New York Times stresses that these were no ordinary Israelis--no, they were settlers: Jews who by their very nature are being "disruptive". If only Israel would make one more concession and 'freeze' the settlements so that no building could be done on land that is likely destined to belong to Israel as part of a peace deal--if only Israel would do this, the attack would not have happened.

But wait! That's not their argument. After all, it is the Palestinian Authority that is supposed to be Israel's peace partners. They are the ones making the settlements into the issue. Hamas, on the other hand, has declared in their charter that they have no interest in peace with Israel at all, want to destroy Israel and replace it with another Muslim state.

Contrary to The New York Times, there are, in fact, two separate issues here

If The New York Times was being honest, they would recognize that the Hamas attack underscored the disruptive role that Islamic terrorism plays in the already fragile negotiations.

But being so friendly with the likes of Yousef and Abunimah apparently dampened their enthusiasm to take that approach.So they have to tiptoe around the issue of Hamas:

The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group, claimed responsibility for the attack -- in which gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying two men and two women at a junction near the city of Hebron -- and described it on its Arabic Web site as a "heroic operation."

As far as The New York Times is concerned, Hamas is simply an "Islamic group"--an Islamic group that has a "military" wing, the kind that has "gunmen" (not soldiers). You know, gunmen who go around murdering civilians in cold blood.

But its the Jewish settlers who are disruptive.

According to The New York Times.

by Daled Amos

Where Are The Tapes Of Hamas Training Exercises For Killing Unarmed Civilians?

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 09:32 AM PDT

[T]he Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades take full responsibility for the heroic operation in Hebron.
Official statement by Hamas

I wonder what the point is.

I mean, we see videos of these exercises by both children and by adults: jumping through hoops of fire and other exotic training exercises.

But we never get to see the exercises where the fearless Hamas terrorists practice shooting unarmed men and women.

Why is that?

I suppose that since murdering unarmed people in cold blood is a specialty of Hamas, they probably do that training in secret. After all, no point in letting others know how much work goes into pulling a gun on an unarmed pregnant woman.

Who knows how much practice goes into shooting civilians, let alone perfecting the nerves of steel required to shoot from a distance before bravely getting close to finish the job.

I think I'd like to see those videos: those and the ones of these heroes getting rewarded by their leaders--the ones who during Operation Cast Lead hid in the basement of a hospital and left Gazans on their own without any bunkers.

by Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Terrorism and Hamas.

30 days for being a nuisance

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:29 AM PDT

I didn't know that it was a crime to be a nuisance. But apparently it is.

Jersey Shore's Snooki Charged with Annoying People

Given the proliferation in recent years of celebrities and pseudo-celebrities, maybe this will solve the problem. Send them away for annoying people.

Right after I saw that, I saw that Meghan McCain just had a book published. Quick, we really need to get to started!

Go back to bed, hosni, you're delusional

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:20 AM PDT

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, (or a ghost writer) apparently has arisen from his sickbed to contribute an op-ed to the New York Times, A Peace Plan within our grasp. Among the elements of peace that Mubarak champion is:

First, we must safeguard the peace process from further outbreaks of violence. To that end Egypt stands ready to resume its efforts to resolve the many difficult issues surrounding Gaza: mediating a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, bringing an end to Israel's blockade and fostering a reconciliation between Hamas and its rival Fatah, which controls the West Bank. All this is critical to achieving a two-state solution. The Palestinians cannot make peace with a house divided. If Gaza is excluded from the framework of peace, it will remain a source of conflict, undermining any final settlement.

(emphasis mine)

But Barry Rubin points out:

To show you are ready to accept a Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and protect it from being overthrown is to ensure there is no basis for peace.

Note that Mubarak considers Hamas essential to peace but Israeli "settlements," including in Jerusalem "incompatible" with peace. Another example of the cbm imbalance.

I guess I shouldn't be too hard on the Times surely it's better than running an op-ed by a terror apologist like Ali Abuminah.

The "cbm" imbalance

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 03:41 AM PDT

The New York Times today reports Killing of Israeli Settlers Rattles Leaders.

First of all, they were not settlers, they were people. When terror attacks claim the lives of Jews living in Judea and Samaria, the Times can't keep its politics out of the reporting. I noticed this too, after the massacre of the Hatuel family. The Washington Post acknowledges the humanity of the victims, calling them Israelis.

I find this more than a little curious:

The Palestinian Authority also condemned the attacks, which occurred just before its president, Mahmoud Abbas, met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. A Palestinian spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the attack by Hamas, the authority's rival, underlined "the need to proceed quickly toward a just and lasting peace agreement," which he said would "put an end to these acts."

What is Rudeineh saying? Is that a "condemnation"?
Or is it simply another way of stating Ali Abuminah's disgusting tweet? Isn't he saying that unless agrees to Palestinian terms, Israel can expect a continuation of terror?

(Elder of Ziyon notes Fayyad's self serving "condemnation.")

The Times continues:

Even before the attack, settlements were looming as a potential deal-breaker in the peace process. Mr. Netanyahu has steadfastly refused to commit to extending a partial moratorium on construction in the West Bank, which expires Sept. 26, while Mr. Abbas has said it will be very hard to keep talking if construction resumes. Mr. Netanyahu has not struck any private deals with President Obama or anyone else on the moratorium, American and Israeli officials said.

Compare that with this sentence towards the end:

The stop-and-go Israeli-Palestinian peace process has often taken place in the shadow of bloody attacks.

So the peaceful building of Jewish communities (in places where the Palestinians, (admittedly) don't want them is considered a "dealbreaker." However terrorism only casts a "shadow" on the peace process?

This is the problem with cbm's. Actions that Israel is deemed obligated to take, take on the force of a commitment. Or, more precisely, the failure for Israel to do so, is regarded as an unforgivable breach in the peace process. Whereas when the Palestinians regularly fail in something basic to peace - like stopping terror or incitement - it's treated like a nuisance, sometimes barely worth mentioning.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Interesting but Nonsense, courtesy of the NY Times

Posted: 31 Aug 2010 10:20 PM PDT

The NY Times is out to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though its editorial writers will then have to scrounge for new subject matter. No matter, it forges ahead with two ambitious recent offerings. The first of these two articles has the confident title "How to Handle Hamas":

If Hamas cannot be uprooted, it might be convinced to not disrupt peace talks with violence and tone down its rhetoric. In order for Hamas to want a lasting cease-fire, Israel and its allies must change the organization's decision-making calculus -- a process that will require both incentives and threats.

One way to go about this would be for Israel to allow the regular flow of goods into Gaza with international, rather than Israeli, monitors manning the crossing points. Israeli intelligence would still watch what goes in and out to ensure that the monitors did their job, but symbolically the switch would be important.

In exchange, Hamas would commit to a lasting cease-fire and agree to stop all attacks from the territory under its control. Hamas would also close the tunnels and end its smuggling.

Such a deal would allow Hamas to claim credit for improving the lives of Gazans, and it could use the resulting increase in the flow of goods to reward its supporters. For Israel, the regular rocket attacks would come to a complete halt and the threat of renewed attacks would diminish. A cease-fire would also free up Israel diplomatically. If the problem of Hamas receded, Israel could take more risks at the negotiating table with Abbas.

And exactly why would Hamas go along with this? It isn't as if this could be our secret strategy. Hamas not only undoubtedly reads the NY Times, its leaders also occasionally contribute to the Washington Post. What Hamas has said would entice it to offer a "lasting cease fire," if it is even being honest there, are the sorts of concessions that two-state-solution proponents envision as being made in exchange for permanent peace. The blockade (and the possibility of its cessation) is already a combination of incentive and threat. Hamas has a clear sense of its overarching goals and an advanced martyrdom ethic. The notion that it could be molded so easily with the ultimate end of defeating its long-term aims is condescending. They may be fascists, but they aren't children.

The Gray Lady also offers an odd bit of triangulation that attempts to enlist supporters of Israel in the anti-settler cause. Religious Zionists, we learn, threaten "Herzl's Zionist vision":

Herzl's view stemmed from the ideals of the Enlightenment and the tradition of democratic national liberation movements, dating back to the American and French Revolutions; religious settlers are steeped in blood-and-soil nationalism. Herzl never doubted that Israeli Arabs should have full and equal rights. For religious settlers, Arabs are an alien element in the organic unity of Jews and their land.

The consequences of these differences are huge. If the settlers achieve their manifest goal -- making Israel's hold on the territories permanent -- it will mean the de facto annexation of a huge Arab population and will force a decision about their status . . .

Israel would have to choose between remaining democratic but not Jewish, or remaining Jewish by becoming non-democratic. Israel's enemies have long maintained that Zionism is racism and that Israel is an apartheid state. If the settlers succeed, they will turn this lie into truth.

If the alternative is a land-for-peace deal, it isn't clear that settling parts of the West Bank hurt the prospects for one. And that is assuming that there are prospects for one under any circumstances. If your enemies want to shrink you to nothingness through endless war, it makes sense to grow--especially within your smallish traditional homeland.

And whether settlers are "steeped in blood-and-soil nationalism" (whatever that means) or not, Palestinians certainly support despots. I like actual democracy in my democratic vision. So what will Israel do if ceding the West Bank will never be anything other than what the Gaza withdrawal was: a bloodless military victory for Israel's enemies? Reviling settlers, or a cartoon labeled "settlers," doesn't solve the problem, or even grapple with it. Somehow it also doesn't begin to exhaust the possibilities for faintly inane opinionating.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:38:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades Information Office: "Joy and maximize joy in the Gaza Strip Hebron heroic operation"
"I ... am in the position to grant nothing"
Cohen's revision
This is a defense?

Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades Information Office: "Joy and maximize joy in the Gaza Strip Hebron heroic operation"

Posted: 31 Aug 2010 05:08 PM PDT

Autotranslated, but understandable a good deal of the time:

Pervaded atmosphere of joy and happiness the Gaza Strip, after a heroic Hebron, which was adopted by the "al-Qassam Brigades" military wing of the movement "Hamas", which resulted in the deaths of four rapists Zionists.

Zoom shouts and cheering from the mosques of Gaza Strip for the masses blessed the process, and declare the responsibility of "Qassam" it, came out with several rallies and spontaneous organization in different parts of the Gaza Strip.

Hundreds of people gathered near a mosque Caliphs in the northern Gaza Strip, chanting tribute to the Qassam Brigades and asking more operations.

The Participants in the march, which started after Taraweeh prayers Palestinian flags and banners green, and cry: "Oh revenge revenge al-Qassam Brigades" and "from Hebron to Gaza .. Qassam code pride."

And seemed to delight in the streets of Gaza, and a large number of people distributed sweets to passersby in the streets, for the blessing of the process quality, which came at a crucial juncture in a common pursuit carried out by the occupation forces and the militia of Abbas against Palestinian resistance.

The young man said Firas Hammad, a distributed sweets on a street in Gaza: "This is a moment of joy, and this is the Qassam Brigades, the lashing out by some, so is the Qassam Brigades, work silently, resulting in two types of work."

He pointed out that from the moment he first heard of the process was uncertain that the Qassam Brigades are behind the process, confirmation came from Abu Obeida to confirm this feeling.

The "Abu Ubaida," spokesman for the Qassam Brigades stressed the responsibility for the implementation of the process, stressing it in a series of implementation plans in response to the crimes of the occupation.

In Khan Yunis, were raised to technicians of the mosques, and left tens of spontaneous marches of the mosques after the Taraweeh prayers, chanting slogans zoom.

Said Haji Abdul Rahim syrup (56 years): "God is great and thankfully, we need the news heartening in this blessed month of jihad and sacrifice, and there is a human came from al-Qassam Brigades, which we return to this anthropologist."

Is not different from the scene in Rafah and the Central Province, where the spontaneous marches roamed the streets and waved flags unification Cubs Green chanting of the Qassam Brigades and asking more operations.

Brahmin and Salem (43 years: "The operation came at a crucial time after a surge in attacks by settlers, and the high frequency of security coordination to say that the resistance is alive and exist, and that all the plots will not succeed."

It seems that the Zionist threats to escalate its aggression after the operation did not succeed in disarming the joy of Gazans, who are still to piece their wounds after the war Criterion late 2008.

1967". He was holding Salman (25 years): "Zionist aggression continuously and do not stop, due to the resistance should not stand idly by, especially given that this process comes against the rapists and the occupied territories since 1967."

And spend hours and increased manifestations of joy and anticipation in the Gaza Strip, amid the prayers and hopes of the return of the Palestinian resistance at the top of "al-Qassam Brigades" to shine once again to strike at the enemy and herds Mgtsbih.

The Al-Qassams Brigade seems to be claiming that this attack was part of something called "Operation Fire Sale." Any Arabic speakers out there?

Update: Maan News:

A Palestinian group calling itself the Al-Haq ("Rights") Brigades has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's shooting that left four Israeli citizens dead in the occupied West Bank . . . The operation was in response to the PLO's decision to return to negotiations with Israel, the statement said.

A front for Hamas but the real reason for the attacks?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

"I ... am in the position to grant nothing"

Posted: 31 Aug 2010 03:59 AM PDT

Via Daily Alert blog.
An article in the UAE's the National Abbas is a man in exile, even among his own

All Palestinian political factions, bar one, have denounced the direct talks, some in harsher language than others.
Only Fatah, Mr Abbas's own group, supports direct talks. Even among its members, though, there are plenty of disapproving voices.

Ordinary Palestinians, as well as the political factions, feel they have little influence on the Palestinian leadership's decisions. The Palestinian polity is broken. There is no functioning parliament. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are divided under the leaderships of rival factions. The PA government under Salam Fayyad was appointed by presidential decree and elections - presidential, parliamentary and municipal - have all been postponed indefinitely

Related, see Daled Amos.

via Daily Alert blog. From the Daily Globe and Mail.

In his second term, Mr. Netanyahu is strong inside and weak outside. Facing no serious challengers, he enjoys political strength like no predecessor in the past generation. Improved security and an excellent economy support a quiet home front. Looking out the window, however, Mr. Netanyahu sees dark clouds surrounding Israel. The country is increasingly isolated, facing a global fatigue over its endless conflict with its neighbours, and a consensus against occupation, settlement expansion and excessive use of military force. And on the horizon, Iran's nuclear project is looming.
Mr. Netanyahu returned to power chiefly to save Israel from the "existential threat" posed by Iran. In this environment, he must rely on the United States, Israel's closest ally and strongest protector. Only Mr. Obama can save Israel from the wrath of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But this protection comes with a price: a Natanz-for-settlements tradeoff.

If PM Netanyahu were to make a deal he would have support to do so. But Abbas has no standing to make a deal. Palestinian nationalism has always been built on a premise on the destruction of Israel, so this is hardly a surprise. As Richard Cohen observed, nothing's changed in the Arab world regarding the acceptance of Israel. And certainly not in the Palestinian world.

It kind of reminds me Khan's famous rebuke to Captain Kirk.

You are in a position to demand nothing sound bite Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan sound bites

Crossposted on Yourish.

Cohen's revision

Posted: 31 Aug 2010 03:54 AM PDT

A few years ago, Richard Cohen wrote an article saying that Israel was a mistake. Though I've read that he didn't mean it the way he wrote it, it was still offensive. Today he writes, Time Stands Still in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, I believe what he was trying to say in that earlier column.

First Cohen observes that despite the pressure President Obama exerted against Israel ...

For Obama, the figures must be disheartening. They strongly suggest that his attempt to woo the Arab world, to convince it that America can be an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians, has dismally failed. In fact, the extent of this failure is most stark in Lebanon. There, 100 percent of Shiite respondents -- in other words, Hezbollah and others -- have no faith in Obama and his good intentions. This may be a setback for Obama, but it is paradoxically a success for American values.
What the Arab world seems to appreciate is that America will never agree to what the Arab world most wants -- an Islamic state where a Jewish one now exists. This entirely reasonable conclusion is based on what has long been American policy -- not what the State Department wanted but what the American people supported. America has always liked the idea of Israel. The Arab world, for totally understandable reasons, has always hated it. Nothing has changed.

I wouldn't describe the hatred of the Arab/Muslim world as understandable, but overall this is pretty accurate.

Towards the end Cohen writes:

This is why Obama's overture to the Arab world, clumsily executed, was never going to succeed. America can please some Arab governments -- Egypt and Jordan, for instance -- but not the Arab people. What they want, and what they have been told repeatedly they deserve, is a return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel and control over all of Jerusalem. These are both out of the question as far as Israel is concerned. It is not willing to give up its capital and, in a relatively short time, its Jewish majority.

Of course if the Arab people weren't fed a steady stream of antisemitic propaganda, this might not be the case. But then Cohen's conclusion doesn't quite match the rest of his op-ed:

This week, Palestinians and Israelis will once again talk peace in Washington. But until both sides, particularly the Arab peoples, give up on what they really want, the clock will remain where it has been. Those Pew polls show that's around 1947.

"Both sides?"

This is a defense?

Posted: 31 Aug 2010 03:42 AM PDT

In Paul Bedard's Rewriting History on Kennedy's Chappaquiddick Accident he writes (via memeorandum):

Now, a year after Kennedy died, his lifelong biographer Burton Hersh, armed with fresh interviews with Kennedy's mistress at the time, tells Whispers that the whole July 1969 episode should have been handled as a simple crash, leaving the senator's legacy untainted. "It was a car accident," he says. "Ted was a terrible driver. He never paid much attention to where he was going."

Hersh goes on to say that Kennedy felt guilty and that he didn't know what he was doing. So what? How does anything here change the fact that Kennedy left the scene of an accident and left someone to die?

If he was a terrible driver then he never should have gotten behind the wheel.

And I love the conclusion:

He also brushes off tales that Kennedy was a playboy more than a lawmaker. "Kennedy's central project was accomplishing as much as he could in public life. And all of the things, including the drinking, the women, and the rest, were sort of supportive activities. They were amusements."

There was more than drinking and women? Maybe some song? How does this improve Ted Kennedy's legacy? He was a rich drunken playboy who passed some laws.

Newsbusters isn't impressed either.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:45:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Is Obama More Like Netanyahu--Or Abbas?
Welcome, mr brisbane
Council speak 08/30/10
The "cbm" maneuver
Abuminah's abominable op-ed
Musical monday #156

Is Obama More Like Netanyahu--Or Abbas?

Posted: 30 Aug 2010 08:58 AM PDT

The real problem undermining the Mideast peace talks, Abbas's lack of a mandate, results in a situation where Abbas is a man in exile, even among his own:

All Palestinian political factions, bar one, have denounced the direct talks, some in harsher language than others.

Only Fatah, Mr Abbas's own group, supports direct talks. Even among its members, though, there are plenty of disapproving voices.

Ordinary Palestinians, as well as the political factions, feel they have little influence on the Palestinian leadership's decisions. The Palestinian polity is broken. There is no functioning parliament. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are divided under the leaderships of rival factions. The PA government under Salam Fayyad was appointed by presidential decree and elections - presidential, parliamentary and municipal - have all been postponed indefinitely.

Even the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is chaired by Mr Abbas and represents Palestinian interests in international forums, including negotiations with Israel, was not properly consulted about the decision to go to direct talks. The US invitation to the talks was accepted, without a quorum as normally required by the PLO's rules, at an emergency meeting of its executive committee.

Speaking of mandates, when you compare Obama, Abbas and Netanyahu, you come up with the following comparison:

Obama was elected, but no longer has a mandate for his policies.
Abbas has failed to call for elections, so he has neither been re-elected nor has a mandate
Netanyahu is still serving his term in office and has Israel behind him.

And in some ways, Obama is more like Abbas than like Netanyahu.

by Daled Amos

Welcome, mr brisbane

Posted: 30 Aug 2010 05:48 AM PDT

The New York Times has a new public editor. I am skeptical of this position. In most newspapers the public editor or ombudsman has the job of explaining why the common folk don't understand the wisdom of the news gatherers. While I wish Arthur Brisbane success is his new job, this paragraph in his introduction bugged me.

"We have a substantial infrastructure for responding to public complaints. Greg Brock [senior editor/standards], Phil Corbett [associate managing editor for standards] and Bill Schmidt [deputy managing editor] all spend at least a portion of their time dealing with issues of balance, fairness, accuracy and taste raised by the public. Some cases get passed up to me or Jill [Abramson, managing editor], or to our legal counsel. We publish corrections and editor's notes, and try hard not to be overly defensive when our work is challenged.

Jill Abramson.... where have I heard that name before. Ah yes. A column by Mr. Brisbane's predecessor, Clark Hoyt.

I asked Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if The Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair. "That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed," she said.
But what the aides believed might not have been the real truth. And if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed.

The story in question was one which publicized unfounded allegations about an affair between Sen. John McCain and a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. This was one of the strongest rebukes Mr. Hoyt issued in his time as public editor. And Jill Abramson is someone whom the new public editor describes as be part of his team in responding to public complaints. Given the atrocious judgment Abramson displayed in the journalistic hit on Sen. McCain, I hope that Brisbane will make sure that her role in handling public complaints isn't too significant.

No public editor will make me happy. The corruption of the Times integrity is too great.
The best Mr. Brisbane can do is to be like the first public editor of the Times, Daniel Okrent, and acknowledge the built-in bias of the paper instead of trying to justify it. At least that way he'll maintain some integrity.

Council speak 08/30/10

Posted: 30 Aug 2010 05:46 AM PDT

The Watcher's Council has spoken. Here are this week's winning submissions!

Council Winners

First place with 2 2/3 votes! - The Razor - Tolerating Intolerance

Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Rhymes With Right - The Tension Of Two Visions Of America

Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - The Colossus of Rhodey - Same situation, less tolerance

Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Wolf Howling - Victory In Iraq

Non - Council Winners

*First place with 2 2/3 votes! - Buckhorn Road - Hey, Union soldier! What have you done for me lately? - submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey

Second place with 1 2/3 votes - American Thinker - Iraq: the War That Broke Us—Not - submitted by The Glittering Eye

The "cbm" maneuver

Posted: 30 Aug 2010 04:51 AM PDT

Helene Cooper contributes a perfectly predictable Early Obstacle at Start of Mideast Talks, to the discussion of peace talks in the Middle East.

President Obama will begin his one-year effort to achieve Middle East peace on Wednesday, joining a long list of his predecessors who have tried to achieve a comprehensive peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
But unlike the presidents before him, Mr. Obama will know within three weeks whether the two sides are serious this time about reaching a deal.

Really? I would have thought that he already knows that. For one thing Barry Rubin pointed out:

It is amusing to see articles claiming that this is a victory for the Obama Administration. If the U.S. government had been doing such a good job it would have been able to announce the resumption of elections in April 2009, after the visit of Abbas to Washington. The president did indeed announce the resumption of negotiations in September 2009 and nothing has happened in a year.
Moreover, it is amusing to read accounts of the resumption of talks without any mention of the fact that the sole reason it has taken so long has been the PA's resistance to negotiations.

Cooper doesn't claim that the upcoming talks will be a victory for the administration, but she hypes the idea that there will be clarity. But she doesn't acknowledge that the delay in the resumption of talks was due to a calculated fit of pique by Mahmoud Abbas, who wouldn't even go back to the negotiating table after Netanyahu agreed to a freeze on building Jewish communiites in Judea and Samaria. I would think that alone shows who's unserious.

Yet Cooper casts things like this:

Mr. Obama, administration officials said, will call on the four leaders to do all they can to settle, within a year, the final status issues: the fate of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes and the issue of Israeli security.
But on Sept. 26, Israel's 10-month moratorium on settlement construction will expire. Mr. Netanyahu appears unlikely to extend it, Israeli and American officials said. And Mr. Abbas has said that he will withdraw from negotiations if settlement activity resumes.

In other words, she has Israel up for failure. A failure to resume the freeze will lead to a collapse of the talks.

According to Ha'aretz it does not seem that Netanyahu is likely to extend it. (via memeorandum).

So what to do?

Those officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that discussions were under way on a number of possible solutions. They include trying to get a promise from Mr. Netanyahu that Israel will exercise restraint in settlement construction, perhaps allowing construction only within existing West Bank settlement blocks, but no housing starts beyond those blocks.
Such a plan could also include early "confidence building" concessions from Israel on a few additional issues of concern to the Palestinians, officials said, including agreeing to limit Israeli Army incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank, and transferring key areas in the West Bank to Palestinian control before a final agreement is reached.

Of course! It always works, Israeli "confidence building measures." It's amazing how often we hear about "Israeli confidence building measures." (From now on "cbm" for short.) If Israel won't sweeten their offer, the Palestinians will be within their rights to walk away. Of course this failure for Israel to toss out new cbm's will be regarded as a sign of Israel's intransigence.

Did Israel withdraw from Gaza? From most of Hevron? From most of Judea and Samaria? Did Israel regard the PLO as a partner for peace even when the PLO was disregarding every single commitment it made? Does the PA/PLO still engage in incitement against Israel? Do its leaders still deny the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state?

I can see why we need more Israeli cbm's. The peace process is so one-sided in Israel's favor, why would the Palestinians participate? Oh wait, they want a state of their own? If their own state is so important why don't they just make a deal? Or is it simply more important to wring concessions out of Israel in exchange for nothing?

So while Israel is introducing Arabic as a second language in many of its schools, the PA continues to deny Israel's history.

I can see why cbm's are needed. And I'm not surprised that the New York Times insists they're needed, where they really aren't.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Abuminah's abominable op-ed

Posted: 30 Aug 2010 04:51 AM PDT

Ali Abuminah, the founder of the anti-Israel website, Electronic Intifada, has been given op-ed space in the New York Times. In that space he has written the highly misleading, Hamas, the I.R.A. and Us. I will have to disagree with some of my allies, as this is not the lowest the New York Times has sunk; the Times has given op-ed space to an actual member of Hamas, not just one of its sympathizers. (via memeorandum)

Abuminah writes:

Mr. Mitchell's comparison is misleading at best. Success in the Irish talks was the result not just of determination and time, but also a very different United States approach to diplomacy.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists. The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom.

A parallel can be seen with the American refusal to speak to the Palestinian party Hamas, which decisively won elections in the West Bank and Gaza in 2006. Asked what role Hamas would have in the renewed talks, Mr. Mitchell answered with one word: "None." No serious analyst believes that peace can be made between Palestinians and Israelis without Hamas on board, any more than could have been the case in Northern Ireland without Sinn Fein and the I.R.A.

This is the heart of his specious claim: Hamas is just like the IRA and just like the IRA was convinced to make peace by being engaged instead of shunned, so too Hamas must be engaged in order to make peace in the Middle East.

Well for this analysis to hold, for one thing, Hamas and the I.R.A. ought to be comparable. They're not.

All these contrasts come back to the one major difference between the IRA and Hamas -- religion. For the Irish, religion is not rooted in all facets of life as it is in with Israelis and Palestinians. Religion in Northern Ireland is understood as a cultural and historical force, while in the Middle East it ties Israelis and Palestinians to the same land. Furthermore, Hamas being a religious organization claims religious justifications for attempting to wipe out Israel. This factor is what differentiates the two groups and will ultimately prove how futile Hamas' reform efforts are.

Z-Word lays out how the concession to Gerry Addams would translate into terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict:

The concession of the visa to Adams, for a trip which involved nothing more than glad handing Irish American supporters of the Provisional Republican movement, may well have improved the mood of certain sectors of Sinn Féin - IRA with regard to calling a ceasefire. If the concession of US visa to Ismail Haniye for a trip that would allow him some tea drinking and back slapping with Arab American supporters were likely to lead to a complete Hamas ceasefire leading to something like a Good Friday deal between Israel and Hamas, I'd be all for it.
Let's just remind ourselves what Sinn Féin - IRA settled for in the Good Friday Agreement. They recognized Northern as an integral part of the UK, decommissioned their weapons and dissolved the military structure of the IRA. In return they got the early release of their prisoners (on license, any return to violence by the main Provisional Republican movement and they'll be straight back in the can), some policing reforms, a couple of cross border talking shops and an autonomous local assembly.

I'll try to translate that into the situation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas accepts that the West Bank and Gaza (why not?) form part of Greater Israel, a Jewish state. Hamas abandons the armed struggle and hands over its weapons to UN monitors. Israel sets up an autonomous Palestine parliament to rule the territories. As well as representative to that assembly Palestinians also get to elect some members to take care of their interests in the Knesset. In return, Israel releases Hamas's prisoners on parole, guarantees that a larger percentage of Magav recruits will be Arabs and promises to make greater efforts to promote the Arabic language and Arab culture in Israel.

Abuminah argues that John Hume - a negotiator of the peace accord for Northern Ireland - wrote an op-ed advocating for Israeli recognition of Hamas. However, that isn't the unanimous position of all those involved. David Trimble, also Nobel Lauereate for his efforts wrote:

If there is one lesson to learn from the Northern Ireland experience, it is that preconditions are crucial in ending violence and producing a settlement. Being overgenerous to extremist groups is like giving sweets to a spoilt child in the hope that it will improve its behaviour - it usually results in worse actions. Our experience suggests that while some flexibility is desirable, there have to be clear principles and boundaries. A failure to recognise this risks drawing the wrong conclusions from the recent history of Northern Ireland and fundamentally misunderstanding the peace process.

This is also the view of former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw (h/t Daled Amos):

Could I just add one thing to that, if I may? Of course, negotiation is far, far better -- infinitely better -- than military action. As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, we welcome hugely the progress that has been made following the Good Friday Agreement. It also has to be said that before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiations. We would not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today.

Fresno Zionism attacks Abuminah's claim of the sanctity of the Palestinian right of return.

You must give Abumimah and his friends credit for chutzpah: first, they invent a 'right' -- the repatriation of the descendants of refugees from a war that their own leaders caused -- that has never existed in history, then they breed a whole population in misery for years to make a demographic weapon of mass destruction out of them, and finally they demand that they be allowed to use it to end the Jewish state. What will remain for them to 'recognize'?
Naturally, he believes that the reason the US was tough on the British but will not get tough on Israel is the nefarious Jewish (OK, he says 'Israel') Lobby. Hamas knew about the Jewish Lobby all along.

Balfour Street makes a similar argument.

Elder of Ziyon gets to the heart of the matter with a single rhetorical question:

So according to Abunimah, for Israel to ask its negotiating partners to not demand its violent destruction is "unworkable"?

Crossposted on Yourish.

Musical monday #156

Posted: 29 Aug 2010 02:51 PM PDT

Welcome to Musical Monday a weekly feature that Elie and I alternate hosting - sometimes getting a little help from our friends. Though Yitz figured out the theme, there are still plenty of songs to be ID'd from Musical Monday #155.

1) I can make it longer if you like the style,
2) The roller-coaster ride we took is nearly at an end
3) You'll find that it's stranger than known
4) Well I feel like dirty laundry
5) I find bliss in ignorance, nothing seems to go away
6) Jimmy's got it wired, law's for hire
7) You make every man feel like a child, oh
8) I see no sense in this crying and grieving
9) I don't know why sometimes I get frightened
10) Well don't you know I'm gonna skate
11) I got six hundred miles to ride, to do one more show, oh no
12) So bring your good times, and your laughter too
13) Commit your crime in your deadly time
14) They're climbing up my waterfalls and swingin' on my vines
15) Shake it, shake it like a Polaroid Picture, shake it, shake it
16) Well, I talk about it, talk about it ...
17) It's the sound of my tears falling or is it the rain?
18) Well meet me baby down at 45th street
19) And have a seat on the same old bench, to watch the children play (huh)
20) At five o'clock it's much too crowded
21) I'm not the reason that you go stranded
22) The clothes you're wearing lately causing public scenes.
23) The neon light's on me tonight
24) Should we proclaim with such persistence
25) seesaw swingin' with the boys in the school

Congratulations to SJ, Yitz, and Clayton for solving Musical Monday #154. In case you're interested here's the backstory for Days of the Future Passed.

Other than the instrumentals, (Also Sprach Zarathrusta, A fifth of Beethoven) I knew about The Lover's Concerto, All By Myself and Could it be Magic.
I'm sure I'd heard Rap City. Thanks to TRN for help in providing the clues.
(Especially the Ludwig one!)

I was unfamiliar with Green Day's Basket Case, but when I saw that it was based on Canon by Pachelbel - my favorite piece of classical music, well I could quite believe it.
The similarity is explained here.

Do you hear a similarity? :-)

1) The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
* (1959) "Once Upon a Dream" in the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty - based upon a waltz in Tchaikovsky's ballet Sleeping Beauty.
2) My heart was captured, my soul surrendered
* (1960) "It's Now Or Never" by Elvis Presley - based on O Sole Mio by di Capua.
3) "" (1962) Give Tchaikovsky the blues? Not Cracker.
* (1962) "Nut Rocker" by B. Bumble and the Stingers - based on Tchaikovsky's "March of the Wooden Soldiers" from the Nutcracker Suite
4) So he reads to us from something called Ulysses
* (1963) "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter From Camp)" by Allan Sherman - based on Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" from La Gioconda
5) "" (1964) Not exactly rhapsody.
* (1964) "Rap City" by The Ventures - based on Johannes Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor
6) How gentle is the rain
* (1965) "A Lover's Concerto" by The Toys - based on J.S. Bach's Minuet in G from the Anna Magdalena Notebook.
7) The past is filled with silent joys and broken toys, laughing girls and teasing boys,
* (1966) "Past, Present and Future" by The Shangri-Las - based on Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano sonata No. 14, "Moonlight"
8) I was feeling kind of seasick
* (1967) "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" by Procol Harum - (loosely) based on J.S. Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3, Air (commonly known as Air on a G String) and Cantata 140 "Sleepers Awake".
9) Tales of mystic days of old are hidden in these walls
* (1968) "Hall of the Mountain King" by The Who - inspired by Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite
10) Don't know what I'm gonna do another week in telephoning...
* (1968) "Prelude B - I'm so Glad" by Deep Purple on Shades of Deep Purple - nicely lifted from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade: The Sea and Sinbad's Ship,
11) One mighty voice that will bring a sound, that will ring forevermore.
* (1970) "A Song of Joy" by Waldo De Los Rios for Miguel Rios - based on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
12) "" (1972) The monkey bone's connected to the spaceship
* (1972) "Also Sprach Zarathustra" [i] by Deodato - a funk arrangement of Richard Strauss' composition of the same name
13) I carry the dust of a journey
* The Sage from (1972) "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Emerson, Lake and Palmer - entire album based on the work by Modest Mussorgsky
14) Every garden grows one
* (1972) "Song Sung Blue" by Neil Diamond - based on Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 21", second movement
15) I bring time, and I can take you through
* (1973) "Joybringer" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band - based on "Jupiter - bringer of jollity" from Gustav Holst's The Planets suite
16) Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain
* (1974) "Annie's Song" by John Denver - based on Peter Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, second movement
17) Sweet Melissa,
* (1975) "Could It Be Magic" by Barry Manilow - quotes extensively from Chopin's Prelude in C minor
18) "" (1975) Trumpet blasts for average guys.
* (1975) "Fanfare for the Common Man" by Emerson, Lake and Palmer - based on Aaron Copland's work of the same name.
19) When I dial the telephone nobody's home
* (1976) "All By Myself" by Eric Carmen - based on Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2
20) "" (1976) 750 mL of Ludwig
* (1976) "A Fifth of Beethoven" [i] by Walter Murphy - disco version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, featured in Saturday Night Fever
21) Cause I couldn't bear to see it end, just like me and you
* (1976) "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" by Eric Carmen - based on Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony
22) Just got back from the downtown palais
* (1977) "Rockaria" by The Electric Light Orchestra - based on "Un Bel Di" from Puccini's "Madame Butterfly"
23) Neurotic to the bone
* (1994) "Basket Case" by Green Day - based on Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D Major
24) Youre the love of my life and the breath in my prayers
* (1999) "Love of my Life" from Supernatural by Santana and Dave Matthews - based on the third movement from Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3

Source: http://www.magle.dk/music-forums/940-modern-popular-songs-based.html

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:15:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

The post-w "either you're with us or you're against us"
Working together might be more productive than boycotting
You don't have to dig so deep to find the antisemitism though
This statement is false

The post-w "either you're with us or you're against us"

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:20 AM PDT

Charles Krauthammer hits one out of the park with The last refuge of a liberal.

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" -- this part is less remembered -- "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."
That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

I noticed this trend in terms of the Ground Zero Mosque. This tendency to eqate all disagreement with the president (and in general to what the MSM considers right thinking) seems to be a function of having an African American president. It's interesting the degree to which President Obama's election has actually made some people (his supporters) throw out charges of bigotry more easily. Effectively, then, the election of President Obama has made our society less, not more, conscious about color. And ironically it's mostly been his champions who are responsible for this.

Remember how liberals mocked President Bush's "either you're with us or you're against us" formulation applied to our foreign enemies? Now they're applying it, to their domestic political opponents.

UPDATE: Yesterday's Day by Day.

Working together might be more productive than boycotting

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:03 AM PDT

Robert Mackey, unsurprisingly, gives a promo to Israeli actors who refuse to perform in the city of Ariel.

Two Israeli actors have announced that they will not travel with the country's national theater company to perform in a new cultural center nearing completion in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

What Mackey does not do, is write about Jews and Arabs working together. (via Daily Alert blog)

One hundred and thirty-four employees arrive at the Rami Levy supermarket in Shaar Binyamin every morning from around the area. Some of them come by bus from the towns of Beit-El, Kochav Yaakov, and Adam, while others, 60 in number, arrive in orange taxis from the villages of Hizma and Anata or by foot from the nearby Jab'a. . . . Ever since the supermarket branch was opened five years ago, Palestinians and settlers work there in a near idyllic state. Their friendships continue even after work hours, though it is usually the Palestinians that visit their Jewish friends and not the other way around.

I remember similar instances of economic cooperation before the first intifada. The peace processors, though, had an interest in inviting the "sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people" - the PLO - in, which made such cooperation even more difficult.

You don't have to dig so deep to find the antisemitism though

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 02:20 AM PDT

The attack on a cabbie and the desecration of a mosque have led some hysterical folks to suggest that the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque has unleashed a tide of anti-Islam behavior. (via memeorandum)

Jonah Goldberg, though, throws some cold water on the hysteria. (via Daily Alert blog)

Let's put this in even sharper focus. America is, outside of Israel ,probably the most receptive and tolerant country in the world to Jews. And yet, in every year since 9/11, more Jews have been hate-crime victims than Muslims. A lot more.
In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, again according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim ones by at least 6 to 1. Why aren't we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?

Because there isn't one. And there isn't an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there's a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don't like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times -- never mind left-wing blogs -- you'll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party") than you will toward Muslims.

Of course, he could point to what's happening in Europe and note that the anti-Israel "reporting" is even worse there than it is here. I don't doubt that the blatant misrepresentations of Israel that pass for "reporting" play some role in feeding the resurgent antisemitism in Europe. But no one who is concerned for Islamaphobia, is truly much concerned about demonstrated antisemitism.

Crossposted on Yourish.

This statement is false

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 02:09 AM PDT

Levi Johnston finds himself in a logical paradox.

Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin's grandson, says he wishes he hadn't apologized for telling lies about the former Alaska governor because he's "never lied about anything."

(via memeorandum)

In other essential celebrity news the twice future and now never, Mrs. Levi Johnston has a found a new way to trade in on her dubious fame.

We can report to you exclusively that Sarah Palin's 19-year-old daughter Bristol Palin has been cast on the 11th season of DWTS, set to premiere Sept. 20, according to sources.

In other essential celebrity news:

The whole sorry saga of her recent jail sentence and spell in drug treatment was down to driving under the influence.
But the first thing Lindsay Lohan did after her release from rehab the night before, was to get back her driving licence.

Fortunately I don't drive in California. And in case you missed it, she even sent off her first post-rehab Tweet! If any of you check it out, no need to inform me of its contents. I don't have any interest.

That's about all the gossip I can handle for now.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:35:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Gilad Schwartz z"l
The bigoted non-bigots
Tolerance is a two way street
Will still in israel
Submitted 08/26/10
The need for bigotry

Gilad Schwartz z"l

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 11:09 AM PDT

Based on the searches for "Gilad Schwartz," I assumed the worst.

Unfortunately, I was correct. Info is here.

The bigoted non-bigots

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 04:13 AM PDT

Nina Shea in Ground Zero Mosque:Who's in Charge? concludes:

Regarding the Ground Zero mosque, based on the information provided by the two partners in the project, we know very little about who will eventually be its directors, or who will fund it. It is the answers to these questions that will determine whether the Ground Zero mosque will be an "affront to extremists everywhere," or, alternatively, whether it will threaten our homeland security by hindering our war against a dangerous idea that has "corrupted" Islam.

However, even if Imam Rauf is not going to play a significant role in the project, currently he (along with his wife) is the public face, so I don't think it's unfair to judge the project by Imam Rauf.

Jeffrey Goldberg defended Imam Rauf last week for saying at a memorial for Daniel Pearl, "I am a Jew." (via memeorandum). Goldberg asserted that by making such a declaration, Imam Rauf put his own life in danger.

Daniel Pearl's father, was impressed by the statement of solidarity. However, according the JTA (via Contentions) he doesn't see it as enough:

Such appearances seem unlikely to sway at least one opponent of building an Islamic center so close to Ground Zero at this time -- Judea Pearl, Daniel's father and a computer science professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Pearl told JTA that while he was "touched" by Rauf's appearance and speech at his son's memorial, "many Muslim leaders offered their condolences at the time." More to the point, Pearl said he is discouraged that the Muslim leadership has not followed through on what he hoped would come from his son's death.

"At the time, I truly believed Danny's murder would be a turning point in the reaction of the civilized world toward terrorism," said Pearl, who engages in public conversations with Akbar Ahmed, an Islamic studies professor at American University, on behalf of the Daniel Pearl Dialogue for Muslim-Jewish Understanding. The established Muslim leadership in the United States, Pearl said, "has had nine years to build up trust by pro-actively resisting anti-American ideologies of victimhood, anger and entitlement.

Reactions to the mosque project indicate that they were not too successful in this endeavor."

He views the controversy to be a vote of no confidence in the organized Muslim leadership, not specifically against Rauf.

Had the statement not just been a one time thing, it might have convinced Dr. Pearl that there had been a change is Islam. Apparently Dr. Pearl wanted to see actions to match the words.

Another surprising opponent of the Ground Zero Mosque, is civil libertarian, Nat Hentoff who writes in Am I also a bigot? (via memeorandum)

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg charges that opponents of Imam Rauf's mosque "should be ashamed of themselves" and are bigots.
Me, too, Mr. Mayor?

If you want to join Speaker Pelosi in investigating me, your honor, I'd be glad to oblige. I'm just doing my job as a reporter. I wish more reporters had gone beneath the shouting on both sides. There's another part of the First Amendment in addition to the free exercise of religion: The press is free to investigate the reasons for Imam Rauf's fixation on the 9/11 location of his mosque.

And why does this location make Hamas glow?

I don't think that anyone else would consider Judea Pearl and Nat Hentoff to be bigots. Yet by opposing (verbally) Park51, there are many of our political elite who would deem them bigots.

There's a lot more to Imam Rauf and the Islamic Center than its supporters let on. By framing the issue as one of "religious tolerance" and conveniently deeming its opponents bigots, the Islamic Centers supporters are refusing to face uncomfortable facts about the project.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Tolerance is a two way street

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 03:52 AM PDT

The New York Times collected reactions to the Park51 controversy from around the world. I have no idea how representative the reactions are to the societies they're from, but some are interesting. I thought this one was particularly good:

One Cambridge University researcher, writing in the Palestinian daily Al Ayyam, said Muslims could win their case for a center near ground zero in a court of law, only to end up losing in the court of public opinion.
"Provoking the other side will eventually create public opinion that will undermine the very laws that the Muslims evoke today," wrote the researcher, Khaled al-Haroub, adding that many Muslim states do not tolerate Christian or Jewish houses of worship: "We keep increasing our religious demands vis-à-vis the West, while refusing to meet even a few of the demands made by religious minorities living among us."

Will still in israel

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 03:48 AM PDT

Today he writes, In the Mideast the peace process is only a mirage:

The biggest threat to peace might be the peace process -- or, more precisely, the illusion that there is one. The mirage becomes the reason for maintaining its imaginary "momentum" by extorting concessions from Israel, the only party susceptible to U.S. pressure. Israel is, however, decreasingly susceptible. In one month, history will recycle when the partial 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction on the West Bank expires. Resumption of construction -- even here, in the capital, which was not included in the moratorium -- will be denounced by a fiction, "the international community," as a threat to another fiction, "the peace process."

For Will's previous columns in this series see here and here.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Submitted 08/26/10

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 03:42 AM PDT

This week's Watcher's Council nominations are up!

Council Submissions

The Colossus of Rhodey - Same situation, less tolerance

Right Truth - The Expendables Works

Wolf Howling - Victory In Iraq

VA Right - Republican Best Case Scenario: 53 Seats in US Senate

The Razor - Tolerating Intolerance

Snapped Shot - Celebrating Ramadan in Kashmir

The Glittering Eye - Putting Humpty Together

Rhymes With Right - The Tension Of Two Visions Of America

Bookworm Room - Cruisin'

Joshuapundit - Islamophobia?

Non - Council Submissions

Buckhorn Road - Hey, Union soldier! What have you done for me lately? - submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey

Counterterrorism Blog, James Gordon Meek - The Real Truth About Al Qaeda in Afghanistan submitted by Right Truth

Pajamas Media - A Patriotic Muslim's Warning on Ground Zero Mosque submitted by Wolf Howling

Disrupt the Narrative - NRA Preps Members for Unpopular & Unwise Harry Reid Endorsement submitted by VA Right

The Phyllis Chesler Organization - Is Time A Muslim Magazine? submitted by The Razor

Cranach: The Blog of Veith - A classical musician on heavy-metal singers submitted by Snapped Shot

American Thinker - Iraq: the War That Broke Us—Not - submitted by The Glittering Eye

Gateway Pundit - Religious Freedom, Property Rights vs. Government Control - submitted by Rhymes With Right

Right Wing News - Why Right Wing News is sponsoring HomoCon submitted by Bookworm Room

Tammy Bruce - Patriots Demonstrate Against GZ Mosque; Little Daisy Whines - submitted by Joshuapundit

Adam's Zionist Journey - The Guardian's Jewish Defamers of Israel, and A Letter To My Teenage Nephew submitted by The Watcher

Legal Insurrection - Gazanitive Dissonance submitted by The Watcher

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

The need for bigotry

Posted: 25 Aug 2010 04:13 AM PDT

Richard Cohen (via Contentions)

If you believe that an entire religion of upward of a billion followers attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, then it is understandable that locating a mosque near the fallen World Trade Center might be upsetting. But the facts are otherwise. Islam was not in on the attack -- just a sliver of believers. That being the case, those people with legitimate hurt feelings are mistaken. They need our understanding, not our indulgence.
If, on the other hand, you do not believe that the attack was launched by an entire religion, you have a moral duty to support the creation of the Islamic center. Lots of people fall into this category -- or say they do -- and still protest the mosque. They include Newt Gingrich, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and that Twittering Twit of the Tundra, Sarah Palin. They indulge in a kind of pornography of analogy -- a bit of demagogic buffoonery that is becoming more and more obvious. They pretend that they have a solemn obligation to defend the (powerful) majority from the demands of the (powerless) minority and champion people whose emotions are based on a misreading of the facts.

To Cohen the choice is binary - either you're for the Islamic center or you're a bigot - but Lynn shows that it is not.

The 9-11 terrorists did attack America in the name of Islam and their associates continue in their attempts to do so today.
Islam has a long and undeniable record of proliferation by force, of which the historic conquest of Cordoba is a particularly prominent example.

There is a growing (?) body of evidence that Imam Rauf is not the model of tolerance and moderation he is made out to be by GZM defenders. To the contrary.

Whatever good intentions the proponents of this mosque may have, the message that building it will send to those who seek to destroy us is a potentially dangerous one.

The developers refuse to rule out funding of the project from Iran and Saudi Arabia, which should raise serious questions as to the true message the mosque is intended to convey.

These and like-minded families (yes, of course others differ, so what?).

This mosque could well have the effect of eroding interfaith dialogue, tolerance and understanding rather than facilitating it.

There are many reasons why one could be opposed to the building of Ground Zero Mosque. Given that the public face of the effort, Imam Rauf, has said that the United States is an "accessory" to 9/11, he's hardly the one to be claiming that his Islamic center is being built to promote understanding. It's one thing to say that America has made mistakes in its foreign policy, but to use the term "accessory" is inflammatory. The position of another of the Islamic center's proponents that the effort wouldn't rule out taking funds from Sauid Arabia or Iran is also troubling.

Until two years there was a question if America was ready for a black president. In November, 2008, the country showed that it was. Most of those who did not vote for Barack Obama didn't because they viewed him as too liberal, not because they didn't approve the color of his skin. America was shown to be sufficiently open minded.

Now however Rasmussen reports that 62% of Americans oppose the building of the Islamic center near Ground Zero (via memeorandum):

Now 62% oppose the building of a mosque near where the World Trade Center stood in Lower Manhattan, compared to 54% in the previous survey. Twenty-five percent (25%) favor allowing the mosque to go ahead, and 13% more are not sure.
Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the Political Class, however, favor building the mosque near Ground Zero. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Mainstream voters are opposed.

So in two years Americans went from being open minded to being a bunch of bigots? I don't buy it.

The poll numbers, of course, show the difference between the political class and the overall population of the country.

J. E. Dyer shrewdly observed:

The U.S. media have comfortably framed the debate over the Park 51 mosque as a case of Middle America versus Islam, but in a very real sense, as others have noted, it's a case of Middle America versus our leftist cultural elite.

In essence. our elites are saying to those who feel that building the Islamic center near Ground Zero, "We don't feel your pain; you shouldn't either." That's a very insensitive approach. Quite a few of those who feel that way actually lost relatives and friends on 9/11. So attributing opposition to the Islamic center is a defense mechanism. If the other side consists of victims, telling them that you don't care about their sensitivities is cruel; if they're bigots it's the proper approach.

By attributing opposition to the Islamic Center to bigotry it allows our elites to feel better about themselves. Sensitivity is not required.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Council speak 08/25/10

Posted: 25 Aug 2010 05:34 PM PDT

A little late, but the Council has spoken.
Last week's top vote getters were:

Council Winners

First place with 2 2/3 votes! - The Razor - The Rage Beneath The Surface
Second place with 1 2/3 votes - The Glittering Eye - Do Differently

Non-Council Winners

First place with 2 votes! - Pascal Bruckner @ City Journal - Europe's Guilty Conscience submitted by Wolf Howling
Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Sultan Knish - The Towers of Barbarism submitted by Right Truth
Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Discriminations - The Separation Of Race And State II submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Cubachi - Harry Reid Can't Believe I'm A Hispanic Republican submitted by Joshuapundit

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:39:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Rice is nice
What if Rauf really is "moderate"?
Peace is coming, why am i annoyed?
Obama <> reagan
The religious freedom argument

Rice is nice

Posted: 24 Aug 2010 07:16 PM PDT

Thanks to the promotion department at 1057 FM - the Fan,

I was invited to bring a guest to get photographed with Ray Rice

My guest was my 11 year old Ravens fanatic son, who has been walking on air since he found out that he'd get to be photographed with Ray Rice.

Rice was attending the kickoff of Checkpoint Strikeforce, a multistate anti-drunk driving inititiative for Maryland.

The event was MC'd by Norris and Davis, co-host, Steve Davis.

The line of the night (I think) went to Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown who said (something like), "When Anthony Brown speaks people listen, but you need to have Ray Rice to get the people to come to listen.

Ray Rice, himself, spoke about the loss of his cousin S.U.P.E. in 1998 to a drunk driver.

My son got to see Ray Rice up close. I don't think he said anything to us, but he was gracious, and the picture came out great.

Thanks to the promotions department at The Fan, for giving my son a real treat!

What if Rauf really is "moderate"?

Posted: 24 Aug 2010 01:57 PM PDT

Christopher Hitchens has a current piece on the Mosque-troversy. Besides hoping that means his cancer treatments are gong well, I would like to examine what he has to say. He dismisses the objections of many on the right as "stupid and demagogic," but continues:

From the beginning, though, I pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was no great bargain and that his Cordoba Initiative was full of euphemisms about Islamic jihad and Islamic theocracy . . .

Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter ...

Which sounds like the problem might be terrorism after all, doesn't it? Leaving that point aside, Hitchens presents his reservations as pertaining to Rauf himself. I wonder, however, if the left is correct, in a sense, that Rauf is the face of Muslim moderation. In other words, I hate to break it to you, Clash of Civilizations Fans, but it's him or nothing--all the non-marginal alternatives are worse. Or worse still, perhaps the alternatives are actually more of the same, minus Rauf's obviously ample marketing abilities.

I am not trying to make some point about the essential nature of Islam. The good thing about not being a Muslim is that you don't have to believe Islam has an essence--it is whatever its adherents make of it. Unfortunately, nowadays that mostly involves funding from oil sheikdoms and the sort of ideology they favor, which usually seems to come from Egypt.

See the rest of what Hitchens has to say to learn "why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous."

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Peace is coming, why am i annoyed?

Posted: 24 Aug 2010 06:22 AM PDT

In Mideast Talks to look forward to? David Makovsky writes:

Security cooperation between the PA and Israel has substantially improved. In 2002, 410 Israelis were killed by suicide bombings and other attacks emanating from the West Bank; in the past three years, Israel has suffered one fatality from one such attack. Speaking in Washington this year, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the situation on the ground "is better than any time in the past." Israeli charges that the Palestinians have a "revolving door" approach of releasing terrorists after quick arrests -- rampant during the Arafat era -- are no longer heard. A Palestinian nonviolent protest movement has been born.

What's missing from this? Well between 2002 and now, Israel fought Operation Defensive Shield, which seriously damaged the terror organizations in the areas under Palestinian Authority's control. Israel also has been building its much maligned security fence. If it hadn't been for Israeli actions, there would be Palestinian security apparatus to cooperate with. But not mentioning the actions Israel has taken, Makovsky implicitly affirms that there is not military solution to terrorism. But Israel's defensive measures have been successful.

Makovsky writes further:

Religious and education reforms have started, including a major effort to identify those imams who agitate for suicide bombings. PA Religion Minister Mahmoud Habbash told me, and Israeli security officials confirm, that such imams have been removed from all Palestinian mosques under PA jurisdiction. "Hamas has been running our mosques for 30 years, and we are trying to take the mosques back so they are used only for prayer," Habbash told me.
The PA has begun reshaping the curriculum of Palestinian institutions that accredit imams, and screening is also being conducted to weed out schoolteachers who support Hamas radicalism. PA security officials say 1,100 of the 28,000 Palestinian teachers in the West Bank have been replaced. Incitement would be further reduced if, among other things, the practice of naming town squares and camps after the killers of yesteryear ended.

I don't know how accurate the claim that inciting imams have been removed from PA mosques. PMW reported last month that a PA imam said:

"The Al-Aqsa Mosque is threatened by the plans of the enemies of Allah [the Jews], who have violated all faith and religious laws, and even deviated from their humanity."

Perhaps my threshhold for incitement is lower than that of the Palestinian Religion Minister.

More troublesome though, is that over the past 17 years we've been told that Israel didn't do this or didn't do that for peace. Yet by Makovsky's account, the fundamental job of preparing its people for peace has been absent from from the PA. I'm less than convinced how effectively or completely the PA is fighting incitement, but if they're doing it now, it's because they made no effort before now.

There are two issues that are not about quiet policy shifts but will require conditioning of the populations: Jerusalem and refugees -- the narrative issues of the conflict that cut to the self-definition of the parties. The difficulties surrounding these issues have led some to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's call to complete the talks in one year. But the hope is that progress on security and borders will facilitate political traction on these thornier topics.
If, however, that does not happen, the parties need to find ways to grapple with these final issues in a manner that does not cause other progress to unravel.

I think here that Makovsky's acknowledging that no final agreement is possible at this time. Certainly not in a year's time.

Barry Rubin explains why not:

--Hamas announces that since it totally rejects direct talks (much less any peace with Israel) as treason, it is stopping its own negotiations with the PA for cooperation or merger. This shows clearly that the PA cannot reach any deal with Israel (even if it wanted to do so) and deliver on its commitments because of the Hamas factor. Do also remember that not only does Hamas run the Gaza Strip but also has a very large base of support in the PA-ruled West Bank.
--Far from welcoming talks and expressing his eagerness to make peace and live alongside Israel, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas explains that he only requested permission from his true masters (the Fatah leadership) to go to talks for one month. It should be clearly understood that the Fatah leaders include three groups: old companions of Yasir Arafat, ideological hardliners, and perhaps about ten percent relative moderates. It doesn't want to make a permanent compromise peace with Israel.

--Some Fatah leaders are claiming that even this one-month permission isn't valid since there wasn't a quorum at the relevant meeting. In some cases, leaders stayed away on purpose so they could block direct negotiations.

--Other PA and Fatah leaders are unhappy that the U.S. officials claimed there were no preconditions for direct talks since the Palestinians wanted to be given everything (especially the 1967 borders and a state whether or not negotiations succeeded) in advance. Basically, they only want to accept a state from Western hands without any real compromises with Israel (recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, permanent end of conflict, settlement of all Palestinian refugees in Palestine, border changes, non-militarization, and security guarantees).

Prof Rubin adds that there may be a benefit to having talks and for the West to be promoting them, but the conditions are not right now for there to be any hopes of a quick and final agreement between israel and the Palestinians.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Obama <> reagan

Posted: 24 Aug 2010 04:14 AM PDT

via memeorandum.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post wrote a few days ago that Reagan's first term offers measuring stick for Obama.

Obama's presidency has looked like Reagan's in some broad ways. Both men succeeded unpopular presidents of the opposite party. Both offered big and bold plans -- Reagan with massive tax cuts, Obama with a massive stimulus package and national health care -- that set the country in a new direction. Reagan's goal was to shrink government. Obama's efforts have enlarged government.
Both presidents were forced by events that preceded their elections to contend with economies in serious trouble. Both saw the unemployment rate rise sharply during their first two years in office -- under Reagan, the rate hit 10.8 percent by November 1982 -- and both saw their approval ratings decline as the numbers of jobless grew.

For much of this year, Obama and his team have taken some solace from the fact that Reagan's approval ratings were even lower at comparable points in his presidency. That is no longer the case. In the past week, Obama has hit a new low in his approval rating, according to Gallup's daily tracking. It now stands at 42 percent, virtually identical to Reagan's in August 1982. (Both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter dipped below 40 percent during their second year in office.)

Republicans suffered significant losses in the House in Reagan's first midterm election, giving Democrats an even larger majority. Most Democrats are braced for a similarly bad night this November.

However, at the end of the article there is a significant bit that perhaps ought to give the current administration pause:

Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at UCLA and author of "The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns," said Obama and his advisers will have to swallow any significant losses in November and quickly put those results in the rearview mirror. "The only thing they should be focused on is growth," she said.
But she added a caveat. If the president and his team conclude that the economy will not be growing at a politically safe pace -- clearly above 3 percent -- by early 2012, then they need to start thinking about finding some other issue big enough to build a reelection campaign around.

"They have to refocus the whole election off the economy," she said.

If the economy doesn't improve in two years, it will be hard to take the focus off the economy and refocus the election to other issues. The problem with the administration's focus is that it's looking at political markers, when its fate will likely be determined by the economics of the time. Reagan took actions designed to restore economicy growth. While the Obama administration has taken the step of introducing "health care reform" ostensibly to help the least fortunate, it will impose huge costs on the economy, which will discourage growth.

William Inboden lists four differences between President Reagan and President Obama (h/t Peter Wehner):

Yet there are several other differences that Balz doesn't mention. Among them:
• Inflation. The economic recession that Reagan inherited was bedeviled not only by low growth and high unemployment (as with today), but also by an inflation rate of 11.8 percent when Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981. In contrast, Obama faced an inflation rate of 0 percent at his inauguration (though fears of deflation were in the air). To tackle this crippling inflation, Reagan supported Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker in hiking the federal funds rate to 20 percent, amid widespread criticism and resistance, especially from farmers and industry. This politically courageous monetary policy was as important as the tax cuts in eventually restoring growth.

• Congress. While Obama has enjoyed the luxury of his party's dominance in both houses of Congress, Reagan faced a harder political landscape in his first two years. The Democrats controlled the House by 244-191, and in the Senate 53 Republicans constituted a slim GOP majority.

• National Security. Reagan believed that the Soviet threat needed to be countered more aggressively and made doing so a centerpiece of his first term. This saw international tensions increase--and fears of nuclear war further heightened the anxiety of an American public already suffering from the recession. While Obama also faces manifest international challenges, in public messaging his administration has devoted comparatively little attention to security issues such as the terrorist threat and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If anything, they have sought to focus public attention and political capital almost exclusively on the domestic agenda.

• Leadership. Perhaps the most important dissimilarity is also the least tangible: an intuitive feel for the public mood and connection with the American people. Even some of Obama's most ardent supporters worry that he has either lost this connection or possibly never had it. Reagan always had it, which accounted for much of his enduring appeal even in politically trying times.

Inboden cutely observes about the administration's effort:

As politics goes, this is a clever try, if one can get past the irony of an administration simultaneously trying to dismantle the Reagan legacy while embracing the Reagan image.

The religious freedom argument

Posted: 24 Aug 2010 03:13 AM PDT

Some time after I first read a Washington Post editorial advocating for the Ground Zero Mosque (or Islamic center) on the grounds of religious freedom, I remembered that the Post's view on the topic wasn't necessarily so categorical.

Five years ago, when Congress was discussing extending Daylight Savings Time the Post ran an editorial, EDT Plus (July 28, 2005) which argued in part:

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.

The truth is that for Orthodox Jews who wish to pray with a quorum (or minyan), sunrise already at the end of October is already rather late and presents problems. The addition of another week of late sunrises is an added inconvenience.

If the Post had at least argued that the inconvience is regrettable but necessary for the greater good of saving energy I could have respected that. But the argument was rather was a mocking "it doesn't affect many people anyway," which is an odd argument if religious freedom is unconditional.

Now I understand that there are times when one group may be asked to sacrifice on account of a greater good. But given that there's no clearcut proof that daylight savings time actually saves energy, the inconveniece was imposed with no gain.

So for private individuals to ask Imam Rauf to worship someplace else is not a violation of is religious freedom. The government, can't demand that of him. But to use religious freedom as

It seems if the Washington Post's view of religious freedom as a defense of the building of the mosque, is awfully selective. Especially when there are significant arguments against building it that ought to be addressed and not simply dismissed.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:25:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

New York Times concerned that concern about extremism causes extremism
Gaza-bag
The unmentioned co-conspirator
What does the title "king" mean to you?

New York Times concerned that concern about extremism causes extremism

Posted: 23 Aug 2010 02:48 PM PDT

"Some experts say" is Journalist-speak for "I believe the following":

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda's claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

"I know people in this debate don't intend it, but there are consequences for these kinds of remarks," said Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism for the New America Foundation here.

He said that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric hiding in Yemen who has been linked to several terrorist plots, has been arguing for months in Web speeches and in a new Qaeda magazine that American Muslims face a dark future of ever-worsening discrimination and vilification.

"When the rhetoric is so inflammatory that it serves the interests of a jihadi recruiter like Awlaki, politicians need to be called on it," Mr. Fishman said. [...]

This sort of reasoning doesn't just miss the forest, it misses all but about 1.2 trees. All sorts of things "play into the hands" of extremists. According to this logic, the best route for leftists would be to downplay anti-Muslim rhetoric on the right. "Surge of Islamophobic bigotry? Never! What gave you that idea?" At all costs, don't write "To equate these moderate Muslims with that horrific act is pure bigotry, a bigotry that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and former Gov. Howard Dean sadly signed on to"--it might fuel extremism. I understand that in Al-Qaeda circles the anniversary of the publication of The Israel Lobby is now a holiday called "Eid Al-Mearsheimer" the blessed day when their recruiting goals became assured for decades.

You can't regulate the great American political conversation to avoid fueling the suspicions of extremists. Extremism is nothing if not resourceful in identifying paranoia-fodder, otherwise it would be a pretty anemic extremism. The West's job is not to be anemic in promoting its values and interests and fighting its enemies.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Gaza-bag

Posted: 23 Aug 2010 04:27 AM PDT

Today Ethan Bronner of the New York Times reports on his trip into Gaza. You see in recent months embarrassing reports have come out that have suggested that perhaps poverty in Gaza was not nearly as bad as advertised by the likes of Lauren Booth.

Bronner reports:

But the broader point many of these advocates are making -- that the poverty of Gaza is often misconstrued, willfully or inadvertently -- is correct. The despair here is not that of Haiti or Somalia. It is a misery of dependence, immobility and hopelessness, not of grinding want. The flotilla movement is not about material aid; it is about Palestinian freedom and defiance of Israeli power.

Actually, that's not reporting that's advocating.

If the reports of poverty in Gaza were refuted by only the instance of this mall, maybe the Times and Bronner would have a point. But numerous pictures from Gaza have shown markets full of products for sale.

My Right Word observes the degree to which blogging forced this article.

But Israel Matzav notes that there's a false narrative that Bronner doesn't address.

If you go to Turkey or most of the Arab countries you will be told that Gazans are starving to death, an image that the Hamas leadership has promoted. Maybe if they told the truth - that no one is starving and that the Israeli blockade is aimed at stopping weapons and not food and at obtaining the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit - it might be possible to talk about ways to ease the blockade.

Daled Amos points out the missing element to the story:

Why does Bronner, who bewails the modesty of the Gaza Mall, make no mention of the malls in the West Bank? The answer is: the same reason that he makes no mention of the Kassam rockets still being fired at Israel from Gaza. The West Bank is not firing rockets at Israel, but Gaza is. The situation in Gaza is the result of the terrorist government of Hamas, not the defensive measures of Israel.

Brian of London (at Israelly Cool!) mocks the Times's newfound focus:

The New York Times has, finally, figured out how to respond to the scenes of abject and desperate non-poverty in Gaza as Dave has ably documented and discussed (a Taste of "Concentration Camp" Gaza series and Gaza mall posts, for example).
So they've switched tack... it's all about humiliation. It reads like a PR piece written by a foreign lobbyist firm. I thought you needed a license in the US to be a foreign lobbyist?

Elder of Ziyon is outlines the hypocrisy involved:

However, the fact is that both the media and the anti-Israel activists have used the "starvation" meme as a convenient fiction to focus the world on demonizing Israel. Their current re-framing to change it instead to "dependence, immobility and hopelessness" is nothing more than an attempt to not look like fools and not admit that they have been lying to the world for years.
If they cared about Palestinian Arab "hopelessness" they would be spending much more time in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. They would be interviewing Mahmoud Abbas about why he has yet to dismantle a single "refugee" camp in the West Bank - all of which are under Palestinian Arab control.

No, these hypocritical reporters are not interested in revealing truths about how Gazans live. They have been dining in fine restaurants in Gaza and staying in fancy hotels - they knew the truth for years. They are equally not interested in Palestinian Arab suffering and deprivation - because by any measure, the Arabs in camps in Lebanon envy the Gazans. These hypocrites hammer away at Gaza for years because they want to blame Israel for Gaza's problems, nothing more. They'll occasionally leaven their prodigious Gaza output with an article about Hamas abuses of Gazans, but their focus has been unrelentingly on Israel.

The unraveling of the "humanitarian crisis" meme just shows how deeply the mainstream media has been in bed with NGOs and anti-Israel activists and how easily they parrot false statistics and claims.

Any way you look at it, the media has been lying to you about Gaza for years. Why should you believe them now?

Crossposted on Yourish.

The unmentioned co-conspirator

Posted: 23 Aug 2010 04:19 AM PDT

Last week Amin al-Hindi died.

Amin al-Hindi, an associate of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and a former Palestinian Authority intelligence chief who was widely suspected of having played an organizing role in the deadly attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, died Tuesday in Amman, Jordan. He was 70.

The Times, however, offers him a measure of deniability.

If Mr. Hindi was involved in the Munich attack -- he never publicly acknowledged any responsibility -- he may have been the last of the plotters to survive. Several were tracked down and killed by Israeli counterterrorist squads abroad. The self-declared mastermind of the attack, Mohammed Oudeh, better known by his guerrilla name, Abu Daoud, died in early July in Damascus at age 73.

But there's someone else whose involvement is covered up here. According to Abu Daoud:

Though he didn't know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud's allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

No doubt Abu Daoud had his reasons for fingering Abbas. But then again since he went to the trouble of exonerating him too ("he didn't know"), so I'm going to rank this charge as believable. The NY Times, of course, saw fit to shield President Abbas from any untoward attention.

So perhaps not all of the conspirators who were responsible for the Olympic terror attack are dead.

What does the title "king" mean to you?

Posted: 23 Aug 2010 04:12 AM PDT

Last week the Washington Post reported:
New restrictions provoke unusually strong wave of criticism among Jordanians.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, one of the United States' most Western-oriented allies in the Middle East, has faced an unusual amount of domestic criticism in recent months that has coincided with a trend toward more autocratic governance, observers say.

In what many describe as a period of exceptional dourness, retired military officers, journalists, teachers and government workers have publicly complained about the direction Jordan is heading. Because overtly criticizing the king remains taboo, much of the grumbling is directed by proxy at the government appointed by Abdullah.

When Abdullah first became King there were articles announcing what a common touch he had. He would apparently dress up in non-royal clothes and go out among his countrymen to see how they lived.

However now:

Lavish vacations in the south of France and motorcycle trips through California have made the 48-year-old king appear out of touch with poor, average Jordanians, political observers said. But in a June speech marking the 11th anniversary of his ascendance to the throne, Abdullah addressed people's concerns.

"Ample talk about corruption, nepotism and favoritism" is "overblown," Abdullah said. He asked for patience as his newly appointed government works to fix the economy.

Why are people surprised. Abdullah is "king." He inherited his position. His journeys among the common folk were good presss, but were done for show. To a large degree what we're seeing is the dissatisfaction of country towards a leader who is not accountable.

He's a "king."

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:18:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Why not arm our enemies?
Jewish blogging this week
They Do Have A Right To Build A Mosque On Ground Zero--But That Right Does Have Limitations
Islam Has A History Of Building Mosques Over Other Religions' Ruins
Free-speech crusaders thwarted
Did I write three ...

Why not arm our enemies?

Posted: 22 Aug 2010 02:29 PM PDT

There are few analysts out there with the inside knowledge of what's going in Lebanon who know as much as Michael Young does. Still reading his description of the Lebanon, it's hard to see who the good guys are.

The Syrians never reconciled themselves to that departure and sought to prevent the emergence of a sovereign Lebanese state and effective government. Because Syrian soldiers and intelligence agents were no longer on the ground, the Assad regime came to rely on Hezbollah to destabilize Lebanon, handing the party, and Iran, major sway over the country's affairs.
This development so alarmed Arab states, above all Saudi Arabia, that early last year King Abdullah decided to "reconcile" with Syria after years of mutual hostility. The Saudi calculation was a cynical one: Mr. Assad would be given latitude to reassert Syrian domination over Lebanon in exchange for curbing Iran's influence here. The Saudis would press Saad Hariri, the son of Rafiq who became prime minister late last year, to mend fences with Damascus. This was a golden opportunity for Mr. Assad to reverse his 2005 Lebanese setback while earning an apparent certificate of innocence from the victim's family.

Politically dependent on the Saudi regime, Mr. Hariri had little choice but to accept. He knows who killed his father, but his most immediate foe in Lebanon is Hezbollah, and he hoped that the new rapport with Syria would allow him to counterbalance Hezbollah while buying him time to consolidate Lebanon's state institutions.

Hariri apparently has decided to make the bad the enemy of the worst. Assuming he's successful, that leads to certain problems. But apparently that gambles doesn't appear to be working too well.

Lee Smith observes:

In the case of Lebanon, Bush's policy curtailed our relationship with Syrian security services and put more money into Lebanese political institutions. U.S. support of the Lebanese Armed Forces was meant to enable the state to extend its sovereignty from border to border. It is hardly surprising that Hezbollah, which embodies the challenge to that state's sovereignty, understood this better than the Lebanese government. For the last five years, various figures from the March 14 movement have come through Washington to petition for more firepower--planes, tanks, artillery--anything that would serve as evidence that, counter to Hezbollah's argument, the LAF was capable of defending Lebanon from Israel. That the IDF colonel was killed on the border by a sniper rifle likely provided by the United States--before the U.S. aid package, the LAF had no sniper rifles--may bring that support to an end.

This has led to recent articles in the Washington Post and New York Times lamenting the tough choices President Obama faces regarding Lebanon.

On August 13, the Washington Post featured an analysis: Calls to stop funding Lebanese army put Obama in tight spot

In interviews with former Lebanese military officials, current politicians and an array of observers in Lebanon, not a single person said he thought the army would take steps to disarm or distance itself from Hezbollah in the near term, with or without U.S. assistance.
But many expressed concern that severing U.S. aid could feed instability in Lebanon and weaken democratic forces that have lost ground since the Cedar Revolution in 2005 swept a pro-Western government to power. Iran immediately said it would make up whatever shortfalls the Lebanese army incurs by a U.S. aid cut.

Washington's frustration is rooted in misguided expectations, military analysts said. "Don't imagine that a strong army can fight Hezbollah," said a retired Lebanese general, Elias Hanna. "Whoever thinks this is possible is under a delusion. . . . Most of the Lebanese army now is against Israel and is pro-Hezbollah."

According to this, it really isn't a difficult call. If providing arms to the Lebanese army means that they won't be used against Hezbollah (and will likely be used against Israel) then what's the advantage to arming the Lebanese army? The only "leverage" is that if the United States won't provide the arms, then Iran will. So what's the problem. Either the United States wastes its resources by arming an enemy or its enemy uses its resources to arm a puppet.

Now the New York Times enters the "analysis" arena with U.S. Weighs Tough Choice Over Aid for Lebanon. First the "analysis" starts off with a fiction:

Earlier this month, Israeli soldiers were pruning a tree on their country's northern border when a firefight broke out with Lebanese soldiers across the fence, leaving one Israeli and four Lebanese dead.
The skirmish seems to have been accidental.

"Accidental?!?!" An Israeli officer was killed and another wounded by snipers. This came after the Israelis told the UN what they intended to do and the UN passed the information on to elements in the Lebanese army hostile to Israel. Where'd I read that the assault was premeditated? Oh, yes, the New York Times:

A senior American official in Washington said that the Lebanese military appeared to have been responsible for starting the gunfire.
Israeli military officials insisted that the attack on their forces was premeditated. They pointed to internal tensions in Lebanon and what they said was the growing influence of Hezbollah -- the Shiite, Iranian-backed militia -- on certain elements within the Lebanese Army.

Of course the point of today's analysis is to emphasize that the pro-Israel crowd is woefully shortsighted, so the "analyst" Robert Worth concludes:

The same pattern can be seen in other countries across the greater Middle East: a flawed national army is not ideal, but it is usually better than chaos or a vacuum that can be filled by suicidal militants and their patron states. As if to prove the point, on Aug. 14 the Lebanese Army killed two members of Fatah al-Islam.
For Washington, minor victories like that may be worth the price of military aid, even if the broader goal of disarming larger militant groups -- including Hezbollah -- is out of reach.

Ignored, of course, is the possiblity that arming the Lebanese army is the equivalent of arming Hezbollah.

Elder of Ziyon quotes Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid (who?) in contrast to Worth and concludes:

Any western support for the LAF is pointless and misguided. Recent events demonstrate that while the LAF cannot and will not solve any of Lebanon's problems, it can easily make them worse. With this in mind, and despite my respect and affection for the people of Lebanon, the United States and other western powers must not support or contribute to the LAF.
Who do you trust more to understand Lebanese politics: a New York Times columnist whose conclusions were set in stone before he did any research, or an Arab who has studied Lebanon for years?

What the Washington Post and New York Times are evading is what Barry Rubin describes as The Week Lebanon Became Part of the Anti-Western Axis and West Governments Didn't Notice:

Most Western governments and media still publicly ignore the transformation (perhaps temporary) of Turkey into part of the radical, anti-Western alliance but Iran, Syria, and Hizballah are quite aware of this huge change. Equally, they pretend that Lebanon still functions as an independent country, though Congress's cut-off of aid to Lebanon's army shows that it comprehends the situation.

And it is this cutoff, that the Washington Post and New York Times are trying to portray as hopelessly misguided.

Jewish blogging this week

Posted: 22 Aug 2010 08:21 AM PDT

The latest JPIX is up at I wish I were a photographer. Thanks for including my pictures from our trip to Niagara. If they convince someone else to make the trip, that would be amazing!

Ruti Mizrachi hosts Haveil Havlalim #281.

Both carnivals are well organized and beautifully illustrated.

Thanks!

They Do Have A Right To Build A Mosque On Ground Zero--But That Right Does Have Limitations

Posted: 22 Aug 2010 12:55 AM PDT

In the debate about the plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero, the straw man that this is all about the right to build that mosque is getting a real workout.

Few argue that this is about the right to build that mosque, but even granting that right leaves the question of its limitations.

Jonah Goldberg writes about What the Mosque Debate Is, and Isn't, About and notes:

The rights in question are not absolute and inviolable. Communities can regulate by time, place, and manner. Porn theaters can be zoned away from schools and slaughterhouses away from city centers. The question almost always boils down to whether such restrictions are reasonable or not, and that is the sort of thing Americans debate every day. The pretense that the professional Left (to use Robert Gibbs's formulation) does not know this is one of the most transparent lies of recent political discourse.

So enough of the name calling.
The governor of New York offered land further away from Ground Zero for building the mosque--the offer was turned down.

Judging by the opposition to the implications of the mosque being so close to Ground Zero, just why is that offer not reasonable?

by Daled Amos

Islam Has A History Of Building Mosques Over Other Religions' Ruins

Posted: 22 Aug 2010 12:37 AM PDT

Here is an article by historian Dr. Steven Carol, which appears originally on the Statebrief blog, where he expands on the number of mosques built on the ruins of buildings of other religions:

Carol: How a Mosque at Ground Zero is Viewed in the Arab-Muslim World

By Dr. Steven Carol

Arab-Muslim conquerors have a penchant for destroying other people's religious shrines and many times building their own on the ruins. It was, and remains, Islam's way of saying, 'We have defeated you, we rule you, and our god-Allah- is greater than your god.' As I have pointed out, with numerous examples, in my book: Middle East Rules of Thumb: Understanding the Complexities of the Middle East, this has been a long established historic practice.

Islam's holiest shrine-the Kaaba, a cube-like building in Mecca-is an older pre-Islamic pagan Arab shrine. According to Islamic tradition the first building was constructed by Adam and rebuilt by Abraham (Ibrahim). The Black Stone, possibly a meteorite fragment, is a significant feature of the Kaaba. The Masjid al-Haram mosque was built around the Kaaba.

The Ibrahimi Mosque was constructed in Hebron, in 637 CE, over the second-most venerated Jewish holy site, the Cave of Machpelah-the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Dome of the Rock was built on the ruins of Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem, by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik, 687-691 CE. Al-Walid, son of al-Malik, erected the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the southern end of the Temple Mount and also over the Basilica of St. Mary of Justinian, in 712 CE.

By no means is this practice limited to venerated Jewish holy sites. The Grand Mosque of Damascus was put up over the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in 715 CE.

On October 18, 1009, the Muslim Fatimid caliph Abu 'Ali Mansur Tariqu'l-Hakim destroyed, down to the bedrock, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church venerated by most Christians as Golgotha, the Hill of Calvary, where tradition says that Jesus was crucified. Gravestones were also destroyed. Muslim forces tried to dig up all the graves and wipe out all traces of their existence. The site is now within the walled, Old City of Jerusalem.

This practice continued through the centuries and was applied not only to Jewish, Christian and Hindu sites but other faiths as well. Late in the 20th century, in Libya, on November 26, 1970, the Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Tripoli was converted into the Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque.

Two 1,400 year-old statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan were blown up in March 2001. This came after a fatwa (a religious edict), ordered by the Taliban directed all Afghan "idols" be destroyed as being anti-Muslim. In the Central Asian republics no Buddhist temples remain.

While not a religious site, the World Trade Center stood as a symbol of Western commerce, industry and civilization. Then came the horrors of the destruction of those twin towers on September 11, 2001. No doubt many prayers were said there both during and after the calamitous collapse.

In May 2010, it was announced that near the ruins of buildings reduced to rubble in the name of Islam, an Islamic mosque would rise. This fits the historic pattern of Muslim construction near or atop the ruins of their enemies' symbolic buildings as a mark of Islamic supremacy.

The land for the mosque has been bought for $4.85 million in unaccounted for cash. The estimated cost of the new building that will house the mosque is $100 million. It is to be funded by donations. Just who specifically, would be making these donations is one unanswered question? Once built, 1,000 to 2,000 Muslims are expected to pray at the mosque every Friday. The target date for the opening of this mosque is September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the attack on New York and Washington, D.C.

Furthermore, a second mosque seeks to build near ground zero. The Masjid Mosque has raised $8.5 million and is seeking an additional $2.5 million to begin construction. While it apparently has not settled on a final location, it has told donors it plans to build very close to where the World Trade Center once stood. In fact, the Masjid Mosque website states: "Insha'Allah we will raise the flag of La-Illaha-Illa-Allah in downtown Manhattan very soon!"

The World Trade Center was destroyed in the name of Islam. The perpetrators stated the people that were murdered were not innocent, which is blatantly false. The planned mosque will be just 600 feet from ground zero, at the site of the greatest Islamofascist achievement over infidels in hundreds of years. Thus, three questions can be raised. Are these mosques to honor the perpetrators of 9-11 rather than its victims? Is the mosque to indicate Islam's triumph and supremacy? Finally, how will the establishment of these mosques be viewed in the Arab-Muslim world? [emphasis added]

Left unsaid, is that other religions have done the same thing. For instance:

Notre Dame de Paris, which translates literally to "Our Lady of Paris" is a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was built on the site of the first Christian Church in Paris whih also happens to be the site of an ancient temple erected to the God Jupiter.

In a comment to Carol's own article, someone writes:

I visited Spain last year.
There are some pretty impressive Cathedrals there....built on the ashes of Mosques.
Islam is not alone in this practice, it shares the habit with Christianity. And, I would guess, with other religions.

We have a choice: we can let them build it, and show that we are a better and more tolerant people. Or we can show that we are just like them.

The last sentiment is nice, but leaves unanswered how allowing them to do what they want shows that we are better--when for them, building that huge mosque illustrates to them that they are better . The fact remains that the symbolism is very disturbing, and the claim that the mosque is intended to honor the victims is merely adapting a Western sentiment for their own purposes.

Allowing the building of the mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero would be a major mistake.

by Daled Amos

Free-speech crusaders thwarted

Posted: 21 Aug 2010 11:07 PM PDT

It seems to be a rule in politics that pure accusations of hypocrisy are hard to come by. The abstract notion of someone being hypocritical is simply not that interesting to people. So if John Doe accuses Richard Roe of hypocritically having one attitude towards A and another one towards B, the chances are that John Doe has some sort of unspoken stake in A or B or both. Case in point:

The Arab European League has been fined 1,000 [Euros] by a court in Arnhem for carrying a cartoon on its website which suggested the holocaust was invented by Jews, reports Friday's Volkskrant.

The cartoon featured two men in suits discussing how to boost the number of people killed during the holocaust.

The court ruled the cartoon was 'highly offensive' to Jews. The total fine was 2,500 [Euros] with 1,500 [Euros] suspended. Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda, head of the AEL who drew the cartoon, was acquitted.

According to a Reuters story:

The Dutch group says it had no intention of disputing the Holocaust, but wanted instead to highlight what it described as double standards in free speech.

The AEL circulated it in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad . . .

MPAC-UK, in a very revealing moment that was repeated over and over again in the Muslim world during the original cartoon controversy, thinks the hypocrisy charge is on-target, thereby reminding us that they are, after all, an organization co-founded by somebody who once gave money to David Irving. (And if you think it is unfair to Muslims to focus much attention on them, recall also that they were invited by the BBC to give a pro-democracy rebuttal to Hizb Ut-Tahrir Caliphate advocacy). Iran's PressTV comments at the end of its article on this latest chapter in the cartoon saga:

Challenging or disputing the Holocaust story is considered a major offense in Europe, entailing fines and long prison term. Many observers view this as a contradiction to the so-called democratic principles of Western democracies, namely the freedom of expression.

Which really means that they, like MPAC-UK, support Holocaust denial (certainly the "soft-core" version, at least), want to shove Muslim taboos down the world's throat, and don't care about freedom of speech. I wonder what Feisal Abdul Rauf thinks. Don't you?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Did I write three ...

Posted: 21 Aug 2010 09:26 PM PDT

... articles by George Will.

I mean 4.

Today in Many possible Israeli concessions would be suicidal Geroge Will writes:

Twenty-one Israeli settlements were dismantled; even the bodies of Israelis buried in Gaza were removed. After a deeply flawed 2006 election encouraged by the United States, there was in 2007 essentially a coup in Gaza by the terrorist organization Hamas. So now Israel has on its western border, 44 miles from Tel Aviv, an entity dedicated to Israel's destruction, collaborative with Iran and possessing a huge arsenal of rockets.
Rocket attacks from Gaza increased dramatically after Israel withdrew. The number of U.N. resolutions deploring this? Zero.

The closest precedent for that bombardment was the Nazi rocket attacks on London, which were answered by the destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities. When Israel struck back at Hamas, the "international community" was theatrically appalled.

Of course there's much more in the op-ed.

Richard Kemp also makes a return appearance. He makes similar arguments to those employed by Will, even if his primary example is different. Here's what he writes (and says) in Will an IDF Withdrawal from the West Bank Mean a Safe Haven for Extremist Groups?

To stand any real chance of success, every insurgent or terrorist movement needs a safe haven to operate from - one that is outside the control of the state being targeted and preferably in a land that is free from interference by the target state or its allies, whether due to geography, the protection of a friendly regime, or operating within a failed state. The Vietnam conflict was a classic example of the use of a safe haven. More recently, in the Iraq campaign, Sunni extremists had a safe haven in Syria which was their main logistic support base and a pipeline for suicide bombers flowing into Iraq. They also used extensive support networks in Iran, which also provided a safe haven for Shi'ite insurgents attacking coalition forces, as well as through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizbullah, which provided training, organization, munitions, and direction.
Today the Afghan Taliban's safe haven and support base is in Pakistan, although the second largest extremist group engaged in Afghanistan, Hizb-i-Islami, has its main base in Iran itself. In March, General Petraeus, the Head of U.S. Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, revealed that Tehran is letting al-Qaeda leaders travel freely between Pakistan and Afghanistan, effectively using Iranian territory as a safe haven, while permitting them also to hold meetings in Iran to plan terrorist attacks against U.S. and other Western targets.

Israel has had more than a flavor of what it can mean to leave hostile groups in control of lands adjacent to its own borders in southern Lebanon and in Gaza. Any similar move to totally cede control to the Palestinians of the West Bank or a part of Jerusalem may have considerable attraction for any peace process, and that is certainly the view of many in the international community. But both prospects would carry immense risk from the perspective of asymmetrical activities against Israel.

Barry Rubin, in a comprehensive critique of George Mitchell's (and, apparently, the administration's) misconceptions, Competing World Views Tear A "Peace Process" to Pieces, similary observes:

Again, Mitchell says what he needs to say, but of course he omits the Hamas violent coup against the PA. Indeed, his statement jibes with the false history of Hamas and its supporters and is rather a mess factually. Abbas's turn came to an end almost two years ago and Hamas could easily argue--and it sure will do so--that he is in office illegally and thus that any agreement he reached with Israel was not valid. By the way, Mitchell states that Hamas does "acknowledge the continued executive authority of President Abbas and his team." I believe that this is false.
In short, Mitchell lays the basis in theory for an Israel-Palestinian treaty leading to a Palestinian state, then Hamas overthrowing the regime to seize control of that state, tossing out the treaty and calling in Iranian and Syrian troops to "protect" Palestine. True, this is leaping ahead in time but this is the kind of thing negotiators need to take into account.

In different ways, Will, Col. Kemp and Prof. Rubin all raise the specter of an eventual terrorist takeover of any territory that Israel cedes. Finally we have a Washington Post editorial, What Israelis and Palestinians must concede if they want a lasting peace:

But the welcoming of good news shouldn't morph into naive celebration. Ms. Clinton was amply justified in warning of obstacles ahead.
The most obvious of those, as she said, will come from the unambiguous "enemies of peace." Hamas, which controls a good chunk of what would become a Palestinian state, might well respond to progress in the talks with increased attempts at violence, and terrorism from other quarters is also likely. Israeli settlers and their supporters who oppose not peace but any ceding of territory may engineer provocations of their own.

There are also potential obstacles within the talks. Is Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu truly committed to a two-state solution? Many Arabs have their doubts. It will be important for him not to allow next month's scheduled end of a settlement moratorium to abort the negotiations.

Is Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas truly willing to accept, once and for all, Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state? Given his inability to say yes to past reasonable offers, many Israelis have their doubts. It will be important for him to engage substantively and not wait for the United States to impose terms. And even if both leaders are willing to compromise, are they also capable of bringing their polities along?

It's frustrating that even after PM Netanyahu withdrew Israel from Hevron, "sophisticates" are still questioning his commitment to a "two state solution." The editorial rightly points out the danger that Hamas poses for peace but doesn't acknowledge that Hamas would still be a threat to Israel even after any hypothetical peace agreement was agreed upon and implemented. And "settlers" as the Post calls them haven't managed to scuttle Oslo or the withdrawal from Gaza, so that reference is gratuitous and unfair.

Still at the end, the Post acknowledges:

Israelis once again will be asked to cede control over territory for intangible and reversible promises of peace and recognition. No one should underestimate the risks of that, especially given the unwillingness of Arab states to offer to Israel even the minor concessions of goodwill that Mr. Obama asked for.

Limiting that concern to two sentences though, fails to acknowledge the unfortunate history of previous Israeli withdrawals (1995, 2000, 2005) all of which led to strengthening terrorists and subsequent terror wars against Israel is disappointing. This is a significant risk, and the Post ought to be giving it more attention than an afterthought.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 02:24:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Forget "Who Is A Jew"--Both Obama And Rauf Muddy The Waters On 'Who Is A Muslim'
Ho hum another condemnation of israel by the un
Objectors not bigots

Forget "Who Is A Jew"--Both Obama And Rauf Muddy The Waters On 'Who Is A Muslim'

Posted: 20 Aug 2010 04:54 AM PDT

It's getting pretty confusing.

According to a Pew survey people are unsure about Obama's religion

This has led Dry Bones to point out:

But while no one seems to think that Obama is Jewish, the Ground Zero Mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf says that he's Jewish. Jeffrey Goldberg notes that in 2003, when Imam Rauf spoke at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, Rauf said:

We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.[emphasis added]

Putting aside the long history of Islamic subjugation of Christians and Jews as dhimmis, Goldberg sees this statement as especially brave, seeing how by saying such a thing Rauf was "placing his life in danger"--another indication that maybe not all Muslims agree on "the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths."

Of course, this alleged danger is not stopping Rauf from touring the Middle East now either.

That's because Rauf's statement was only reported in The Atlantic--and not Dry Bones.

by Daled Amos

Ho hum another condemnation of israel by the un

Posted: 20 Aug 2010 04:13 AM PDT

Not content to have blown a single incident up out of all proportion, the New York Times is now acting as a press agency for the United Nations. In Report Criticizes Gaza Restrictions, Ethan Bronner reported:

A United Nations report issued on Thursday says the Sweleims are part of 12 percent of the population of Gaza -- 178,000 people out of 1.5 million -- who have lost livelihoods or have otherwise been severely affected by Israeli security policies along the border, both land and sea, in recent years. These include the establishment of no-go zones and frequent incursions and attacks. The report estimates that the restricted land comprises 17 percent of Gaza's total land mass and 35 percent of its agricultural land. Israel also restricts Gazan fishing to three nautical miles. Catches are greatly reduced, leading some fishermen to take a long, risky sail into Egyptian waters to buy the fish from Egyptian fishermen and return home to sell it.

Aside from the dubious claim about agricultural land, that makes it sound like Israel is arbitrarily instituting policies designed to make life for the Palestinians uncomfortable. But then we get to the next paragraph:

The study, issued by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, says that anti-Israeli militants operate from the border areas in question, planting explosive devices, firing at Israeli military vehicles across the border fence and shooting rockets and mortars at civilians.

So wait a second, the Israeli incursions are in response to "militants operat[ing] from the border areas! That would mean that rather than being arbitrary, Israel's military activities have been in response to terror attacks. But instead of acknowledging that, the UN and hte uncritical report in the Times make it sound that Israel's goal is to disrupt the lives of Gazans rather than protect its own citizens. In a sense this isn't much different from the Goldstone report that insisted on impossible rules of engagement and then condemned Israel for disobeying them.

I actually took a look at the report (via BBC) and it has an interesting claim:

Over the past ten years, the Israeli military has gradually expanded restrictions on access to farmland on the Gaza side of the 1949 'Green Line', and to fishing areas along the Gaza Strip coast, with the stated intention of preventing attacks on Israel by Palestinian armed factions, including firing projectiles.

Ten years? Israel has been defending against Qassams for nearly ten years. I'm guessing though, that Israel didn't start the policy of restricting access near the border areas until after "disengagement" five years ago. In other words, I'm reasonably certain that the UN just pulled a number out of hat. As it did regarding agricultural lands.

The New York Times and the BBC (and no doubt other media outlets) don't see their job as investigating the veracity of UN charges against Israel, but rather to act as megaphones.

Crossposted on Yourish

Objectors not bigots

Posted: 20 Aug 2010 04:07 AM PDT

via memeorandum

Jeffrey Goldberg:

The right-wing campaign against the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" includes vicious personal attacks on the Muslim cleric who leads the Cordoba Initiative, the organization behind the plan. I know Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, and I know him to be a moderate, forward-leaning Muslim -- yes, it is true he has said things with which I disagree, but I have never expected him to function as a member of the Zionist Organization of America.

"Vicious personal attacks?" Such as his claim that America was an "accessory" to 9/11? His refusal to condemn Hamas outright? That he rejects the concept of interfaith dialogue, the pretext for building his mosque?

Calling the United States an "accessory" or failing to call Hamas a terrorist organization, I would hope, would qualify as more than just something Goldberg would disagree with. I would hope that he would find such views offensive.

Goldberg goes on though:

In 2003, Imam Rauf was invited to speak at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the journalist murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan. The service was held at B'nai Jeshurun, a prominent synagogue in Manhattan, and in the audience was Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl's father. In his remarks, Rauf identified absolutely with Pearl, and identified himself absolutely with the ethical tradition of Judaism. "I am a Jew," he said.

Well that is something. But does it erase his other comments? I don't think it should. And if he is considering Saudi or Iranian funds to build his center for fostering interfaith understanding, it's clear that he isn't at all sincere about that goal. (via memeorandum) Or is a quote from one of his partners another "vicious personal attack?"

Charles Krauthammer writes what the problem is quite clearly.

Ground Zero is the site of the most lethal attack of that worldwide movement, which consists entirely of Muslims, acts in the name of Islam and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world. These are regrettable facts, but facts they are. And that is why putting up a monument to Islam in this place is not just insensitive but provocative.
Just as the people of Japan today would not think of planting their flag at Pearl Harbor, despite the fact that no Japanese under the age of 85 has any possible responsibility for that infamy, representatives of contemporary Islam -- the overwhelming majority of whose adherents are equally innocent of the infamy committed on 9/11 in their name -- should exercise comparable respect for what even Obama calls hallowed ground and take up the governor's offer.

Even if Iman Rauf's record was perfect and he showed no signs of tolerance for extremism, Krauthammer's objection would still be valid. We can find the building of the mosque (or Islamic center) to be offensive and as Americans we have every right to protest. It is unfortunate that newspapers like the Washington Post and commentators like Jeffrey Goldberg feel the need to paint all those who disagree with them as bigots.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:29:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

What's so funny about peace, love and a mosque near ground zero?
Third in a series by george will
Vacation in niagara

What's so funny about peace, love and a mosque near ground zero?

Posted: 19 Aug 2010 04:19 AM PDT

In an editorial today, the Washington Post asks Where are the Republicans who will reject pandering and prejudice?

BROADLY SPEAKING, there seem to be three strands of argument against building a mosque or Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.
The first is that the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and killed almost 3,000 people there in 2001 really did represent Islam and that to pretend otherwise is a dangerous delusion. The second is that, no, al-Qaeda does not speak for Islam, but many people -- including survivors and relatives of the victims -- naturally associate the two, and therefore it would be insensitive to locate anything Islamic so close to the scene of the crime. The third, for many politicians, seems to be that most Americans oppose construction of the mosque, and therefore opposition is useful (for Republicans on the attack) or safe (for Democrats cowering in a corner).

All three of these are objectionable.

So then there is no debating the wisdom of placing a mosque near where Osama bin Laden's henchman killed 3000 people. Glad to know that the editors of the Post are so openminded. I thought that dissent was an important part of the American way of life. But apparently some things are so sacrosanct that they may not be debated.

Still let me try.

For one thing, I don't find the second reason for objecting to Imam Rauf's mosque objectionable. Perhaps, if Imam Rauf was who the editors of the Post say he is - a true moderate who believes in peaceful coexistence - then that argument wouldn't hold much water.

But in a number of ways Imam Rauf has shown that he is not the moderate he advertises himself to. As Charles Krauthammer noted, he told Ed Bradley that he considered the United States to be an "accessory" to 9/11. He refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization. And I see from Roger Simon (something that Laura pointed out to me in an e-mail) that he doesn't believe in interfaith dialogue. Where, then, is the moderation that allowing him build a mosque will foster?

The editors of the Washington Post are remarkably incurious about these matters. That is, of course, their right. But it hardly justifies their painting those who disagree with them as bigots who oppose the free exercise of religion. After all a large percentage of Americans find the notion of the mosque near ground zero to be objectionable.

James Taranto put his finger on what bothers me most about the Post's attitude.

It reminds us of something Bob Tyrrell said about the left not long ago: "There is only one political value that they have stood by through three generations, and that is the political value of disturbing your neighbor." The pro-mosque left's pieties about "American ideals" have about as much to do with the reality of the controversy as the fringe right's ravings about "Shariah." In truth, the left favors a mosque near Ground Zero simply because most Americans find the idea obnoxious.

The mosque's critics are expressing their views. Nothing more. As far as I can tell there are no legal ways to challenge its construction. But to ask Imam Rauf to show some sensitivity, is somehow offensive.

BTW, Imam Rauf is going to the Gulf to promote understanding.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Park51 Muslim community center and mosque proposed on a site near New York's Ground Zero, leaves this week for a three-nation Middle East tour on behalf of the State Department, during which he is expected to speak about the controversy surrounding his project.

So what wil he talk about? Will he complain about how he's persecuted by Americans? Or will he praise America for allowing citizens to object to their government's action without fear of reprisal, as they might find in a country like Bahrain?

Third in a series by george will

Posted: 19 Aug 2010 04:18 AM PDT

In recent weeks, George Will has written two excellent columns about Israel and the Middle East:
Netanyahu, the anti-Obama and
Netanyahu's warning.

Today, he presents Skip the lecture on Israel's "risks for peace":

The intifada was launched by the late Yasser Arafat -- terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- after the July 2000 Camp David meeting, during which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line.
Israelis are famously fractious, but the intifada produced among them a consensus that the most any government of theirs could offer without forfeiting domestic support is less than any Palestinian interlocutor would demand. Furthermore, the intifada was part of a pattern. As in 1936 and 1947, talk about partition prompted Arab violence.

Those two paragraphs are loaded, and there's a lot more packed into the op-ed. It's a really an excellent capsule of everything that's happened since Oslo (and more!)

Crossposted on Yourish.

Vacation in niagara

Posted: 18 Aug 2010 10:44 PM PDT

Last week we drove up to Niagara Falls. It was a wonderful vacation. I don't think I've ever seen natural phenomena as awesome as the falls. After talking to numerous friends, we decided to get a package to the Canadian side attractions. I'm not unhappy we did as the Horseshoe Falls are located on the Canadian side. (The other two sections of the falls are called the American Falls and the Bridal Veil falls.)

Because of the mist, it was impossible to get an unobstructed view of the Horseshoe falls from the Rainbow Bridge that spans the river from the United States to Canada.

We went on the Maid of the Mist which took us in close to the Horseshoe falls.

Afterwards we went to the shopping area to have lunch and enjoyed the view of the top of the falls from the observation deck.

Then before we went to meet my nephew and his bride (and her family) we went on the Journey behind the falls. This takes you down to the through tunnels to an observation area near the foot of the Horseshoe falls, which again is quite awesome.

But in the end, the part that everyone loved the most was the next day. We walked to the Cave of the Winds. Unlike any other attraction of Niagara Falls, the Cave of the Winds tour doesn't just bring near the falls, it puts you in the path of Bridal Veil Falls. At a distance and in comparison to the other falls, the Bridal Veil Falls look small and unimpressive.

Up close, on the other hand ...

And the scaffolding takes directly into the path of the water. You will get soaked.

As you can see, this picture was somewhat obscured by all the mist, but I still caught an elusive "rainbow" going across the rock.

The place to get deluged is called the "hurricane deck." And there's this useless warning sign there.

I guess someone had a sense of humor.

I liked the picture of this wild flower (or weed) with white water behind it.

The commercial development on the Canadian side makes it much more "touristy." I'm not sure that Iiked it.

The American side benefited from the wide open spaces of a park.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:14:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

The unique voice of abd al-rahman al-rashed
Disparate columnists notice the anti-israel trend
The spirit of the idf
Two quick baseball stories
Re-defining chutzpah

The unique voice of abd al-rahman al-rashed

Posted: 18 Aug 2010 04:36 AM PDT

A number of people have quoted Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed on his opposition to the Park 51 Islamic Center.
He is not your average Arab commentator.
Barry Rubin has quoted him favorably a couple of times.
And six years ago after the terror attack in Beslan he wrote:

Obviously not all Muslims are terrorists but, regrettably, the majority of the terrorists in the world are Muslims. The kidnappers of the students in Ossetia are Muslims. The kidnappers and killers of the Nepalese workers and cooks are also Muslims. Those who rape and murder in Darfour are Muslims, and their victims are Muslims as well. Those who blew up the residential complexes in Riyadh and Al-Khobar are Muslims. Those who kidnapped the two French journalists are Muslims. The two [women] who blew up the two planes [over Russia] a week ago are Muslims. Bin Laden is a Muslim and Al-Houthi [the head of a terrorist group in Yemen] is a Muslim. The majority of those who carried out suicide operations against buses, schools, houses, and buildings around the world in the last ten years are also Muslims.

Of course this leads to an interesting question.

Disparate columnists notice the anti-israel trend

Posted: 18 Aug 2010 04:14 AM PDT

Though I already wrote about this, a week and a half ago Thomas Friedman, in Steal this movie wrote:

I write about this now because there is something foul in the air. It is a trend, both deliberate and inadvertent, to delegitimize Israel -- to turn it into a pariah state, particularly in the wake of the Gaza war. You hear the director Oliver Stone saying crazy things about how Hitler killed more Russians than Jews, but the Jews got all the attention because they dominate the news media and their lobby controls Washington. You hear Britain's prime minister describing Gaza as a big Israeli "prison camp" and Turkey's prime minister telling Israel's president, "When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill." You see singers canceling concerts in Tel Aviv. If you just landed from Mars, you might think that Israel is the only country that has killed civilians in war -- never Hamas, never Hezbollah, never Turkey, never Iran, never Syria, never America.

Friedman, in his regular criticism of Israel has at least been an enabler of this phenomenon. And while he recognizes the problem, he, in no way, demonstrated no self-knowledge or regret for the role he plays in delegitimizing Israel. I think he was stung by some of the criticism he received for his vicious column comparing Israel's recent wars with Syria's destruction of the city of Hama. Still at least he sees the problem.

Richard Cohen too, in a column criticizing the Economist for soft-pedaling Sayyid Qutb's antisemitism, wrote:

Yet I cannot quite suppress the feeling that the need to demonize Israel is so great that the immense moral failings of some of its enemies have to be swept under the carpet. As Jacob Weisberg pointed out recently in Slate, the "boycott Israel" movement is oddly unbalanced -- so much fury directed at Israel, so little at countries like China or Venezuela. Can it be that the French philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch was prescient when he suggested years ago that anti-Zionism "gives us the permission and even the right and even the duty to be anti-Semitic in the name of democracy"? The line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, a demarcation I have always acknowledged, is becoming increasingly blurred.

George Will in a column about Netanyahu similarly observed:

From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to "eliminate Israel by conventional warfare." Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. "We put up a fence," Netanyahu says. "Now they have rockets that go over the fence." Israel's military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation's lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.
That, however, cannot cope with Hamas's tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah's up to 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. Resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hezbollah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River. Since 2006, Hezbollah's rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock Resolution 1701. Hezbollah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel's next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged "disproportionate." Israel knows this as it watches Iran.

While Will's observation is more nuanced that Cohen's or Friedman's it's still conveys a sense that Israel can do no right.

What's frustrating is that by any objective measure, Israel should have been past this stage. For years we were told that Israel had to end the occupation. And Israel did. Israel withdrew from most of Judea and Samaria. Israel withdrew from Gaza. Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon. Each of these concrete actions to address the supposed Arab grievances in israel were met with an increase in terrorism. And when Israel finally struck back (Defensive shield, the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Cast Lead) it was condemned for having done so. Meanwhile the terror that was directed against Israel was dismissed. Israel was not to use it as an excuse not to make peace (as if peace would exist if Israel just ignored the terror) and thus give a victory to the terrorists. So Israel has survived the post-Oslo years and thrived in many ways. But there are still legions of academics, politiicians (though not so many in America), diplomats and journalists who insist that Israel must make peace for its own good. It's as if Oslo never happened. It's as if Israel made no concesssions over the past 17 years.

Barry Rubin offered this synopsis:

First, before 1993 Israel had total control of the West Bank. Since then it has withdrawn from almost all populated areas and a Palestinian Authority has been created which rules the people there, receives massive foreign aid, and has proportionately huge security forces. In a real sense, Israel doesn't "occupy" the West Bank. Indeed, if there were not terrorist attacks there would be even less presence.
Second, and this might sound strange at first but is quite true, whatever Israel is doing in the West Bank is not a non-consensual occupation but embodies arrangements accepted by the PLO and PA. They have signed numerous agreements which regulate the situation. True, after they sign agreements they often say they were unfair and demand more. But this is hardly a good omen for their abiding by any future agreements. The fact is, however, that the "occupation" ended in 1994-1996.

Third, as noted above, the PA can end the Israeli presence whenever it wants to do so simply by making a peace agreement.

After all this, Israel still can't catch a break. Israel's expected to accept terror and not strike back. Israel's expected to make concessions without getting anything in return. The failure to make peace is deemed Israel's (and this is still Thomas Friedman's belief) and Israel is condemned for its absence.

The peace process was supposed make Israel normal. Instead it has isolated Israel even more. What Friedman, Cohen and Will are observing is that opposition to Israel isn't based on some rational consideration of the history, but rather it is driven by what can only be described as a pathological hatred of Israel.

Noting all this Jeffrey Robbins recently wrote:

The anti-Israel fashion that is so enthralling to so many in so many places provides a comfortable setting for those who are determined to indict Israel whatever the facts, whatever the circumstances. Those doing the indicting deny that they are biased.
And that is understandable. "Bias" is not the sort of label one wants on his coat lapel.

Crossposted on Yourish.

The spirit of the idf

Posted: 18 Aug 2010 04:06 AM PDT

Why this has already been worth three stories in the New York Times, I have no idea, but Robert Mackey weighs in again on the former IDF soldier who posted controversial pictures to her Facebook page.

In an interview with Israeli Army radio on Tuesday, a former Israeli soldier said, "I still don't understand what's wrong" with photographs she posted on Facebook of herself posing next to blindfolded Palestinian detainees.

She might be clueless, but the IDF is not.

Two quick baseball stories

Posted: 18 Aug 2010 03:56 AM PDT

From Ken Rosenthal:

Mike Fontenot, meanwhile, had only one question when Cubs assistant GM Randy Bush and acting manager Alan Trammell informed him that he had been traded in the middle of the Giants-Cubs series in San Francisco: "What do I do, just walk over there?"
The answer was yes -- and as Fontenot strolled to the home clubhouse, a television cameraman tracked his every step.

From Tim Kurkjian:

But I still read box scores with the same vigor and interest every day for there is so much to learn in box scores, almost everything you need is in box scores, especially with the expanded ones that tell you, in some cases, more than you wanted to know. Twice a year, I have lunch and talk baseball with George Will and Dr. Charles Krauthammer, who write and speak about important issues in the world, such as war and gay marriage. At one lunch, Krauthammer said, "I read the front page for 30 seconds every day, then I go straight to the box scores.'' To which Will said, "Why do you waste the 30 seconds?''

Tim Kurkjian and Ken Rosenthal both covered the Orioles for the Baltimore Sun. Mike Fontenot was drafted by the Orioles. I actually saw him play in Bowie.

Re-defining chutzpah

Posted: 18 Aug 2010 03:48 AM PDT

No doubt you're familiar with the definition of chutzpah as "A man kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan."

This is as close to that as you're going to get. (h/t OyVay blog)

A Montana teenager charged with deliberately causing a fatal car crash in a failed suicide attempt has filed a lawsuit against the family of the pregnant woman who was killed in the collision with her teenage son.

Here's the claim in the lawsuit:

The lawsuit claims Winter suffered permanent injuries in the crash and a "loss of capacity to enjoy life." She is also claiming future loss of income as well as past, present and future medical expenses.

Capacity to enjoy life? Here's what she texted in her suicide "note":

"That's why I'm going to wreck my car. Because all I can do is f*** up. Because I am a terrible person and I know it."

It doesn't sound like she was enjoying life too much before she killed the Thompsons.

Since Winter survived she won't get a Darwin, however this really ought to be in the running for a Stella.

What unmitigated gall.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:02:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Ma'an: Haniyeh says PA "waging war against Islam"
Shades of moderation
The new york times anti-israel tag team

Ma'an: Haniyeh says PA "waging war against Islam"

Posted: 17 Aug 2010 06:46 PM PDT

Palestinians vs. Post-Palestinians:

Gaza government Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused the Palestinian Authority on Monday evening of waging a war against religion and Islam.

Haniyeh, speaking to reporters at the rebuilding ceremony of the police station in Al-Shati refugee camp, said "what is happening in the West Bank is a religious war that targets the pious people, particularly the new generation."

The Gaza premier said the PA began taking "several steps" from the beginning of Ramadan, including banning a Hamas-affiliated sheikh from making Friday sermons in the West Bank, turning down the volume on mosque loudspeakers during prayer call , and closing associations for memorizing the Quran, which he said has left many mosques without preachers.

"They won't succeed in their war against Islam, because they are fighting God," Haniyeh said, alleging that the PA was trying to impose "religious normalization."

Haniyeh called on religious men in the West Bank "not to surrender" and protest against the PA's actions.

Those sound like fighting words. Is Hamas emboldened by the recent assertiveness of Iran and Hizbullah? When the show-down comes between the PA and Hamas, I'm betting on Hamas.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Shades of moderation

Posted: 17 Aug 2010 05:31 AM PDT

Two weeks ago Jeffrey Goldberg wrote, If He Could, Bin Laden Would Bomb the Cordoba Initiative (via memeorandum):

This seems like such an obvious point, but it is apparently not obvious to the many people who oppose the Cordoba Initiative's planned mosque in lower Manhattan, so let me state it as clearly as possible: The Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda. Bin Laden would sooner dispatch a truck bomb to destroy the Cordoba Initiative's proposed community center than he would attack the ADL, for the simple reason that Osama's most dire enemies are Muslims.

Goldberg insists that since Imam Rauf is a moderate, Bin Laden would fear him. Thus by showing understanding to Rauf, we are helping to fight Bin Laden.

The problem is that however slickly Imam Rauf presents himself he has a troubling history. Yes he talks about interfaith cooperation but he somehow can't bring himself to condemn Hamas.

How do you know someone really isn't a "moderate" on the question of Islamic radicalism? When he endorses a double standard for terrorism -- appearing to condemn it when it is directed against Americans, refusing to condemn it when directed against Israelis.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, a self-styled champion of moderate Islam, was recently asked whether he thinks Hamas is a terrorist organization. "The issue of terrorism is a very complex question," he replied. When pressed, he insisted that "I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy."

But surely there should be no middle ground when it comes to Hamas, just as there can be no middle ground when it comes to Al-Qaeda.

Or as Charles Krauthammer noted the other day Imam Rauf told Ed Bradley of "60 Minutes" that the United States was an accessory to the terror of 9/11.

Perhaps there's some poetic justice in that Imam Rauf can't condemn Hamas, for yesterday (via memeorandum) Hamas endorsed the idea of the Islamic Center near ground zero.

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero -- insisting Muslims "have to build" it there.

"We have to build everywhere," said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization's chief on the Gaza Strip.

But if an Islamist terror organization approves this mosque doesn't that refute the idea that Bin Laden would seek to destroy it. Yes, I know that the mosque's developers say that Hamas doesn't speak for them. But if you are going to argue that extremists would oppose the mosque and then they actually endorse it, it should be obvious that extremists do not see it as a threat.

One other reason I doubt Imam Rauf's moderation is the name of his initiative. As I blogged last week, Cordoba doesn't represent peaceful coexistence. At least it doesn't represent tolerance in any 21st century understanding of the word. Jennifer Rubin yesterday noted Michael Lame's observation:

The idea of an Andalusian golden age, when Christians and Jews lived contentedly under Muslim rule, has become a fixture of Western historical thinking over the last hundred years. But is it true?
Professor [Richard] Fletcher weighs in on the question: "Early medieval Spain was multicultural in the sense of being culturally diverse, a land within which different cultures coexisted; but not in the sense of experiencing cultural integration. Toleration for Christians and Jews as 'Peoples of the Book' is enjoined by the Koran. But in practice it was limited - Christians under Islamic rule were forbidden to build new churches, to ring church bells, to hold public processions - and sometimes it broke down altogether. In 1066 there was a pogrom in Granada in which its Jewish community was slaughtered. Thousands of Christians were deported to slavery in Morocco in 1126. Thoroughly dismissive attitudes to Christians and Jews may be found in the Arabic literature of al-Andalus. It is a myth of the modern liberal imagination that medieval Islamic Spain was, in any sense that we should recognize today, a tolerant society."

So in addition to Imam Rauf's failure to condemn extremism, the name of his institute hardly evokes the toleration he says it does.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer's approach is correct.

The most apt comparison between the debate surrounding the planned ground zero mosque is with the one which surrounded the planned Nazi marches in Skokie, a Chicago suburb inhabited by a large number of Jewish holocaust survivors. The US constitution guarantees the right of American Muslims to disregard the pain they will cause the victims of the Islamist terrorist attack on 9/11 just as the constitution guaranteed American Nazis the right to disregard the pain of the victims of the Nazi holocaust.

Legally, there may be nothing we can do to stop the Islamic Center from being built but we certainly have every right to protest it as an affront to those killed and targeted on 9/11. Those who argue that protests against the mosque are somehow acting against freedom of religion, are saying that we must show toleration to a religion that doesn't tolerate others. If Imam Rauf's efforts are constitutionally protected surely too are those who oppose his plans. There is nothing un-American about protesting insensitivity.

Finally this is breaking mostly along partisan lines as Robert Avrech observes:

The Ground Zero Mosque is a stark political issue that divides Democrats from Republicans.
If you support the Ground Zero Mosque vote for the Democrats.

If not, vote Republican.

This scares Mark Halperin:

Yes, Republicans, you can take advantage of this heated circumstance, backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001.
But please don't do it. There are a handful of good reasons to oppose allowing the Islamic center to be built so close to Ground Zero, particularly the family opposition and the availability of other, less raw locations. But what is happening now -- the misinformation about the center and its supporters; the open declarations of war on Islam on talk radio, the Internet and other forums; the painful divisions propelled by all the overheated rhetoric -- is not worth whatever political gain your party might achieve.

The ground zero mosque is a potent issue for many voters. Halperin isn't asking the Republicans to be noble. He's asking them to surrender.

Finally, will those defending Imam Rauf, defend Glenn Beck too?

Crossposted on Yourish.

The new york times anti-israel tag team

Posted: 17 Aug 2010 01:12 AM PDT

The New York Times saw fit to report on a former Israeli soldier who posted tasteless pictures from her army service on her Facebook page. Remember that these were the actions of a single individual, but the Times bureai chief, Ethan Bronner saw fit to use this villify Israeli society as a whole.

Generally, acts done while in military service can be prosecuted, but a spokesman said that since Ms. Abergil had been discharged last year, legal action remained unclear. The Public Committee Against Torture, an Israeli group, said that abusive behavior by soldiers was the norm at West Bank checkpoints and at detention centers.

Does the Public Committee against Torture have any proof that "abusive behavior ... was the norm?" None that Bronner mentions, but the allegation, which slanders Israeli society is presented with no rebuttal as if it is fact.

Not leaving bad enough alone, the Time blogger Robert Mackey, decided to show everyone how awful Israel is by reproducing the pictures! This allows Mackey to fabricate an Abu Graib comparison.

What was Isabel Kershner doing that prevented her from joining in the Israel bash-fest?

But as My Right Word points out:

And as the picture shows, she's just showing off and sitting near prisoners, off to the side.
Stupid, yes.

Dumb, yes.

Insensitive, yes.

Mean and evil and demeaning, not quite.

So in order to smear Israel the Times employs two reporters to blow an isolated incident into an indictment of Israel society!

So what happens when a member of the government of Israel's peace partners expresses the need for "armed struggle" against Israel? The Times has no reporters to spare. So let me do their job for them.

Thanks to PMW for making this important bit of news available.

In an interview on official Palestinian Authority Television, Fatah Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub said: "At the [Sixth Fatah] Conference, we affirmed the struggle in all its forms, including resistance and the armed struggle... The [armed] struggle is a means, not an end. The [armed] struggle is related to our abilities... must cause pain to the occupation [Israel]; it must be connected to a political platform."

This isn't an immature individual who's showing off. This is a leader of the PA.

Furthermore, as Elder of Ziyon points out, the PA (not Hamas!) continues to build Mosques which often feature vicious antisemitic sermons. And the PA is telling its citizens to avoid Israeli hospitals.

So while the PA systematically influences its citizens to hate Israel, the New York Times doesn't care one whit about the PA's soul. But when a single Israeli misbehaves it becomes a reasons for the Times to break out its tag team to comment "more in sorrow than in anger" about the corruption of Israeli society.

This is a particularly noxious variation on Khaled Abu Toameh's double standard. Last week Thomas Friedman complained about destructive criticism of Israel; he really doesn't have to look too far if he wants to fight it.

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:21:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Harry Reid clarifies controversial statement
If Hezbollah Was Behind The Hariri Assassination--How Involved Was Iran?
Abbas's Demand For 1967 Borders Is Diplomatic Sleight-Of-Hand
If ... you must 081610
Rounding third and headed for home ...
Harvard divests ... er.. not so fast
Global weirding returns ... in a news story
The commish vs. the state's attorney
Musical monday #154

Harry Reid clarifies controversial statement

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 07:40 PM PDT

Visibly shaken by opinion writer Greg Sargent's observation that "This just makes the Dems look weak, unorganized, cowardly, and unwilling to take a stand for principles they plainly believe in," Reid clarified his widely-reported controversial statement that "the mosque should be built some place else."

"I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque somewhere else," he said.

"I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about."

"The Constitution protects freedom of relocation," added Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman. "Senator Reid respects that, but thinks that the decision is perhaps better left until after the Midterm elections."

Source: AP, additional reporting by Yitz (h/t: memeorandum )

Crossposted on Judeopundit

If Hezbollah Was Behind The Hariri Assassination--How Involved Was Iran?

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 10:51 AM PDT

That is a question that Amir Taheri asks in Lebanon and Nasrallah's Trinity. In addressing the issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Taheri notes that neither Lebanon nor Iran are signatories to the ICC treaty--which is why during the past 30 years pro-Iranian Lebanese militants make a bee-line to Iran when they are indicted in Europe, with about 30 indictments still pending.

More to the point, consider the nature of Hezbollah and the tight connection it has to Iran:

Although the ICC is focusing on a number of individuals, it would be hard to pretend that Hezbollah as a whole will not be affected by such grave accusations. The Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, like all other branches of the pan-Shiite radical movement, is known for its iron discipline and highly centralized decision-making. It also has a seasoned intelligence service of is own which trained and supported by Iranian services.

No one would believe that individual members could organize a sophisticated operation to carry out a high profile assassination in the heart of Beirut without anyone in their party knowing what was going one.

And, if someone high-level in the Lebanese branch knew of the plot, is it possible that Tehran was not informed? Would a branch of the movement go for such a high risk operation without obtaining at least a nod from the 'mother country'?

The point is that Hezbollah is more that merely associated with Iran. Hezbollah is more than tightly associated with Iran.

The point, often forgotten is that Hezbollah is not some organic group that arose in opposition to Israel's occupation in southern Lebanon--Hezbollah in Lebanon is an Iranian creation:

There is an abundant literature on Hezbollah's Iranian connection. Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Mohtshami-pour has published memoirs narrating how [he] founded the party during his tenure as Khomeini's ambassador to Damascus.

Hezbollah was originally founded by a group of mullahs, led by Ayatollah Hadi Ghaffari, while they were in the Shah's prisons in Iran in 1975.

In 1980, the government, headed by the then Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, approved a budget of $60 million to help create branches of Hezbollah in [a]s many Arab countries as possible. The idea was that these groups would help switch Arab public opinion in favor of the Islamic Republic during its bloody war with Saddam Hussein.

The model taken was that of the Communist International which helped create more than 60 pro-Soviet parties across the globe during the 1920s and 1930s.

Over the eight years that followed the Tehran decision, 10 foreign branches of Hezbollah were created abroad.

The Lebanese branch became the best known because of its involvement in a series of dramatic operations, including the taking of over 100 foreign hostages.[emphasis added]

Read the whole thing.

As a result of Hezbollah's connection to Iran and the way it has embedded itself into Lebanon, it is obvious that even if it were possible to bring to justice those those Hezbollah members who actually carried out the assassination, the actually planners behind the assassination are not going to face justice.

by Daled Amos

Abbas's Demand For 1967 Borders Is Diplomatic Sleight-Of-Hand

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 10:46 AM PDT

One of the key demands that Abbas is making as a precondition before he will negotiate peace face-to-face with Netanyahu is that there be agreement that negotiations be based on the 1967 borders.

The problem is--there are no 1967 borders.

To be more precise, there is no such thing as a 1967 border between Israel proper on the one hand and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) on the other. While historically there have been international boundaries established between Israel and Egypt as well as Israel and Syria--what is called the 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank is actually the 1949 Armistice Line, a military line.

Dore Gold explains the history:

In fact, Article II of the Armistice Agreement with the Jordanians explicitly specified that the line that was designated did not compromise any future territorial claims of the two parties, since it had been "dictated by exclusively by military considerations."
In other words, the old Armistice Line was not a recognized international border. It had no finality. As a result, the Jordanians reserved the right after 1949 to demand territories inside Israel, for the Arab side.

This is a fact that though ignored now, was well-known by the parties involved at the time:

On the eve of the 1967 Six Day War, it was noteworthy that the Jordanian ambassador to the UN made this very point to the UN Security Council, by stressing that the old armistice agreement "did not fix boundaries".

After the Six-Day War, the architects of UN Security Council Resolution 242 insisted that the old armistice line had to be replaced with a new border. This was significant since Resolution 242 became the sole agreed basis of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

It provided the foundation for Israel's peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, years after. Back in 1967, Lord Caradon, the British ambassador to the UN admitted at the time: "I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border, it is where the troops had to stop." He concluded: "It is not a permanent border."

Caradon's U.S. counterpart, Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, added that "historically, there have never been secure or recognized boundaries in the area," and he added that the armistice lines did not answer that description.

For the British and American ambassadors, at the time, the Resolution 242 that they drafted involved creating a completely new boundary that could be described as "secure and recognized," instead of going back to the lines from which the conflict erupted.

President Lyndon Johnson made this very point in September 1968: "It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders."

It is for this reason that Resolution 242 did not call for a full withdrawal from all the territories that Israel captured in the Six Day War; the 1949 Armistice lines were no longer to be a reference point for a future peace process.

Read the whole thing.

The point is that President Bush wrote in a letter to PM Ariel Sharon in 2004 that "it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."--a letter that was approved overwhelmingly by both the House and Senate. While Obama has not said that it is bound by that letter, Obama has said on numerous occasions that he supports secure borders for Israel.

It is past time for Obama to reconcile this apparent contradiction.

Obama has engaged in dragging Abbas kicking and screaming to the negotiations table.

Now Obama should finally do his part as well and make clear what 'secure borders' means--and openly acknowledging that the 1948 Armistice Line is not a border (let alone a secure one) would be a start.

UPDATED: In an article last year, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon touched on this same issue when he wrote about Israel's Right in the 'Disputed' Territories:

The name "West Bank" was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan. The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan's insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: "No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations." (Italics added.) This boundary became the famous "Green Line," so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map.

After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for "peace within secure and recognized boundaries," but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be.

Using the 1948 Armistice Line as a starting point for negotiations is one thing, but Abbas--ever anxious to avoid the give-and-take of negotiations--is looking for one more precondition that alleviates the necessary work of actually sitting down and negotiating for peace.

by Daled Amos

If ... you must 081610

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 04:32 AM PDT

If you haven't read Palestinian Journos Test Big Media's Double Standards at Media Backspin; you must.

If you haven't read In Stay Motion, Prop. 8 Supporters Quote Obama's Audacity of Hope at Legal Insurrection; you must.

If you haven't read More adventures of Peter Beinart at The Future of Capitalism; you must.

If you haven't read Obama's Finest Moment? at Powerline; you must.
Related, see Daled Amos and Fiery Spirited Zionist.

If you haven't read AFP catches the fake Muslim grave story at Elder of Ziyon ; you must.
Related: See CAMERA snapshots and do you think it would hurt Ethan Bronner to do minimal research instead of promoting the Islamic claims as genuine?

Rounding third and headed for home ...

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 04:29 AM PDT

... is more diversity nonsense. This time (unsurprisingly) courtesy of The New York Times - sports section!

About 40 percent of the players in Major League Baseball are black, Hispanic or Asian, and the sport is seen as a leading example of diversity, yet a curious disparity has emerged in a corner of the game.
Among baseball's 30 teams, only 23 percent of the third-base coaches are members of minorities, compared with 67 percent of its first-base coaches. The disparity has existed for decades but it is now about twice as large as it was in 1990, based on an analysis by The New York Times.

Prof Jacobson (who kindly gave me a hat tip) turns the analysis on its head:

Wait a second. The Times has missed the big story here.
Minorities appear to be heavily over-represented at the first-base coach position, coming in at 67%.

Which means ... wait for it ... there is a "curious disparity" at the under-representation of non-minorities at the first base position.

The question is why is The Times obsessed with race counting only when there is the possibility of anti-minority bias, not anti-majority bias?

More from Thomas Sowell (via Future of Capitalism), and Rob Neyer:

If we want to pick through the numbers, we can always find something or someone to complain about. But in sensitive matters like these, I think we should take extra care to be intellectually rigorous.

Harvard divests ... er.. not so fast

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 04:07 AM PDT

According to Globes: (via memeorandum)

In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University's endowment.

The first assumption was that this was the result of political pressure from the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement.

Prof Bainbridge, though, notices that many of the companies from Israel listed were losing money. However that may not even be the real reason as Solomonia notes:

In other words, Israel's economy is so good it's no longer considered "developing," it's just a category shift...which sounds plausible to me. How much do you want to bet that that's pretty close to what it's going to be all about when we start hearing from on the record sources?

Yid with Lid and Israel Matzav have updated their posts accordingly.

In other BDS news, Johnny Rotten disagrees with the movement.

Most musicians, particularly those who have been around for 30 years, wouldn't let hate mail upset them. They probably wouldn't even read it. But John's anger is genuine. He wants me to record it, for posterity. "I really resent the presumption that I'm going there to play to right-wing Nazi jews," he tells me. "If Elvis-f******-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated." That's our Johnny Rotten. Always lively. Always entertaining. Often wrong. But, whatever you may think of him, never afraid to stick that bog-brush haircut exuberantly over the parapet.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Global weirding returns ... in a news story

Posted: 15 Aug 2010 11:13 PM PDT

A few months ago Thomas Friedman wrote about global weirding.

Avoid the term "global warming." I prefer the term "global weirding," because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous. The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington -- while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought -- is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

The problem is that if both colder extremes and hotter extremes "prove" global warming, what exactly disproves it. Now remarkably, the idea of global warming has hit the news pages of the New York Times.

Granted, this time it's called a somewhat more scientific sounding "weather chaos," but the idea remains the same.

Theory suggests that a world warming up because of those gases will feature heavier rainstorms in summer, bigger snowstorms in winter, more intense droughts in at least some places and more record-breaking heat waves. Scientists and government reports say the statistical evidence shows that much of this is starting to happen.

As I pointed out earlier, Charles Krauthammer already anticipated this nonsense, 14 years ago.

But the best response to Friedman came from Charles Krauthammer, 14 years ago.

We've been lectured incessantly on how prideful man is spewing tons of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing global warming. We've been told further that this desecration of nature will ultimately wipe out winter, turn Kansas to desert and put Long Island under water. Now comes the exact opposite climatic event -- a monster snowstorm -- and that, too, is caused by our sinning against Gaea? Yes, holds the newest variation in environmental scolding. Global warming is now the cause not just of warming but of all weather "extremes," i.e., calamities. How? Warming increases water evaporation, adding moisture and energy to the atmosphere, making for more rain and storms -- and, mirabile dictu, "more severe droughts" as well. Huh? Exact opposites again? Yes, writes the Times' William Stevens: "in cases where atmospheric circulation conspires" -- a deliciously revealing anthropomorphism -- "to keep rain away from a given area." So global warming has now become a theory of everything, or at least everything bad: rain, snow, heat, cold, storms, droughts. You name it, we caused it. When anything unpredictable and unwanted occurs -- particularly if it occurs near a media center like Washington or New York -- we can now blame it on global warming and, by extension, on us. Is there a primitive religion that can match this one for attributing natural calamity to the transgressions of man -- this time around, to man's sins against Mother Earth and her environmental priesthood?

I guess that's scientific progress, the idea of global weirding moving from the op-ed pages to the news pages.

The commish vs. the state's attorney

Posted: 15 Aug 2010 11:10 PM PDT

There's an interesting race shaping up in Baltimore City. Incumbent State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy is facing a challenge from Gregg Bernstein.

Baltimore is one of the more violent cities in the country. So why is that?

A few weeks ago a friend put up a sign for Bernstein.

He wasn't the only one. Famouse director, John Waters did too. More remarkably, Baltimore City's police commissioner, Fred Bealefeld, put up a sign in support of Bernstein. (It has since been taken down.)

So the police commissioner took a stand (as a private citizen) that puts at professional odds with the civil servant he needs to work with. It a gutsy move and if, as expected, Jessamy wins re-election, I'd have to think that Bealefeld's job could be in jeopardy.

Still it's odd that support for Jessamy is lukewarm, at best. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake defended Bealefeld against calls for his ouster.

In public, Bealefeld wasn't saying much, but his boss, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake continued to back him.
"He understands the distinction between private citizen and police commissioner and wouldn't do something like that," said Rawlings-Blake.

She cautioned Bealefeld walks a fine line.

"I spoke to him about focusing on the job, not the politics," said Rawlings-Blake.

And former mayor, now Governor O'Malley apparently isn't endorsing Jessamy. Or at least not yet.

On Thursday, when asked by the Baltimore Sun if he would support a candidate for city state's attorney, O'Malley said of Jessamy: "We've done a lot of positive things together.... I believe the state's attorney's office, led by Mrs. Jessamy, has had a significant part in saving lives.... It would fly in the face of the facts to say it hasn't."
When asked specifically whether he was endorsing Jessamy, O'Malley then said: "Yeah, stay tuned.... Partnerships between the state and the state's attorney's office have never been stronger."

To add to the confusion, O'Malley campaign spokesman Rick Abbruzzese later told The Sun that the governor was not endorsing any candidates.

Getting back to the police commissioner, Richard Vatz writes:

There are two major questions that arise from this lawn sign endorsement: whether it is legal, and whether it is responsible.
It is legal because Bealefeld, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi (in a wonderfully comprehensive report in The Baltimore Sun by Justin Fenton), "won't be doing any campaign appearances or using department resources or city time to promote Bernstein."

The endorsement is responsible because it promotes critically needed changes in public policy.

What can police do when, as in the Stephen Pitcairn murder, judges drop the ball serially? What can police do when prosecutors have such a high threshold of sufficient evidence to try a case that when a witness refuses to cooperate but there is a tape of the accused committing the crime, the case goes unprosecuted?

The contrast between Governor O'Malley and Commissioner Bealefeld is amazing. O'Malley, apparently for political reasons won't take a stand. Bealefeld was willingn to risk his career to effect change.

Unsurprisingly Bernstein was recently on the Norris and Davis show talking about the major issues in the campaign. (Podcast below.) Host (and former police chief) Ed Norris said that in all his policing he's never encountered a worse situation than when he had to work with Jessamy. And that confirmed Bernstein's main argument that in Baltimore City there's a dysfunctional relationship between the police department and prosecutor's office. (In other words, don't expect Law and Order: Baltimore anytime soon.)

The two candidates participated in an acrimonious debate on Thursday.

In the meantime, as it appears that Jessamy's attacks on Bealefeld have only raised Bernstein's visibility, Baltimore just experienced one of its bloodiest weekends in some time.

Baltimore endured a bloody Sunday morning with three people shot and a fourth killed within two hours, police said. Later in the day a police officer shot a man in the leg, the second police-involved shooting of the weekend.
That meant 13 people were shot over the weekend -- three fatally. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III plans to meet with commanders Monday morning to assess their violence prevention strategy.

Clearly we need change.

Musical monday #154

Posted: 15 Aug 2010 10:05 PM PDT

Elie and I alternate hosting Musical Monday. Last week's though, was composed by TRN and we still need a theme! TRN also helped me put together this week's. So many thanks!
For guidance on the instrumentals, see Musical Monday 40.

1) The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
2) My heart was captured, my soul surrendered
3) "" (1962) Give Tchaikovsky the blues? Not Cracker.
4) So he reads to us from something called Ulysses
5) "" (1964) Not exactly rhapsody.
6) How gentle is the rain
7) The past is filled with silent joys and broken toys, laughing girls and teasing boys,
8) I was feeling kind of seasick
9) Tales of mystic days of old are hidden in these walls
10) Don't know what I'm gonna do another week in telephoning...
11) One mighty voice that will bring a sound, that will ring forevermore.
12) "" (1972) The monkey bone's connected to the spaceship
13) I carry the dust of a journey
14) Every garden grows one
15) I bring time, and I can take you through
16) Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain
17) Sweet Melissa,
18) "" (1975) Trumpet blasts for average guys.
19) When I dial the telephone nobody's home
20) "" (1976) 750 mL of Ludwig
21) Cause I couldn't bear to see it end, just like me and you
22) Just got back from the downtown palais
23) Neurotic to the bone
24) Youre the love of my life and the breath in my prayers

Here's the solution to Musical Monday #151, which might be considered "rocking around the clock" as noted by Clayton.

1) And see that twinkle in your eyes
In the midnight hour - Wilson Pickett
2) The air's electric, sparklin' power, loaded, loaded
Living after midnight - Judas Priest
3) were gonna chug-a-lug and shout.
After midnight - Eric Clapton, JJ Cale
4) It was a night with Daddy G.
Quarter to three - Gary U.S. Bonds
5) ... 25 dollars and pieces of silver
Wednesday Morning 3 am
6) Just another lonely boy in town,
Tequila sunrise - The Eagles
7) ... can leave you feeling just like a ghost?
A brand new day - Sting
8) It's your chance to wake up and plan another brand new day.
It's a beautiful morning - The Rascals
9) And I've always been a patient man, but my patience has reached its end
Blue Morning, Blue Day - Foreigner
10) Got to get some peace in my mind.
Monday Morning - Fleetwood Mac
11) Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.
Tuesday afternoon - Moody Blues
12) Sky rockets in flight.
Afternoon delight - Starland Vocal Band
13) Should I try to do some more
25 or 6 to 4 - Chicago
14) No one owns a piece of my time
5 O'clock world - The Vogues
15) Work day passes like molasses in wintertime, but it's July.
It's 5 O'clock somewhere - Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett
16) Sadly ecstatic, that their heroes are news.
5:15 - The Who
17) Heavenly shades of night are falling
Twilight Time - The Platters
18) When the sun goes down, and the clouds all frown,
Twilight Time - The Moody Blues
19) In the room where you do what you don't confess
Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot
20) Thoughts they cannot defend,
Nights in White Satin - Moody Blues
21) The stars are winkin' above
Right Time of the Night - Jennifer Warnes
22) Well I swear we were doin' eighty
Rockin' into the night - .38 Special
23) Pumping like a fugitive in cover from the night
11:59 - Blondie
24) One more time for all the old times.
Midnight Blue - Melissa Manchester
25) Shake the town with the windows down
Midnight wind - John Stewart

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:32:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

Council speak 081510
Haveil havalim #280
IRIB Radio (Iran): "Obama' Politicized Mosque Move at Politically-Motivated Iftar"
Surprised? Obama Backtracked On Jerusalem--Now He Backtracks On Ground Zero Mosque

Council speak 081510

Posted: 15 Aug 2010 06:53 PM PDT

I have some catching up to do. Last week, the council spoke:

Council Winners

First place with 2 1/3 votes! - Mere Rhetoric - After Lebanon Border Ambush, Reuters First Out Of The Gate With Demonstrably False Anti-Israel Propaganda
Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes - JoshuaPundit - Obama's Latest Anti-Israel Tactic - Getting Others to Do the Dirty Work For Him
Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes - Wolf Howling - What Direction Our Economy

Non-Council Winners

*First place with 3 2/3 votes! - Winds of Change - Why We're Just Flatly Screwed in Afghanistan submitted by The Glittering Eye
Second place with 2 2/3 votes - Seraphic Secret - Nazis To Open Museum Of Tolerance At Aushwitz submitted by Wolf Howling

A complete list of the entries is here.

The council has spoken again:

Council Winners

*First place with 3 votes! - JoshuaPundit - A Mosque At Ground Zero

Second place with 2 votes - Rhymes with Right - We Are The Revolution People

Non-Council Winners

First place with 2 2/3 votes! - Iowahawk - Undocumented Imam's Refusal to Perform Interracial Gay Handicapped Wedding Leads to Charges of Racism submitted by The Razor

Second place with 2 1/3 votes - Sultan Knish - Is Islam's Problem a Lack of Modernity? submitted by JoshuaPundit

All entries listed here.

Haveil havalim #280

Posted: 15 Aug 2010 03:22 AM PDT

via Voices for Israel

Welcome back to Haveil Havalim and many thanks to Jack for keepingn Haveil Havalim going!
Inclusion in this edition of Haveil does not imply endorsement by management of Soccer Dad.
I had a cut off of three submissions per blogger and did not include non-blog submissions.

Haveil Havalim #280
Community
Culture
Israel
Torah
Judaism
History
Misc

Community

One aspect of blogging is bringing like-minded people together.

The Israel Situation does just that with The Kehila: The Jewish/Israel Blogger Community | The Israel Situation posted at The Israel Situation, saying, "Welcome to the Kehila! If you have an Israel or Jewish themed blog, please take a look and join our community!"

I haven't linked to previous editions in a while, so I'll let Lady Light do it. Also she links to an important project called "the Other Side" devoted to humanizing Jewish residents of Yehuda and Shomron.
Lady-Light presents Greeting Shabbat on a Positive Note-and HH #279 posted at Tikkun Olam.

When the internet was new there was a fellow named Jacob Richman who made the effort to compile lists of jobs available in Israel in order to ease the efforts of those planning Aliyah. I'm glad to see that he's blogging and promoting Israel still! Here's more about Shai Agassi.
Jacob Richman presents Today I drove an electric car...... posted at Good News from Israel.

One of the other ongoing Jewish blogging carnivals is JPIX. So if you're Jewish and you take pictures: read up!
Leora Wenger presents Jewish Blog Carnival News posted at Here in HP, saying, "This post is a reminder to submit posts with photos to JPIX - next edition coming soon."
Plus Batya presents the pre-Yom Tov edition of KCC.

Hadassah Sabo Milner presents Jewish Social Media Shmooze posted at In the Pink.

Leah Jones presents The Jewels of Elul Blog Tour is coming posted at Latest entries from leahj.blog-city.com, saying, "For the month of Elul, parallel with Jewels of Elul, there is a blog tour featuring many Jewish and a few non-Jewish blogs answering Craig Taubman's theme "the art of beginning... again."

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Culture & personal

You are what you wear! Robert J. Avrech presents East of Eden posted at Seraphic Secret.

A point Mrs. S. would agree with, I think Mrs. S. presents Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and... lettuce? posted at Our Shiputzim: A Work In Progress.

This is beautiful. Batya presents Being Thankful posted at Shiloh Musings.
But this is even better: Batya presents 90! He Made It!! posted at Shiloh Musings.

Mirjam Weiss presents Cheddar Salvation posted at Miriyummy.

Mirjam Weiss presents Holy Grail posted at Miriyummy.

Batya presents Surviving the Unimaginable posted at Shiloh Musings.

rickismom presents Envy/ Happiness posted at Beneath the Wings.

Chaviva presents Fashion's Modest Cousin. posted at Just call me Chaviva

Chaviva presents Who Wants Free $$ (To Donate, That Is)!? posted at Just call me Chaviva.

Yisrael Medad presents Difference Between Jews and Muslims posted at My Right Word.

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Israel

This was great! rickismom presents Privileged Class? posted at Beneath the Wings.

Very enjoyable too!
Benji Lovitt presents Just Your Average Four-Year Aliyah Anniversary Blog Post (Would I Lie?) posted at What War Zone???.

harry presents Shlomo Gronich hijacks Jethro Tull posted at Israelity.

rutimizrachi presents "...where everybody knows your name..." #3 posted at Ki Yachol Nuchal!.

Yisrael Medad presents The Sadness of the Irrational posted at My Right Word.

SnoopyTheGoon presents Nasrallah's "revelations" of Zionist crimes posted at SimplyJews.

harry presents Russian Roulette on the roads posted at Israelity.

I was impressed with the absence of <-sanctimony in this post.
David Morris presents Child Abuse: Rav Motti Elon and Komemiyut posted at Tzedek-Tzedek

harry presents Down by the ol' water hole - with 1,200 screaming kids posted at Israelity.

Mordechai Torczyner presents "A little girl sick with cancer" posted at The Rebbetzin's Husband.

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Torah

Mordechai Torczyner presents How Jewish Law defines the application of Jewish Ethics posted at The Rebbetzin's Husband.

Josh Waxman presents Does Hebrew moznayim, scales, derive from Hebrew ozen, ear? posted at parshablog.

Josh Waxman presents Does Rashi reject the very *idea* of magical objects? posted at parshablog.

Yehoishophot Oliver presents Torah: A body and a soul posted at >A Chassidishe farbrengen.

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Judaism

A nice treatment of the topic.
Hadassah Sabo Milner presents How are wigs ok? posted at In the Pink.

Elianah-Sharon presents Jewels of Elul posted at Irresistably Me.

Minnesota Mamaleh presents Minnesota Mamaleh: Slow Religion Anyone? | TC Jewfolk posted at TC Jewfolk.

Ben-Yehudah presents Another Story Of Proving Ones Jewishness posted at Esser Agaroth.

Ben-Yehudah presents Items of Interest posted at TOMER DEVORAH

David Levy presents It's the Season of the Shofar > posted at JewishBoston.com.

Chana Sorel presents Elul posted at On Borrowed Time.

Chaviva presents It's Art, It's Renewal: Jewels of Elul posted at Just call me Chaviva.

Susan Barnes presents Kabbalat Shabbat in Heaven posted at To Kiss A Mezuzah.

Ben-Yehudah presents Now there arose new rabbis in Israel who knew not the Rav, part 1 posted at Jewish Israel.

Elianah-Sharon presents The Last Night of Av - Au Revoir Av!!! posted at Irresistably Me.

Independent Patriot/Elise presents When the Days of Awe Come Early posted at Liberty's Spirit

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History

One thing I like is when someone realizes that they read something special on someone else's blog and wants to share it.
Leora Wenger presents Jewish History in Hamburg (part I) posted at Ilana-Davita.

Yisrael Medad presents Green-Lined - The foolishness of a fantasy posted at Green-Lined.
Yaacov Lozowick, didn't care much for Judt's views of Israel, but found his history of Europe excellent

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Misc

Lady-Light presents After a Hiatus: Chock Full O' Links posted at Tikkun Olam.

Hadassah Sabo Milner presents New Rule - household help must be uglier than you. | In the Pink posted at In the Pink.

Izgad presents St. Augustine Teaches Rabbi Aharon Feldman Authentic Jewish History posted at Izgad.

Lisa presents The Intellectual Implosion in Haredism posted at Lamrot Hakol (Despite Everything).

Heshy presents Dear Heshy: Why are frum Jews so�unhealthy? posted at Frum Satire.

Joel Katz presents Religion and State in Israel - August 9, 2010 (Section 1) posted at Religion and State in Israel.

Joel Katz presents Religion and State in Israel - August 9, 2010 (Section 2) posted at Religion and State in Israel.

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IRIB Radio (Iran): "Obama' Politicized Mosque Move at Politically-Motivated Iftar"

Posted: 15 Aug 2010 02:59 AM PDT

How's that outreach to the Muslim world going, Mr. President?

Amid opposition by certain groups in the US to the building of a mosque at the so-called Ground Zero in New York at the site of the highly suspicious 9/11/2001 incidents, President Barack Obama on Friday made a politically motivated move by claiming to respect the rights of Muslims in the US including the Cordoba Mosque Project.

He made the comments at the politically-motivated 'Iftar' at the White House State Dining Room to a selective gathering of pro-western Muslims breaking the fast of the blessed month of Ramadhan.

The White House had so far not taken a stand on the mosque, which would be part of a 100 million-dollar Islamic center two blocks from the World Trade Center towers, whose destruction was blamed on Muslims while it was clear that the Zionists were behind the terrorist act that killed 3,000 people, but not a single Jew working in that place, since they were all mysteriously absence on that Monday.

Some Republicans including the defeated vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and former head of House of Representatives Newt Gingrich had made common cause against the Mosque project with the Anti-Defamation League, which is a pro-Zionist group.

The wrangling thus provided Obama with an opportunity to try to deceive Muslims once again with his seemingly supportive words for the Mosque project despite the fact he has breached all his election promises of change of policy towards world Muslims as is evident from the worsening of their plight in the American occupied countries of Afghanistan and Iraq in addition to the Palestinians continuing to groan under the jackboots of the US-supported Zionist usurpers of their homeland.

And this was evidently written before Obama backtracked. Did I mention that Rite-Aid has been having two for one specials on bottles of Ibuprofen lately?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Surprised? Obama Backtracked On Jerusalem--Now He Backtracks On Ground Zero Mosque

Posted: 14 Aug 2010 10:41 PM PDT

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
Candidate Obama in AIPAC speech, June 4, 2008

-----

"Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations...as a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute [a division of the city] and I think that it is smart for us to -- to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city.
Candidate Obama 'clarifying' what he said to AIPAC, June 5, 2008

Is it really so surprising that President Obama would do the same thing that candidate Obama did back in 2008?

But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.
President Obama, Friday night's iftar dinner at the White House, August 13, 2010

-----

I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about.

And I think it's very important as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about.
President Obama, at a business roundtable in Florida, August 14, 2010

There really is no reason to be surprised--in both cases Obama was speaking to a partisan group and just said what they wanted to hear. That is why that video the LA Times is suppressing of his speaking at a banquet in honor of Rashid Khalidi would be interesting.

Of course, there is one reason we can thank Obama for his comments about the mosque--it's not just a New York issue anymore, as the Mosque controversy swirls around Obama:

Obama's comments placed him in the middle of the controversy over a Muslim group's plans for a mosque near the site of the 2001 attack -- and in turn, transformed an emotion-laden local dispute in New York into a nationwide debate overnight.

That of course is a good thing--unless you happen to be a Democrat up for reelection. As the Politico article notes, now every Republican can ask his Democratic opponent point blank if they agree with Obama's support for the mosque or not.

One point that is missed by Obama and those who are defending both his statement and the Ground Zero Mosque in general--the claim that this issue is all about the rights of Muslims is a subterfuge. John Hinderaker of Powerline writes:

since when is it politically toxic to stand up for the rights of Muslims? The Department of Justice is now stocked largely with lawyers who not only stood up for the rights of Muslims, but offered their services for free--not just to Muslims, but to Muslim terrorists. Heck, I stood up for the rights of Muslims--not just Muslims, but the ones who want to build Cordoba House--here. I'm not aware of a single instance where the "rights of Muslims" are under attack, unlike, for example, the rights of Christians. Sargent's claim is lame even by straw man standards.

Over time, we will now doubt see that straw is in no way in short supply.

by Daled Amos

Soccer Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Soccer Dad) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:30:00 +0000

Soccer Dad

He ain't a heavy, he's turkey
MondoWeiss revives the poison balloon story
If ... you must 081310
It's not a matter of freedom, but of sensitivity

He ain't a heavy, he's turkey

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 12:42 PM PDT

Here are 4 articles from the New York Times about different incidents in which Israel was quickly condemned as the bad guy. Regardless of what emerged afterwards, this was the default position of the New York Times. (If you feel that I'm exaggerating, click on the links and see if my presentation is accurate.) I attempted to find the first report in each of these cases.

January 29, 2010

Hamas Official Murdered in Dubai Hotel
Another Hamas leader, Khalil al-Hayya, told reporters that Mr. Mabhouh was "not the first one the Mossad's hand has reached."

"We reserve our right to respond to this crime in a suitable time and place," Mr. Hayya said. But, he added, "We in Hamas emphasize that our battlefield is the land of Palestine and our battle with the enemy is in Palestine," and not on foreign soil.

March 9, 2010

As Biden Visits, Israel Unveils Plan for New Settlements

Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel's security here on Tuesday, Israel's Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Mr. Biden condemned the move as "precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now."

April 6, 2010

Debate in Israel on Gag Order in Security Leak Case

Mordechai Kremnitzer, a law professor at Hebrew University and a senior fellow of the Israel Democracy Institute, said that Israel's treatment of suspected criminal offenses in the security realm was "draconian." By isolating the suspect and preventing any public debate, he said, the authorities could more easily press the suspect to arrive at a plea bargain.

Mr. Kremnitzer also criticized the ease with which courts in Israel hand out gag orders.

May 31, 2010

Deadly Israeli Raid Draws Condemnation

Israel faced intense international condemnation and growing domestic questions on Monday after a raid by naval commandos that killed nine people, many of them Turks, on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.

Turkey, Israel's most important friend in the Muslim world, recalled its ambassador and canceled planned military exercises with Israel as the countries' already tense relations soured even further. The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session over the attack, which occurred in international waters north of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was flying home after canceling a Tuesday meeting with President Obama.

Der Spiegel (via Daily Alert Blog and memeorandum) is reporting that German experts believe that a number of PKK terrorists were killed last year by chemical weapons deployed by Turkey.

It would be difficult to exceed the horror shown in the photos, which feature burned, maimed and scorched body parts. The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings. Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) underground movement, who are thought to have been killed in September 2009.
In March, the activists gave the photos to a German human rights delegation comprised of Turkey experts, journalists and politicians from the far-left Left Party, as SPIEGEL reported at the end of July. Now Hans Baumann, a German expert on photo forgeries has confirmed the authenticity of the photos, and a forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the initial suspicion, saying that it is highly probable that the eight Kurds died "due to the use of chemical substances."

Israel Matzav

I trust also that Tom Friedman will write a column in the next week accusing Turkey of operating under the Hama rules that Bashar Assad's daddy Hafez used when he gassed all those people to death in 1982.

JoshuaPundit

Now, if Israel were the accused party in something like this...well, now that would be a different matter, wouldn't it? And no evidence would even be necessary, just the wild allegations of a country like, well, Turkey.

and Gateway Pundit

Now imagine the din and uproar that the EU would raise if it was thought that Israel or the United States had used chemical weapons on anyone. Do you think they'd wait a year to five months to gin up their Euro-like outrage?

all wonder what I do. If the terrorists killed had been Israel's enemies, would the MSM have waited so long to air the suggestion that Israel had violated international law? As I show above, of course not.

This isn't about holding Israel to a higher standard. Turkey is being held to no standard whatsoever. Der Spiegel rreported that Turkey had long been suspected of using chemical weapons against the PKK, so this isn't exactly something new. And surely once Der Spiegel saw fit to report it the rest of the MSM would at least cite Der Spiegel, wouldn't they?

Turkey's not Israel, so it isn't automatically the heavy. That would seem to be a mistake.

MondoWeiss revives the poison balloon story

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 10:32 AM PDT

I missed it at the time, but on August 4th the MondoWeiss blog revived the poison balloon story, the same day Weiss himself posted admitting he was wrong about the now-famous border-incident tree's location. From a post entitled "The Lebanese Army finally acts to protect Lebanon's sovereignty":

Israel has violated the ceasefire with Lebanon over 7,000 times since the end of the 2006 war on Lebanon . . . Dropping poisonous balloons over Southern Lebanon causing 8 people to be rushed to the hospital after inhaling toxic fumes.

The MondoWeiss post links to the original Naharnet story. By the time of this Naharnet story it was clear that they were just helium balloons from a promotional event of the Ha'ir newspaper. Just for fun, let's revisit the Fars News story "Israel Massacres Lebanese by Poisonous Balloons" (the image from the Fars story graces the top of this post):

Genocide by poisonous balloons is the new method employed by the Israeli army for killing people in southern Lebanon.

FNA dispatches from Beirut said that the Israeli planes have so far dropped thousands of these balloons all across the woods and coastal areas in southern Lebanon.

The balloons which come in bright and child attractive colors have been observed specially in Nabatieh, Sour and the surrounding villages and, of course, in Beirut.

The balloons read such phrases as 'Happy Birthday' or 'Happy Night' in English and Hebrew . . .

The Israeli army has a long record of massacring civilians with bombs placed inside dolls, mobile sets and similar objects . . .

I searched for the word "balloon"in the 134-post comment thread of the MondoWeiss post. Did the whole MondoWeiss crowd really not notice? Yaacov Lozowick noted the post on August 6.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

If ... you must 081310

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 03:57 AM PDT

If you haven't read Roger Waters OKs Iranian anthem, blows it on Gaza at Fausta's Blog ; you must.
He's also supporting Cinema Jenin. Maybe he's anti-Mullah, but he's not exactly pro-Israel.

If you haven't read Save Mohamed Abu Muailek at Simply Jews; you must.
Oh, you mean Israel isn't the main menace to the people of Gaza?

If you haven't read Ramadan in Tel Aviv at In Context; you must.
Along these lines, read about Gad Marahsha, of blessed memory.

If you haven't read Kutcher if you can at Israelly Cool; you must.
Aussie Dave's obervation about celebrities - But I am pleased to see more and more celebrities visiting Israel, especially sites holy to Jews. - is spot on.

If you haven't read Peaceful Coexistence Alert 2: Banned for posting 'historical truth' on Arabic site at Solomonia; you must.
It seems that ethnic sensitivity works only one way sometimes. Do you think that the owners of the website will be called "reflexively anti-Jewish."

If you haven't read Nate Oman on the Auto Bailouts at the Volokh Conspiracy; you must.
How a financial problem became a political one.

If you haven't read Watermelons force Palestinians to institute checkpoints for Palestinians at Daled Amos; you must.
Showing that no Israeli good deed goes unpunished.

If you haven't read IRIB Radio (Iran) on Kagan appointment: Obama doing "utmost to appease the influential Zionist lobbies" at JudeoPundit; you must.
The influence is everywhere. Oh the horrors.

It's not a matter of freedom, but of sensitivity

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 12:49 AM PDT

According to the Washington Post:

Two Republican members of Congress, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter T. King of New York, called government sponsorship of Rauf's trip "unacceptable" in a joint statement. They said he had suggested in at least one interview that the United States was to blame for the 2001 attacks.

I love the qualifications: "They said" and "he had suggested." Why not just write Imam Rauf made the charge? It's right here:

Bradley: Are you in any way suggesting that we in the United States deserved what happened?
Faisal: I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but united states policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

As I noted earlier, the Post also is ignorant of the meaning of "Cordoba."

With a major newspaper failing to exercise any sort of oversight over the intentions of the leaders of the Ground Zero mosque effort, it's funny to read in the New York Times that For Mosque Sponsors, Early Missteps Fueled Storm. In a nutshell:

The organizers built support among some Jewish and Christian groups, and even among some families of 9/11 victims, but did little to engage with likely opponents.

With a media that has been incurious about its organizer's motives or the sources of its funding, the effort to build the Islamic center in lower Manhattan, has faced only grass roots opposition. The building has been cast in simple terms of freedom of religion with opponents being characterized as intolerant and bigoted. But the real issue is sensitivity. True, there may be no legal grounds to prevent Imam Rauf and his organization from building. However, in Sacrilege at Ground Zero, Charles Krauthammer makes a strong case for fighting the mosque on sensitivity grounds.

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.
Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi -- yet despite contemporary Germany's innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

Which makes you wonder about the goodwill behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's proposal. This is a man who has called U.S. policy "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, "I'm not a politician. . . . The issue of terrorism is a very complex question."

(It is through Krauthammer, that I found the interview of Imam Rauf by Ed Bradley.)

Krauthmmer concludes:

The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere. A mosque really seeking to build bridges, Rauf's ostensible hope for the structure, would accept the offer.

The city may not have the legal means to block the building, however it is up to Imam Rauf to show that he understands what an affront it would be for him to build in lower Manhattan, so close to the scene of the Islamist attack on America.

Crossposted on Yourish.