TEXTBOOKS ARE BRAINWASHING JEWISH CHILDREN: At least that is what a professor at the American University in Beirut is claiming about a book that teaches about Israel. Elder of Ziyon has the background.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

PUTTING HIS PASTOR BEHIND HIM: At least that is what Barack Obama seems to have done when he disinvited his controversial Pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. from delivering a public invocation on the day of his presidential announcement.(Hat Tip: Larwyn)

Funny thing: everyone has a different reason why Obama disinvited him.

• Obama spokesman Bill Burton: Obama campaign did not want the church to face negative attention.
  
  
• Some black leaders: fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s overly Afrocentric teachings, which may exclude whites.
  
  
• Rev. Wright: In 1984 he went to Tripoli with Farrakhan to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi--so his association with Obama's will cause a lot of his Jewish support to dry up.

Rev. Wright's reason of course is the most unlikely--liberal Jews tend to be very trusting in their chosen candidate to be supportive of Israel, to the extent that they will then focus on the other issues that differentiate their candidate from the others.

Besides, referring to Obama's call to him on the evening of Friday, February 9th, Rev. Wright told the Times: “Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack.”

Must have caught him just before Licht Bentschen...

See also Dean Barnett's take on this.

Technorati Tag: Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright .

FROM THE SECULAR ISLAM CONFERENCE: Here is a video of interviews with some of the speakers at the conference, courtesy of Pajamas Media:

The first Secular Islam Summit - a ground-breaking event bringing together some of the most courageous people on earth, Muslims who publicly seek to reform their religion - took place last weekend in St. Petersburg, Fla. Producer Andrew Marcus caught several of the key participants - Walid Phares, Ibn Warraq, Irshad Manji, Nonie Darwish, Tawfik Hamid, Wafa Sultan and event organizer Michael Ledeen - in exclusive interviews for Pajamas Media.

Here is video of The St. Petersburg Declaration, read by Ibn Warraq.



You can see the text of the declaration here.

This should keep CAIR busy for a while...

Technorati Tag: Secular Islam Conference.

YOU MEAN FRANCE HAS A JEWISH LOBBY TOO!? Former French Prime Minister Raymon Barre sure thinks so. After all, how else could you possibly explain how Maurice Papon was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1998 for organizing the deportation of hundreds of Jews to Nazi extermination camps.

Papon was made "a scapegoat" because in reality opposing the deportation of Jews had not been a matter of "major national interest."

This is the same Raymon Barre, who was Prime Minister under former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, when Palestinian terrorists bombed a Paris synagogue in October 1980. Barre said on TV: "This appalling attack was intended to hit Jews on their way to the synagogue, it has hit innocent French people who happened to be in the Rue Copernic".

Technorati Tag: Raymond Barre and Maurice Papon.

BEFORE THE MOVIE, READ THE ARTICLE: While we are waiting for the movie version of Joe and Valerie's Excellent Adventure, it pays to separate the fact from the fiction.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

The Washington Post, July 10, 2004:

Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

The Washington Post, March 7, 2007:

Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had "twisted," if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.

A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false -- and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame's name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.

The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame's name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak's primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity -- and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.

It would have been sensible for Mr. Fitzgerald to end his investigation after learning about Mr. Armitage. Instead, like many Washington special prosecutors before him, he pressed on, pursuing every tangent in the case.

You can argue about the war in Iraq and the way that the White House has handled it, but Wilson and Plame's planned movie will take war profiteering to a new level.

Technorati Tag: Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame and Scooter Libby.

POLL VAULTING: With all the early talk by the politicians in the running for 2008, Soccer Dad was curious about how early success in the polls translated into actual nominations come the actual election. He checked out Newsbank for articles on the 1996, 2000, and 2004 elections during the months of March and April of the previous year.

See his post for the results.

Technorati Tag: Elections.

WESTBANKBLOG HAS MOVED!: Wow, am I behind. Westbankblog moved a month ago and I only just now realized it. I need to do a better job of reading up on blogs on my blogroll.

AND NIXON HAD ARCHIBALD COX: Yid With Lid posts about State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss and the upcoming report on the management of the home front during last summer's Lebanon war. Currently, the story is being overshadowed by stories about who leaked what and other distractions.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

THE OTHER RIGHT OF RETURN: Smooth Stone posts about Jews protesting about land that was stolen from them--during the 1929 Hebron massacre that killed 67 Jews.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

THE CREATIVE SPARK: Holy Hyrax has some insightful thoughts on creativity over at SerandEz.

Technorati Tag: Judaism and Creativity.