I Live In The Palestinian Territories And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee-Shirt

Story here.
Personally, when someone puts a gun in the hands of a child, I would agree that child is being victimized--I would just disagree on who the victimizer is.

[Hat tip: Powerline]

Technorati Tag: Palestinians.

Are Jewish Voters Ready To Compare Obama's Words With His Actions?

Sabrina Leigh Schaeffer notes that Obama has been saying all the right things when he appears before the Jewish voters--

But with the Democratic nomination all but secured, Jewish voters are likely to start thinking less about the senator’s speeches and more about the company he keeps. As the last two elections reveal, when it comes to the Jewish vote, actions speak louder than words.

While Reverend Wright’s anti-American and anti-Semitic ravings captured the attention of the public for weeks, it’s simply his theatrics that appear to make him the most repellant of Obama’s friends. The senator has tried to dismiss Wright as a “crazy uncle,” but if you take a closer look at the crowd the senator runs with, it appears he has a whole lot of crazy relatives to disinvite from dinner.

It was widely circulated that Wright supported — and even publicly commended — radical black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan. Yet little has been said about Sen. Obama’s relationship with Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Catholic pastor at St. Sabina, also on the South Side of Chicago. In 2004, Obama told the Chicago Sun Times that Pfleger was one of his three spiritual mentors.

Pfleger’s name became more widely recognizable two years ago when Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed a Farrakhan aide to serve on a hate-crimes commission. When the appointee, Sister Claudette, refused to denounce Farrakhan’s racist and anti-Semitic remarks, three Jewish members on the commission resigned — a situation that prompted Pfleger to respond, “good riddance.”

No less reprehensible than Reverends Wright and Pfleger is the Obama campaign’s national co-chairman, retired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill “Tony” McPeak, who has made numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments. While the general has a long blame-Israel-first record, the most repugnant remark came during a 2003 interview, when he blamed the Jewish-American community for the failure of the peace process between Israel and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Despite calls on Senator Obama to remove McPeak as a key adviser, the general continues to serve on the campaign.

Obama’s support among radicals in the Palestinian community — and even from Ahmed Yousef of Hamas — has not gone unnoticed. In fact, in 2003 Obama helped honor Rashid Khalidi, a well-known critic of Israel and advocate of Palestinian rights, at a celebration where anti-Israel poetry was read and the United States was sharply criticized.

That evening, Obama told guests stories about his long relationship with the Khalidis, the meals he had shared with Rashid and his wife, Mona, and the effect they had had on his political thinking.

Last month, another concerning relationship came to light between the Obamas and Hatem El-Hady, former chairman of the Toledo-based Islamic organization Kindhearts for Charitable Human Development — a group shut down in 2006 for raising money for Hamas. Until recently, El-Hady had a personal website on the official Obama campaign site and Michelle Obama was listed as one of El-Hady’s three “friends.”

Perhaps the most alarming Obama relationship — and the one his campaign can do the least about — is the marriage of Barack Obama to his wife, Michelle. As women tend to take the lead in directing household religious affairs, children’s education, and community involvement, it is likely — as Christopher Hitchens suggests — Michelle Obama is the reason Wright married the couple, baptized their children, became a recipient of their donations, and remained their spiritual mentor for two decades.

The Obama campaign continues to stress that the senator is open to understanding multiple points of view, even if he doesn’t agree with them. But, after a while, the crowd you run with starts to say a lot about your own perspective.

Jewish voters are creatures of habit who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates. Issues like the economy and Iraq take precedence over Israel. But will wariness over Obama's friends be enough of a factor increase the Republican share of the Jewish vote?

See you in November.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Obama.

Dore Gold On The Syrian-Israeli Negotiations

From The Jerusalem Center For Foreign Affairs

The Golan Heights and the Syrian-Israeli Negotiations

Dore Gold

• Israeli negotiators will quickly discover three core areas in their discussions with the Syrians that they will not resolve easily: delineation of an agreed boundary, security arrangements, and the Syrian-Iranian alliance.

• Just prior to the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syria deployed 1,400 tanks along the border against a total Israeli force of 177 tanks (a force ratio of 8 to 1 in favor of Syria). Should Syria's considerable missile forces be used to delay Israel's reserve mobilization, then the importance of the Golan terrain will increase as Israel's small standing army will have to fight for longer without reserve reinforcement.

• When Israel reached its Treaty of Peace with Egypt in 1979, it agreed to fully withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula to the international border. Syria illegally occupied Israeli territories during the 1950s that were within Israel's international borders: the southern demilitarized zone at al-Hamma, the Banias area, and the strip of coastal territory along the northeast shoreline of the Sea of Galilee.

• If Israel were to agree to the June 4, 1967, line, as Syria demands, it would be rewarding Syrian aggression. Moreover, it could compromise Israel's control of its largest fresh water reservoir. Israel should not have to be arguing with the Syrians over the question of whether a future Israeli-Syrian boundary should correspond to the June 4, 1967, line or to the older international border, for neither of these lines is defensible.

• The U.S. has given Israel repeated diplomatic assurances in the past that Israel will not have to come down from the Golan Heights, beginning with a September 1, 1975, letter from President Gerald Ford to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It was renewed prior to the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference by Secretary of State James Baker. During the Clinton administration, Secretary of State Warren Christopher renewed the Ford commitment in a letter dated September 19, 1996.

• Even if, by prior agreement with Tehran, the Syrians took steps that appeared to be downgrading relations, Israel's concession of the Golan Heights would be irreversible, while the political orientation of states in the Middle East is notoriously changeable. It would be a cardinal error for Israel to put into jeopardy its own security by agreeing to come down from the Golan Heights.

Despite advances in military technology, the Golan Heights remains a vital strategic asset for the defense of the State of Israel. True, this week Israel and Syria have re-opened their diplomatic dialogue after a hiatus of eight years. But negotiators will soon find that there are three clusters of issues that they will not resolve easily: delineation of an agreed boundary, security arrangements, and the Syrian-Iranian alliance. And to a large extent, these issues have become even more difficult since negotiations were held back in the 1990s.

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

We Are All Broadcasters

Making the medium and the message one.

We are all Broadcasters
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Mishpacha
May 21, 2008

When a radio transmitter transmits sound waves, there is no way of knowing who will receive the signals. To pick up the radio signals, the recipient must have a radio and the radio must be tuned to a particular frequency.

We are all in the same situation as that radio transmitter. We are constantly sending messages – some verbal and some through our behavior. With respect to the messages conveyed by our behavior, we often have no idea as to who will pick up the messages. That depends on who is watching, and more importantly who has an eye to see. The whole world heard of Hashem's miracles in Egypt and of the Splitting of the Sea, but only Yisroel really heard and took the message to heart.

Of those messages that we are transmitting perhaps the most important are those that convey what it means to be a Jew whose life is shaped by Torah. Every moment, we have the potential to make a Kiddush Hashem or the opposite. Heightening the awareness that we are always broadcasting deepens everything we do as a Jew.

A grade school teacher once asked a class of eight-year-olds what is a tzaddik. One answered that a tzaddik is someone who fasts every Monday and Thursday; another that a tzaddik is someone who learns all night. Finally, one little girl piped up and said, "My tatte says a tzaddik is someone who does what is right."

That last definition encompasses a great deal of wisdom. For one thing, it implies that every moment there is always a right and wrong thing to do. Each moment presents us with an opportunity to go up or go down on the ruchnios ladder. But there is no standing still – ever. If we start to view life in this fashion, we become reflective human beings, and not just creatures of habit.

In a similar fashion, an awareness of the potential ramifications of everything we do makes us more alive, thinking beings. For that reason, I make something of a hobby of collecting stories that demonstrate the immense impact of seemingly innocuous actions.

Recently, I received a Short Vort from Rabbi Yitzchok Eisenman of Passaic. His subject that particular morning was a woman whom he had accompanied on her journey from Leilani, a young woman from the Phillipines, to Leah. That journey began with a chance encounter as she left the public library of a north New Jersey city one day, just as three yeshiva students were walking by the library.

The behavior of one of the bochurim so piqued her curiosity that she was filled with the desire to understand why he had acted as he did. On the spot, she turned around and went back into the library to learn something about Judaism.

What had the yeshiva bochur done that made such an impression on Leilani? Did he greet her pleasantly? No, he ignored her, or, to be more precise, he quickly averted his eyes and turned the other direction as they passed one another. By the standards of the world, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Leilani's dress. But by the Torah's standards of tznius, her attire fell short. And that is what caused the bochur to turn to the side.

His gesture did not pass unnoticed, precisely because it was so far from anything Leilani had ever experienced. As an attractive young woman, she had never before had someone make a deliberate effort to avoid looking at her.

That particular yeshiva bochur will have no idea, until he reaches Shomayim, of the spiritual tumult he set off with that one gesture. He will go through life never imagining that he, like Avraham Avinu, played a major role in bringing a neshama under the wings of the Shechinah.

No less important to remember, of course, is that the potential for doing good is inevitably linked with a corresponding potential for the opposite. Recently, I was speaking on this topic in the Bais Yaakov high school of Los Angeles. I told a story of how the lives of three brothers and two friends – today all chashuve bnei Torah – took a totally unexpected turn as a consequence of the impression made on one of them by a family coming out of the Los Angeles Kollel after Shabbos morning davening.

I pointed out that had the frum father been giving his young son a patch at the exact moment he passed in front of a local bistro instead of holding his hand and smiling, five Jews and all the subsequent generations that will come out of them would likely have been lost. When I had finished, I repaired to the office of the principal Rabbi Yoel Bursztyn, who shared with me a story from his days as a yungeman in Lakewood, which emphasized the point I had made.

He told me about a neighbor of his from those days – an elderly, non-religious Jew. On one occasion, Rabbi Burzstyn's neighbor agreed to help make up a minyan in a shiva house. Afterwards, he told him the following story about his youth.

He had been born in Europe, and his mother passed away when he and his sister were very young. Eventually, the family immigrated to Philadelphia. They were extremely poor, so poor that the brother and sister had to walk miles each way to school because they did not have the nickel fare for the trolley.

One day, the young boy went to shul to recite Kaddish on his mother's yahrtzeit. After davening, an old Jew came over to him, and asked him whether he had yahrtzeit. The boy nodded. "So where's the herring and schnaps?" the old man asked. Having assured himself that none would be forthcoming, the old man told him, "This you call a yahrtzeit? Pheh."

The boy was too humiliated to say anything, He rushed home and threw himself on his bed sobbing. His father passed by his son's room, and saw how distraught he was. When the boy related what had happened, he added a vow, "Ta, I swear to you, I will never set foot in a shul again." And he never did.

Can any of us begin to fathom the joy of discovering for the first time in Shomayim that we provided the impetus for one gentile's journey to Yiddishkeit? Or, for that matter, the shame of learning that because of an unthinking, offhand remark of ours a Jew never again set foot in shul?

Technorati Tag: Kiddush HaShem.

Anti-Jewish Discrimination In Michigan Spy Case

The New York Sun has the story of Army tank engineer David Tenenbaum, who was accused in 1997 of spying for Israel and since then has been trying to undo the damage the US government has done to him. At the time, the US attorney declined to prosecute the case on the grounds that the government had not produced sufficient evidence.

And now:

This month, new details emerged when an independent watchdog organization called the Project on Government Oversight [link] published new internal documents relating to the Pentagon inspector general's investigation into the handling of the Tenenbaum case.

Among the documents is a presentation laying out the inspector general's findings. The presentation's third slide says, "Mr. Tenenbaum experienced religious discrimination when his Judaism was weighed as a significant factor in the decision to submit him for an increase in his security clearance."

The investigation then went on to quote several Pentagon officials involved in the case against Mr. Tenenbaum acknowledging that his religion and his contacts in Israel were grounds at least in part for launching the investigation against him. A discrimination suit brought by Mr. Tenenbaum was thrown out of federal court after the government requested the judge acknowledge that the Army would need to disclose state secrets in order to mount its defense.

According to a sworn affidavit of Mr. Tenenbaum, when he took his first polygraph test in 1997, his questioner said to him: "I have done other Jews before and gotten them to confess and I'll get you to confess too," and, "I can tell you are lying by looking into your eyes."

Jewish community leaders and former Defense Department officials say Mr. Tenenbaum's case represents a disturbing phenomenon.

"There are other cases that have been brought to our attention over the years. Often people are afraid to go public for fear of further retribution, but there clearly has to be a systemic approach to this and let justice be done for those who have been discriminated against," said the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein. "This case is a blatant example of discrimination that is tolerated within the system against Jews and perhaps others. For 11 years this innocent man has suffered and paid a heavy price, personally, financially, socially. There is no compensation that is adequate for that suffering."

On the website of the Project for Government Oversight, they post an alert with links to documents:

The Project On Government Oversight has obtained a cache of documents from inside the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office that raises a variety of questions, troubling and even bizarre.

Here are some excerpts from one of the documents (PDF), with statements from some of the parties involved:

o "I also felt that he had natural religious and ethic (sic) sympathies which the Israelis could try to exploit."

Project On Government Oversight notes:

This statement is one example of the religious bias that existed as officials were deciding whether to request a pretextual upgrade of Tenenbaum's security clearance in furtherance of a counterintelligence investigation. When reviewed by LOIG DOD's Director of Employment & Equal Opportunity, this quote was found to be similar to quotes in cases in which juries found discrimination.

o "Yes...I believe that David's obvious love for culture and the land, his dream to anything that involved Israeli projects, people and consequently he spent more time with Israeli citizens than anybody else I know by far and I believe that John possibly others saw that as a risk."

o "[I] am assuming that if he were not Jewish he would not do all the things that he does, you know relative to Israel...if being a Jew is a package deal because he's a Jew he wants to do all of these things and he does all of these things with his family and yeah I think that played."

Kind of makes you wonder about the motivation behind the AIPAC case.

Technorati Tag: Anti-Semitism.

Know The Words!

Dixie Yid pointed out a new blog that came out this year--Know The Words. From his post Our Objective:

Have you ever been to a simcha where everyone is going nuts, dancing around in circles with the music blasting, and you're "singing along" to the songs? I think we've all been there, but the question is- Do we really know the words? Many a time I've found myself just mumbling along, not knowing a single word. I look around trying to read people's lips, trying to make out the words (cmon you know you've done that!). I think to myself "What am I doing??" These are the words of G-d; The words of Tanach and Chazal... the most amazing, inspirational words. Words that have the ability to really touch your Neshama. And I'm standing there pretending to know the words?!

...So that is where this blog comes in. I would like to attempt to somewhat solve this big problem of ours. Slowly but surely I hope to compile as many simcha songs as i possibly can, with their words, source, meaning, and maybe even something a little deeper...

Check out Know The Words--and the audio clips from his song index.

Technorati Tag: Judaism.

More On The Al-Dura Verdict (Updated)

The written verdict has not yet been handed down, but HonestReporting--has some of the observations of someone who was in the courtroom and spoke to some of the lawyers who saw a copy of the judgement:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

At the time of writing, the full judgment had not been released to the media. However, Take A Pen's Endre Mozes was in the courtroom delivering firsthand accounts of proceedings to HonestReporting [see his report here]. Mozes spoke with some of the lawyers involved who had seen a copy of the judgment prior to its forthcoming release.

Amongst his observations and the comments from these lawyers was the court's acceptance of the argument that protagonists operating in non-democratic regimes such as the Palestinian areas are inherently less reliable and should be carefully scrutinized as should have been the case with Talal Abu Rahma.

Essentially, the court decided the level of doubt associated with the al-Dura footage warrants deep analysis. It is perfectly legitimate to question it, not libelous.

Philippe Karsenty's efforts have opened up France 2 to scrutiny and serves as an example of how the media should be held accountable for their material and the consequences of their reporting. France 2's al-Dura footage has been shown in court to be unreliable and possibly fake. Along with a number of investigations concluding that Israel was not responsible for the bullets that allegedly killed the boy, the icon that is al-Dura - the edifice upon which so much hostility has been directed at Israel, aided and abetted by a willing media - comes toppling down.

It sounds like the court is ruling about Karsenty's right to question the film--not ruling on the film itself.

The Augean Stables writes that Charles Enderlin, who says he is going to take the case to the highest court, is emphasizing in his blog that the court did not rule the film itself a fake. Richard Landes, who writes The Augean Stables, translates:

M. Karsenty was condemned by the tribunal in Paris for having said that France2 and i, myself, produced a fake news report.

The Appeals court ruled:

1 That these accusations were, in fact, defamatory.

2 That M. Karsenty did not bring proof of this supposed “staging” and the lying character of the report.

3 But on the other hand, the Appeals court, contrary to the initial tribunal considered that Karsenty had the right to virulently criticize this report, the subject having created a notable emotion, and recognized that he had carried out his investigation that permitted the Court of Appeals to grant him the benefit of doubt in the matter of his good faith.

Obviously we do not share this last analysis and we are planning to appeal this to the highest court (Cassation).

We'll have to wait to see exactly how the court phrases it in the written verdict, expected to come out today.

UPDATE: On Pajamas Media, Phyllis Chesler reacts to the coverage by The New York Times--which has a response in a blog, but does not cover the story in the paper itself. In response to the 'evenhanded' analysis, Chesler writes:

The piece quotes Karsenty and his “supporters” in the media who claim a victory–but it also quotes France 2’s lawyers and Charles Enderlin himself who claim that the decision merely allows Karsenty to hold his “strident” point of view without considering it “libelous.” According to them, the court decision has nothing to do with the actual facts of the case, which includes footage which shows that the child is still alive on camera even after he has been pronounced dead.

You see: Both sides make good points, both sides are equally worthy, moral. According to Nizza, the “court has not released its decision, increasing the likelihood that this round in a continuing debate is far from over.”

According to the Times, nothing has been proven. To them, this all-too-academic debate continues.

You see, one man's hoax is another man's icon.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Al-Dura and Karsenty.

In Florida, Could Jewish Opposition To Obama Is About More Than Just Israel?

From the New York Times:

Some of the resistance to Mr. Obama’s candidacy seems just as rooted in anxiety about race as in anxiety about Israel. At brunch in Boynton Beach, Bob Welstein, who said he was in his 80s, said so bluntly. “Am I semi-racist? Yes,” he said.

Decades earlier, on the west side of Chicago, his mother was mugged and beaten by a black assailant, he said. It was “a beautiful Jewish neighborhood” — until black residents moved in, he said.

In speeches to Jewish groups, aides said, Mr. Obama will stress the bonds between the two groups, noting how Jewish civil rights workers were killed alongside a black one in Mississippi in 1964. But the relationship between the two outsider groups whose fortunes took different turns has also been bitter, said Hasia Diner, a professor of history at New York University.

Jews, who have long considered themselves less racially prejudiced than other Americans, have been especially wounded by black anti-Semitism, she said, which may help explain why so many Florida voters were incensed about Mr. Obama’s membership in a church whose magazine gave an award to Mr. Farrakhan.

Jack Stern, 85, sitting alone at an outdoor café in Aventura on Sunday, said he was no racist. When he was liberated from a concentration camp in 1945, black American soldiers were kinder than white ones, handing out food to the emaciated Jews, he said.

Years later, after he opened a bakery in Brooklyn, “I got disgusted, because they killed Jews,” he said, citing neighborhood crimes committed by African-Americans. “I shouldn’t say it, but it is what it is,” said Mr. Stern, who vowed not to vote for Mr. Obama. [Emphasis added]

The New York Times 'survey' of why Jews in Florida is not exactly scientific--and if it were accurate, would apply across the country and not just in Florida. There has been no indication that such is the case.

You could just as well say that the fact that the 2 men interviewed were in their 80's may point to something else.

Technorati Tag: Obama.

We Bloggers Knew This All Along!

From Scientific American, no less:

Blogging--It's Good for You
The therapeutic value of blogging becomes a focus of study

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.

Flaherty, who studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication.

Hypergrapia....hmmm. What about hyperblogia?

Read the whole thing.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Blogging.

Is The Jewish Vote Up For Grabs?

Somebody thinks so. The Republican Jewish Coalition has planned a special welcome for Barack Obama:

In advance of Sen. Barack Obama's remarks tomorrow to B'nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton, Florida, the Republican Jewish Coalition today released a new advertisement that will run in three major newspapers in South Florida.

The ad will run on Thursday, May 22 in the Palm Beach Post, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the Boca Raton News.

Here is the ad (click to enlarge)

Every presidential election year, there is talk about the Jewish vote being up for grabs, that the Republicans are making inroads. According to the article, the Jewish vote for Republican candidates has been increasing every year from 11% in 1992 to 25% in 2004.

Can you blame McCain's people for thinking that this year they will continue that trend?

Technorati Tag: The Jewish Vote.