Thursday, September 28, 2006
Road Show, Israeli Style. (Daniel Gordis)
Road Show, Israel Style
22 September 2006
Sometimes, a simple drive on a highway in the Jewish State is all is takes to restore perspective, to revive hope. A road, its exits, the places to which they lead and the history they recall – and you suddenly find yourself with faith in the future restored. If only all of us could take those drives. For especially light of these past months of
grief and of disappointment, of coming to terms with the war that we lost (as a senior IDF general admitted publicly yesterday), what we need is perspective, a reminder of where the Jewish people was just decades ago, and how far we’ve come.
I remember the feelings of Israelis a month into the war. We didn’t know what to name this new and unanticipated conflict (Lebanon II? The Hezbollah War?), but it was consuming us. History, it seemed, had had turned on us. Unilateralism had failed. Our worst fears about Gaza and the disengagement had come to be. Even the departure from Lebanon suddenly seemed like it had been a bad idea. Hope gave way to despair. Were we really in a war that we couldn’t win? What would be if we lost
this war? Would we lose the next one, too? And then what would happen to us?
Everything had changed so quickly that we weren’t even entirely certain what had happened. How, we wondered, had we gone from a peaceful (though painful) disengagement in August 2005, to the election of Olmert and his promise of yet another major move towards peace, to suddenly finding ourselves at war? How did we go from the confidence of the first days of the war when a passionate and convincing Olmert promised to dismember Hezbollah, to the messy, unrelenting and costly battles that dragged on for week after week, to the days filled with funerals and grieving parents at the side of freshly dug graves in military cemeteries across the country?
We feared for our sons at war, for the fathers who still couldn’t come home at night. We longed for our captured soldiers, and prayed they were at least being treated humanely. We wondered when the next missile would hit, and what damage it would do. We struggled to understand how it was that the mightiest army in the region could have been at war for weeks, and was still unable to put a stop to the barrage of rockets. And perhaps most importantly, we worried about the future, about what kind of lives the citizens of the Jewish State would have.
Would we become a fortress state, eternally vulnerable to threats to our homes and villages from the outside? Had Israel lost its deterrent edge? Was power in the Middle East now more evenly divided than we’d allowed ourselves to believe? Would bomb shelters once again be part of the fabric of our children’s and grandchildren’s lives, as they were for Israelis a generation ago? Were we no longer moving forward, but instead sliding back into the past from which we’d thought we’d finally escaped?
Jerusalem fared much better than the north of the country, but even here, you could feel the heaviness in the air, and I was consumed by the same despondency that had begun to characterize much of the country.
And then, one day in the middle of the war, I was driving the Jerusalem - Tel Aviv highway. This time, staring aimlessly out the windshield, I found myself looking at the metal remains scattered alongside the road. I drive the road so often that I hardly ever notice them anymore, but this time, I did. Immobile, but carefully painted so as to preserve them, lay the shells of the trucks that were destroyed as Jews tried to break the Jordanian siege on Jerusalem in 1948. The carcasses of these trucks were a reminder, a source of perspective. If you had told someone in 1948, when Jews in Jerusalem were besieged -- and out of food, water and medicine -- that we’d be OK, you’d have sounded like a dreamer. You’ve have had nothing on which to base your confidence. Except, perhaps, for perspective, and for the knowledge that in the end,
the Jews have always figured out how to survive. That there is something about our people that defies explanation, but which is real, no less real than any of the challenges we face.
The highway is a reminder of that. The road from Tel Aviv to the capital road still snakes its way up through the hills to Jerusalem. And Israel is still surrounded by enemies. But the difference? Jerusalem is rebuilt, and thriving. And the main problem that we have on that road now is the traffic. Sixty years after the siege, our problem is too many Jews in Jerusalem. Jerusalem overflowing with Jews, living in and visiting the Jewish State. It’s a good problem to have. And not one that we thought we’d have back in 1945.
Further on down the road, I pass the exit for Latrun, the site of devastating battles in the War of Independence, the same Latrun that Ariel Sharon tried to conquer when he was a young commander. But he failed. His troops literally dying of thirst in the sun-scorched battlefield because they didn’t even have canteens, Sharon had to withdraw. And today? There’s a tank museum there. And at the amphitheater there, Israeli soldiers are inducted into their army units in ceremonies overflowing with pride and with confidence, a reality wholly other than what witnesses of Sharon’s battle would have believed the future would hold.
Off the road is also Beit Horon, the site of Maccabee battles during their revolt against the Greeks. I imagine that things looked grim during that period, too. The Greeks were determined to break the backbone of the Jews who lived here then. And who would have imagined that the Greeks might not win? A small, if determined, band of priests was going to stand up to the Seleucid empire and recapture Jerusalem? The mere idea was entirely absurd. And it happened. Strength, Jewish tradition reminds us, can be measured in a multiplicity of ways.
And even further down the road, had I continued driving that far, I’d have hit the turnoff to Yavneh, the seat of rabbinic learning during the period of the Romans. By all accounts, Judaism should have died under Rome. A religion centered on Jerusalem saw its sacred city destroyed. Its citizens were exiled. A nation for whom the Temple was the very center of its identity saw the Temple Mount go up in flames, for the second time. A people whose Torah taught them that sacrifice was key to their relationship with God, could no longer perform the sacrificial rite. The Roman conquest should, by all accounts, have been the end.
But the Jewish story wasn’t done. Over the course of time, the synagogue developed and became the focus of our communities. Prayer substituted for sacrifice. And we learned to survive in exile. We yearned for Zion, but we continued to develop our civilization so that it could thrive in the Diaspora.
And now we have Zion, too. Not without travail, not without cost. The price we pay for staying, and the toll we exact from our children, is huge. The pain is sometimes unbearable. And it seems that just when that we’ve solved one challenge, another seems to rise up. Such as the war just ended, a war we lost.
But this war was only one battle in the long campaign for Jewish survival. For even if we lost the war, what matters on the eve of Rosh Hashanah is perspective. As the new Jewish year begins, and as Jews across the globe prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, we’ve got much reason for concern. An army desperately needs to be rebuilt. A country urgently needs visionary leadership. We’re still under the threat of Hezbollah’s missiles. Our kidnapped soldiers have not been returned. And Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear while Europe adopts Chamberlain’s failed posture. We have been bruised this year, and badly so.
But the response can’t be despondency. It has to be to roll up our sleeves and to get to work. It will take a very long time to rebuild Israel’s deterrent capacity and image, but it can be done. We’ve been dreaming of peace, but now we must begin to prepare for war, and in earnest. The Rosh Hashanah liturgy offers a reminder that ha-yom harat olam, “today is the birth of the world.” Today is pregnant with possibility. Today, anything is possible. We’ve been in trouble before, and we’ve always emerged. Dedicated, wiser. Stronger. Better equipped to face the future.
That can happen, if we recognize our failures and begin to respond to them. This is a season of the recognition of personal failures, of course, but now there are communal failures to acknowledge as well. How did the Jewish state allow the sick, the infirm and the poor to languish in bomb shelters, day after day, week after week, for a month, with no plan for how to care for them? How did we send our sons to the front to have them run out of water, to run out of bullets? Why were the orders issued to reservists changed so many times in the space of a few hours that they literally had no idea what they were supposed to be doing?
(And there are questions for those Jews who live abroad, too. Did those of us who live in the Diaspora give enough? Speak out enough? Care enough? Visit enough? If Israel’s survival were dependent on what we had done during the war, would Israel be here for the next generation?)
This is a sobered country, more sad than angry it seems to me. Sure, there are people clamoring for Olmert and Peretz and Halutz to resign, but not everyone’s all worked up about them. Perhaps because no alternative seems much better. And perhaps because people understand that it’s much more than these three guys … Hezbollah stockpiled missiles for years and years, and we just watched it happen. Ariel Sharon is more responsible than Olmert. But there’s not much anyone can do about that. Most people, I think, want to focus on the future, not on the past.
So during Sukkot, I’m going to take some days off with my family. Rent a place in the north, to give the people who lost so much this summer a bit of extra income. And mostly, perhaps, so we can get on the highway and drive. And on the highway, watch the exits, and see the history, and get reminded …
The Babylonians. The Romans. The Crusaders. The Ottomans. The British. The Arab Legions. They’re all gone, and we’re still here.
For now, at least. The challenge is to make this year into a year when we begin to do what we need to, to try somehow, to keep it that way.
NOTE: This “dispatch” is a revised version of an article that appeared recently as “Israel – the Eternal Nation” in the World Jewish Digest
(www.worldjewishdigest.com), Vol. IV, No. 1 (September 2006).
That version, which deals more with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is posted
on the "Articles" page of Daniel Gordis’ web site, http://www.danielgordis.org/site/.
(c) 2006 Daniel Gordis
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
MADNESS AT LARGE AT THE U.N. Almadinejad, Chavez, et al.
Are the terrorists and their leaders psychopaths?
(Miriam-downunder)
In an article entitled IS THIS MAN MAD? Jon Swain in The Australian Weekend Magazine, of 16/17 September, asks the question and states:
“As Iran’s president squares up to the West over his nuclear ambitions and rants about an impending apocalypse, even the mullahs are starting to question his sanity.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TERMINOLOGY
Madness is an inability to discern and deal with reality.
a) An imaginary world seems as interesting and more important.
(e.g. PARADISE?)
b) The two common forms of madness are paranoid schizophrenia, in which conspiracies and plots are imagined and the person with the disease loses trust in everyone and the ability to love anyone. (cf. Suicide bombers!)
c) Another common madness is psychopathic behavior, in which everything is a game and there is no right or wrong (this used to be called "moral imbecility"). This disease is dangerous because the general contact with reality is maintained, so this person can do a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people. ( Some current leaders in the ME?)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Swain: “Almadinejad’s talk at the UN of the coming of the”promised one” (i.e.. The Mahdi) and “perfect human beings” may have been mumbo-jumbo to many delegates in New York, but it is hugely relevant in Shi’ite Iran. It has not gone down with some clerics, though, reinforcing the view that Almadinejad is out of touch with reality. He was referring to the coming of the Mahdi, Shiite Islam’s long-hidden 12th imam.”
“In Qom there are voices of discontent. ‘Such talk about the Mahdi is unworthy of a president’, says Ayatollah Tabrizi, one of the city’s clerics.
And: “Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei, once a close collaborator of Khomeini, is even blunter. ‘Anyone who talks that way must have a screw loose.’”
In my opinion, looking at one description of madness above, i.e. psychopathic behavior, in which everything is a game and there is no right or wrong (this used to be called "moral imbecility") then Almadinejad is definitely a “moral imbecile” from all his pronouncements and activities to-date.
Add to it,- that this disease is dangerous because the general contact with reality is maintained, so this person can do a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people,- then one must definitely be concerned about Almadinejad,- his threats and his nuclearization ambitions for Iran.
As for the United nations, Mark Steyn in an article on JewishWorldReview (www.jewishworldreview.com/) “UN shows why it’s incapable of reform” notes that the “Iran’s president was a huge hit at the UN. Short of bringing out some burqa-clad Rockettes and doing a couple of choruses of “This is the Age of a Scary Us,” he couldn’t have been a bigger smash.”
Steyn continues: “ I said a year or two back, apropos the U.N., that it’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and blend it with a quart of dog poop the result would taste more like the latter than the former. And last week’s performances at the General Assembly were a fine illustration of that. Almadinejad and Hugo Chavez were star finalists of “UnAmerican Idol,” and, just when you need Simon Cowell, the only Brit in sight was the oleaginous Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan’s deputy, fawning over every crazy in town.”
If madness is an inability to discern and deal with reality and an imaginary world seems as interesting and more important,- then Mark Steyn believes that the UN’s problems are there because many of its members have lost the ability to discern and deal with reality.
“Anyone who thinks that the U.N. is the body to mediate Iran’s nuclearization or anything else is more deluded than Almadinejad. At this rate, the Twelfth Imam (Nahdi) will be the next Secretary General.”
(Or Moshiach?)
What to do?Alan Dershowitz believes that Iran should be expelled from the UN for Almadinejad’s behaviour. Mark Steyn’s reaction: “Yeah, right. There’s more chance of the Twelfth’s Imam eloping with Paris Hilton.”.
A letter to UN Ambassador John Bolton of the US, lobbying for this action elicited this (auto)reply:
Thank you for your message to Ambassador Bolton concerning Iran. President Bush said in the General Assembly that the UN has passed a clear resolution requiring that the regime in Tehran meet its international obligations. Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. We are working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis.
Australian Senator, Mitch Fifield wrote and article in The Herald- Sun, Melbourne:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Terror is no joke
September 25, 2006
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“IT is easy to become complacent about the threats of Islamic terrorists and their sponsor states.
The terrorists and their threats can seem remote and unreal.
Take the letter from Iran's embassy in Canberra to MPs and Senators to keep them informed on the situation in the Middle East.”
.. Article continues here.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20468948-5006029,00.html
Apparently the letter contained President Almadinejad’s speech to the UN. How the Ambassador was not embarrassed to disseminate this in Canberra is in itself puzzling! But then, he probably had no choice in the matter!
They are all mad, mad, mad! In the end we’ll be the ones hiding in fear from them, while they roam free in the world at large.
N.B. Virgin Airlines is taking bookings for flights in space already!
MM
(Miriam-downunder)
In an article entitled IS THIS MAN MAD? Jon Swain in The Australian Weekend Magazine, of 16/17 September, asks the question and states:
“As Iran’s president squares up to the West over his nuclear ambitions and rants about an impending apocalypse, even the mullahs are starting to question his sanity.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TERMINOLOGY
Madness is an inability to discern and deal with reality.
a) An imaginary world seems as interesting and more important.
(e.g. PARADISE?)
b) The two common forms of madness are paranoid schizophrenia, in which conspiracies and plots are imagined and the person with the disease loses trust in everyone and the ability to love anyone. (cf. Suicide bombers!)
c) Another common madness is psychopathic behavior, in which everything is a game and there is no right or wrong (this used to be called "moral imbecility"). This disease is dangerous because the general contact with reality is maintained, so this person can do a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people. ( Some current leaders in the ME?)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Swain: “Almadinejad’s talk at the UN of the coming of the”promised one” (i.e.. The Mahdi) and “perfect human beings” may have been mumbo-jumbo to many delegates in New York, but it is hugely relevant in Shi’ite Iran. It has not gone down with some clerics, though, reinforcing the view that Almadinejad is out of touch with reality. He was referring to the coming of the Mahdi, Shiite Islam’s long-hidden 12th imam.”
“In Qom there are voices of discontent. ‘Such talk about the Mahdi is unworthy of a president’, says Ayatollah Tabrizi, one of the city’s clerics.
And: “Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei, once a close collaborator of Khomeini, is even blunter. ‘Anyone who talks that way must have a screw loose.’”
In my opinion, looking at one description of madness above, i.e. psychopathic behavior, in which everything is a game and there is no right or wrong (this used to be called "moral imbecility") then Almadinejad is definitely a “moral imbecile” from all his pronouncements and activities to-date.
Add to it,- that this disease is dangerous because the general contact with reality is maintained, so this person can do a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people,- then one must definitely be concerned about Almadinejad,- his threats and his nuclearization ambitions for Iran.
As for the United nations, Mark Steyn in an article on JewishWorldReview (www.jewishworldreview.com/) “UN shows why it’s incapable of reform” notes that the “Iran’s president was a huge hit at the UN. Short of bringing out some burqa-clad Rockettes and doing a couple of choruses of “This is the Age of a Scary Us,” he couldn’t have been a bigger smash.”
Steyn continues: “ I said a year or two back, apropos the U.N., that it’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and blend it with a quart of dog poop the result would taste more like the latter than the former. And last week’s performances at the General Assembly were a fine illustration of that. Almadinejad and Hugo Chavez were star finalists of “UnAmerican Idol,” and, just when you need Simon Cowell, the only Brit in sight was the oleaginous Mark Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan’s deputy, fawning over every crazy in town.”
If madness is an inability to discern and deal with reality and an imaginary world seems as interesting and more important,- then Mark Steyn believes that the UN’s problems are there because many of its members have lost the ability to discern and deal with reality.
“Anyone who thinks that the U.N. is the body to mediate Iran’s nuclearization or anything else is more deluded than Almadinejad. At this rate, the Twelfth Imam (Nahdi) will be the next Secretary General.”
(Or Moshiach?)
What to do?Alan Dershowitz believes that Iran should be expelled from the UN for Almadinejad’s behaviour. Mark Steyn’s reaction: “Yeah, right. There’s more chance of the Twelfth’s Imam eloping with Paris Hilton.”.
A letter to UN Ambassador John Bolton of the US, lobbying for this action elicited this (auto)reply:
Thank you for your message to Ambassador Bolton concerning Iran. President Bush said in the General Assembly that the UN has passed a clear resolution requiring that the regime in Tehran meet its international obligations. Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. We are working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis.
Australian Senator, Mitch Fifield wrote and article in The Herald- Sun, Melbourne:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Terror is no joke
September 25, 2006
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“IT is easy to become complacent about the threats of Islamic terrorists and their sponsor states.
The terrorists and their threats can seem remote and unreal.
Take the letter from Iran's embassy in Canberra to MPs and Senators to keep them informed on the situation in the Middle East.”
.. Article continues here.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20468948-5006029,00.html
Apparently the letter contained President Almadinejad’s speech to the UN. How the Ambassador was not embarrassed to disseminate this in Canberra is in itself puzzling! But then, he probably had no choice in the matter!
They are all mad, mad, mad! In the end we’ll be the ones hiding in fear from them, while they roam free in the world at large.
N.B. Virgin Airlines is taking bookings for flights in space already!
MM
Monday, September 25, 2006
In response to "Drain the swamps where terror breeds".
(From Michael Bernet Ph.D., NY.)
Dear Kerry:
Your article was original, thought provoking, and very well written. I especially liked your "swamp" metaphor. I copied out some sentences to cite or paraphrase in my current book, which deals with the psychological aspects underlying the conflicts in the Middle East and undermining the path to peace.
You wrote:
<<>>
==I agree with most of your article, but some of it appears based on misinformation.
==For starters, Israel has been in favor of a two state resolution since November 29, 1947, when this was voted for at the UN. The neighboring Arab states--Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon thought they could do better and take over the whole country. It was a bloody war. The Arab neighbors were willing to battle to the last Palestinian Arab; the Jews were unwilling to be slaughtered. The Jews prevailed. Egypt grabbed the Gaza Strip, Transjordan grapped what it called "the West Bank" and renamed itself "the Hashemite Kingdom of [all of] Jordan." No one suggested creating an independent states for the Palestinians.
==Israelis offered genuine negotiations to establish peace. The Arabs responded with bukra fil mishmish. And with terrorism, inside Israel, and against Jews and Israelis anywhere. Every now and again Israelis responded forcefully to a particularly brutal attack. Didn't bring about peace, either.
==King Abdullah wanted to make peace with Israel; he was assassinated for his troubles in the precincts of el-Aksa after Friday prayers. Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel; he was assassinated for his troubles during a proud military review. In 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to wipe out Israel in conjunction with Syria and with Jordan. He ordered the UN to get out of the way so he could attack unimpeded. The Israeli aairforce managed to hit his airfields an hour before he had planned to hit theirs. The Israelis won. The Palestinians rejoiced. Literally. Many begged to be incorporated into the Jewish state. I guess you weren't there at the time. I was. I was a journalist. I wrote a book.
==The Israelis offered to give back almost every square inch in return for peace and an end to threats and terror. The Arabs met in Khartoum and vowed never to accept Israel's existence, never to negotiate with Israel, never to make peace with Israel. The first "settlements" went up nearly a decade after the events of Khartoum, largely as a bargaining point, "the longer you refuse to make peace and stop killing, the less territory you're likely to get.
==Israel risked much when it negotiated what became the Oslo agreement in the early 1990s, but was fully resigned to co-existing with an independent and peaceful Palestinian neighbor-state. Immediately after the agreement was signed, Yasir Arafat appeared at a rally in South Africa and informed his supporters there that the treaty was a sham and that he intended to eventually destroy Israel.
==Again and again, Israel thinks it is close to a negotiated peace that is fair to both sides; again and again, one Arab politico or another will intervene to make that impossible, and at the same time, a bunch of lobotomized idiots will blow themselves up among a group of totally blameless Israeli civilians to make sure no peace can be made.
==There is no word in Hebrew for hegemony. Nothing similar exists in the thinking and vocabulary of most Israelis (excluding a small lunatic-fringe minority). For your information, two responsible polls of Palestinian public opinion held in the past two weeks, shown that the vast majority (close to 90+%) reject a two-state offer and reject peace with Israel. They are intoxicated by the victories of their various leaders and heroes and appear convinced that all of Israel is ripe to fall into their hands.
==I am happy for you that you put so much faith in "the statement by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails calling for a Palestinian state behind the 1967 borders." The purpose of the paper can be seen on your Monopoly gameboard. They're playing it as a "Get out of Jail" card. Many are properly convicted brutal killers. Many were prisoners in the past who were released by the Israelis only after they promised to renounce all acts of terrorism--and then were caught at it again. Do you think it would be wise to allow jailed sex-offenders and convicted wife-beaters in Australia to design Australia's foreign policy or to rewite its constitution?
==you say "Hamas will have to bow to this and engage in an unfolding peace process." You gonna make them? They've said repeatedly, adamantly, that they will not settle for a Jewish state in what is supposed to be the new Islamic Caliphate with its seat in Jerusalem. Go ahead, talk to them--and publish their response.
==Have you read my book, "The Time of the Burning Sun: Six Days of War, Twelve Weeks of Hope"? [see http://www.mem-ber.net/work3.htm] It is a highly current book, giving perspective to the events that led to Israel's occupation of the contended areas (West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights) in the war of 1967; a unique "I was there" recounting of those events, in the words of civilians and combatants on all sides. It movingly tells of the euphoria, among Jews and Arabs alike, the hopes for an equitable and lasting peace that then seemed readily attainable--until the hopes were dashed, twelve weeks later, by the Arab League. The book serves as a valuable tool when you find yourself caught up in arguments about Israel's "aggression," and alleged refusals to make peace. ==You can order my book directly at mBernet@aol.com at US$15.00 a copy. Postage in USA, 10-day delivery, $2.40 each; priority postage $4.50 for up to three copies to one address. Overseas: US$5.00 for priority postage one volume; $10.50 for two or three. Send the appropriate payment (from any credit card) through http://www.paypal.com/ together with your request, and names/addresses of recipients. Payment to mBernet@aol.com. You can read comments and look through the book at http://www.amazon.com/.
Cordially
Michael Bernet, Ph.D.
New York
Dear Kerry:
Your article was original, thought provoking, and very well written. I especially liked your "swamp" metaphor. I copied out some sentences to cite or paraphrase in my current book, which deals with the psychological aspects underlying the conflicts in the Middle East and undermining the path to peace.
You wrote:
<<>>
==I agree with most of your article, but some of it appears based on misinformation.
==For starters, Israel has been in favor of a two state resolution since November 29, 1947, when this was voted for at the UN. The neighboring Arab states--Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon thought they could do better and take over the whole country. It was a bloody war. The Arab neighbors were willing to battle to the last Palestinian Arab; the Jews were unwilling to be slaughtered. The Jews prevailed. Egypt grabbed the Gaza Strip, Transjordan grapped what it called "the West Bank" and renamed itself "the Hashemite Kingdom of [all of] Jordan." No one suggested creating an independent states for the Palestinians.
==Israelis offered genuine negotiations to establish peace. The Arabs responded with bukra fil mishmish. And with terrorism, inside Israel, and against Jews and Israelis anywhere. Every now and again Israelis responded forcefully to a particularly brutal attack. Didn't bring about peace, either.
==King Abdullah wanted to make peace with Israel; he was assassinated for his troubles in the precincts of el-Aksa after Friday prayers. Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel; he was assassinated for his troubles during a proud military review. In 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to wipe out Israel in conjunction with Syria and with Jordan. He ordered the UN to get out of the way so he could attack unimpeded. The Israeli aairforce managed to hit his airfields an hour before he had planned to hit theirs. The Israelis won. The Palestinians rejoiced. Literally. Many begged to be incorporated into the Jewish state. I guess you weren't there at the time. I was. I was a journalist. I wrote a book.
==The Israelis offered to give back almost every square inch in return for peace and an end to threats and terror. The Arabs met in Khartoum and vowed never to accept Israel's existence, never to negotiate with Israel, never to make peace with Israel. The first "settlements" went up nearly a decade after the events of Khartoum, largely as a bargaining point, "the longer you refuse to make peace and stop killing, the less territory you're likely to get.
==Israel risked much when it negotiated what became the Oslo agreement in the early 1990s, but was fully resigned to co-existing with an independent and peaceful Palestinian neighbor-state. Immediately after the agreement was signed, Yasir Arafat appeared at a rally in South Africa and informed his supporters there that the treaty was a sham and that he intended to eventually destroy Israel.
==Again and again, Israel thinks it is close to a negotiated peace that is fair to both sides; again and again, one Arab politico or another will intervene to make that impossible, and at the same time, a bunch of lobotomized idiots will blow themselves up among a group of totally blameless Israeli civilians to make sure no peace can be made.
==There is no word in Hebrew for hegemony. Nothing similar exists in the thinking and vocabulary of most Israelis (excluding a small lunatic-fringe minority). For your information, two responsible polls of Palestinian public opinion held in the past two weeks, shown that the vast majority (close to 90+%) reject a two-state offer and reject peace with Israel. They are intoxicated by the victories of their various leaders and heroes and appear convinced that all of Israel is ripe to fall into their hands.
==I am happy for you that you put so much faith in "the statement by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails calling for a Palestinian state behind the 1967 borders." The purpose of the paper can be seen on your Monopoly gameboard. They're playing it as a "Get out of Jail" card. Many are properly convicted brutal killers. Many were prisoners in the past who were released by the Israelis only after they promised to renounce all acts of terrorism--and then were caught at it again. Do you think it would be wise to allow jailed sex-offenders and convicted wife-beaters in Australia to design Australia's foreign policy or to rewite its constitution?
==you say "Hamas will have to bow to this and engage in an unfolding peace process." You gonna make them? They've said repeatedly, adamantly, that they will not settle for a Jewish state in what is supposed to be the new Islamic Caliphate with its seat in Jerusalem. Go ahead, talk to them--and publish their response.
==Have you read my book, "The Time of the Burning Sun: Six Days of War, Twelve Weeks of Hope"? [see http://www.mem-ber.net/work3.htm] It is a highly current book, giving perspective to the events that led to Israel's occupation of the contended areas (West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights) in the war of 1967; a unique "I was there" recounting of those events, in the words of civilians and combatants on all sides. It movingly tells of the euphoria, among Jews and Arabs alike, the hopes for an equitable and lasting peace that then seemed readily attainable--until the hopes were dashed, twelve weeks later, by the Arab League. The book serves as a valuable tool when you find yourself caught up in arguments about Israel's "aggression," and alleged refusals to make peace. ==You can order my book directly at mBernet@aol.com at US$15.00 a copy. Postage in USA, 10-day delivery, $2.40 each; priority postage $4.50 for up to three copies to one address. Overseas: US$5.00 for priority postage one volume; $10.50 for two or three. Send the appropriate payment (from any credit card) through http://www.paypal.com/ together with your request, and names/addresses of recipients. Payment to mBernet@aol.com. You can read comments and look through the book at http://www.amazon.com/.
Cordially
Michael Bernet, Ph.D.
New York
DRAIN THE SWAMPS WHERE TERROR BREEDS.
THE AUSTRALIAN.
Kerry Langer: Drain the swamps where terror breeds.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
An anti-Vietnam war protester calls on her left-wing comrades to ditch Noam Chomsky and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and to support the Bush policy of exporting democracy to the Middle East
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
25sep06
GRIPPING a book by Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez crosses himself and calls George W. Bush the devil - at the same time vowing solidarity with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Strange times indeed when Chomsky can be embraced by supporters of Islamo-fascism in their struggle against the US as Great Satan.On the home front, the cacophony of voices bewailing and predicting disaster, instability and civil war across the Middle East has reached fever pitch. "Left" opponents of the war have allied themselves with many on the Right who initially supported the war but subsequently became panic-stricken at the reality of the radical changes unleashed by neo-con policy.
In the 1960s and '70s I played an active role in the Vietnam War protest movement. In that war I was on the side of the National Liberation Front and, with thousands of other Australians, I celebrated when the US was defeated.
For the same reason that I opposed the US in Vietnam I supported its overthrow of the fascist regime in Iraq. The genuine Left has always hated fascism and supported the spread of progress, democracy and modernity.
There is a deep misunderstanding of the radical strategic change spearheaded by Bush. This is the result of consistent attempts by the Bush administration to describe the new policy in misleading, lowest common denominator terms as a war on terror. But capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and individual terrorists was never what this war was about. The reality is that in order to eliminate terrorism, the US has no choice but to attack the underlying forces of reaction and oppression that create it.
On the website that I write for (www.lastsuperpower.net) we have characterised US policy by using the metaphor draining the swamps. Eliminating individual mosquitoes is a losing battle, it's necessary to drain the swamp that breeds them. The same applies to ridding the world of terrorism.
From this perspective, it becomes clear that there are self-interested and historical reasons to explain why the most far-sighted members of the US ruling elite are pushing for a democratic Middle East. Their old policy of maintaining stability in the region by propping up the worst dictatorships had become a liability. In the 21st century their interests as a relatively declining power are clearly tied to the spread of globalisation and modernity.
This is why the US went into Iraq - not just to topple a brutal tyrant, but to launch a historically necessary democratic revolution intended to trigger change across the entire region.
Many on the Right supported the overthrow of Saddam but imagined the easy installation of a pro-American democracy there. They were taken by surprise when it turned out that neo-con policy was to turn things upside down by completely dismantling the Baathist infrastructure. When this unleashed an anti-democratic counter-revolution which provoked an upsurge of sectarian violence, they despaired. And when the Iraqis elected a strongly Islamist government they interpreted that as a defeat. "What's going on?" they ask. 'Clearly Bush doesn't know what he is doing."
However, the US cannot simply impose democracy in the same way that it used to impose puppet governments. This is an entirely different scenario. It's not possible to just march in and establish a democratic culture. Having devoted decades to maintaining the Middle East as a stagnating swamp, rife with backward, fundamentalist and anti-Western ideology, democratisation requires a complete destabilisation of the old order.
The initial stages necessitate the inclusion of some quite reactionary, fundamentalist groups and will continue to result in elected governments that are neither strongly secular nor pro-American. This chaotic and painful process is the only way to undo the damage, move toward democracy and defeat terror. As with all revolutions it's not a dinner party.
Rather than attempting to win support for their actual policy, the neo-cons have attempted to unleash this cascade of change to the point of no return. After launching the war with the false claim that it was all about weapons of mass destruction they have continued to duck and weave. Given the minuscule chance of having convinced Congress to fund such a revolutionary chain of events, this makes real-world sense. Fortunately things have gone so far that even a Democrat president is likely to have no choice but to stay the course.
The establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is a central task. Propping up Israel at the expense of the Palestinians is a policy that they can no longer afford.
Bush is the first US president to have talked seriously of the necessity for a Palestinian state. Quite cleverly, he has managed to create the perception that he is the most pro-Israel President in history while at the same time also insisting that Israel must withdraw from both Gaza and the West Bank.
Due to the continuing (very careful) US rhetoric about the necessity to defend Israel against terrorism, many from the Right who supported the war have not yet caught on to this. However if we look at what is really happening, we can see that Ehud Olmert (and previously Ariel Sharon) has been cleverly maneuvered into reframing victory as "an end to terrorist attacks on Israel" rather than as a continuation of their hegemony over the occupied territories.
Despite the election of Hamas, all indications suggest a majority of Palestinians want a cease-fire with Israel and support the so-called prisoner's document (a statement by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails calling for a Palestinian state behind the 1967 borders). Hamas will have to bow to this and engage in an unfolding peace process.
As in Iraq, the end game will be complex and confusing. But if we interpret events in the light of what we can see the US must do, rather than falling for the rhetoric emanating from both sides, the trend is clear.
Those who oppose current US policy have failed to look beyond the superficial appearance of things to see the deeper reality. The pseudo-Left opposition is driven by a backward-looking victim mentality focused on complaining about how bad things are rather than on how to change them. Objectively they are united with the conservative Right, which is similarly beset by doom and gloom due to not yet having come to terms with the very limited options available to the last superpower.
Quite simply: It's no longer possible for the US to hold back the spread of democracy and modernity across the planet. This is something that we on the Left should celebrate, support and take advantage of.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kerry Langer, a Melbourne writer, was a Vietnam War protester in the late 1960s and early '70s. She is a regular contributor to www.lastsuperpower.net.
Kerry Langer: Drain the swamps where terror breeds.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
An anti-Vietnam war protester calls on her left-wing comrades to ditch Noam Chomsky and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and to support the Bush policy of exporting democracy to the Middle East
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
25sep06
GRIPPING a book by Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez crosses himself and calls George W. Bush the devil - at the same time vowing solidarity with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Strange times indeed when Chomsky can be embraced by supporters of Islamo-fascism in their struggle against the US as Great Satan.On the home front, the cacophony of voices bewailing and predicting disaster, instability and civil war across the Middle East has reached fever pitch. "Left" opponents of the war have allied themselves with many on the Right who initially supported the war but subsequently became panic-stricken at the reality of the radical changes unleashed by neo-con policy.
In the 1960s and '70s I played an active role in the Vietnam War protest movement. In that war I was on the side of the National Liberation Front and, with thousands of other Australians, I celebrated when the US was defeated.
For the same reason that I opposed the US in Vietnam I supported its overthrow of the fascist regime in Iraq. The genuine Left has always hated fascism and supported the spread of progress, democracy and modernity.
There is a deep misunderstanding of the radical strategic change spearheaded by Bush. This is the result of consistent attempts by the Bush administration to describe the new policy in misleading, lowest common denominator terms as a war on terror. But capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and individual terrorists was never what this war was about. The reality is that in order to eliminate terrorism, the US has no choice but to attack the underlying forces of reaction and oppression that create it.
On the website that I write for (www.lastsuperpower.net) we have characterised US policy by using the metaphor draining the swamps. Eliminating individual mosquitoes is a losing battle, it's necessary to drain the swamp that breeds them. The same applies to ridding the world of terrorism.
From this perspective, it becomes clear that there are self-interested and historical reasons to explain why the most far-sighted members of the US ruling elite are pushing for a democratic Middle East. Their old policy of maintaining stability in the region by propping up the worst dictatorships had become a liability. In the 21st century their interests as a relatively declining power are clearly tied to the spread of globalisation and modernity.
This is why the US went into Iraq - not just to topple a brutal tyrant, but to launch a historically necessary democratic revolution intended to trigger change across the entire region.
Many on the Right supported the overthrow of Saddam but imagined the easy installation of a pro-American democracy there. They were taken by surprise when it turned out that neo-con policy was to turn things upside down by completely dismantling the Baathist infrastructure. When this unleashed an anti-democratic counter-revolution which provoked an upsurge of sectarian violence, they despaired. And when the Iraqis elected a strongly Islamist government they interpreted that as a defeat. "What's going on?" they ask. 'Clearly Bush doesn't know what he is doing."
However, the US cannot simply impose democracy in the same way that it used to impose puppet governments. This is an entirely different scenario. It's not possible to just march in and establish a democratic culture. Having devoted decades to maintaining the Middle East as a stagnating swamp, rife with backward, fundamentalist and anti-Western ideology, democratisation requires a complete destabilisation of the old order.
The initial stages necessitate the inclusion of some quite reactionary, fundamentalist groups and will continue to result in elected governments that are neither strongly secular nor pro-American. This chaotic and painful process is the only way to undo the damage, move toward democracy and defeat terror. As with all revolutions it's not a dinner party.
Rather than attempting to win support for their actual policy, the neo-cons have attempted to unleash this cascade of change to the point of no return. After launching the war with the false claim that it was all about weapons of mass destruction they have continued to duck and weave. Given the minuscule chance of having convinced Congress to fund such a revolutionary chain of events, this makes real-world sense. Fortunately things have gone so far that even a Democrat president is likely to have no choice but to stay the course.
The establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is a central task. Propping up Israel at the expense of the Palestinians is a policy that they can no longer afford.
Bush is the first US president to have talked seriously of the necessity for a Palestinian state. Quite cleverly, he has managed to create the perception that he is the most pro-Israel President in history while at the same time also insisting that Israel must withdraw from both Gaza and the West Bank.
Due to the continuing (very careful) US rhetoric about the necessity to defend Israel against terrorism, many from the Right who supported the war have not yet caught on to this. However if we look at what is really happening, we can see that Ehud Olmert (and previously Ariel Sharon) has been cleverly maneuvered into reframing victory as "an end to terrorist attacks on Israel" rather than as a continuation of their hegemony over the occupied territories.
Despite the election of Hamas, all indications suggest a majority of Palestinians want a cease-fire with Israel and support the so-called prisoner's document (a statement by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails calling for a Palestinian state behind the 1967 borders). Hamas will have to bow to this and engage in an unfolding peace process.
As in Iraq, the end game will be complex and confusing. But if we interpret events in the light of what we can see the US must do, rather than falling for the rhetoric emanating from both sides, the trend is clear.
Those who oppose current US policy have failed to look beyond the superficial appearance of things to see the deeper reality. The pseudo-Left opposition is driven by a backward-looking victim mentality focused on complaining about how bad things are rather than on how to change them. Objectively they are united with the conservative Right, which is similarly beset by doom and gloom due to not yet having come to terms with the very limited options available to the last superpower.
Quite simply: It's no longer possible for the US to hold back the spread of democracy and modernity across the planet. This is something that we on the Left should celebrate, support and take advantage of.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kerry Langer, a Melbourne writer, was a Vietnam War protester in the late 1960s and early '70s. She is a regular contributor to www.lastsuperpower.net.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Why hasn't religion brought peace to the ME?
Published: Friday, September 22, 2006
http://www.the-tidings.com/2006/0922/peacesym.htm
Why hasn't religion brought peace to the Middle East?
By R. W. Dellinger
The greatest problem that religion must answer today is that it has not been a source of peace in the Middle East --- in fact, religious leaders have been the ones leading the charge for war.
Oftentimes in a society --- even in so-called religious nations --- there are forces more powerful motivating people than their faith.
Jesus is a model for peace, whose greatest political temptation --- and triumph --- was not joining the zealots of his day to wage a violent civil war against Roman rule.
These points were stressed by a rabbi, Muslim Imam and Mennonite Christian during a Sept. 14 "Peace Symposium" at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes. The evening event, which drew some 100 people, marked not only the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, but also the International Day of Peace on Sept. 21.
The symposium, part of an 11-day campaign for peace, was a collaboration among Marymount's Campus Ministry, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and Office of International Students Programs. Ken Zanca, professor of philosophy and religious studies, moderated the program.
"The great problem that religion must answer --- in fact, the indictment against religion --- is that it has not functioned at all in the Middle East as a source of peace," declared Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of the Hillel Center at UCLA. "No prominent religious leader stands out, either in the Jewish community or Muslim community, in pursuing peace. Instead, religious leaders are leading the charge for war."
He said today's religious authorities have to ask themselves why religion isn't perceived by most people as being a force for good. And the key issue is whether religions can transcend self-interests and "self-rightedness" to achieve their lofty goal of a "universal unity" where all people celebrate the oneness of being.
Rabbi Seidler-Feller also stressed that the "magnificent secret" of monotheism is not that any one has a monopoly on the truth, but that members of all three great faiths are linked by the image of God. But too many contemporary believers, he said, have "zero tolerance" for members of other faiths, creating contempt and, too often, bloodshed.
A cleansing of hateful teachings in Judaism, Islam and Christianity must take place, noted the rabbi. And if these texts can't be reinterpreted, they must be refuted. Other "sources of darkness" in the three religions are nationalism vs. God, a reborn tribalism separating people from the common good and a return to biblical literalism.
In addition, he said, Jews often see themselves as victims, which is harmful because victims claim no moral responsibility.
Rabbi Seidler-Feller, however, stressed that there were many "counterforces" in the Bible against aggression and warfare, including God telling David that he could not build the temple because his hands were bloody. Moreover, the patriarch of all three great monotheistic faiths, Abraham, was "kept" for sacrificing Isaac.
"The angel of Yahweh saved his son," he pointed out. "And the grace of Abraham was that he realized God prevented that violent act. Because that God could not be cruel."
What motivates believers
Imam Jihad Turk said Islam was a continuation of the faith tradition of Abraham as seen in the teachings of Moses and Jesus - an example to be followed, not questioned and negated.
He recalled the cold-blooded killing of a Baghdad girl after she had been taken hostage, ransomed and returned to her family. But to save the family's honor, her uncle shot her.
"As a person of religion, it's my hope that religion is the primary mover in my life and in people's lives," said the director of religious affairs at the Islamic Center of Southern California. "But as this story typifies, these are often times forces more powerful in society that motivate people to do what they do. It was the pressure of this tribal society to make this man do what he did."
Jihad Turk said one statement of the prophet Mohammed stood out above all others for him: "I have come for no other reason than to teach good conduct, to protect your character, for the preservation of human thought, life, property and family." And the five major principles of his faith all spring from this.
He pointed out that Islam is a religion of inclusion, not exclusion. No one has to be a Muslim to go to heaven. He also thought it is important to identify and acknowledge verses in the Koran that supposedly justify harming others. He emphasized that these passages have to be contextualized and reinterpreted for today's followers.
"Historical context must be taken into account, too," he said. "They were not written for all humanity for all time."
As a negative force, Jihad Turk cited Wahhabism, the fundamentalistic perception of Islam that has its roots in the 18th century and still flourishes in Saudi Arabia, which has been used to justify acts of terror and holy wars.
"So we have a deep challenge in the Islamic world," he said. "And it is an urgency for ourselves to resolve this problem. Because by far the biggest victims of the Islamic extremists in the world today - if you look at Iraq - are Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
"And it's important for us as a Muslim community in the United States of America, where we have this freedom, this example of a pluralistic society, to really bring that example and develop a theology that can then be used in directing moral behavior and to empower Muslims in other nations to reflect the human dignity of all people."
'The greatest peacemaker'
Kent Davis Sensenig, a Ph.D. candidate in Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, reported that he has been studying "just peacemaking practices," including trying to build bridges between evangelical Christians and American Muslims. From 1963 to 1973, his parents were part of an American Mennonite mission team in Vietnam and conscientious objectors to war.
"My family experience shows me how God blesses nonviolent approaches to peacemaking, especially when we are going to cross cultural boundaries, take personal risks and learn new languages," he said. "Those willing to die for God's cause, but not kill for it, are called children of God by Jesus in the beatitudes."
Sensenig pointed out that Jesus repeatedly rejected joining with violent zealots against their repressive Roman rulers. Instead he sought a totally peaceful way of changing society --- and the hearts of humankind.
"That Jesus was the greatest peacemaker of his day can be seen in the fact that his band of disciples included both former zealots and revolutionaries against Rome and former tax collectors, ex-collaborators with Rome," he said.
"Together, they led a nonviolent revolution to subvert pagan domination with transforming initiatives of love and justice, like those found in the Sermon on the Mount. The apostle Paul called this overcoming evil with good in his letter to the Romans."
copyright The Tidings Corporation ©2004Contact us at: info@the-tidings.com
http://www.the-tidings.com/2006/0922/peacesym.htm
Why hasn't religion brought peace to the Middle East?
By R. W. Dellinger
The greatest problem that religion must answer today is that it has not been a source of peace in the Middle East --- in fact, religious leaders have been the ones leading the charge for war.
Oftentimes in a society --- even in so-called religious nations --- there are forces more powerful motivating people than their faith.
Jesus is a model for peace, whose greatest political temptation --- and triumph --- was not joining the zealots of his day to wage a violent civil war against Roman rule.
These points were stressed by a rabbi, Muslim Imam and Mennonite Christian during a Sept. 14 "Peace Symposium" at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes. The evening event, which drew some 100 people, marked not only the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, but also the International Day of Peace on Sept. 21.
The symposium, part of an 11-day campaign for peace, was a collaboration among Marymount's Campus Ministry, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and Office of International Students Programs. Ken Zanca, professor of philosophy and religious studies, moderated the program.
"The great problem that religion must answer --- in fact, the indictment against religion --- is that it has not functioned at all in the Middle East as a source of peace," declared Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of the Hillel Center at UCLA. "No prominent religious leader stands out, either in the Jewish community or Muslim community, in pursuing peace. Instead, religious leaders are leading the charge for war."
He said today's religious authorities have to ask themselves why religion isn't perceived by most people as being a force for good. And the key issue is whether religions can transcend self-interests and "self-rightedness" to achieve their lofty goal of a "universal unity" where all people celebrate the oneness of being.
Rabbi Seidler-Feller also stressed that the "magnificent secret" of monotheism is not that any one has a monopoly on the truth, but that members of all three great faiths are linked by the image of God. But too many contemporary believers, he said, have "zero tolerance" for members of other faiths, creating contempt and, too often, bloodshed.
A cleansing of hateful teachings in Judaism, Islam and Christianity must take place, noted the rabbi. And if these texts can't be reinterpreted, they must be refuted. Other "sources of darkness" in the three religions are nationalism vs. God, a reborn tribalism separating people from the common good and a return to biblical literalism.
In addition, he said, Jews often see themselves as victims, which is harmful because victims claim no moral responsibility.
Rabbi Seidler-Feller, however, stressed that there were many "counterforces" in the Bible against aggression and warfare, including God telling David that he could not build the temple because his hands were bloody. Moreover, the patriarch of all three great monotheistic faiths, Abraham, was "kept" for sacrificing Isaac.
"The angel of Yahweh saved his son," he pointed out. "And the grace of Abraham was that he realized God prevented that violent act. Because that God could not be cruel."
What motivates believers
Imam Jihad Turk said Islam was a continuation of the faith tradition of Abraham as seen in the teachings of Moses and Jesus - an example to be followed, not questioned and negated.
He recalled the cold-blooded killing of a Baghdad girl after she had been taken hostage, ransomed and returned to her family. But to save the family's honor, her uncle shot her.
"As a person of religion, it's my hope that religion is the primary mover in my life and in people's lives," said the director of religious affairs at the Islamic Center of Southern California. "But as this story typifies, these are often times forces more powerful in society that motivate people to do what they do. It was the pressure of this tribal society to make this man do what he did."
Jihad Turk said one statement of the prophet Mohammed stood out above all others for him: "I have come for no other reason than to teach good conduct, to protect your character, for the preservation of human thought, life, property and family." And the five major principles of his faith all spring from this.
He pointed out that Islam is a religion of inclusion, not exclusion. No one has to be a Muslim to go to heaven. He also thought it is important to identify and acknowledge verses in the Koran that supposedly justify harming others. He emphasized that these passages have to be contextualized and reinterpreted for today's followers.
"Historical context must be taken into account, too," he said. "They were not written for all humanity for all time."
As a negative force, Jihad Turk cited Wahhabism, the fundamentalistic perception of Islam that has its roots in the 18th century and still flourishes in Saudi Arabia, which has been used to justify acts of terror and holy wars.
"So we have a deep challenge in the Islamic world," he said. "And it is an urgency for ourselves to resolve this problem. Because by far the biggest victims of the Islamic extremists in the world today - if you look at Iraq - are Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
"And it's important for us as a Muslim community in the United States of America, where we have this freedom, this example of a pluralistic society, to really bring that example and develop a theology that can then be used in directing moral behavior and to empower Muslims in other nations to reflect the human dignity of all people."
'The greatest peacemaker'
Kent Davis Sensenig, a Ph.D. candidate in Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, reported that he has been studying "just peacemaking practices," including trying to build bridges between evangelical Christians and American Muslims. From 1963 to 1973, his parents were part of an American Mennonite mission team in Vietnam and conscientious objectors to war.
"My family experience shows me how God blesses nonviolent approaches to peacemaking, especially when we are going to cross cultural boundaries, take personal risks and learn new languages," he said. "Those willing to die for God's cause, but not kill for it, are called children of God by Jesus in the beatitudes."
Sensenig pointed out that Jesus repeatedly rejected joining with violent zealots against their repressive Roman rulers. Instead he sought a totally peaceful way of changing society --- and the hearts of humankind.
"That Jesus was the greatest peacemaker of his day can be seen in the fact that his band of disciples included both former zealots and revolutionaries against Rome and former tax collectors, ex-collaborators with Rome," he said.
"Together, they led a nonviolent revolution to subvert pagan domination with transforming initiatives of love and justice, like those found in the Sermon on the Mount. The apostle Paul called this overcoming evil with good in his letter to the Romans."
copyright The Tidings Corporation ©2004Contact us at: info@the-tidings.com
Thursday, September 21, 2006
ROSH HASHANAH.The New Year of 5767: and counting!
Subject: 5767 and counting
This week we Jews will begin our 5767th year on
this earth! Who would have
believed this possible? If anyone had told Abraham
that his people would be
around this long he probably would have been
astounded.
Imagine, we did this without beheading anyone,
without a single suicide
bomber, without kidnapping and murdering school
children, without slaughtering
Olympic athletes, and without flying airplanes into
skyscrapers.
We lasted this long despite 400 years as slaves in
Egypt, 40 years of
wandering in the desert, the mighty Roman army who
nailed us to ten thousand
crosses; despite the best efforts of the Christian
crusaders, the Spanish
Inquisition, Hitler's third Reich, Stalin's gulags,
Arab wars of annihilation, 100
years of Arab and Arafat terrorism, and 800
hate-filled UN resolutions!
How did we Jews do it? We did it by concentrating
our efforts on education,
love of family, faith, hard work, helping one
another and a passionate
dedication to life no matter what evil befell us!
We hung in there in hope the rest of the world
would one day overcome its
hatreds, jealousies, violence and join us in a life
of cooperation and mutual
respect.
We're not there yet, but we're still hopeful. And
when we enter our places
of worship next weekend, this is what we'll pray
for with all the strength in
our hearts:
Best wishes for a New Year filled with good health,
much happiness, laughter, success,
joy, and kindness, and may this coming year also bring
peace and security to all.
5767 and counting !See the "wishful thinking future"here:
http://www.jerusalemonline.com/newyear.asp
This week we Jews will begin our 5767th year on
this earth! Who would have
believed this possible? If anyone had told Abraham
that his people would be
around this long he probably would have been
astounded.
Imagine, we did this without beheading anyone,
without a single suicide
bomber, without kidnapping and murdering school
children, without slaughtering
Olympic athletes, and without flying airplanes into
skyscrapers.
We lasted this long despite 400 years as slaves in
Egypt, 40 years of
wandering in the desert, the mighty Roman army who
nailed us to ten thousand
crosses; despite the best efforts of the Christian
crusaders, the Spanish
Inquisition, Hitler's third Reich, Stalin's gulags,
Arab wars of annihilation, 100
years of Arab and Arafat terrorism, and 800
hate-filled UN resolutions!
How did we Jews do it? We did it by concentrating
our efforts on education,
love of family, faith, hard work, helping one
another and a passionate
dedication to life no matter what evil befell us!
We hung in there in hope the rest of the world
would one day overcome its
hatreds, jealousies, violence and join us in a life
of cooperation and mutual
respect.
We're not there yet, but we're still hopeful. And
when we enter our places
of worship next weekend, this is what we'll pray
for with all the strength in
our hearts:
Best wishes for a New Year filled with good health,
much happiness, laughter, success,
joy, and kindness, and may this coming year also bring
peace and security to all.
5767 and counting !See the "wishful thinking future"here:
http://www.jerusalemonline.com/newyear.asp
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Oriana Fallaci: Champion of civilization
Oriana Fallaci: Champion of civilization
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMY K. ROSENTHAL, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 17, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My day begins like any other. I roll out of bed, make coffee and turn on the computer to touch base with my employer in Rome, the newspaper Il Foglio. But today is different. I'm informed that Oriana Fallaci died at age 77 in her home town of Florence. I'm stunned.
The article I'm currently writing on terrorism no longer has my full attention and my thoughts turn in silent reflection toward the small, but fearless Italian journalist and author. We all knew she was ill and battling cancer for years, but seeing that she had fought off death for more than a decade, it seemed as if she was immortal.
The image of her with dark sunglasses on, cigarette in hand, churning out endless smoke and declaiming true and politically incorrect words would defy time and be with us forever.
As the day unrolls, friends and colleagues call from Italy saying, "Fallaci died, have you heard?" Yes, I tell them, as I repeat for what seems the umpteenth time, "Another great has perished."
FOR THE Italians, whether they loved or despised her, today marks the loss of one of their modern icons. Fallaci was quintessentially Italian - glamorous, passionate and polemical. She reflected a generation which, in its youth, knew what freedom and anti-conformism meant as it battled fascism and Nazi occupation during World War II.
As a young girl, Fallaci smuggled explosives across Nazi checkpoints in Florence. Her father was a leader of the Italian resistance who fought against Mussolini's dictatorship. Her great-great grandfather was a hero of the Italian Risorgimento.
Undoubtedly, that sort of commitment to fight tyranny and uphold freedom inspired the woman who would go on to become one of Italy's most renowned journalists. This is the woman who followed Vietnam and other wars in the Middle East and South America and who jetted around the world to interview famous and infamous leaders, such as Golda Meir, Henry Kissinger, Willy Brandt, the shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi, Yasser Arafat, Indira Gandhi and Deng Xiaoping. As the title of her book Interview with History hints, she was one of history's foremost interviewers.
AFTER A dozen books, including the international best-seller Letter to a Child Never Born, in which Fallaci imagines speaking to a child in the womb and asking if it is right or wrong to give it life, and A Man, which immortalized the martyred poet and Greek resistance leader Alekos Panagoulis, the great love of her life, Fallaci decided to retire and move to New York.
She would come there to live a reclusive existence, and upon being diagnosed with cancer, to dedicate her remaining days writing a novel, which the childless author often affectionately referred to as "my child."
However, her grand plan was upset on September 11, 2001. Shocked, Fallaci chucked aside her novel and broke her 10-year media silence by responding with a long article published in Italy's Corriere della Sera on September 29, 2001. There, she spoke out against extremism, Islamo-fascism and terrorism and denounced mediocre leaders, especially in Europe. Her message was a call to the West to uphold its civilization and its core values against the forces which seek to destroy us.
That article eventually became a book, The Rage and the Pride, which sold more than a million copies in Italy and was translated into numerous languages.
The tone of the article (and later book) was thought to be extreme. But its overriding message was clear - Westerners had to fight back or be ready to capitulate to Islam's jihad.
ALTHOUGH Fallaci is now gone, her resounding message five years after September 11, after Madrid, after London, after so many other terrorist attacks, remains alive. In her follow-up book, The Force of Reason, she again took to task her fellow Europeans for their "mumbo-jumbo multiculturalism," political correctness and the transformation of her continent into a coming "Eurabia."
Fallaci was quickly blasted as a "racist" and faced an onslaught of attacks. She was sued by Muslims for the contents of her book and received death threats for her opinions and views, which, it is true, could be sometimes over the top.
However, I suspect that it was precisely Fallaci's bold outspokenness that her admirers most loved and that her detractors most despised. People loved the fact that she had the courage to be unpopular and to say unflinchingly what so few dared in a world filled with seemingly endless PC banter. Her intellect, her personality - but above all her courage, moral and intellectual - will be greatly missed.
The author, a writer for the Italian daily Il Foglio, lives in Rome and Jerusalem. This piece appeared in the Weekly Standard.
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AMY K. ROSENTHAL, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 17, 2006
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My day begins like any other. I roll out of bed, make coffee and turn on the computer to touch base with my employer in Rome, the newspaper Il Foglio. But today is different. I'm informed that Oriana Fallaci died at age 77 in her home town of Florence. I'm stunned.
The article I'm currently writing on terrorism no longer has my full attention and my thoughts turn in silent reflection toward the small, but fearless Italian journalist and author. We all knew she was ill and battling cancer for years, but seeing that she had fought off death for more than a decade, it seemed as if she was immortal.
The image of her with dark sunglasses on, cigarette in hand, churning out endless smoke and declaiming true and politically incorrect words would defy time and be with us forever.
As the day unrolls, friends and colleagues call from Italy saying, "Fallaci died, have you heard?" Yes, I tell them, as I repeat for what seems the umpteenth time, "Another great has perished."
FOR THE Italians, whether they loved or despised her, today marks the loss of one of their modern icons. Fallaci was quintessentially Italian - glamorous, passionate and polemical. She reflected a generation which, in its youth, knew what freedom and anti-conformism meant as it battled fascism and Nazi occupation during World War II.
As a young girl, Fallaci smuggled explosives across Nazi checkpoints in Florence. Her father was a leader of the Italian resistance who fought against Mussolini's dictatorship. Her great-great grandfather was a hero of the Italian Risorgimento.
Undoubtedly, that sort of commitment to fight tyranny and uphold freedom inspired the woman who would go on to become one of Italy's most renowned journalists. This is the woman who followed Vietnam and other wars in the Middle East and South America and who jetted around the world to interview famous and infamous leaders, such as Golda Meir, Henry Kissinger, Willy Brandt, the shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi, Yasser Arafat, Indira Gandhi and Deng Xiaoping. As the title of her book Interview with History hints, she was one of history's foremost interviewers.
AFTER A dozen books, including the international best-seller Letter to a Child Never Born, in which Fallaci imagines speaking to a child in the womb and asking if it is right or wrong to give it life, and A Man, which immortalized the martyred poet and Greek resistance leader Alekos Panagoulis, the great love of her life, Fallaci decided to retire and move to New York.
She would come there to live a reclusive existence, and upon being diagnosed with cancer, to dedicate her remaining days writing a novel, which the childless author often affectionately referred to as "my child."
However, her grand plan was upset on September 11, 2001. Shocked, Fallaci chucked aside her novel and broke her 10-year media silence by responding with a long article published in Italy's Corriere della Sera on September 29, 2001. There, she spoke out against extremism, Islamo-fascism and terrorism and denounced mediocre leaders, especially in Europe. Her message was a call to the West to uphold its civilization and its core values against the forces which seek to destroy us.
That article eventually became a book, The Rage and the Pride, which sold more than a million copies in Italy and was translated into numerous languages.
The tone of the article (and later book) was thought to be extreme. But its overriding message was clear - Westerners had to fight back or be ready to capitulate to Islam's jihad.
ALTHOUGH Fallaci is now gone, her resounding message five years after September 11, after Madrid, after London, after so many other terrorist attacks, remains alive. In her follow-up book, The Force of Reason, she again took to task her fellow Europeans for their "mumbo-jumbo multiculturalism," political correctness and the transformation of her continent into a coming "Eurabia."
Fallaci was quickly blasted as a "racist" and faced an onslaught of attacks. She was sued by Muslims for the contents of her book and received death threats for her opinions and views, which, it is true, could be sometimes over the top.
However, I suspect that it was precisely Fallaci's bold outspokenness that her admirers most loved and that her detractors most despised. People loved the fact that she had the courage to be unpopular and to say unflinchingly what so few dared in a world filled with seemingly endless PC banter. Her intellect, her personality - but above all her courage, moral and intellectual - will be greatly missed.
The author, a writer for the Italian daily Il Foglio, lives in Rome and Jerusalem. This piece appeared in the Weekly Standard.
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Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/
ONE ARAB'S APOLOGY for 9/11.
NEW YORK POST -
ONE ARAB'S APOLOGY
By EMILIO KARIM DABUL
September 12, 2006 -- WELL, here it is, five years late, but here just the same: an apology from an Arab-American for 9/11. No, I didn't help organize the killers or contribute in any way to their terrible cause. However, I was one of millions of Arab-Americans who did the unspeakable on 9/11: nothing.
The only time I raised my voice in protest against these men who killed thousands of innocents in the name of Allah was behind closed doors, among the safety of friends and family. I did at one point write a very vitriolic essay condemning their actions, but fear of becoming another Salman Rushdie kept me from ever trying to publish it.
Well, I'm sick of saying the truth only in private - that
Arabs around the world, including Arab-Americans like
myself, need to start holding our own culture accountable
for the insane, violent actions that our extremists have perpetrated on the world at large.
Yes, our extremists and our culture.
Every single 9/11 hijacker was Arab and a Muslim. The apologists (including President Bush) tried to reassure us that 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam, but was a twisting of a great and noble religion. With all due respect, read the Koran, Mr. President. There's enough there for someone of extreme tendencies to find their way to a global jihad.
There's also enough there for someone of a different mindset
to find a path to enlightenment and peace. Still, Rushdie
had it right back in 2001: This does have to do with Islam.
A Christian who bombs an abortion clinic in the name of God
is still a Christian, at least in his interpretation, and saying otherwise doesn't negate the fact that he has spent a goodly amount of time figuring out his version of the one true and right thing to do.
The men who killed 3,000 of our citizens on 9/11 in all likelihood died saying prayers to Allah, and that by itself is one of the most horrific things to me about that day.
And, while my grandparents never waged a jihad, their
attitudes toward Jews weren't that much different than
Mohammed Atta's. No, they didn't support the Holocaust, but they did believe that Jews were trouble in many
ONE ARAB'S APOLOGY
By EMILIO KARIM DABUL
September 12, 2006 -- WELL, here it is, five years late, but here just the same: an apology from an Arab-American for 9/11. No, I didn't help organize the killers or contribute in any way to their terrible cause. However, I was one of millions of Arab-Americans who did the unspeakable on 9/11: nothing.
The only time I raised my voice in protest against these men who killed thousands of innocents in the name of Allah was behind closed doors, among the safety of friends and family. I did at one point write a very vitriolic essay condemning their actions, but fear of becoming another Salman Rushdie kept me from ever trying to publish it.
Well, I'm sick of saying the truth only in private - that
Arabs around the world, including Arab-Americans like
myself, need to start holding our own culture accountable
for the insane, violent actions that our extremists have perpetrated on the world at large.
Yes, our extremists and our culture.
Every single 9/11 hijacker was Arab and a Muslim. The apologists (including President Bush) tried to reassure us that 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam, but was a twisting of a great and noble religion. With all due respect, read the Koran, Mr. President. There's enough there for someone of extreme tendencies to find their way to a global jihad.
There's also enough there for someone of a different mindset
to find a path to enlightenment and peace. Still, Rushdie
had it right back in 2001: This does have to do with Islam.
A Christian who bombs an abortion clinic in the name of God
is still a Christian, at least in his interpretation, and saying otherwise doesn't negate the fact that he has spent a goodly amount of time figuring out his version of the one true and right thing to do.
The men who killed 3,000 of our citizens on 9/11 in all likelihood died saying prayers to Allah, and that by itself is one of the most horrific things to me about that day.
And, while my grandparents never waged a jihad, their
attitudes toward Jews weren't that much different than
Mohammed Atta's. No, they didn't support the Holocaust, but they did believe that Jews were trouble in many
Sunday, September 17, 2006
So Islam is not a violent religion? The Pope says sorry.
The Pope (almost) apologized to the Islamic world. Did that help? Moslems get offended easily, start to riot, murder, burn and plunder,- this time Christians & Churches, other times Synagogues and Jews, - but oh no,- they are not violent!
DebkaFile's
Islamic observers comment that the threat of Muslim anger exploding into violence is becoming an increasingly powerful deterrent to any religious controversy that touches on the Muslim faith - especially in the West - because Western Christians, moderate Muslims and the Jewish world continue to distinguish between international Islamic terrorist groups and Muslims at large.
While the majority of Muslims do not subscribe to al Qaeda’s violent methods, neither do they actively oppose them. As for Palestinian violence against Israel, that is universally condoned.
Much of Western society as well as many Muslims and Israelis prefer to forget that suicidal terrorism as a political and religious instrument was the gift Yasser Arafat bequeathed to contemporary Islam; and it was enthusiastically embraced by al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
This ability to disremember the root of a world problem extends to non-recognition of the deepening integration of the Palestinian and al Qaeda jihad movements. Abu Musab al Zarqawi was a Jordanian Palestinian, as were some of his commanders; a Palestinian Hamas mentor hosted and instructed shoe bomber Richard Reid in Gaza before his failed attempt to blow up a US airliner in 2000. Many of al Qaeda’s most active cells are planted in Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Nonetheless, many Western policymakers place “the Middle East conflict’ in a box of its own, separate from the global war on terror or the clash of religions and civilizations.
Because these policymakers have only very limited control over developments in the campaign against terror or the religious elements thereof, their pious hopes and efforts to appease angry Muslims keep on blowing up in their faces. The current crisis can be traced back to Khomeini’s death warrant (fatwa) for the writer Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses. It culminated now in the explosion of fury against the pope. But any suggestion that Islam is linked to the ideology of terror or violence evokes immediate outrage.
Oddly enough, no outrage was forthcoming when the leader of Israeli Arab Muslims, Sheikh Raad Salah promised a gathering of 50,000 Israeli Arabs, Friday night Sept. 15 that “very shortly the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem would be eclipsed and the city (Israel’s historic and national capital), will become the capital of the “world Islamic caliphate.”
His audience eagerly thundered: “With fire and blood we will liberate al Aqsa!”
No one demanded of the sheik any apology although by a strange coincidence he parroted one of al Qaeda’s central goals and injunctions and the justification for its terrorist campaign against the American, British and French “crusaders” and “the Jews,” namely, the establishment of a caliphate for world rule from its center in Jerusalem.
Where are the demonstrations and effigies protesting the explicit threat to the Jewish state and its capital? This double standard for legitimate and illegitimate Islamic conduct ruled the thinking of much of the world before Pope Benedict dropped his clanger - and will be there after it is forgotten
DebkaFile's
Islamic observers comment that the threat of Muslim anger exploding into violence is becoming an increasingly powerful deterrent to any religious controversy that touches on the Muslim faith - especially in the West - because Western Christians, moderate Muslims and the Jewish world continue to distinguish between international Islamic terrorist groups and Muslims at large.
While the majority of Muslims do not subscribe to al Qaeda’s violent methods, neither do they actively oppose them. As for Palestinian violence against Israel, that is universally condoned.
Much of Western society as well as many Muslims and Israelis prefer to forget that suicidal terrorism as a political and religious instrument was the gift Yasser Arafat bequeathed to contemporary Islam; and it was enthusiastically embraced by al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
This ability to disremember the root of a world problem extends to non-recognition of the deepening integration of the Palestinian and al Qaeda jihad movements. Abu Musab al Zarqawi was a Jordanian Palestinian, as were some of his commanders; a Palestinian Hamas mentor hosted and instructed shoe bomber Richard Reid in Gaza before his failed attempt to blow up a US airliner in 2000. Many of al Qaeda’s most active cells are planted in Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Nonetheless, many Western policymakers place “the Middle East conflict’ in a box of its own, separate from the global war on terror or the clash of religions and civilizations.
Because these policymakers have only very limited control over developments in the campaign against terror or the religious elements thereof, their pious hopes and efforts to appease angry Muslims keep on blowing up in their faces. The current crisis can be traced back to Khomeini’s death warrant (fatwa) for the writer Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses. It culminated now in the explosion of fury against the pope. But any suggestion that Islam is linked to the ideology of terror or violence evokes immediate outrage.
Oddly enough, no outrage was forthcoming when the leader of Israeli Arab Muslims, Sheikh Raad Salah promised a gathering of 50,000 Israeli Arabs, Friday night Sept. 15 that “very shortly the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem would be eclipsed and the city (Israel’s historic and national capital), will become the capital of the “world Islamic caliphate.”
His audience eagerly thundered: “With fire and blood we will liberate al Aqsa!”
No one demanded of the sheik any apology although by a strange coincidence he parroted one of al Qaeda’s central goals and injunctions and the justification for its terrorist campaign against the American, British and French “crusaders” and “the Jews,” namely, the establishment of a caliphate for world rule from its center in Jerusalem.
Where are the demonstrations and effigies protesting the explicit threat to the Jewish state and its capital? This double standard for legitimate and illegitimate Islamic conduct ruled the thinking of much of the world before Pope Benedict dropped his clanger - and will be there after it is forgotten
Friday, September 15, 2006
Opposition Leader calls for 'Australian Values' to be conditional for Visa applicants.
Quoting from transcript:(Australian Labor Party website)
Opposition Leader,The Hon. Kim beazley, MHR. Radio interview re his call to make Visa Applicants sign to accept "Australian Values".------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEAZLEY: Well, it’s pretty good if you take a look at the citizenship oath. But it’s a commitment to freedom, commitment to democracy, commitment to respect for each other’s views, commitment to a sense of tolerance about people having diverse beliefs. Also, I would add to it, as well as respect for people’s different views in religious and political terms, respect for (inaudible) gender – respect for women. So, these are the things that I’d incorporate within it.
_------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter to Michael Danby, MP, Member for Melbourne Ports (Labor).
Dear Michael,
I want to express my approval of Mr. Beazley’s statement above and the general proposition that Visa applicants have to sign up to these “values”.
However, I wish to make a suggestion to defuse the criticisms. The term “values” is too nebulous for people to accept as an important issue. Values are subjective after-all, not substantive.
It is far more important to know, understand and respect a country’s laws and its customs. Would people from say, the backwoods of Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, some African countries, or even Turkey or Albania, etc. know what these are in Australia? They wish to come to a “free country”,- wouldn’t some of them expect to be allowed to perpetuate here some of their less acceptable-to-us customs from their home-country, such as polygamy, female genital mutilation, “honor killings”, child-brides, etc.? To them, these are not only acceptable, but also ‘expected” in their communities.
Radical Islamists love these (customs),- hence the attraction to these kinds of Islamic teachers, for some young males.
Many already do so even while living here (in Australia as well as in other Western countries no doubt),-through a “revolving door” system,- by sending their kids back to their villages which they left behind, for “indoctrination” (training, marriage!)
For many years, whenever I had the opportunity, I voiced the opinion that all Australian Embassies,- or on-line where visa applications are presented,- should have in hand booklets stating both in English and in the local language(s) of each country, a list of our laws pertaining to the above “values” and where there are no laws, then the “expectation” is that applicants will have to respect the “customs” of this country, e.g. pertaining to the respectful treatment of women of all ages, irrespective of their dress (or undress?).; that polygamy etc. is not only unlawful, but also unacceptable (what is to stop a man claiming that three women in his entourage are a nanny, a cousin or two, plus a wife? As visitors, no one cares,- but as immigrants living here,- what status would they have if he dies?); then there is the fact that while we are a multicultural, multiethnic society where individuals’ rights are protected and respected, the public holidays e.g. are according to the Christian calendar and the foods available may not always be according to all others’ religious dietary requirements.; etc., etc., etc.
They have to be prepared to accept all of these, or stay away!
What visitors and especially prospective immigrants, including refugees, should sign is not a declaration promising to abide by these, but a statement that they have read and UNDERSTOOD what they have read and that they understand that this is what is expected of all Australian residents while in this country.
I really hope that something will be done to eliminate some pretty bad habits and customs which people bring with them, then continue to keep them here, but hidden, so that some women and girls in particular, suffer in silence in this country, when they shouldn’t have to. Without the understanding of their rights, these poor people (females usually) may continue to be forced to live in the past.
Wishing you and your family Shana Tova (a Happy New Year)
Yours sincerely,
MM
Opposition Leader,The Hon. Kim beazley, MHR. Radio interview re his call to make Visa Applicants sign to accept "Australian Values".------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEAZLEY: Well, it’s pretty good if you take a look at the citizenship oath. But it’s a commitment to freedom, commitment to democracy, commitment to respect for each other’s views, commitment to a sense of tolerance about people having diverse beliefs. Also, I would add to it, as well as respect for people’s different views in religious and political terms, respect for (inaudible) gender – respect for women. So, these are the things that I’d incorporate within it.
_------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter to Michael Danby, MP, Member for Melbourne Ports (Labor).
Dear Michael,
I want to express my approval of Mr. Beazley’s statement above and the general proposition that Visa applicants have to sign up to these “values”.
However, I wish to make a suggestion to defuse the criticisms. The term “values” is too nebulous for people to accept as an important issue. Values are subjective after-all, not substantive.
It is far more important to know, understand and respect a country’s laws and its customs. Would people from say, the backwoods of Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, some African countries, or even Turkey or Albania, etc. know what these are in Australia? They wish to come to a “free country”,- wouldn’t some of them expect to be allowed to perpetuate here some of their less acceptable-to-us customs from their home-country, such as polygamy, female genital mutilation, “honor killings”, child-brides, etc.? To them, these are not only acceptable, but also ‘expected” in their communities.
Radical Islamists love these (customs),- hence the attraction to these kinds of Islamic teachers, for some young males.
Many already do so even while living here (in Australia as well as in other Western countries no doubt),-through a “revolving door” system,- by sending their kids back to their villages which they left behind, for “indoctrination” (training, marriage!)
For many years, whenever I had the opportunity, I voiced the opinion that all Australian Embassies,- or on-line where visa applications are presented,- should have in hand booklets stating both in English and in the local language(s) of each country, a list of our laws pertaining to the above “values” and where there are no laws, then the “expectation” is that applicants will have to respect the “customs” of this country, e.g. pertaining to the respectful treatment of women of all ages, irrespective of their dress (or undress?).; that polygamy etc. is not only unlawful, but also unacceptable (what is to stop a man claiming that three women in his entourage are a nanny, a cousin or two, plus a wife? As visitors, no one cares,- but as immigrants living here,- what status would they have if he dies?); then there is the fact that while we are a multicultural, multiethnic society where individuals’ rights are protected and respected, the public holidays e.g. are according to the Christian calendar and the foods available may not always be according to all others’ religious dietary requirements.; etc., etc., etc.
They have to be prepared to accept all of these, or stay away!
What visitors and especially prospective immigrants, including refugees, should sign is not a declaration promising to abide by these, but a statement that they have read and UNDERSTOOD what they have read and that they understand that this is what is expected of all Australian residents while in this country.
I really hope that something will be done to eliminate some pretty bad habits and customs which people bring with them, then continue to keep them here, but hidden, so that some women and girls in particular, suffer in silence in this country, when they shouldn’t have to. Without the understanding of their rights, these poor people (females usually) may continue to be forced to live in the past.
Wishing you and your family Shana Tova (a Happy New Year)
Yours sincerely,
MM
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Australian PM calls for Muslim women's rights.
THE AUSTRALIAN
Heed the PM's call for women's rights
By turning a blind eye to beatings, intimidation, genital mutilation, forced marriages, domestic slavery and honour killings, feminists and so-called progressives are letting down Muslim sisters, writes Janet Albrechtsen .
06sep06
THE young Turkish mother never stood a chance. Standing at a Berlin bus stop one February night last year, 23-year-old Hatin Surucu was gunned down at point-blank range, three bullets tearing into her face. This was no random killing in the heart of progressive Europe. Three of Surucu's Muslim brothers were arrested. This was an honour killing.According to foreign newspaper reports, Surucu was pulled out of her German school in Year 8 and sent back to Istanbul where, at 16, she was forced to marry an older Turkish cousin. She was killed because she rebelled. She fled Turkey, taking her young son to Berlin. She discarded the Islamic headscarf. She moved into a women's shelter, finished school and enrolled in a technical school. In the eyes of her family, that display of female independence brought dishonour on them. She was slaughtered to restore their honour. Her youngest brother, who allegedly bragged to friends about killing her, confessed to the murder. In his statement, he said: "She wanted her own circle of friends ... It was too much."
What shocked Germany even more came in the weeks after the slaying. According to German magazine Der Spiegel, during a classroom discussion of the murder at a school not far from the murder site, 14-year-old Muslim boys mocked Surucu for getting what she deserved. One boy said: "The whore lived like a German."
So let's not beat about the bush. John Howard was right to point to the inequality confronting some Muslim women. But it is a shame the Prime Minister did not elaborate further. This is not about the banalities bandied about by Australian feminists obsessed with glass ceilings, pay discrepancies and men not changing the right number of nappies.
Though rarely reported in the Australian media, for some Muslim girls living in liberal Western nations, a lack of equality means being yanked from school lest they get too educated. It means genital mutilation, forced marriages, beatings, intimidation, domestic slavery. And for some who want to dress and live like the rest of us, it can mean becoming another victim of honour killings.
Last year there were eight honour killings in Berlin. According to Papatya, a Turkish women's group, there have been 40 such cases across Germany in the past decade. Some reports suggest the numbers are higher. It makes for horrifying reading. A girl beaten to death by her brothers with a hockey stick because she slept with her boyfriend. A young girl strangled by her father because she had a boyfriend.
Earlier this year, a court in Denmark sentenced nine members of a family for the honour killing of 18-year-old Ghazala Khan. She had married an Afghan man against her father's wishes.
According to The Brussels Journal, Khan's brother, who pulled the trigger, went to prison along with her father, her aunt, two uncles and other family members who colluded in her slaying at a local train station.
It's happening in Britain, too. In 2002, a Kurdish immigrant from Iraq stabbed his 16-year-old daughter and slashed her throat over a bathtub. Her crime? She had an 18-year-old boyfriend. Since then, there are reports that a police review of 22 domestic homicides last year led to 18 being reclassified as "murder in the name of so-called honour" and to Scotland Yard reopening investigations into more than 100 suspicious deaths during a 10-year period that may have involved family conspiracies to murder Muslim women. It may only be the tip of the iceberg. Other Muslim girls are sent back to Muslim countries where they are murdered away from prying Western eyes.
In Australia, we need to be asking some serious questions. We know we have problems, though not on the same scale as Europe, with a small group of Muslims refusing to integrate and rejecting the most basic Western values. Last month Faheem Khalid Lodhi was sentenced to 20 years for terrorism. Muslim boys have been jailed for a horrible series of gang rapes. If we have no idea about oppression meted out to Muslim women at the hands of Muslim men in Australia, that's because those in a position to know are not talking.
Instead, any attempt to highlight the problems is met with a swift and predictable response. After Howard's comments last week, out came the cry of discrimination. Muslims would be alienated, said our Muslim leaders. If these are the responses from so-called moderate Muslim leaders, it's little wonder they are fast losing credibility on a crucial issue confronting Western nations. That same reaction kept the murder and mistreatment of Muslim women under wraps in Europe for too long. As Blair government minister Mike O'Brien said years ago, multiculturalism became an excuse for "moral blindness".
Most disappointingly, this multicultural moral blindness has silenced our feminists. Instead, it's left to a conservative Prime Minister, derided by feminist critics as Mr 1950s Picket-Fence Man, to make headlines about the inequality facing some Muslim women. Meanwhile, our feminists have been making headlines with their trivial pursuits.
Just over a week ago, 400 feminists gathered at the NSW Parliament House for their annual boo-in. These women jeered and howled, with the loudest boos determining the winner of the Ernie Awards for the most sexist comments. In July, their American sisters at the National Organisation for Women celebrated their 40th birthday with a three-day conference. The program listed sessions on fashion and feminism, music and feminism, political blogging and feminism and something called "womanopoly", where the audience was asked to imagine a feminist budget. It was feminism at its most tired and trivial. I searched and searched but there was no mention in the program of the problems facing Muslim women.
NOW's younger activists, who convened that same weekend for the Young Feminist Summit, hardly raised the bar. Conference manager Bonnie Rice asked participants: "Are you ready to change the world?" She then reported that NOW's Women of Action award would go to a group of Pennsylvania gals who forced clothing giant Abercrombie & Fitch to pull its "attitude" T-shirts from stores.
Go, girls.
Fortunately, a handful of brave Muslim women is confronting the real calamities facing some of its number. Women such as Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, as a Dutch parliamentarian, blew the lid on what was happening in The Netherlands. And Canada's Irshad Manji. Some Western feminists are waking up, too. Self-styled 1970s feminist Pamela Bone recently wrote on this page she would wear the right-wing tag if that's what comes from fighting to protect women from the rise of Islamic extremism. But a few wise voices does not a groundswell make. True reform will come only when women stop marching under banners screaming "We are all Hezbollah now" and are willing to side with a conservative Prime Minister, even if that means admitting that on this issue, at least, we are all right-wing now.
Heed the PM's call for women's rights
By turning a blind eye to beatings, intimidation, genital mutilation, forced marriages, domestic slavery and honour killings, feminists and so-called progressives are letting down Muslim sisters, writes Janet Albrechtsen .
06sep06
THE young Turkish mother never stood a chance. Standing at a Berlin bus stop one February night last year, 23-year-old Hatin Surucu was gunned down at point-blank range, three bullets tearing into her face. This was no random killing in the heart of progressive Europe. Three of Surucu's Muslim brothers were arrested. This was an honour killing.According to foreign newspaper reports, Surucu was pulled out of her German school in Year 8 and sent back to Istanbul where, at 16, she was forced to marry an older Turkish cousin. She was killed because she rebelled. She fled Turkey, taking her young son to Berlin. She discarded the Islamic headscarf. She moved into a women's shelter, finished school and enrolled in a technical school. In the eyes of her family, that display of female independence brought dishonour on them. She was slaughtered to restore their honour. Her youngest brother, who allegedly bragged to friends about killing her, confessed to the murder. In his statement, he said: "She wanted her own circle of friends ... It was too much."
What shocked Germany even more came in the weeks after the slaying. According to German magazine Der Spiegel, during a classroom discussion of the murder at a school not far from the murder site, 14-year-old Muslim boys mocked Surucu for getting what she deserved. One boy said: "The whore lived like a German."
So let's not beat about the bush. John Howard was right to point to the inequality confronting some Muslim women. But it is a shame the Prime Minister did not elaborate further. This is not about the banalities bandied about by Australian feminists obsessed with glass ceilings, pay discrepancies and men not changing the right number of nappies.
Though rarely reported in the Australian media, for some Muslim girls living in liberal Western nations, a lack of equality means being yanked from school lest they get too educated. It means genital mutilation, forced marriages, beatings, intimidation, domestic slavery. And for some who want to dress and live like the rest of us, it can mean becoming another victim of honour killings.
Last year there were eight honour killings in Berlin. According to Papatya, a Turkish women's group, there have been 40 such cases across Germany in the past decade. Some reports suggest the numbers are higher. It makes for horrifying reading. A girl beaten to death by her brothers with a hockey stick because she slept with her boyfriend. A young girl strangled by her father because she had a boyfriend.
Earlier this year, a court in Denmark sentenced nine members of a family for the honour killing of 18-year-old Ghazala Khan. She had married an Afghan man against her father's wishes.
According to The Brussels Journal, Khan's brother, who pulled the trigger, went to prison along with her father, her aunt, two uncles and other family members who colluded in her slaying at a local train station.
It's happening in Britain, too. In 2002, a Kurdish immigrant from Iraq stabbed his 16-year-old daughter and slashed her throat over a bathtub. Her crime? She had an 18-year-old boyfriend. Since then, there are reports that a police review of 22 domestic homicides last year led to 18 being reclassified as "murder in the name of so-called honour" and to Scotland Yard reopening investigations into more than 100 suspicious deaths during a 10-year period that may have involved family conspiracies to murder Muslim women. It may only be the tip of the iceberg. Other Muslim girls are sent back to Muslim countries where they are murdered away from prying Western eyes.
In Australia, we need to be asking some serious questions. We know we have problems, though not on the same scale as Europe, with a small group of Muslims refusing to integrate and rejecting the most basic Western values. Last month Faheem Khalid Lodhi was sentenced to 20 years for terrorism. Muslim boys have been jailed for a horrible series of gang rapes. If we have no idea about oppression meted out to Muslim women at the hands of Muslim men in Australia, that's because those in a position to know are not talking.
Instead, any attempt to highlight the problems is met with a swift and predictable response. After Howard's comments last week, out came the cry of discrimination. Muslims would be alienated, said our Muslim leaders. If these are the responses from so-called moderate Muslim leaders, it's little wonder they are fast losing credibility on a crucial issue confronting Western nations. That same reaction kept the murder and mistreatment of Muslim women under wraps in Europe for too long. As Blair government minister Mike O'Brien said years ago, multiculturalism became an excuse for "moral blindness".
Most disappointingly, this multicultural moral blindness has silenced our feminists. Instead, it's left to a conservative Prime Minister, derided by feminist critics as Mr 1950s Picket-Fence Man, to make headlines about the inequality facing some Muslim women. Meanwhile, our feminists have been making headlines with their trivial pursuits.
Just over a week ago, 400 feminists gathered at the NSW Parliament House for their annual boo-in. These women jeered and howled, with the loudest boos determining the winner of the Ernie Awards for the most sexist comments. In July, their American sisters at the National Organisation for Women celebrated their 40th birthday with a three-day conference. The program listed sessions on fashion and feminism, music and feminism, political blogging and feminism and something called "womanopoly", where the audience was asked to imagine a feminist budget. It was feminism at its most tired and trivial. I searched and searched but there was no mention in the program of the problems facing Muslim women.
NOW's younger activists, who convened that same weekend for the Young Feminist Summit, hardly raised the bar. Conference manager Bonnie Rice asked participants: "Are you ready to change the world?" She then reported that NOW's Women of Action award would go to a group of Pennsylvania gals who forced clothing giant Abercrombie & Fitch to pull its "attitude" T-shirts from stores.
Go, girls.
Fortunately, a handful of brave Muslim women is confronting the real calamities facing some of its number. Women such as Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, as a Dutch parliamentarian, blew the lid on what was happening in The Netherlands. And Canada's Irshad Manji. Some Western feminists are waking up, too. Self-styled 1970s feminist Pamela Bone recently wrote on this page she would wear the right-wing tag if that's what comes from fighting to protect women from the rise of Islamic extremism. But a few wise voices does not a groundswell make. True reform will come only when women stop marching under banners screaming "We are all Hezbollah now" and are willing to side with a conservative Prime Minister, even if that means admitting that on this issue, at least, we are all right-wing now.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Jewish,- and proud of it!
Why I am proud to be a Jew
(Anonymous)
With war raging in the Middle East, with global
terror reaching new heights, with global anti-Semitism on the rise, I
thought it might be a good time to reflect on why I'm proud,
more than ever, to be a Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew because Jews don't kidnap.
I'm proud to be a Jew because Jewish education does
not consist of teaching martyrdom and hatred.
I'm proud to be a Jew because my religious leaders
and religious services don't whip me into a frenzy to kill others.
I'm proud to be a Jew because in the middle of a
war, Jews still demonstrate
and protest to protect the rights of the
Arab-Israeli minority to voice
their opposition to the war.
I'm proud to be a Jew because even when Israel is
wrongly and falsely
accused of killing innocent civilians, Jewish
leaders apologize immediately for any loss of life - instead
of celebrating these deaths
by passing out candy and shooting celebratory
gunshots into the air.
When the world accuses Israel of massacre in Jenin -
when the world
accuses Israel of bombing civilians on a Gaza beach
- when the world accuses Israel of shooting a child cowering
against a wall - when the
world accuses Israel of bombing a Lebanese
apartment building killing 56 civilians - when all of these
accusations turn out to be totally false - to be
vicious anti -Semitic lies - and when all along
I knew in my heart that these stories justcould not be true
- and I'm later proven to be right - then I'm
proud to be a Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew because the Israeli Army is
so, so good, that when
it takes more than four weeks to wipe out a
sophisticated enemy who has
prepared six years for this war, the world
criticizes the IDF for not getting the
job done quickly.
I'm proud to be a Jew when my army, the Israeli
army, drops leaflets and makes calls to Lebanese citizens
on their cell phones to warn them to evacuate
before bombing begins.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the democracies of the
world talk about fighting
the war on terror, but only Israel is left alone to
bear the burden of
eradicating Hezbollah, the proxy army of Iran and
Syria.
I'm proud to be a Jew when entire Israeli towns in
the north-Nahariya,
Kiryat Shimona, Safed, are reduced to ghost towns
due to the constant shelling, and yet not one looter has
appeared to empty out the property of others.
When Israel must defend its very right to exist,
when it must fight a well
armed enemy representing the Islamic fascists, as
President Bush has
called them, when Israel must conduct this war on
terror with its hands tied
behind its back so as not to take an innocent life
lest the media have something true to report,
that it must fight this war of survival under
the cloud of "disproportionality", as if thousands of
Katusha rockets falling on its
citizenry is somehow "proportionate"- when
Israel simultaneously pushes back these threats both in the
North and in
the South under the added pressure of a biased
media, then I'm proud to be a Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the Edinburgh Scottish
film festival tells an
Israeli director to stay home although his film is
being screened and the
director says "No, I'm coming."
I'm proud to be a Jew because Mel Gibson is not a
Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the UN's Human Rights
Commission consists of
countries like Syria, Libya and Iran and Israel is
not asked to join.
I'm proud to be a Jew when magician David Blaine
announces his trip to
Israel next week to entertain the children living in
bomb shelters and tells
the press he's doing it to encourage other
performers to stand up for Israel
and its right to defend itself.
I'm proud to be a Jew when a Russian/Israeli
businessman single-handedly
creates not one but two tent cities on the beach to
house Israelis fleeing the
North and provides shelter, bedding, food and drink,
showers and bathrooms - all done
without red tape in a matter of 24 hours - to
house over 6,000
Israeli's, one of whom described it as a "poor man's
Club Med."
I am proud to be a Jew when Israelis on the left and
on the right
support the government's decision to fight - when
97% of the country is united in its own defense -
when Israeli's from Jerusalem give shelter to
families from Haifa - when food from the Negev is donated to
feed soldiers at the front -
when the IDF deploys soldiers on special
assignments to deliver diapers to shelters and to entertain
and calm the frightened children.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the three weeks preceding
Tisha B'Av reminds
us of the terrible things we have endured as a
people and as a nation - and
yet immediately thereafter, Hashem offers us
consolation, redemption and
hope - plus the promise that we shall defeat our
enemies, that we shall endure, that Am Yisrael Chai.
And I am proud to be a Jew because when we proclaim
that God is on our
side, we have the book to prove it.
(Anonymous)
With war raging in the Middle East, with global
terror reaching new heights, with global anti-Semitism on the rise, I
thought it might be a good time to reflect on why I'm proud,
more than ever, to be a Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew because Jews don't kidnap.
I'm proud to be a Jew because Jewish education does
not consist of teaching martyrdom and hatred.
I'm proud to be a Jew because my religious leaders
and religious services don't whip me into a frenzy to kill others.
I'm proud to be a Jew because in the middle of a
war, Jews still demonstrate
and protest to protect the rights of the
Arab-Israeli minority to voice
their opposition to the war.
I'm proud to be a Jew because even when Israel is
wrongly and falsely
accused of killing innocent civilians, Jewish
leaders apologize immediately for any loss of life - instead
of celebrating these deaths
by passing out candy and shooting celebratory
gunshots into the air.
When the world accuses Israel of massacre in Jenin -
when the world
accuses Israel of bombing civilians on a Gaza beach
- when the world accuses Israel of shooting a child cowering
against a wall - when the
world accuses Israel of bombing a Lebanese
apartment building killing 56 civilians - when all of these
accusations turn out to be totally false - to be
vicious anti -Semitic lies - and when all along
I knew in my heart that these stories justcould not be true
- and I'm later proven to be right - then I'm
proud to be a Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew because the Israeli Army is
so, so good, that when
it takes more than four weeks to wipe out a
sophisticated enemy who has
prepared six years for this war, the world
criticizes the IDF for not getting the
job done quickly.
I'm proud to be a Jew when my army, the Israeli
army, drops leaflets and makes calls to Lebanese citizens
on their cell phones to warn them to evacuate
before bombing begins.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the democracies of the
world talk about fighting
the war on terror, but only Israel is left alone to
bear the burden of
eradicating Hezbollah, the proxy army of Iran and
Syria.
I'm proud to be a Jew when entire Israeli towns in
the north-Nahariya,
Kiryat Shimona, Safed, are reduced to ghost towns
due to the constant shelling, and yet not one looter has
appeared to empty out the property of others.
When Israel must defend its very right to exist,
when it must fight a well
armed enemy representing the Islamic fascists, as
President Bush has
called them, when Israel must conduct this war on
terror with its hands tied
behind its back so as not to take an innocent life
lest the media have something true to report,
that it must fight this war of survival under
the cloud of "disproportionality", as if thousands of
Katusha rockets falling on its
citizenry is somehow "proportionate"- when
Israel simultaneously pushes back these threats both in the
North and in
the South under the added pressure of a biased
media, then I'm proud to be a Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the Edinburgh Scottish
film festival tells an
Israeli director to stay home although his film is
being screened and the
director says "No, I'm coming."
I'm proud to be a Jew because Mel Gibson is not a
Jew.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the UN's Human Rights
Commission consists of
countries like Syria, Libya and Iran and Israel is
not asked to join.
I'm proud to be a Jew when magician David Blaine
announces his trip to
Israel next week to entertain the children living in
bomb shelters and tells
the press he's doing it to encourage other
performers to stand up for Israel
and its right to defend itself.
I'm proud to be a Jew when a Russian/Israeli
businessman single-handedly
creates not one but two tent cities on the beach to
house Israelis fleeing the
North and provides shelter, bedding, food and drink,
showers and bathrooms - all done
without red tape in a matter of 24 hours - to
house over 6,000
Israeli's, one of whom described it as a "poor man's
Club Med."
I am proud to be a Jew when Israelis on the left and
on the right
support the government's decision to fight - when
97% of the country is united in its own defense -
when Israeli's from Jerusalem give shelter to
families from Haifa - when food from the Negev is donated to
feed soldiers at the front -
when the IDF deploys soldiers on special
assignments to deliver diapers to shelters and to entertain
and calm the frightened children.
I'm proud to be a Jew when the three weeks preceding
Tisha B'Av reminds
us of the terrible things we have endured as a
people and as a nation - and
yet immediately thereafter, Hashem offers us
consolation, redemption and
hope - plus the promise that we shall defeat our
enemies, that we shall endure, that Am Yisrael Chai.
And I am proud to be a Jew because when we proclaim
that God is on our
side, we have the book to prove it.
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