Obama Quits His Church

I think it is a good thing that Obama quit his church. Much as I like him, I do find it difficult to understand why he remained a member of the church for so long. I saw the "performance" of Rev. Michael Pfleger on CNN the other day. Pfleger "delivered a tirade against Mrs. Clinton that included fake tears, a high-pitched voice and top-of-the-lungs screaming." Pfleger is white, and the sermon seemed to me to be an attempt to (badly) imitate a black preacher's style in order to appeal to the congregation of the church. It was very strange, and I found it very offensive. I also didn't understand how he was even able to make such a partisan political sermon in the face of the Catholic Church's prohibition of priests getting involved in partisan politics.

The text of Resolution UCU 25

This is from the Stop the Boycott website:

Motion 25: Palestine and the occupation: University of Brighton - Eastbourne, University of Brighton - Grand Parade, University of East London Docklands, National Executive Committee

Congress notes the

1. continuation of illegal settlement, killing of civilians and the impossibility of civil life, including education;

2. humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel and the EU;

No mention, of course, of the role of Hamas in making it nearly impossible even to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza - for example, the bombing of the crossing points by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.

3. apparent complicity of most of the Israeli academy;

This is the part of the resolution that is a demonstrable lie. Most of the Israelis whom I know who work against the occupation are, in fact, academics, teaching at a variety of colleges and universities in Israel. I would think that if one were calling for a boycott of Israeli academics that one should ascertain whether in fact they support the occupation.

4. legal attempts to prevent UCU debating boycott of Israeli academic institutions; and legal advice that such debates are lawful

Legal attempts to prevent the UCU from taking a step that is illegal under British law! Whose legal advice is it that such debates are lawful? The legal advice that was given last year, and which stopped discussion of the boycott, stated that even in discussing such a boycott the union was coming close to violation of the Race Relations Act.

Congress affirms that

5. criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are not, as such, anti-semitic;

6. pursuit and dissemination of knowledge are not uniquely immune from their moral and political consequences;

Congress resolves that

7. colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating;

8. UCU widely disseminate the personal testimonies of UCU and PFUUPE delegations to Palestine and the UK, respectively;

9. the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions;

10. UCU facilitate and encourage twinning arrangements and other direct solidarity with Palestinian institutions;

11. Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure.

British academic union passes boycott motion

I think that the most disheartening detail in Eve Garrard's description of the University and College Union's Congress passing the motion to boycott Israeli academics was this item: "There was a real, palpable desire in the meeting to take some action against Israel. An otherwise rather somnolent audience woke up at the first mention of Palestine, and applauded every suggestion that action should be taken against Israel. A congress which had just passed very moderate motions on Burma and Zimbabwe and Sudan, about solidarity with trade unions and asylum seekers, and putting pressure on governments, quite clearly felt that these measures weren't sufficient for Israel's crimes: that for Israeli academics, nothing but punishment would do."

So Israel is worse than Burma, Zimbabwe, and Sudan? What is wrong with these people? What else is this other than anti-semitism?

McCain repudiates Hagee - when will Jewish leaders follow?

An article in the Huffington Post - McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will - seems to have made enough waves about pastor John Hagee to persuade John McCain it was time to reject Hagee's endorsement of him. Sam Stein, the Huffington Post writer, learned of an offensive sermon by Hagee from Bruce Wilson's website, Talk 2 Action.

A couple of days before this I was cruising the Talk 2 Action site and came across the audio clip from one of Hagee's sermons in the 1990s, in which he referred to Hitler as a "hunter" who was sent to harry the Jews into Palestine. Wilson introduced the clip by referring to Hagee's book Jerusalem Countdown: "In his 2006 book 'Jerusalem Countdown', Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves - the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive."

I just took a look at Jerusalem Countdown (the revised 2007 edition, available on Amazon) and discovered that Hagee put almost the same words as he uttered in his sermon into the book (pp. 132-33).

The Bible is a book of parables and word pictures describing principles of truth from God to man. The prophet Jeremiah puts his pen to parchment and paints a vivid picture of the human agents God intended to use to bring the Jewish people back to Israel.

“But now I will send for many fisherman” declares the Lord, “and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks.”
Jeremiah 16:16 (NIV)

I believe this verse indicates that the positive comes before the negative. Grace and mercy come before judgment. The fishermen come before the hunters. First, God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine to establish the Jewish state. The Jews were encouraged to escape while there was still time. The situation for the Jews in Europe would only get worse, not better.

A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait. Herzl and his fellow Zionists were God’s fishermen, calling the sons and daughters of Abraham home. Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.

God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler’s Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have – Israel. I stand amazed at the accuracy of God’s Word and its relevance for our time. I am stricken with awe and wonder at His boundless love for Israel and the Jewish people and His divine determination that the promise He gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob become reality.

This passage is part of a longer discussion about how the return of Jews to Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel fulfill God’s plan to restore Israel, as outlined in Ezekiel 37. He maintains that even though the state has physically been established, it is still waiting for spiritual life (p. 131).

At the conclusion of Ezekiel 37, the nation of Israel had been physically reborn. Today they have a flag; they have a constitution; they have a prime minister and a Knesset. They have a police force, a powerful military might, and the world’s best intelligence agencies. They have Jerusalem, the City of God. They have a nation. They have everything but spiritual life.

Like the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, Israel waits the spiritual awakening of the breath of God and the coming of Messiah.

Even without discovering the sermon, anyone who read Hagee's book could have found out that he considered Hitler to be the "hunter" who providentially made sure that the Jews (minus the six million who died at the hands of the Nazis!) returned to the land of Israel. For Hagee, Hitler did God's will. I guess those who died in the Holocaust were just the collateral divine damage to enable the state to be established, in Hagee's opinion. For Hagee, this is a sign of God's "boundless love" for the Jewish people. Mass death=love?!

I don't understand how anyone could believe in a God who would do that. As Yehuda Bauer (well-known Israeli historian of the Holocaust) wrote in 2000:

For me, the existence of God after the Holocaust is impossible from a moral point of view. It makes belief in God a vast problem, quantitatively and qualitatively. One and a half million children - of the Chosen People - under the age of thirteen were murdered! This is not a question of free choice because the children didn't have any free choice. It is the Nazis who had the free choice, not the children. So if there is a God that in one way or another controls the destiny of the world - even if that God retires and does not wish to do it, he can and he knows; otherwise he's not a God. He's responsible for the murder - no way out. No answer, human or divine, is satisfactory for the murder of one and a half million children - and if there is an answer from high above, then it is the answer of Satan, and rather than believe in Satan, I will not believe.

I don't come to the same conclusion that Bauer does - that it is impossible to believe in God after the Holocaust - but I agree with him that if one believes that God permitted the Holocaust to occur, that one believes in a Satanic God.

What's more, Hagee is saying that the only place Jews should be living is in Israel - so those of us who live in the United States and other countries are defying God's will, and presumably should suffer the divine consequences.

Tell me again why this man is considered to be "pro-Israel" or "pro-Jewish"? Tell me again why "Jewish leaders" like Joe Lieberman are willing to cosy up to Hagee because of his supposed "support" for Israel?

For my previous posts on Hagee - click here.

Full-blooded Americans?

Kathleen Parker's op-ed last week in the Baltimore Sun is bizarre, especially this section:

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values and made-in-America. Just as we once had and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Mr. Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It's also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Full-bloodedness? Blood equity? Roots? What do they have to do with patriotism or heritage? Parker seems to be arguing, in an extremely inept way, that Barack Obama isn't a true American because his father was Kenyan. During the rest of the article she slams on the usual suspects of multiculturalism and illegal immigration. Her real point seems to be an insistence on a "blood and soil" definition of Americanism.

Feh.

Update: Or, as Molly Ivins said of Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican convention: "It sounded better in the original German."

Why won't some people vote for Obama?

An article in yesterday's Washington Post makes it clear that some white voters don't vote for Obama because he's black (or because they believe the lie that he's a radical Muslim) - Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause. Campaigners for Obama in some states have run into rank racism.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

On another race that's being decided tonight - in the Mississippi first congressional district, the Democrat (Childers) is defeating the Republican (Davis) 53% to 47%, with 58% of the vote counted. It would be remarkable if Childers defeated Davis, as this article from Talking Points Memo describes.

Lebanese bloggers

For those interested in blogging by Lebanese bloggers on the current fighting in Lebanon between Hezbollah and many others (may it not actually turn into the new Lebanese civil war), I've found these blogs very insightful:

Jeha's Nail
Blacksmiths of Lebanon
Across the Bay
Beirut Spring
From Beirut to the Beltway
Bad Vilbel

Obama and Lebanon

More on Obama and the Middle East, this time Lebanon. An aticle by Lee Smith on Michael Totten's website - The Tea Boy - calls into question his knowledge and tendencies in Lebanon, which according to his analysis might lead Obama to be much too accommodating to Syria. This would definitely not be good for Lebanon, which is backing Hezbollah in its attempt to take over the country. See also the analysis of Jeha - Between the lines. He says: "Could someone tell that neophyte that he is not yet President of the United States? He will have plenty of chances to “engage” with Syria at our expense, when or if he becomes "President of these 57 states". We may be down, but we're not out yet..."

Obama in North Carolina and Indiana

It's very interesting watching the presidential primary results tonight. The television networks called North Carolina for Obama as soon as the polls closed, but they still haven't called Indiana (apparently because one county in the northwestern part of the state is waiting to report all of its votes until after completing the counting of all the absentee ballots). It seems unlikely, however, that he'll take Indiana, even if he does very well in Lake County. It's pretty close, though.

Jeremiah Wright on Zionism and Israel

I used to have hope that Barack Obama's candidacy was really a sign that this country was changing - that it was possible that a black man might actually be the Democratic presidential candidate and even win the presidency. I didn't expect miracles from him if he became president, but his candidacy gave me hope. Now, even since before the Pennsylvania election last week, I started to lose hope - because of the attacks of the Clinton and McCain campaigns, the malicious nonsense being spread about how he's a Muslim and hates Israel, the attacks from a whole host of right-wing pundits. Now, Jeremiah Wright seems to have decided that he wants to completely destroy Obama's chances for becoming the Democratic candidate - out of his own selfish desire to make a name for himself. He made a speech today at the National Press Club. I'm not going to write about all of what he said, only the part that upsets me the most.

As I said on the Bill Moyers' show, one of our news channels keeps playing a news clip from 20 years ago when Louis [Farakkhan] said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion.

This is a nonsensical statement. Zionism is a political movement, not a religion. And Louis Farakkhan did call Judaism a "gutter religion." (See this pro-Farakkhan website for a corroboration of that statement - Blacks and Jews).

And he was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter is being vilified for, and Bishop Tutu is being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago.

Which UN resolutions is he talking about? The 1975 resolution that declared that "Zionism is racism"? Or the one that abrogated that resolution? Somehow I suspect that he's referring to the first one.

Later on in the talk Wright said:

MODERATOR: You have likened Israeli policies to apartheid and its treatment of Palestinians with Native Americans. Can you explain your views on Israel?
WRIGHT: Where did I liken them to that? Whoever wrote the question, tell me where I likened them.
Jimmy Carter called it apartheid. Jeremiah Wright didn't liken anything to anything. My position on Israel is that Israel has a right to exist, that Israelis have a right to exist, as I said, reconciled one to another.
Have you read the Link? Do you read the Link, Americans for Middle Eastern Understanding, where Palestinians and Israelis need to sit down and talk to each other and work out a solution where their children can grow in a world together, and not be talking about killing each other, that that is not God's will?
My position is that the Israel and the people of Israel be the people of God who are worrying about reconciliation and who are trying to do what God wants for God's people, which is reconciliation.

I'm glad to hear that he thinks Israel has a right to exist, but why should Israel be expected to be the "people of God" in his Christian terms? Does he make the same demand of Palestinians or other Arabs? I certainly don't see it in this speech.

Now what about the group "Americans for Middle Eastern Understanding"? The name rang a bell, from my reading online about Daniel McGowan, the anti-semitic Holocaust denying emeritus professor from Hobart and William Smith College. And in fact, it's the same group that's published some of McGowan's prose on its website. The website is: AMEU and the Link is its newsletter.

From what I can see from its website, AMEU isn't interested in dialogue or reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians - it's interested in the dissolution of the state of Israel. And this is the group that Wright is recommending to us a source of inspiration for reconciliation?

My fear about Obama is that no matter what he says about Wright now - however harshly he denounces him - that this means the utter destruction of his campaign.

AAR & SBL - together again?

The AAR has finally come to its senses and decided that it's okay for the AAR and SBL to hold their Annual Meetings at the same time of the year and in the same city.

April 14, 2008

Dear Fellow Members of the American Academy of Religion:

I write today to alert you to an action taken by your Board of Directors at its meeting this past weekend.

In light of the scheduling and logistical problems connected with the proposed Independent Annual Meetings, and given the views our members expressed in our recent member survey, the Board, in its April 12, 2008 meeting, approved a recommendation that the AAR begin scheduling concurrent, yet independent Annual Meetings with the Society of Biblical Literature as soon as is feasible....

I cancelled my membership in the AAR because of its unilateral decision to stop organizing Annual Meetings together with the SBL. I learned of this decision because of an e-mail from the SBL:

The SBL Council discussed this announcement at its meeting on April 26, 2008, and offers the following comment to SBL members.

We are pleased to hear of this new development, and wish to reaffirm our continued interest in meeting at the same time and in the same city as the AAR. The SBL was not involved in the original decision by AAR; nor have we been involved in the present one. We will certainly discuss with AAR the feasibility of meeting in the same city at the traditional time (the weekend before US Thanksgiving) as soon as it is possible given present scheduling commitments and contractual arrangements. We are already scheduled through 2012 (Chicago) and 2013 (Baltimore). Once discussions commence with AAR regarding future concurrent meetings, the SBL Executive Director will report regularly on the progress in making this a practical reality. We firmly believe that holding the SBL Annual Meeting at the same time and in the same city as other organizations involved in the advancement of biblical, religious, theological, and related academic studies is a good idea. It brings together people from diverse disciplines and backgrounds to exchange ideas and build relationships.

Great! It made no sense to stop holding the meetings together, and I hope that the two associations will start working immediately to make the joint meetings possible again.

How predictable!

IAEA head slams US for holding back info on Syrian reactor. "Additionally, 'the director general views the unilateral use of force by Israel as undermining the due process of verification that is at the heart of the nonproliferation regime,' it said."

So if the US and Israel had informed the IAEA ahead of time about this reactor, would the IAEA have done anything about it? Or would there have been a long and fruitless series of discussions with the Syrian regime, first trying to get permission to see the reactor, then getting permission to do tests - by which time it would have been fully operational. This way, the reactor is destroyed and the North Koreans are outed as having helped the Syrians. What is bad about that?

Obama's Pastor

Obama is going to have to denounce the statements of the pastor of the church he's belonged to for many years in much stronger terms than he has previously if he has any hopes of becoming president. This ABC news story has many very damaging quotes from Obama's Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11.

This is what I find the most offensive - Jeremiah Wright speaking in terms very reminiscent of Ward Churchill's vile article after the September 11 attacks:

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

He even uses the same metaphor as Churchill - chickens coming home to roost.

And Obama's campaign hasn't been nearly forceful enough in its denunciations of Wright -

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

I don't really care if Obama doesn't think of the pastor of his church in political terms - a lot of other people will, and will identify him with the comments that Wright has made over the years. He has to denounce him, and quickly. I don't believe for a minute that Obama believes the same things as Wright does - but he has to make that crystal clear.

Leon Greenman

This is a moving obituary of "the only Englishman to be sent to Auschwitz," Leon Greenman, who died on March 7 at age 97.

Leon Greenman was the only Englishman to be sent to Auschwitz. His wife and son died in the gas chambers, and for two and a half years he was a slave labourer, subjected to beating and experimentation. He vowed that his life thereafter would be devoted to keeping the memory of such horror alive. His final decades were spent in unceasing testimony against the crimes of Nazism, and determined campaigning against any modern revival of fascism.

South Jerusalem

Matthew Yglesias just tipped me to this new blog - South Jerusalem - written by Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman. Haim's entry on why I like South Jerusalem really encapsulates my favorite things about South Jerusalem - Emek Refaim, Baka, Katamon, Talpiot. This is my place in Jerusalem. I love this line - "Add to that the fact that South Jerusalem is the only place in the world where you can be a left-wing, skeptical Orthodox Zionist Jew and feel like you are part of a mass movement." Amen!

Why do writers pretend to be Indians?

This article - Why do writers pretend to be Indians? - may shed some light on the psychology of Ward Churchill.

To the Westerner who 'understands' the terrorist

Another great column by Bradley Burston - To the Westerner who "understands" the terrorist - on yesterday's terrorist attack in Jerusalem.

Today's dead

1) Terrorist attack on Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Kiryat Moshe kills eight yeshiva students, one as young as 15.

2. Islamic Jihad terrorists blew up an IDF jeep on the Gaza border, attacked a rescue crew and killed one soldier. About the roadside bomb that blew up the jeep - "Israeli officials said that the explosive device was large, shaped and sophisticated. They suggested that it was built by militants who had received weapons training in Iran, the main sponsor of Islamic Jihad." Could this be one of the explosively formed penetrators that have been so devastating against American armored vehicles in Iraq? They were used by Hezbollah in the Lebanon war in 2006.

3. Workers at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha came under fire from the same group of Islamic Jihad terrorists.

4. A Palestinian terrorist was killed by a Israeli airstrike on a rocket-launching team.

5. Seven Qassams were fired into Israel, two hit houses in Sderot, including that of Elisheva Turjeman.

Jews and Hagee

Two good articles on Hagee & Jews - one from Gershom Gorenberg, one from Matthew Yglesias. Both address the question of why there hasn't been more Jewish outrage about Hagee's support for McCain.

Gorenberg, who has written on the type of Protestant theology that Hagee adheres to - dispensational premillennialism (in his book The End of Days) - points out that Hagee's 1996 book, Beginning of the End: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist "expressed uncommon sympathy for" Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin.

Hagee is a fine man to be supporting John McCain - someone who thinks that political assassination is a legitimate way to change a nation's policies!

More on Obama and the Jews (and a little Ralph Nader thrown in for good measure)

The same talk that Obama gave to Jewish leaders in Cleveland (which I quoted from in my last post) also has some more interesting statements from him, as well as the latest slime from Ralpha Nader.

He [Obama] also again noted his disagreement with some of the critical statements on Israel made by the pastor of his church, which he ascribed to the latter's support for the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa at a time that Israel continued to trade with the regime there.

"He is like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with," he said. "And I suspect there are some people in this room who have heard relatives say some things that they don't agree with, including, on occasion, directed at African Americans."

He concluded, "I understand the concerns and the sensitivities, and one of my goals constantly in my public career has been to try to bridge what was a historically powerful bond between the African American and Jewish communities that has been frayed in recent years."

Also on Sunday, Ralph Nader, while declaring his third-party candidacy for the US presidency, attacked Obama for allegedly concealing his "pro-Palestinian" feelings.

"He's run a brilliant tactical campaign, but his better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself," Nader charged on NBC's Meet the Press. "He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state senate... Now he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people."

Nader called the Palestinian-Israeli conflict a "real off-the-table issue for the candidates," including Obama, whom he described as "the first liberal evangelist in a long time" to run for president.

"The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He's got no credibility," an Obama campaign adviser said about Nader.

Obama's campaign on Monday responded to Nader's attacks on the senator's position on Gaza.

"Barack Obama's longstanding support for Israel's security is rooted in his belief that no civilians should have to live with the threat of terrorism," the campaign statement said. "In Gaza, Hamas continues to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians every day, and that's why it is long past time that Hamas renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist and abides by past agreements."

Democratic National Committee consultant Matt Dorf, who also does Jewish outreach, also dismissed the Nader accusations as off the mark and meaningless.

"If he thinks there are voters out there to be had by demonizing Barack Obama's record, including on Middle East issues, he's not going to find them," Dorf said. "Nader's going to get even less support than he got last time."

I guess Nader has decided that once again it's his turn to play the spoiler role vis-a-vis a Democratic candidate for President. Nader is a star example of the principle that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." He is seeking perfection, and can't abide anything less than perfect that might actually succeed. For him, ideological perfection is much preferable to doing something that actually might bring practical results.