Islam & Terrorism roundup

An excellent article by Salman Rushdie on India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor. "The 'culture' of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame. Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that."

And also in today's New York Times, For a Decade, London Thrived as a Busy Crossroads of Terror. Read this article if you subscribe to the puerile excuse that the attacks in London last week were because Britain has supported the U.S. in the war in Iraq.

Long before bombings ripped through London on Thursday, Britain had become a breeding ground for hate, fed by a militant version of Islam.

For two years, extremists like Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, a 47-year-old Syrian-born cleric, have played to ever-larger crowds, calling for holy war against Britain and exhorting young Muslim men to join the insurgency in Iraq. In a newspaper interview in April 2004, he warned that "a very well-organized" London-based group, Al Qaeda Europe, was "on the verge of launching a big operation" here. In a sermon attended by more than 500 people in a central London meeting hall last December, Sheik Omar vowed that if Western governments did not change their policies, Muslims would give them "a 9/11, day after day after day."

If London became a magnet for fiery preachers, it also became a destination for men willing to carry out their threats. For a decade, the city has been a crossroads for would-be terrorists who used it as a home base, where they could raise money, recruit members and draw inspiration from the militant messages. Among them were terrorists involved in attacks in Madrid, Casablanca, Saudi Arabia, Israel and in the Sept. 11 plot. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in the United States in the 9/11 attacks, and Richard C. Reid, the convicted shoe-bomber, both prayed at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London. The mosque's former leader, Abu Hamza al-Masri openly preached violence for years before the authorities arrested him in April 2004.

...Well before Thursday's bombings, British officials predicted a terrorist attack in their country. In a speech in October 2003, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, said she saw "no prospect of a significant reduction in the threat posed to the U.K. and its interests from Islamist terrorism over the next five years, and I fear for a considerable number of years thereafter."

Britain's challenge to detect militants on its soil is particularly difficult. Counterterrorism officials estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims living in Britain are supporters of Al Qaeda. Among that number, officials believe that as many as 600 men were trained in camps connected with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

...Even last week's bombings did little to curtail the rhetoric of some of the most radical leaders, who criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair for saying that the bombings appeared to be the work of Islamic terrorists. "This shows me that he is an enemy of Islam," Abu Abdullah, a self-appointed preacher and the spokesman for the radical group Supporters of Shariah, said in an interview on Friday, adding, "Sometimes when you see how people speak, it shows you who your enemies are."

Mr. Abdullah declared that those British citizens who re-elected Mr. Blair "have blood on their hands" because British soldiers are killing Muslims. He also said that the British government, not Muslims, "have their hands" in the bombings, explaining, "They want to go on with their fight against Islam."

Imran Waheed, a spokesman for a radical British-based group, Hizb ut Tahrir, which is allowed to function here but is banned in Germany and much of the Muslim world, said: "When Westerners get killed, the world cries. But if Muslims get killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, it's the smallest of news. I will condemn what happened in London only after there is the promise from Western leaders to condemn what they have done in Falluja and other parts of Iraq and in Afghanistan."

So far, there appears to be little effort to restrain outspoken clerics, including prominent extremists like Sheik Omar, who has reportedly been under investigation by Scotland Yard. Sheik Omar, who remains free, is an example of the double-edged policies in Britain. He is a political refugee who was given asylum 19 years ago and is supported by public assistance. Asked in an interview in May how he felt about being barred from obtaining British citizenship, he replied, "I don't want to become a citizen of hell."

It's nice to see the Times not pulling any punches in today's article, because in article in yesterday's Times on Muslims in England, they presented Imran Waheed as an example of a moderate Muslim outraged by people slurring all Muslims as terrorists! See this outrageous article.

But the frustration of the community is growing as evidence mounts that Muslim immigrant citizens or the children of immigrants in Europe are increasingly populating the rank and file of terrorist organizations. Of 140 people implicated in European terrorist activities since 1993, 24 percent were European nationals, according to a study by Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke at Washington's Nixon Center, an independent think tank.

And whose fault is it that Muslim immigrants or their children are increasingly counted among the terrorists? Seems to me that Muslims should be frustrated at themselves, not at others!

These next paragraphs, however, are the most outrageous, picking supporters of Islamist terror and quoting them as moderate Muslims!

For many Muslims here, condemning terrorism does not mean condoning American or British policies. "It is correct to say Islam forbids the killing of civilians, but we need to have a larger discussion about why these actions happened," said Imran Waheed, spokesman for the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global Islamist party working for the return of an Islamic caliphate, whose activists handed out leaflets outside the Finsbury Park mosque as people left Friday Prayer. "What we want is equity or parity between the life of a Briton in the suburbs of London and a farmer in Iraq," he said.

Opposition to Britain's role in Iraq has turned the area's Muslim community away from the governing Labor Party and toward the upstart Respect Party of George Galloway, who issued a statement Thursday saying that his party had warned that the war in Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain.

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of Britain's Islamic Human Rights Commission, argued that injustice lends legitimacy to extremist discourse. "There needs to be a separation between those who are committing those atrocities and those who are passionate about injustice," he said, adding that dismissing extremists outright only isolates them and makes them more likely to turn to violence. "We need to encourage that passion and give them avenues within the civil society to deal with injustices."

This is another excuse for terrorists. Their "passion" needs to be encouraged and given avenues within civil society! How, exactly? Making all women wear burkas? Like instituting the laws about rape cited in Salman Rushdie's op-ed piece? Like opposing the existence of the state of Israel?

"We have far greater experience as victims of terror than as perpetrators of terror," said Mr. Waheed of Hizb ut-Tahrir, saying that the community's reaction to the killing of Muslims in Afghanistan and the Middle East has been "remarkably restrained..."People need to understand the feeling on the Muslim street," he said. "People hate the foreign policy of Britain and the United States, and the West needs to consider whether constant interference in the Muslim world is productive."

What were the editors of the Times thinking when they allowed this piece of biased, slanted, and simply wrong journalism to be printed in the newspaper? It seems to me that they were letting the political biases of this particular reporter, Craig Smith, get in the way of some honest reporting about the support for Islamic terrorism among Muslims in Britain. While I am not usually one to attack the Times for its political stance, in this case I think it has made an egregious mistake.

This article, however, does give me some hope: Longtime Haven for Arabs Now Must Ask: Why Us?. One of the bombs in London went off in a predominantly Arab neighborhood.

"We have to be honest and realistic with ourselves," said Laith Abdel Fattah, a part owner of Panini Cafe, tucked on a side street a block from the bombed train station. "We are living in an age that is simply unnatural. Is there anywhere in Islam that says you have to kill? Nowhere does it say you can take away somebody's right to live. And yet they do this in the name of Islam." Like many here, Mr. Abdel Fattah said he was indignant that the bombing could possibly be done in the name of his faith and his community. Out of a sense of duty, he said, he approached the police on Friday and offered any help they required.

"I wanted to show them that we too believe that what happened was unacceptable," he said. "There are only two directions we can take now. Either we wait and see what's coming, and that can only be bad, or we have to speak out and say unequivocally this is unacceptable. We need to show people what the right example is."

At the Rafidain Real Estate Agency on Edgware Road, Abu Ahmad al-Sharif sat with his nephew and a friend, pondering the bombings. Mr. Sharif, an immigrant from Iraq, was riding a bus as the Edgware Road bomb went off a few blocks away from him. The bus service was halted and he walked to work, leading him past the carnage at the Edgware Road station, where he grasped the gravity of the incident. He realized his son had taken one of the routes to work and broke into tears, then grew furious.

"In my homeland, Iraq, terrorism is no longer a surprise," Mr. Sharif said. "But I never imagined it could happen in a place like this. This place always seemed so far from terrorism," he said, noting the safe harbor England has given many Iraqis. "I blame the fathers, the mothers and the schools of these people who let them get to this point," he said. "It is our duty to find these groups because they are like a cancer and will only continue to grow unless we cut it from its roots." "Someone has to show them the boundary," said Sabah al-Hamdani, who had been listening intently. "We need to stand in their way."

Visiting Prague

Just a quick posting, because I'm paying by the minute.... I arrived in Prague last Monday, and will be visiting here until next Thursday. I spent the first few days visiting an academic study abroad program that we have sent students to - it seems very well-organized and intellectually rooted, and I will be happily recommending it to more students. Along with that I've been a tourist in Prague, and as I'm sure almost everyone says who visits here, it's a beautiful city - lots of art nouveau buildings from the early 20th century mixed in with medieval architecture. I visited Josefov, the Jewish quarter, my first full day here - I saw the synagogues, including the Old-New synagogue, which dates from the 13th century. Yesterday and today I went to the Prague Castle complex and have still seen only a part of it - lots of beautiful buildings and art still to be seen in the days ahead. Tomorrow I'm going on a tour to Terezin - the town the Nazis turned into a concentration camp, which became the way-station to Auschwitz. I'll post more about my trip probably when I return to the states and have more time (and I'm not writing in an internet cafe!).

It was shocking to hear about the attempted bombings in London yesterday and the horrible bombings in Sharm el Sheik today. It still feels distant from Prague, which seems like a very safe city (at least in the touristy sections), but it puts me a bit on edge.

Terrorist attacks in London

Tom Friedman in tomorrow's New York Times is correct when he says: "Yesterday's bombings in downtown London are profoundly disturbing. In part, that is because a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country." I have to admit this is also how I feel - although more people were killed in the Madrid bombings on 3/11/04, the bombings in London have upset me more deeply. I've visited London, some of my ancestors come from England (others passed through on their way to the U.S.), and the British were the bulwark against Nazism when no one else was. Somehow, this hits closer to home.

He continues by arguing that this attack in London could lead Western countries to a crackdown not just on Muslim terrorists, but on all Muslims.

And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. Many people said Palestinian suicide bombing was the spontaneous reaction of frustrated Palestinian youth. But when Palestinians decided that it was in their interest to have a cease-fire with Israel, those bombings stopped cold. The village said enough was enough.

The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.

Some Muslim leaders have taken up this challenge. This past week in Jordan, King Abdullah II hosted an impressive conference in Amman for moderate Muslim thinkers and clerics who want to take back their faith from those who have tried to hijack it. But this has to go further and wider.

The double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst.

There are Muslims who condemn terrorism in their name and who call for free and equal Muslim societies. The Bahraini blogger Mahmood al-Yousif says, "The way to beat them is not to give in to them, and more democracy and democratic institutions, a complete overhaul of the education system in the Arab and Muslim worlds and the full separation of Mosque and State. The time is now. We have to get this done. Otherwise we will be completely left behind and will suffer much more at the hands of these terrorists. My heart and thoughts go to the people of the United Kingdom in this very difficult time."

I second his feelingsl and hope that this will be the last terrorist attack inflicted by al-Qaeda and its cohorts.

Protest vigil in Jerusalem

According to this report in Haaretz, about 350 people showed up tonight for the protest vigil against the stabbing at the Jerusalem gay pride rally.

Tuesday's demonstration was an expression of solidarity with the three marchers stabbed last Thursday at Jerusalem's gay pride parade. The slogan of the demonstration was "They tried to kill me because I am gay."

Approximately 350 demonstrators gathered Tuesday on King George Street in the capital across from the spot in which Schlisel stormed the parade. Demonstrators waved signs ("Jerusalem was destroyed by hatred" and "love thy enemies") and called for an end to homophobia, addressing Jerusalem's mayor Uri Lupolianski directly.

Chair of the Jerusalem Open House and organizer of the event Noa Sattath said, "There is a direct connection between the incitement that originated with the mayor and the stabbing... I don't understand how the mayor sleeps at night."

More violence against gay people in Jerusalem

As reported in today's Jerusalem Post, Violent anti-gay protests continue in Jerusalem.

A 30-year-old haredi man who was seen approaching an event organized by Jerusalem's gay and lesbian community in the city center Tuesday night was detained for questioning after police found a knife in his possession, police said. The suspect told police that he came to the event to "read the placards" and that he uses the knife "to peel fruit", Jerusalem Police Spokesman Shmuel ben Ruby said.

Simultaneously, several thousand haredi protesters pelted three city busses with stones Tuesday evening at a central Jerusalem thoroughfare in a continuation of the protest over last week's gay pride parade in the city, police said. One police officer was struck in the head by a rock, and was treated for injuries at Sha'are Zedek Hospital. Three Egged busses were also badly damaged, ben-Ruby said. Police dispersed the rioters, who had congregated at Kikar Shabat in the heart of Jerusalem's haredi neighborhoods.

I would guess that the event referred to was the protest vigil I mentioned earlier.

One wonders why the haredi rioters pelted city buses with stones - were their drivers or riders guilty of anything in particular, or were they just handy, in the way? And one also wonders if there will be any protests by the religious "leadership" in Israel against these acts of violence?

Daf Yomi

There seems to be a new phenomenon of people blogging on the Daf Yomi. I found this blog, Daf Am Haaretz, written by Neil Litt, former chair of the National Havurah Committee. And Kaspit frequently blogs on the Daf Yomi, especially as it relates to environmental issues. Reclaiming the Daf is a group blog on the Daf, which includes Kaspit.

Gay pride parade assailant charged with attempted murder

The man who stabbed three people at the Jerusalem gay pride march has been charged with three counts of attempted murder.

The man, Yishai Schlisel, an Orthodox Jew from Upper Modi'in, was quoted by state prosecutors as telling police officers who interrogated him that he "came to kill in the name of God." According to the indictment filed against Shlisel, the defendant carefully planned his actions, purchased the knife ahead of time, hid it in his waistcoat and then ambushed the marchers along the parade's route.

The Jerusalem Open House sent out an e-mail yesterday giving more details about the protest vigil, which is to occur tonight at 7 p.m., Jerusalem time.

Web Roundup

I just read a beautiful post on Mishkaneer - Beyond the Old Zionism, about what it really means to be a "New Jew."

Jen Taylor Friedman is a soferet (female scribe), whose website I found from Netivat Sofrut. Jen Friedman writes megillot Esther (the scroll of Esther), as well as other documents.

Mordechai Pinchas, a sofer, writes about his writing of a newly composed scroll, the Megillat ha-Shoah. This Megillah was composed by Professor Avigdor Shinan, working on behalf of the Conservative movement in Israel. These are the contents:

The scroll contains six chapters that include a testimony from a survivor whose job in a death camp was to dispose of bodies while removing the victims' gold teeth, including those of his dead brother; an eyewitness account of life in the Warsaw Ghetto; and an eulogy for those who perished. Its final chapter also commemorates the survivors, including those who went on to build the State of Israel.

Velveteen Rabbi is discussing the numbering of the Ten Commandments and how they differ between Jews and Christians. She says:

But disenfranchisement of those who don't share this text, or the government's chosen version of the text, is only one problem. Another problem -- at least, for me as a Jew -- is the implication that these verses supercede the rest of the Torah. Jews don't generally call this bit of text the "Ten Commandments," because we don't want to imply that they're the Big Ten and all the other ones don't matter as much. (In Torah they're called aseret ha'dvarim/ten sayings, and from Rabbinic days onward we've used the name aseret ha-dibrot/ten utterances). We place our focus on the whole path of righteous behavior, and consider it inappropriate to elevate these ten statements above the other 603 mitzvot that Torah offers. So while it's true that I'm a member of a faith-community for whom (some versions of) these words have relevance, I wouldn't be comfortable seeing them displayed in public spaces even in the original lengthy Hebrew version.

And here's a good online article about Jewish blogs, written by Sarah Bronson.

Yishai Schlissel Stabs 3 at Jerusalem Gay Pride March in 2005

The gay pride parade in Jerusalem last Thursday night was disrupted when a protester stabbed 3 marchers.

The stabbing attack was the most serious in a series of incidents involving opponents of the gay and lesbian gathering. Police said that some 200 religious protesters gathered at the parade's starting point, the downtown offices of the Jerusalem Open House, the gay and lesbian community center that organized the fourth annual parade.

Protesters tried to stop the march by throwing a stink bomb, but some 2,000 participants marched on through the center of Jerusalem regardless, braving shouts and insults from protesters, most of them young ultra-Orthodox men.

"Homo sex is immoral," read one protester's sign. As the parade neared a main intersection, the attacker jumped into the first group of marchers and stabbed a man. Blood from the victim's chest seeped through his shirt as he sat, dazed, at the side of the road before an ambulance came to take him to a hospital, where he was said to be in serious condition.

The organized protest, I am sure, came about because of the determined opposition of the ultra-Orthodox leadership to this parade - including Mayor Lupolianski's trying to ban it (the ban was overturned by the court). It's hard to imagine that the stabbing was unrelated to the extreme rhetoric used by the ultra-Orthodox and to the general atmosphere of violent protest against the disengagement from Gaza.

In my experience of demonstrations in Israel, I never saw a weapon used against demonstrators (I mostly went to demonstrations against the Israeli occupation), but I was tear-gassed four times (by the police), and many times experienced horrible curses being directed against us by right-wing passersby. One in particular sticks in my mind - when participating in the weekly "Women in Black" anti-occupation demonstration in Paris Sq. in Jerusalem (this would have been in the late 1980s, during the first intifada), we were cursed by someone wishing that Hitler had killed us too. And this was a curse uttered by a Jew against fellow Jews! I also remember going to prayers organized by the Women of the Wall for Ta'anit Esther in 1989, when we were met by a determined band of about 50 ultra-Orthodox men yelling at us and threatening us. The police fired a tear-gas canister at them, and one man picked the canister up and threw it at us in the women's section of the Kotel. We all had to leave, since it was impossible to breathe.

According to the weekly e-mail that I receive from the Open House in Jerusalem (the Jerusalem gay and lesbian center), they are planning a protest vigil against the stabbing, at the same place where it occurred (on King George St.). I'm not sure when the vigil is planned for, since a date isn't given. The notice reads: "A community demonstration to protest the incitement, violence, and the stabbings that occurred at the Pride March on Thursday." It says that it will be guarded by the police. "It is important for us to emphasize the connection between incitement and violence, and to protest in a dignified way against hatred." They were also planning for buses to bring people from Tel Aviv to participate in the protest vigil. I looked at the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz web sites, but didn't see anything about this protest vigil, so I don't if it occurred already.

For more information, see also: Gay Stabbing Victim Blames Negative Publicity, Court extends remand of suspect in Gay Pride stabbing. To see some pictures, see Gay Pride Marchers Attacked in Israel, but ignore the anti-Zionist ravings in the comments. For an example of incitement see this story from Arutz Sheva: MK Yishai: Gay Parade is a Contamination. Yishai is the chairman of the Shas party, the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party.

Sometimes people ask me if Jews still use amulets. I tell them that I've seen preprinted amulets that can be bought at Jewish book stores (I have a few in my office). But this is an example of a contemporary soferet (scribe) writing an amulet based upon the classic form of an amulet taken from Sefer Raziel, an early 18th century anthology of mystical and magical texts. Aviel Barclay-Rothschild, "the only living certified Soferet (female Jewish ritual scribe)," says about the amulet:

The top text is a series of angel names, invoked for the safety & health of the mother & child. The middle is an illustrated focal point, representing the 3 angels who have power over Lilith as birds on one hand, mysterious shapes on the other. Adam & Eve are banishing Lilith from the birthspace. The bottom text is a blessing for the mother, here referred to as "Plonit bat Plonit", or "What's-her-name daughter of What's-her-name". This space can be personalised. I sold the original work to a female obstetrician/gynecologist in St Louis, MO.

She also has an example of another amulet she has made, this time a birth-protection amulet

Jews blaming ourselves for the Holocaust

Once more on the theme of Jews blaming ourselves for the Holocaust. Over on DovBear, Toby Katz has again fallen into the pit which she herself has digged, with the following comment:

1. I said, over and over and over, that no one knows why the Holocaust occurred, that there were numerous reasons for it, and that the only people to "blame" for it are the Nazis. OTOH I did say that "it was no coincidence the Holocaust started in Berlin." That is the only sentence of mine you keep quoting, because you seem to think it shows me at my worst. Mis-nagid [another blogger] has openly admitted he's an atheist, but what about the people who claim to believe in the Torah? Do you deny Hashgacha Pratis [individual Providence - i.e., the idea that God watches over each individual]? Do you deny the validity of the Tochacha [the Rebuke - series of punishments described in Deut. 27-28, which are supposed to come upon the Jewish people if they fail to obey the covenant with God]? Do you think that whatever happened in Europe, it WAS just a coincidence? By causing people to focus their hatred against Torah-true Jews [i.e., Orthodox Jews] instead of against the failings of their own non-Torah movements, you prevent the Ge'ulah [redemption]. And how do you know for sure that it WAS just a coincidence? That Reform was not even one thousandth of a thousandth of a reason for any of G-d's protection to be withheld from His people, not even one tiny bit? Did G-d Himself tell you that the Tochacha is no longer operative?

I find this offensive in so many ways, principally because it involves a Jew blaming other Jews for mass murder inflicted upon Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. I also object to the view of God that Toby Katz (and not only her - see also the comments of a Rabbi Forsythe, A Torah Insight into the Holocaust) puts forward - as an unmerciful, vengeance-seeking, tyrant. What about the prayers that we utter during the Days of Awe, asking for God's forgiveness and being assured that God will forgive us? "And repentance, prayer, and charity/ righteousness will avert the evil decree."

I also object because Toby (and Rabbi Forsythe, and perhaps others) are arguing that this is the only "Torah-true" perspective on the Holocaust, something which is clearly not true. The best example, perhaps, is to be found in the writings of Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, a Polish Hasidic rebbe (whom I've written about before) who led a very successful yeshiva and educational program before World War II. He was imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazi invasion of Poland, and lived through the "Great Deportation" in summer of 1942, when the majority of the Ghetto's Jews were taken to Treblinka and killed.

His first attitude towards the sufferings the Jews were enduring at the Nazis was very much the traditional view espoused by Toby Katz & R. Forsythe, although unlike them he was going through this suffering, rather than theologizing about it after the fact. He first held that the Jews were suffering because they had left religion, were not studying Torah with the proper diligence, etc. After a while in the Ghetto, his views began to shift, and he began to believe that it was not because of the sins of the people that they were suffering. Instead, he began to see it as an unknowable mystery about which even God himself was weeping in his inner chambers - and a mystery into which a weeping Jew can enter precisely through his own weeping.

Rabbi Shapira also denied that the sufferings of the Holocaust could be compared to any previous suffering in Jewish history. In November, 1942, after the Great Deportation, he writes in a note, "Only until the end of 5702 [summer of 1942] was it the case that such sufferings were experienced before. However, as for the monstrous torments, the terrible and freakish deaths the malevolent monstrous murderers devised against us, the House of Israel, from the end of 5702 and on - according to my knowledge of rabbinic literature and Jewish history in general, there has never been anything like them. May God have mercy and deliver us from their hands in the twinkling of an eye" (p. 139 of R. Shapira's Esh Kodesh, a collection of his homilies published posthumously after the war; translation from Nehemia Polen, The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, pp. 132-133).

One of the qualities that shines through Rabbi Shapira's writing is his love for the Jewish people and individual suffering Jews - and I believe it is this quality of his that we must emulate when writing and speaking about the Holocaust, rather than blaming the victims and besmirching the memory of the Jews were were murdered.

This is another serious issue that Rep. Hostettler took up last year, to defend the morals of the good citizens of Indiana - Hostettler mounting campaign to change the name of Interstate 69. Otherwise, from looking at his official website, he seems a fairly devoted supporter of Pres. Bush's conservative Republican policies, although he voted against the war in Iraq (and also against sending U.S. ground troops to Kosovo). He voted for that perennial favorite, moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but since no such thing is going to happen until there's a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians, such a vote is a cheap sop to Zionists.

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post writes about Rep. David Obey's attempt to Keep Faith With Religious Freedom. Last week Obey offered "an amendment to the military appropriations bill calling on the secretary of the Air Force to 'develop a plan to ensure that the Air Force Academy maintains a climate free from coercive intimidation and inappropriate proselytizing.'" For his pains, Obey, a Roman Catholic, was viciously attacked by Rep. John Hostettler of Indiana, with these words:

Obey's all-American assertion of religious liberty was, for Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.), part of "the long war on Christianity in America [that] continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives. It continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats. . . . Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians."

This appalling statement was eventually stricken from the record, but that was cold comfort for Obey:

Obey rose to his feet and demanded that Hostettler's last words be stricken from the record, which they eventually were. "If Jesus is watching what's happening on the floor of the House of Representatives, with people behaving in such a blasphemous fashion," Obey said this week, "well, I am reminded of that passage, 'Jesus wept.' " Obey said that when he first came to Congress, "there would have been universal condemnation of Hostettler by both parties." In this case, Obey said he was approached afterward by a single sympathetic Republican. Obey was comforted that Jewish House members "appreciated that a Christian would speak out."

This last quote is very scary! Only Jewish house members appreciated what Obey said? And have we descended to the political level now that we have to be grateful that Christians are speaking out in favor of religious tolerance?

The Forward reported earlier this month on how Rep. Steve Israel of New York was also harassed when he tried to introduce two measures to require the Air Force to "submit a plan for ensuring religious tolerance" at its academy.

Several Republican lawmakers are using the controversy as an opportunity to air the view that it is Christians whose constitutional free-speech rights are being suppressed in the military. At a recent Armed Services Committee hearing, Rep. John Hostetler, an Indiana Republican, derided the "mythical wall of church-state separation" as he argued that Israel's amendment "would bring the ACLU" and "the very silliness that's been present on... several courts of justice over the last 50 years" into the United States military. Israel's measure, he added, would "quash the religious expression of millions of service personnel."...

At the hearing, Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, suggested that, contrary to what Israel was reporting about the Air Force Academy, the problem in the military was that some evangelical Christians feel they are "not being promoted" because of their faith, and Christian chaplains say they are not being allowed to conduct prayers referring to Jesus. "There is a problem in the military.... The problem is political correctness," he declared.

No, the problem is what Andrew Sullivan has started calling "Christianism" (a term to parallel with "Islamism") - the belief that Christianity is superior to all other religions, and that this superiority must be upheld by the U.S. government.

As Steve Israel said, "The Republicans [on the Armed Services Committee] just jumped on me," Israel told the Forward. "The people who were coerced were represented as the problem. The people who coerced were represented as the victims."

I wonder what the position these Republicans take on Israel (the nation, not the individual)?

DovBear has decided to train his sights on Daniel Lapin's organization, Toward Tradition, so I thought I'd cruise on over to their web site to take a look at them. On their home page I came across a list of the "four unique programs" of their mission. They include:

1) The Macabee Project. "Combating anti-Jewish/ anti-Christian bigotry; defending Christians unjustly accused of anti-Semitism." The main point seems to be to provide coverage for right-wing Christians whose vision for America doesn't include much tolerance for anybody else. See their comments on the ADL: "The Anti-Defamation League once stood to defend the Jewish faith, as well as the Jewish ethnicity, from anti-Semitic assaults in the media, and in society. They now seem poised to turn every conflict between a secular Jewish individual and a religious Christian into a specious example of anti-Semitism. This will not help the Jewish community. In fact, Judaism seems to be under attack from liberal, secular Jews: this is defamation and anti-Semitism that seems to attract little to no attention from the ADL."

I do agree that the ADL does sometimes blow incidents of antisemitism out of proportion, but I think that Lapin is simply turning his own political disagreement with the ADL into the ADL's supposed lack of interest in defending Jews against antisemitism.

3) The American Alliance of Jews and Christians. "The American Alliance of Jews and Christians (AAJC) is led by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. The Alliance unites American Jews with Christians on behalf of traditional values. The AAJC’s Board of Advisers includes Dr. James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Charles Colson, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson, Pastor Rick Scarborough, as well as Rabbi Barry Freundel, Rabbi David Novak, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Michael Medved, John Uhlmann."

Well, from this list of advisors we know where their political beliefs lie - uniting with such paragons as Charles Colson, Pat Robertson, et al, and equally conservative Jews like Freundel, Novak, and Medved (although one wonders why they've gone along with such a dubious character as Lapin).

For those who wish to know more, they've published a pamphlet called "Enemies or Allies? Why American Jews Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Conservative Christians."

And finally, 4) The Ethical Capitalism Project, which begins with these words: "Much of America's strength is depleted by the animosity and disrespect heaped on business people. When an employer who has provided jobs for thousands of people is made to feel guilty for being greedy, it's time for society to reassess its values."

As DovBear Rabbi Lapin appears to be deep in the muck with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist accused of defrauding Indian tribes. So much for ethical capitalism...

Defining "lulei"

On the phrase "lulei de-mistafina," a favorite of Cloojew (and mysterious to most others), two people comment (from On the Main Line):

It's one of those words that no one in ninth grade told me what it literally meant and I never thought about it, but you pick up from context. Contextually it means something like "if I may be so bold".
S. | Homepage | 06.24.05 - 12:00 pm | #

Lit.
If not for the fact that I am less than 100% sure of what I'm saying...

LkwdGuy | 06.24.05 - 12:02 pm | #

I was just cruising through Bloghead and found a link to this hilarious post by Naomi Chana of Baraita, on the broad-ranging cross-blog fight about hagba, women's tefillah groups, and the role of women in Judaism (by the way, why don't we ever have big fights about the role of men in Judaism?). Her best line: "But I had hitherto been ignorant of how participating in groups of women praying and studying Torah together will cause said women to sprout facial hair, stop loving their children, produce Christian grandkids, do something unspecified but presumably nasty to True Judaism (tm), and start participating in incestuous cannibalistic orgies with married terrorists." Read the rest for further amusement....

I've definitely been spending too much time participating in some rather rousing discussions over at DovBear's and Miriam (and Paul) Shaviv's blogs - long arguments, mostly about women and halakhah (a very interesting discussion sparked by Miriam's participating in a women's tefilah group and getting hagba). There's been much spirited argumentation with Toby Katz, and now Lisa, on DovBear's comment threads - they defend a rather (to my mind) rigid version of Orthodoxy and especially what should be important to Orthodox women (having more babies and dressing modestly, it seems).

Two bloggers that I've encountered through these discussions and have started to read with pleasure are Orthomom and Mirty, who has also been drawn into the uproar (see this posting from her: they really don't get it).

Since I currently belong to a Conservative shul, and have never defined myself as Orthodox (even though I did belong to an Orthodox shul for a year in Jerusalem), I sometimes feel a bit of an interloper in these discussions, but one of the pleasures of the internet & especially the blogging world is that it's possible to enter into a community of sorts that one might never enter in the "real world."

I would find it interesting to be introduced to some more Conservative and Reform Jewish bloggers who are as passionate as the usual crew over at DovBear & Bloghd - the inimitable Amshinover, the halakhically correct Gil Student, the lyrically spiritual Barefoot Jewess, GoldaLeah, Conservative Apikorus... the list goes on. Anyone have suggestions?

There were several letters in yesterday's Ithaca Journal responding to the full page of opinion pieces published on May 21, 2005, responding to Sandy Wold's column criticizing Israel. (By the way, I discovered by going back to the site that my letter has made it on to the IJ's web site: "Zionist Jew" rejects inflammatory comments.)

Along with three letters critical of Israel written by other people, Sandy Wold herself wrote an angry retort in yesterday's Journal, in which she said that she is retracting her apologetic letter of May 21:

I have been deeply concerned about the presentation of the May 21 opinion page. While the Journal followed its "journalistic standards," they nevertheless made choices that placated an international group at my expense and neglected to inform readers of significant behind-the-scenes events. Readers should know that 90 percent of the hostile letters published on May 21 came from Honest Reporting", an organization of 120,000 who bombarded me with hostile emails and calls. Readers should know that the Journal publisher urged me to submit a peace-making communication I posted to the honestreporting.com blog on May 9. Readers should also know that the Journal omitted two significant paragraphs from my May 21 guest column without my permission while superfluous quotes remained.

She's right that the letters were prompted by the posting on Honest Reporting, and also by the posting on Little Green Footballs. I went to the HR website and some of the comments posted there were extremely hostile, as were those on the LGF site. While I didn't agree with what she said, some of the HR and LGF comments were over the line and engaged in personal abuse.

My critics made countless false assumptions about what I believe and the Journal misrepresented me and my message of May 21. Ironically, the volatility of my critics and the Journal's appeasement perfectly exemplify the dynamic I was describing in my original guest column of May 7.

I don't quite know what she means by the "volatility" of her critics. Yes, people were mad at her - as advocates of Israel often are at those who criticize or demonize Israel (I think her comments came closer to the latter than the former). I don't see that the Journal "appeased" them - rather, it published letters critical of her remarks - and letters that were not personally abusive. They objected to her on political, rather than personal grounds. Anyone writing in public on Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to be prepared for criticism (and sometimes personal attacks) from those disagreeing with them.

I also object to the choice of pictures for that page which demonized Arab people. Readers deserve to be reminded that not all Palestinians/Arabs agree with PLO behavior. My column and its omitted content was written in a sincere spirit of seeking understanding of the individuals within this group and simultaneously clarifying what I originally meant by the universality of the victim mind-set. I did not know that the Journal would edit my column in such a way that would collude with the agenda of this group to silence dissent; I therefore retract my letter of May 21 and will publish elsewhere.

For the information of readers who only saw the internet version of the Journal from May 21, there were two photographs placed at the top of the page, below which came first my letter, then a whole series of international letters (prompted by the posting on Honest Reporting), and then Sandy Wold's column responding to those who criticized her (specifically, the international letters, not mine). The photograph on the right depicted Palestinian men wearing masks, and aiming guns. The legend below the picture was, in the words of the Journal, "Masked Palestinian militants of the Popular Resistance Committees, a militia linked to the Fatah movement, perform a military exercise in the streets during a rally in Gaza City, Friday. As Palestinian-Israeli fighting spilled over into a third straight day, Israel warned a cease-fire declared in February is in danger of collapse." The photograph on the left depicted Jewish settlers, also armed, in Gaza, with the legend: "Jewish settlers walk toward an abandoned building located between the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom and the Palestinian town of Deir el-Ballah on Friday. Settlers intend to set up a defensive position in the building used earlier on by Palestinian militants who fired missiles and light arms fire at the Jewish settlement." Both pictures were from the AP. The placing of the photos side by side seemed to me the Journal's attempt to be evenhanded - to point out that there is violence on both sides from sources not officially authorized - Jewish settlers and the Popular Resistance Committees.

I think it's very telling that Wold only objected to the picture of the Palestinian gunman, and didn't even mention the photo of the Jewish settlers. She is only capable of seeing media bias on one side (as is true of many of the letters criticizing her).

In response to Wold's letter, the editors of the Journal wrote (June 18): "EDITOR'S NOTE: Wold was repeatedly advised by the opinion page editor that she was welcome to submit a follow-up column to her May 7 piece, but was not required to do so. Wold accepted that invitation, submitting nine versions of her reply as well as a hand-written addendum. The final version of her reply, plus addendum, was about 300 words longer than The Journal's established 750-word limit for such submissions. It was carefully edited to approach that word limit without altering its message. We stand by that effort."

It's because of stories like this - Iraqis Found in Torture House Tell of Brutality of Insurgents - that I can't support U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. We would be abandoning and betraying people like Ahmed Isa Fathil, who briefly joined the new Iraqi army and apparently was captured and tortured by terrorists (I can't bring myself to call them "insurgents" - it's much too anodyne a name for these torturers and murderers). I'm just sad and angry that our administration has screwed things up so badly in Iraq.

As Kevin Drum says, "This [Gov. Bush's insisting on keeping the Schiavo case open], though, simply beggars the imagination. What kind of human being would keep a vendetta like this alive at this point?"

When I read this in yesterday's New York Times, Gov. Bush Seeks Another Inquiry in Schiavo Case, I was astonished and disgusted. Has Jeb Bush no shame at all? He writes in a letter to the Times yesterday: "The New York Times's grotesque and chilling disrespect for the sanctity of life has never been more apparent than in your June 16 editorial 'Autopsy on the Schiavo Tragedy.'" Does he really think that the New York Times, which opposed the Iraq War, opposes the death penalty, and speaks out for those being murdered in Darfur, Sudan actually disrespects "the sanctity of life"? He goes on to write: "Terri Schiavo was a deeply loved daughter, wife, sister and friend. The fact that her brain was atrophied or that she was blind or could not have been rehabilitated doesn't change that fact. While many medical professionals said she was in a persistent vegetative state, still other highly respected neurologists said there was a chance that she was not." Which highly respected neurologiests? Sen. Frist? Anybody who had actually examined her? He finishes by saying, "Despite claims of cynicism and being "\'agenda-driven,' we will continue to strive to protect our most vulnerable citizens. All innocent human life is precious, and government has a duty to protect the weak, the disabled and the vulnerable." What a hypocrite. This is the so-called culture of life? I'm really disgusted.

Last night I went with friends to see a new Israeli movie - Walk on water. It's a story about a Mossad agent whose mission is first to find out if an old Nazi war criminal is still alive, by befriending his grandson who is visiting his sister who is volunteering on a kibbutz in Israel, and then when he discovers that the old man is still alive, to follow the grandson back to Germany to find the war criminal. The grandson is gay, and the sister is estranged from her parents because of their accepting attitude toward her grandfather. I won't reveal the climax because it's rather surprising. I thought the movie was very well made - perhaps the best made of the Israeli movies I've seen. The acting was top-notch, especially the portrayal of the Mossad agent, Eyal - a paradigmatic stoical Israeli man, whose brittle veneer is broken down completely by the end of the film. The gay grandson was also portrayed very well, and there was a fun and revealing look at the gay male culture in Israel. The ending was somewhat pat, but didn't detract from the rest of the film. I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Steven Fine's new book, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World, has just been published by Cambridge University Press.

From the publisher's description: "Art and Judaism explores the Jewish experience with art during the Greco-Roman period - from the Hellenistic period through the rise of Islam. It starts with the premise that Jewish art in antiquity was a ‘minority’ or ‘ethnic’ art and surveys ways that Jews fully participated in, transformed, and at times rejected the art of their general environment. It focuses upon the politics of identity during the Greco-Roman period, even as it discusses ways that modern identity issues have sometimes distorted and at other times refined scholarly discussion of ancient Jewish material culture."

It sounds like a really interesting book, worthwhile for anyone interested in ancient Jewish art and archaeology. I hope that it might be of some use to me in my current research on the Babylonian incantation bowls (I'm currently writing an article tentatively called "Image and Word: Performative Ritual and Material Culture in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls," a revision of two papers given in the last two years at the Association for Jewish Studies meetings). One of the problems that always concerns me in dealing with the bowls is the question of the relationship between literary sources and material remains. Are they talking about the same thing? Do they give evidence for the same aspects of late Sassanian/early Islamic culture in Iraq? What is the relationship between unequivocally Jewish sources like the Babylonian Talmud and the incantation bowls, which clearly display a pluralism of cultural markers? What do the bowls tell us about cultural/ethnic/religious identity at that time in late antique Iraq? Steve Fine's book deals with the Greco-Roman world, but some of the same intellectual problems would arise there also.

In this Autopsy on the Schiavo Tragedy, the New York Times editorial page points out that "The autopsy results released yesterday should embarrass all the opportunistic politicians and agenda-driven agitators who meddled in Terri Schiavo's right-to-die case. There is no evidence that Ms. Schiavo's husband did any of the awful things attributed to him, and no hope that her greatly damaged brain would ever have recovered. The courts were right to conclude that she should be allowed to die after 15 years in what her doctors described as a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery."

When I was reading about the autopsy yesterday, it made me wonder if Terry Schiavo had actually even been alive before the feeding tube was removed. If her brain was half the size it should have been, and if she could survive only with the feeding tube - why do we call this "being alive"? Some of her body was alive, but not any of the higher centers of the brain, and not some of the lower centers of the brain. Why were people so eager to keep her in this state of existence?

Transience

A friend of mine just started up a blog - Quicksilver - that has as its framework a commentary on the daf yomi - the daily reading of one page of the Talmud. His commentary is very interesting, touching on many issues of the day as well as the Talmudic back-and-forth. His latest post addresses the question of "What causes cancer?" Since I've had many friends and relatives succumb to cancer, this question is of concern to me also.

What causes cancer? Why do these people get those cancers? For half a century, such questions have nagged us. The search for explanation. In the 1950s, we asked, does smoking cause cancer? Later: are there synergistic factors? (E.g., tobacco and asbestos combined.) What about pesticides? Are there cancer “hotspots” caused by hazardous waste sites? We seem to be straddling scientific research and a political / culture war. I suspect many of us gravitate to one pole, e.g. cancer is caused or facilitated by diet and lifestyle, or by toxic pollution, or by our genetic inheritance. But we are all far from able to explain the decline or rise of particular types of cancer.

I wish we could figure out what causes various cancers, and learn how to stop them. It's such an evil disease to die of. (I know, how can a disease be "evil"? "Evil" is a human category, our way of judging the morality of human actions. But still, cancer feels evil to me - especially when a friend is suddenly stricken with cancer and dies a horrible death).

Yesterday evening I took a bicycle ride over to Ithaca Falls, one of our local waterfalls (in the city of Ithaca alone there are two waterfalls - Ithaca Falls and Cascadilla Falls). The whole area of the falls looks like it was scoured out by last winter's heavy snow and cold. The path of Fall Creek flowing from the falls towards Cayuga Lake has shifted. And instead of soil and plants & trees growing from the bank, it's now mostly big and little stones. The pool just under the falls appears to be bigger also, and yesterday a family was swimming there. As I walked back from the falls to my bicycle, I couldn't help but think about the transience of life, how ephemeral human life (and everything else) is. The Fall Creek neighborhood, where I live, is built on the flood plain for Ithaca Falls. Floods are now mostly contained by various measures, so only some people this winter had their basements fill with water - but what about in a hundred years? Will the neighborhood even exist? My house was built in 1870 - will it make it another hundred years?

I just got an e-mail from Macher Search telling me that they have indexed my blog. Quoting from the e-mail: "MacherSearch is a search engine that gives users the opportunity to search through thousands of Jewish and Israeli Sites websites with just one click, and search blogs, the news, and the web-at-large as well." I'll have to check it out and see how well it works.

This is a cool story from Israel that has nothing to do with the current conflict - After 2,000 Years, a Seed From Ancient Judea Sprouts.

Israeli doctors and scientists have succeeded in germinating a date seed nearly 2,000 years old. The seed, nicknamed Methuselah, was taken from an excavation at Masada, the cliff fortress where, in A.D. 73, 960 Jewish zealots died by their own hand, rather than surrender to a Roman assault. The point is to find out what was so exceptional about the original date palm of Judea, much praised in the Bible and the Koran for its shade, food, beauty and medicinal qualities, but long ago destroyed by the crusaders.

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree," says Psalm 92. "They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat and flourishing."

Well, we'll see. Dr. Sarah Sallon, who runs a project on medicinal plants of the Middle East, notes that the date palm in ancient times symbolized the tree of life. But Dr. Elaine Solowey, who germinated the seed and is growing it in quarantine, says plants grown from ancient seeds "usually keel over and die soon," having used most of their nutrients in remaining alive.

The plant is now 11.8 inches tall and has produced seven leaves, one of which was removed for DNA testing.

Well, let's hope this one doesn't keel over!

Some rather strange searches recently directed people to my blog:

freemasons in amman (?!)
yentl subtitle hebrew
new york in the summer

and a couple of sad ones:

Janjaweed
pictures about famine in Darfur

And on the note of "New York in the summer" - I think I was probably writing about New York City in the summer, but it's been plenty hot here in Ithaca, New York too. On the other hand, it does mean that the vegetables are growing fast. The roses are blooming (and the Japanese beetles haven't yet arrived), as are the snapdragons (which reseeded themselves), AND the chives (the first plant to come back after the snow melted). My peonies have already finished blooming (and the blossoms were blown away in last Monday's thunderstorm), but other people's are still blooming away. The daylilies are starting to bloom.

I guess it's summer!

Thank you DovBear (Still fuming...) for fisking Toby Katz's horrendous comments about why the Holocaust occurred.

She said (in a comment thread): "Jews tried to leave Judaism but G-d reminded them that He does not allow that. When we try, there are fearful consequences, spelled out in the Torah. The same Torah also promises that our enemies will never be able to destroy us, that we are an eternal people. Individuals die but Klal Yisrael does not die." In a further comment in the same thread, she redoubled her obnoxiousness: "I don't understand those of you who claim to be orthodox & yet attack someone so vehemently for saying that the reform was a major factor in the Holocaust. The Torah at the end of Vakikra & Devorim say clearly that if the Jewish people don't follow the Torah they will be punished with terrible punishments. When the Second Temple was destroyed Chazal gave reasons to explain which sins were the primary cause. Likewise when Betar was destroyed. I think the same was done through out the generations when tragedy struck the Jewish people. In all of those tragedies the good & bad were punished together but that did not stop the Rabbis from attempting to attribute what sins were the primary cause of our punishment. If not following the Torah is the cause of our punishments, is it not logical that the reform movement should be on the top of that list? Certainly religious Jews were not perfect & I'm sure that they too contributed to the punishment, but the point remains that those who abandoned the Torah the most are the most culpable for G-d's decision in decreeing or allowing(per R' Berkovitz) the Holocaust."

Until I had read this discussion on DovBear, I didn't realize that this nonsense was still being propagated in Orthodox (or ultra-Orthodox) circles. When will Jews stop blaming other Jews for the Holocaust? How about blaming the true perpetrators, the Nazis, and their collaborators?

A good response comes from Cara, who replied to her: "Toby- Most of my mother's family was killed in Germany during the Holocaust. None lived in Berlin. Of those who survived and came to America, only my mother's children (and some distant cousins in NY) are still frum. Given my family background, I don't know what pains me more: to read the dreck you just wrote about how certain you are with regards to the reasons why the Holocaust happened the way it did, or to know that you believe what you wrote."

Nicholas Kristof again calls us to pay attention to the genocide in Darfur - Uncover Your Eyes: "Mr. Bush values a frozen embryo. But he hasn't mustered much compassion for an entire population of terrorized widows and orphans. And he is cementing in place the very hopelessness he dreads, by continuing to avert his eyes from the first genocide of the 21st century."

In this article he outlines ways in which the African Union troops, plus international aid groups, have actually saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Darfur. If we could just muster the political will to give real support to the African Union mission, perhaps we could end the genocide - if we would just pay attention...

The ADL executive board met with the superintendent of the Air Force Academy, and: Air Force Academy Chief Admits School Bias.

The superintendent of the Air Force Academy acknowledged to leaders of a national Jewish group Friday that religious intolerance permeates the military school.

"As a commander, I know I have problems in my cadet wing," Lt. Gen. John Rosa said at a meeting of the Anti-Defamation League's executive committee. "I have issues in my staff, and I have issues in my faculty - and that's my whole organization."

He said he admonished the academy's No. 2 commander, Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, a born-again Christian, for sending an e-mail promoting National Prayer Day....

Rosa said he has spoken with academy critics and agrees with many of their complaints. He said he didn't learn of a Yale University memo issued last year on religious intolerance at the school near Colorado Springs until much later.

I have to admit I don't understand why he didn't know about the Yale Divinity School memo - isn't he running the school? Shouldn't he know about these things?

Mikey Weinstein said that "We need new leadership at the Air Force Academy." We certainly do! And especially leadership that pays attention to whether certain cadets are being discriminated against for their religion.

A new AP poll shows that the U.S. is the most religious nation among several surveyed, and the one where the most people are willing to countenance clergy interference in politics: Religious Devotion High in U.S.

Religious devotion sets the United States apart from some of its closest allies. Americans profess unquestioning belief in God and are far more willing to mix faith and politics than people in other countries, AP-Ipsos polling found.

In Western Europe, where Pope Benedict XVI complains that growing secularism has left churches unfilled on Sundays, people are the least devout among the 10 countries surveyed for The Associated Press by Ipsos. Only Mexicans come close to Americans in embracing faith, the poll found. But unlike Americans, Mexicans strongly object to clergy lobbying lawmakers, in line with the nation's historical opposition to church influence....

The polling was conducted in May in the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain.

Nearly all U.S. respondents said faith is important to them and only 2 percent said they do not believe in God. Almost 40 percent said religious leaders should try to sway policymakers, notably higher than in other countries. "Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian policies and religious leaders have an obligation to speak out on public policy, otherwise they're wimps," said David Black, a retiree from Osborne, Pa., who agreed to be interviewed after he was polled.

In contrast, 85 percent of French object to clergy activism - the strongest opposition of any nation surveyed. France has strict curbs on public religious expression and, according to the poll, 19 percent are atheists. South Korea is the only other nation with that high a percentage of nonbelievers [my suspicion is that this number may include non-theistic Buddhists who would be considered religious by other measures - RL]....

But even in Italy, home to the Catholic Church, resistance to religious engagement in politics is evident. Only three in 10 think the clergy should try to influence government decisions; a lower percentage in Spain, Germany and England said the same...

The poll found Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to think clergy should try to influence government decisions - a sign of the challenges ahead for Democrats as they attempt to reach out to more religious voters.

It seems to me that there is a direct connection between my previous posting and this poll. It would be interesting to see a more nuanced poll - who are, exactly, the 40% of Americans who think that clergy should try to sway politicians? I imagine this number doesn't include very many Jews, and probably a lot of evangelical Christians and some Catholics.

This article in Haaretz, I Want You for the U.S. Air Force (but you'd better believe in Jesus), details the series of abuses at the Air Force Academy, where evangelical Christianity appears to have become the official religion. Mikey Weinstein, who served in Reagan's White House, and whose younger son is now at the academy, initiated a public campaign, which has "exposed an intentional policy going back several years of religious guidance from above, active encouragement of Christian evangelism by senior officers and prejudicial discrimination against members of other religions. Hundreds of families have approached Weinstein, and to date 117 people have filed official complaints through him. Only eight are Jews. The majority are Christians who feel persecuted by the policy of promoting evangelical Christianity on an institutional basis while employing the power of military authority." Congress has refused to do anything about this, and in fact when the issue was brought up in a Congressional committee, criticisms of the academy's bias against non-evangelicals were turned into complaints by Republican congressmen of anti-Christian bias (surely a new definition of what the word "chutzpah" means!).

And what is the Air Force Academy doing about this? "Last Friday, USAFA Superintendent Lieutenant-General John Rosa met with Anti-Defamation League activists, and for the first time admitted to them that there was a problem at the base. He said he is losing sleep over it, but noted that it might take up to six years to correct." It doesn't sound to me like he's losing very much sleep over it!

If Jews and non-evangelical Christians are being harassed in this way, just imagine how Muslim cadets might be treated there - if there are any who dare to apply. It's becoming clear that at least some of the people who are fighting the war on terror do think that it's a religious war - evangelical Christianity vs. everyone else.

And yet another excellent op-ed essay by Anne Applebaum, about Democracy Under The Veil, in the Islamic world.

Hooray for this Washington Post editorial ('American Gulag') condemning the head of Amnesty International's recent naming of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay the "gulag of our times." One does not have to admire what we have done there (or at Abu Ghraib or other U.S. detention facilities) to object to AI's false equivalence with the gulag of the Soviet Union. The Post editorial says:

But we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union. Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime. Abuses there - including new evidence of desecrating the Koran - have been investigated and discussed by the FBI, the press and, to a still limited extent, the military. The Soviet gulag, by contrast, was a massive forced labor complex consisting of thousands of concentration camps and hundreds of exile villages through which more than 20 million people passed during Stalin's lifetime and whose existence was not acknowledged until after his death. Its modern equivalent is not Guantanamo Bay, but the prisons of Cuba, where Amnesty itself says a new generation of prisoners of conscience reside; or the labor camps of North Korea, which were set up on Stalinist lines; or China's laogai, the true size of which isn't even known; or, until recently, the prisons of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The convenient left-wing orthodoxy, on the other hand, regards only the U.S. embargo of Cuba as unjust, without ever considering the lack of freedom, injustice, and oppression of the Cuban regime itself.

Now, I don't care about these people at all, but I do love this headline - Paris Hilton Engaged To Paris . She is now engaged to someone named Paris Latsis.

On another note, I just returned from a fun visit to New York City over the Memorial Day weekend. I went to the Jewish Museum and saw two exhibits - on the Jewish salon women (of the 18th-20th centuries), people like Rahel Levin Varnhagen and Gertrude Stein, and one on the art of Maurice Sendak, which was really fun. The weekend also included enjoyable Shabbat meals with friends, and a barbecue yesterday with more friends. I'm now back in Ithaca, where it appears that my grass grew several inches in my absence, where the peonies are now blooming, the lettuce is big enough to eat (planted a few weeks ago), and everything looks intensely green.

The Ithaca Journal devoted its entire editorial page today to responses to Sandy Wold's column two weeks ago. In their own editorial, they bravely argued for the value of free speech, invoking the names of Locke and Voltaire - but without considering the professional responsibility of a newspaper to edit articles responsibly. Sandy Wold apologized for her remarks, saying that:

Rather than defend or explain myself to my critics, I decided to listen and understand, and I was surprised to see how complacent I had become with my point of view. Reading letters that came from around the world, investigating their sources, discovering new ones, questioning my assumptions, and the assumptions of my sources, I had periodic moments of feeling duped. So I went back and studied my original sources and their sources so I could feel reaffirmed. Finally, I came across an example of a battle between Palestinians and Israelis that happened over 50 years ago. According to the media representation, the Palestinians were "massacred," and according to the Israeli source I read, the Israelis were acting in "self-defense." Apparently, the media left out the bigger picture, which was that the Israelis were being blockaded by the Palestinians and facing near starvation. Also, a Red Cross witness to the aftermath of the "massacre" only verified Palestinian gore. I believe that such series of misrepresentation, misunderstanding and media bias is common to all conflict. It is no wonder many of us feel so confused and unable to help.

I commend her for her willingness to listen to and think about the remarks people made to her - some of which were fairly hostile, judging from the Honest Reporting web site, which publicized her column to their subscribers. On the other hand, she does need to do more homework on the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, in the quoted paragraph, what battle is she referring to? The siege of Jerusalem in 1948? And another quibble: over 50 years ago, when people referred to "Palestinians," they meant Palestinian Jews, not Palestinian Arabs. She should have used the term "Arabs." (With this comment, I'm not denying the existence of a Palestinian people today.)

The Journal also published many letters from people around the world who were outraged by Wold's comments - most of whom probably knew about her column from the story about it on the Honest Reporting web site, or perhaps from LGF.

A letter that I wrote also appeared in the print version of the newspaper, but for some reason doesn't seem to have made it onto the electronic version. This is the text:

I am writing in response to Sandy Wold’s article, “Mothers can make healing a priority,” published on Saturday, May 7, 2005. I identify as a “Zionist Jew,” and ally myself with the Jews who established the state of Israel, whom Sandy Wold condemns as having “occupied Palestinian land in the name of God and victimhood.” I’m not sure exactly where to start in response to her poorly thought-out and inflammatory remarks. The Zionist movement, which fought to establish first a Jewish homeland in Palestine and then an independent state, was founded in the late 1800s, long before the Holocaust. The founders of the state were predominantly secular Jews who wanted to establish a place where Jews could find refuge from anti-semitism in Europe and build their own modern Jewish culture. Far from “getting stuck in the victim role,” as Wold accuses “Zionist Jews” of having done, the Zionist movement very actively tried to solve the problems of Jewish life through the creation of their own national movement – a nationalist movement very akin to the Palestinian national movement, which in parallel to Zionism has the aim of creating a Palestinian state.

Wold also accuses Israel of “terrorist attacks and slaughter of the Palestinians” and says that anyone who criticizes Israel is “guilt-inflicted for the Holocaust without any regard for Palestinian suffering.” This statement minimalizes the suffering that Jews went through in the Holocaust and completely avoids mentioning the Israeli victims of Palestinian violence. Is it only Palestinians who suffer in the ongoing conflict? What of the many terrorist attacks inflicted upon Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades?

Wold seems to have taken sides in the ongoing conflict, squarely on the side of the Palestinians – but does this really advance the “self-healing” agenda that she argues for in her article? Isn’t it time for both Israelis and Palestinians (and their supporters in the United States) to recognize the complexity of the situation and admit that there is right in the claims, and the historical memory, of both sides? In my view, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip should end, making it possible for a viable Palestinian state to be founded alongside Israel. This would not salve all wounds, but it would make a new beginning possible, where both peoples would suffer less than they have in the past, and perhaps begin the long process of reconciliation with each other.

My letter was also the only one written by someone living in Ithaca, who would read it in its paper form, rather than learning about it from an internet source. I'm disappointed that other people in Ithaca didn't feel motivated, or capable, of writing a response to her, but I am glad they published mine (and thus far I've only gotten positive responses to it).

In re the Newsweek story (now retracted) about a Koran being put into a toilet at Guantanomo Bay, the Washington Post reports that Desecration of Koran Had Been Reported Before. Perhaps Newsweek got the wrong story from their particular source, but it does seem to have corroboration from many other sources. Is such behavior a matter of policy - i.e., was it decided upon specifically in order to break the spirit of the detainees there? Or is this a by-product of the type of behavior we see at the U.S. Airforce Academy - evangelical Christian cadets, chaplains, and school administration harassing Jews and other, non-evangelical Christians by insulting them and saying that they "will burn in the fires of hell." Or perhaps a combination - they disrespect every other religion than their own, and decide specifically because of this disrespect to mistreat the inmates in this particular way? In either case, this is disgusting. Is this what we're coming to?

Haaretz reports that 5 Jews arrested for planning to attack the Temple Mount. Four of the men charged apparently were plotting to launch an anti-tank missile at the Temple Mount, while the other one was detained "over an alleged plan to fly a model aircraft fitted with a camera over the Mount and over Arab population areas as a provocation." All five men were released from detention. The intention seems to have been to provoke a renewed intifada and stall the planned disengagement from Gaza.

This is very scary - what I don't understand is why these people were released from detention. Surely, if they had been Palestinians threatening Jews, they would not be "freed with limitations," and not face charges "on the grounds that they had been unable to implement their plan and had decided not to carry it out." Doesn't that suggest that they might try to figure out some other way to implement their plans. The police and Shin Bet also said "there was not enough evidence to charge them." When has that stopped the police and Shin Bet when it comes to Palestinian threats to Israeli security?

The reactions by two right-wing MKs also strike me as very peculiar responses to the arrests:

In response to the reports, MK Uri Ariel (National Union) said, "This is a clear attempt to stain a loyal and law-abiding community struggling justly and fairly for its values."

The chairman of the National Union Knesset faction, Zvi Hendel, accused the Shin Bet of planting an agent provocateur, as it had done with Avishai Raviv prior to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Does Uriel really think that planning to lob an anti-tank missile at the Temple Mount is part of a "just struggle"? And what does Hendel mean by accusing the Shin Bet of planting an agent provocateur. Who is the provocateur in this case?

I certainly hope the Shin Bet is keeping an eye on these men and their associates!

Via DovBear, a despicable article by Pat Buchanan on Was World War II worth it? Apparently we (and the Brits) should have let Germany and the Soviet Union carve up eastern Europe between them - and as a bonus get rid of all those pesky Jews! Appeasement, 60 years on. And this man is still considered a serious person to listen to?

The Association for Jewish Studies today sent out a message to all its members protesting the British Association of University Teachers' boycott of Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities in Israel. This is the text:

The American Academy of Jewish Research, the oldest body of North American scholars of Jewish studies, and the Association for Jewish Studies, the learned society of academic Jewish studies, condemn the British Association of University Teachers’ decision to boycott two Israeli universities for their alleged complicity in governmental policies and their purported discrimination against a faculty member on political grounds. The boycott is an egregious assault on academic freedom and a woeful misreading of the role of Israeli academics and the Israeli university. Academics have an obligation to support the free exchange of ideas and to participate in international dialogue, not to shun and restrain them. Israeli universities are an important source of the robust discussion and critical evaluation of governmental policy that characterize Israeli society. It is indeed, ironic, and offensive, that in a world where many governments muzzle their faculties, and academic freedom is rare, the AUT should focus solely on Israeli universities, which have maintained academic freedom and diverse student and faculty communities under difficult circumstances. It is also distressing that in a world where, sadly, war and the killing of civilians are far too common only one country is singled out for ostracism.

The AUT has been ill-served by leaders who pushed through the motion without proper investigation of the “facts” on which the decision was purportedly based, and without open debate within the Association itself. Academics should govern ourselves according to the standards of fairness and free discussion we expect from the larger society.

We stand in solidarity with our fellow Israeli academics. We also welcome the criticism of the AUT decision by many British university administrators and by the Times of London as well as the planned reconsideration of the boycott by the AUT. We are confident that the AUT’s declaration of a boycott will be understood internationally to reflect less upon the reality of Israeli universities than upon the politicization of certain leaders of the British academic community. We call on academics throughout the world to refrain from participating in international conferences from which Israeli scholars have been banned.

Paula E. Hyman
American Association for Jewish Research

Sara R. Horowitz
Association for Jewish Studies

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also issued a condemnation of the AUT's boycott.

Interestingly enough, LGF has now linked to Sandy Wold's article in Saturday's Ithaca Journal - A Mother's Day Antisemitic Rant.

My local newspaper published several articles today for Mother's Day. One, titled Mothers can make healing a priority, by Sandy Wold, launched into a vicious attack on Israel in the middle of discussing how to heal oneself from anger and hatred. The author makes an analogy between her own psychological struggles and war and fascism:

As I enter the fourth year of my healing focus, I now understand war on yet a deeper level. During a recent emotional storm, I saw myself revisiting an old wounded pattern of victimization and fought back with self-righteousness. I then felt the rage of fascism pass through me, which eventually dissipated and turned into squalls. The sun came out, and there was peace. (For some people this sequence can take years or a lifetime; I can do it now in just a few days.) And, finally, in the stillness, I was able to see beyond the illusion and the victim pattern I was playing out. From this place, I found clarity and self respect and was able to find a heart-centered solution to my problem.

What war and fascism have to do with the author's own personal struggles is not clear to me from this paragraph. It does seem, however, that she is very self-satisfied about her own psychological development - "I can do it now in just a few days," as opposed to those poor slobs whose "sequence can take years or a lifetime." It does seem like she's concerned about something she calls the "victim role" - and projects her concept onto the political level. She continues in a far more noxious vein:

Most people get stuck in the victim role, however. On the global scale, for example, Zionist Jews in Israel have occupied Palestinian land in the name of God and victimhood. If anyone criticizes Israel for their terrorist attacks and slaughter of the Palestinians, they are immediately labeled "anti-Semitic" and guilt-inflicted for the Holocaust without any regard for Palestinian suffering. In response, the United States and United Nations fall into a co-dependent behavior of acquiescence and collusion.

I'm not sure where to begin to criticize this. It strikes me as very odd that in the middle of an article about self-healing, she suddenly launches into an attack on Israel, and one that minimalizes the suffering that Jews went through at the hands of the Nazis. For her, Palestinian suffering trumps Jewish suffering - as if one has to make a choice between them! For her, it's Israel that is guilty of terrorism, not Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades. What of all the Israeli civilians killed by terrorist bombers? Is it only Palestinians who can really suffer? She also evinces no knowledge of the history of Israel or how and why it was established as a Jewish state in 1948. If she did, she would know that the founders of the state were predominantly secular Jews, and that the Zionist movement had been trying since the 1880s to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine - long before the Holocaust. (And she would also know that not all the Jews living in Israel now, or then, are or were Zionists - and that most of them arrived because they were fleeing a Europe that had tried to exterminate them or Arab countries that kicked them out after the establishment of Israel). Why did she drop this anti-Semitic paragraph into her article on self-healing? What is self-healing about that? (And her argument is anti-Semitic even though she tries to inoculate herself against such a charge).

I just read a beautiful post on Rachel Barenblat's blog on doing taharah - the ritual of preparing the dead for burial. One paragraph particularly struck me: on how the body was lovingly dressed in simple white garments, which eventually left it "a bundled white human-shaped figure: no features, no distinguishing marks, only legs and arms, a torso and a head, a small still white figure." I thought back to the movie on the concentration camps I saw earlier tonight - which depicted the bodies of the dead simply thrown naked into a pit without care or dignity. What a contrast to Rachel's calm, focused description of how the body of a person should be treated when the soul is no longer there.

Tonight I watched the Frontline program - Memory of the Camps, containing footage of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Austria, filmed soon after liberation. It was put together right after the war but not shown until 1985 by PBS. It is very chilling. It was made apparently to show to German civilians, to demonstrate to them what they and their government were responsible for doing. Some of the footage shows German civilians being shown through the camps, seeing the emaciated survivors, and the bodies of the dead; most it seemed watched stoicly but some began to weep. At Buchenwald German civilians see lampshades made of human skin and tattoos taken from prisoners' skin and tanned, one of the many stomach-turning scenes in the film. As of Thursday (which is Holocaust Remembrance Day), it will be possible to view the film online through the PBS web site. It has very graphic footage - don't have your children watch it!

It made me think of how Darfur will be memorialized if we do not succeed in stopping the genocide. I have recently seen, both on television (the Lehrer Report) and in the New York Times really unrealistically sunny reports on the possibility of peace coming to Darfur. The Lehrer Report piece underestimated the number already dead in Darfur. And tonight on the BBC news shown on our local PBS station after the Frontline show, there was a brief article about the Darfur children's pictures (which I already wrote about below) and how they might be used in the prosecutions at the International Criminal Court. The BBC reporter said that "100,000" have already been killed. Why are programs like this continuing to underestimate the number of the dead? Even Amy Goodman's show on Democracy Now (broadcast today), which discussed the disgusting ties between the American CIA and the Sudan Government's Mukhabarat (secret police/intelligence) underestimated the number of deaths. If the numbers are consistently underestimated like this, it leads to people of good will thinking that it's not such a big deal what's happening in Darfur, makes it easier to turn the page and ignore what's going on. These news reports should be using Eric Reeves' figures - almost 400,000 have died thus far, both of direct murder and from hunger and illness.

---------------------------------------
This coming week, the Darfur Action Group at Cornell will be showing documentaries on Darfur and having a panel discussion. If you're in the Ithaca area, please come!

DARFUR ACTION GROUP | CORNELL UNIVERSITY Presents...

"Documenting Darfur" Film Forum
Featuring the best video documentary and alternative media work about the ongoing genocide in the western Sudanese region of Darfur

Monday-Wednesday
May 9, 10 + 11 @ 5:00 pm
McGraw 165

ALSO: 11 May 2005 @ 8 pm (MG 165)
Distinguished professors will take part in a Panel Discussion about the documentaries and the ongoing crisis in Darfur

FREE ADMISSION - ALL ARE WELCOME - REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED

For more information contact asg29@cornell.edu.

If you want to visit my brother's blog, he's started blogging again about My Popular Music Tastes. His profile photo depicts my grandmother (holding my blogging brother), my mother, my other brother, and myself (at age 6? 8? I'm not sure).

For an excellent blog on issues of racism, voting fraud, and most recently, the shocking case of a 5-year old African-
American child handcuffed (!?) by police in Florida, see my friend Ben's blog, HungryBlues.

Rachel Barenblat (of Velveteen Rabbi) sent me a link to these heartbreaking drawings - Children’s Drawings from Darfur. These are drawings from children about what they saw and experienced when the Sudanese army soldiers and the Janjaweed invaded and destroyed their homes and villages. They were collected by Human Rights Watch workers sent to refugee camps in Chad.

Here is one of the images:

While cruising on the Ha'aretz web site, I found this hilarious guide to street Hebrew - The Hebrew they never taught you. I think that most of these words come from Army slang, Arabic, or Russian. I knew some of them but the more outre or more Army ones were less familiar. Ahla!

Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica.com has an extensive post on the Association of University Teachers' proposed boycott of three Israeli universities, quoting the proposals and criticizing them in much the same terms as Frances Raday's letter to the Guardian, which I quoted in a previous post. The amazing hypocrisy and anti-semitism of these proposals knows no bounds. If they are so exercised about human rights abuses, perhaps they should consider the repression in almost all Arab countries of political dissent, the prohibition of the open practice of any religion except Islam in Saudi Arabia, the exceptionally bloody war in Chechnya, etc. No, nothing is terrible except what is done by Israel (and probably by the U.S. as well).

Somehow, I knew this: Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says. Can we now stop with the hysteria about being fat? And note: this new study says that in 2000, in the United States, it is estimaged that 33,746 people died of health problems associated with being underweight, while 25,814 died of health problems associated with being overweight or obese.