Think Again about Stanley Fish

Stanley Fish has some interesting thoughts about the idea of a student bill of rights, recently approved by the student body at Princeton, and about the idea of "intellectual diversity," which is being pushed by the conservative activist David Horowitz. The reapproval of the Higher Education Act, up for action by Congress, includes a version of Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights," and the Pennsylvania legislature is also considering a version of it.

Several versions of the bill—including a separate but overlapping Student Bill of Rights—can be found on a Horowitz-sponsored Web site, Students for Academic Freedom, but they all display the same strategy of alternating unexceptionable statements with statements that at first sound benign but are in fact troubling in their implications. Who could disagree with the Princeton document’s insistence that “professors must never allow a student’s affiliations or religious beliefs to negatively affect his/her academic performance” or with the assertion that “Teachers are entitled to freedom in teaching their subject as they see fit, but not to the point of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination…”?

I certainly don’t, which is why three of my own essays are featured on the Students for Academic Freedom Web site. I have problems, however, with the clause that concludes the second quotation: “or to the exclusion of other viewpoints.” The repetition of “or,” linking the three propositions, suggests that they are all in the same line of work, but they are not. The second clause—“not to the point of political, ideological, religious, or anti-religious indoctrination”—properly limits the instructor’s freedom (which cannot include the freedom to proselytize). But the third clause takes that freedom away by requiring the instructor to give class time to viewpoints simply because they are out there.

This little move has been telegraphed by the first words of the Princeton bill: “Believing in the need to affirm the principles of academic freedom and intellectual diversity.…” The strong suggestion is that academic freedom and intellectual diversity go together, but in fact they pull in opposite directions. Academic freedom is the freedom to go wherever an intellectual inquiry takes you without regard to directives proclaimed in advance by a regime of prior restraint. Intellectual diversity is a prior restraint; it tells you where to look and what you must look at—you must take into account every point of view independently of whether you think it is worth considering—and it tells you what materials you must include in your syllabus. The number of viewpoints you decide to consult or present to your students should be determined by the shape and history of the academic task rather than by a general imperative which may or not be pertinent to a particular line of inquiry.

Fish then goes on to point out the political underpinnings of this movement for "intellectual diversity" - the goal is for more professors to express conservative viewpoints in the classroom, as a counter to the left/liberal opinions expressed by many professors.

I can understand some of the impulses behind the move towards something like an "academic bill of rights," because I have seen and heard of professors pushing their own political line in the classroom and censuring students for disagreeing with them. On the other hand, I agree with Fish that not all viewpoints are appropriately expressed in the classroom. For a blatant example, must a course on the Holocaust also include the viewpoints of Holocaust deniers as equally valid with knowledgeable historians of the Holocaust? On the third hand, I do think that it is educationally sound to permit students to ask questions or raise objections based upon views that I may not think are sound - so that I can present evidence that refutes them. I'm thinking of John Stuart Mill's argument for free speech here - allowing even repugnant views the light of day allows others to refute them, present evidence countering them, etc. A classroom is not a democracy, certainly not the typical American college classroom - but it should permit free speech in most instances (I exclude the hurling of vile insults at other students or the professor).

There is none like You among the dumb - אין כמוך באלמים

A medieval piyyut, composed by Isaac bar Shalom, in response to the persecutions of Jews in Ashkenaz during the Second Crusade in 1147, begins with this stanza:

There is none like You among the dumb,
Keeping silence and being still in the face of those who aggrieve us.
Our foes are many; they rise up against us,
As they take counsel together to revile us.
"Where is your King?," they taunt us.
But we have not forgotten You nor deceived You.
Do not keep silence! (אל דמי לך )

Source: Jakob J. Petuchowski, Theology and Poetry: Studies in the Medieval Piyyut (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 71-83.

Only In America: Never Again

My local NPR station just broadcast Only In America: Never Again, a one-hour special remembering the Holocaust. Most of the show is devoted to an affecting interview with Elie Wiesel. It's worth listening to on Yom Ha-Shoah.

The controversial Stanley Fish

Watch the amazing spectacle of Stanley Fish arguing that Salman Rushdie should not be a speaker at a college commencement because he's too controversial! His NY Times blog is, of course, behind the Times' firewall, but here's the substance of his remarks. (One wonders when the Times will finally understand what a blog really is!)

Rushdie was invited to be the graduation speaker at Nova Southereastern University in Davie, Florida.

Some student members of the International Muslim Association are protesting the invitation, presumably because they agree with those who regard Mr. Rushdie’s 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” as a blasphemy against Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. (It’s the Danish cartoons all over again, only this time with an additional twist provided by the literary quality of the offending document.)

Graduating senior Farheen Parvez is planning not to attend. “I was looking forward to my graduation,” she told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, but “when I found out that Salman Rushdie would be the speaker, I was appalled.”

His closing argument:

But a graduation ceremony is not a class; it is, quite precisely, a ceremony, a formal rite of passage where etiquette and ritual are more important, and more appropriate, than profundity. Inviting controversial speakers to campus is certainly a good idea, but inviting controversial speakers to give a commencement address may not be. Mr. Rushdie’s visit is trumpeted (in the college’s announcement) as the “capstone” to a series of public lectures and classroom discussions on “tolerance, acceptance and social justice.” One assumes that in the classrooms and at the public lectures, vigorous participation was encouraged, and those who disagreed with the teacher or speaker could make their disagreement known. But graduation speeches are not usually followed by question-and-answer periods or by a panel of people representing opposing views. A graduation speech is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and those who prefer to leave it must either walk out or resolve to stay home.

Ms. Parvez [one of the protesting Muslim students] had it exactly right when she said, “If he was here for any other event, that would have been fine, because that’s optional. But having him at graduation, it’s not appropriate because that’s for the families and the students.” When you’re the proud parent of a graduating son or daughter, the last thing you want to hear is something that will make you think. You want to hear something that will make you feel good. Professor Smith asserted, “The choice of Rushdie as speaker inspires questions, invites challenges and embodies larger issues… .” That’s precisely the problem.

In my experience of commencement speakers, they vary between the hopelessly banal and the irritatingly offensive. Despite that, it is certainly worthwhile to invite a speaker who will actually say something interesting and maybe even profound, even if one doesn't agree with everything he says. Are colleges and universities required to give in to the sentiments of students who are insulted on religious or political grounds? My institution of higher learning is hosting the editor of the National Review tonight. I'm sure he'll say a lot of things I don't agree with - but so what? Are we guaranteed the right not ever to be insulted by the views of others? I don't think so.

Jews are the "only enemy"

According to Jamal Abu Samhadana, the new P.A. police chief, "We have only one enemy. They are Jews. We have no other enemy. I will continue to carry the rifle and pull the trigger whenever required to defend my people."

Google Earth

I was very happy to discover that Google Earth finally has a Macintosh version, and I've been happily playing with it. I first went to my favorite place - Jerusalem - and discovered that the resolution isn't very good (it's much better for Manhattan, for example). However, enterprising individuals have put a much more detailed overlay of the Old City, which makes it easier to identify individual sites in the city, for example the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Temple Mount. As I imagine many people have, I spent some time looking at lower Manhattan, at the site where the World Trade Center once stood - many people have provided overlays for the site, including a fairly detailed timeline of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I also looked at Baghdad, where some energetic soul has pinpointed the locations of many of the deaths in the Iraq War. It's really an amazing resource, as well as being quite a time-sink....

Police officer and terrorist

As Haaretz says, when a police officer is also a terrorist, it means that the new Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has now declared war on Israel. The Palestinian Interior Minister appointed a top terrorist, Abu Samhadana, as the inspector general of the Interior Ministry and commander of a new security force. I've looked on in wonder as the Hamas government has had the chutzpah to complain at not receiving aid from the U.S. or the EU, or at Israel's refusal to transfer taxes to the P.A. Actions like this by the Hamas government demonstrate how justified all three were in not continuing to fund the P.A.

A few weeks ago, a student organization on my campus organized a week of lectures and other activities around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The tendency was notably critical of Israel and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. One day the group put up a mock section of the Israel "separation wall."

Once upon a time I opposed the separation wall, thinking that it would be unjust to the Palestinians. I still think it is unjust to the Palestinians, since it separates farmers from their fields and prevents students from attending school. The route of the fence has divided communities, when with a little consideration, it could have be rerouted to make life easier for Palestinians.

But now, with the Hamas victory, I find it increasingly hard to oppose the fence/wall. I think that Israel is justified in defending itself. The wall seems to have made it more difficult (although not impossible) for suicide bombers to reach Israel. If various groups that are so critical of Israel had a better solution to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel, I would probably continue my opposition to the wall, but I haven't heard anything. (Such groups don't usually seem so concerned with the security of ordinary Israelis - for an example of this thinking, see Tony Judt's recent op-ed piece in the New York Times). At this point, I'm more interested in protecting Israelis, among them friends and relatives, than I am in supporting justice absolutely. Such are the consequences of war.

Response to Andrew Sullivan

I haven't been writing very much in this blog, as my few loyal readers can tell, but I was just moved by a posting today on Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish about "God and Sides."

He writes (about responding to religious fundamentalism, especially what he calls "Christianism"):

Another trap is to play into the hands of fundamentalism and try to defeat their version of faith, rather than working, daily and hourly, on improving one's own morality, bettering one's own soul. Opposing one ideology with another is simply to perpetuate the same mistake. I admire Karen Armstrong's work a great deal; and in this profile, the intrepid breadth of her own faith journey comes through. Money quote:

"It's a mistake to define God. I gave it up a long time ago ...'To define' literally means to set limits. That is a travesty to try to define a reality that must go beyond our human thinking. The idea of a God overseeing all of this death and despair is untenable. That's the antithesis of God. If you looked at the history of the 20th century, who is overseeing this? Elie Wiesel says that God died at Auschwitz. That's just one human idea of God as overseer, and it's a childish idea of God."

I wrote this to Sullivan:

I'd like to write in response to your quote from Karen Armstrong. I also admire her large-heartedness and her attempts to see the commonality among the Abrahamic religions, but I'd like to object to what she says about Elie Wiesel. She's only quoting part of what he says about his own experiences, which is actually very powerful if you read his great work, Night. As a teenage boy, imprisoned at Auschwitz, he witnessed the hanging of a young boy, together with two adult men. Just before the hanging, a man behind Wiesel said, "Where is God? Where is He?" After the three were hanged, the prisoners were forced to parade past them. When he passed the boy, he was still alive - dying slowly. Wiesel reports, "Behind me, I heard the same man asking: 'Where is God now?' And I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows...." (p. 76 of the 1960 English translation) I don't believe that this is a childish idea of God - it's one wrought out of deep suffering, written by a man who grew up in a deeply devout family, suddenly confronted as a child by the worst horrors imaginable.

I don't know what she means by God "overseeing" the death and despair of the 20th century - perhaps she's thinking of the traditional idea of God as King and Judge. Perhaps that is a limited way to view God, although it is difficult for me to reject that vision of God entirely when it sustained my own people (I am Jewish) for so many years. I myself don't know how to understand - or even deal with - the genocide of the Jews and the other genocides of our time without believing that God in some way is present among the victims. Last summer, while visiting Prague, I took a day visit to Terezin - the ghetto/concentration camp where most of the Jews of Prague (and many others) were sent on their way to Auschwitz. Part of the tour took us to the "Small Fortress," where political prisoners were held, and executed. We walked along long corridors inside the building to the execution site - the same path that the prisoners would have taken on their way to death. It was horrifying to imagine what they must have felt - and what helped me as I walked along that path was believing that even in this place God was present. Of course, that does not mean that divine intervention stopped the executions. In that sense God does not act as the Bible teaches us He once acted to save the people of Israel at the splitting of the Red Sea. But I believe that even if we cannot rely on miraculous intervention, we must be able to rely on God's deep wisdom to sustain us.

Wiesel wrote in 1997, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times at the time of the High Holidays:

What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?

I now realize I never lost it, not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don't know why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, and those one reserves for the Sabbath, and for the holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha-Shanah eve, with hundreds of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remained a link to the vanished world of my childhood?

But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?

In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I would not repeat them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. Why did you allow if not enable the killer day after day, night after night to torment, kill and annihilate tens of thousands of Jewish children? Why were they abandoned by your Creation? These thoughts were in no way destined to diminish the guilt of the guilty. Their established culpability is irrelevant to my "problem" with you, Master of the Universe. In my childhood I did not expect much from human beings. But I expected everything from you.

Where were you, God of kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they were Jewish?

These questions have been haunting me for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders, you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: "God is God. He alone knows what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways." Or: "Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry's sins of assimilation and/or Zionism." And: "Isn't Israel the solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel."

I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven't you also suffered?

With this essay, Wiesel was rethinking what he wrote in Night. I think we need to consider seriously what he has written - both originally, and in his rethinking fifty years later.

Richard Hugus

Interestingly enough, Richard Hugus, mentioned below, also denounced the U.S. & NATO campaign against Slobodan Milosevic (see 'To Kill A Nation (The Attack On Yugoslavia)'. He calls the attack at Srebrenica, in which 7,000 Muslim men were killed by Bosnian Serb forces "the alleged massacre at Srebrenica, the very existence of which is refuted in well-documented articles."

In September of 2005, Mr. Hugus also called for International ANSWER to change "its central demand of "Troops out now" with a declaration of support for the Iraqi Resistance? These are, afterall, the people most successfully fighting imperialism today. If fighting imperialism is what we want, why aren't we vocally and materially supporting the people who are laying their lives on the line doing it? Why are we concentrating on bringing "home" and showing sympathy for the racist invaders who are fighting the people we support?" Thus Mr. Hugus is more extreme even than ANSWER (difficult to believe) in calling for Americans to support the terrorists in Iraq who are killing American troops and Iraqi civilians.

He says in another article, "We don't support the troops. Why would we want to support or "bring home" people who have volunteered for murder? We support the Iraqi resistance. Were we wanted, and if it were possible for decent people in the US to do so, we would fight alongside them."

Divestment blues (Update)

While cruising the net last night I came across this blog [dead link] about the fight last year in Somerville, Massachusetts over whether the city's retirement fund should divest from Israel bonds and companies doing business with Israel. I lived in Somerville for over ten years (left in 1995) and found this an astonishing story. Apparently a small group of anti-Israel activists calling themselves the Divestment Project [dead link] decided that Somerville was the place to further the divestment movement. Hard-working Somerville residents managed to stop this move after the Divestment Project almost slipped the proposal through the Somerville City Council. If you take a look at the Divestment Project's web site, you'll find a plethora of anti-Israel postings, some of a particularly repulsive nature.

The article "Zionism in Boston" is especially hilarious, because it starts out with the claim that "the state of Israel has established key outposts in Boston, Massachusetts." What do these "key outposts" consist of? First of all, the Israeli consulate, then the Anti-Defamation League and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and finally two private initiatives - CAMERA and the David Project. I often disagree with CAMERA, but it certainly was not established by the State of Israel! Richard Hugus, the author of this article, seems incapable of distinguishing between the state of Israel and Jews living in America. Read the whole article for his signal distortions of Zionism. A point that I particularly like is his denunciation of those who disapprove of genocide in Darfur, because apparently our only goal is to attack Arabs and support Zionism. The article also refers to American genocide in Iraq and Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Mr. Hugus seems to be unaware of the over 300,000 innocent people murdered by Saddam Hussein's regime before his overthrow in 2003.

---------------

Update from April 22, 2018

The Divestment Project website is no longer extant on the web, but Hugus also has a blog with some of his articles posted on it - https://richardhugus.wordpress.com.

Torture and Death of Jew Deepen Fears in France

This is a particularly frightening story - Torture and Death of Jew Deepen Fears in France. Today's New York Times reports on three more attacks on Jews in the Paris suburbs.

The police said two young men, 17 and 18, were attacked late Friday by black and Arab youths in the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles, home to a large number of Jewish families. The attackers broke the nose of one victim, a rabbi's son, and stole the cellphone of the other.

On Saturday, a 28-year-old Jewish man was beaten in the same suburb by youths who made anti-Semitic remarks. He suffered a dislocated shoulder. Four people are being questioned in the Saturday attack, the police said.

J-blogosphere Purim Carnival

Click over to The Muqata for an absolutely hilarious set of Purim parodies of various J-blogs. They are spot-on, I particularly liked the Ren Reb and Orthomom. As they say in the blogosphere, I laughed out loud and almost fell off my chair.

More Cartoons

A collection of interesting articles on the cartoon controversy:

Tolerance Toward Intolerance.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "Everyone is Afraid to Criticize Islam".

From the BBC:

Twelve cartoons were originally published by Jyllands-Posten. None showed the Prophet with the face of a pig. Yet such a portrayal has circulated in the Middle East (The BBC was caught out and for a time showed film of this in Gaza without realizing it was not one of the 12).

This picture, a fuzzy grey photocopy, can now be traced back (suspicion having been confirmed by an admission) to a delegation of Danish Muslim leaders who went to the Middle East in November to publicise the cartoons. The visit was organised by Abu Laban, a leading Muslim figure in Denmark.

According to the Danish paper Ekstra Bladet, the delegation took along a pamphlet showing the 12 drawings. But the delegation also showed a number of other pictures, including the "pig" one. The delegation claimed they were the sort of insults that Muslims in Denmark had to endure. These also got into circulation.

(Update: A reader has e-mailed to say that the original of the "pig" picture was from a "pig-squealing" competition held in France every summer. Some character dressed up like a pig. See the link to the neandernews.com site on the right for the details.

Ekstra Bladet has also published a letter taken by the delegation on its mission. This gives the delegation's account of how the cartoons originated and what the reaction to them was. But it also mentions other pictures, which it said were "much more offending." These presumably included the "pig" picture, whose origin is now known.)

Western diplomats appear to have missed this entirely and seem to have made no attempt to counter some of the arguments in the pamphlet or to distinguish between the various portrayals.

It might not have made much difference but it shows how rapidly propaganda can add to fuel to the fire.

And, an interesting parody by Orthomom.

And a cartoon satirizing the whole situation.

Christopher Hitchens has some relevant comments:

Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.

Mahmood's Den on the cartoons

Mahmood, of Mahmood's Den, gives a very interesting response to the cartoons.

The main thing is the prohibition by Islam on representing the prophets graphically, possibly for fear of some people using that graphic as an idol, hence promoting idolatry practices rather than praying to Allah alone.

These cartoons not only represented the prophet, but made fun of, and denigrated him; that's double trouble.

As every Muslim is brought up to respect not only our prophet but also all those who have been sent by Allah to disperse His religions, and that we do not represent the prophet in any way, shape or form, they were insulted by the caricatures which were seen as the height of blasphemy.

Now as WE revere the prophet of Islam (pbuh) and do not represent him and hold him at the highest platform, and as we hold the other prophets at the same level of love and respect, we expect that everyone else in the world to hold our prophet in the same light. Reciprocal respect, if you like, was a "given" to us.

These cartoons shocked Muslims because we were slapped in the face. That respect, it was found, was not reciprocal at all, but one sided.

Now the way that Muslims went about dealing with this situation is, to me, farcical.

Yes, we should hold the prophet at the highest level of love and affection. Yes, we should defend him and his reputation, but the level that most of the protests I've seen, the worst of which was paradoxically in London, proves the point of those cartoons without a shadow of a doubt: Islam is a religion of hate and violence.

These protests and the way this situation was handled is completely wrong. We - continue to preach - that we have the higher moral hand, that our religion is the religion of peace, that our religion is the highest form of moral contract, yet, we go about the streets in droves holding up placards DEMANDING the death and torture of ANYONE who denigrates our religion and its symbols! Why should anyone respect us if this is the way we go about things?

These protests demanding violence, to me, is a complete moral bancruptcy of those taking part in those protests AND of their particular understanding of Islam.

I keep saying, so what if a dimwitted cartoonist, or Nazi or racist or a stupid person drew a cartoon or swore at our religious symbols or misrepresented them? Is that going to reduce our symbols' place in our and hundreds of millions of Muslims' hearts? Is that going to change their greatness? Of course not. So why was this situation blown up out of all rational repercussions?

I think this situation was used to divert the Muslim nation's attention from the real problems festering in its midst. And these things - a full 5 months after being published - were picked up and used, abused, to do just that.

Forget the festering corruption, negligible education, unemployment, squandering of opportunities, injustice, restriction of speech, restriction of expression, and the hundreds of other bad things we go through on a daily basis, and hang them all on a bunch of Danish cartoonists.

I don't buy it.

These cartoons or the hundreds of thousands of ones which probably have been drawn and are more offensive than the original 12 published because of the brouhaha we created will not negate nor lessen my love and respect for a great man sent by Allah as a saviour of the world.

What DOES offend me greatly however is the once again hijacking of my religion, this time universally by all sects, to show the world that it is ugly, intolerant, and violent.

I would like to make it clear that I don't endorse the sentiments reflected by some of the cartoons published by the Danish newspaper. (Some of them are actually poking fun at the newspaper itself). When I first read selections of the Qur'an as a graduate student in religion, I was very moved - the Qur'an retells many stories from the Hebrew Scriptures, and also refers to later rabbinic traditions (for example, the statement that "he who kills one person, it is as if he has destroyed an entire world").

There was something very similar religiously to what I was accustomed to finding in Judaism - concern for the weak and the poor, the necessity to seek justice, strict insistence on the oneness of God, and the importance of prophecy. The first part of the Muslim confession of faith - the shehadah - is something that Jews would have no problem saying: "There is no god but God." (Compare the sh'ma: "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone").

The portrayal of Muhammed in the Qur'an bears striking similarities to the depiction of prophets in the Bible. I don't see any reason to mock or condemn the figure of Muhammed as he is known from the Qur'an, and it makes sense to me why Muslims revere him.

Like Mahmood with some of his fellow Muslims, I have been enraged and saddened when I feel that fellow Jews are trying to hijack my religion and turn it into an excuse for hatred and violence. A number of years ago, when I was living in Israel, one Shabbat afternoon I was visiting someone in the Old City of Jerusalem. The guests went up on to the roof, where we had a clear view of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount - the place sacred to Jews because it is where the Temple stood until it was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 C.E. It is also a place holy to Muslims - the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located there. The Dome of the Rock may stand on the spot where the Temple once stood. If you have never seen it, it is a beautiful building, with a golden dome and tiled walls. I was standing next to a young religious Jewish man, an American who was studying in Jerusalem, and we were both looking at the Temple Mount. I said to him something like - isn't it a beautiful building? He pointed to the Dome of the Rock and made as if to shoot at it. He said that it would be good if it were destroyed, so that the Temple could be rebuilt on the spot. I said, but aren't they (Muslims) also human beings, made in the image of God (implying that many people would be killed if the mosques on the Temple Mount were destroyed)? He allowed as they might be, but my words clearly had no effect on his desire to destroy the Dome of the Rock.

I don't see that there's any place in Judaism for this kind of hatred and incitement to violence. Unfortunately not all Jews agree with me on this point.

Other cartoons

Here are some examples of recent anti-semitic cartoons in the Saudi Press, courtesy of The Religious Policeman.

And see this list of recent anti-semitic press reports from the Arab and Muslim world:

Iran TV Discussion on the Myth of the Gas Chambers and the Truth of Protocols of the Elders of Zion; ‘The Only Solution for This Cancerous Tumor [Israel] is Surgery’ (from January 5, 2006).

U.S.-Based Saudi Professor & Former U.N. Fellow in Interview with Iranian State Media: ‘I Agree Wholeheartedly with President Ahmadinejad… There was No Such Thing as the Holocaust’; The Americans are Digging Their Own Grave and Eventually Will Collapse Just as the Soviet Union Collapsed. This was from an interview on Iranian state media.

Iranian TV Blood Libel: Jewish Rabbis Killed Hundreds of European Children to use Their Blood for Passover Holiday & Discussion on Holocaust Denial.

MEMRI also lists articles by Arab and Muslim writers who OPPOSE the use of anti-semitism - it's not just a one-sided story.

But why isn't the U.S. State Department issuing prominent statements about the plethora of anti-semitic stories, TV broadcasts, etc., on the media of the Arab and Muslim world?

Cartoon Context

Andrew Sullivan on the caricatures of Muhammed (he has several good posts on this topic) - "Islamists and Muslims are in a violent uproar about the publication of truly conventional political cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammed. Here are some other cartoons recently printed in the Arab, Muslim press. They are no different than Nazi propaganda in their unvarnished anti-Semitism. And I would defend the right of every one of those papers to publish them. Why, then, cannot Muslims return the favor? What is it about contemporary Islam that seems to make it clearly incompatible wih Western freedom of speech? In that may lie the answer to the most pressing question facing the West today: the illiberal, fanatical religious enemy within."

There are some Muslims who do return the favor (of tolerating even offensive speech), such as the Religious Policeman - alas, they are not the ones in power.

Violence and Cartoons

This is unbelievable - Embassies in Syria Are Burned in Furor Over Prophet Cartoon. The Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus were burned down by mobs in protest against the caricatures of Muhammed published first by Danish and then by Norwegian newspapers.

The Vatican also made an unhelpful statement: "deploring the violence" but saying that freedom of speech "cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers." This strikes me as highly self-serving, coming from the Vatican - is Catholicism immune from criticism and mockery? I daresay they would have closed down the exhibit in New York City that showed a few years ago, which included a painting by an African Catholic that depicted elephant dung on the Virgin Mary's breast.

The U.S. State Department also said that about the cartoons: "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive." They did say, at least, "We vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view."

The leader of Hamas said that the cartoonists should be murdered.

In South Africa, a court forbade Sunday newspapers from reprinting the cartoons.

As far as I know, no American newspaper has reprinted the cartoons - and NPR, which I've been listening to, is not publishing them on the website article about them, using the excuse that it's not necessary to do so in order to tell the story. (An article in today's New York Times discusses how American newspapers and broadcast media generally decided not to show images of the cartoons)

I first heard about the cartoons not from the public media, but from the Religious Policeman blog. The RP is a Saudi, currently living in Britain, who engages in fearless criticism and mockery of his own government and its religious pretensions. He talks about how this whole controversy is fanned by governments in the Middle East in order to distract people from thinking about the real problems in their lives caused by their dictatorial and oppressive governments. He accuses the Saudi government of raising rage about the cartoons to fever pitch in order to direct public attention away from the recent stampede at the Hajj in which hundreds of pilgrims died.

I must say, I think there is a great deal of hypocrisy surrounding this issue. Press and other media in Arab and Muslim countries publish and broadcast anti-semitic cartoons, articles, television series, etc. - which don't just make fun of Jews and Judaism, but defame Jews and spread outright lies, along with denying that the Holocaust occurred (e.g., President Ahmadinejad of Iran). Why hasn't there been a worldwide outrage at this continuous defamation of Jews? The American and European press certainly don't constantly run articles about widespread official anti-semitism in Arab and Muslim countries.

The other thing that offends me is the idea that religion and religious people should be shielded from mockery or otherwise offensive speech. As I've said before, religion, like anything else, is open for criticism, mockery, etc. I don't like it when people mock practices and beliefs that I consider sacred, but that is part of what it means to live in a free society. If Christopher Hitchens writes an article denouncing a particular practice associated with Jewish circumcision, I don't think he should be told to shut up because it might offend my religious sensibilities. Why has religion come to acquire this quality that it is above criticism?

And I speak as a religious person, not as an atheist.

UPDATE, Sunday morning - The Danish Embassy in Beirut was burned by a mob today.

Hamas and Us

I received a different perspective on the Hamas victory from a friend involved with the Coalition of Women for Peace group in Israel - Gila Svirsky.

1) Who’s to blame?

Listening to the reactions of passersby at the recent Jerusalem vigil of Women in Black, you would think it was our peaceful little group that put the Hamas into power. This stems from Israeli right-wing politicians who are asserting that Hamas won because of the Gaza withdrawal and other conciliatory overtures, i.e., “rewarding terrorism”. Indeed, Bibi Netanyahu & co. are delighted with the Hamas victory, on which they can now build a fear-saturated election campaign, and return voters to the fold who lately had slipped into something more moderate.

But here’s my take on what made Hamas victorious in the recent elections: Israel’s failure to sit down and negotiate an end to the occupation. This is often phrased as “the failure of Fatah to make progress on peace”, but they amount to the same thing: the Fatah failed because Israel refused to offer any reward for moderation, refusing to sit down and negotiate with them.

And what about the corruption claim – that voting for Hamas was also a vote against the corruption of the Fatah politicians? This may have played a role for some voters, but since when does corruption bring down a politician? Certainly not in Israel, where Sharon’s corruption has been an open book, but forgiven by those who support his politics. Corruption is tolerated when approval ratings are high in other respects. The corruption of the previous Palestinian government would have been overlooked, had the politicians only managed to show some progress on ending the occupation.

2) When terrorists become politicians

I remember standing on the balcony of my home in Jerusalem on a lovely May morning of 1977 and gasping when I heard who had won the Israeli election: Menahem Begin, former head of a Jewish terrorist organization that had killed 91 civilians by bombing the King David Hotel in 1946. And then it was Begin who returned the Sinai Peninsula and negotiated peace with Egypt. In 2001, Israel elected Ariel Sharon, responsible for blood-soaked episodes in Qibiya, Beirut, Gaza, Sabra and Shatila, and more. And then it was Sharon who returned Gaza – imperfect, but a singularly important precedent.

I condemn terrorism, whether ‘rogue’ or state sanctioned, and I would never have voted for Hamas (or Begin or Sharon). But who is better positioned than Hamas to reach a compromise peace agreement? We have the mirror image of Israel in the Palestinian election: Just as the Israeli right (Begin and Sharon) could more easily make concessions than Yitzhak Rabin, who had to fight our right wing all the way, so too the Hamas can mobilize more support for concessions than the more moderate Fatah could now undertake.

3) About creeping fundamentalism

Yes, I am worried about Hamas rule, particularly its domestic agenda in Palestine: I worry about women, non-Muslims, journalists, gays, people in the arts, and all those who benefit from the open society. To what extent will the Hamas increase the role of Shari’a (Muslim) law in civilian life? Or religious education in the schools? On the other hand, it’s quite evident that Palestinians have experienced democracy and will not easily tolerate a closing of their society.

I take heart from this week’s survey of the Palestinian population, published in the Palestinian Authority’s Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda and reported in the Jerusalem Post: 84% of Palestinians support a peace deal with Israel. In case you wondered if this includes the Hamas, 75% of Hamas voters are opposed to calls for the destruction of Israel. The Hamas knows that seculars comprise a large portion of their constituency.

4) And who benefits from ending foreign aid?

So along come American and Israeli politicians advocating for a policy that would isolate and punish the Palestinians by withholding financial aid. Everyone knows this would destabilize the fragile economy, harm the innocent (but not the politicians), and foster increasing bitterness against the secular west. A much more reasonable approach would be to extend support and see how responsibly Hamas uses it. Or does someone have an interest in sowing chaos in the Palestinian territories?

Yes, I too would like to demand a renunciation of terrorism and violence as a precondition for talking …I’d like to demand it from both sides. But realistically this has to be done as part of the negotiations.

I can understand her argument - it makes sense politically. But nonetheless I find it repugnant to think that American taxpayer dollars could get to Hamas.

"Virtual Talmud"

I got an e-mail from someone at Beliefnet, telling me about a new blog they're hosting - "Virtual Talmud." Here's the info.:

Q: Take three rabbis, turn them into bloggers, and what do you get?
A: Virtual Talmud!

"For the sake of heaven," no Jewish blog should be without a link to this novel forum. Virtual Talmud.

And who can resist a blog with headlines like: "The Commandment Pat Robertson Forgot," "Can Alito See the Shades of Gray?" and "Abramoff Fails the Shanda Test."

About Virtual Talmud:
In the spirit of the rabbinic tradition, Beliefnet has asked three rabbis to create a virtual Talmud, blogging on Judaism and the world today. Unlike the talmudic arguments of old, the interactivity of Virtual Talmud makes it possible for any member of our community to talk back to the learned teachers and to each other.

Meet our bloggers:
Rabbi Susan Grossman, a Conservative rabbi, is the rabbi of Beth Shalom Congregation in Columbia, Maryland. Rabbi Eliyahu Stern, an Orthodox rabbi, received rabbinic ordination and an M.A. in Talmud from Yeshiva University. Rabbi Joshua Waxman, a Reconstructionist rabbi, is the spiritual leader of Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation, located in Fort Washington, PA.

Kosher money or non-kosher money?

Wow, did you hear that there's kosher money and non-kosher money? Heshy (of Heshy's House fame) just visited Israel and gave people the choice of being paid in kosher or non-kosher money. Guess which is which? It's not what you expect!

Nice to have something amusing to blog about!

Hanna Siniora on Hamas

Another voice on the Hamas victory - from Hanna Siniora, the Palestinian co-leader of IPCRI:

For Hamas in opposition it was always easy to criticize. Now Hamas has a heavy of load of responsibility and duties to shoulder, on one hand they have to steer the ship of state to safety and to independence. As a religious fundamentalist movement they have to negotiate with Israel and be accepted by the West. Is Hamas able to modify its ideology? Or are they going to stick rigidly to its platform?

In the election campaign, Hamas managed to send signals of flexibility, they discarded the slogan calling for the destruction of Israel, Hamas announced its readiness to negotiate directly with Israel. They entered the democratic process of elections based on the Oslo agreements, while declaring that Oslo is dead. But what was important, tangible and real, and they continue to adhere the ceasefire.

Hamas, in a similar manner to the PLO before it is undergoing a process of transformation, history is repeating itself. Hamas is obliged to uphold its promises and pledges to its public to steer the ship of state to safety, to reexamine its platform, this is not going to happen overnight. In this process, it is a do or die situation, they have the responsibility of delivering the people from the burden of occupation as well as implementing their social and economic program. Militancy and armed confrontation of the occupation are not the tools of Hamas at the head of the PA they have also to change otherwise they will be isolated. The EU have to again be the vehicle in a similar role they played in the past with the PLO, the EU started it with the Venice declaration of 1980, the USA followed suit in the waning days of the Reagan administration and Israel through the Oslo Accords. Hamas also must reciprocate otherwise it will be ostracized and isolated. It is Hamas'’ turn to demonstrate flexibility and responsibility. Israel too can play an important role and profit from Hamas emerging as the leading power in the Palestinian political system. Israel has the ability to accelerate the Hamas movement towards moderation by adopting reciprocal and not unilateral steps. Israel by its actions can either drive Hamas deeper into the jungle or thus explode the fragile ceasefire or Israel and Hamas together can exploit the new situation to lead toward and political settlement.

Siniora seems to think that Hamas is in a process of transformation - I certainly hope that he is correct.

Selections from the Hamas Charter

The Hamas Charter details Hamas' enmity not only for the state of Israel and the Zionist movement, but also for the Jewish people.

Some quotations:

"For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails."

The Charter quotes a hadith often cited by anti-Israel and anti-semitic Jihadist groups:

"the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: 'The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree' (cited by Bukhari and Muslim)."

The basic reason that Hamas cannot moderate, if it persists with its current charter, is found in Part III, Article Eleven: "The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it."

On the possibility of peaceful solutions:

"[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: 'Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware.'"

In Article Seventeen, which deals with the role of Muslim women, the charter says that the enemies understand that women are crucial in the formation of the next generation, and that if they turn women away from Islam, they will have one. At this point, the Charter goes off into the nowhereland of anti-semitic propaganda:

"Therefore, you can see them making consistent efforts [in that direction] by way of publicity and movies, curricula of education and culture, using as their intermediaries their craftsmen who are part of the various Zionist Organizations which take on all sorts of names and shapes such as: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, gangs of spies and the like. All of them are nests of saboteurs and sabotage. Those Zionist organizations control vast material resources, which enable them to fulfill their mission amidst societies, with a view of implementing Zionist goals and sowing the concepts that can be of use to the enemy."

It is a standard part of anti-semitic fantasies to connect the Freemasons to the Jews; this theme is found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Charter also uses another standard anti-semitic slur: equating Jews with Nazis. In Article Twenty, it accuses Israel of being "a vicious, Nazi-like enemy," and then goes on to say, "The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people’s livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor. In their horrible actions they mistreat people like the most horrendous war criminals."

Article Twenty-two tells the history of Zionism according to the fantasies of anti-semitic groups, again, accusing the Freemasons, the Rotary Club, and also Lions Clubs and the B'nai B'rith of being part of the Zionist movement. The "enemies" are accused of being behind the French and Communist revolutions, World War I (in order to wipe out the caliphate - i.e., the Ottoman Empire), and WWII (to make lots of money), and the U.N. (to rule the world).

Article Twenty-Eight again accuses the Freemasons et al of being spies for Zionism. It accuses Zionism of distributing drugs to destroy Muslim society. This article also says: "Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims."

Article Thirty-Two takes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for a truthful historical source: "For Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there."

Unless and until Hamas rewrites its charter, renounces the anti-semitic assumptions upon which its beliefs about Israel and Jews are based, and abandons the "armed struggle" against Israel, I don't see how we can view this as an organization that is becoming moderate.

Hamas Leader Sees No Change Toward Israelis

Despite the hopeful statements on the Hamas victory that I've been hearing from commentators on the radio and reading in the newspapers, Hamas Leader Sees No Change Toward Israelis.

The political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, in Damascus, said that Hamas would not "submit to pressure to recognize Israel, because the occupation is illegitimate and we will not abandon our rights," nor would it disarm, but work to create a unified Palestinian army. He defended attacks on Israeli civilians.

....arguing against any fundamental changes are Hamas's deeply held religious views, as expressed in its charter, sermons and election platform. Those views suggest that the kind of transformation that the secular P.L.O. took 25 years to make will be highly unlikely for a fundamentalist religious organization that regards all Israeli territory as irrevocably Muslim land.... Yossi Alpher, co-editor of bitterlemons.org, said ""I think we have to take Hamas at its words and assume that as Islamicists, they have some core beliefs that won't change."

The most fundamental of those beliefs, says Hisham Ahmed, a political scientist at Birzeit University in Ramallah and a student of Hamas, is that the entire land of Palestine belongs to Allah and is Muslim holy land. The 9,000-word Hamas charter, written in 1988, is explicit about the struggle for Palestine as a religious obligation. It describes the land as a "waqf," or endowment, saying that Hamas "believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it."

In the charter, Hamas describes itself as "a distinct Palestinian Movement which owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine."

It calls for the elimination of Israel and Jews from Islamic holy land and portrays the Jews as evil, citing a bizarre anti-Semitic version of history going back to the Crusades. It also includes a reference to the noted czarist forgery of a plan for world domination called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and condemnation of supposedly Zionist organizations like the Rotary Club and the Masons. It describes the struggle against the Jews as a religious obligation for every Muslim, saying, "For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah's victory prevails."

While the Hamas election platform did not refer to seeking the destruction of Israel, this does not mean that the organization's goals have changed.

Despite the platform's relative moderation, a Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, vehemently denied any contradictions with the charter. "The platform refers to details and implementation methods for the next four years, while the charter lays out our permanent strategic views," he said....

But no Hamas leader or candidate is on record as sanctioning a permanent recognition of Israel's right to exist side by side with an independent Palestinian state, which has been the cornerstone assumption of peace negotiations since the Oslo accords in 1993. As Mr. Zahar also said, "We do not recognize the Israeli enemy, nor his right to be our neighbor, nor to stay, nor his ownership of any inch of land." Nor is any Hamas leader on record as expressing a willingness to disarm or to stop attacks on Israel and Israelis, or to make a distinction between Israeli soldiers and civilians, especially settlers living on occupied land, however defined.

Thus, I don't understand why people continue to be so optimistic that Hamas will moderate and be willing to speak to Israel. I don't see any evidence for this, unfortunately.

Hamas victory

As Amir Oren of Haaretz says: "Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections is one of the most important events in the history of the Middle East since the Six Day War. Not only does it change the picture, but also it puts it into a completely different frame. Palestine under Hamas rule puts an end not only to the road map and the Oslo process, but also to the formula embodied by UN Resolution 242: "land for peace" and an accompanying end to the conflict. Not only does it perpetuate the conflict, but also it reshapes it - from an Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a Jewish-Arab one, and even a Western-Muslim one. Such a conflict, backed by the global Jihad movement and Khomeinist Iran, has neither a solution nor an end."

He ends by saying: "Rabin brought Arafat. Arafat brought Benjamin Netanyahu and Sharon to power. Sharon brought Hamas. And Hamas will yet bring back Netanyahu - and the lion shall lie down with the lamb."

I know that today's Haaretz still says that Kadima will win the Israeli election, but I find this difficult to believe. I find it very likely that Netanyahu will win the election, or at least come very close to doing so.

This is a disaster.

Iranian blogger

Through Velveteen Rabbi I came across this blog by an Iranian, Hossein Derakhshan, now living in Toronto - Editor: Myself. It is a real relief to read a such a sane, peace-seeking person, a good antidote to Ahmedinejad. He's currently visiting Israel.

Thus shall it be done unto the man

An interesting literary point is made in this Haaretz article on Shaul Mofaz's recent remarks about Iran - Thus shall it be done unto the man.

Thus spake Shaul Mofaz at the Herzliya Conference on Saturday evening, in his appeal to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "You would be advised to learn from history to see what became of tyrants like you who tried to annihilate the Jewish people. They only brought destruction upon their own people."

Addressing the Iranian people directly, Mofaz said, "Ahmadinejad, his hallucinatory statements, his criminal actions and his extreme views will bring disaster upon you. Do what you know to be right in order to prevent this."

Sound familiar?

In the Book of Esther, Haman's wife Zeresh warns her husband: "If Mordechai, before whom thou hast begun to fall, be of the seed of the Jews, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him." (Esther 6:13)

Since Mofaz thought it appropriate to mention his own Iranian background ("a native of the city in which I was born") in his appeal to Ahmadinejad, it is legitimate to point out the connection - at least the associative one - between the warnings that he sent to the Iranian people and the fate of the oppressors of the Jews in Persia as inscribed in Jewish tradition.

The Haaretz article then goes on to criticize Mofaz by saying that Mofaz's words "cause people to question their wisdom" and to ask "What is achieved by Israel explicitly threatening to destroy Iran?" I'm not so sure that's the import of his allusions to the story of Esther, since in that book, Haman and his supporters are destroyed - not the entire Persian Empire. Actually, in the end, Persia ends up with a Jewish queen. It also strikes me that Mofaz is using quasi-religious language to assert that no matter what the opponents of the Jewish people may try to do to them, they will somehow inevitably be defeated. While this may be a comforting statement from the religious point of view, I somehow doubt that it's necessarily true politically.

Ahmadinejad meets radical Palestinian chiefs in Syria

I was kind of wondering why Ahmadinejad was in Syria - turns out he was meeting radical Palestinian chiefs in Syria.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met in Damascus with the leaders of 10 radical Palestinian movements including Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Ahmadinejad said he "strongly supports the Palestinian people's struggle" during the meeting, according to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) official Maher Taher Friday. Taher said the militant chiefs pledged to Ahmadinejad that the "Palestinian resistance and struggle would continue" against Israel.

"We expressed our solidarity with Syria, which is under pressure due to its national positions, as well as with Iran which has the right to possess nuclear technology for peaceful purposes," he added. Islamic Jihad chief Abdullah Ramadan Shala, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril were among those at the meeting, Taher said.

The meeting came one day after Islamic Jihad claimed a suicide attack in Tel Aviv that wounded 19 people. Israel blamed Tehran and Damascus for supporting the attack. "The attack was financed by Tehran, planned in Syria and carried out by Palestinians," Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was quoted as saying by a ministry official.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did not attend Ahmadinejad's meeting with the Palestinian chiefs, though he and Ahmadinejad met Thursday in Damascus as the two allies reaffirmed their ties amid increasing international pressure....

The ultra-conservative Iranian president has already faced international outcry over his comments describing Israel as a "tumor" that should be "wiped off the map." During his first visit to sole regional ally Syria since his shock election win in June, Ahmadinejad described Israeli Jews as "migrants" and asked if Europeans would be willing to accommodate them. "Give these migrants authorization to come into your countries and you will see that they no longer want to live in occupied (Palestinian) territory," Ahmadinejad said during a meeting with high-ranking Syrian officials.

"Are you prepared to open the doors of your country to migrants so that they can move freely throughout Europe? Are you going to guarantee their security and no longer engage in anti-Semitic repression if they come into your countries?" he asked, adding that he doubted Europeans' "sincerity."

'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader

An exploration of Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic theology: 'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader.

The most remarkable aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's piety is his devotion to the Hidden Imam, the Messiah-like figure of Shia Islam, and the president's belief that his government must prepare the country for his return. One of the first acts of Mr Ahmadinejad's government was to donate about £10 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the pious come to drop messages to the Hidden Imam into a holy well.

All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. A common rumour - denied by the government but widely believed - is that Mr Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a "contract" pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi and sent it to Jamkaran.

Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace. This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.

Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.

The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying. The unspoken question is this: is Mr Ahmadinejad now tempting a clash with the West because he feels safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? Worse, might he be trying to provoke chaos in the hope of hastening his reappearance?....

Its most remarkable manifestation came with Mr Ahmadinejad's international debut, his speech to the United Nations. World leaders had expected a conciliatory proposal to defuse the nuclear crisis after Teheran had restarted another part of its nuclear programme in August. Instead, they heard the president speak in apocalyptic terms of Iran struggling against an evil West that sought to promote "state terrorism", impose "the logic of the dark ages" and divide the world into "light and dark countries". The speech ended with the messianic appeal to God to "hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace".

In a video distributed by an Iranian web site in November, Mr Ahmadinejad described how one of his Iranian colleagues had claimed to have seen a glow of light around the president as he began his speech to the UN. "I felt it myself too," Mr Ahmadinejad recounts. "I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there. And for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink…It's not an exaggeration, because I was looking. They were astonished, as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic."

Western officials said the real reason for any open-eyed stares from delegates was that "they couldn't believe what they were hearing from Ahmadinejad." Their sneaking suspicion is that Iran's president actually relishes a clash with the West in the conviction that it would rekindle the spirit of the Islamic revolution and - who knows - speed up the arrival of the Hidden Imam.

In the course on Biblical Interpretation that I'm co-teaching this semester, we're going to spend the last several weeks discussing apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity - now I wonder if we should discuss Islam as well. I don't know much about Islamic apocalypticism - except what I read about in Gershom Gorenberg's book, The End of Days.

Iran and the Bomb

In tomorrow's Times, David Brooks lays out the four bad solutions to the current standoff with Iran - Hating the Bomb. Given my own political predilections, I would go with the "pre-emptionists," who include John McCain.

Pre-emptors would work with Europe and the U.N. to step up pressure on Iran, while making it clear the world is willing to do what it takes to halt the nuclear program. As McCain said on "Face the Nation": "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option. That is a nuclear-armed Iran."

But all of the options are bad.

The most recent statement by the Israeli Defense Minister on Iran:

Israel's Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned the people of Iran on Saturday that their president would bring disaster and suffering upon them if he continued to call for the destruction of the Jewish state. He also said Israel was preparing to protect itself if international diplomatic efforts failed to convince Iran to give up its nuclear program.

Speaking at the Herzliya conference, an annual gathering of politicians and academics, Iranian-born Mofaz said he knew a large portion of the Iranian people did not support President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's ideology.

Mofaz addressed the Iranian people saying: "Ahmedinejad, his hallucinatory statements, his criminal actions and his extreme views will bring disaster upon you. Do what you understand needs to be done in order to prevent this.'' Mofaz, who was speaking in Hebrew, said Ahmedinejad should look at historical examples of others who tried to destroy the Jewish people.

"You, who are leading your country in an ideology of hatred, terror and anti-Semitism. You had better take a glance at history and see what became of tyrants like you who tried to annihilate the Jewish people. They only brought destruction upon their own people,'' he said.

Ahmedinejad has said that Israel should be :wiped off the map'' and has questioned whether the Holocaust took place.

Mofaz said that 2006 was a "year of transition'' during which Iran would not yet have a nuclear bomb, but that Israel would have to do all it could to make sure the United States and European nations maintained diplomatic pressure on the Iranians.

The United States and European Union want Iran's nuclear program to be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, and accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is purely for generating electricity.

"Israel's policy is ... to bring this hot potato to the Security Council to impose sanctions and invasive inspection,'' Mofaz said. He said Israel would nevertheless continue its preparations to protect itself if diplomatic means against Iran failed. "Israel must be capable of protecting itself and ... we are preparing for this,'' he said.

The stuff of nightmares.

And Ahmadinejad is up to his usual rhetoric:

In a new attack on the existence of Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has challenged Europe to take back the Jews who emigrated to Israel, adding that no Jews would remain in Israel if Europe were to open its doors.

Ahmadinejad delivered the challenge after arriving in Syria for a two-day visit on Thursday. Addressing Europe, he asked: "Would you open the doors of your own countries to these (Jewish) immigrants so that they could travel to any part of Europe they chose?"

"Would you offer the necessary guarantees that you would provide for their security when they came to your countries and not allow another anti-Semitic wave in Europe?" he added in an apparent reference to recent attacks on Jewish cemeteries and properties in European states. [RL: or could this be a backdoor reference to the Holocaust that the AP reporter was too slow to pick up on?]

Ahmadinejad provoked an international outcries last year when he said Israel should be "wiped out" and that the Nazi Holocaust against Jews in World War II was a "myth."

In his comments in the Syrian capital, which Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Friday, Ahmadinejad forecast that the West would not answer the questions he had posed but would instead accuse him of "talking against global peace."

He said Europe should welcome Jewish people to prove its sincerity in supporting people's freedoms. He added he was confident that no Jews would remain in Israel if European countries allowed them to immigrate.

Among other things, it seems to have escaped Ahmadinejad's notice that about half of Israel's Jewish population is not of European descent, having left or been thrown out of Arab countries and Iran.

Every time Ahmadinejad says things like this, I am more attracted to the pre-emptionist option.

A Web Witness to Iranian Brutality

Another great Anne Applebaum column, this time on A Web Witness to Iranian Brutality. Link from Normblog, at this point my favorite British blogger.

More from Mahmood's Den

Mahmood has a round-up of Bahraini blogs (done weekly for Global Voices), where he cites the responses of many Bahraini bloggers to the recent death of the son of the Bahraini king:

Practically every Bahraini blog offered condolences to his majesty the king of Bahrain on the tragic death of his 6th son: Shaikh Faisal, who was just 14 and died as a result of a car accident. Shaikh Faisal is remembered by his friends as an avid equestrian and is full of life. Some commentors however wanted to break the norm and politicise this tragic event, especially as controversial forums like the recently lauded BahrainOnline.org, which mysteriously is on a 4 day maintenance regime! Hassan Al-Khozai (Arabic) was disgusted by some of the black-hearted comments on 'some' Bahraini forums who seemed to revel in the extinguished young life just because it belonged to a royal, and this comes from someone who could only be described as opposition. However Hassan is certainly not unique in this respect, he has proven his humility just as other traditional government opponents have: Abdulhadi Khalaf, and Manama Republic have conveyed their condolences with the politeness, respect and humility this situation demands.

By the way, Global Voices is a fabulous way to keep track of blogs from all around the world. People from many countries provide a blog roundup once a week or whenever the fancy strikes them and thus give a lot of exposure to blogs others will never have heard of. (There hasn't been an Israeli blog roundup since early December 2005, and a lot has certainly happened since then!)

The Great War of 2007

If you want to be frightened about the possible consequences of Iran getting the bomb, read this article by the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson - The origins of the Great War of 2007 - and how it could have been prevented. He's writing as from 2011, after the end of the "Great War."

A couple of scary paragraphs:

So history repeated itself. As in the 1930s, an anti-Semitic demagogue broke his country's treaty obligations and armed for war. Having first tried appeasement, offering the Iranians economic incentives to desist, the West appealed to international agencies - the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council. Thanks to China's veto, however, the UN produced nothing but empty resolutions and ineffectual sanctions, like the exclusion of Iran from the 2006 World Cup finals.

Only one man might have stiffened President Bush's resolve in the crisis: not Tony Blair, he had wrecked his domestic credibility over Iraq and was in any case on the point of retirement - Ariel Sharon. Yet he had been struck down by a stroke as the Iranian crisis came to a head. With Israel leaderless, Ahmadinejad had a free hand.

As in the 1930s, too, the West fell back on wishful thinking. Perhaps, some said, Ahmadinejad was only sabre-rattling because his domestic position was so weak. Perhaps his political rivals in the Iranian clergy were on the point of getting rid of him. In that case, the last thing the West should do was to take a tough line; that would only bolster Ahmadinejad by inflaming Iranian popular feeling. So in Washington and in London people crossed their fingers, hoping for the deus ex machina of a home-grown regime change in Teheran.

Hopefully an implausible scenario...

On the death penalty

Norman Geras of Normblog cites an interesting quote by Sister Helen Prejean on her attendance at executions - Being there. She says, "I go there to be there for them. When they look in my face they see someone who cares about them and believes in their dignity. They know that I will tell their story. You have to steel yourself to be utterly thinking of them. It is afterwards that you vomit." She is, of course, the nun who is opposed to the death penalty and her work with men facing the death penalty was the subject of first her own book and then the movie Dead Man Walking. She has recently published another book on the death penalty, entitled The Death of Innocents.

An article about her in the Guardian (UK) says, "She has attended the executions of men she knows to be guilty of horrific crimes, but also of men she believes to be innocent, and prays with and counsels their families and those of victims. She believes that executions are morally wrong but the killing of the innocent, subjected often to a callous and stubborn judicial refusal over years properly to reinvestigate their cases after conviction, fills her with revulsion."

Her opinion of politicians and judges who use the Bible to justify executions:

Sister Helen is scathing about politicians and judges who use the Bible to justify executions. "I call it Christianity-lite. It's not real Christianity. Truly it is blasphemy. Jesus Christ is being held hostage by these people: his whole message is being perverted." ...

The book is fiercely critical of the supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic who claims to be obeying biblical injunctions and the intentions of the 18th-century framers of the US constitution. Sister Helen has little more hope for Mr Bush's appointments to the supreme court - John Roberts, also a Catholic, and the nominee Samuel Alito.

"They come out of the same George Bush cookie cutter. They have a certain ideology and it is not one that will be on the side of standing up for people's rights. They are rightwing authoritarians. These people put on five pairs of white gloves when they are considering death penalty cases.

"They do not see the people they are dealing with as human. That's how Auschwitz happened."

I have mixed feelings about the death penalty. On the one hand, I find it revolting that the state may be killing innocent people - but on the other hand, the crimes that the guilty have committed are horrific and sicken me.

Even if it seems to me that someone deserves to die for his crimes, it is still something I find very troubling. I was very disturbed when Timothy McVeigh was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, in which 168 people were killed. In part I was troubled because I supported his execution. I woke up that morning just at about the time of the execution and as I listened to the radio I had the sick feeling that I (and anyone else who supported his execution) was implicated in his death. I still am not sure what I think about the death penalty. It certainly does not seem to be a deterrent to violent crime, innocent people can be killed for acts they did not commit, and it is obvious that the death penalty is imposed very unequally across the U.S.

Thinking about this, I came across an interesting blog entry by Jay Lassiter - Everything I know about the death penalty, I learned from Pope John Paul II (typos corrected by me). He said about the late Pope's stance:

But when I heard Pope John Paul II discuss the death penalty in the context of forgiveness and vengeance, I was moved to revisit the issue (and my own ideas of forgiveness.) The Pope mentioned that support for the death penalty is generally rooted in desire for revenge. He acknowledged the legitimate urge for justice, but suggested that justice can never be achieved through vengeance. He admonished those who cite Biblical scripture to justify a pro-death penalty stance. According to the Pope, the oft-repeated proverb "an eye for an eye...." (Lev. 24:20) was not a recipe for vengeance, rather it meant to serve as a cautionary tale against the escalation of violence in general. The Pope also pointed out that Jesus' position on the death penalty was clear: rather than retaliation, we should "turn the other cheek" and extend our hand in healing, blessing, and forgiveness. (Matthew 5:38-55) ...

The Pope advanced the argument that when a prisoner (who poses no threat to society) is executed, it sends the message that life is worthless, thus we can view the death penalty as an injustice to the sanctity of life. I share the Pope's belief that execution does not end with the death of the criminal, but affects each and every one of us living in a society which justifies capital punishment. I admit it's instinctively pleasing to judge those who commit heinous crimes as worthless or "less-than" but we should resist this temptation. If we convince ourselves that some among us deserve death, then we forget that all of us deserve forgiveness and the grace to amend our lives. Fighting violence with violence for the sake of vengeance does not serve a useful role in this country. Nor does it allow society to cultivate less vengeful methods of dealing with violent crime.

It is interesting here that Lassiter brings in the themes of forgiveness and the importance of not treating fellow humans as if they were worthless. It is so easy for me to feel angry at people who commit horrible crimes that I forget my agreement with these elementary moral truths. The desire for revenge can certainly overwhelm one's moral judgement.

Alan Sable

I was thinking earlier tonight about my brief career as a student at UC Santa Cruz - 1977-79, studying psychology and women's studies. One of the courses I took was an introduction to sociology (or maybe it was a course in American sociology) by Professor Alan Sable. He was a radical professor, a Marxist, and an out gay man, and made his political opinions obvious in the classroom. He was not granted tenure by UC and during my first year at Santa Cruz there were a series of student demonstrations protesting this, in which I participated. The culmination of the demonstrations was a sit-in in the administration building over one weekend. The demonstrators left early Monday morning, before the building opened for business - the administration had announced that those sitting-in would be arrested if they stayed any longer. Despite our protests, Professor Sable was not reinstated, and ended up becoming a psychotherapist - he now works at the Gay Therapy Center of San Francisco as a marriage and family therapist with a primarily gay and lesbian clientele.

I found a long interview with him on the Santa Cruz web site, where he talks about the whole struggle for tenure and why he thinks he did not gain tenure - primarily because he was the first out gay professor on the UC campus, and also probably because of his political radicalism and internal faculty struggles over whether teaching or research was more important for gaining tenure. He was a very popular professor (hence the student support) - I remember students flocking to his courses, which were often conducted in a very personal manner. Santa Cruz at that time was a hotbed of political radicalism and activism (for all I know, it still is - there was an article in today's New York Times about protests against military recruiters there on April 5 of last year, and allegations that the student group that organized the protests was spied upon by the Pentagon), and demonstrating against Sable's dismissal was part of that.

In his class I recall writing a paper on the racial tensions during my high school years, and trying to explain them in terms learned from him about the American racial situation. I believe it was in his class that I first learned about the concept of "institutionalized racism" - that racism is not just a matter of personal bigotry, but is part of an entire institutional system of white supremacy.

I guess I would say that I learned a lot from him, but in retrospect I think that he went overboard in pushing his own political agenda on the students (despite the fact that what he said was often congruent with the opinions of the majority of students in his classes). It was hard to stand up and question the political positions he supported. As a teacher now, I think it's important for students to feel that they can speak up in class in disagreement with the teacher.

But on the other hand, it's apparent from the interview that many students did feel able to stand and speak in his class and say things that they had not been able to express in other places. He was part of the first wave of gay and lesbian professors on campuses, bringing awareness of gay and lesbian life into the classroom, supporting gay studies classes, supporting gay and lesbian students in organizing a gay student group - long before such a thing as "queer studies" gained the relative academic respectability it has now.

Blogging in the Arab world

Tomorrow's New York Times reports on the impact the web is having on politics in Bahrain - In Tiny Arab State, Web Takes on Ruling Elite. The article focuses on Ali Abudelemam, the author of Bahrain Online (Arabic). It's interesting to read in light of comments by Mahmood al-Yousif on his blog, Mahmood's Den about politics in Bahrain (his blog is in English, therefore I can read it!). Mahmood's latest posting is about the horrible loss of life in Mecca during the Hajj a few days ago - a mass stampede killed over 35 people.

A previous posting on Mahmood's Den covered the death in a traffic accident of the son of the king, Shaikh Faisal bin Hamad Al-Khalifa. It's interesting that Mahmood wrote very respectfully of the King of Bahrain, while some of his commenters were less deferential of the royal family. This is interesting in light of the fact that Mahmood himself is Shi'ite, while the royal family is Sunni (and 70% of the Bahraini population is Shi'ite) - and according to the Times article, there is a great deal of resentment among the Shi'ites because of discriminatory treatment of them by the government.

The Religious Policeman, a Saudi blogger who is very critical of the Saudi government, also blogged on the stampede in Mecca, a few days after predicting further disasters during the Hajj because of the enormous numbers of pilgrims who come each year. He writes: "There is something very eerie about writing about the dangers, and then seeing yet another repetition, once more the corpses being loaded into trucks. It just keeps happening again and again, like a bad nightmare." (RP was offline for a long time and recently started blogging again - he's not living in Saudi Arabia at the moment, which probably makes it easier and safer for him to blog).

Sharon's changes

I received an e-mail today from Gershon Baskin of IPCRI - an article he wrote for the Jerusalem Times (a Jerusalem Palestinian journal) on Sharon. Baskin writes:

Since the end of May 2003 I have added a quote of Ariel Sharon as part of my email signature. This is quite significant for me as no one more than Sharon personified almost everything that I was opposed to in Israel. This quote marked the real shift that Sharon underwent in the past few years.

In 1988 I launched the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information – IPCRI, based on the idea that the two-states for two peoples solution was the ultimate fulfillment of the national strategic interests of the Jewish people and the Palestinian people. At that time, less than 5% of Israelis supported this solution and many Israelis, particularly in the government and military, related to me as a traitor. The final rejection of the occupation by Sharon was my final vindication from the accusations of being a traitor. The quote reads as follows: “I think the idea that it is possible to continue keeping 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation - yes it is occupation, you might not like the word, but what is happening is occupation - is bad for Israel, and bad for the Palestinians, and bad for the Israeli economy. Controlling 3.5 million Palestinians cannot go on forever. You want to remain in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem?" Ariel Sharon, May 26, 2003

He goes on in the article to write about how Sharon's politics changed significantly, to the extent that he was willing to withdraw from Gaza and then leave the party he founded (Likud), founding a new centrist party, Kadima. He ends the article with these words:

It is really sad that Sharon is not witness to the overwhelming outpouring of good wishes that he is receiving from all over the country and the world. Sharon was one of the most hated politicians in the last decades both in Israel, the region and around the world. He is now regarded as a great statesman and leader. He certainly gained my respect for what he did this past year. His history will not be forgotten but he did leave the political arena with a different legacy – one that has brought new hope to the region.

I feel the same way. It never would have occurred to me in 1982, after the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon, that I would be sad at the news that Ariel Sharon had suffered a devastating stroke and was fighting for his life. (I just heard on the radio that he's been rushed back to the emergency room to reduce swelling in his brain - it looks bad).

Pat Robertson on Ariel Sharon

And now, our own homegrown Taliban, Pat Robertson, blames Sharon stroke on policy of "dividing God's land". Via Media Matters:

From the January 5 edition of CBN's The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: I have said last year that Israel was entering into the most dangerous period of its entire existence as a nation. That is intensifying this year with the loss of Sharon. Sharon was personally a very likeable person. I am sad to see him in this condition. But I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who, quote, "divide my land." God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible, he says, "This is my land." And for any prime minister of Israel who decides he going carve it up and give it away, God says, "No. This is mine." And the same thing -- I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, and it was terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless, he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon, who was again a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with. I prayed with him personally. But here he is at the point of death. He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or United States of America. God said, "This land belongs to me, you better leave it alone."

This is the same man who blamed the 9/11 attacks on pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and lesbians, when on his show Jerry Falwell said that they "helped this happen."

More news on Sharon

This report from Haaretz about Sharon's condition says that he has "sustained vast brain damage as a result of his stroke and ensuing cerebral hemorrhage."

A public opinion survey conducted yesterday in Israel for Haaretz reports that Kadima (Sharon's party) would still win from 40-42 seats in the Knesset if Ehud Olmert or Shimon Peres led the party. Of course, it is still a couple of months until the elections, and who knows what will happen in the meantime.

Pulsa Denura, again

I was reading through my referral logs, and noticed that the most frequent search term that gets my blog is "pulsa denura" or "Ariel Sharon pulsa denura." I guess that people around the world (Russia, Hungary, Israel, Canada, and the U.S. according to their IP addresses) are wondering if Sharon's stroke is as a result of the supposed curse inflicted against him last summer by Rabbi Yossi Dayan and his band of fanatics. One referral is from Judapest, a blog in Hungarian, which I can't read, so I don't know if the posting is neutral, just about the curse, or if there's a political or religious slant to it.

In any case, although I study Jewish magic and mysticism, I do not believe that Sharon's stroke was caused by supernatural intervention - he, like the rest of us, is subject to all the frailties of the flesh, and has fallen victim to a natural weakness.

More on Sharon's stroke

In this article, the New York Times points out the difficulties In treating this type of stroke. It sounds very bad for Sharon.

I've been feeling kind of paralyzed since I heard the news of Sharon's stroke about 6:00 p.m. tonight - and sad. I am reminded somewhat of the night of Rabin's assassination, although that of course was death by violence, and this is not. That same feeling of being in limbo and not know what's going to happen next. Of being on a deathwatch, and waiting to hear the news.

When Sharon first became Prime Minister, in the wake of the beginning of the second intifada, I thought it was going to be a disaster for Israel (not that Ehud Barak did very well in dealing with the intifada). All I could remember was the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, when Sharon was Defense Minister and the Phalangist militia killed hundreds on his watch. But then when he actually became Prime Minister, he didn't seem that different from Barak - and gradually, he began to change, especially after the death of Arafat. The old warrior seemed to be recognizing the reality before his face - that Israel could not continue to occupy another people. I thought that he was very impressive last summer with the withdrawal from Gaza, and hoped that this was a harbinger of future withdrawals. Now, even if he survives, I can't imagine that he'll be able to continue to serve as Prime Minister, or to lead a party in the elections. Everything has been thrown up completely in the air.

There are Israeli politicians whose policies I agree with more than Sharon's - Amir Peretz for example - but he seemed the most likely to be able to get Israel out of a large part of the West Bank. I don't believe that anyone in Kadima will be able to take his place as a leader - no one else has his stature (except Peres, but Peres is no good at winning elections).

More on Sharon

Another report on Sharon says that he "was brought to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital from his ranch in the Negev desert, an official said. Channel 2 TV said Sharon was suffering from paralysis in his lower body and was taken into the hospital on a stretcher."

Sharon suffers second stroke

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, suffers significant stroke, undergoing surgery for intra-cranial bleeding. "Dr. Shmuel Shapira of Hadassah Hospital told Channel 2 TV that Sharon suffered 'a massive stroke, he was taken to an operating room to drain the blood.'"

This is not good - Sharon is probably all that is keeping Kadima together (the new Israeli centrist party that is reckoned to receive about 40 mandates in the upcoming elections for the Knesset). At this point, Sharon's doctors "assessed that Sharon's chances of recovery may not be high. "