The Media Myth of Camelot

“Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He talked a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab. Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame....”
– James Ellroy, American Tabloid

Assassination does wonders for a public figure’s place in history.

John F. Kennedy was a president of questionable character and meager accomplishment, but his untimely and violent death, followed by decades of unceasing image control by the Kennedy family and their media apologists, has helped sustain one of the great myths of American history – a myth that there once existed in Washington a magical kingdom called Camelot, ruled by a dashing prince whose wisdom and bravery were matched only by his unshakeable devotion to his beautiful princess.

So powerful is the Camelot legend that the many seamy discoveries of recent years have managed only to tarnish, but hardly to destroy, the reputation of a man who almost certainly would have been impeached or forced to resign the presidency had even a fraction of what we now know been made public while he was still alive and in office.

Even the very term that has come to symbolize the Kennedy era – Camelot – is an invention after the fact. The notion of the Kennedy White House as Camelot has always been, as even Kennedy press secretary and longtime loyalist Pierre Salinger admitted, a “fraud” – the word was never once used to describe the Kennedy administration while Kennedy was alive.

The Camelot-Kennedy connection was nothing more than a widow’s successful attempt to glamorize her husband’s legacy. Not long after Kennedy’s murder, Jacqueline Kennedy, quoting the lyrics of the title song from a popular Broadway show, implored the writer Theodore White: “Don’t let it be forgot/That once there was a spot/For one brief shining moment/That was known as Camelot.”

White dutifully recorded her words in an article for Life magazine, and instantly and forevermore the Kennedy years became Camelot in retrospect. It is necessary to keep all this in mind when reflecting on any aspect of the Kennedy administration. Nothing was as it seemed, and the truth about those years began to seep out only after Kennedy had been dead for a decade.

In fact, the mythmaking about JFK was under way well before he was elected president – being born to a politically ambitious, fabulously wealthy and well-connected father has its benefits.

“Kennedy,” the liberal journalist Lawrence Wright observed, “had spent thirteen years in the House and Senate without passing a single important piece of legislation. And yet before his election to the presidency, people were comparing him with Franklin Roosevelt, with the young Churchill, with various movie stars, with Lindbergh.”

Kennedy’s best-selling books, Why England Slept and Profiles in Courage, which helped sell the notion that he was some sort of intellectual? Both were largely ghostwritten.

The World War II incident that bestowed on Kennedy an aura of heroism?

“It was true Kennedy had saved the life of one of his men on PT-109, on a mission in which Kennedy was supposed to torpedo a Japanese destroyer,” writes Wright. “Instead, the lumbering destroyer managed to slice the PT boat in half, killing two crewmen. Apparently, Kennedy had failed to notice the ship until it was bearing down on top of him. ‘Our reaction to the 109 thing had always been that we were kind of ashamed of our performance,’ admitted one of the crew, Barney Ross. ‘I had always thought it was a disaster.’”

Wright continues: “Was this heroism? Or just luck – that Kennedy was still alive and not brought before a court-martial? The Navy rejected his application for a Silver Star, and it wasn’t until a friend of the Kennedy family, James Forrestal, became secretary of the Navy, that Kennedy received a life-saving award.”

Among close acquaintances Kennedy was candid about his heroics. In his 1991 book A Question of Character, historian Thomas Reeves quotes the son of a Kennedy intimate as saying, “He told her it was a question of whether they were going to give him a medal or throw him out.” And in 1946, according to Reeves, Kennedy told a friend, “My story about the collision is getting better all the time. Now I’ve got a Jew and a nigger in the story and with me being a Catholic, that’s great.”

Reeves, by the way, learned that taking a hard-eyed look at JFK is to automatically be viewed as nasty and mean-spirited. Whereas his earlier biography of Joseph McCarthy garnered widespread acclaim, the Kennedy book drew decidedly mixed reviews – with critics invariably taking issue not so much with Reeves’s facts as with his allegedly negative tone.

It’s become fairly routine: Every few years some enterprising reporter or biographer unearths new, unflattering information about Kennedy. The inevitable cycle of response – from the media, liberal intellectuals, and, of course, the Kennedy family – is one of shock, followed by denial, followed by silence. Until the next round of revelations, at which point the cycle begins anew – shock, denial, silence.

Seymour Hersh is an investigative journalist with solidly leftist credentials. For thirty years, just about everything he wrote was lapped up by appreciative liberal readers – until he took on the Kennedy legend in his 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot. While offering little fresh material, Hersh did add a considerable amount of corroborative background and detail to stories unearthed by earlier authors, and for that both he and the book were trashed by liberal reviewers.

After spending years searching through the muck of pumped-up war stories, doctored medical records (contrary to the image of “vigor” he liked to project, Kennedy suffered from a variety of ailments and consumed a prodigious daily cocktail of pharmaceuticals), compulsive extramarital activity, Mafia ties, and electoral shenanigans (“The 1960 presidential election,” Hersh flatly states, “was stolen”), the liberal muckraker was forced to reevaluate a man he once admired.

“Kennedy,” said Hersh in an Atlantic Monthly web interview shortly after the publication of The Dark Side of Camelot, “was much more corrupt than other post-war presidents, by a major factor. Much more manipulative, though Nixon was a close second. There’s nothing wonderful about Nixon – Watergate proved that – but I think that Nixon was an amateur compared to Kennedy.... [Kennedy] was above the law; he didn’t think anything could stop him.”

Particularly irksome to Hersh and others who see through the Camelot haze is the claim by Kennedy apologists that had their man lived, he would have put an end to America’s involvement in Vietnam – this despite the fact that the U.S. commitment in Vietnam expanded from a few hundred military advisers under Eisenhower to nearly 17,000 troops under Kennedy; that the men generally viewed as the architects of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policies, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, were in fact holdovers from the Kennedy administration; that just two months before his death Kennedy told Walter Cronkite, “I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw” and insisted to Chet Huntley that “We are not there to see a war lost”; and that the very speech Kennedy planned to give in Dallas the day he was killed warned that a diminished American commitment in Vietnam would “only encourage Communist penetration.”

The reason for the eagerness on the part of so many on the left to make over Kennedy’s feelings about – and plans for – Vietnam is really quite simple: Kennedy, whatever his failings, was a classic cold warrior who presided over a military buildup that, proportionately, trumped the Reagan buildup of the 1980’s and whose Inaugural address put the world on notice: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

Liberals haven’t acted or spoken that way since the Johnson administration, and perhaps Kennedy, had he lived, would have moved to the left along with his brothers Robert and Ted and most of the Democratic Party. But it’s impossible to know for certain, and today’s liberals are stuck with the inconvenient reality that the Kennedy whose legacy they claim as their own was in fact far closer to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush than to them in terms of his foreign policy and worldview.

Hence the desperate need of Kennedy court historians and media fellow travelers to posit all sorts of fanciful scenarios about how Kennedy would have shed his hawk’s wings and sprouted dove’s feathers had he lived and been reelected in 1964.

Of course, Kennedy insiders have a history of revisionism that goes beyond Vietnam. When the existence of Richard Nixon’s wiretaps and secret White House taping system was revealed in the early 1970’s, Kennedy loyalists were among the loudest critics, contrasting the sinister behavior of Tricky Dick with the high ideals of their golden Prince Jack. But several years later it emerged that Nixon was a mere piker in such matters, at least compared to Kennedy:

“The FBI and the CIA had installed dozens of wiretaps and listening devices on orders and requests from the attorney general [Robert Kennedy],” writes Richard Reeves in his 1993 study President Kennedy: Profile of Power. “Transcripts of secret tapes of steel executives, congressmen, lobbyists, and reporters routinely ended up on the president’s desk. The targets ranged from writers who criticized the president ... to members of Kennedy’s own staff.”

And, adds Reeves, a White House taping system was “installed by the Secret Service with help from military aides early in 1962, on Kennedy’s orders. When he thought of it, the president used hidden switches in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, and his living room in Hyannis Port to secretly record meetings and phone calls.”

Of course, none of the above was even touched on this week as the media’s talking heads and print hacks -- dutifully and unquestioningly conveying Caroline Kennedy’s remarks about her father in her New York Times op-ed article endorsing the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama -- served once again to reinforce the seemingly invincible myth of Camelot.

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"Rabbi Bechhofer’s concerns are certainly well placed. But as Rabbi Rakeffet recently said, "over the years my knowledge of baseball made hundreds of kids into bnei Torah ... you have no idea the effect it has on younger students when the rebbe knows baseball… In the kid’s mind, who can be like the rebbe? He’s from a different generation. Suddenly the rebbe opens his mouth to talk baseball and he’s one of the kids. Now he can teach Torah." " - From Sports and the Orthodox Jewish Fan

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"While America’s economy and financial position in the world are extremely important concerns, we also subscribe to the Bush belief that these depend on how the war on terror fares. Failure to deal with the Islamist threat will result in a reevaluation by a number of countries concerning future alliances. Russia and China are military and economic powers waiting in the wings as replacements, and looming on the horizon is a resurgent – and potentially nuclear – nuclear Iran. " - From The Jewish Press lead editorial

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"Lacking is the valuable interchange of people-to-people encounters, so vital to creating reconciliation and overcoming hatred. As more casual tourists include the Holocaust sites as part of their overall tour of Poland, it is critical that their experiences reflect the truth of the past, as well as present-day efforts to come to terms with it." - A New Approach to visiting Auschwitz

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"For most of us, “we support the troops” does not constitute a preamble to antiwar statements. Rather, we support the troops because we know how important it is for good people to stand firm against evil. It seems a significant number of our children and grandchildren understand that as well." - Do you know where all the Flower Children went?

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"Dr. Norman Hollenberg, a Harvard professor, found that some of the Kuna Indians, who live in Panama, had lower blood pressure, less hypertension and suffered from less cardiovascular disease than their relatives. The difference between the two groups was that the Indians who still lived on the chain of islands consumed three to four cups of cocoa a day, while their relatives who had moved to the mainland, stopped drinking cocoa." - Chocolate and blood pressure reduction - who knew!

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And, the View from Sderot, Uniting East and West, and Glimpses into American Jewish History.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 800-992-1600 ext. 344: Chaos over Jerusalem, Personal Perspectives, and a Starfish.

Happy Reading!

My Own One-Man Alternative Winograd Report on the Lebanese War:

Buddy, Can You Spare A Shekel?

During the past two years, a growing number of older American couples have taken the Nefesh B'Nefesh aliyah plunge in order to be closer to their sons, daughters and grandchildren who had previously moved to the Holy Land. However, none of these senior citizens could imagine that their pensions/Social Security checks from the "Goldener Medina" would be tarnished by the weakening dollar and the strong shekel.

Earlier this week, one of the "Golden Age" couples stopped me for a shmooze in a local coffee shop. "Steve, what are WE going to do about the weakening dollar? Will Bank of Israel Chairman, Stanley Fischer, stop the slide? We're getting hurt by this," they pleaded. While I'm not known for being a financial forecaster, I tried to ease their concern by telling them that ALL Americans, young and old who've made aliyah and occasionally rely on dollars are losing money at the moment.

As recently as 18 months ago, a dollar could buy at least 4.50 shekels. Earlier this week, a greenback could only buy 3.65 shekels! You see those of us who live in the Holy Land appear to rely too much on the "In G-d We Trust" slogan on the dollar bill, rather than BELIEVING in the shekel!

In reality, this is no joking matter, especially for senior citizens, new immigrants and yes, even Israeli exporters who are being paid back in dollars (on exports to the USA), rather than in shekels. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration reacted a bit late to the criminal sub-prime crisis, which prompted a hungry media to proclaim that a harsh recession is on the way, even though the inflated price of oil has been the PRIME cause of an economic slowdown within the USA.

For the moment, Stanley Fischer is in no rush to adjust the shekel because the Israeli economy remains relatively robust, even though the average Israeli worker only takes home about about $475 a week and pays nearly $6 a gallon for gasoline!

The true shekel to dollar rate, according to most industry pundits should be 4 shekels per dollar. When will Stanley ( who was a multi-millionaire BEFORE he made aliyah to Israel from the USA) wake-up and smell the coffee? When a substantial number of American olim start calling the Bank of Israel and the Absorption Ministry to warn them that they'll not only head back to the USA, they'll also discourage potential American olim and business investors from pumping big money into the Israeli economy. Stanley understands English.

The Olmert First Amendment

You will be happy to hear that the head of the Islamic movement among Israeli Arabs proclaimed yesterday that Jews in Europe make bread out of the blood of gentile children. See story here and also this.

Will he now be publicly hanged? Defenestrated? Jailed? Electric chair? Forced to listen to sociology lectures?

Have no fear, grasshopper. Since he is not a settler proclaiming that Rabin's Oslo policies were foolish, he will NOT be prosecuted for incitement and racism, even though the Attorney General has decided to "investigate the matter." Arab Nazis and Jewish leftists in Israel are never prosecuted. Anti-Semitic blood libel is protected speech under the Olmert First Amendment.

In fact, I expect him to be awarded an Israel Prize and hosted by the New Israel Fund in New York!

The Wicked Son

(Pictured: The Wicked Son, Prague Haggadah, 1526)

When Dr. Israel Shahak died on July 2, 2001, I speculated in print that he “presumably had ample opportunity by now to compare notes with Hitler, Stalin and the other equally distinguished residents of his new, supernaturally heated neighborhood.”

In retrospect, that attempt at morbid humor at Shahak’s expense was probably out of place, because there was nothing at all funny about one of the sickest characters Jewry’s ever produced – and God knows we’ve produced more than our share of sick ones.

It’s a truism that you can tell a man by the company he keeps, and a recent Google search on Jewish anti-Semitism revealed the company that keeps Shahak. Six and a half years after his death, his legacy lives on at countless neo-Nazi and anti-Israel websites, where his writings – with titles like “The Jewish Laundry of Drug Money” and “Israel’s Discriminatory Practices Are Rooted in Jewish Law” – are lavishly praised and lovingly preserved.

To call Shahak a self-hating Jew would be too easy, too trite. Besides, as the writer Sidney Zion observed to the Monitor several years back, such Jews are rarely self-hating at all – to the contrary, they love and adore themselves. It’s other Jews with whom they have a problem.

Going by the large body of writing he left behind, one can accurately describe Shahak as not just a hater of Israel but a hater of Jews, with the exception of those who share his ultra left-wing, militantly anti-religious, passionately pro-Palestinian mindset.

Shahak was a Polish Jew whose family was herded into the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. He was sent to Bergen-Belsen in 1943 and, upon his liberation two years later, made his way to what was then British Mandate Palestine.

He went on to become a professor of organic chemistry (he taught at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University for 25 years), but it was as a so-called human rights activist that he made a name for himself. This, however, was no garden variety bleeding-heart leftist. Shahak not only came to despise Zionism and consider the establishment of the State of Israel a criminal act; he also set out to expose what he considered the depravities and hypocrisies of rabbinic Judaism – and to do so in as public a manner as possible.

Because he downplayed Jewish suffering in favor of painting Jews and Israelis as serial oppressors, Shahak had little patience with the notion that the Holocaust had a profound impact on either the Israeli psyche or Israeli policy-making. To him, Jews were victimizers, not victims.

“These ‘Holocaust memories’ are a fake,” he wrote in one of his numerous essays popular with the shaved head and tattooed-swastika crowd. In another article, he insisted that “racism and discrimination pervade all walks of life in Israel.... We need to recognize that in Israel the real issue is discrimination not only against the Palestinians ... but against all non-Jews.”

It was Shahak who helped popularize the now familiar equating of Israelis with Nazis, declaring in one article that “the Jews of Israel, along with most of the Jews of the world, are at present undergoing a process of Nazification” and in yet another that any Jew who “denies the Palestinians their humanity” is a “Jewish Nazi.”

Just how twisted was Shahak? In his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, he portrayed the notorious Chmielnicki massacres as a righteous rebellion by the downtrodden against their Jewish oppressors, and complained that Jews choose to remember it instead as an unprovoked anti-Jewish atrocity. Here’s how he put it:

“This typical peasant uprising against extreme oppression [italics added] .... has remained emblazoned in the consciousness of east European Jews to this very day – not, however, as a peasant uprising, a revolt of the oppressed, of the real wretched of the earth, nor even as a vengeance visited upon all the servants of the Polish nobility, but as an act of gratuitous anti-Semitism directed against Jews as such.”

Shahak time and again came under fire for his habit of denigrating Judaism by citing references and quoting sources taken wholly out of context, and as far back as 1966 was exposed as an incorrigible liar by the late Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, the then-chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, in an article in the Orthodox publication Tradition.

He was a dangerous mountebank and fraud, and the Passover Haggadah’s wicked son personified.

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"Shabbos Sheva Berachos: This meal should ideally be eaten at the home of the kallah’s parents. Alternatively, the meal should be eaten in a small catering facility. Only grandparents, the kallah’s siblings, and – only if they reside out-of-town – the chassan’s siblings are to be invited. In smaller families, the chassan’s siblings may be invited. Other close relatives, such as those of the kallah’s parents, should eat at other relatives and join the sheva berachos only for bentching." - The Satmar chasunah guidelines

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"It was during our first briefing that I learned things were not as peaceful as they had initially seemed. We had received intelligence reports that Hizbullah was about to launch a wide-ranging offensive in our area, and it was anticipated that this attack would take place that very week. Suddenly, we were all brought back to the reality of our situation. Previous visions of us all sitting atop our tank and enjoying the view quickly faded as the specter of battle loomed." - Simcha Goitein with Avi's story.

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"For single women age 20, the modeled ratio is approximately 90%, which means that for every 100 single women at age 20, there are only about 90 single men who are 1 to 5 years older in the pool of potential marriage candidates. For single women age 25, the modeled ratio is only around 80%, and for single women age 30, the modeled ratio drops to around 60%." - Ariel Halpert gives a Mathematical explanation for the shidduch crisis.

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"The Torah is not a mere set of cold laws. It includes events and stories, with lessons about the spirit of its laws and how we should live our lives. The settings in Bereishit – such as Gan Eden, the generation of the Flood, even Creation itself – also represent such theoretical states of nature. Locke himself referred to Adam in his Second Treatise. Indeed, everything that occurs in the Torah is a presentation of Judaism’s primary contribution to the theory of civilization: the idea that there is one God in heaven and on earth. " - Daniel Tauber with a theory regarding the Ten commandments.

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"If Jordan were to return the Jordanian citizenship it illegally revoked in 1988 from the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians would finally have a citizenship that means something. They would be represented by a government capable of advancing their interests instead of one that forces them to live in constant terror of PA security forces and assorted terror cells. " Caroline Glick on Palestinian Statehood.

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And Tu B'Shevat contest, a Premiere for a Queen, the Final Word to the new mother-in-law.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 800-992-1600 ext. 344: From Denial to Awareness, Crispy Saffron & Thyme Potatoes and the Cutest Babies.

Happy Reading!

Israeli "Survivors" vs. U.S. Primaries

In order to distract themselves from the daily trials and tribulations of "surviving" Hamas & Hizbollah rocket threats, a vindictive Prime Minister, $6 a gallon gasoline, high taxes and a stifling bureaucracy, Israelis amuse themselves with various forms of prime-time entertainment, ranging from a local version of "Survivor" to the "Hillary vs. Obama" gladiator battles.

The local version of "Survivor" underscores the brutal reality of what it means to be a Jew and and an Israeli. Stubborness, rebellion and a stiff-necked disposition are on display as Israelis from all walks of life including several immigrants from the FSU (former Soviet Union) play out physical and spiritual mind games on an island chain within the territorial waters of the Dominican Republic. The Israeli version goes one step further in toying with the suffering of those who've been eliminated. Instead of sending them straight home, the "eliminated" are sent to an "island of death" where they must battle each other once more in order to stave off permanent elimination.

This is a painful exercise to watch... but if one compares the contestants reactions to what Jews have endured over the millenium, from brutal slavery in Egypt, medieval Crusades, Inquisitions, the Holocaust and enduring wars in contemporary Israel, "Survivor" becomes a metaphor for "am k'shei oref" (a stiff-necked people). For good and bad...

Which is why, so many Israelis tune into their prime-time evening news to watch in-depth coverage of the "Hillary vs. Obama" episodes. It's one long episode of "American Survivor" which is colored by race, money and vicious politics - something that Israelis actually hunger for when it comes to local politics. Israeli politicians, especially the "front-runners" (i.e. Olmert & Netanyahu) would never debate each other face-to-face in front of a national audience over a period of months. Their egos just wouldn't fit into the same room. And, their personal foibles would be exposed, which would be too much for their spinmeisters.

Israeli politics are most certainly colored by ethnicity, money and a viciousness that rivals Hillary vs. Obama. But most Israeli politicians are cowardly survivors who will manipulate in order to administrate. Most Israelis would pay to see Olmert and Netanyahu marooned on an island, just to see who could survive the longest without the trappings of physical prestige.

Should Anyone Care?

Does anyone think that Israel's situation will actually be better rather than worse ten years from now? Twenty years from now?

Does anyone believe that Israel won't cede more land to its mortal enemy?

Does anyone believe that Israel will ever protect its citizens from kassam rockets?

Does anyone doubt that the Arabs will be launching more, not fewer, rockets in the ensuing decade?

Does any of this matter?

Perhaps Judaism only requires one to study Torah and perform mitzvos.

Perhaps controlling the land of Israel is a nice amenity but certainly not a necessity.

Or perhaps living as a sovereign people in one's own land is of supreme religious and historical value if one can do so in a peaceful manner. Shedding blood, however, for such a venture is simply not worth it.

Or rather, bleeding for the land is fine. Making others bleed is the problem. And if we Jews bleed to death.... well, so is the price of living in the Holy Land.

Perhaps some Jews would run the country differently if they were in charge, but since they're not in charge, bleeding on the cross of national suicide would then constitute morality of the highest order.

But why am I going on? Does any of this really matter? Does it? Isn't Hashem truly in charge, and isn't whatever He wills going to happen anyways? So why bother getting angry, depressed, excited, active, revolutionary? Why?

Glory is for previous ages. An age like that of the Maccabees. An age of the "give me liberty or give me death" American revolutionaries.

Our age is one in which we wait for the hand of God. When He decides to redeem us, then we will be redeemed and sing His holy praises. And until then, we will cry, we will pray, we will perform mitzvos.

God wants nothing from us except to bleed on the altar of passivity. Proud, jingoistic patriotism is for non-Jews. Especially non-Jewish is patriotism translated into action.

Jews are international and spiritual. We don't need a land. We certainly don't need to fight for it. And certainly not when fighting for it requires sacrifices of a degree that many of us have not even begun to conceive of.

What’s Marriage Got To Do With It?

Hollywood has never been a bastion of morality, but lately the decline in traditional values has been picking up speed. By this I mean the out-of-wedlock baby boom among celebrities. Every time I tune in to the news (news these days being defined very loosely), another famous face is proclaiming his or her impending parenthood. I am loath to list their names in this forum.

It’s not that having children out of wedlock is anything new; celebrity couples have long been known to reverse the sequence of marriage first, baby carriage second. But it was usually a question of when, rather than if, the marriage would take place. Now unwedded parenthood has become acceptable—even fashionable. Another choice on the lifestyles menu, with Hollywood leading the way. (Of course, marriages in that little microcosm aren’t exactly known to last very long. But that’s another story.)

My point here is not to decry secular media and entertainment, and in any event I do not advocate an indiscriminate ban. Rather, on a positive note, I find that noticing the contrast between the values—or lack thereof—espoused in the popular culture and those of our own moral outlook gives me an even greater sense of pride and good fortune to be part of the Torah community.

Jews From Arab Countries

Below are excerpts from an interview I conducted several months ago with Dr. Heskel Haddad of WOJAC (World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries), which did not appear in the paper edition of The Jewish Press.

Are Iranian Jews safe? Are they allowed to leave?

They are not persecuting them now. They are as safe as second-class citizens can be. Many of them want to leave but they can’t because the Iranian government knows they will go to Israel and they don’t want them to go to Israel.

How about Syrian Jewry? How many of them are left?

About 100. I don’t think these 100 Jews want to leave. They are not mistreated; they are okay. They have money, they have homes, and they don’t want to leave them.

Some people claim that the Israeli governments of the 1940's and 1950's were responsible for many Jews from Arab countries becoming irreligious. Can you comment?

When the Jews from Arab countries came to Israel, they were told “If you want to work, the pinkas adom, [the red membership book of the socialist Mapai party] should be your Bible” – because Mapai controlled the Histadrut labor union. And for the jobs they were given, they had to get up very early in the morning, with no time to go to the synagogue. So a lot of Jews lost interest in the religion “mikotzer ruach u'meavodah kasha – from shortness of breath and hard work” (Exodus 6:9). But gradually these Jews came back to religion.

Did the Jews from Arab countries flee or leave willingly?

Those who left out of Zionism, I would say, are less than two percent. The majority were forced to leave their homes by persecution. For example, in Iraq all the workers in the government were fired. So there was 90% unemployment among the Jews of Iraq.

In talking about the founding and purpose of WOJAC, Dr. Haddad said...

Between 1948 and 1951, almost one million Jewish refugees came to Israel penniless because all their property and assets were confiscated by the Arab governments. And nobody talks or says anything about them. Only 600,000 Palestinian Arabs left Israel. So we're talking about a de facto population exchange.

We want to negate the right of return and we want to have mutual compensation.

Clintonian Déjà Vu

The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign is getting louder and uglier by the minute as racial and gender politics threaten to fracture the Democratic base, and even those media outlets that in the past had defended or at the very least tolerated the Clintons give every indication of having finally lost patience with the shopworn act.

But did anyone expect anything other than a three-ring circus, particularly with a publicity-seeking missile like Bill Clinton launching himself at any available microphone or television camera?

Really, was there ever a president quite like Bill Clinton? The Oval Office has seen more than its share of questionable characters, but rarely had one embodied so many of the traits we normally abhor in a low-level political hack, let alone a president of the United States.

There is no need to recite here the dreary and extensive litany of Clinton’s flip-flops on both domestic and foreign policy. Suffice it to say that the man is a political chameleon who, as the editors of National Review once put it so memorably, “has been ruled ineligible for Mt. Rushmore because there isn’t room for so many more faces.”

Nor is it necessary to revisit the sordid details of all the controversies and scandals that came to attach themselves to a man for whom the word “shameless” always seemed the mildest of sobriquets.

The wonder of it all is not that Clinton twice managed to get elected president – he failed, after all, to garner a majority of the vote in both 1992 and 1996, and his victories owed much to the ineptness of his Republican opposition and the unbridled ego of Ross Perot.

No, the remarkable thing about the Clinton years is the narcotic effect they seemed to have on Americans, large numbers of whom were content to sleepwalk their way through the accumulating detritus of White House sleaze.

Jews in particular were enamored of Bill Clinton, and his approval ratings in Jewish strongholds from Great Neck to Beverly Hills were positively Rooseveltian. It was said in the 1940’s that for American Jews there was di velt (this world), yene velt (the next world) and Roosevelt; in that sense Clinton was FDR revisited, a man who could do no wrong in Jewish eyes, facts – and Israel – be damned.

The fact is, Clinton left office with Israel’s situation considerably more precarious than it had been at the end of the first President Bush’s lone term. And while Israeli leaders bore a considerable portion of the blame, it was Clinton who pulled, prodded and pressured Israel – and directly intervened in the Israeli political process – whenever he felt it necessary to sustain the mirage of Oslo.

And Hillary of course always was the perfect sideshow to Bill’s Main Event, someone who simply by opening her mouth in public during the Clintons’ White House years made the pundits cringe, her poll numbers plunge, and general chaos ensue.

It was Hillary, as author Sally Bedell Smith reminds us in For Love of Politics, her recently published account of the Clinton presidency, who almost single-handedly ran national health care into the ground. It was also Hillary whose behind-the-scenes machinations resulted in Travelgate and Filegate, among many other such Clintonian hijinks.

And, as Smith convincingly relates, it was Hillary’s insistence that her husband ignore the advice of his attorneys that necessitated the court depositions which eventually led to Bill’s impeachment.

By the time Hillary gave an excruciatingly embarrassing 1999 interview to Talk magazine (since defunct), once-sympathetic observers like the liberal columnist Richard Cohen were beginning to see the unflattering truth behind the first lady’s carefully cultivated veneer.

Describing Hillary as a “bit of a ditz,” Cohen asked, “What can we make of a woman who talks the language of afternoon television – an amalgam of psychobabble and fortune-cookie wisdom, with a dollop of religion here and there?”

The Talk article, Cohen conceded, “raises real questions about her sagacity, her knowledge of how she sounds to others and – not least – her political wisdom.”

Later in 1999, the Suha Arafat imbroglio (Hillary had embraced Mrs. Yasir Arafat moments after the latter accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian women and children – and then offered up a series of excuses and explanations for her behavior) threw into sharp relief all the weaknesses exhibited by Hillary throughout her career as a public figure.

Those weaknesses were overlooked or forgotten as Hillary rather deftly settled into her role as U.S. senator from New York. But apparently they were always under the surface and have now reemerged: the transparent posturing, the dissembling and denial whenever her actions or statements blow up in her face, and the political spinning – always the political spinning.

Sderot As 'Sport'

It's hard for the average Jew in North America to have a proper understanding of what is taking place in Sderot. There are those who believe that Sderot (which Secretary of State Rice called SDAY-ROT) is located either somewhere in the "territories" or in the middle of the Negev desert.

In reality, Sderot is located less than an hour by car from metro Tel Aviv, adjacent to Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, one of Israel's most productive agricultural farms. In fact, the gas station/restaurant at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai bears a striking resemblance to a Route 17/Quickway "pit stop" one would pass on the way up to the Catskills.

Sderot also borders one of the country's main roadways heading south towards Beersheba, the capital of the Negev. Sderot looks like any other mid-size Israeli town, except for the fact that the red-tile roofs on the villas are becoming craters in the aftermath of incessant Kassam rocket attacks from nearby Gaza.

Sderot is NOT a settlement. It is working-class town that has become cannon fodder for Hamas and political fodder for PM Ehud Olmert's peace games. Sderot is INSIDE the so-called pre-1967 ceasefire lines and yet its citizens are paying a heavy toll for being near the bottom of the country's economic and social scales. The throngs of mostly Ashkenazic Israeli reporters who descend upon Sderot each time there's a massive barrage, have yet to challenge the secular elite businessmen and politicians who reside in chic Tel Aviv to trade places with their Sderot brethren in order to understand their anger and frustrations.

If Hamas or Hizbullah successfully fired a rocket at central Tel Aviv, there can be no doubt that the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon would be turned into an "urban renewal" project in a matter of hours. Yes, a form of social racism actually determines military and political policy in Jerusalem.

Think about it. What would you do if you lived in Brooklyn and missiles were falling on friends and family on Long Island? Would you allow the president to actually negotiate with the enemy at the gates?

Random Thoughts on the Primaries So Far

Lying to pollsters – All the polls predicted an Obama win in Iowa, some by a large margin, yet Hillary walked away with it. [As a reader rightfully admonished me after I originally posted this, Hillary won New Hampshire. Obama won Iowa. -- MK] Reminds me of the first Dinkins-Giuliani race for Mayor of NYC. Dinkins won, but only by a drop. The polls had him winning in a landslide. At the time, I remember reading how the media were upset that people would lie to pollsters. G-d forbid. The idea that was suggested then and now is that some people feel they have to say they are voting for a black person, so they don't seem racist.

Crying – Hillary famously cried at a question the day before Iowa. Supposedly Iowans liked this. [Again, I mixed up Iowa and New Hampshire. Hillary cried before the New Hampshire primary. -- MK] It makes her seem more human. Short-term benefit? I wonder how many people will be turned off by that elsewhere. Some of us are imagining “Waa, Putin wasn’t nice and Kim Jong Il is a bad boy…"

Giuliani and Thompson – My personal picks. I’m sort of astounded that both of them are nowhere. I never imagined them in 4th and 5th. True, Giuliani wasn’t intending to compete in these early races, which together only represent a small percentage of delegates, and polls showed him easily winning most of the big Feb. 5 states (NY, NJ, California…) and Florida. However momentum is a funny thing. I suspect a lot of that has changed since. I saw polling data in New Jersey, California and Florida that show Senator McCain in the lead or very close. Shame.

Romney do or die today – Former governor Romney had 2nd places finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, so Michigan (which as of now he seems to have won) was seen as a must win for him. What is strange is that he had the 2nd-most delegates before Michigan. Iowa and New Hampshire were not winner-take-all, and he won Wyoming, which no one seems to consider. And yet pundits were preparing his political obituary.

Wyoming – Wyoming moved up its Republican primary to 2nd in the nation. The Republican Party penalized half the state's delegates. Still had as many delegates available as New Hampshire, yet there has been almost no mention of it.

Huckabee – Who?

On to South Carolina.
(As the comments below indicate, I stupidly mixed up Iowa and New Hampshire. For atonement, I went to bed early without dinner. )

Bush Loves Saudi Oil. Do you?

As has been documented, the Orthodox community in America is steadily moving to the right in almost all areas of politics and public policy. This includes issues of foreign policy, society, and economics. And for many, this also includes environmental concerns.

It seems to me that an increasing number of Orthodox Jews would scoff at requirements or incentives for automakers to create cars with better gas mileage, or for measures to ensure alternative fuel sources. Indeed, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit taking place now, environmental concerns are the hot topic.

But President Bush's visit to Saudi Arabia should give all Israel-loving Jews cause for concern.

Bush was urging "OPEC nations on Tuesday to put more oil on the world market and warned that soaring prices could cause an economic slowdown in the United States," according to an AP article, which can be found here on AOL, for now.

But look at a quote later in the article, and it doesn't sound like Bush was urging at all: "When consumers have less purchasing power, it could cause the economy to slow down," Bush said. "I hope OPEC nations put more supply on the market," he added. "It would be helpful."

And the usual pictures of Bush buddying up to Saudi royalty doesn't make me feel any warmer.

We know what owing favors to Arab countries in the Middle East often means--sacrificing America's strong support of Israel. Now what would happen if this year sales for cars that get better gas mileage increase 3 fold or more? And what would happen if 100,000 Jews this year bought or leased a hybrid or otherwise more fuel efficient vehicle? The trend would be off and running, those kinds of cars would start becoming more mainstream, and sales would increase next year, as well.

I'm not suggesting anyone spend more than he can afford. But if you can afford it, wouldn't it be another great way to help support Israel? Why wouldn't you?

A real Ratan Tata

Two weeks ago, Ratan Tata, known in India as the father of industry, unveiled his 10-year in the making dream. He had dreamed of an inexpensive car that millions of his countrymen would be able to affford.

The car, the Tata Nano, much smaller than your average car, has no airbags, no passenger mirror, no power steering or power locks and only one windshield wiper instead of two. The deluxe version will have air conditioning. What he calls the People's Car, will cost the equivalent of $2,500, the cheapest car ever made. Some options on a Lexus cost more than this.

Of course the climate change wackos are concerned, because now many more people will have cars. Obviously people in underdeveloped countries don't deserve the same lifestyle as the rest of us (These people have to put a damper on any nice idea or innovation).

Now if my kid would call me a Ratan Tata, I might not get angry.

How to Solve the Counterpunch-Nation Problem Via the "One Magazine Solution"!!

Columbia University Jihadist Navasky, seeking a Rwanda Solution for the Problem of Israel's Existence

I have this amazing idea for how to deal with the Far-Left neo-Stalinist anti-Israel magazines Counterpunch (webzine) and The Nation (print mag and website). It is called the "One-Magazine Solution."

The idea is that Counterpunch, The Nation, and The Jewish Press merge and then continue to operate as a single web magazine under the hegemonic control of ourselves, while the Counterpunch and Nation writers and editors would be assured minority rights (fair trials for treason). Well, except for those Counterpunchers born outside the U.S., like Alexander Cockburn, who would be expelled back to the countries whence they came.

Now before you accuse me of ingesting the same substances as the editors of Tikkun Magazine, let me explain. The Neofascist Left, and by that I mean the extremist Left best represented by writers at Counterpunch and The Nation (or - as I prefer to call it - The Moonbatnation) have in recent years been demonstrating a refreshing candor and openess when it comes to their anti-Semitism. Unlike so many others, these writers do not pretend that they simply oppose Zionism but-got-nothing-against-dem-Joos-as-such-mind-you. Specifically, they are entirely open about the fact that they want to see Israel destroyed. They call it the "One State Solution," also known as the Rwanda Solution, in which Israel will be enfolded into an Arab Palestinian Islamofascist Third World Kleptocratic State, encompassing all Israeli territory, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The Jews would be assured minority status in this Arab-majority entity, and so would be treated almost as well as the Copts in Egypt or the Kurds in Iraq or the southern Sudanese are today.

Now, how come Israel is the only country on the planet that these folks demand be destroyed, you ask? It is very simple. Israel is the only Jewish country and the Neofascist Left has a severe problem with Jews. Sometimes the Lefties pretend they want Israel destroyed because they claim it is a "discriminatory" or "immoral" country, but no one thinks they really believe that. Israel is by far the least discriminatory and immoral country in the Middle East and the state of human rights in Israel is at least a thousand times better than in the next-best state in the Middle East.

In recent years, Counterpunch has run quite a few articles opposing the "Two State Solution" and endorsing the "One State Solution." The "Two-State Solution" to the Middle East conflict should in fact be more correctly termed the "Twenty Four State Solution," meaning 22 Arab states, Israel, and the new terror state these people want the "Palestinians" to run.

As envisioned in the "Road Map," the Arabs would add to their twenty-two existing states. In addition to holding land almost twice the area of the United States, they'd have yet another state, a twenty-third Arab state to be called Palestine, the second Arab state to be erected in the territory of historic Palestine (the other one being named Jordan), while the Jews would keep their one tiny statelet with land smaller than New Jersey for at least another month or two.

That is the Bush Road Map plan. But the Neofascist Left insists this solution is too generous to the Jews and too stingy to the Arabs. Their preferred solution is to turn the Levant into Rwanda and resolve the ethnic conflict the same way the Rwandans did.

The Nation, always trying to out-jihad Counterpunch and bypass it in the Anti-Semitism Tournament of the Left, has also long endorsed the Rwanda Solution, er, we mean the "One-State Solution" by which Israel would be destroyed, and of course that would have nothing at all to do with the fact that Israel is the only country the Jews have on earth. The Germans called it the Final Solution. None of this of course has stopped the Columbia School of Journalism, located in that Columbia Madrassah on the Upper West Side, from turning the school's website over to the control of The Nation's Uber-Moonbat editor and publisher, the Israel-hating, Castro-loving Victor Navasky.

Pomp & Smiles...But No Substance

Yes, the sight of Air Force One landing on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport, President George W. Bush nodding his head while "Hatikva" was being played in front of an Israeli military honor guard, Arab and Chinese construction workers in Modiin dropping their tools as they watched President Bush's helicopter overhead were moving experiences.

However, the sight of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert constantly praising and back-slapping President Bush in long-winded speeches was reminiscent of a contestant pleading to stay on Survivor Island. Even Israeli TV commentators resorted to cynicism, claiming that President Bush's trip might prop up Olmert temporarily but it won't advance the peace process and won't prevent Olmert from fighting for his political survival in a few weeks, when the contents of the Winograd Commission Report are released.

There can be no doubt that President Bush is a true friend of Israel. He made it clear that Israel was the "Jewish state" and appeared to be authentically excited to be visiting the Holy Land. " I know that this is a special place," he said upon his arrival.

Unfortunately the people around him are either naive or just plain inept. One of Bush's national security advisers remarked that PA President Abu Mazen could pick up the phone to his associates in Gaza and help stop the rocket fire on Sderot and beyond. In fact, Abu Mazen will tell Bush he cannot stop Hamas or anyone else in Gaza. The average Palestinian in Ramallah has no use for Abu Mazen and most Palestinian media outlets in Gaza and the West Bank vilified the American leader calling him a 'criminal.' In Gaza, wild-eyed Arabs were yelling "Hell to the Chief" instead of Hail to the Chief.

President Bush is a religious man who reads a portion from the Bible every day. However, as a practicing Christian with evangelical ties, he is bound by the Christian belief in turning the other cheek. In this part of the world, Arab religious fanatics consider turning the other cheek a form of weakness that should be exploited through jihad.

Which by the way, is also a false interpretation of the Koran. The Islamic holy book boldly claims that the Holy Land belongs to the Chosen People, i.e., the Jews. No one in the White House or the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem has called the Arab world's bluff by reading these Koranic verses in front of Arab media outlets based in Jerusalem and Washington.

President Bush is a man of peace who truly wants to put a stop to the madness in this region. Too bad he's surrounded by both naive "yes men" and cowardly world leaders who are more interested in oil barrels than religious fascism.

The Schwarzschild Award

The winner of my fourth annual Henry Schwarzschild Award for most offensive comments by a Jew in the public spotlight is David Landau, editor of Haaretz, Israel’s leading left-wing daily.

The prize is awarded to the person who, by his or her statements, displays contempt for the Jewish people, disregard for historical truth, a desire to sup at the table of Israel’s enemies, or who otherwise plays into the hands of the enemies of Jews and Israel.

Before we get to Landau, a little something about Henry Schwarzschild, who died in 1996 and was a longtime activist in groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Jewish Peace Fellowship. In the wake of the Israeli siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982, he wrote a public letter of resignation from the editorial advisory board of the journal Sh’ma – a letter that will stand in perpetuity as a monument to the unimaginable neuroses and insecurities afflicting secular leftist Jews.

Schwarzschild’s main points:

"For a generation now, I have been deeply troubled by the chauvinistic assumptions and repressive effects of Israeli nationalism. I have experienced the War on Lebanon of the past few weeks as a turning point in Jewish history and consciousness exceeded in importance only by the End of the Second Commonwealth and the Holocaust. I have resisted the inference for over thirty years, but the War on Lebanon has now made clear to me that the resumption of political power by the Jewish people after two thousand years of diaspora has been a tragedy of historical dimensions….

"I will not avoid an unambiguous response to the Israeli army’s turning West Beirut into another Warsaw Ghetto. I now conclude and avow that the price of a Jewish state is, to me, Jewishly unacceptable and that the existence of this (or any similar) Jewish ethnic religious nation state is a Jewish, i.e. a human and moral, disaster and violates every remaining value for which Judaism and Jews might exist in history.

"The lethal military triumphalism and corrosive racism that inheres in the State and in its supporters (both there and here) are profoundly abhorrent to me. So is the message that now goes forth to the nations of the world that the Jewish people claim the right to impose a holocaust on others in order to preserve the State….I now renounce the State of Israel, disavow any political connection or emotional obligation to it, and declare myself its enemy…."

Schwarzschild’s screed was immediately published by the far-left Nation magazine (then as now the most anti-Israel mainstream political publication in America) and for better than two decades has remained a favorite of left-wing Jews. Tony Kushner (Steven Spielberg’s screenwriter for “Munich”) and Alisa Solomon thought so much of it that they included it in Wrestling with Zion, a compilation of essays by leftists struggling with their feelings of ambivalence toward Israel.

By his stunning choice of words – delivered to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a gathering at the Tel Aviv home of the American ambassador to Israel – this year’s Schwarzschild awardee confirmed what many have long maintained about the sheer depth of hostility toward Israel found among that country’s media and academic elite.

Landau, a veteran Israeli journalist (and an observant Jew) whose politics are a perfect reflection of the Blame Israel First mentality for which Haaretz has long been famous, told Rice that Israel needed to be “raped” by the United States, adding, in sexual terminology too vulgar to repeat in a family newspaper, that conveying this sentiment to her had always been his fantasy.

Though Landau claimed his remarks were “much more sophisticated” than what was reported, he admitted he “did say that in general, Israel wants to be raped – I did use that word – by the U.S., and I myself have long felt Israel needed more vigorous U.S. intervention in the affairs of the Middle East.”

He also acknowledged, apparently without apology or regret (or explanation as to why he feels his statements were in any way “sophisticated”), his use of a schoolboy vulgarism in relating his psychotic fantasy to the secretary of state.

Landau and those who think like him always swear up and down that they love Israel and have only its best interests at heart. But even the most boorish and unsophisticated of clods would never wish or urge rape on an object of their affection – though of course the terribly sophisticated David Landau would disagree with that observation.

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"And yet, despite the naked hatred of Israel exhibited by so many Jews on the left, I recognize that there are critics who are driven not by hate but by the sincere conviction that if only Israel would radically reform itself and become a pure and sacrificial light unto the nations, the world would embrace the Jews and the Almighty would bring about the End of Days. (For my part, I’ll leave town when that happens. Read Isaiah. That much-touted event will not be a pretty sight.)" - Phyllis Chesler and the difference between hate and criticism.

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"It was in Shanghai that Rabbi Berenbaum’s dedication to Torah study began to shine brightly, according to Rabbi Hecht. He said that the famed mashgiach (spiritual mentor) of Mir at the time, Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein, said that Rav Shmuel "held up the yeshiva bein hasedarim (in between learning sessions)."" - Mourning the loss of the Mirrer Rosh Yeshiva.
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"Seeing that fads are so attractive, it should come as no great surprise that, with grand fanfare and headlines, a major Jewish philanthropic foundation recently announced the offering of a substantial financial prize and an academic appointment at a prestigious university to the individual who comes up with the “next great big idea” to change the way Jews think about themselves and their community. " George D. Hanus and the continuing saga of Jewish education.
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"I watch in growing dismay and horror the unfolding of disturbing events in Israel. I can only imagine what you would be writing today in answer to the dire situation that threatens the very existence of our beloved homeland. You always said that the pen is mightier than the sword and I know that your pen would have been a powerful weapon." - Naomi Mauer reflecting on the 8th yarzheit of Rabbi Sholom Klass.
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"There is a Yiddish saying, which roughly translated says, “As the non-Jewish world goes, so goes the Jewish world.” Tragically, these negative influences have slowly encroached upon our Jewish world as well. Nowadays, children feel entitled and not indebted. There is very little hakaras tov – appreciation or respect. " - Rebbetzin Jungreis with advice for a new mother-in-law.

And Jewish-Black alliance, the New Girl and Results in Poland.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 800-992-1600 ext. 344: Pesach hotels, a Singing Rabbi, and Family Fun page.

Happy Reading!

Finally, The New York Times Discovers Sderot

See here for the online version of the front page article.

Just don't forget, Steven Erlanger remind us while still on page 1, that "across the border in Gaza, life is wretched for Palestinians."

The Guru of Ben Gurion University's Gordon Touting Terror in Lebanon

Norman Finkelstein, the anti-Semitic ex-professor, was in Lebanon this week rubbing fangs with the Hizbollah terrorists. He had been sitting around his rent-controlled apartment near Coney Island trying to figure out how to entertain himself now that DePaul University in Chicago joined the list of academic institutions that regard Finkelstein as a fraud, a liar, and as a pseudo-scholar.

Finkelstein, widely regarded as a Neo-Nazi and often regarded as a Holocaust Denier, goes to Lebanon regularly to show his support for Hizbollah terrorism against Israel. There he gave talks in which he celebrated the fact "that the Lebanese resistance inflicted a historic and well-deserved military defeat on the invading foreign army and its chief supporter." (Meaning - on Israel and its children.) While in Lebanon he met with senior Hizbollah terrorists to show his solidarity with them.

Noah Pollak describes Finkie thus:

"It is normal to say that Finkelstein’s are the views of a self-hating Jew. But by all appearances, the man does not hate himself, and in fact views his role as that of a hero - a brave truth-teller fighting against the imperial forces of Zionism and Americanism. Finkelstein is a hustler and a coward because he trades off his Jewishness to lend credibility to starkly anti-Jewish rhetoric. It’s time we stopped calling Finkelstein a self-hating Jew and started calling him what he actually is: an anti-Semite."

In Haaretz he is cited as saying:

"I think that the Hezbollah represents the hope. They are fighting to defend their homeland."

Finkelstein is now involved in a one-man campaign on behalf of anti-Jewish genocidal terror. But what of his number-one Israeli academic supporter?

Neve Gordon, a radically anti-Israel far-leftist instructor in political science at Ben Gurion University, has devoted much of his career to celebrating and promoting the writings and views of Norman Finkelstein. Gordon, seen in the picture with another of his gurus, has ethically compared Neo-Nazi Finkelstein to the Prophets in the Bible.

Neve Gordon, in turn, has been conducting a campaign on behalf of Norman Finkelstein, promoting him and his views and denouncing DePaul University for firing him. Gordon went so far as to claim that Finkelstein could get tenured at his own school, Ben Gurion University (BGU). BGU officials repudiated the claim that a pseudo-scholar like Finkelstein could get tenured at Ben Gurion University by turning out anti-Israel hate propaganda!

The problem is that in a sense Gordon was correct. Anti-Israel propagandists and anti-Semitic pseudo-scholars indeed CAN get hired, promoted and granted tenure at Ben Gurion University!

The Olmert Star Wars Program

Peace through Collisions

Most of us were under the impression that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had no idea whatsoever about how to stop the near-daily missile attacks on Israel by his peace partners. This - in addition to having no idea whatsoever about how to deal with other forms of terrorism, how to run the country, how to defend Israeli interests, how to deal with the American government, and how to deal with just about everything else.

But I have discovered that Olmert actually has an ingenious missile defense strategy he is planning to implement for Israel. You will kick yourself when you realize that you had not figured it out on your own!

I uncovered it when the Katyusha missile fired from the Gaza Strip landed NORTH of Ashkelon a few days ago. I was sitting there contemplating having spent the entire summer of 2006 being bombarded in Haifa by Katyusha missiles (among the 4000 fired at northern Israel), fired from Lebanon as a direct result of Ehud Barak pusillanimous turning of southern Lebanon over to the Hezbollah savages in 2000. One Hezbollah rocket reached Hadera. The Qassam and Katusha missiles are also getting more sophisticated by the month, with ever longer range!

And then it hit me. Eureka!

Pshita! It is the Olmert version of Star Wars!

Olmert is simply waiting until the Katusha missiles from Gaza can reach the same areas of Israel as the Katyusha missiles from Lebanon, and then he will just sit back and watch, as each set of Katyushas collides and knocks out the other set of Katyushas, neutralizing one another and protecting the Land of Israel!

It is better than video games!

What Stephon Marbury Can Teach Us About Mourning

After politicians, perhaps no group endures greater day-to-day scrutiny about its job habits and efforts than professional sports players. And while not frequent, when sports players take off time because of bereavement, the fans always get into the act, offering opinions that range from enthusiastic support to outright indignant.

Because of the great attention paid to sports superstars’ actions, it’s interesting to note the Torah’s prescription for mourning, and how different that is from the general population's understanding.

The fans have been sore with Stephon Marbury, who returned to the Knicks last night, but alas to no great avail; the Knicks still lost by 10. He played in only his fourth game (out of the team’s 14) since his father died at the age of 68 on Dec. 2. I remember that when Bernie Williams took off a few days when his father died, he received a similar treatment from the fans.

On the other hand, Brett Favre of the NFL Green Bay Packers was widely lionized for playing the day after his father died in 2003. "I knew that my dad would have wanted me to play," he was quoted as saying.

And sometimes I wonder what would happen if there were an Orthodox basketball player. Now obviously aveilus would not be the first or most prominent culture shock the fans would have to endure—Shabbos would. But still, what would callers to WFAN say about a player who would have to take off a full week (“A FULL WEEK!!”) after his parent died?

Then there’s the question of should we apply the Torah’s standards to everyone. If the Torah's prescription is the most emotionally satisfying and relieving, then maybe everyone should engage in it? Still, the Torah never required non-Jews to follow the shiva laws. (For an excellent take on the psychological and emotional aspects of mourning, read Rabbi Maurice Lamm's Consolation.)

And while we'd never deliberate about whether Mr. Gonzalez at Goldman Sachs is doing the right thing by returning to work the next day, because Favre is that all important sports star, we ask: should he have played the next day?

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"But the story in its wry humor reflects a great deal of what goes on today in Jewish education: an overworked principal, no time to set educational standards or think about goals, a beleaguered spirit on the part of the staff, and relief when no one complains. At the same time we expect perfection." - Rebbetzin Rivkah Blau and the future of Jewish Education.

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"But these special neshamot, after 120, begged Hashem to come back to earth because there were maybe one or two little tikunim they needed to make toward perfection, and they could only do it here on earth. So they are born with severe disabilities – because they have no further need to speak or to hold a job or to sit and learn or to do mitzvot. They are here in their seemingly limited capacities." - Dr. Bernie Kastner discusses why God put us here.

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"Still others see the issue as one of their own legitimacy. There are ostensibly Orthodox rabbis who maintain that as ordained clergy they can interpret and apply the rules as they wish (even when their credentials in this area of halacha are less than sterling) and who expect their conversions to command universal acceptance. Reform and Conservative rabbis, in a much less subtle manner, insist on their right to abrogate the old rules and set new ones, likewise demanding acceptance across the Jewish community." - A Jewish Press editorial on the conversion controversy.

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"As for the verse, our “strength will be missing” – left with no clear alternatives, we have made a pact (which we are doing our best to fulfill) to settle this hilltop, a strategically significant piece of land that the governments of the United States and (consequently) Israel have chosen to make the center of a Palestinian state. They have made this decision with blatantly little apparent concern for the citizens of Israel and the numerous tourists of all nationalities who may be traversing on Highway 1 (perhaps going from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, Masada or Eilat). They have displayed an especially alarming lack of concern for the 40,000 permanent residents of Ma’ale Adumim. And they have reached this policy against anything that sound judgment would seem to suggest." - Ezra Klein with the view from El.

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And Academic Insanity, an Itsy Spider, and Happy New Year.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 718-992-1600 ext. 344, a winning Senior Forum, Cutest Babies, and our monthly crossword puzzle.

Happy Reading!

Hail To The Chief

Yesterday, as I sat in the front seat of a Modiin-Jerusalem "sherut" taxi, the driver and I had an animated conversation about how President Bush's arrival in Israel next Wednesday would create shockwaves for Jerusalem-bound commuters. The original plan was to have Bush's motorcade head from Ben-Gurion Airport to Jerusalem via the main highway (#1)--effectively shutting off the main highway to all traffic and forcing cars, buses and trucks onto road #443, a 2 lane highway that passes through Modiin.

As a result of this announcement, many commuters began to alter their plans for next week. The driver of the "sherut" just smiled and replied, "Baruch Hashem, I will be on vacation next week, so I won't be aggravated." My response was, "Well, President Bush is a big boy, can't he make our lives easier by just hopping aboard an IDF helicopter at Ben-Gurion and puddle jump around Jerusalem?"

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz must have been swamped with complaints from simple commuters to the Egged Bus Company about the impending gridlock. Because, within 24 hours after I opined about the helicopter option, the government announced that Pres. Bush will indeed use a 'copter to and from Jerusalem. Mind you, I didn't even make a call to Shaul Mofaz either!!!

Halleleujah--the Israelis actually used a bit of "seichel." Even from a security perspective, a helicopter is better than a motorcade. However, within Jerusalem, Pres. Bush wil travel in his armored limousine, which will be driven by an Israeli driver making about $9 an hour for his efforts, according to one newspaper report.

Pres. Bush will be conducting most of his meetings at the King David Hotel (near the entrance to the Old City--photo-op at the Kotel has NOT been announced) and at PM Ehud Olmert's home nearby. There will be a formal dinner at the King David Hotel for Pres. Bush and top Israeli officials, as well as one press conference. Pres. Bush will also visit Yad Vashem, which should generate an emotional pic or two.

Brother, Can You Spare a Vote?

This Thursday marks the beginning of the presidential primaries -- Iowa first, followed by Wyoming and New Hampshire a few days later.

Though the number of delegates from these states is minimal and Iowa is non binding (Republican side non binding and Democrat side unclear), winning these early states has always been considered a must.

The momentum created by an early win is difficult to overcome. In recent memory, only Bill Clinton won the nomination after having lost in both Iowa and New Hampshire (Wyoming only joined the early states this year). This issue has been the subject of much debate over the years. Many feel that giving this much say to these states is unfair and unwise. Others say this forces candidates to spend time with real people, instead of hiding behind sound bites, commercial airtime and press releases.

"Retail politics," as it is called, has many people in those states meeting the candidates personally. A conversation with a voter might go like this:

Candidate: "Hello, Mr. Iowa citizen, what do I need to do to get your support?"

Iowa citizen: "I don't know, but Senator Obama is washing my car and Senator Clinton is watching my kids. Come back later, I might have some light yard work or some errands to run."
Many Iowans feel it is their sacred duty to vet the candidates for the rest of us. Similar sentiment is apparent among New Hampshire residents.

I don't know if this is enough. There are still too many people, even in Iowa, for candidates to get really up close and personal. I propose that the first non binding primary take place in my house. All 15 candidates would move in for a few weeks and compete in leadership areas of my choice. Dishes, laundry, dusting, etc. Every day I would vote another one out.

It's a tough job, but I am willing to do this on behalf of my fellow Americans.