Lyndon Baines Johnson

The Jewish Press Senior Editor, Jason Maoz, remembers our 36th president, on his 100th birthday.

Though the prevailing mood in Washington favored a bipartisan foreign policy - as a popular adage had it, "politics stops at the water's edge" - Johnson fought the administration from day one of the crisis, and soon others in Congress, Republicans as well as Democrats, followed his lead. Ultimately, Eisenhower prevailed and Israel withdrew from the Sinai. There soon followed, however, a distinct softening in the administration's public demeanor toward Israel - a change many believe attributable, at least in part, to Eisenhower's desire to avoid another bruising battle with Johnson over Middle East policy.

Jews active on behalf of Israel in those years, particularly the Washington-based lobbyists, valued Johnson's outspokenness and consistency. Si Kennen, director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) during that period, echoed the sentiments of his colleagues when he offered this succinct evaluation of Johnson: "Front-rank, pro-Israel.''

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Send In The American Anarchists

Hardcore Jewish anarchists, a substantial portion of whom are from the USA, are trying to destroy Israel by land and by sea. For the past year, the anarchists have assisted Palestinian villagers in violent protests against the meandering Israeli "security fence" in the Hashmonaim-Modiin Illit region, pelting IDF soldiers and Border Policemen with stones and anything else they can throw.

Earlier this week, the Border Police arrested an anarchist who was using a forged Israeli ID card to smuggle illegal Palestinian workers into Modiin and Modiin Illit. This was the second time the anarchist, who holds an American passport, was arrested for the same offense. On Friday, a group of anarchist 'pirates' set sail from Cyprus heading for the Gaza coast, where they tried to break the Israeli naval blockade around the Gaza Strip, which is part of an effort to stop the smuggling of weapons to Hamas. The pirates knew very well that they were practically begging the Israeli navy for a violent encounter, which they could use for media propaganda purposes.

Many of these American Jewish anarchists belong to the radical Int'l Solidarity Movement, which advises them to use any ruse possible to enter Israel via their American passports and then cross-over to Palestinian territory, in order to be drafted into the "cause." The Israeli government has been way too lenient with these self-hating Jews. At this point, deportation isn't enough, because some of them have found their way back into the country. Perhaps the biggest punishment they could receive is dumping them deep into Gaza and then let the American Embassy in Tel Aviv try and rescue them after they've been pistol whipped and taken hostage by the "peace loving" Gazan Palestinians.

Earlier this week, another group of Americans tried to create a different kind of anarchy within the Jewish State. For the past few months, a handful of alleged "good-willed" Jewish businessmen from New England have tried to "revive" the Israel Baseball League. This of course is without a formal business or marketing plan. They sold tickets for a week-long
"barnstorming" All-Star competition without enough players or money...Meaning, those small groups of people who actually bought tickets for the week-long event were left holding the bag.

It has become obvious that these Jewish bush league "business" anarchists should have been either stopped at Ben-Gurion Airport or placed aboard one of those pirate ships heading for Gaza. In Gaza, I'm sure the baseball anarchists could have found themselves facing a real "flame-throwing" pitcher that would have satiated the anger of those duped Israeli baseball fans, who were eager for real fun in the sun.

Media Fickleness

(Pictured: The old Sharon as portrayed in a Spanish newspaper cartoon. Note the hook nose and swastika. He's saying, "At least Hitler taught me how to invade a country and destroy every living insect.”)

Cleaning out some old files last week, the Monitor was reminded how fickle the media can be in the matter of designating heroes and villains, and how a world leader can go from slug to statesman merely by falling into line with the media's preconceived notions of right and wrong.

By the time Ariel Sharon slipped into an apparently irreversible coma in January 2006, he had, improbably enough, become a media favorite whose departure from the scene was almost universally characterized as a major blow to hopes for Mideast peace.

Of course, Sharon by then had done a complete ideological about-face, overseeing just months earlier the expulsion of nearly 10,000 Jews from Gaza and promising more concessions to come. As far as the media were concerned, what was not to love?

It was a different story back in the fall of 1998, when then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Sharon foreign minister, a move that certified Sharon's return from the political wilderness. In an editorial remarkable for its name-calling and general nastiness, The New York Times described Sharon as "an implacable foe of the Palestinians"; "reckless"; "leaving destruction in his wake"; and "capable of wrecking the entire peace effort."

It was as if the Times editorial board had been visited by an apparition of Menachem Begin and spooked into recycling its favored stock phrases about Israel circa 1982.

But it was Sharon's election as prime minister, in January 2001, that inspired a near apocalyptic media reaction.

As the Monitor noted at the time, Reuters headlined a post-election report "Sharon Win Casts Pall Over Mideast Peace Prospects," as if all was well until the portly old general showed up to spoil the fun.

But the Reuters headline had nothing on this one from London's left-wing Guardian: "Israel Gives Up On Peace With Sharon Victory" - a headline that served to expand on the theme of warmongering Israel dashing the noble efforts of that munificent elder statesman Yasir Arafat.

The Guardian headline was only the appetizer to the story by Jerusalem correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg, who immediately got to the point: "Israel," she wrote (in syntax so disjointed it gives the lie to the notion that the Brits hold some sort of patent on proper English), ''yielded to the dark fears unleashed by a Palestinian uprising yesterday, voting by a staggering margin to entrust their future to a man famous for making war, Ariel Sharon."

Also in The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland compared Sharon to the notorious French xenophobe Jean-Marie Le Pen, and in case his readers didn't get the allusion to a far-right politician widely reviled for his allegedly racist and sectarian views, Freedland helpfully explained that ''Israel, by a massive landslide, turned to a man who has spent two decades as an international byword for extremism - a global hate figure - and elevated him to the top job.... For anyone who wishes peace for that nation and its neighbors, today is among the darkest of days.''

Freedland then went on to almost gleefully predict "ostracism" for Israel, "as the world community turns a cold shoulder toward a nation led by a thug.... The country's link with the Jewish diaspora will weaken, too; Jews in the United States, Britain and elsewhere may want less to do with an Israel that could choose Sharon as its leader."

Finally, no media roundup from the land of tea and crumpets would be complete without a contribution from The Independent's Robert Fisk, a Palestinian sycophant from way back."For once," Fisk fairly gloated, "the nation that so often points to the bloodstained hands of its Arab enemies will have its very own home-grown blood-splattered leader."

Meanwhile, Newsweek's Joshua Hammer typified the reaction of the American media to Sharon's election: "Before he had even formed a government," Hammer ominously intoned, "Ariel Sharon radicalized both sides of the Arab-Israeli dispute.... Sharon was willing to talk peace, but only on his own terms.''

And Hammer quoted "a senior Israeli military source" who supposedly observed that "When ... cars start exploding in the middle of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, then we'll see how short [Sharon's] fuse really is. He'll be out there ... doing whatever it will take to stamp it out. But there is a price to be paid - and the price may be war."

Never mind that it's almost impossible to imagine "a senior Israeli military source" saying something even remotely resembling that quote, especially given the mood in Israel at the time - the very mood that made Sharon's landslide win over Ehud Barak possible.

A better question: Why is it that when a reporter uses anonymous or unattributed quotes, those quotes almost always reflect what one strongly suspects are the reporter's own views?

Rabbi Norman Lamm's Heritage

YU has opened to the public a tribute site for Chancellor Rabbi Norman Lamm--one of the leaders and most vocal advocates of Modern Orthodoxy.

As this blog first reported over a year ago (...), YU has also included a large collection of his sermons--a treat that everyone should avail themselves of, considering Rabbi Lamm is one of the best Orthodox orators in the world.

Terrorist Poet Croaks

Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian terrorist poet that Yossi Sarid wanted taught in Israeli public schools back when Sarid was Minister of Education, has croaked. The pro-Arab media are tearing their clothes in anguish at the passing of this terrorist and even the Israeli media are pretending he was something other than a terrorist. Well, actually he was also a communist.

The following is from one of Darwish's most popular poems: "Dig up your dead! / Take their bones with you / and leave our land." "Our land" meaning the Land of Israel, and those being ordered to pack up their dead and leave are the Jews.

I happen to think the world is better off without poets of terrorism and xenophobia. So I composed my own poem in response to this event:

Roses are red, violets are blue,
Darwish has croaked, Arafat too.

The Mystery of Charley Reese

Submitted for your amusement, a tale of two columnists, as different as it is humanly possible to be in their view of the Middle East.

First, four quotes from the columnist who is second to none in his support for Israel:

1) “Yes, I love the state of Israel. It is everything a Western democracy should be at this point in history: brave, resourceful, tough, realistic, in search of peace but ready for war. It is a King Arthur of nations which is showing the rest of us how a brave and free people ought to live.…”

2) “I have no use for the [Palestine Liberation Organization]. It is not a political organization, it is a criminal organization and a very wealthy one at that. Any government which recognizes the PLO is condoning murder and extortion.”

3) “The notion of homeless Palestinians is a myth. Some people who consider themselves Palestinians are in fact homeless but a majority are not. Those Arabs who lived in and continue to live in that part of Palestine now called Jordan are obviously neither homeless nor without a country. Those Arabs who chose to remain in the area that became Israel ... are not homeless and never have been.”

4) “Solutions can never come from myths; they must be based on facts. That will not be possible, however, until people who hate Israel stop exploiting the Palestinian issue.…”

And now four quotes from the columnist who, safe to say, is the polar opposite of the gentleman quoted above:

1) “The U.S. government’s slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S. Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie ... Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians.”

2) “[T]here’s no group of people in the world who are more clearly victims of ethnic cleansing than the Palestinian refugees who have been rotting in refugee camps for 50 years. Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948 and again in 1967.”

3) “The Zionists in America are the biggest enemy of freedom of speech and freedom of the press there is.”

4) “The Israelis are to the Palestinians like a 250-pound wrestler assaulting a 4-year-old child. Without pressure from the U.S., the Israeli government will go right on killing Palestinians, taking their land and expanding Israeli settlements.

Identification time. The name of the latter writer, the fiery advocate of “ethnically cleansed” Palestinians and bitter denouncer of Zionists (whose columns are regularly featured on anti-Israel and anti-Semitic websites) is Charley Reese, former Orlando Sentinel and current King Features Syndicate columnist.

The name of the first columnist, the staunch champion of Israel and debunker of Palestinian claims, is also Charley Reese – and therein lies a great mystery, because sometime between the late 1980s and early 1990s something happened that caused Reese to turn on Israel in full fury and assume the persona of a low-rent Patrick Buchanan.

It is not exactly clear why Reese turned; some critics, among them the former editor of the Heritage Florida Jewish News, alluded to rumors about Reese’s personal life, while others have speculated that Reese simply came under the influence of several hard-core Israeli leftists whom he regularly quotes in his columns.

What is clear is that Reese is easily one of the three or four most anti-Israel columnists to regularly appear in mainstream publications, and that his animus toward Israel has become almost indistinguishable from his hostility to the United States, the country about which he recently asked, “Who would have thought that we would become the rogue nation committing acts of aggression around the globe?”

What happened with Reese wasn’t a matter of a pundit merely adjusting, tweaking, or revising his views – the best of them do it all the time. No, Reese’s about-face was something far different, something much more sudden and sweeping, something visceral rather than intellectual.

Someone who once routinely declared his love for Israel, calling it “the King Arthur of nations,” doesn’t become as outspokenly hostile to the former object of his affection simply because, as he no doubt claims, he wasn’t as well-informed or hadn’t read the right books about the Middle East.

The Next Mayor of Jerusalem Will Be....

Though Jerusalem is revered as both the Holy City and Israel's largest metropolis, with a population close to 800,000 residents, the city has a myriad of growing problems.

This past week, nearly the entire stretch of Jaffa Street, the city's main traffic artery, was virtually closed to traffic in a belated effort to speed up the completion of Jerusalem's "light rail" project, which is two years behind schedule and way over budget.

Many "central city" businesses will eventually have to close their doors, as residents and out-of-towners are no longer able to park their cars or board convenient transportation across town to do their shopping. For those who commute with their cars to work in Jerusalem, a simple 10 minute ride to a reserved building parking lot now takes almost an hour. Mayor Uri Lupolianski's reaction to this Israeli "bar-dak" (slang for insufferable screwup) is his "What, Me Worry?" smile, which has become a bit of a joke after 4 plus years of inaction at City Hall. It's not that Lupolianski is a bad guy. Chas V'Shalom...he just isn't a political bulldozer who can move mountains and "light rails" when need be.

Jerusalem is also being pulled in 2 very different economic directions, which could destroy the core of its existence. The Haredi population is growing by leaps and bounds but this sector is also getting poorer by the day. At the other end of the spectrum, foreign investors and new olim from N. America and the UK are buying high-end real estate properties, which is making middle class i.e. affordable housing nearly impossible. Combine this with the imminent fiscal destruction of Jaffa St. due to the off-the-derech light rail project and you have a stark blueprint for disaster.

In November, Jerusalem, like all Israeli cities will feature a hotly contested mayoral contest. Lupolianski is supposed to leave office and "allow" Knesset member Meir Porush to run as the city's Haredi candidate against centrist secular businessman Nir Barkat. Problem is, "Lupo" doesn't want to go home so fast and Porush is under attack from various Haredi factions who believe that he will be soundly defeated by Barkat. There are indications that Lupolianski's 4.5 years of "pareve" city management is not something many Haredi voters want to be associated with. In fact, recent polls indicate that Barkat, who ran a strong second to Lupolianski in the last election might be a better choice because of his successful business background. He is also not anti-religious, as many National Religious residents are openly supporting his candidacy.

Jerusalem is also the heart of the country's tourist business. Without an aggressive business model to allow more construction of hotels and other venues, the city will forfeit millions of dollars in annual revenues and taxes. The reality is that the "What, Me Worry" smile should be replaced by a "Wow, I Should Be Worried" frown. Jerusalem needs change and quickly...

Can You Say Race Card?

In its lead editorial this week The Jewish Press takes a skeptical look at Barack Obama’s claim that John McCain was injecting race into the presidential campaign, when in fact it was Obama who first implied that the Republicans would at some point in the campaign begin playing the race card:

It seems that not a week goes by without some new evidence of Barack Obama’s problem with sticking to his story. He apparently believes he can make even the obvious go away simply by saying it never happened. The “dollar bill” statement is the current entry.

Addressing an audience in Missouri last Thursday, Senator Obama told them (emphasis added):

Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.

Did the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee mean to say “they” have not yet tried any of the devices he lists or that they’ve tried but have yet to be successful in making “you” scared? Of course, employing such loose phraseology enabled him to get the negative suggestion out without having to cite chapter and verse.

The question of the week, however, was whether Obama’s “dollar bill” reference was to his race. Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no doubt: “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck… It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

Sen. McCain agreed, telling CNN, “I’m sorry to say that it is [true]. There’s no place in this campaign for that.” Indeed, a top McCain campaign aide was quoted by The New York Daily News as saying, “There is no greater directive inside this campaign” than the rules against anything approaching racism. “It is like the quickest ticket out of this building.”

Sen. Obama himself has not commented directly on the issue of what he meant, but ever so carefully limited himself to what he thought of the McCain campaign: “In no way do I think John McCain’s campaign was racist. I think they are cynical. Their team is good at creating distractions and engaging in negative attacks.”

In truth there is not a scintilla of evidence Sen. Obama could cite to bolster any suggestion that the McCain campaign has played the race card, so he really had no choice but to try to shift the focus from his initial statement.

To read more, click here.

Saving Judaism

A Temple lost, a people banished, almost 2,000 years of exile - and still we wait for salvation. In the year 69 CE, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai began the process towards that salvation when he asked the Roman general Vespasian for three things:

"Give me Yavneh," he said, "and its wise men, the family chain of Rabban Gamliel, and physicians to heal Rabbi Tzadok."

In this week's front page essay Rabbi Naphtali Hoff explains how Rabbi Yochanan's requests saved Judaism.

This Cup Runneth Over

Newsweek reports this week on the growing problem of alcohol abuse in the Orthodox community. The article’s opener: a frum young man was arrested for drunk driving in the Catskills last month—on Shabbos!

If the thesis is correct, alcoholism in our community has progressed from a sacrilegious, debased, self-declared intermission from synagogue services (i.e., the much-maligned kiddush clubs) to a potentially deadly exercise in excess showing a complete depravity toward human life. Chilul Hashem has reached a new low (or is it a new high?).

The author points out that Jews have historically had less incidence of alcoholism than other groups; perhaps early exposure to wine in religious rituals helps prevent the “forbidden fruit” syndrome.

But one only has to look around in a many a yeshiva on Purim or shul on Simchas Torah to see that young men in particular are far too prone to excess when it comes to alcohol. All too often, they are encouraged—or at least not discouraged—by their teachers and rebbes to let themselves go on certain “special occasions,” even though their resulting behavior may be no more refined than that of a hobo on a street corner. In my book, that is never OK, no matter what day of the calendar it is.

Ben Gurion University Students Fight Back! Attack Anti-Israel Fanatic!!

I guess there was a local shortage in Beer Sheba in tar and feathers.

You may recall the incident a few months back in which an Arab lecturer at the Sapir College in Sderot refused to allow a student wearing an army reserve uniform to enter his class room.

Well, this time a radical leftist self-hating Jewish teaching assistant at Ben Gurion University named Yakim Silverman did the same thing. A few weeks back he asked a student in reserve uniform not to enter his class. Silverman teaches in the Ben Gurion U math department, the same department in which ultra-leftist Kobi Snitz, head of Anarchists for Attacking Israeli Police and Tearing down the Security Wall so that Terrorists can Get In, used to teach. Snitz has since moved to Bar Ilan's math department. On his Facebook entry, Silverman describes Ben Gurion University as occupied Palestinian land. It is not known whether he ever studied under Ben Gurion University anti-Israel fanatics Neve Gordon or Oren Yiftachel.

Yesterday a student wearing an army reserve uniform and a mask, together with two friends, entered the classroom in which Silverman sat and dumped a bucket of paint on him.

The full story in Hebrew is here:

You will be happy to hear that the paint was blue. Turning Silverman into a walking blue and white banner. The Haaretz report says at least one student proposed in the chat forum for students at BGU that someone should shoot Silverman instead of painting him.

Nefarious Cover-Up at Hebrew University!!!

The tale of the Hebrew University rapist professor of sociology, Eyal Ben-Ari (see the next blog item below), continues to gather steam. So far, no one in the mainstream media in Israel has taken note of the fact that he was in fact also the supervisor of that "Non-Rape Means Racism" thesis. In any case, it is now emerging that a big part of the real story here is yet another cover-up by the heads of the Hebrew University. It is not the first cover-up – see this.

The women who were abused, molested and raped by the good professor, a leading member of the Tenured Left at Hebrew University, had filed detailed complaints about him to Hebrew University campus authorities. In a long expose in Maariv today (August 1), alas – not on their web site, the paper reproduces a letter that was sent to the Dean of Social Sciences at Hebrew University. It was suppressed and ignored. The chiefs at the Hebrew University circled their wagons around their comrade, the rapist professor. Interestingly, Maariv also mentions the fact that Ben-Ari bought a vibrator and charged it to university research funds. (I am starting to wonder whether I am in the wrong discipline, being an economist. We never get to buy fun stuff with any of OUR research funds!)

Maariv reports that two of the female students of Ben-Ari had nervous collapses and one of them was hospitalized after being molested by him. Maariv claims that Ben-Ari made it clear to all his female students that, er, let us say - "pillowing with him" was a prerequisite for getting him to sponsor them as research students. That being the case, inquiring minds would like to know more details about the relationship with Ben-Ari of Tal Nitzan, the student who wrote that infamous thesis claiming Jewish soldiers do not rape Arab women because the Jews are such racists.

Haaretz is also doing a good job at exposing the story even though the perp is a member of the Tenured Left. In English see this. See also this piece about the professor's research vibrator.

To tell the Hebrew University heads what you think of all this, contact:

President of the Hebrew University
Prof. Menachem Magidor
Email hupres@cc.huji.ac.il
menachem@math.huji.ac.il
Menachem.Magidor@huji.ac.il
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905
Tel. 02-6584143, 02-5881905
Fax. 02-5811023


Rector of the Hebrew University
Prof. Haim Rabinowitch
Email rabin@agri.huji.ac.il
rector@savion.huji.ac.il
Haim.Rabinowitch@huji.ac.il
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905
Tel. 02-5882920, 02-5882919
Fax. 02-5811023

Hebrew University "Friends of" Offices listed here