Hebrew Test

Test your Hebrew.
What is wrong with this sign?

The U.N. Weeps for “Palestine”

The United Nations (or, as I like to call it, United CondemNations) has just finished observing its annual “Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” on November 24.

This solemn event on the U.N.’s busy calendar (former Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it “a day of mourning and a day of grief”) commemorates the selfsame body’s 1947 partition resolution which heralded Israel’s founding. Laments the U.N. on its website: “Of the two States to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.” That the Arabs rejected the two-state plan and instead decided to attack the new Jewish state is, apparently, irrelevant.

According to EyeontheUN.org, at this year’s program, the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, stood at the podium and accused Israel of apartheid. Brockmann (who is Catholic) claimed our Palestinian “brothers and sisters are being crucified” by Israel. His remarks essentially called for a South-Africa style “campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions” against Israel.

U.N. bigshots speaking as part of the day’s special proceedings included the current Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, who (like the others in attendance) voiced no opposition to the flying of the Palestinian flag side by side with the U.N.’s, while Israel’s flag was deliberately omitted. There was lots more on the program, including the opening of a public exhibit glorifying terrorism and the showing of a film comparing Israel to the Nazis.

Make no mistake—this event had nothing at all to do with promoting peace or mutual cooperation. The only dream these pseudo-civilized, overpaid pen pushers hold in their hearts is the same as that of the Palestinians they weep for: erasing Israel from the map.

A Dishonest Excuse for Not Celebrating Thanksgiving

A post on http://guesswhoscoming2dinner.blogspot.com inspired me to repost an article I wrote last year.

Many are the reasons religious Jews offer for celebrating or not celebrating Thanksgiving. The least rational of the lot, however, has to be the often snidely delivered boast: "Orthodox Jews thank God every day."

First, I doubt that more than a handful of American Jews truly thank God every day for the free and benevolent country they live in.

Leaving that aside, however, I wonder how these Jews come to to terms with holidays like Chanukah, which only comprises eight distinct days every year. By golly, don't we thank God every day for the miracles He performed for our Maccabean ancestors? How could the rabbis have established such a holiday?

How could they have established only one day a year to thank God for the salvation from Haman's genocidal decree? Shouldn't we thank God every day for this miracle?

Why did God reserve only seven days to commemorate the exodus from Egypt? How come only one day to celebrate the giving of His Torah? Why only one day a week to remember God's creation of the world?

The fact is that human beings and religions have always designated certain times and days for reflection and celebration. Children are glad their parents married each other but only congratulate them on their anniversary. They are sad when their parents pass on but especially call their memory to mind on the date of their death.

Almost all of religion and culture centers around specific physical symbols or temporal times designed to evoke certain ideas or emotions.

So, to those Jews opposed to celebrating Thanksgiving I say: Offer any argument you please to support your position. But please, please do not assume some sort of moral superiority by saying you thank God every day for America. You unwittingly criticize your own religion (and your adherence to it) by doing so.

SUpport the Initiative to Strip Traitors of Citizenship

To the right, Ilan Pappe, pseudo-academic for the annihilation of Israel

Well, for a real change, the Israeli government is doing something sensible. Meir Sheetrit, the ex-Likudnik turned Kadima party stalwart serving as the Israeli Minister of the Interior, has announced that he is initiating moves to strip Azmi Bishara of his Israeli citizenship. Azmi Bishara is an Arab fascist who served in the Knesset, but then served as a spy for and collaborator with the Hizbollah in the middle of the 2006 war with Ehud Barak's rockets on the northern border. Bishara is wanted by the Israeli police for terrorism and treason and is hiding in some Moslem country (there is debate as to which). Since he refuses to come back to answer charges, Sheetrit has uncharacteristically moved to strip the traitor of his Israeli citizenship. If stripped he also loses his Knesset member pension and some other perqs.

Now this is such a good idea that I really think we should all write Meir Sheetrit at the Israeli Ministry of the Interior and urge that he expand his initiative to strip other anti-Israel pro-terror extremists and fascists of their citizenship. Take Ilan Pappe. After sitting at the University of Haifa for years, where he was best known for inventing a fictional account of a non-existent massacre of Arabs, Pappe has moved to Britain where he is a full-time pseudo-academic advocate of Israel's destruction (at the University of Exeter). So why not strip HIM of his Israeli citizenship as well?

And while we are at it, why not strip some of those anti-Israel fascists at Ben Gurion University of THEIR Israeli citizenship. In fact, there are scores of tenured traitors at Israeli universities who could be stripped of their tenure and their pensions if only they were first stripped of their citizenship!

Sheetrit can be reached at Meir Sheetrit, Minister of the Interior, 2 Kaplan Street, Jerusalem, Israel Fax 972 -2-6469442 or 972-2- 02-5666376

If Sheetrit does not respond, keep a copy of your request and send it again to the next Minister of the Interior after Netanyahu wins the February election!

Meanwhile eight Neo-Nazis inside Israel were just sentenced to prison. Strange – none of them were from Ben Gurion University!
See this and this.

Speaking of Ben Gurion University, you may recall that the lies of Neve Gordon about how an Israeli General (Aviv Kochavi) was supposedly a war criminal prevented Kochavi from entering the UK for private studies. It is not often when Shimon Peres and I are on the same wavelength, but Peres is this week denouncing the law in the UK that allows Israeli officials to be harassed legally on the say-so of people like Neve Gordon. Take a look at this.

Liberty for Some

As we all get older and more mature, we begin to see that the many group stereotypes repeated over and over, while sometimes containing a kernel (or even a nectarine pit) of truth, are rarely accurate.

And so, politically, Republicans are not always better financial stewards, and Democrats are not always helpful to blacks' desire to climb up in society.

Here’s another: Liberals may not be as tolerant as you’ve been led to believe.

After Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriages, passed in California on Election Day, the artistic director of the California Musical Theater resigned under heavy criticism. Scott Eckern, the former director, apparently broke a liberal theatre rule; he contributed $1,000 to support Proposition 8.

Several members of the theatre community are quoted in a New York Times article, and amazingly, not one sees anything wrong with his resignation. In fact, some think it’s not enough. “Marc Shaiman, the Tony Award-winning composer (“Hairspray”), called Mr. Eckern last week,” the article reported, “and said that he would not let his work be performed in the theater.”

The article goes on to say that the theatre accepted his resignation and said, meaninglessly, that it would not “impinge on the rights of its employees to engage in political activities.” I see. Starting when?

In other news from the tolerance front, there have been several reports of arson to and near Mormon churches from opponents of the measure.

Social Justice, Gum, and Judaism

To right, the essence of Judaism?
Social Justice Fetishism appears in this week's Jewish Press.

As background to this piece, in one of the better known episodes of Seinfeld, George Costanza feels obligated to define his relationship with a girlfriend. He feels the need to have an official purpose and "definition" of that relationship, as necessarily being about SOMETHING! At a loss to come up with something better, and noticing that he and the woman both chew gum, which may in fact be the ONLY thing they have in common, George decides that their relationship is henceforth officially about gum. After all, it HAS to be about SOMETHING!

I am reminded of that episode every time I am faced with assimilationist Jewish liberals in the United States and elsewhere who insist that Judaism is essentially about the pursuit for social justice. It is not.

These are people who seem to feel that their Jewishness HAS GOT to be about SOMETHING! For most such people, it is not about religious observance and ritual, and their interest in Israel is superficial and fleeting. They certainly have no interest in relocating to the Middle East and paying Israeli taxes. At the same time, they still feel a desire to maintain some sort of outward assertion and proclamation of Jewishness. (The totally assimilated do not even feel THAT!) And since they are convinced that their Jewishness just HAS GOT to be about SOMETHING, they almost uniformly proclaim that is has got to do with "social justice."

I think they would be on firmer grounds if they insisted it has got to do with gum.

I have long had a rage against such assimilationist liberal American Jews, people who pretend that all of Judaism reduces to liberal "social action" political activism. I dismiss such people as "Tikkun Olam Pagans," (see this) because of their obsessive misuse of the term "Tikkun Olam" in order to promote their political agendas. (Tikkun magazine itself is just the tip of the chattering iceberg.) For such people, membership in the Jewish people is equivalent to membership in some campus protest movement, like the movements to save whales or fight global warming. Theirs is an empty un-Jewish Jewishness.

Interestingly, over the past few months a debate of sorts has been going on in Commentary Magazine, triggered by an article by Hillel Halkin entitled "How not to Repair the World" in this past July/August 08 issue. The November 08 issue has several letters continuing the discourse. Halkin is not one of my favorite writers, but his denunciation of misuse of "Tikkun Olam" by such people was dead on.

I believe it is important that everyone understand how contrary to real Judaism is this "social justice fetishism." I spell out here why this is pseudo-Jewishness and a paganistic parody of Judaism in the article mentioned.

An Idea whose Time has Come! Boycott the Savages!

BEEP FOR THE BOYCOTT!!
The Jewish Chronicle in London reports a new effort by a Palestinian activist whose family was tortured by the Hamas to organize a world boycott of products exported from the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority.

The campaign is directed by director Muhsir Mutawakil, who claims in a press release that 'Hamas's control of Gaza had resulted in "religious and gender apartheid" for 120,000 Palestinian Christians and more than two million women.'

JC reports that Rafah-born Mr Mutawakil said: "There is a growing realisation that fostering business dealings and exchanges in the travel, professional, educational and medical sectors with these apartheid-based regimes is counter-productive. Commitments made for 2009 are being renegotiated or dropped."

The following is the press release released by his group:

For Immediate Distribution
Successful Launch of Boycott of Palestinian Arab Goods and Services

VANCOUVER, November 10 -- Organizers of a new world-wide campaign to boycott imports of goods and services from so-called Palestine today expressed satisfaction with the inroads they have made in this regard.

Boycott of Palestinian Goods and Services (BPGS) CEO Muhsir Mutawakil said he is looking forward to global distributors shifting their imports of agricultural and horticultural products from Gaza and the West Bank towards other sources.

"The Islamic oppressive regimes in Gaza and Ramallah are enforcing apartheid rule against 120,000 Palestinian Christians and over 2 million women. This religious and gender apartheid must stop at once," he said.

He noted that the multinational business community is sensitive to handling tainted products from exporters who are engaging in war crimes. Accordingly, there should shortly be a measurable decline in shipments to Western markets, including Canada, of flowers, soap, handicrafts, olive oil, figs, dates, pita and Cremisan wine from "Palestine."

Mutawakil also reported successful discussions with the services industry in Canada, Australia, the USA and the UK. "There is a growing realization that fostering business dealings and exchanges in the travel, professional, educational and medical sectors with these apartheid-based regimes is counter-productive. Already, commitments made for 2009 are being renegotiated or dropped entirely," he said.

The BPGS campaign is proud to be receiving the assistance of lay and religious publics in the developed world. It is confident that just as apartheid South Africa was brought to its knees by the boycotts of international civil society, so too will the brutal Hamas and Abbas occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank be defeated by NGOs like us world-wide.

For Editors: Muhsir Mutawakil is a Palestinian Arab from the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. His parents were tortured to death by the Hamas gang currently ruling Gaza. He converted to Judaism in 1994.

For further information:
Batsheva Waley-Mutawakil
Director of Communications
email: batshevawm@yahoo.com

Israel's Literary Soviet

Amos Oz and the Literary Soviet demand Popular Front with the Communists!

The headline in Haaretz today (Nov 16) is that literary leftist Amos Oz is leading the call for Israelis to join the new expanded Neo-Meretz party, to be renamed the Social Democratic Party, which will be composed (his words) of "ex-members of Meretz, people deserting the Labor Party, Greens, and those who support Dov Chanin." Dov Chanin is the Stalinist who just ran for Mayor of Tel Aviv and got about a third of the votes. So Amos Oz' call is essentially one to create a popular front with communists. Anyone who has read history knows who ends up grabbing control of such pluralistic democratic popular fronts that include communists as participants.

More generally, I really think the time has long come for renaming Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman, all of whom are among the central figures in this new popular front, the "Literary Soviet." In Hebrew it sounds even better: Ha-Soviet Ha-Sifruti. Amos Oz declares in the Haaretz headline that "the Israeli Labor Party has finished its historic mission." I am a little confused by that. I thought the Labor Party's historic mission, at least these past 2 decades, has been to annihilate Israel, yet Israel is still standing. Oz and his buddies do not think Labor is pro-Palestinian and appeasing ENOUGH!

In part, the Literary Soviet and their comrades are taking advantage of the fact that the lemmings in the Labor Party are fleeing THAT sinking ship by the cruiseship-full. Ami Ayalon is the latest to resign from Labor Party, and plans to set up his own mini-party. All Labor will soon be left with is Ehud Barak and Avishai Braverman, the "professor" who turned Ben Gurion University into the Bir Zeit of the Negev.

The Anti-Democratic Members of the Rabin Cult of Personality Strike again against Freedom of Speech

Not a spoof, this really happened, as reported by the Haaretz Service: (to right, dangerous inciter in need of being arrested)
IDF soldier jailed for yawning during Rabin memorial service:

The Israel Defense Forces has sentenced a soldier to 21 days in jail for yawning during a recent memorial service for assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The soldier yawned while the commander of the Ramat David Israel Air Force base was delivering a speech on last week's memorial day for Rabin. The senior officer paused for a few minutes after the yawn, which was allegedly long and loud.

The soldier was consequently by the army tried on account of his "disrespectful act" and was sentenced to 21 days in military prison. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that he is able to request a pardon, which will be considered according to military regulations.

The soldier's mother told Israel Radio that her son was not disrespectful, but tired. She said that her son deserves to be punished for inappropriate behavior, but the verdict is disproportionately harsh.

She said that her son was raised upon Rabin's legacy, and that yawning is known to be an uncontrollable physical act.

Afterward by SP: Gosh, just imagine if they arrested every economics student who yawned in class!!!

Rabin Day - Parts I and II

1. Rabin Day – Part I

Today is the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin according to the Jewish calendar. In Israel the week around the day has long been turned by the Israeli political establishment into an annual ritual of McCarthyist attacks on freedom of speech. In ceremony after ceremony and speech after speech, Israelis are reminded by their politicians and by the chattering class that Rabin was murdered because those who disagreed with his policies were allowed to exercise freedom of speech. The myth of a conspiracy by Rabbis and by the political Right to have Rabin killed is repeated with all the mechanical repetition of the Big Lies of two generations ago. This year, even Olmert repeated it, although he was a member of the Likud in 95 and is clearly one of those the McCarthyist Left asserts is collectively guilty of the murder.

Never mind that not a single Rabbi has been identified as having expressed approval of the idea of killing Rabin, nor approval after it happened, and not a single politician from the Israeli Right cheered or said hurrah when Rabin was killed. A handful of fringe Kahanists might have said hurrah, half of whom were probably police moles, but they are hardly representative of the half of Israelis who opposed Rabin's policies.

I disliked Rabin and his policies. I think his policies were disasters and that they directly produced the 2000 or so Israeli deaths from the Oslo "peace process." That does not make me a killer of Rabin. I am tired of being accused by the McCarthyists of having been part of the assassination. Like virtually everyone else who hated Rabin's foolish policies, I wanted him evicted from power via an election and not murdered. I also want Kadima evicted via an election.

The anniversary of Rabin's killing could have been turned into a day of education about democracy and freedom of speech. A day in which Israeli children are reminded that political assassination is an attack on democracy, and where they are also reminded that everyone has the right to freedom of speech even if they disagree with the leftist canon. Most importantly, a constructive Rabin Day would remind Israelis of the massive anti-democratic wave of McCarthyism launched by the Left right after the assassination, in which dissidents (including Rabbis) were arrested, indicted, harassed, demonized.

On a constructive Rabin Day, Israelis should also be warned of the efforts at deification of Rabin and the attempt to build around him a cult of personality, where his policies have been represented not as controversial and often foolish political proposals, but instead are raised to unchallengeable theological canon. A constructive Rabin Day might also address the dangers to democracy from a situation in which the entire media are self-recruited for one wing of the political spectrum. A constructive Rabin Day might point out the dangers to democracy of incidents such as Ehud Barak's getting up and screaming that those who disagree with the Left are a cancerous tumor. In a week in which a communist candidate is running for mayor of Tel Aviv, a constructive Rabin Day might be spent discussing the dangers of totalitarian ideologies.

The McCarthyism around Rabin Day reasserts itself in the Israeli media every year. This year it is being fed by hysteria over an attempt to bomb far-leftist anti-democratic Prof. Zeev Sternhell, an attack attributed by the Israeli media with no evidence whatsoever to the political Right and to "settlers." The media continue to demonize daily the Jews who live inside the West Bank as violent criminals.

One component of the Big Lie invented by Israel's McCarthyist Left is that the political Right consists of people who are congenitally lawless and violent. No one denies that there have been a handful of violent criminals to emerge from the Right, people universally repudiated by the leaders and thinkers in the Right. Yigal Amir may be the worst.

But let us not forget the long long long history of crime and violence by the Left. Leftist hooligans clash violently with police and soldiers in the West Bank every day, trying to sabotage the security fence so that the terrorists can get in more easily. The Left produced the spies and the traitors, including Mordecai Vanunu, Azmi Bishara, Tali Fahima, Marcus Klingberg, and including the ring of espionage and terror operated by kibbutznik Udi Adiv (today a lecturer in political science at the Open University) in the 1970s. Those with long memories will remember the earlier campaigns of leftist violence against the Right in the 1940s, the "season," the sinking of the Altalena, the betraying of members of the Edsel to the British by the Left, the gangs of street thugs operated by Ben Gurion to beat opponents, etc.

A constructive Rabin Day, devoted to stopping political violence and promoting open political debate, would mention not only Yigal Amir and the clown who threw a grenade at a Peace Now demonstration in 1983, killing protester Emil Grunzweig, but also Vanunu and Adiv and the others.

See also this.


Rabin Day – Part II
(to right, the terrorist "Ben-Ariel")


Another part of the annual passions concerning the assassination is the recycling of the brain-numbingly stupid "theory" concerning a fictional conspiracy of the Israeli government itself to kill Rabin. The "theory" was invented by UFO nut Barry Chamish, and has since been picked up by a gaggle of copycats. In brief, it claims that because Rabin was supposedly having second thoughts about Oslo (a claim for which no evidence exists), then Shimon Peres and the heads of the Shin Bet decided to have Rabin killed and turned into a martyr, which would discredit the rising Right. The conspiracists claim that Yigal Amir was not the real assassin, which will come as a surprise to Amir himself, and instead Rabin was killed by his own bodyguard at the orders of Peres.

There is not a scrap of any evidence to support for such a "theory," and it is patently absurd, too pathetic even to be a movie screen for Oliver Stone. The conspiracists have based much of their "theory" on claims that have been proven to be lies, everything from their claim that it took 20 minutes to drive Rabin to the emergency room to their claim that Rabin had a bullet wound in his chest or a sliced spine.

Nevertheless, small groups of Chamish chipmunks still operate. This year for the first year since the assassination, Israel National News (a.k.a. Arutz 7) did not run lurid "news" stories (except for some minor small-font items on their Hebrew pages) about how the official report by the Shamgar Commission is false, or assertions that there exists "evidence" that Amir is innocent. (There is no such evidence, and Amir himself continues to insist that he is guilty.) Israel Insider, a minor Israeli English-language news blog, also for the first time since 1995 let the day go by without running Chamish conspiracist blather.

For more details, see this.

That is all good news.

When Chamish is not out discovering space aliens roaming the earth from their flying saucers, or doing the "Jews for Jesus" lecture circuit, he spends his days turning out hundreds of rants for Holocaust Denial and Neo-Nazi web sites. This is the same "journalist" who invented the fictional conspiracy "theory" about the Rabin assassination still being bandied about by some.

Chamish claims that Shimon Peres and the Shin Bet really arranged for Rabin to get murdered because they had nothing better to do that day, and then they forgot to tell Yigal Amir and his family about it. Since Amir obviously fired something from his gun, as can be seen in the tape of the killing, Chamish and his chipmunks claim he fired blanks, something Amir denies. So now the Amir family, including Yigal, still mistakenly think Yigal Amir is guilty, whereas Chamish and his chipmunks know otherwise.

Now the leading internet promoter of Chamish's writings and "theories" is one David A. Hoover, who uses the pseudonym "David ben-Ariel." Hoover/ben-Ariel lives in Toledo, Ohio, and describes himself as a "Christian Zionist." He is a certifiable obsessed groupie of Chamish, repeats and mimics every idiotic "theory" Chamish invents, including about how 911 was an "inside job" of the Republicans, the Vatican and the publishers of Foreign Affairs magazine. Ben-Ariel floods the Jewish and non-Jewish web with sycophantic talkbacks celebrating his teletubby guru, the Barry, not always written under his own (pen) name. Hoover also keeps inventing blogs under the names of other people, a favorite tactic of the Chamishites. Hoover (ben-Ariel) just opened a phony blog entitled http://emanuelrahm.blogspot.com/, in addition to a dozen similar ones with other make-pretend titles and stolen identities. Chamish for years ran identity-theft blogs in the names of Yigal Amir, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, and others. You can seen Hoover's list of blogs here. The other remaining Chamish groupie leader, David Rutstein, who lived in Israel for a while, stole the identity of Jerusalem Post columnist Caleb Ben David and runs a phony blog in Ben-David's name that "endorses" Chamish and his "theories."

Since this Hoover/ben-Ariel is now Chamish's main remaining booster and marketer, other than the Holocaust Deniers at the Neo-Nazi Adelaide Institute, a closer look at him is in order.

It turns out that Hoover is a terrorist. In 1996, he was part of a plot by deranged fringe characters to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Hoover was arrested by the Shin Bet and deported from Israel, never to be allowed back in. The story was reported on the front page of the Jerusalem Post on Jan 8, 1996. (You can see Hoover's version of the story here.) Hoover, like Chamish, is also a UFO nut (see this).

Now if you think things in the Middle East have gotten as bad as they could ever get, you ain't seen nothing yet. And had the terrorist plot to blow up al-Aqsa succeeded, we cannot even begin to imagine the horrific consequences to the Jews that would have followed. Hoover/Ben-Ariel, who took part in that plot, is a deranged dangerous lunatic. So it is hardly surprising that he has become the world's Number One Chamishite. (The total number of remaining Chamishites may be a single digit number, but certainly is no more than a double digit number. Unfortunately the group includes the rather dull-witted publisher of the "Israel Insider" web magazine and some hangers-on at the Israel National News web site, still desperately seeking to defeat the Left using fiction.)

Obama: The Hysteria and the Reality

(Pictured: America's next First Family. What is it about them that frightens some people?)

I supported John McCain in the presidential campaign just concluded, and given the choice I would do so again.

Having said that, anyone who wasn't profoundly moved by Barack Obama’s victory rally and speech on Tuesday night has to be either emotionally dead or devoid of any appreciation of just how historic a moment it was.

The tears of joy and disbelief, the looks of wonder and hope, on all those faces in that crowd -- particularly, for obvious reasons, the black faces -- were enough to offset the despair I felt the next morning on reading through the shamefully racist and abjectly ignorant comments posted by visitors to certain Orthodox websites.

There are things about Obama I don’t like – he’s way too liberal for my political taste, and he failed, in my opinion, to convincingly repudiate or even explain his past relationships with a handful of troubling individuals. But McCain had his own skeletons and unanswered questions, as do all politicians – indeed, as do we all – and the fact is there exists nothing in Obama’s history to indicate any hostility to Jews or Israel (unless making mention of Palestinian suffering is enough to have a speaker fitted for a swastika armband and storm trooper boots).

How, then, to explain the following comments, unfortunately just a small sampling of what has appeared since Tuesday on the sites alluded to above? (Errors of spelling, punctuation, and syntax all in the originals.)

* [America] has finally gotten what it deserves. “the people have voted”…now we know the garbage that surrounds us.

* Wake up hes a muslim with muslim friends keep your eyes open and passports near

* Rabosai, everyone should make sure they have an updated passport and I think tomorrow should be a Yom Tefilah and maybe even a fast day. This is very, very scary….

* Obama is an arab for crying out loud. his campaign was funded by terrorist organizations….i agree with all those who are planning to move to israel. i personally just looked up nefeshbnefesh for some suggestions.

* Unfortunately, there are many comparisons to Germany circa 1936. We both have an elected leader from out of nowhere, with no track record, which has people swooning….everyone out there has read “The Protocols of Zion”, so they know that Jews run the banks.

* Let’s wait and see what happens. Yes, I know people are scared, I am also scared. My grandmother she should live and be well, was in Auschwitz. I have always kept passports for myself and my family and some cash on the side. You never know, you never know.

* I will walk out of my shul if/when they make the customary brocha for the president of the USA. Do you realize that Obama wants to force Orthodox shuls to perform weddings between man and man?

Now, I am fully aware, from the letters and e-mails I receive at The Jewish Press, that Orthodox Jews are as susceptible as anyone else to Internet innuendo and urban legends, even if the lies or rumors in question have long been debunked. But it’s still a shock to the system to confront the hysteria and paranoia, the willful – no, the prideful – ignorance conveyed in such a crude and ugly manner and posted for public consumption, yet.

One can be a conservative who’s convinced beyond doubt that McCain would have made a better president than Obama and at the same time recognize and appreciate the transcendent nature of the election results and what they say about America.

As Commentary’s John Podhoretz wrote on Tuesday night: “America, it appears, is on the verge of electing a black man as its president…. the immensity of this single cultural moment dwarfs almost any other in my lifetime. Its positive social impact is incalculable; it was only eight years ago that Al Gore traveled to Harlem to kiss Al Sharpton’s ring…. Sharpton was, at that point, by default the most important black politician in America. Obama’s ascension to the White House, if it does nothing else, may at last bring down the curtain on race hucksters like Sharpton, whose power has always been rooted in the political alienation of inner-city blacks.”

And as The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat noted, “…Obama has just been elected president of a nation in which he could have been bought and sold as a slave just generations ago. I don’t think there are any words adequate to the occasion of America electing its first black president, so I’ll just say this: This may be a bleak day for the Republican party and for conservatism, but come what may in the years ahead, it's great for our country. Barack Obama deserves congratulations tonight, but so does the nation he’s about to govern. We’ve come a long, long way."

Oh, and those who have their bags packed and their passports ready in anticipation of the coming deluge might consider this: the election of a black man as president should make Jews feel more secure in America rather than less.

African Americans have endured infinitely greater prejudice, hardship and discrimination – slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, etc. -- than have Jewish Americans, and yet earlier this week the nation entrusted its highest office to a black man. Not only did Obama win tens of millions of white votes, he carried states where not so long ago blacks were prevented by law from using the same public facilities as whites and actually took their lives into their hands simply for attempting to exercise, as American citizens, their right to vote.

America has arrived at the point where a black man will sit in the Oval Office while his black wife will do whatever it is First Ladies do and their black children will roam the White House and play in the Rose Garden. If the country has come this far in its comfort level with and acceptance of blacks, how much more so is that the case with Jews, who already for decades now have been the nation's most successful and influential ethnic subgroup?

Whose Victory Was It?

While today is truly an amazing and historical day for the United States, one has to wonder exactly how it happened. How is it possible that a man with virtually no political and foreign policy experience, questionable associations and socialistic policies will be our 44th president?

In this week's front page essay, Don Feder explains How The Media Spun Campaign '08.

"If the news media is a criminal conspiracy, The New York Times is its Vito Corleone. The Gray Lady sets the tone for the rest of the press, which sounds a lot like the Dixie Chicks humming the Internationale.

You probably didn't know that besides editing the editorial pages of the Times, Andrew Rosenthal is also a stand-up comic. Performing live at the Association of National Advertisers annual conference, Rosenthal observed that The New York Times "aims to ensure opinion and news are kept separate, even as the Internet increasingly blurs the line" (as reported by Advertising Age on October 17).

For sheer hypocrisy, this is hard to beat. In the real world, The New York Times is to objectivity what Jack the Ripper was to women's rights.

After seeing their candidate bludgeoned in its news pages for months, on September 22 the McCain campaign charged that The New York Times is "150%" behind Barack Obama. Said McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt: "Whatever The New York Times once was [in the middle of the 19th century?], it is not today by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin and excuses Obama."

This is a revelation on par with: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has issues with Israel.

In late July, Rosenthal's paragon of objectivity ran an opinion piece by Obama ("My Plan for Iraq"), then rejected a similar offering by McCain - the rationale being that McCain's piece didn't "mirror" Obama's. As a top McCain aide explained, the paper simply didn't agree with McCain's Iraq policy, and wanted him to change his position, not "re-work the draft." That's fair.

From the moment McCain announced his choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, the Times attack machine went into hyper-drive. A division of investigative reporters was deployed to Juneau, literally sifting through garbage to get dirt on Palin.

Every aspect of the lady's personal life has been subjected to media scrutiny.

On September 2, the Times ran a convention story ("Palin's Daughter's Pregnancy Interrupts G.O.P. Convention Script") worthy of The National Enquirer. Her daughter, Bristol, age 17, was five-months pregnant, the family announced. The Times covered the disclosure with glee. Here was a pro-family candidate who was such a lousy mother that she couldn't keep her teen-aged daughter from getting pregnant - this from a newspaper that believes in giving condoms to 14-year-olds, without parental notification.

From there, it was a dizzying descent into tabloid hell. The Times breathlessly informed readers that the Palins eloped on Aug. 29, 1988, and that their first child, Track, was born eight months later.

The article hit rock bottom, when it reported "some claimed that Ms. Palin had not actually given birth to Trig [her youngest son], but that Bristol had, and that the family had covered it up." As support for this absurdity, the Times cited photos posted on "various websites" supposedly showing that the governor didn't look pregnant in the months leading up to Trig's birth.

In his speech to the Association of National Advertisers, Rosenthal compared the wild rumors and preposterous theories flying around the Internet with impeccable reporting at The New York Times. But the paper is willing to repeat the most outlandish cyber speculation, if it suits its purposes.

Rosenthal's rag was also fascinated with Palin's wardrobe. The Republican National Committee is reported to have spent $150,000 to outfit her in a manner befitting a vice-presidential candidate. An October 23 New York Times story mentioned unnamed Republicans expressing "consternation" at the Palin "shopping spree" and wondering if this would "compromise her standing as Senator McCain's chief emissary to working-class voters."

Naturally, there was no speculation on how Obama could campaign as a middle-class hero attired in $1,500-suits. At least Palin didn't get her duds compliments of Tony Rezko.

But most Times coverage of Palin focused on her alleged lack of experience, corny rhetoric and, well, the contention that she just wasn't vice-presidential material.

In an October 3 story on the vice-presidential debate, the Times termed Palin's performance "unusual theater," while stressing her use of phrases like "a heck of a lot."

The governor was said to rely on a "steady grin, folksy manner and carefully scripted talking points." In other words, she's a hick, a rube, a Republican Stepford Wife who can't function without 3x5 cards.

You may recall another politician whose intelligence the media questioned because of his use of index cards. He was the president who won the Cold War and gave us the longest peacetime prosperity in our history."

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

How Infantile Conspiracism by the Israeli Right may Preserve the Hegemony of the Left

This is the time of year when infantile conspiracism regarding the Rabin assassination makes its seasonal appearance in Israel and in the Jewish world. Nov 4was the anniversary or the killing of Rabin in the secular calendar and Nov 10 will be by the Jewish calendar. The pursuit of idiotic conspiracism by parts of the Israeli Right explains better than any other single factor why the Right in Israel has been so ineffective in reversing national policies imposed upon the country by the Left. By promoting a "theory" that is even stupider than that invented by the "911 Truth" conspiracy nuts, many of whom are Neo-Nazis, the ones who claim that bombs placed inside the WTC and not the hijacked planes really brought them down, these Israeli Rightist conspiracists have convinced large segments of the general Israeli electorate and public that the "Right" is nothing more than a gang of kooks, certainly not to be trusted with the reins of power.

By now, I suppose most people have come across the Rabin conspiracy "theory" in one form or another. It is largely a fictional invention by Barry Chamish, a chronically unemployed fabricator, whose career has been spent mainly in "documenting" space abductions by UFO aliens, and who publishes hundreds of his rants with Holocaust Denial and Neo-Nazi web sites. Chamish is an official columnist for the Rense.Com Neo-Nazi web site, which runs articles about how there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and how the Holocaust was a Zionist hoax. Chamish is generally incapable of writing a full sentence without lying.

Nevertheless, Chamish's fabrications about the Rabin assassination have been adopted by conspiracists, including – somewhat amazingly – a handful of professors. The simple fact of the matter is that there is not a shred of real evidence that the assassination of Rabin took place any differently from the official report about it prepared by the Israeli state commission of inquiry led by the ex-Chief Justice Meir Shamgar. Yigal Amir pled guilty and continues to insist that he murdered Rabin, including in a TV interview that was scheduled to be aired last week but was pulled at the last minute due to public protest. So do his family members.

This is not to say that the Israeli Left's version of the politics behind the assassination or its campaign against freedom of speech are anything other than anti-democratic and anti-Zionist. No, the exercise of freedom of speech by anti-Oslo dissidents did not cause the assassination. No, the Israeli Right is not congenitally violent, and actually is involved in far less violence than the Left (just witness the Left's behavior at checkpoints and at the security wall in the West Bank!!). Yes, the police agent Raviv who served as a mole in the "AYAL" fringe group to which Amir belonged, did engage in some dubious activities, such as initiating provocations that served to discredit the Right. (In contrast with the claims of the conspiracist nuts, it is pretty clear that he did so to firm up his own cover and not as some sort of grand anti-Right conspiracy by the police. And, no, Amir did not kill Rabin because he was "ordered" to do so by Raviv.) Yes, the Left did lead a wave of McCarthyism after the assassination, which in some ways still operates, a campaign against freedom of speech for non-leftists, in which all non-leftists are painted as murderers and criminals. Yes, the Left did invent a new pseudo-crime, "incitement," which means nothing more than the exercise of freedom of speech by those who disagree with the Left. Yes, the Left and its captive media did invent the Big Lie, repeated countless times, that nameless Rabbis encouraged and inspired Amir to murder Rabin.

But none of that changes the fundamental fact that Rabin was indeed murdered by Yigal Amir. Amir was religious, although not a settler, and was a law student. The same media that blame the Orthodox for inspiring Amir have never blamed the law schools, although the latter accusation is no less absurd than the former. Amir was a political fanatic and his attack on Rabin was also an attack on Israeli democracy. No, Rabin's murder did not change the fact that Rabin's Oslo initiative was foolish and harmful to Israel, nor that Rabin and Peres launched it in direct opposition to the campaign platform upon which they were elected.

The great irony is that most Israelis who claim to believe that Amir was part of some sort of larger conspiracy do not have in mind the lunatic "theory" invented by Chamish and his IQ-challenged followers - that the Shin-Bet and Shimon Peres ordered Rabin to be murdered while setting up Yigal Amir as a "patsy" to take the blame. Instead, they believe the "theory" that the Israeli Left has been chanting for 14 years that a conspiracy of Rightists and settlers supposedly inspired Amir. They allegedly did so by saying things like "Rabin is a Traitor" and otherwise "inciting," thus legitimizing the violence. When the conspiracy nuts claim that the Rabin family members themselves believe conspiracy theories, what they forget to mention is that the "theories" believed by them are the ones that hold that the Likud and the Right were really responsible for the assassination.

As for the conspiracy "theory" coming from the lunatic fringes of the Israeli Right, it is by and large based on outright lies, and on "questions" about supposed "inconsistencies" in the official report that have long ago been laid to rest. (Actually, questions are themselves never evidence of anything; they are merely questions.) No, it did not take 20 minutes for the car to take Rabin to the emergency room; it took 3 or 4 minutes. No, Rabin's spine was not sliced by the bullet. No, there was no third bullet nor any bullet wound from the front. No, there was no mysterious extra bullet hole in Rabin's clothing. No, there were no suspicious items in the medical reports from the hospital nor in the postmortem inquest. No, Amir did not fire blank bullets. If someone really yelled "blanks" at the scene it was because they incorrectly thought blanks were being fired, something not uncommon at shooting scenes. No, there were no collaborators with Amir at the scene nor among the bodyguards. The Rabin bodyguards may have been lax, but that was because no one expected a religious Yemenite Jew in the vicinity to be an assassin. No, there were no mysterious additional people inside the car that sped Rabin away. No, there is nothing in the amateur video taping of the shooting to suggest that anyone other than Amir shot Rabin nor that anything other than what the Shamgar Commission claims happened did in fact happen.

And while we are at it, no, Baruch Goldstein was not innocent and, no, there were no Yemenite babies kidnapped and turned over for illicit adoptions. Such scenarios might make entertaining Oliver Stone movie scripts but are all fiction.

More generally, obsessive conspiracism is little more than a form of mental illness, and the conspiracism about the Rabin assassination is just is inane as the conspiracism about everything popular in the Arab world or the "911 Truth" cult conspiracism.

For more on this, see this.

ONE CANNOT DEFEAT THE LEFT WITH FICTION!!!

Hamas in the Noah Story

To the Right - Hamas as global environmental threat:
Isn't it cool when the weekly Torah portion provides current political commentary?

The story of Noah is a case in point. No, not just about how all those environmentalist extremists are wrong about the planet being about to be destroyed by deoderants, SUV's, and refrigerator gases....

Take the reason for why the earth was destroyed in the flood in the story of Noah. It is all because of Hamas. The Torah says so. The world was destroyed because of Hamas, where humans did not stop the Hamas. That is the word used.

Now "Hamas" in Biblical Hebrew is usually translated as "evil" or "violence." (Rashi translates it as "theft.")

But the Onkelus translation of the Torah into Aramaic, perhaps the very first translation into any language, clearly translates the word "Hamas" as kidnapped hostages or "chatufin" in Aramaic.

Perhaps it is a warning of what happens when Hamas is appeased rather than exterminated?