A Response to a Post Blaming Israel for the Iraq Debacle

Background: The original post was by a person arguing that Bus was motivated by oil, esp, by the big companies. Then, there was a counter post claiming that Bush was motivated by suport for Israel. The second poster went on to accuse Israel of being corrupt, illegal, and so on.

I agree that Bush, while naive, illiterate, ill informed, and ill advised id not simply a tool of the big oil companies. I suspect, moreover, that those companies would have been all to happy with a rapprochement with Saddam rather than his deposition.

BUT, you go to an equally absurd extreme by blaming this disaster on us ... the Jews or Zionists .. whatever term you want to use.

First, calling Israel names is bigoted. Israel is a small country, in a tough place, trying hard to survive. Of course it deserves criticism, but calling it criminal, corrupt, etc is just nuts .. espe. when you look at the countries it stands against. If you can find a country more criminal, more corrupt, then Syria I will give you three points but it would take a lot to find good things to say about Saudi Arabia. So, you are correct, the interests of big oil and the interests of Israel do NOT overlap .. other perhaps than in the befuddled mind of our dear leader.

As a Jew, I am frightened of people like you. Israel is a refuge for us, one possible answer to the two millenia of of oppression by Christian and Islamic societies. If it fails, I suspect we will die as a people, Hitler, Torquemad, Pious IX, the KKK, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Iranian President, all these bigots will win and 3000 years of a very special history will have been destroyed.

I say this while also feeling that we have real responsibility for Bush's screw up. The Neocons may have a majority of Jews and certainly we are prominent in the top ranks of those who made this horrid decision.

The challenge to Jewish survival is not just from Islam but from our choices of allies. Israel, for example, made the horrid choice of siding with the apartheid regime of S. Africa. Only a nation faced with obliteration would ever make such a choice and it has yet to be learned whether the reward for that alliance,some say this was the source of Israel's atomic bomb, was worth it. Now e .. or our leaders .. chose to ally themselves with the Bushies .. a group of naive believers in the Chrsitian good of the world. They, the Bushies, believe that their fight is so good, so inevitable that all advice form "experts," military or political could be ignored. They even sent in missionaries with the invading force! We chose to support Bush and that may be a fatal error.

All this said, the challenge is not just to OUR survival. Much of what is said about the danger os Islamo-fascism is quite real. Saudi Arabia is like an overgrown tomato, already rotting. The potential evil of a Wahaabi regime that is more extreme than Iran's Shia regime is very real. Atomic bombs, Shariay, and oil .. are a dangerous mix for the whole world.

IMO, there is only one viable answer. The West/democratic part of the world needs to replace the US as a cop with some new, bigger alliance. Europe, the US, India, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Australia and part sof South America have a great deal of self interest in working with China and even the former Soviet Union in creating a ... new world order. Bush could have led such a movement post 9/11. He could have taken time, pursued confinement vs. invasion as alternatives and built the allinace needed to achieve pacification if invasion were the outcome. he did not do that. he wasted his presidency, huge amount of American wealth, and the possible piece of the world in pursuit of a naive, amateurish view of the world.

Finally, and this is the hardest part, I am NOT convinced Israel can now survive. Our alliance with the Christian right may have doomed Israel. There is, IMO, one barely possible alternative. We .. the Jews ... have a natural affinity for the Muslims. In a choose up between Islam and Christianity, the ease of the true strict monotheisms being allies is clear and historic. We also have another allie. Our times of great success in the world, post exile, have included two enlightenments .. Andalusia and later Europe. While Christianity treated us horrible, the enlightenment .. a child of Christinaity .. has been the time of great growth in our culture.
Islam may be, I emphasize maybe, finally in a time where it can enter the enlightenment. A Muslim enlightenment would be different than Europe's but it might be something we and our semitic brothers could join in together.

Call it a dream.
--
Stephen M Schwartz
SeattleJew.blogspot.com

Election 2006

Nuff said.

Of Burkhas and Pastors

I ran into trouble this morning after I tried to read more about the outing of Ted Haggard, a Bush confidant and evangelical gay bating pastor. Haggard scares me because he is part of a community of right wing evangelicals that envelope the US Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. The same Air Force Academy that last year admitted to its officers' efforts to indoctrinate Jews into Jesus worship.

The problem? Google gave me too many hits. I began coming upon other news stories about fundamentalists in trouble over sex. I began to wonder, are fundamentalist Christtians obsessed with sex? Then I ran into this post from the personal blog of Marc Driscoll, a fundamentalist Christian pastor in Seattle:

....I started the church ten years ago when I was twenty-five years of age. Thankfully, I was married to a beautiful woman. I met my lovely wife Grace when we were seventeen, married her at twenty-one, and by God’s grace have been faithful to her in every way since the day we met. I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin. On one occasion I actually had a young woman put a note into my shirt pocket while I was serving communion with my wife, asking me to have dinner, a massage, and sex with her. On another occasion a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body. Thankfully, that email was intercepted by an assistant and never got to me.

....I would like to share some practical suggestions for fellow Christian leaders, especially young men:

• Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. .... It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.
  

• Every pastor needs a pastor. Too often the pastor is seen as a sort of little God and his wife as some glorified First Lady. Every pastor needs a pastor with whom he can regularly have accountability and the confession of sin. Every pastor’s wife also needs a godly woman chosen for her maturity and trustworthiness.
• ... There is no reason a pastor should be sitting alone at the church at odd hours (e.g., early morning and late evening) to study when anyone can drop in for any reason and have access to him. .......Some years ago I found that lonely people, some of them hurting single moms wanting a strong man to speak into their life, would show up to hang out and catch time with me. It was shortly thereafter that I brought my books home and purchased a laptop and cell phone so that I was not tied to the church office.
• (if) a flirtatious woman shows up to a Bible study at the pastor’s home, the pastor and his family have the right to request that they never return.
• ..... Too often the pastor’s assistant is a woman who, if not sexually involved, becomes too emotionally involved with the pastor as a sort of emotional and practical second wife. I have been blessed with a trustworthy heterosexual male assistant who can travel with me, meet with me, etc., without the fear of any temptations ........
• Pastors must speak freely and frankly with their wives about their temptations. Without this there really can be no walking in the light and sin always grows in darkness.
• Pastors must not travel alone; the anonymity and fatigue of the road is too great a temptation for many men.
  

In conclusion, I say none of this as moralism.

The reader can judge for themselves but for me, this sounds like the stuff of a very serious mental illness. Mr. Driscoll sounds really obsessed. Is he also frightened of men? I wonder if this sort of fear motivates men in Saudi Arabia to enforce the burkha? And how does such thinking effect sex itself? After a day in the company of males and burkha-ed females, does the Saudi Prince come home to perfumed flesh?

I am personally sexually conservative, I believe that heterosexual sex is normative and see no reason to have a public debate about other forms of play in bed. To me, most fo this is a private affair. But, how can the same people who consider homosexuality a sin worthy of electing G. Bush as President and NOT see the illness implicit in Marc Driscoll's writings?

Impersonating Harold Ford

Last night I watched Harold Ford on Bill Maher. Or ... I watched someone who at times looked like Harold Ford. The actor worked hard at his Tennessee accent and at expressing support for prayer n the schools and totin guns as a civil right. He explained how his business cards carry the 10 commnadments on their backsides, to remind Mr. Ford of such important moral issues as not having any God but your own God. Hmmm ... must be the commandments Moses receives on a trip to Tennessee.


I feel bad. I really admire Mr. Ford and hope he will be elected. But the act was dreadful. This can not be the same articulate, well thought out young congressman I have watched parry the cable heads for the last four years. True, stripped of the weird accent and the Suthern patois, the underlying ideas were solid .. all Tennesseeans believe Their kids have a right to go to school, healthcare should be guaranteed to the kids of the poor and the rich, and more. I have tasted this man's spirit in his speeches to the Demo. Convention and know .. as much as nay of us can in this era of media deception, that MY Ford is the real one.

Silence of the Professors

We are one week from a potentially pivotal election. The sleeze is dripping from this campaign in a way I have never seen before. The media have become tamed, made obsolete, or fauxized. And where are the much feared academic liberals in all this?

The attack on SCHOLARLY writings in Virginia is going without protest from academics!

Webb vs. Allen, the Senate race in Virginia, is what caught my attention this morning. I am pretty agnostic in politics. The fuss over Allen's use of terms like Macaca and claims that he is a secret Jew were reasons for me to doubt Webb .. as were the claims that Mr. Webb has actually, horror of horros, used the N word at some time. PFEHHGH ... of both sides, as my grandmother said in Yiddish.

So, when I read the cites from Webb's novels I put it down to more of the same. OK, so this guy made a buck writing cheapo porn. Tsk Tsk. Next week, I expected to read, that Allen rented the "Story of O" or donated sperm and asked for a copy of Hustler to help his efforts.

Was I wrong! The Washington Post today finally got around to reporting on Webb's books. Read it! The "porn" cited is part of novels published by such sleeze houses as the U.S. Naval Institute, an independent organization that produces books about the military. " "Fields of Fire," a novel about the Vietnam War, has been on the Marine Corps reading list for 20 years and is the "most-taught piece of literature regarding the Vietnam War on college campuses."

In other words, these are serious works by a serious guy who actually served in Vietnam. The sort of material that is essential to our primary challenge .. educating people about reality. What happens if the keepers of intelelctual integrity, the faculty of Universities, allow this sort of distortion of the truth?

I do not know how to find out if Webb's book is required at the UW, but here are some comments from Amazon:
“In my opinion, the finest of the Vietnam novels.”
— Tom Wolfe

“Few writers since Stephen Crane have portrayed men at war with such a ring of steely truth.”
— The Houston Post

“A novel of such fullness and impact, one is tempted to compare it to Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.”
— The Oregonian

And more of the same. Clearly this is a classic book.

If Webb can be smeared, who is next? Darwin?

Imagine what would happen if some UW professor were to run for office after writing a novel about the complex life of Lenin ? Something is very wrong when WE are silent when this sort of anti-intellectual activity is NOT discussed on campus.

Summers vs. The National Academy

Recently the National Academy of Sciences published a report on women in science that seemingly was a retort to the comments of Larry Summers as the then President of Harvard. In brief, Summers raise the issue that the lack of women in high level academe was due to complex issues and perhaps not largely doe to old boyism. The NAS report focussed on the issue of old boy prejudice and dismissed claims of any innate differences relevant to achievement at the high level needed to become a chair or prominent scientist.

The claim that the NAS Committee was impartial and did not see itself as contrapunctal to Summers seems to implausible. If the intent was NOT to respond to Summers or at least to promote an agenda that he somehow also addressed why was the Committee overwhelmingly female and feminist?

The tragic thing, in all this, is the lack of attention to issues he raised that should ring a bell with ANYONE.

It is foolish to argue about something as hard to test as the effects of X chromosomes on extreme mathematical ability while utterly neglecting the real fact that the lifestyles expected of most female careerists in America, as addressed well by Summers, are served very badly by our current rules. Sure, there are some women who will want to pursue male patterned, traditional career paths but doing so does mean losing real perogatives women have had.

Is it biological for women to have children outside of ones' teens and age 30? It seem unlikely, but even if women can have children later or if some women choose not to have children or even if we throw families into the lake .. the effect of our current system robs women of a right they have had and is destructive of families for the mifddle and upper classes.

So, to me, a report devoted to women's issues should have had issues of career path and day care as central.

Back at the "man"power issue, I think Summers point about women's choices has merit. At least the public media report that a much higher portion of female MDs than males choose alternative ife styles to full time careers. So, in one area, if we want enough docs and want to serve women's wishes, we simply need to turn out more docs. Is that such a bad thing?

Finally, the issue of finding people to fill the extreme jobs at a Nobelist level is a fascinating subject. While I did not read the original research in the NAS report, I find it very hard to believe anyone can provide an objective answer to the questions Summers asks about this ... nor do I think Summerca can though I admire his asking an interesting question. However, I do not think it makes sense to address the need for such folks simply by affirmative action efforts .. directed at women or at minority groups. Such an effort may be good civil rights but it is horriby inefficient. The most efficient means is immigration. The Bush laws are idiotic and need to be dumped.

Here too, however, I suspect the lifestyle issues are more relevant than biology. The debt load alone is enough to deter all but the children of the reach to pursue the extreme academic goals both the NAS and Summers describe. How few people WITH ability can affairs a debt of 100,000 while pursuing a Math PhD? If we want to compete we need to make huge changes in how we support graduate study and in providing jobs for junior faculty that do not depend on so much risk.

A Movie in a Minute .. Forrest Tucker as idi Amin

We went to see this movie out of curiousity. Forest Tucker is an actor of immense talent, ,imitted one assumes by the smallish literature for actors with black faces. Sure, one can do MacBeth with a black actor but I dubt that we have yet gotten to the place where no one would notice the casting.

So maybe that is why Tucker chose to do this movie. The movie is abuot one thing. idi Amin is awful, dreadful, disgusting and evil. His evil is secutive, charming, overwhelming, and maketh Richard III seem like a nicer guy than George W Bush. This sort of evil is not the evil of unintended outcomes or corrupted goodness. This is the evil of biblical proportions, an evil that ight just explain Stalin and Hitler.

It is an evil portrayal that will make Tucker a "Sir" if England ever decides we Americans need that sort of recognition if only to put greta acotr in a class with Gielgud and Olivier. We NEED a vehicle for Tucker's talents?

He needs to play Richard III, maybe the hump will hide his skin? MacBeth might be an easier do, but is that King of Scotland as evil as the self stuyled Scpts King of Ugandha?

Drinking LIberally .. an essay.

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

DL is a weekly affair at the Montlake Tavern. Formally hosted by a liberal organization, yclept Drinking Liberally, in reality this one is sorta like a 1700s French salon, with an assortment of Woody Alan/Seinfeld/Neil Simon characters orbiting around David Goldstein.
David is a political junkie-liberal-activist and likely eventual force in local Demo politics.
Actually, as I understand the salons, DL is very different in one way. The hostess at the salons
was the nominal attraction. The guests were her court, she gave favors and credibility. Maybe the beer serves this purpose at Montlake. But the Madame at a Paris salon of 1767 did did not lead. Instead she got her merit badges from attracting luminaries. The room was like a collection of small suns, each with tis own planets. Mostly, this salon is about one luminary. The rest of the crowd is interesting but they are in orbit around the star.

As "Goldie" David hosts a very informative local website, HorsesAss.org, with a political professional's insights and fascination with campaign detail. He gained fame for launching a state instigative to rename our local right wing instigative monger form Tim Eynman to "horse's ass." The initiative, unlike too many of Eynman's horrors, failed but it made Goldy something of a local celeb.

The website is a heavily visited local website and, as part of DL, Goldie launched a podcast.

The Pope

What can anyone say. The Pope screwed up. Only a leader embedded n the self-satisfying, closed world of the Papacy (or the White House) could make such a mistake. Jihad is all too real, but the Prophet did not preach the doctrines of conversion by the sword cited by the Emperor and quoted by the Pope.. True, Gregory MEANT the Emperor's speech as an example of what NOT to say. Yet ... given the bloody history of the Chair of Peter, it would have been better if he picked an example closer to home. How about citing the antisemitism of Pius IX ... or is he waiting until this evil man is canonized?

Yet, how does anything the coddled white guy said justify the Muslim rage? Does anyone in the rational world think the Pope meant to insult the Muslims? Is there NOONE amongst the callous headed worshipers of Allah willing to defend the intent of the Holy Father? If the US Muslim world is so moderate, where are they now???

Thehim

"The him" is the nom de web of Lee Rosenberg, a self announced liberal, employed in the software industry, and generally rationally liberal. Thehe is married to theher and edits a Blog.


I recommend Lee's blog for an occasional well done essay on plotics. he can be thoughtful and often is knowledgeable. Except when it comes to one thing. Somehow, Lee has a serious aversion to ethnicity.

This all started out with a diatribe he wrote about my comments about the Quran and Muslim teachings. Like some 60's kid yelling on the street, he accused me of all sorts of evil thoughts. No effort to reassure him that I was smart enough to distinguish the bad from the good, would help. To make matters worse, when he writes about me Lee seems to acquire coprolalia (another word for Tourette's syndrome, an illness where people spout obscenities for no apprarent reason).

Why me? Lee apparently resents my being openly Jewish. As matters progressed, it turns out that Lee has some sort of a problem with Jews, at least Jews who think being Jewish is different form not being Jewish. He identifies himself as being of "Jewish roots" but then spouts forth, for no apparent reason, and becomes defensive about his being intermarried and never having had a bar mitzvah. I would feel badly if I had ever said anything critical about these issues but it sseems to have arisen with thehim himself. I care no more about thehim's roots than Id about Madeline Albright's.

My guess is that Lee is a self conscious Jew who has, unfortunately, assimilated a lot of the subtle antisemitism that refuses to distinguish Jewish identity and pride from arrogance, ethnic superiority, and ...yes .. racism. All this from someone who claims (I find this hard to believe) to know nothing whatsoever about Judaism. I told him how proud I am of all the Nobel's we have won and he, of course, got angry and disparaged me for believing the Jewish heritage had anything to do with all this.

To compound all the criticizes ethnicity of the Jews as "tribalism," that classical Eurocentric distinction between "our" nations and the primitive folk's "tribes"." As in .. "It is unfortunate that the Nigerians can not rise above tribalism." Tell that to my Ibo classmate! Now, now ,, the quote is not from Lee, but it is the kind of racist clap Eurocentric folks say all the time.

The latest contre-temps came when he started swearing at me for expressing my respect for our County Executive, Ron Sims. Ron is a Black politician in the best sense. He is a role;e model for Black kids and has worked hard, when he was a local rep, to help the black community. He speaks movingly of the role his origins, church and culture, have had in shaping his career. He is a proud, successful Black man. But, not to The he. The he wants to rob Ron and the Black community of any pride but that of coming from a good home.

Of course, like all Eurocentrics, he is blind to the fact that his culture is a dominating culture. By denying Ron's ethnic origins, Lee is, in effect saying that the only good society is the he's own. Lee's predecessors are the very people who did so much damage to the cultures of the people's of Puget Sound.

Take a look at his Blog for more. The good part is that he has a lot of good things to say on other issues. But don;t call him a Jew, he might consider that an insult.

The Brother Faith is Dying

An article in today's NY Times predicts that Zorastrianism is dieing.

Zorastrianism is Judaism's not so secret lover. We once lived together in Noble Persia and much of modern Judaism grew from that contact ... angels, the devil, ... maybe even the tradition of milk and meat.

We, along with others of that 2500 years away world, benfited from this religion and this peole's tolerance.

Now, without the blood stained Holocaust, the religion of the fire is near death. Like Jews, Zorastrians are kept people in Iran .. their ancient home. Not allowed to control their own schools or live as equalas, the Zorastrians are leaving, intermarrying and just dieing.

Of course the Zorastrians have fled ... to the US, a country that owes much to ancient Persian tolerance. The Jesus story has dep roots in Zoraster's teachings.

But Islam's tolerance is not very supportive of this people of the book. It si ahrd to tell yor kids that they should remain in the people, marry in the people, when the reuslt is dhimmihood.

In the outside world, this tolerant religon is dieing through acculturation. Like the spotted owl, the last Zorastrian may have been borne already.

The great work of their prophet, Zoroaster still rings with the sounds of cows and the holy fire. A religon wiht a hisotry of tolerance .. may soon be gone.

The Jew, the toilet seat and the shicksa?

Over at Horses' Ass, Goldy has started a thread offering advice to anyone interested in Judaism.

Apparently the important credentials are that David Goldstein is secular (I guess that means he does not want to be considered a Jew by belief) and he was married to a Roman Catholic woman. Somehow, this is mixed up with his living near two orthodox shuls and his wife's wanting the toilet seat put down.

Not exactly impressive. What does Judaism or intermarriage have to do with anatomic issues like peeing forward vs downward?? Which is Jewish?

Anyhow, Goldy posts a Seinfeldesque self doubting pose. Kinda like imagining Dr. King dismissing his fervor as the product of eating too much watermelon. Can anyone imaging Cesar Chavez w/o the church? Imagine Kennedy w/o catholicism or Bushie w/o his identity. Why can't Jewish liberals just accept the Jewish liberal tradition? Jews can't be proud of Gompers? BTW, while his wife is described as Roman Catholic, Goldy never tells us if she was secular too? Are there secular Catholics or just lapsed Catholics vs secular Jews?

The remarks are followed n the comments threads by the chorus of a few choir members, assuredly goyische choir members, who applaud the Jew for the remarks .. rather condescending that bit, well it is hard to be nice.
"Hey look .. isn't the Jew funneee? He makes fun of himself!!"

OK OK .. we all need to make fun of ourselves, but do we need praise from others for doing so?? Goldy is a good guy and it would interest me more to know what part of that goodness came from Judaism, but then I am Jew. Maybe the goyem don't care what we have to offer?

Instead of sharing with others the part of Goldy that is Jewish, it is politically correct to turned that into a self deprecating joke.

Sad, you want a funny Catholics/Jews story?

Patrick and Sam grew up on neighboring streets. One went to parochial school while the other attended public school but the two remained lifelong friends. Beside public school, Sam went to Hebrew school and found that he enjoyed very much. Soon after Sam's bar mitzvah, the two boys decided to follow a common path .. Pat would become a priest and Sam a Rabbi. They vowed to remain friends.

Both did very well. Soon they each had a suburban congregation. They co-chaired the Catholic-Jewish civil action group and even hosted visiting Southern Baptists. After awhile, however, Pat was recognized by the church and became a bishop. Sam married, had two kids and wrote a book about a Jewish guy married to a catholic girl from Seattle. The book became a TV show and Sam was very famous.

Pat's career progressed too ... soon he became the Archbishop. The consecration and beautiful robes thrilled Sam, but it was still, after all just Pat. IN the meantime Sam's congregation was fine and even provided a Buick for their popular rabbi. Sam wasn't jealous at all of the large manor house that Patrick occupied.

Then Patrick was called to Rome for a red hat. Pat invited his Jewish friend but Sam couldn't go ... after all it was high holiday season. When the new cardinal came back, he invited the Rabbi to dinner. The joked about Rome and the aging Pope, and then Patrick asked, " Just think, if we had just switched houses 50 years ago, you could've become the cardinal!" Sam laughed. "And then? no wife, no kids! Patrick, all you have is your church." Patrick wrapped his cape a bit closer, a bit chilled by Sam's remark. "But then, look it is possible that when this Pope passes on I could become the Pope. I could have the power of the entire church!" The Cardinal smiled and sipped at his sherry. There was tension in the room. But Sam looked at his friend and said " and so? You get a white hat! Big deal." Patrick was mad. "You are just jealous! What more could anyone achieve, becoming God?"

Sam turned to him and said, "It happend once before!."

Fascism may be our future!

I recently read a post that was in awe about a foreign economy. The author was impressed at the success of socialism in Europe. I too would prefer to live in Europe to o our current Bush league version of the US. But, in the long term I think the the US and Europe are both in trouble.

Adam Smith rules; capital will move toward the best economics. This is even true at the level of nations marketing themselves. For example, it is cheaper, as I understand, to build cars in Canada despite the high Canadian wages. Canada is doing better than the US .. in no small part because their socialism is more efficient at heath care, education and retirement. If the state is paying for the cancers, that makes it easier for Daemler to build cars there.

BUT, the flies in this ointment are Sino-Indian. Despite a lot of stuff about the new economy, most jobs still come from manufacturing something (and yes, the Big Mac is a manufactured item). We are in real danger of our capital and Europe's as well being concentrated in China or India simply because the capital is more efficient there.

If this occurs, the US and Europe will be increasingly left with low capital investment type jobs. If we don't fix the US education system the jobs here will be making big Macs because the shipping costs from Shanghai are too high. A few % of Americans will be buying those burgers and trying to live in our extentended suburban slums because they can't afford to buy condoes n Seattle..

Education, however, can never employ more than a few percent of a society ... with one exception: education for capital management .. can you spell Suisse? Switzerland lives off of capital management ... banks and dysfunctional drug companies that now do their research in the US.

Similarly we can fantasize that Microsoft will always keep their capital, and high capital jobs, in Redmond, but why would Beijing or Delhi share that fantasy? As their own capital grows, it seems clear that they will want these jobs too and, if their model of state-capitalism succeeds why would they not buy and move Microsoft?

This is not a new idea. Before he became a bad guy, liberals across the world praised Mussolini for his version of state capitalism, Mussolini indeed made the trains run on time and brought jobs to Italy.

Fascism may be our future!

Why be Jewish?

This was done in response to a colleague's questioning the lack of values in contemporary university or Jewish education. He was esp. concerned with the latter.

I am however, much more dyspeptic toward the Torah than you. Like the Quran, the Torah reflects its age. It is a wonderful root and I worry about the tree surviving unless the root is cared for. We need to Lubavitchers and Charedi. But, they do not nourish the traditions, the branches and fruit that have grown out of the tree for the last 1000 years or so.

It is that tree ..Spinoza, Gompers, Alinsky, the Mississippi three, Einstein, and yes, modern Israel, that I see as important. I see that tree as fragile. In the USA, Judaism is becoming too like the Judaism of fin de siecle Germany. Other than the charedi, what do we stand for other than bagels and Israel?

In my youth, we led the civil rights movement, we created the pivotal literature of the time.. and founded modern science. Today's American Jewish youth seem to have no noble goals. Where is Ginsberg when we need him and why are so many of the Bush team vin unsere?

In my opinion this is, in part because, we teach the wrong things .. including Torah. The Torah should be taught as what it is .. a historical document of great import for the world. Kids should learn about the authors, the role of Josiah and the effect of Babylon. The conflicts of the Hasmoneans and mystery of the great council should be staples of Jewish education leading up to the Pharisees and the confrontation with the Greeks and Romans that gave us ... the modern European world!

Kids should honor Hillel and Ben Zakai so they, the kids can understand who Paul was an how weird, form a Jewish sense, Paul's creation of Jesus was. The kids should learn about central Jewish ideas .. not a simply revealed in the Torah but as evolved by our great men and women.

And then we come to modern times. Jews have won more than 20% of the science Nobels yet no Hebrew school kid can name 1! The Mississippi three are, if anything, white kids. Contemporary Jewish writers? I guess I can name Krugman and Friedman but no one is aware of their "roots." Spinoza might as well still be in cherem and the Ramban .. wasn't he Saladin's doctor? How many Hebrew School kids can name three Jewish Nobelists or describe the Jewish role in Civil rights, labor or South Africa?

Jewish history neglects "our" role in Andalusia, German liberalism, even our role as soldiers in WWII is neglected.

So kids get the Jewish version of the old testament stories, are taught a sort of JudeoChristianity, and visit Israel.

Why be Jewish?

"Aryan" Mythology in the Mosque?

YESTERDAY, schools in the American south and, of course in Hitler's Germany, taught a mythical view of the "white race." In this view the people of Northern Europe, somehow destined to become the true Christians, descended from an ancient and nobel root. Mixing the fruit of that root with inferior seed merited a 12 letter word, "miscegenation." The worst of European racism, the KKK, the Aryan nations, and the Nazis based their most odious policies on these mythical beliefs.

Do such beliefs exist in Islam? In one vital way the answer is no. One of the glories of Islam was the Prophet's teaching that all Muslims are one people. Indeed he taught that at one time in the past all people were Muslims and knew the truths of the Quran. Once a person reverts to Islam. the Quran teaches, there must be no distinctions based on race. Of course, as we all see today, the implications for those of us to blind or arrogant to accept Islam may not be so kindly.

Nonetheless, there is within Islam a teaching eerily similar to White racism and that teaching too is antisemitic ... or to be more linguistically correct .. attempts to strip Jews of their Semitic heritage .

TODAY's Islamic school in Seattle teaches that Arabs are a true ancient people, while Jews are a false people comprised of Europeans and others who have usurped the Jewish heritage. For what it is worth, modern genetics shows that Arabs and Jews are pretty much the same people, likely descended from the Semitic tribes of North Arabia back some 10,000 years. However, a large part of "Arab" included people who are descended form non-Semitic North African peoples.

This only matters if you are teaching your children to make racist decisions about others. There is much more in the Quran itself where Jews are depicted as siding with the (nonMuslim) Arabs against the Prophet, as rejecting his message (why not?), and as trying to poison him (in revenge for Jews he killed in battle). To cap it all, the Quran teaches that Jews exulted on the purported death of Jesus, " That they say (boasting): We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah." , But they killed him not nor crucified him. Only likeness of that was shown to them” (Al-Nisa’ 4: 157),

The only purpose of the following text is to deprive Jews of our heritage.

This is based on text taken today from the web site of the Idris Mosque in Seattle. The author of the text is Jamil Abdul-Razzak.

Origins of the "Arabs"

"The indigenous people of Palestine were Arabs for over 5000 years. They migrated from the Arabian Peninsula and lived in the land of Canaan or Palestine"

This is utter nonsense. Semites, including many peoples, did arise in Arabia, but were no more "Arabs" then they were Hittites. Moreover, amongst early peoples of Canaan there were non Semites, esp. including the sea people .. the "Philistines" of the bible. These people were related to the Greeks, Minoans, etc and it is THEIR name that is the basis for the term "Palestine".

"The Israelites, progeny of Jacob, remained in Egypt and assimilated with the Egyptian population. In 1290 BC, Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) led his followers out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan. Prophet Moses received revelations from Allah (God) which he inscribed into the Blessed Torah."

Perhaps. Archaeology says this is unlikely. What we KNOW is that Semites, (I guess in the Muslim mind all Semites are "Arabs") moved into Egypt and eventually established their own Pharonate as a people called the "Hyksos." The Pharaoh of the Torah and Quranic story, Ramses II, may have conquered the Hyksos and driven them from Egypt.

"In 586 BC the Babylonian army invaded Canaan and took the Jews to Babylon and placed them in captivity. During the years of captivity (586-539 BC) the Jews reconstructed from memory the Torah which is different from the original Torah."

By this time Canaan had ceased to exist and the people conquered by the Babylonians were know as Hebrews. Modern Palestinians, if they really have ancient roots would be the descendent of Jews.

The same essay on the Mosque's web site claims that the Torah was written in Babylon from imperfect memories. This is nonsense. Whether the Torah was really revealed to Moshe, it was finalized in pre-Babylon Israel under King Josiah.(ruled 640–609 bce). Jews have been literate for a very long time and it would have been as bizarre for the Jews of 620 bce to restrict the torah to oral transmission as would have been 620 AM for Muslims not to write down the words of the Prophet. Still, the effect is to dismiss the Jewish holy book. Imagine the Islamic anger if the Jutlands-posten, along with the Muhammad cartoons, had replayed the Salmon Rushdie claim that the "satanic verses" of the Quran represent errors in the Prophets thinking?

To make matters worse, Mr. Jamil Abdul-Razzak teaches us that Jews are not true Jews (as opposed, I guess to all Arabs, regardless if their ancestors were .. as in the case of all North Africa, NOT Semitic at all.

Origins of the "Jews"

In 539 BC, King Cyrus of the Persians "conquered Babylon and freed the Jews from captivity. At this point we may say that the Israelites are descendants of Israel, the grandson of Abraham, and the Jews are the followers of Moses. This means not all Jews are Israelites or all Israelites are Jews."

This is an essential aspect of Arab antisemitism .. the claim that most of us are false Jews.

"Throughout the history, the Jews and Israelites coexisted with the Arab and Muslim majority in peace and harmony for hundreds of years."

Tell this to the Romans who defeated THE PEOPLE of Palestine in the JEWISH WARs.

Tell it to the Jews who suffered pogroms in Palestine in the era of a Muslim Majority.

Tell it to the Jew in Turkey who died after the Muslim world republished the charges of our drinking blood.

Tell it to the Jews of Arabia who were expelled from their ancient homes by the third caliph, Omar.

The saddest part of this all is that Jews and Arabs are ... beyond religion ... still the common descendents of the ancient Semites. Our religions share essential beliefs, as long as neither one denigrates the other simply for accepting or not accepting M. as a prophet. Can God really care which prophets a man follows if the man leads a moral life?

How can peace live with such bigotry taught to children?

What is taught in the mosque?

Freedom House, an institution created by Eleanor Roosevelt and others to promote inter-community tolerance undertook a project to determine what was taught in American Mosques in the post 9/11 era. Muslim volunteers went to 15 prominent mosques from New York to San Diego and collected literature disseminated by Saudi Arabia (some 90% in Arabic).

The result is a report of at least one part of what is taught in the mosque:
The results surely rival what might be found in a far right Christian church in the dim reaches of Idaho or Alabama ... except that this porn comes from the largest Mosques in the largest American cities.

Some points in the Wahabi literature:

Muslims must:

*

Muslims must avoid churches accept to convert others "that churches are houses of God and that God is worshiped therein is an infidel."
*

Islamic law must prevail FOR ALL, not just Muslims: women must be veiled, punishments for infidelity are draconian, apostates from Islam "should be killed".
* Israel was created by a conspiracy of liberal protestants and Jews as a wedge to destroy Islam.
*

Muslims should not associate with non Muslims: "Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law."
*

Citizenship: "It is forbidden for a Muslim to become a citizen of a country governed by infidels because this is a means of acquiescing to their infidelity and accepting all their erroneous ways."
*

Prepare for war against America: "To be true Muslims, we must prepare and be ready for jihad in Allah's way. It is the duty of the citizen and the government."

There is more and I strongly recommend that one read this report with an open mind to two thoughts. First, one hopes that this is only one sort of literature available in the Mosque. Second, imagine what would happen if the US government sponsored similar documents to be distributed to Christian minorities in Muslim lands?

The Blogs Nominate Their Democrat

Nate Lamont beats Lieberman in Conn. Democratic Senate primary.

This could be a pivotal event if it leads the progressive movement to a tighter commitment to acting as a political party. All too often Move-On has come across as a negative voice rather than supporting a winnable effort.

To me the big issues now. other than whether Lamont can beat Lieberman (I suspect he will) is who Lamont is. As of now we know less about NL than we did about GWB when he ran for Pres. NL is an affable son of traditional wealth who claims to be a likeable liberal (sorta like a mirror image of a compassionate conservative).

Lieberman never impressed me. As a Jew I was excited that one of us was finally running for the near-White House but I was disappointed by this little, shrill man who seemed to lack much n the way of interesting ideas. Put Lieberman and Obama or Lieberman and Hillary on a balance and the tilt would be the other way.

I hope there is a lot more to Lamont than a simplistic opposition to the war or reflexive response to the Bushies! I especially wonder where he stands on knee jerk liberal issues. For example, where does he stand on immigration? NAFTA? charter schools? reparitions?

However that happens, it would do the country a lot of good to refressh the left with a new, strong political party. At worst, the Blogoleft could be an effective counterbalance to the Churchedright.

A Great Muslim Site

It was heartening to read the posts and comments on this site .. Alt.muslim.
It would indeed be wonderful if some new insight and peace came of the tragedy in Seattle.

On the other hand, this link is to an in depth review by Freedom House of Wahabi materials used to teach in American mosques. Frightening.

The Offending Images

I have tried to upload the Jillands-Posten images here, but it appears that somehow Blogger is censoring them. A good site for these and other images in this controversy is http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/jyllands-posten_cartoons/.

I finally did manged to upload the most famous of the images, the image with the bomb in the turban, by lumping it with the rest of the images here.

Why the fuss? The cartoon shows the Prophet in a viscious guise .. the guise of a holyman who kills for his beliefs. But that is exactly the story of the Quran. M. was not just a prophet on a hill like Jesus or the leader of a fight for freedom like Moses or ML King. The Prophet was the leader of a great army, an army he assembled to conquer Arabi and expel all disbelievers.

This watercolor is from the book on the Prophet by Danish author Kåre Bluitgen. The image shows the story in the Quran of Mohamed's masacre of the Jews of Yathrib for their refusal to side with him in the conflict with the Quraishis from Mecca. Bluitgen's inability to find a cartoonist to draw images like this was the original reason for the Jillands Posten cartoon contest.

The association of M. with violence is hardly limited to the effort by a Dutchman to make the Quran accessible to the West. The fires of hell image is from Muslim Persia, showing the Prophet presiding while demons burn women for showing their hair.

Which of these is most offensive to Islam. You vote.

The War Of the Images

When the furor over the images of Mohamed in Jillands-Posten was active, I decided not to post anything ... thinking that respect for the feelings of Muslims, even misguided feelings, was better than a perhaps meaningless gesture.

My level of tolerance has changed. The cartoon at the left, IMO fairly, makes fun of all deities. It is interesting in who is left out. G-d somehow did not make the cut .. though the Christian version, spelled Je--h did. Maybe there is an advantage in being nameless? Of course Allah means G-d and is not a name> Moreover the anmeless deities of the Muslims and the Jews are not believed to have faces visible to humans. .. so maybe we ... the Mulsims and the Jews,, or at least our shared faceless, namelss Deity. both escaped this humilation.

This sort of idlolatry and idolatry-hatred is nothing new. In the Quran and the Jewish books of the Canaanite wars, Jews and Mulsims kill others over the worship of idols. Though I don't remember any great celebrations of these events in Hebrew school like the celebrations in Afghanistan when the Taliban destroyed the statures of Buddha. Of course, the prophet is celebrated for destroying the Gods of Mecca. Is this different from the French cartoon?

The cartoon of Muhamed is part of a very important book . Danish author Kåre Bluitgen complained that he could not find an artist brave enought to illustrate his upcoming book about Mohammed. Jyllands Posten ran a contest and the result was the furor over the images "disrespect" for the prophet. The book is about to be released and includes this very accurate painting, depicting a well known Quranics story ... painted by an anonyous artist no doubt frightened for her life.

And the cartoons that elicited this hatred?