Isaac Balbin
Monday December 1, 2008
4 Kislev 5769
לעלוי נשמות הקדושים החסידים התמימים הרב גבריאל נח ורעיתו מרת רבקה הי’ד
In the beginning, Reb Gavriel and Rivki had a choice between Melbourne and Mumbai. They chose Mumbai. Hashem planned that our paths would cross one way or another.Parshas Toldos in Melbourne, Australia has just concluded. It is a cool and quiet evening. After two days of frantic searching, the information I was dreading reached me via SMS on that morning. One of my colleagues in Mumbai had been sending me updates, as were my past students who had travelled to the Chabad House, at my request. I saw the words “we now pray for their souls, I am sorry” flash up momentarily on my phone only to quickly disappear.
It was Shabbos and I couldn’t touch my cell phone. Frankly, I didn’t even want to. Instinctively, I knew what had happened—a nightmare on Hormusji Street. On Thursday evening, I had been singing at a Simcha. It was difficult, to say the least. In between sets, I had been ringing Reb Gavriel. Fellow band members were trying to provide me with support. Gavriel had been silent for nearly 2 days. I feared the worst. We now know what transpired. I feel compelled to write.
Silence is not always golden.
On this same evening, “winter” is upon Mumbai. Picture the scene. It is a cool 30 degrees centigrade-- noisy, humid, odour-laden and basically offensive to our western sensibilities. An old classical Baghdadi inspired Shule in the heart of Colaba is nestled in a winding alley. There are 10-15 people sitting around Reb Gavriel, may Hashem avenge his blood. Reb Gavriel is speaking about the Parsha. They are a mixture of native Bene Yisrael Jews, elderly Iraqis of a bygone era, a few religious businessmen and the odd Israeli backpacker. It is the period between Mincha and Ma’ariv (or Arbit as they call it).
Binyamin the shamash sits in a corner. He is a quiet and devoted elderly man from the Bene Yisrael who is belittled by two of the remaining elderly Baghdadi Jews because he had the temerity to defect to Chabad by attending Friday night meals at Reb Gavriel and Rivki’s Chabad House. Binyamin is resolute and withstood the pressure. Freddy Sopher is arguably the only balanced Iraqi Jew remaining. He appreciates what Reb Gavriel and Rivki are doing. He is now very weak and barely able to walk, but his ears crane to hear every word that Reb Gavriel is saying. Freddy is a devoted Jew. The prohibition of intermarriage meant that he never married. He remains faithful to his people and religion. Before the Chabad house, Freddy’s home was the address for any businessman who found themselves “stuck in Mumbai” over Shabbos. There was now a new home. It was a magnificent permanent five storey edifice paid for by the magnanimous Baal Tzedoko, Mr George Rohr and his wife Pamela . This was the Chabad House of Mumbai. Reb Gavriel used to call it “Mombai” because he feared that the eponym Mumbai is the name of a Hindu getchke and therefore forbidden to be uttered.
My connection with India
As a professorial member of staff at RMIT, I have been a frequent visitor to India over many years. I interview aspiring postgraduate students, especially those who may be eligible for scholarships, and who wish to study at RMIT’s prestigious School of Computer Science and IT.
India is no holiday. I generally carry enough food in my suitcase to last the 12 days that I traverse this vast country. I have never “seen the sites” nor explored the country. I simply do my job and return home. There is no time, and to be candid, I have never wanted to venture far from hotels and airports.
Shabbos used to be a difficult day — cooped up inside a hotel room, reading and waiting for Shabbos to end. I knew there were some Jews in far flung areas of India, but my schedule meant that I was on a flight each day, and had little time or inclination for romantic visits to far flung communities in remote fringes of a vast country.
Mumbai is large. It is claimed to be the second most populous city proper in the world. I used to stay in an area which was relatively close to the airport. One year, local colleagues advised me to stay somewhere a little more central. Coincidentally, I had heard that a Chabad house had opened up.
I landed in Mumbai late on a Thursday afternoon, on my way to the Taj Hotel from the airport, having arrived in India on the Sunday prior. I asked my Taj driver if the Chabad House was “on the way”. He didn’t recognise the “Hotel” where the Chabad House was then located but after a few calls he advised me that it was near the Taj and that he’d be happy to stop there.
The car stopped. I was sure we were at a wrong address. This was surely a dilapidated hotel. Walking up to the top floor, because the lifts were not reliable, I was sweating profusely, as one does in Mumbai. I came to a door with a Mezuzah and a little sign that read “Chabad House”. I knocked, but there was no answer. I knocked again, and still there was no answer. The door was slightly ajar, and I tentativey pushed it. In front of me a line of Seforim materialised. You can’t imagine how foreign, a set of Sifrei Kodesh seemed in India. I backed off, and continued to knock.
Eventually, Rivki HY”D came and invited me to sit down and wait because Reb Gavriel was just returning from the fish market with fish for Shabbos. Menachem Mendel A”H, their elder son, was playing nearby.
I was thunderstruck by the scene.
In this part of the world where I always imagined there was not much more than me, a billion Indians, humidity, and a cornucopia of exotic smells, I suddenly found myself in the presence of Yidden and Torah. I suddenly felt the need to give something. What did I have?
Running downstairs to the cab and opening my suitcase, I returned with some chewing gum, wafers and assorted Nosh. Rivki smiled, and said her son was too young for these things, but thanked me nonetheless.
Rivki insisted that the guests would enjoy them.
At that point, Reb Gavriel arrived. We spoke and he insisted that I come for Shabbos meals. I don’t like to impose myself at the best of times, but “relented”. I was told to be at the lobby of the Taj at 6:05 p.m., on the next day, Erev Shabbos. Reb Gavriel asked me to see if I recognised any other Yidden and to bring them as well. This was the first time I wasn’t cooped up in a hotel room. I waited in the lobby and, eventually, a battered ancient black cab swung by the front and I could see Reb Gavriel waving. I climbed into the tiny cab. There was barely space. One western person sat in the front, two Israelis, and Reb Gavriel and I. For some inexplicable reason, we started to speak Yiddish. I discovered that one of the Israelis was an ex-Aussie, a son of Mord’che Rich, one of the pioneers of the Melbourne Jewish Community. It is a small world.
Everything is Hashgocho Protis.
Prior to that we had spoken in Ivrit with a drop of English. We now spoke Yiddish until the last time I saw him. It was the language wherein we could speak privately, because almost nobody understood what we were saying.
The Shul was dilapidated and stifling. Some old ceiling fans whirred above, while pigeons flew around, occasionally greeting us with fresh droppings. What a Scene. The Chazan, Mr Dindorkar z”l was a Bene Yisrael Jew. His voice wasn’t great, and he davened a little too slowly for ne, but he had an endearing quality. I liked him. Maybe I just wanted the experience to end quickly. Reb Gavriel was cajoling me into davening Kabolas Shabbos. I couldn’t understand why, given that there was an Chazan employed. In Yiddish, he quietly explained the reasons. I didn’t know the Nusach but felt there was no halachic choice except to daven for the amud. In my mind I had barely stumbled through the davening (have you ever said that Sefardi version of Kaddish?) but in the mind of the paltry few locals I was an instant celebrity. My standing was enhanced on the following day when they realised I was a Cohen. They duchen twice every Shabbos, and as a lone visiting Cohen, each and every person touched my hand with their Tallis after duchening and then kissed their own Tallis. This was all new and strange to me.
Back at the Chabad House, we ate on the roof. There wasn’t enough room in the unit to accommodate the crowd of 15-20. I couldn’t believe there were other Jews in India. I discovered businessmen (mainly working in diamonds) and the Israeli backpacker phenomenon. While Reb Gavriel held court with the males, Rivki was in animated discussion with the females. They were on a mission, and it showed. Mendy, their son, was present for a short time, and then was put to bed by Sandra Samuel, one of the home helpers. Sandra is now world-famous. She saved Moshe Tzvi, the Reb Gavriel HY’D (right) and one a local Indian Jew (whose sons regularly come to Shule) little brother that Mendy would never meet. Mendy was a child always crying, and who seemed to be in great pain. I was to learn later, that Mendy had an incurable disease.
The scene was surreal. On the roof of an old hotel in Mumbai on a Friday night, surrounded by peaceful Hindus we sat and spoke on a roof-top overseeing the famous Gateway of India.
Reb Gavriel had done his apprenticeship in Bangkok. We were all given the choice of dvar torah, song, story or hachlata tova. Thankfully, I wasn’t the first person to be called upon. I could have sung a song given that I run the Schnapps band in Melbourne, but I ended up presenting a dvar torah. I was to continue the tradition of giving a dvar torah each time I visited. My most recent one one was a few weeks ago before the tragic events that unfolded leading to the murder of Reb Gavriel and Rivki. Ironically it was Parshas Noach. I spoke about Shem, Cham and Yafes. I mentioned Rav Soloveitchik’s observation that while Shem possessed ethics, Yafes was limited to etiquette.
Ironically, I didn’t speak about Cham. Ominously, Cham arrived a few weeks later in the form of murderous Muslim terrorists, descendants of Put the son of Cham, whose progeny are thought to have inhabited the India region. Ironically, the terrorists came through the harbour near the gateway of India.
Over the years, I watched Reb Gavriel and Rivki evolve as two very young and inexperienced Shluchim to become polished, non-judgemental and tolerant role models. There was some tension between the existing community and the perception of the “incursion” of Chabad into their space. I could detect it and wasn’t sure how to tackle the situation.
On one occasion, after returning to Australia, I decided to send an email and be forthright. To his great credit, Reb Gavriel thanked me for my advice and shared no animosity, thereafter. Indeed, I was to become a sounding board on our walks back and forth to Shule on Shabbos.
On my last Shabbos with Reb Gavriel and Rivki, only a few short weeks ago, most guests had left after the shabbos meal. I always went for an afternoon nap. This time, I found myself drawn into conversation with Reb Gavriel and Rivki. We sat for hours and spoke about different things. We shared a bond and an understanding. In Melbourne, some people joked that I had become the “Shliach for Mumbai.” No, Reb Gavriel and Rivki, may their innocent blood be avenged, were the dynamic team. They were everything. I was merely one of many occasional visitors, drawn to their Shabbos table by the extreme dedication and mesiras nefesh they personified through their mission.
The Challenge of Mumbai Mumbai wasn’t another far-flung Western locale in the middle of nowhere. I acknowledge that such places present their own challenges for people setting up Chabad Houses and I commend them for their work. Mumbai, however, is different. It is more than remote and challenging.
Even those who came to “help out” before Pesach, had difficulty coping in a physical sense. I remember the 3 young Bochurim who simply struggled to venture outside after one day. Most people are in shock given the extreme contrast to the, perhaps, pampered lifestyle we lead in the West.
My trips were always timed to be between Simchas, lecture schedules, Sefira or the 3 weeks.
Inevitably, I was on a flight to India the morning after a Simcha. After my first meeting, I felt the need to collect money to assist Reb Gavriel and Rivki. I don’t find “collecting” a natural activity, and luckily I was able to enlist the gregarious Avremy Raskin, and on other occasions Yitzchok New and Reuven Tatarka, to collect on my behalf.
Upon arriving in Mumbai, I added my own contribution, and passed on the tzedoko. I knew that this money wasn’t wasted. Reb Gavriel and Rivki were very touched that a community in Melbourne was assisting them. I became one of the regulars in their house. There were certainly some strange and interesting people passing through.
One time, Reb Gavriel suggested that perhaps I should sing a song because Rivki had enjoyed my singing. I made the silly and self-centred mistake of mentioning that Avraham Fried concert which I had sung at, when Avraham’s voice decided it would not function. They loved the story so much, that each time I came, they told everyone at the table. For them, I was someone semi-famous. I didn’t want to deflate this perception given that they felt it provided their table with added importance.
When we sang together, I chose to sing Chabad Nigunim because I knew that this was precious to Reb Gavriel and Rivki. Ordinarily the songs were “simple and contemporary” — the type of songs designed for people of all walks of life. On Shabbos afternoon, we farbrenged together singing and exchanging divrei torah, as well as discussing halachic issues that had arisen. These weren’t simple issues.
What do you say when you are told that Reb Gavriel discovered that a woman seeking a Get was actually in a relation with another man, and pregnant with that man’s child. The two Israeli Dayonim who had come to help with this Get were aghast and almost annoyed that Reb Gavriel had asked such questions upon noticing a ring on the women’s finger, as there was now a case of potential Mamzerus. I suggested to Reb Gavriel that he needed to find a reason to excise the original kiddushin, following the view of Reb Moshe, as opposed to Rav Henkin on such matters. He agreed, but said that the matter was now with Chief Rabbi Amar. Reb Gavriel didn’t indulge in a crooked path. He was direct and followed derech hayoshor.
I won’t forget the last Motzei Shabbos at the Chabad House with Reb Gavriel. It was late, and everyone was asleep except for Reb Gavriel and I. Sitting in his office, he asked me to sing Unesane Tokef . He knew I davened for the amud at Elwood Shule in Melbourne on Yomim Noroim. I felt uncomfortable but complied because I realised that he simply wanted to learn as much as he could. Suddenly, he pulled out a letter and asked “how would you pasken on these sheylos”. I looked at him, incredulously, at first. It was clear that he had become the de-facto Chief Rabbi of India. This letter was from the tiny community of Jews in Ahmedabad (which he had never visited). I read the letter, and between the lines could discern what was happening. He had been sitting on the letter for months. My advice was that this was the type of Shayloh which couldn’t be answered unless one knew the people. I figured that this would also provide Reb Gavriel with an opening to meet these Jews by asking them to come to Mumbai. It was a tribute to his modesty and tzidkus that he saw fit to share such things with me.
It is hard for me to imagine that he and Rivki are now hovering around Gan Eden. Mumbai without both Reb Gavriel and Rivki just isn’t Mumbai.
One Friday Evening
One Friday evening, I found myself sitting on the roof of the old Chabad House. I wasn’t in a talkative mood, being really tired, and wanting to get back to the Taj to sleep. The person opposite me (who had introduced himself to everyone as “Mordechai visiting from England”) had a thick English accent and persisted in making conversation, eventually introducing himself as Martin Gilbert. I then introduced myself.
Turning to him I said “you are not Sir Martin Gilbert, are you?” to which he answered, “I’m afraid so”. For the next hour I found myself in private conversation with Sir Martin and his wife. She was writing a set of books that served to record stories of Holocaust survivors.
I asked Sir Martin what brought him to a Chabad House on a Friday evening in Mumbai, of all places. He mentioned that when he was in China he had also visited a Chabad House, and liked the informal and friendly atmosphere. He commented that unlike China, where he felt they were being watched by the authorities, Mumbai was gloriously emancipated.
Sir Martin related that he had been travelling through India as a young student and became very ill. His mother advised him that if he was to become ill, that he should visit an Auntie Fori. Auntie Fori’s husband, Mr B.K. Nehru was a famous distinguished civil servant of India, also serving as Ambassador to the US and UK. He was a cousin of Prime Minister Nehru. Auntie Fori had curiously avoided shaking the hand of the German Foreign Minister when she had met him, and it transpired that she was a Hungarian Jewess. She knew nothing of her heritage. Begging Sir Martin to give her a history lesson about the Jews, he responded that he would write a series of letters to this effect, from England. This was subsequently published as a book entitled Letters to Auntie Fori.
Sir Martin sent me a signed copy and, in return, I sent the music to some Stoliner Nigunim. Susan Sacher, Sir Martin’s second wife’s family had come from Stolin. Sir Martin and Susan left before everyone. I had surreptitiously revealed Sir Martin’s identity to Reb Gavriel during the meal, but he and Rivki were otherwise involved. I suspect that if they had realised who he was, there would have been some fanfare.
For a number of years, Reb Gavriel would ask me to “tell the story about Sir Martin” to his guests. He was always proud. Everything was through Hashgocho Protis.
Slichos
How can I forget the weekend I found myself in Mumbai on the first night of Slichos. Again, it was a scene from a fairy tale. I arrived back at the Chabad House at 11:30 p.m.. Normally, after Shabbos I quickly returned to the Taj, had a shower, turned down the air conditioning and was happy to be cool and comfortable. This time I had to venture out again into the stifling heat and up the steep staircase to the top floor. We had to be quiet because the noise of moving chairs disturbed the occupants below. Alas there were only nine males. A quick Mechitza was erected and we recited Slichos, leaving out those parts which are only said in the presence of a Minyan. At the end, Reb Gavriel and I started to sing Rachamoneh Deyoney and it became lebedik.
Rivki came in and took pictures. I was to hear from Binyomin Althaus, on my return to Australia, that he had seen a picture in some publication from Kfar Chabad (I think) and he was “taken” by the scene.
Yissurim
One year, as I emailed Reb Gavriel to ask whether he would be around for Shabbos so that I could eat there, he replied in the affirmative, and said that Rivki was still in Israel. Rivki and Reb Gavriel had to leave Mendy in a specialist facility for terminally ill children. Reb Gavriel confided in the taxi to Shule that Friday night about the nature of the illness, and I realised then that the Mesirus Nefesh that he and Rivki had shown was simply LeMaaloh MiDerech HaTevah. He related that his second son (may he have a refuah shelemah), also had the incurable disease and would be “lucky” to live beyond 5-7 years of age.
Reb Gavriel and Rivki had reached a cross-road in their lives. It was either go to Israel and abandon their Shlichus and watch their two sons perish in a palliative institution over the next few years, or continue to light up souls in India, visiting their sons whenever possible.
Reb Gavriel modelled his operation on the methods employed by Reb Yosef Chaim Kantor in Thailand, but I doubt that any two Shluchim ever faced such a gut wrenching decision. I wondered what the Lubavitcher Rebbe would have advised. Suffice it to say that they chose to “ignite new souls” in India. I listened with incredulity and was caught between feelings of shock and awe.
Reb Gavriel and Rivki threw themselves into their Avodas Hakodesh with even greater fervour. I always asked about Mendy, and on one trip, I was to learn that he had passed away, and that a Sefer Torah was being written in his memory. I noticed a change in the attitude of some recalcitrant locals. I could tell that they “now” accepted Reb Gavriel and Rivki more, because they realised the incredible mesirus nefesh that they were displaying for the community and the ubiquitous travellers.
The Mikvah
Walking back from Shule one Shabbos, Reb Gavriel informed me that he was building a Mikvah. It would be modern and clean and equipped to the highest standards. Unless you have visited India, it is difficult to imagine how curious the concept of a modern and clean Mikvah is. In so called “deluxe” hotels that I frequent, the “shower” is one of those bath/ shower type combinations. Okay, so I am spoilt, and expect a separate shower, but when you are in a “5” star hotel, you expect some basics. A modern Mikvah? What a concept. Indeed, I asked Reb Gavriel why he didn’t either add to the existing Mikvah and/or renovate. Of course, he met with opposition from a few locals. For them, a new Mikvah meant that the upstart and his wife were implying that the existing Mikvah was not up to scratch. Ironically, it wasn’t the Beneh Yisrael who objected. Rather it was a few remaining Baghdadis. Reb Gavriel launched into a
discussion of Bor Al Gabei Bor, argung that this was the best Chumrah. I responded that there were deyos either way, but more importantly it would be better if he simply focussed on the “modern” aspect of the Mikvah.
Again, to his credit, he quietly listened to my “free” advice. I knew he had listened because during my last few moments with Reb Gavriel, while we were downstairs in the car port area, he pointed to a portion of the carport and said that he was about to build a new mikvah at that spot for both males and females. I asked why he needed to add to the existing Mikvah. He responded, with a twinkle in his eye, that the existing Mikvah was very successful because it was modern and clean and he only charged about 10 Rupees (50c) for a session. The local Jews regularly patronised his Mikvah.
He now wanted something closer, specifically for the Chabad house. With India being a place where many seek the so-called spiritual side of life, I could well imagine many of those visiting the Chabad house also availing themselves of the new Mikvah. Alas, Reb Gavriel and Rivki have now left this project to a new set of Shluchim who I hope will continue their Avodas HaKodesh until we are all transported on the wings of an eagle to Yerusholayim Ir HaKodesh.
The story of the Mikvah itself was miraculous. Reb Gavriel used to rise in the early hours of the morning, twice a week, and take a boat to a little Island off the coast, where there were chicken farms. He would then Shecht chickens for the week and bring them back for Rivki and others to clean. While the Mikvah was being built, he also had to keep a close watch on the workers to make sure that they didn’t drop any liquid into the Mikvah or eat in the vicinity.
Normally there is a set period of Monsoonal rain. It is like clock work each year. The year that the Mikvah was completed there was no rain. Barely a drop had fallen, and it looked as though the Mikvah would lie empty for a full year. The Rav Hamachshir from Israel had arrived and was helping with the finishing touches. There was still no rain.
The Rav returned to Israel and Reb Gavriel and Rivki were quite upset that the Mikvah would not be functional for a full year. On the Friday morning that I landed in Mumbai, the car from the Taj that was sent to collect me was somewhat different. I was met by a large four wheel drive.
The driver explained that there had been a torrential downpour on Thursday night, completely out of keeping with this time of the year, and that it had been so intense, that it had destroyed parts of the road leading from the airport. The four wheel drive was needed to navigate the damaged road with pieces of broken tar strewn far and wide. I hadn’t realised the connection until Reb Gavriel explained that a Nes had occurred the night before and that this Nes was just in time for his Mikvah. In fact, the rain had been so strong, it had almost burst through the roof. Reb Gavriel was beaming. He felt that his Shlichus was blessed with Siyata Dishmaya, and he wasn’t wrong.
Pidyon Shvuyim
I often wondered if there was any significance to meeting Sir Martin Gilbert. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. An unfortunate Jewish girl had fallen in love with a Jewish criminal in Goa, She had been taken captive.
There is much more to this story, but let me just say that various people, including Reb Gavriel and Rivki worked behind the scenes to help this girl who was now in prison, falsely accused, and dying.
I contacted Sir Martin and suggested that he pull some diplomatic strings in India to help out. He had a contacts with an International Human Rights Lawyer in Jerusalem and we exchanged emails on the matter.
Let’s just say that the girl survived and now lives in Israel, reunited with her mother. Reb Gavriel and Rivki acquired their Olam Habo from this incident alone. For their trouble, Indian Police hung around the Chabad house for months, until Rivki let them have it, warning them never to come back!
Matir Assurim
This also reminds me of the strange (in my eyes) couple who were present each Friday night. She is of Yemenite extraction with a strong internalised sense of Jewish tradition and he an Ashkenazi with (now) white curly hair and blue eyes. They seemed always to be wearing the same clothes each time. While she had an overtly visible Yiddishe Neshoma he was quieter and seemingly struggling with belief. I discovered that their son was in prison on drug-related charges. They had picked themselves up and moved to
Mumbai while living from the rental income of their apartment in Israel.
Where did they eat during these years in Mumbai? At Reb Gavriel and Rivki’s house, of course. Who provided them and their son with all the assistance in the world? The answer is, again,Reb Gavriel and Rivki. I see this couple and am sure they are weeping at the calamity which has befallen us.
Lechatchila Ariber
It was always strange for me to hear Reb Gavriel tell stories about Chabad Rebbeim during his speeches at Shule. These were Iraqis and Bene Israel. They knew about the Rambam and the Ben Ish Chai. White Russia seemed to be a clash of cultures. It was almost comical. Nevertheless, Reb Gavriel persisted. Interestingly, they listened. Reb Gavriel’ motto was “Lechatchilo Ariber”—one should overcome any seeming obstacle and proceed headlong with the task at hand.
I could not help but admire their single-minded application to the tasks needed to increase holiness in the world. They were not small-minded, slogan-bearing, chanters or flag wavers. Like Chassidim of old, yet under 30, they were involved in doing; not chanting. They loved and were loved. They didn’t estrange. Despite their comparative youth they understood the meaning of Yotso Scharo BeHefsedo, Vehamayvin Yovin. We spoke about this on our last Shabbos together.
Reb Gavriel used to tell the story of an old bed-ridden Chosid who was dangerously ill. The Rebbe Maharash said that this Chosid should go the the Mikvah. They couldn’t understand how one could touch a Shchiv Merah let alone immerse such a person into a Mikvah. The story, which Reb Gavriel used to say he heard from someone who heard it directly from an elderly man who had witnessed it, was that the Maharash declared that they should lower the sick chosid into the mikvah, strapped to his bed.
Apparently, after this, the man became better. This was Lechatchiloa Ariber. My mind is now racing with tragic images of two bodies carried out of the Chabad House, to be taken to a Mikvah, only this time for Taharoh. The irony is inescapable. The picture is haunting.
The miracle of Moshie’s Yeshuah is amazing. He was the most important thing in Reb Gavriel and Rivki’s life. The story of his survival is beyond belief. On my last trip, I brought a range of Ajitas vegetable chips (unique to Australia and now exported). He loved them and we had to prise them away otherwise he wouldn’t eat his lunch. Walking around with his blue “Chabad of Mombai” yarmulka, he was the centre of attention. Sandra, who saved him, was always nearby, watching his every move. I understand there are now moves to bring her to Israel.
There are other stories, but I hope I have captured some of the more important elements of this unique couple.
I want to address the last few words of this essay to the dear parents and the next shluchim. I ask that someone translate this essay for Rivki’s parents. To the parents—Rabbi and Mrs Rosenberg and Rabbi and Mrs Holtzberg;
Reb Gavriel and Rivki HY”D are irreplaceable — period. They are a reflection of the types of homes they came from, and the Mosdos that they attended. They were Yechidei Segulah possessed with Tzidkus and Yashrus that is hard to find. None of us have explanations for why this happened and why it happened to two of Chabad’s finest. I will just say that Hashem seems to have this unacceptable habit of calling back the Neshomos of the finest and best, at a time that we all consider as “far too early”. I can’t believe that Reb Gavriel and Rivki’s Shlichus has seemingly come to an end in Hashem’s eyes. It makes no sense to me.
I can only surmise that it must now be time for a new couple to step in, without fear, and continue this Avodas Hakodesh of re-acquainting Jews with their heritage. To the next young couple.
Dear Rabbi,
You need to be a Talmid Chochom. You should have a broad yedias hatorah. You need to have an old-style appreciation of Torah that includes considerations which are not only Chabad-centric. You and your Rebbetzin need to be able to speak Ivrit fluently. You need to know Shechitah and Kiddushin, Gittin (but avoid the latter two L’Maaseh). Have a capacity to work long hours. More recently, Reb Gavriel was giving Shiurim professionally prepared by a Chabad organisation and was starting to build a clientele o locals who came to learn. You will need to continue that. You will need to learn how to relate to the locals and you will need to Leyn, preferably in Sfaradit, each week (this includes ß from Klaf).
You will need to have a reasonable voice. You will be tolerant but remain principled. In short, you have to be a talented Kol Bo-nik.
Dear Rebbetzin,
You need to be a Balabuste, including knowing how to clean Ofos. It is important that cleanliness and class are naturally part of your make up. That’s ironic in Mumbai, but absolutely critical to your success. You should be a woman of this world, and be someone who carries herself most gracefully, but you must also be prepared to walk streets which are dirty, smelly and above all humid and hot. You will have to get your hands dirty, only to clean them later. The new Chabad house is air-conditioned, and after the repair work is completed, you will have a wonderful foundation with a great new kitchen, recently installed for Pesach. You need to know how to bake and cook for large crowds and not be flustered by unexpected crowds. You have to have eyes on both sides of your head, while you ensure that there is no Bishul Akum in the kitchen. At the same time you will have to watch your kids.
You need to both have outgoing personalities and yet both be inherently Tzniusdik, if you know what I mean. You have to be able to look at people in the eyes. You need to be naturally empathetic to people’s problems. Not everything you see or do will seemingly have a connection to your Shlichus, but it will. You both need to be entrepreneurial.
You have to seek opportunities and make ends meet. You have to be subtle. Luckily there are lots of good people in the world who will help you. Indians are wonderful. Moishi would not be with us if not for the self-sacrifice of Sandra, one of the Indian staff. Indians are not anti-Semitic. Yes, they have different habits, are relatively disorganised, and take an eternity to do things, but they are warm and accepting. The murderous terrorists came from a different source. These are not the Indians who live around the Chabad house.
Be prepared to have philosophical discussions with strange people seeking spirituality. At the same time, know when not to have such discussions! Be well-read, or at least have a voracious appetite to continue reading. Be ready to bring your children up to a stage where you will need to send them out for continued education.
You need to have a lot of patience. India is a bureaucratic jungle. It will infuriate you. I will do what I can to help, and you are most welcome to contact me further in this regard, at any time.
Others will have useful ideas based on their experience in Mumbai and will, of course, be of great assistance. Listen to them all and then forge your path.
If all this sounds like you need to be Superman and Superwoman, then I am sorry, but that is precisely what you need to aspire to be.
Reb Gavriel and Rebbetzin Rivki were exactly that — a superman and superwoman.
המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך
שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים
The text and pictures were taken by me and are copyright. However, it is my wish that as many people as possible read this essay and that they undertake to do something positive for the neshomos of the kedoshim. I am more than happy to supply the text and pictures to any outlet that wishes to reprint this essay, as long as any changes are agreed to by me before republication.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Palestinians: Leftist boats didn't bring enough food
Gaza disappointment: Palestinian source tells Ynet local residents disappointed by small quantities of food brought in aboard leftist 'peace boats'; some people left beach in disillusioned after realizing boats were mostly carrying activists
Ali Waked
Palestinian disappointment: A Gaza activist told Ynet Saturday that local residents were disappointed by the small quantities of food brought in by two boats carrying international leftist activists. "Many people thought these boats will make a significant contribution to break the siege, not only politically but also in terms of brining in goods, equipment, food, and medicine," he said. "However, once it turned out these boats contain too little food and mostly activists…some people left the beach disappointed."
Hundreds of Gazans reportedly received the leftist activists at the beach. A Hamas source told Ynet the initiative was proven successful, but added that "the Arab and Muslim world should draw lessons and learn from those dozens of activists, because they risked their lives at sea for the sake of Strip residents and against the siege."
The source also slammed Egypt for being "an inseparable part of the siege."
Palestinian boat near Gaza (Photo: AFP)
The wo boats, carrying 44 international left-wing activists, reached the Gaza shore around 6:00 pm Saturday. Earlier, Israel announced that it will allow the boats to reach the Strip.
Foreign Ministry official Aryeh Mekel said Israel allowed the boats to enter Gaza in order to "prevent a media-covered provocation at sea."
"We know who's on these boats and what they contain, and therefore we'll allow them to reach shore," he said. Meanwhile, dozens of Gazans headed to sea in fishing boats to welcome the leftist activists, who includeTunisian, German, and American nationals, as well as an Israeli activist.
Earlier, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Aviv Shiron told Ynet that Israel will allow the boats carrying left-wing activists to reach Gaza.
The Foreign Ministry slammed the leftists and said that they did not deserve to be referred to as "peace activists," branding them as a "handful of provocateurs seeking a public relations stunt who initiated a political protest aimed at boosting Hamas' regime of horrors in Gaza."
"How does such delusional journey promote peace?" the Foreign Ministry added. "What kind of contribution does this journey make to the promotion of ideas of reconciliation and compromise? None."
Israeli officials noted that genuine humanitarian groups can provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian population through existing land crossings, branding the leftist activists as "propagandists."
Earlier, Hamas Spokesman Sammy Abu Zuhri said that Israel's initial insistence on torpedoing the arrival of boats carrying international activists headed to Gaza "attests to the Israeli distress caused by this international peace initiative."
Anat Shalev contributed to the report
Majadele at Arab beauty pageant: Woman belongs at home
Science, culture and sports minister attends fifth annual contest as official representative, but makes his opinions clear by saying woman's role should be to build good family, career comes second. Nineteen-year-old Stephanie Zakkak takes crown
Sharon Roffer-Ofir
Dozens of excited spectators arrived at the northern town of Shfaram Sunday night to witness the crowning of this year's Arab beauty queen. While the 2008 title went to 19-year-old Stephanie Zakkak from Jaffa, Science, Culture and Sport Minister Raleb Majadele stole the show with his controversial statement that "the woman's role should be to build a good family, to be an aide to her husband and to stand by him".
The young Zakkak beat 11 contestants on her way to winning the fifth annual beauty pageant, sponsored by the Arab media in Israel. Outgoing queen Mary Abu-Arab got to pass the crown down to Zakkak.
"The beauty contest symbolizes the Arab woman's status in the 2000s. The possibilities that stand before her to achieve whatever she wants. There must be equality between women and men," said the former queen.
Northern District Commander Jamal Hakrush and his wife San were also at the pageant cheering on their daughter, contestant Nijem. The proud father said, "Those that are against this event don't understand that it's not against our culture.
"It's time to view the woman as an inseparable part of culture. Not only should she leave the house and develop a career, she must have a career."
Nijem's mother added, "This event is a vital and educational event. Beauty should be shown and not hidden. True that I am married to a man that has a career, but he has never stopped me from doing what I want and love."
Alongside the joy of the winners and the disappointment of the losers lied the dispute among the Arab public, some of which feel such pageants are inappropriate.
Majadele, who attended the pageant as minister said he had received phone calls from people asking him how he, a praying and traditional man, could crown the beauty queen.
Stephanie Zakkak, 2008 Arab beauty queen (Photo: Muhammad Amara)
The minister said his response to such questions was that his personal opinion is irrelevant, and as a minister, he must attend every event in the Arab sector in Israel.
Nonetheless, the minister did give his personal opinion, saying, "I would like to see the woman fill a central role in the building of a family according to the Arab society's world view and not that of the blind Israeli modern European society.
"The woman's role should be to build a good family, to be an aide to her husband and to stand by him."
The minister added that "a career woman in the Arab society is something that can only happen when the home and a family are at the center of the woman's life. A career woman that neglects her family is a home wrecker and not a career builder."
The new beauty queen however, was completely indifferent to this controversy. "It's an amazing experience; I recommend every girl my age experience this," said Zakkak, who won NIS 20,000 ($5,000), NIS 10,000 ($2,500) worth of jewelry and a year-long modeling contract.
Zakkak's mother Ilana said, "I knew my daughter would win. I am glad that lately people have progressed and have begun to realize that there is a place for such competitions. When I was her age I couldn't do this."
Comment: Welcome to the Arab mentality of the ME-this is the rule, not the exception in terms of Arabic thinking and values. Now you understand the "clash"-no, you still don't believe-ugh!
Conflict Zone
Will James Jones and Hillary Clinton butt heads over Middle East policy?
Eli Lake
The New Republic
What will be Barack Obama's policy towards the Middle East? During the campaign, this was a question that flummoxed partisans of both the Israeli and Palestinian causes. There was enough conflicting evidence of his intentions to lead everyone to believe that they would have a friend in the White House. But now, we have actual foreign policy appointments to look at. And, guess what? They haven't clarified the direction of his administration. In fact, there's a chance that we will be in store for at least four more years of muddle. His administration could be split by the same internal debates that divided the Bush administration.
During the Bush administration, the State Department was the source of every call for envoys, roadmaps, summits, and efforts to revive the peace process. And for most of the Bush era, these calls were rejected by the White House and Pentagon--which believed that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle was a symptom of deeper pathologies within the Islamic and Arab world, and not the underlying cause of Middle Eastern terrorism. Within the Obama administration, this dynamic is likely to be reversed. It may be the White House--and, more specifically, the likely national security advisor, James Jones --that will be the passionate proponent of peace processing. Or, as he told the newsletter Inside the Pentagon last month, "'Nothing is more important" to regional security in the Middle East than resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Jones, the retired commandant of the Marine Corps, has significant experience in the Middle East. Last November, Condoleezza Rice appointed him as her special envoy for Middle East security, with a particular emphasis on working with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian security services. Last August, he drafted a report on security in the Palestinian territories that is said to have been highly critical of Israel's policies in the territories and its attitude toward the Palestinian Authority's security services. The White House and State Department opted not to publish the report.
In August, Israel's leading newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported that the draft report challenged Israel's conception of its security interests in the West Bank as being overly broad, and that the IDF in particular was too dismissive of the Palestinian security services. The newspaper quoted one IDF officer as saying he expected the report would be "very harsh, and make Israel look very bad." Steve Rosen, the former director of foreign policy for AIPAC who was dismissed from his post after the federal government charged him and a colleague with leaking classified information to the press and a foreign official, told me, "In my experience, when you take a 'deep dive' into security issues in the territories, you very quickly come to tradeoffs between Israeli security and Palestinian rights. Successful counter-terror preventive and pre-emptive measures require highly intrusive intelligence collection that is onerous for the population of the area under surveillance. ... A third party tries to balance Israeli security and Palestinian rights with a different valence than an Israeli security agency."
In his interview with Inside the Pentagon, Jones said that the Palestinians should be granted increasing degrees of local sovereignty over the West Bank until an independent state is born--with an emphasis on giving the Palestinians experience with governance. On Sunday, Ha'aretz reported that Jones favors dispatching a NATO force to keep the peace in the interim. That's a plan that the Israeli government would likely fiercely resist on the grounds that the Jewish state's defense doctrine has always spurned the presence of foreign troops on its territory and that it could be a reprise of the disasters of the U.N. mission to Lebanon.
Now, consider his potential nemesis, Hillary Clinton. It is true that there is some doubt about where she ultimately lands on the Israel-Palestine question--confusion that followed her famous hug with Suha Arafat. But since becoming senator, she's been a persistent critic of Palestinian media and schooling, an issue that has traditionally been swept under the rug by the State Department and a central argument the Israeli right has used to warn against the delusions of the Oslo process. Clinton has described the teaching of anti-Israel views in Palestinian textbooks as "child abuse," and held hearings on the topic in an effort to get the Bush administration to do more on the issue.
By focusing on the underlying tenets of Palestinian culture, Senator Clinton has in a way made common cause with the Bush administration hawks. While General Jones wants to take steps now to empower Abbas and his Fatah party to take over a Palestinian state, Clinton is asking if even the Palestinian moderates are ready to govern. At AIPAC's annual policy conference in 2005, she said: "How do we expect to have a democratically elected Palestinian government if their textbooks are still preaching such hatred, and this if we allow this dehumanizing rhetoric to go unchallenged? Because what is happening is young minds are being infected with this anti-Semitism, and that is going to run counter to what we hope can happen over the next years as we do work for peace and stability."
And that's not the only place she has voiced loudly, and with a high degree of specificity, her support for Israeli policy. She had resoundingly rejected the idea of negotiating with Hamas; she has endorsed the security fence; and she supported a resolution sponsored by Senators Kyl and Lieberman that urged the White House to designate Iran's revolutionary guard as a terrorist organization, a measure opposed by both Obama and Biden. These stances have won many fans among pro-Israel hawks. "Senator Clinton's track record during her years in the senate has been outstanding," says Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "In addition to the public record, she has done many things quietly without seeking recognition that were significant in regards to the Middle East and other international concerns."
So does this mean that Jones and Clinton are on a collision course over Israel? Not necessarily. Clinton's hawkish pronouncements may simply have been a byproduct of representing New York in the Senate. And there are hawks who trust Jones because of his work on Iraq; in 2007, when he headed a Congressional commission to assess U.S. training of the Iraqi military, he warned against setting an arbitrary deadline for removing troops.
Then again, there are many reasons to believe that these differences over the Middle East are very real. When he speaks of his faith in the peace process, Jones isn't just mouthing the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy elite. He is speaking out of convictions born of experience on the ground. He will feel like he has unique authority to direct policy towards Palestine. Similarly, Clinton has gone much further than any previous secretary of state in her expressions of solidarity with a signature issue of the Israeli right. She has repeated these sentiments so many times that there's reason to believe that they are more than just pandering.
With domestic policy looming so large in the coming year, few people expect Obama to immediately dive into Middle Eastern diplomacy. Even devoted peace processors have little hope of progress, given the looming Hamas-Fatah civil war. But every president always turns to the issue, in the end--and when Obama makes that move, the Jones-Clinton tensions may reprise the great Powell-Cheney fights of yore.
Eli Lake is a contributing editor at The New Republic.
Eli Lake
The New Republic
What will be Barack Obama's policy towards the Middle East? During the campaign, this was a question that flummoxed partisans of both the Israeli and Palestinian causes. There was enough conflicting evidence of his intentions to lead everyone to believe that they would have a friend in the White House. But now, we have actual foreign policy appointments to look at. And, guess what? They haven't clarified the direction of his administration. In fact, there's a chance that we will be in store for at least four more years of muddle. His administration could be split by the same internal debates that divided the Bush administration.
During the Bush administration, the State Department was the source of every call for envoys, roadmaps, summits, and efforts to revive the peace process. And for most of the Bush era, these calls were rejected by the White House and Pentagon--which believed that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle was a symptom of deeper pathologies within the Islamic and Arab world, and not the underlying cause of Middle Eastern terrorism. Within the Obama administration, this dynamic is likely to be reversed. It may be the White House--and, more specifically, the likely national security advisor, James Jones --that will be the passionate proponent of peace processing. Or, as he told the newsletter Inside the Pentagon last month, "'Nothing is more important" to regional security in the Middle East than resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Jones, the retired commandant of the Marine Corps, has significant experience in the Middle East. Last November, Condoleezza Rice appointed him as her special envoy for Middle East security, with a particular emphasis on working with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian security services. Last August, he drafted a report on security in the Palestinian territories that is said to have been highly critical of Israel's policies in the territories and its attitude toward the Palestinian Authority's security services. The White House and State Department opted not to publish the report.
In August, Israel's leading newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported that the draft report challenged Israel's conception of its security interests in the West Bank as being overly broad, and that the IDF in particular was too dismissive of the Palestinian security services. The newspaper quoted one IDF officer as saying he expected the report would be "very harsh, and make Israel look very bad." Steve Rosen, the former director of foreign policy for AIPAC who was dismissed from his post after the federal government charged him and a colleague with leaking classified information to the press and a foreign official, told me, "In my experience, when you take a 'deep dive' into security issues in the territories, you very quickly come to tradeoffs between Israeli security and Palestinian rights. Successful counter-terror preventive and pre-emptive measures require highly intrusive intelligence collection that is onerous for the population of the area under surveillance. ... A third party tries to balance Israeli security and Palestinian rights with a different valence than an Israeli security agency."
In his interview with Inside the Pentagon, Jones said that the Palestinians should be granted increasing degrees of local sovereignty over the West Bank until an independent state is born--with an emphasis on giving the Palestinians experience with governance. On Sunday, Ha'aretz reported that Jones favors dispatching a NATO force to keep the peace in the interim. That's a plan that the Israeli government would likely fiercely resist on the grounds that the Jewish state's defense doctrine has always spurned the presence of foreign troops on its territory and that it could be a reprise of the disasters of the U.N. mission to Lebanon.
Now, consider his potential nemesis, Hillary Clinton. It is true that there is some doubt about where she ultimately lands on the Israel-Palestine question--confusion that followed her famous hug with Suha Arafat. But since becoming senator, she's been a persistent critic of Palestinian media and schooling, an issue that has traditionally been swept under the rug by the State Department and a central argument the Israeli right has used to warn against the delusions of the Oslo process. Clinton has described the teaching of anti-Israel views in Palestinian textbooks as "child abuse," and held hearings on the topic in an effort to get the Bush administration to do more on the issue.
By focusing on the underlying tenets of Palestinian culture, Senator Clinton has in a way made common cause with the Bush administration hawks. While General Jones wants to take steps now to empower Abbas and his Fatah party to take over a Palestinian state, Clinton is asking if even the Palestinian moderates are ready to govern. At AIPAC's annual policy conference in 2005, she said: "How do we expect to have a democratically elected Palestinian government if their textbooks are still preaching such hatred, and this if we allow this dehumanizing rhetoric to go unchallenged? Because what is happening is young minds are being infected with this anti-Semitism, and that is going to run counter to what we hope can happen over the next years as we do work for peace and stability."
And that's not the only place she has voiced loudly, and with a high degree of specificity, her support for Israeli policy. She had resoundingly rejected the idea of negotiating with Hamas; she has endorsed the security fence; and she supported a resolution sponsored by Senators Kyl and Lieberman that urged the White House to designate Iran's revolutionary guard as a terrorist organization, a measure opposed by both Obama and Biden. These stances have won many fans among pro-Israel hawks. "Senator Clinton's track record during her years in the senate has been outstanding," says Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "In addition to the public record, she has done many things quietly without seeking recognition that were significant in regards to the Middle East and other international concerns."
So does this mean that Jones and Clinton are on a collision course over Israel? Not necessarily. Clinton's hawkish pronouncements may simply have been a byproduct of representing New York in the Senate. And there are hawks who trust Jones because of his work on Iraq; in 2007, when he headed a Congressional commission to assess U.S. training of the Iraqi military, he warned against setting an arbitrary deadline for removing troops.
Then again, there are many reasons to believe that these differences over the Middle East are very real. When he speaks of his faith in the peace process, Jones isn't just mouthing the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy elite. He is speaking out of convictions born of experience on the ground. He will feel like he has unique authority to direct policy towards Palestine. Similarly, Clinton has gone much further than any previous secretary of state in her expressions of solidarity with a signature issue of the Israeli right. She has repeated these sentiments so many times that there's reason to believe that they are more than just pandering.
With domestic policy looming so large in the coming year, few people expect Obama to immediately dive into Middle Eastern diplomacy. Even devoted peace processors have little hope of progress, given the looming Hamas-Fatah civil war. But every president always turns to the issue, in the end--and when Obama makes that move, the Jones-Clinton tensions may reprise the great Powell-Cheney fights of yore.
Eli Lake is a contributing editor at The New Republic.
Media Fail to Connect Dots on Bailout
Dan Kennedy
Monday, December 01, 2008
Have you noticed that the media largely fail to connect the dots between related events? In all the reporting on the auto industry’s ills, little is said about the government as the chief cause. Politicians holler at auto executives in hearings and beat their chests in interviews, but never mention Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mileage standards. Just like unaffordable union contracts (mentioned incredibly often by the same politicians who now wish to give the unions expanded), unchecked power wreaks the same destruction in other industries via the Employee Free Choice Act (which steals away free choice).
In all their reporting of how the sub-prime mortgage meltdown purportedly triggered the financial industry collapse (as a child’s sneeze might topple a meticulously constructed, floor to ceiling house of cards), they uttered hardly a word about Barney Frank and Gang’s push for financial institutions to provide mortgages to the woefully unqualified. Nobody mentioned the the Clinton Administration’s push for home ownership as a God-given right to be facilitated at any cost, let alone the years of criminal conspiracy and obscene executive compensation at Fannie and Freddie.
The next big mess in the making, where the dots are not being connected, is the attack on the fast food industry, intended to cripple its growth, slash its size and is certain to eliminate millions of entry level jobs for which there are no horizontal equivalents.
On Nov. 20, MSNBC reported on a new scientific study, stating that a ban on fast food restaurants’ TV advertising could reduce obesity in pre-teen children by 18 percent.
Unless we have an unreported epidemic of 12-year-old car thieves driving themselves to McDonalds, I have different statistical voodoo. Mine suggests that responsible parenting could reduce childhood obesity by 100 percent. But that’s not my point.
This is another in a series of political and media attacks on this industry, laying the groundwork for successful class action lawsuits by state governments and consumers. It’s an exact replication of the assault on the tobacco industry, which made so many lobbyists and lawyers rich, got so many politicians so much time in the spotlight, and accomplished absolutely nothing with regard to public health.
The fast food industry is looking like Custer surrounded by Indians. You can see over there, the ban on trans fats; over there, new menu laws, intended as prejudicial toward and damaging to the fast food chains; over there, the Employee Free Choice Act; over there, silly science; and over there, the media constantly blaming the industry for everything from childhood obesity to adult diabetes to out of control health care costs.
Opening new fast food restaurants has even been outlawed in parts of Los Angeles on the grounds that they contribute to childhood obesity. (Outlawing sitting for endless hours on an ever widening posterior while playing video games and eating mountains of junk food supplied by parents is not considered politically attractive.)
These are neither accidental nor unrelated incidents. To think so is hopelessly naïve. If you go back and carefully examine the build-up to the full-fledged war on tobacco, you will see the parallels, step by step. It is deja vu, all over again.
This train is now just leaving the station, coal being shoveled into its furnace, steam and power building. It will gain speed and strength, cross the point of no return, and slam into this giant industry unless de-railed early. The destruction: skyrocketing prices at the surviving chains (a tax on the poor and middle class), the shuttering of thousands if not tens of thousands of outlets, the loss of millions of jobs in the food industry, an epic loss of property and sales tax revenues to communities, the loss of ad revenues to media (which in turn provide tax revenue and jobs), and untold damage to franchising – a major force in guiding people, including veterans and minorities, into business for themselves. Of course, zero real impact on public health.
The impending wreck is another of too many examples of government not just picking but creating winners and losers in business. And it is part of an even bigger tabletop of puzzle pieces the media views and reports as separate and unrelated when, in reality, they are all strategically connected to expansion of government control of business.
Maybe it will bring the fast food industry to the federal table for its multi-billion dollar bailout before it is all over. Super-size my bailout, please.
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Recent Musings
Burt Prelutsky
Monday, December 01, 2008
I admit I am not an economist. The truth is, I have trouble balancing my checkbook. Having said that, I can’t figure out how we can compete in a global economy. When China uses slave labor and other countries pay their workers a few dollars a day, it seems to me that we’re trying to fight with one arm tied behind us and a small dog biting our ankles. I know even less about cars than I do about economics, so I have no way of knowing if American cars are as good as those produced by the Germans and the Japanese. But I did hear recently that when pensions and benefits are factored in, a UAW union member makes about $78-an-hour. That works out to about $156,000-a-year. I’m not suggesting that an American factory worker isn’t worth it, but how can the company paying out that kind of money possibly sell a car at a competitive price?
I don’t have answers, you understand, I’m just asking questions. Another question that comes to mind relates to George W. Bush. One of my readers took me to task for suggesting that the President didn’t do anything to ward off the financial crisis. He claimed that Cal Thomas, among others, had written about Bush’s attempts to do something about Fannie Mae before the crisis hit. My response is that it’s not the job of Mr. Thomas to carry the President’s message to America. The presidency is not supposed to be a covert operation. The President is the man with the bully pulpit, and if he isn’t prepared to use it, he probably shouldn’t have it. And I’m not referring to those dog-and-pony press conferences. I don’t need to see Helen Thomas hogging camera time, but I do need to hear what the president thinks and why he thinks it. Which is why I hope Obama makes it a practice to give weekly or bi-weekly reports, and I don’t need to see the first lady, the first kids or even the first dog while he’s doing it.
Next, I don’t ever want to hear a Democrat claim, as I believe Joe Biden did, that paying taxes is patriotic. Paying taxes is about as patriotic as going to the bathroom. In other words, at times, it’s necessary, but it’s always compulsive. I believe that for a thing to be patriotic, it has to be done on a voluntary basis. I suppose a case could be made that if a person paid more than he owed, he was being patriotic. So, as an example to the rest of us, I would love to see such tax-loving liberals as George Soros, Mr. and Mrs. John Kerry and all the various Kennedys, pay at the rate they would if most of their income didn’t come to them in the low-taxed form of trusts and off-shore accounts.
By the way, aren’t there any liberals who are embarrassed by the fact that their single biggest benefactor, George Soros, not only doesn’t pay his fair share of taxes, but made his billions the old-fashioned way -- through the tawdry practice of currency manipulation? Instead of using his ill-gotten gains to promote his left-wing agenda, I keep wishing Soros would simply buy an island where he could build a palace, plunk a crown on his fat head and make all his subjects call him King George.
Most people have an odd relationship with money. For one thing, they seem to take it personally when an athlete makes, say, $20 million-a-year. They carry on as if it’s coming out of their pocket. I mean, would you all feel better if the Steinbrenners kept all their moolah to themselves instead of paying it to Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez? It reminds me of when people used to carry on as if they’d been mugged when it came to the costs of the space program. I used to point out that NASA wasn’t taking that money, sticking it in a space capsule and shooting it to the moon. The money stayed right here on earth and went to buy materials and pay salaries.
On the other hand, even I know there’s a time to flaunt it and a time to keep a low profile. A while back, a lot of noses were out of joint because three fat cats flew from Detroit to Washington, D.C., on private jets in order to beg for money. Not only was it unseemly, but they blew a golden opportunity to garner decent publicity. Did nobody in the PR departments at Ford, Chrysler and G.M., even consider having the CEOs form a convoy and drive their company’s cars 520 miles to the nation’s capitol? While I am aware that, after having been severely scolded, the three stooges left their jets at home the second time they went begging, that only made them look like wimpy snobs.
Still, when AIG, after getting bailed out by the American taxpayer, hands out bonuses to its executives, and when the world’s leaders gather for dinner at the White House and toast each other during a financial meltdown with wine costing $500-a-bottle, you can’t help wondering if Paris Hilton or perhaps Lindsay Lohan is handling everyone’s PR these days.
It’s no secret that I am not looking forward to an Obama administration. The notion that the liberals will control the House, the Senate and the Oval Office, for the foreseeable future makes my blood run cold. The mental image that first comes to mind is a bull in a china shop, but the ensuing damage in that case would be inadvertent. The bull, after all, isn’t looking to destroy the crockery. It is merely looking for the quickest way back to the farm and the cows, whereas the liberals are looking to create an America in their own cockeyed image. That makes me think of vandals taking knives to the Mona Lisa or firebugs burning down a virgin forest.
Many people are questioning why Obama, the alleged agent of change, is filling his administration with a lot of Clinton re-treads. I am reminded of what took place in Germany after World War II. Suddenly, it seemed like all the mayors and bureaucrats were former Nazis. The explanation was that after a dozen years of Hitler, only the Nazis had the necessary leadership experience. Well, when you realize that since 1980, the only Democratic president was Bill Clinton, it figures that Obama would be forced to furnish his White House with second-hand goods from the Clinton thrift shop.
With that said, I have found one reason, other than not having to hear John McCain begin every other sentence with “My friends,” for cheering Obama’s election. As of this moment, he has removed Rahm Emanuel from the House, Bill Richardson and Janet Napolitano from their governors’ mansions, and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton from the U.S. Senate. Now if he can only find new jobs for Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Dick Durbin, Barney Frank, John Murtha and Charles Schumer, heck, even I might vote for him in 2012!
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
The Jewish version of Arafat’s “Phased Plan”
Ted Belman
Judea and Samaria activist Yechiel Leiter is promoting a plan that calls for immediate steps that will lead to the annexation of some 50% of Judea and Samaria. “There are those who fear talking about annexing 50%, because that means giving up the other 50%,” he told. Manighut Yahudit is one of those opposed.
I’m with Leitner. In fact, three years ago, I recommended that Israel Divide and Conquer
The US is seeking to divide and conquer by isolating Hamas in Gaza and reinforcing Fatah in Ramallah. I go one better. I propose that Israel erect a fence around Area “A”, as delineated by Oslo, and annex the rest of the West Bank. Israel would thus divide the West Bank Arabs into two groups, those within Area “A” (1,000,000) and those (300,000) in the annexed land. Gaza with its 1.1 million Arabs would revert to being part of Egypt or at least would look to Egypt. All terrorists in the annexed lands and their families would have to be expelled to Gaza. The rest would have to be given the option over time of becoming Israeli citizens. These Arabs would be polled on whether they want to stay in Israel under those conditions. Assuming that they would overwhelmingly so elect, that would change everything. There would be more Arabs living in Israel then in Area “A”. It would strengthen Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Borders and Jerusalem would no longer be negotiable.
Area “A would be given autonomy and would be connected to Jericho and Jordan by a land link. These Arabs would be given the choice of good or bad relations including economic relations. The same choice could be given to the Arabs in Gaza.
Sounds good to me but what are the impediments?
First of all, this plan would attempt to divide the Palestinians. The 300,000 would in effect be doing what’s in their best interests without regard to their brothers in Area “A” and Gaza. Over time, I believe their self interest would trump their unity. Furthermore, any violence would result in expulsion. As long as we salve their conscience by offering a good economic deal to their brothers, they would accept the division. After all, they already accepted the idea that only a token number of refugees could return to Israel.
Secondly, it would mean the end of their dream of Palestine. This may seem like a big deal, but is it? Fatah always believed in the destruction of Israel by phases. Palestine didn’t drive them, otherwise they would have compromised to achieve it. Hamas also rejects the idea of Palestine and prefers to destroy Israel instead. The “Palestinians” in Israel and Jordan are conflicted. The issue for the Arabs of the Middle East has always been the destruction of Israel rather than the creation of Palestine.
The US and the EU would accept this solution if the “Palestinians” did. After all, this plan would ensure that the problem is solved without the creation of a failed state which would also be an economic basket case and be prone to trouble making.
Many would point out that it isn’t fair that Israel leaves only 40% of the West Bank for 80% of the West Bank Arab residents. Once they accept that they aren’t getting their own state, this won’t matter. What matters is that what is left is economically viable.
The task for the West would be to solve the statelessness of the refugees in Syria and elsewhere, get Gaza integrated with Egypt and get Jordan to work with the Palestinians in Area “A”. If these countries didn’t want to annex these territories and offer the inhabitants citizenship then the West could devise a system where they could be accorded passports. Either a state would be created for this purpose or the West would recognize passports issued by them though they didn’t declare a state. No biggy. Let’s call it a provisional state.
The beauty of this Plan is that it doesn’t depend on a peace process or the agreement of the PA. There is no land to be conquered. Its like a security measure. Just build the fence in a different place and annex the land. Of course legislation would have to be passed to remove the jurisdiction of the HC of Israel. Kadima has stated their intention to unilaterally set the borders of Israel. This Plan does just that but selects borders more advantageous to Israel. In both cases only Israel would recognize those borders. It would take years if ever before the world recognized such borders. Israel has lived for over fifty years without recognized borders. Many countries have border disputes. Life goes on.
For this plan to succeed, Israel has to make it clear that Palestine, Jerusalem and the “right of return” are off the table. The PA would be given the choice to govern Area “A’ and if they decline to do so, Israel would disband the PA and work through local Mayors like they did before Oslo. Israel would be able to create good government in Area “A” whereas the US is failing to do so in Iraq. In comparison, it’s a piece of cake.
Divide and conquer.
Not mentioned in this proposal is the idea of offering compensation, to any Arab in Israel who is not a citizen, to leave.
Manighut Yahudit wants to keep it all which means that a way has to be found to induce the Arabs to leave. To annex all but area “A” now wouldn’t preclude annexing the rest later. It would be the Jewish version of the “phased Plan”.
Ted Belman
Judea and Samaria activist Yechiel Leiter is promoting a plan that calls for immediate steps that will lead to the annexation of some 50% of Judea and Samaria. “There are those who fear talking about annexing 50%, because that means giving up the other 50%,” he told. Manighut Yahudit is one of those opposed.
I’m with Leitner. In fact, three years ago, I recommended that Israel Divide and Conquer
The US is seeking to divide and conquer by isolating Hamas in Gaza and reinforcing Fatah in Ramallah. I go one better. I propose that Israel erect a fence around Area “A”, as delineated by Oslo, and annex the rest of the West Bank. Israel would thus divide the West Bank Arabs into two groups, those within Area “A” (1,000,000) and those (300,000) in the annexed land. Gaza with its 1.1 million Arabs would revert to being part of Egypt or at least would look to Egypt. All terrorists in the annexed lands and their families would have to be expelled to Gaza. The rest would have to be given the option over time of becoming Israeli citizens. These Arabs would be polled on whether they want to stay in Israel under those conditions. Assuming that they would overwhelmingly so elect, that would change everything. There would be more Arabs living in Israel then in Area “A”. It would strengthen Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Borders and Jerusalem would no longer be negotiable.
Area “A would be given autonomy and would be connected to Jericho and Jordan by a land link. These Arabs would be given the choice of good or bad relations including economic relations. The same choice could be given to the Arabs in Gaza.
Sounds good to me but what are the impediments?
First of all, this plan would attempt to divide the Palestinians. The 300,000 would in effect be doing what’s in their best interests without regard to their brothers in Area “A” and Gaza. Over time, I believe their self interest would trump their unity. Furthermore, any violence would result in expulsion. As long as we salve their conscience by offering a good economic deal to their brothers, they would accept the division. After all, they already accepted the idea that only a token number of refugees could return to Israel.
Secondly, it would mean the end of their dream of Palestine. This may seem like a big deal, but is it? Fatah always believed in the destruction of Israel by phases. Palestine didn’t drive them, otherwise they would have compromised to achieve it. Hamas also rejects the idea of Palestine and prefers to destroy Israel instead. The “Palestinians” in Israel and Jordan are conflicted. The issue for the Arabs of the Middle East has always been the destruction of Israel rather than the creation of Palestine.
The US and the EU would accept this solution if the “Palestinians” did. After all, this plan would ensure that the problem is solved without the creation of a failed state which would also be an economic basket case and be prone to trouble making.
Many would point out that it isn’t fair that Israel leaves only 40% of the West Bank for 80% of the West Bank Arab residents. Once they accept that they aren’t getting their own state, this won’t matter. What matters is that what is left is economically viable.
The task for the West would be to solve the statelessness of the refugees in Syria and elsewhere, get Gaza integrated with Egypt and get Jordan to work with the Palestinians in Area “A”. If these countries didn’t want to annex these territories and offer the inhabitants citizenship then the West could devise a system where they could be accorded passports. Either a state would be created for this purpose or the West would recognize passports issued by them though they didn’t declare a state. No biggy. Let’s call it a provisional state.
The beauty of this Plan is that it doesn’t depend on a peace process or the agreement of the PA. There is no land to be conquered. Its like a security measure. Just build the fence in a different place and annex the land. Of course legislation would have to be passed to remove the jurisdiction of the HC of Israel. Kadima has stated their intention to unilaterally set the borders of Israel. This Plan does just that but selects borders more advantageous to Israel. In both cases only Israel would recognize those borders. It would take years if ever before the world recognized such borders. Israel has lived for over fifty years without recognized borders. Many countries have border disputes. Life goes on.
For this plan to succeed, Israel has to make it clear that Palestine, Jerusalem and the “right of return” are off the table. The PA would be given the choice to govern Area “A’ and if they decline to do so, Israel would disband the PA and work through local Mayors like they did before Oslo. Israel would be able to create good government in Area “A” whereas the US is failing to do so in Iraq. In comparison, it’s a piece of cake.
Divide and conquer.
Not mentioned in this proposal is the idea of offering compensation, to any Arab in Israel who is not a citizen, to leave.
Manighut Yahudit wants to keep it all which means that a way has to be found to induce the Arabs to leave. To annex all but area “A” now wouldn’t preclude annexing the rest later. It would be the Jewish version of the “phased Plan”.
Ted Belman
Navy set to stop Gaza-bound Libyan boat
YAAKOV KATZ, Herb Keinon and Shelly Paz , THE JERUSALEM POST
Israel will likely stop a Libyan boat that on Monday is scheduled to try and sail into the Gaza Strip port, defense officials said on Sunday.
Independent Palestinian lawmaker Jamal Khoudari said the ship was carrying food, medicine, blankets and powdered milk, and after docking in Egypt, was set to sail from a Libyan Port to Gaza on Monday. "This ship is coming to Gaza to help the Palestinian people who are under siege," Khoudari told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Gaza. "This ship is safe and will help us since it is carrying food and medicine. There is no reason to stop it."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak met Thursday night to discuss the ship and according to officials, decided not to allow it to arrive in Gaza. The Israeli Navy has been put on high alert and ships have been given orders to stop the boat as it enters Israeli waters.
"We will treat this boat different than the earlier ones that were allowed into Gaza," one official said. "Libya is a hostile state to Israel and what guarantees do we have that the boat is not carrying weapons and explosives for Hamas?"
Senior Foreign Ministry officials said a decision on whether to allow the boat in would only be taken when it approached Israel's territorial waters. A spokesman for Olmert declined comment.
Since September Israel has allowed into the Gaza Strip three boats chartered by the US-based Free Gaza movement that set sail from Cyprus.
Meanwhile, Barak decided to keep the crossings into the Gaza Strip closed on Monday after the Kassam landed in Sderot, sending one person into shock. Another rocket landed in an open field, causing no harm.
MK Zevulun Orlev's visit to Sderot's hesder yeshiva on Sunday was interrupted by a Kassam rocket that fell only a few hundred meters from where he was standing.
"I came to the yeshiva to check the progress of fortifying the institute, where 500 students are under daily threat," Orlev said. "The rabbi of the yeshiva and I were sitting in his office, which is not protected, when the alarm was activated. We started running to the nearest concrete shelter, and while we were running we heard the distant explosion of a Kassam. The second we took shelter, another Kassam exploded. This time it sounded close, probably 200 meters from us." Though Orlev, a leader of the now-defunct National Religious Party, was shaken, he did not think residents of the area should leave Sderot and the surrounding towns and Kibbutzim.
"I don't think they're the ones who need to leave, but that this government should be replaced. It's clear that the IDF will have to operate inside the Gaza Strip sooner or later, and I believe that the longer we wait, the more victims this operation will cost us," he said.
He added that the truce with Hamas was "a fool's peace," and false.
"Eventually, Israel will have to face Hamas, which in the meantime is gaining strength and arms," he said.
The government informed the High Court on Sunday that it will allocate money to complete the construction of security rooms for all 8,000 families living in a radius of 4.5 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. The state's representative, Attorney Aner Hellman, asked the court to give it until December 10 to submit a definitive statement after the cabinet meets on Sunday to approve the decision.
The funding, estimated at about NIS 500 million, will be allocated as part of a government emergency program to cope with an anticipated recession as a result of the world economic crisis. In February, the government allocated funding to build security rooms for 3,000 of the 8,000 families.
Dan Izenberg contributed to this report.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702378402&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Lt. General Moshe Ya'alon
Caroline Gick
Dear Friends,
I know that you all share my deep concern for Israel's security. And as you know, the threats Israel faces from Iran and Syria and from their Palestinian and Lebanese terror proxies increase every day. Then too, the rising tide of Islamic totalitarianism throughout the Arab world raises the specter of future Islamic takeovers of Egypt and Jordan. Israel has the military capabilities to weather this storm and even emerge victorious. Unfortunately, for too long now, it has been led by failed leaders who lack both the moral courage and the strategic wisdom to defend the country, to instruct the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the coming wars, or to prepare the public for the challenges the country must face.
On February 10, the Israeli people will have a chance to change this situation. Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu is currently leading all other parties in the polls and today seems poised to form the next government.
Recently, a great leader, who has both the strategic wisdom and the moral fiber to take on and meet Israel's massive security challenges threw his hat into the political ring and joined Likud. Former IDF Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon announced his intention to run in this month's Likud Knesset primaries. Those primaries will determine Likud's candidate slate in the elections. Depending on how Lt. Gen. Ya'alon places in those primaries, he will either be relegated to the Knesset's back benches or he will be appointed Israel's next Defense Minister.
Given the stakes, in my view it is absolutely imperative that Lt. Gen. Ya'alon place in the top five in the Likud's primaries. As you all know, running a successful campaign requires funding. Lt. Gen. Ya'alon, who only joined Likud a few weeks ago, finds himself at a severe deficit in that department in comparison to his fellow candidates, who have been planning their primary bids for several months. He needs to raise about $200,000 to run the type of campaign he'll need and the primary day operation required to gain a top spot.
According to Israeli campaign finance laws, it is legal for foreign nationals to donate up to $2400 per household to primary election campaigns if the money is received by the deadline set by the electoral commission. The deadline for Likud fundraising for the current primary is December 6.
I just made my first political contribution and pledged that amount – or NIS 10,000, for Israelis -- and believe me, I'm not a wealthy lady. I just think that Israel's survival may well depend on Lt. Gen. Ya'alon becoming defense minister.
I strongly urge you all to contribute to his campaign to the extent you are able in the short time remaining. He is an extraordinary man and a true Israeli patriot.
His campaign's website has set up the following link to send wire transfers to his campaign. Please take a few moments to fill out the form and help out.
http://yaalon.org.il/formwired782.html
If you have any further questions, please contact Guy Seeman, his campaign's international coordinator. Guy's email is guyseemann@gmail.com. He is available to take your calls as well. You may contact him directly on his mobile phone: 972-54-724-4172 if you have any questions about contributing.
I am sorry for sending out this request in such a massive and urgent way. As you know, I have never done anything like this before. And I would never consider taking your time for something that I didn't believe was anything other than critical for the future of Israel.
Below you will find a column that I wrote about the Lt. Gen. Ya'alon in September. Perhaps after reading it, you will understand why I feel as strongly as I feel about his candidacy and will be moved, as I am, to help him.
Thank you all for your support for the State of Israel and for taking the time to consider this request.
All the best,
Caroline Glick
A road paved on reality
Sep. 25, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
Listening to the news in Israel these days, it is hard to escape the feeling that the Israeli political discourse has become dangerously irrelevant.
Take Iran for example. On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the heads of UN member states, "The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."
Ahmadinejad then promised that Israel will soon be destroyed - for the benefit of humanity.
For these remarks, he received enthusiastic applause from the world leaders gathered at the UN General Assembly.
And how has Israel responded? It hasn't done anything in particular. And it has no intention of doing anything in particular.
This point was made clear to the public on Wednesday when Israel's new UN ambassador, Gavriela Shalev, gave an interview to Army Radio. While bemoaning Ahmadinejad's warm reception, she said that the world leaders were probably just being diplomatic. She noted that many of their ambassadors say nice things about Israel to her in private.
Israel's woman at the UN devoted most of her interview to defending the UN. In fact, she said she believes it is her duty not simply to defend Israel to the world body, but to defend the UN to Israelis. As she put it, her job is "correcting the UN's image in the eyes of the people of Israel."
Shalev's appointment to the UN was the work of Foreign Minister - and would-be prime minister - Tzipi Livni. And her view of her role as Israel's ambassador is strictly in keeping with what Livni perceives as the job of Israel's top diplomats. They are the world's emissaries to Israel.
Livni has spent the better part of the past three years at the Foreign Ministry telling us that the UN is our friend, the Europeans are our friends and that the Americans and Europeans and the UN will take care of Iran for us. The Palestinians are also our friends.
As anti-Semitic forces grow throughout the world, Livni has not communicated one single policy for defending Israel abroad that doesn't involve the kindness of strangers. Her response to Ahmadinejad's speech was a case in point.
The one thing the woman who believes that she has the right to lead the country without being elected by anyone thinks that Israel should do in response to Ahmadinejad's call for our physical destruction is to object to Iran's bid to join the UN Security Council. Livni's only concrete response to Ahmadinejad's promise to annihilate us was to issue a directive to Israel's embassies telling our diplomats to ask their host governments not to support Iran's bid for Security Council membership.
Livni doesn't actually think Iran is Israel's greatest challenge. The Palestinians are. And as far as she is concerned, giving the Palestinians a state by handing over Judea and Samaria (and Jerusalem, although she never says it outright), as quickly as possible is Israel's most urgent task. We need a two-state solution and we need it NOW, she says.
Neither Livni nor her colleagues in Kadima, Labor and Meretz, nor her supporters in the Israeli media ever bother to acknowledge the troublesome, inconvenient fact that the Palestinians don't want a state. They want to destroy our state.
This basic fact was made clear - yet again - on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Livni took time out of her busy schedule of political meetings with Labor, Shas and Meretz leaders with whom she is attempting to build a government without being elected by anyone, to meet with Fatah's chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei. Although Livni refused to tell us what she talked about, she promised that progress was made toward the urgent imperative of forming a Palestinian state.
But Qurei was not so enthusiastic. In fact, he was contemptuous of Livni and of the very notion of peaceful coexistence between the Palestinians and Israel. After the negotiating session, Qurei told Reuters that if the talks toward an Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem collapse, the Palestinians will renew their terror war against Israel. In his words, "If the talks reached a dead end, what do we do? Capitulate? Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right."
Just to make sure he understood Qurei properly, the reporter asked whether that meant that the Palestinians would renew their suicide bombing campaign against Israelis. Qurei responded, "All forms of resistance."
We have been here, of course, a million times before. This is the same threat that Yassir Arafat and his men have made - and implemented - repeatedly since signing the Oslo Accords with Israel 15 years ago. They use terror and negotiations in tandem to squeeze Israel into giving away more and more of its land. And it works.
When Livni heard about Qurei's remarks, she called him and reportedly told him that they were unacceptable. So he said he was taken out of context. No skin off his back.
He knew Livni wouldn't do anything. At the same time that Livni said his remarks were unacceptable, she pledged to continue negotiating Israel's surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with him for as long as she remains in power.
Today, Livni and her colleagues in Kadima, Labor, Meretz and Shas are working fervently toward forming a new government that will continue holding irrelevant but dangerous negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians, and pretending that Iran's nuclear weapons are not going to be used against Israel. They argue that we need the "political stability" that they can provide us in this dangerous time.
The Israeli media gives these fantasies their full support. Indeed, anyone who notices that the world is sitting back and allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons or points out that the Palestinians don't want a state is immediately shot down as an alarmist and an extremist.
This national discourse - which has been the only one permitted in the country since the advent of the "peace process" with the PLO 15 years ago - is Israel's Achilles' heel. Until the general public is set clear on the reality of the world confronting the country, there is no chance that Israel will take the necessary steps to defend itself and ensure that it survives.
Understanding this basic fact, former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon has taken it upon himself to tell the Israeli public the truth about the world we live in. Ya'alon is a rare bird among Israel's current pantheon of luminaries. He is an honest man who lives by his principles, and he doesn't bend them, ever.
Last week Ya'alon published a book called The Longer Shorter Road in Hebrew. Ya'alon, whose tour of duty as Chief of Staff was unceremoniously cut short by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in June 2005 due to his trenchant opposition to Sharon's planned withdrawal of IDF forces and Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip, has written a book that sets out the facts of life clearly, credibly and passionately.
The book's title is derived from a speech that Ya'alon's commander, Yoram Ya'ir, gave to his officers during the First Lebanon War. Ya'ir explained that short-cuts are not necessarily better than long roads. In fact, it is often better to take the longest route. As Ya'ir put it, "There is a long road that is short and there are short roads that are long."
Ya'alon uses Ya'ir's point to demonstrate that the Israeli Left's insistence on peace "now" and a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict "now" has placed Israel on a strategic trajectory that has brought it, and will continue to bring it only bloodshed and danger. Israel's enemies in the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Syria and Iran view Israel's insistence on finding immediate solutions to the threats it faces as a sign that Israeli society is collapsing.
As a consequence, every step that Israel has made toward appeasing its neighbors - from recognizing the PLO and bringing Arafat and his legions into Judea, Samaria and Gaza; to retreating from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005; to failing to properly prosecute the Second Lebanon War in 2006; to doing nothing to combat Hamas's regime in Gaza since 2007; to embracing the false paradigm of peace at Annapolis last November - has strengthened their conviction that Israel can and will be destroyed.
Ya'alon also dwells on the moral collapse of Israel's political and media elite and that collapse's adverse impact on the senior command echelons of the IDF. The abandonment of Zionist values and public and private integrity by our politicians and media has cast and kept Israel on a path of self-delusion, where the only thing that matters is immediate gratification. Politicians promise the public "hope" based on illusions of peace-around-the-corner to win their votes. The media support the politicians' lies both because of the media's post-Zionist ideological uniformity and due to their refusal to acknowledge that their populist demands for peace "now" have brought Israel only war and danger.
Ya'alon's book is part memoir and part polemic. He reminds Israelis of what it is about us that makes us a great people, worthy of our land and privileged to defend it. At the same time, he chastises our failed leaders who have tricked the public into following a strategic path that endangers us. His book's greatest contribution is not in providing a set path forward, but in courageously and unrelentingly explaining the reality that surrounds us today and in showing the public how it is that we have arrived in our current predicament.
In exposing himself, his values and his beliefs to the public, and juxtaposing his own leadership experience and personal integrity with the corruption and weakness of our political and intellectual leaders, Ya'alon is telling the public in a very clear way that there is an alternative to defeatism and self-delusion, and that he - and we the public - represent that alternative, that "longer shorter road."
Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their colleagues on the Left in the Knesset and the media insist that we not take that longer road to security and peace. In fact, they deny that it even exists. They attempt to convince us that elections are unnecessary by arguing that there is no difference between political parties today, because their short cut to defeat is the only path available to us.
It must be fervently hoped that Ya'alon will soon enter the political fray. Like the Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu, Ya'alon is proof positive that Livni and her cronies are lying. There are great differences between those that would lead us and the paths they would take.
And the only road to safety is the long road that is paved on reality.
--
---------------------------------
Caroline Glick
www.CarolineGlick.com
Dear Friends,
I know that you all share my deep concern for Israel's security. And as you know, the threats Israel faces from Iran and Syria and from their Palestinian and Lebanese terror proxies increase every day. Then too, the rising tide of Islamic totalitarianism throughout the Arab world raises the specter of future Islamic takeovers of Egypt and Jordan. Israel has the military capabilities to weather this storm and even emerge victorious. Unfortunately, for too long now, it has been led by failed leaders who lack both the moral courage and the strategic wisdom to defend the country, to instruct the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the coming wars, or to prepare the public for the challenges the country must face.
On February 10, the Israeli people will have a chance to change this situation. Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu is currently leading all other parties in the polls and today seems poised to form the next government.
Recently, a great leader, who has both the strategic wisdom and the moral fiber to take on and meet Israel's massive security challenges threw his hat into the political ring and joined Likud. Former IDF Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon announced his intention to run in this month's Likud Knesset primaries. Those primaries will determine Likud's candidate slate in the elections. Depending on how Lt. Gen. Ya'alon places in those primaries, he will either be relegated to the Knesset's back benches or he will be appointed Israel's next Defense Minister.
Given the stakes, in my view it is absolutely imperative that Lt. Gen. Ya'alon place in the top five in the Likud's primaries. As you all know, running a successful campaign requires funding. Lt. Gen. Ya'alon, who only joined Likud a few weeks ago, finds himself at a severe deficit in that department in comparison to his fellow candidates, who have been planning their primary bids for several months. He needs to raise about $200,000 to run the type of campaign he'll need and the primary day operation required to gain a top spot.
According to Israeli campaign finance laws, it is legal for foreign nationals to donate up to $2400 per household to primary election campaigns if the money is received by the deadline set by the electoral commission. The deadline for Likud fundraising for the current primary is December 6.
I just made my first political contribution and pledged that amount – or NIS 10,000, for Israelis -- and believe me, I'm not a wealthy lady. I just think that Israel's survival may well depend on Lt. Gen. Ya'alon becoming defense minister.
I strongly urge you all to contribute to his campaign to the extent you are able in the short time remaining. He is an extraordinary man and a true Israeli patriot.
His campaign's website has set up the following link to send wire transfers to his campaign. Please take a few moments to fill out the form and help out.
http://yaalon.org.il/formwired782.html
If you have any further questions, please contact Guy Seeman, his campaign's international coordinator. Guy's email is guyseemann@gmail.com. He is available to take your calls as well. You may contact him directly on his mobile phone: 972-54-724-4172 if you have any questions about contributing.
I am sorry for sending out this request in such a massive and urgent way. As you know, I have never done anything like this before. And I would never consider taking your time for something that I didn't believe was anything other than critical for the future of Israel.
Below you will find a column that I wrote about the Lt. Gen. Ya'alon in September. Perhaps after reading it, you will understand why I feel as strongly as I feel about his candidacy and will be moved, as I am, to help him.
Thank you all for your support for the State of Israel and for taking the time to consider this request.
All the best,
Caroline Glick
A road paved on reality
Sep. 25, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
Listening to the news in Israel these days, it is hard to escape the feeling that the Israeli political discourse has become dangerously irrelevant.
Take Iran for example. On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the heads of UN member states, "The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."
Ahmadinejad then promised that Israel will soon be destroyed - for the benefit of humanity.
For these remarks, he received enthusiastic applause from the world leaders gathered at the UN General Assembly.
And how has Israel responded? It hasn't done anything in particular. And it has no intention of doing anything in particular.
This point was made clear to the public on Wednesday when Israel's new UN ambassador, Gavriela Shalev, gave an interview to Army Radio. While bemoaning Ahmadinejad's warm reception, she said that the world leaders were probably just being diplomatic. She noted that many of their ambassadors say nice things about Israel to her in private.
Israel's woman at the UN devoted most of her interview to defending the UN. In fact, she said she believes it is her duty not simply to defend Israel to the world body, but to defend the UN to Israelis. As she put it, her job is "correcting the UN's image in the eyes of the people of Israel."
Shalev's appointment to the UN was the work of Foreign Minister - and would-be prime minister - Tzipi Livni. And her view of her role as Israel's ambassador is strictly in keeping with what Livni perceives as the job of Israel's top diplomats. They are the world's emissaries to Israel.
Livni has spent the better part of the past three years at the Foreign Ministry telling us that the UN is our friend, the Europeans are our friends and that the Americans and Europeans and the UN will take care of Iran for us. The Palestinians are also our friends.
As anti-Semitic forces grow throughout the world, Livni has not communicated one single policy for defending Israel abroad that doesn't involve the kindness of strangers. Her response to Ahmadinejad's speech was a case in point.
The one thing the woman who believes that she has the right to lead the country without being elected by anyone thinks that Israel should do in response to Ahmadinejad's call for our physical destruction is to object to Iran's bid to join the UN Security Council. Livni's only concrete response to Ahmadinejad's promise to annihilate us was to issue a directive to Israel's embassies telling our diplomats to ask their host governments not to support Iran's bid for Security Council membership.
Livni doesn't actually think Iran is Israel's greatest challenge. The Palestinians are. And as far as she is concerned, giving the Palestinians a state by handing over Judea and Samaria (and Jerusalem, although she never says it outright), as quickly as possible is Israel's most urgent task. We need a two-state solution and we need it NOW, she says.
Neither Livni nor her colleagues in Kadima, Labor and Meretz, nor her supporters in the Israeli media ever bother to acknowledge the troublesome, inconvenient fact that the Palestinians don't want a state. They want to destroy our state.
This basic fact was made clear - yet again - on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Livni took time out of her busy schedule of political meetings with Labor, Shas and Meretz leaders with whom she is attempting to build a government without being elected by anyone, to meet with Fatah's chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei. Although Livni refused to tell us what she talked about, she promised that progress was made toward the urgent imperative of forming a Palestinian state.
But Qurei was not so enthusiastic. In fact, he was contemptuous of Livni and of the very notion of peaceful coexistence between the Palestinians and Israel. After the negotiating session, Qurei told Reuters that if the talks toward an Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem collapse, the Palestinians will renew their terror war against Israel. In his words, "If the talks reached a dead end, what do we do? Capitulate? Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right."
Just to make sure he understood Qurei properly, the reporter asked whether that meant that the Palestinians would renew their suicide bombing campaign against Israelis. Qurei responded, "All forms of resistance."
We have been here, of course, a million times before. This is the same threat that Yassir Arafat and his men have made - and implemented - repeatedly since signing the Oslo Accords with Israel 15 years ago. They use terror and negotiations in tandem to squeeze Israel into giving away more and more of its land. And it works.
When Livni heard about Qurei's remarks, she called him and reportedly told him that they were unacceptable. So he said he was taken out of context. No skin off his back.
He knew Livni wouldn't do anything. At the same time that Livni said his remarks were unacceptable, she pledged to continue negotiating Israel's surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with him for as long as she remains in power.
Today, Livni and her colleagues in Kadima, Labor, Meretz and Shas are working fervently toward forming a new government that will continue holding irrelevant but dangerous negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians, and pretending that Iran's nuclear weapons are not going to be used against Israel. They argue that we need the "political stability" that they can provide us in this dangerous time.
The Israeli media gives these fantasies their full support. Indeed, anyone who notices that the world is sitting back and allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons or points out that the Palestinians don't want a state is immediately shot down as an alarmist and an extremist.
This national discourse - which has been the only one permitted in the country since the advent of the "peace process" with the PLO 15 years ago - is Israel's Achilles' heel. Until the general public is set clear on the reality of the world confronting the country, there is no chance that Israel will take the necessary steps to defend itself and ensure that it survives.
Understanding this basic fact, former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon has taken it upon himself to tell the Israeli public the truth about the world we live in. Ya'alon is a rare bird among Israel's current pantheon of luminaries. He is an honest man who lives by his principles, and he doesn't bend them, ever.
Last week Ya'alon published a book called The Longer Shorter Road in Hebrew. Ya'alon, whose tour of duty as Chief of Staff was unceremoniously cut short by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in June 2005 due to his trenchant opposition to Sharon's planned withdrawal of IDF forces and Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip, has written a book that sets out the facts of life clearly, credibly and passionately.
The book's title is derived from a speech that Ya'alon's commander, Yoram Ya'ir, gave to his officers during the First Lebanon War. Ya'ir explained that short-cuts are not necessarily better than long roads. In fact, it is often better to take the longest route. As Ya'ir put it, "There is a long road that is short and there are short roads that are long."
Ya'alon uses Ya'ir's point to demonstrate that the Israeli Left's insistence on peace "now" and a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict "now" has placed Israel on a strategic trajectory that has brought it, and will continue to bring it only bloodshed and danger. Israel's enemies in the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Syria and Iran view Israel's insistence on finding immediate solutions to the threats it faces as a sign that Israeli society is collapsing.
As a consequence, every step that Israel has made toward appeasing its neighbors - from recognizing the PLO and bringing Arafat and his legions into Judea, Samaria and Gaza; to retreating from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005; to failing to properly prosecute the Second Lebanon War in 2006; to doing nothing to combat Hamas's regime in Gaza since 2007; to embracing the false paradigm of peace at Annapolis last November - has strengthened their conviction that Israel can and will be destroyed.
Ya'alon also dwells on the moral collapse of Israel's political and media elite and that collapse's adverse impact on the senior command echelons of the IDF. The abandonment of Zionist values and public and private integrity by our politicians and media has cast and kept Israel on a path of self-delusion, where the only thing that matters is immediate gratification. Politicians promise the public "hope" based on illusions of peace-around-the-corner to win their votes. The media support the politicians' lies both because of the media's post-Zionist ideological uniformity and due to their refusal to acknowledge that their populist demands for peace "now" have brought Israel only war and danger.
Ya'alon's book is part memoir and part polemic. He reminds Israelis of what it is about us that makes us a great people, worthy of our land and privileged to defend it. At the same time, he chastises our failed leaders who have tricked the public into following a strategic path that endangers us. His book's greatest contribution is not in providing a set path forward, but in courageously and unrelentingly explaining the reality that surrounds us today and in showing the public how it is that we have arrived in our current predicament.
In exposing himself, his values and his beliefs to the public, and juxtaposing his own leadership experience and personal integrity with the corruption and weakness of our political and intellectual leaders, Ya'alon is telling the public in a very clear way that there is an alternative to defeatism and self-delusion, and that he - and we the public - represent that alternative, that "longer shorter road."
Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their colleagues on the Left in the Knesset and the media insist that we not take that longer road to security and peace. In fact, they deny that it even exists. They attempt to convince us that elections are unnecessary by arguing that there is no difference between political parties today, because their short cut to defeat is the only path available to us.
It must be fervently hoped that Ya'alon will soon enter the political fray. Like the Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu, Ya'alon is proof positive that Livni and her cronies are lying. There are great differences between those that would lead us and the paths they would take.
And the only road to safety is the long road that is paved on reality.
--
---------------------------------
Caroline Glick
www.CarolineGlick.com
Mumbai doctor: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks"
Did the murderers feel justified in this torture by this Qur'anic injunction? "Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews" (5:82)? This horrific news from Mumbai underscores the crucial importance of the point made by Bat Ye'or years ago: that those who are the potential victims of Islamic jihad need to unite together to fight against it. Dhimmi communities -- Jews, Christians, as well as the Hindus who were awarded dhimmi status during the Islamic conquest of India -- need to stand together against Islamic supremacism and jihadist barbarism. If we do not hang together, we shall assuredly hang separately.
"Doctors shocked at hostages's torture," by Krishnakumar P and Vicky Nanjappa for Rediff, November 30 (thanks to M3Pino):
They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai.
Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.
"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.
Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.
Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.
The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.
Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. "During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis," an IB source said.
It is also said that the Israeli hostages were killed on the first day as keeping them hostage for too long would have focused too much international attention. "They also might have feared the chances of Israeli security agencies taking over the operations at the Nariman House," he reasoned.
On the other hand, there is enough to suggest that the terrorists also did not meet a clean, death.
The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. "Their faces were beyond recognition."
There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.
An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye."...
Pamela calls for a Constitutional remedy.
Thanks Jihad Watch
"Doctors shocked at hostages's torture," by Krishnakumar P and Vicky Nanjappa for Rediff, November 30 (thanks to M3Pino):
They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai.
Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.
"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.
Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.
Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.
The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.
Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. "During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis," an IB source said.
It is also said that the Israeli hostages were killed on the first day as keeping them hostage for too long would have focused too much international attention. "They also might have feared the chances of Israeli security agencies taking over the operations at the Nariman House," he reasoned.
On the other hand, there is enough to suggest that the terrorists also did not meet a clean, death.
The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. "Their faces were beyond recognition."
There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.
An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye."...
Pamela calls for a Constitutional remedy.
Thanks Jihad Watch
Hindus, Jews, and Jihad Terror in Mumbai
Andrew G. Bostom
American Thinker
Sixty hours of jihadist terror depradations throughout India's financial capital, Mumbai -- during which nearly 200 innocent victims were murdered, and 300 wounded -- apparently ceased this Saturday, November 29, when Indian commandos slew the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel, while it was still ablaze. Mainstream media coverage of these rampaging, cold-blooded murderous acts of jihad terrorism -- perpetrated by a self-professed "mujahideen" organization (i.e., "The Deccan Mujahideen") -- consistently ignored the clear ideological linkage to Islam. Simply put, "mujahideen" are Muslim jihadists, "holy warriors," because there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite present day apologetics. The root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries -- from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam, to ordinary people -- meant and means "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like." As described by the seminal mid-19th century Arabic lexicographer E.W Lane, "Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war, against unbelievers." A contemporary definition, relevant to both modern jihadism and its shock troop "mujahideen" was provided at the Fourth International Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research at Al Azhar University, Cairo -- Islam's most important religious educational institution-in 1968, by Muhammad al-Sobki:
...the words Al Jihad, Al Mojahadah, or even "striving against enemies" are equivalents and they do not mean especially fighting with the atheists...they mean fighting in the general sense...
Contemporary validation of the central principle of jihad terrorism -- rooted in the Koran -- (for example, verses 8:12, 8:60, and 33:26)-i.e., to terrorize the enemies of the Muslims as a prelude to their conquest -- has been provided in the mainstream Pakistani text on jihad warfare by Brigadier S.K. Malik, originally published in Lahore, in 1979. Malik's treatise was endorsed in a laudatory Foreword to the book by his patron, then Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq, as well as a more extended Preface by Allah Buksh K. Brohi, a former Advocate-General of Pakistan. This text -- widely studied in Islamic countries, and available in English, Urdu, and Arabic -- has been recovered from the bodies of slain jihadists in Kashmir. Brigadier Malik emphasizes how instilling terror is essential to waging successful jihad campaigns:
Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision we wish to impose upon him...
"Jihad," the Koranic concept of total strategy...[d]emands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war...Under ideal conditions, Jihad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the military stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting.
...the Book [Koran] does not visualize war being waged with "kid gloves." It gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both, the nation and the individual, to be at war "in toto," that is, with all their spiritual, moral, and physical resources. The Holy Koran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test of utmost preparation lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of the enemies.
The Islamic correctness of most mainstream media outlets -- which refused to consider such ideological motivations, rooted in jihad -- did not apply, however to Hindus, or Jews-targeted infidel victims of the attacks. Blithely ignoring obvious Islamic and Muslim connections -- credit taken for the attacks by a mujahideen organization; or testimony from a Turkish Muslim couple briefly apprehended, and then released unharmed by the jihadists because, "...[w]hen the (Muezzinoglus) said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed" -- some media (at Fox; NPR) even voiced their own "speculations" about the possible culpability of "Hindu extremists," an absurd calumny, stated in full paranoid transference mode by the Muslim Brotherhood:
A photograph published in Urdu Times, Mumbai, clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India and met Sadhus and other pro-Hindutva elements recently. A conspiracy was clearly hatched.
Yet these same media offered no speculation about Islamic Jew hatred as an obvious potential motivation for the transparently selective attack on Mumbai's Chabad House -- a focal point symbol of the miniscule Jewish community of 5000 (or 0.03%) in a city of some 15 million inhabitants. More egregiously, this neglect of any hateful Islamic motivations for the targeted murder of such innocent Jews -- including a young Lubavitcher Rabbi and his wife -- was accompanied by consistently dehumanizing and demeaning references to these victims as "Ultra-Orthodox," and their entirely false characterization as "missionaries."
This current Jewish tragedy within a much larger non-Muslim, primarily Hindu tragedy, reminded me of the Indian Sufi "inspiration" for The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Ahmad Sirhindi. Nearing completion of my first book compendium, The Legacy of Jihad, in early 2005, specifically the section about jihad on the Indian subcontinent, I came across a remarkable comment by the Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624). Typical of the mainstream Muslim clerics of his era, Sirhindi was viscerally opposed to the reforms which characterized the latter ecumenical phase of Akbar's 16th century reign (when Akbar became almost a Muslim-Hindu syncretist), particularly the abolition of the humiliating jizya (Koranic poll tax, as per Koran 9:29) upon the subjugated infidel Hindus. In the midst of an anti-Hindu tract Sirhindi wrote, motivated by Akbar's pro-Hindu reforms, Sirhindi observes,
Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.
The biographical information I could glean about Sirhindi provided, among other things, no evidence he was ever in direct contact with Jews, so his very hateful remark suggested to me that the attitudes it reflected must have a theological basis in Islam -- contra the prevailing, widely accepted "wisdom" that Islam, unlike Christianity was devoid of such theological Antisemitism. Having originally intended to introduce, edit, and compile a broader compendium on dhimmitude in follow-up to The Legacy of Jihad, this stunning observation inspired me instead to change course and focus on the interplay between Islamic Antisemitism, and the intimately related phenomenon of jihad imposed dhimmitude for Jews, specifically.
Of course Jew-hatred was merely a sidelight to Sirhindi's hatemongering Islamic "ethos." He was an intensely anti-Hindu bigot, as revealed by these words:
Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs [Hindus] may probably agree to pay jizya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice...The real purpose in levying jizya on them [Hindus] is to humiliate then to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya , they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It in intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honor and might of Islam...
Completely uninformed about (and stubbornly resistant to any informed discussion of) the motivating Islamic ideology for the Mumbai attacks, the media "meta-narrative," repeated ad nauseum, is also oblivious to the living historical legacy of jihad on the Indian subcontinent. Thus journalists and even policymaking elites appear to accept at face value, and uncritically, the "rationale" for this wantonly murderous jihadism as stated, for example, by one of the Muslim perpetrators:
Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?...Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims?
The Muslim supremacist, jihad-inspired conflict in Kashmir -- really a tragic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Hindus by Muslim jihadists which began in earnest during the 14th century -- re-emerged in late June of this year when the Indian government had the "temerity" to want to transfer 99 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running the popular Hindu shrine (including the cave that houses a large ice stalagmite itself, revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Siva, the god of destruction and reproduction). Hundreds of thousands of Hindus visit the area as part of an annual pilgrimage to the cave.
Please view the poignant, elegantly produced video by Kashmiri filmmaker Ashok Pandit, "And the World Remained Silent," (linked here, Parts 1 and 2) which chronicles in gory detail the brutal ethnic cleansing of some 350,000 indigenous Hindus from Kashmir during early 1990, orchestrated by Pakistan. and it's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. (Focus on the time period 2:15 to 4:00 minutes, from Part 1 above, and witness the jihadist speech of the late, much ballyhooed "modernist reformer" Ms. Bhutto. She was a jihadist, plain and simple; the head of what remains a jihadist state.)
Despite the brutal Islamization of India -- dating back to the initial 8th century Arab Muslim jihad ravages, and the subsequent more extensive campaigns under the Ghaznavids (Islamized Turkic nomads who annihilated the indigenous Hindus of Afghanistan by the mid-9th century), through the Delhi Sultanate period (1000-1525 C.E.) during which an estimated 70-80 million Hindus were slaughtered -- due largely to bowdlerized educational and public discourse on Islam, even many modern Hindus remain ignorant of both this history, and the Koranic injunctions which inspired the brutal waves of jihad conquest, and Muslim colonization of India.
The Muslim chroniclers al-Baladhuri (in Kitab Futuh al-Buldan) and al-Kufi (in the Chachnama) include enough isolated details to establish the overall nature of the conquest of Sindh (in modern Paksitan) by Muhammad b. Qasim during 712 C.E. These narratives, and the processes they describe, make clear that the Arab invaders intended from the outset to Islamize Sindh by conquest, colonization, and local conversion. Baladhuri, for example, records that following the capture of Debal, Muhammad b. Qasim earmarked a section of the city exclusively for Muslims, constructed a mosque, and established four thousand colonists there. The conquest of Debal had been a brutal affair, as summarized from the Muslim sources by the renowned Indian historian R.C. Majumdar. Despite appeals for mercy from the besieged Indians (who opened their gates after the Muslims scaled the fort walls), Muhammad b. Qasim declared that he had no orders (i.e., from his superior al-Hajjaj, the Governor of Iraq) to spare the inhabitants, and thus for three days a ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter ensued. In the aftermath, the local temple was defiled, and "700 beautiful females who had sought for shelter there, were all captured". The capture of Raor was accompanied by a similar tragic outcome.
Muhammad massacred 6000 fighting men who were found in the fort, and their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoners. Sixty thousand slaves, including 30 young ladies of royal blood, were sent to Hajjaj, along with the head of Dahar [the Hindu ruler]. We can now well understand why the capture of a fort by the Muslim forces was followed by the terrible jauhar ceremony (in which females threw themselves in fire [they] kindled...), the earliest recorded instance of which is found in the Chachnama.
Practical, expedient considerations lead Muhammad to desist from carrying out the strict injunctions of Islamic Law and the wishes of al-Hajjaj by massacring the (pagan) infidel Hindus of Sindh. Instead, he imposed upon the vanquished Hindus the jizya (Koranic poll-tax, pace Koran 9:29) and associated restrictive regulations of dhimmitude. As a result, the Chachnama records, "some [Hindus] resolved to live in their native land, but others took flight in order to maintain the faith of their ancestors, and their horses, domestics, and other property."
Thus a lasting pattern of Muslim policy towards their Hindu subjects was set that would persist, as noted by Majumdar, until the Mughal Empire collapsed at the end of Aurangzeb's reign (in 1707):
Something no doubt depended upon individual rulers; some of them adopted a more liberal, others a more cruel and intolerant attitude. But on the whole the framework remained intact, for it was based on the fundamental principle of Islamic theocracy. It recognized only one faith, one people, and one supreme authority, acting as the head of a religious trust. The Hindus, being infidels or non-believers, could not claim the full rights of citizens. At the very best, they could be tolerated as dhimmis, an insulting title which connoted political inferiority...The Islamic State regarded all non-Muslims as enemies, to curb whose growth in power was conceived to be its main interest. The ideal preached by even high officials was to exterminate them totally, but in actual practice they seem to have followed an alternative laid down in the Koran [i.e., Q9:29] which calls upon Muslims to fight the unbelievers till they pay the jizya with due humility. This was the tax the Hindus had to pay for permission to live in their ancestral homes under a Muslim ruler.
Regarding the Islamization of Hindu Kashmir, although Mahmud of Ghazni made brutal forays into Kashmir in the early 11th century, it was not until the mid-14th century when the ruling Hindu dynasty was displaced completely by Shah Mirza, in 1346, and Kashmir was brought under Muslim suzerainty. During the reign of Sikandar Butshikan (1394-1417), mass Islamization took place as described by the great historian K.S. Lal:
He [Sikandar Butshikan] invited from Persia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia learned men of his own [Muslim] faith; his bigotry prompted him to destroy all the most famous temples in Kashmir-Martand, Vishya, Isna, Chakrabhrit, Tripeshwar, etc. Sikandar offered the Kashmiris the choice [pace Koran 9:5] between Islam and death. Some Kashmiri Brahmans committed suicide, many left the land, many others embraced Islam, and a few began to live under Taqiya, that is, they professed Islam only outwardly. It is said that the fierce intolerance of Sikandar had left in Kashmir no more than eleven families of Brahmans.
Lal also notes that,
His [Sikandar Butshikan's] contemporary the [Hindu] Raja of Jammu had been converted to Islam by [Amir] Timur [the jihadist, Tamerlane], by "hopes, fears, and threats."
When the Moghul ruler Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586, the majority of the population was already Muslim. Lal summarizes the chronic plight of the Kashmiri Hindus during a half millennium of Islamic rule, through 1819, which explains the modern demography of Kashmir:
When Kashmir was under Muslim rule for 500 years, Hindus were constantly tortured and forcibly converted. A delegation of Kashmir Brahmans approached Guru Teg Bahadur at Anadpur Saheb to seek his help. But Kashmir was Islamized. Those who fled to preserve their religion went to Laddakh in the east and Jammu in the south. It is for this reason that non-Muslims are found in large number in these regions. In the valley itself the Muslims formed the bulk of the population.
There is also a modern era nexus -- rooted in jihad-between the Hindus of Islamized Kashmir, and the Jews of Islamized Palestine. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements. Urging a "full struggle" against the Hindus of India (as well as the Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim Congress, he stated:
We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine.
And el-Husseini's jihadist, Koran (and hadith)-inspired Jew hatred was shared by a seminal modern Muslim ideologue from the Indian subcontinent, Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi (d. 1976), a major late 20th century Koranic commentator. An eminent scholar, Maulana Muhammad Shafi served as a professor and as a grand Mufti of Darul-Uloom Deoband, the well-known university of the Islamic Sciences in pre-partition India. In 1943, he resigned from Darul-Uloom, because of his active involvement in the Pakistan movement. When Pakistan came into existence, he migrated to Karachi devoting his life to the service of this new Muslim state. He also established Darul-Uloom Karachi, an renowned institute of Islamic Sciences patterned after Darul-Uloom Deoband, and considered today as the largest private institute of Islamic higher education in Pakistan. Here is Maulana Muhammad Shafi's commentary on the central antisemitic motif in the Koran, sura (chapter) 3, verse 112:
...verse 112 speaks of the general condition of the Jews. They played the most virulent role against the Holy Prophet [Muhammad] and the movement of Islam. It was not strange that they were the most malignant against the Holy Prophet because they had played a similar role against the Prophets before the advent of Islam. They had slandered Jesus Christ, they had plotted to kill him, they had slain so many Prophets before Jesus Christ. They had earned the wrath of Allah before the Holy Prophet by killing the Prophets and the Saints and by their vociferous opposition to the Divine Commands. This wrath increased when they deadly opposed the Holy Prophet and made treacherous and surreptitious plans to kill Muhammad and defeat Islam. They tried to harm the Muslims and prevented the common men from Islam. These activities enhanced the wrath of Allah, and curse became their eventual fate. The wrath of Allah manifested itself in conditional abasement, but permanent poverty. Their abasement could be suspended if they could cover a bond of Allah or they should be covered by a bond of the people. But the poverty and the general wrath of Allah was pitched without any suspension. Bond of God means adherence to some remnants of the Torah. Bond of men means either becoming the subjects of some Muslim State or some Christian State or some other constitutional State; or becoming a satellite or a protectorate of some powerful people, whoever they may be either Muslims, or non-Muslims, by means of some agreement, treaty, or merely political support. Their separate individual existence enjoying an inviolable sovereignty or commanding a good respect in the Comity of Nations is not implied in this verse because of the extreme wrath of Allah which is significant of their superlative Kufr [infidelity] against Allah and their extremely tremendous enmity against the Holy Prophet as compared to other non-Believers. For example, the modern State of Israel cannot survive if the Americans and Russians, etc., give up their support. [note: this commentary was written beginning in the 1960s] This is the bond of the people which has outwardly suspended their abasement. But so far as wretchedness (poverty) is concerned it is pitched on them permanently and the general wrath and anger of Allah surrounds them forever. Inner wretchedness can be reconciled with outer opulence. The Jews may have become billionaires but the wretchedness and poverty of hearts cannot leave them any moment. Parsimony has become a part and parcel of their internal self.
Nearly six decades ago, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (d. 1958), the preeminent historian of Mughal India, wrote admiringly of what the Jews of Palestine had accomplished once liberated from the yoke of jihad-imposed Islamic Law. The implication was clear that he harbored similar hopes for his own people, the Hindus of India, and those of their Muslim neighbors willing to abandon the supremacist, discriminatory, and backward mandates of Islam:
Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, Christians and Islamites, had been turned into a desert haunted by ignorant poor diseased vermin rather than by human beings, as the result of six centuries of Muslim rule. (See Kinglake's graphic description). Today Jewish rule has made this desert bloom into a garden, miles of sandy waste have been turned into smiling orchards of orange and citron, the chemical resources of the Dead Sea are being extracted and sold, and all the amenities of the modern civilised life have been made available in this little Oriental country. Wise Arabs are eager to go there from the countries ruled by the Shariat [Sharia; Islamic Law]. This is the lesson for the living history.
The jihadist carnage in Mumbai, and some 12,327 other acts of jihad terrorism since 9/11/2001 -- motivated by supremacist Islamic doctrine, and the atavistic hatred of Hindus, Jews, and other non-Muslims it inculcates -- provides ugly living proof that Sarkar's wistful admonition from 1950 remains almost entirely unheeded.
American Thinker
Sixty hours of jihadist terror depradations throughout India's financial capital, Mumbai -- during which nearly 200 innocent victims were murdered, and 300 wounded -- apparently ceased this Saturday, November 29, when Indian commandos slew the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel, while it was still ablaze. Mainstream media coverage of these rampaging, cold-blooded murderous acts of jihad terrorism -- perpetrated by a self-professed "mujahideen" organization (i.e., "The Deccan Mujahideen") -- consistently ignored the clear ideological linkage to Islam. Simply put, "mujahideen" are Muslim jihadists, "holy warriors," because there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite present day apologetics. The root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries -- from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam, to ordinary people -- meant and means "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like." As described by the seminal mid-19th century Arabic lexicographer E.W Lane, "Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war, against unbelievers." A contemporary definition, relevant to both modern jihadism and its shock troop "mujahideen" was provided at the Fourth International Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research at Al Azhar University, Cairo -- Islam's most important religious educational institution-in 1968, by Muhammad al-Sobki:
...the words Al Jihad, Al Mojahadah, or even "striving against enemies" are equivalents and they do not mean especially fighting with the atheists...they mean fighting in the general sense...
Contemporary validation of the central principle of jihad terrorism -- rooted in the Koran -- (for example, verses 8:12, 8:60, and 33:26)-i.e., to terrorize the enemies of the Muslims as a prelude to their conquest -- has been provided in the mainstream Pakistani text on jihad warfare by Brigadier S.K. Malik, originally published in Lahore, in 1979. Malik's treatise was endorsed in a laudatory Foreword to the book by his patron, then Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq, as well as a more extended Preface by Allah Buksh K. Brohi, a former Advocate-General of Pakistan. This text -- widely studied in Islamic countries, and available in English, Urdu, and Arabic -- has been recovered from the bodies of slain jihadists in Kashmir. Brigadier Malik emphasizes how instilling terror is essential to waging successful jihad campaigns:
Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision we wish to impose upon him...
"Jihad," the Koranic concept of total strategy...[d]emands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war...Under ideal conditions, Jihad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the military stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting.
...the Book [Koran] does not visualize war being waged with "kid gloves." It gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both, the nation and the individual, to be at war "in toto," that is, with all their spiritual, moral, and physical resources. The Holy Koran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test of utmost preparation lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of the enemies.
The Islamic correctness of most mainstream media outlets -- which refused to consider such ideological motivations, rooted in jihad -- did not apply, however to Hindus, or Jews-targeted infidel victims of the attacks. Blithely ignoring obvious Islamic and Muslim connections -- credit taken for the attacks by a mujahideen organization; or testimony from a Turkish Muslim couple briefly apprehended, and then released unharmed by the jihadists because, "...[w]hen the (Muezzinoglus) said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed" -- some media (at Fox; NPR) even voiced their own "speculations" about the possible culpability of "Hindu extremists," an absurd calumny, stated in full paranoid transference mode by the Muslim Brotherhood:
A photograph published in Urdu Times, Mumbai, clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India and met Sadhus and other pro-Hindutva elements recently. A conspiracy was clearly hatched.
Yet these same media offered no speculation about Islamic Jew hatred as an obvious potential motivation for the transparently selective attack on Mumbai's Chabad House -- a focal point symbol of the miniscule Jewish community of 5000 (or 0.03%) in a city of some 15 million inhabitants. More egregiously, this neglect of any hateful Islamic motivations for the targeted murder of such innocent Jews -- including a young Lubavitcher Rabbi and his wife -- was accompanied by consistently dehumanizing and demeaning references to these victims as "Ultra-Orthodox," and their entirely false characterization as "missionaries."
This current Jewish tragedy within a much larger non-Muslim, primarily Hindu tragedy, reminded me of the Indian Sufi "inspiration" for The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Ahmad Sirhindi. Nearing completion of my first book compendium, The Legacy of Jihad, in early 2005, specifically the section about jihad on the Indian subcontinent, I came across a remarkable comment by the Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624). Typical of the mainstream Muslim clerics of his era, Sirhindi was viscerally opposed to the reforms which characterized the latter ecumenical phase of Akbar's 16th century reign (when Akbar became almost a Muslim-Hindu syncretist), particularly the abolition of the humiliating jizya (Koranic poll tax, as per Koran 9:29) upon the subjugated infidel Hindus. In the midst of an anti-Hindu tract Sirhindi wrote, motivated by Akbar's pro-Hindu reforms, Sirhindi observes,
Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.
The biographical information I could glean about Sirhindi provided, among other things, no evidence he was ever in direct contact with Jews, so his very hateful remark suggested to me that the attitudes it reflected must have a theological basis in Islam -- contra the prevailing, widely accepted "wisdom" that Islam, unlike Christianity was devoid of such theological Antisemitism. Having originally intended to introduce, edit, and compile a broader compendium on dhimmitude in follow-up to The Legacy of Jihad, this stunning observation inspired me instead to change course and focus on the interplay between Islamic Antisemitism, and the intimately related phenomenon of jihad imposed dhimmitude for Jews, specifically.
Of course Jew-hatred was merely a sidelight to Sirhindi's hatemongering Islamic "ethos." He was an intensely anti-Hindu bigot, as revealed by these words:
Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs [Hindus] may probably agree to pay jizya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice...The real purpose in levying jizya on them [Hindus] is to humiliate then to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya , they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It in intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honor and might of Islam...
Completely uninformed about (and stubbornly resistant to any informed discussion of) the motivating Islamic ideology for the Mumbai attacks, the media "meta-narrative," repeated ad nauseum, is also oblivious to the living historical legacy of jihad on the Indian subcontinent. Thus journalists and even policymaking elites appear to accept at face value, and uncritically, the "rationale" for this wantonly murderous jihadism as stated, for example, by one of the Muslim perpetrators:
Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?...Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims?
The Muslim supremacist, jihad-inspired conflict in Kashmir -- really a tragic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Hindus by Muslim jihadists which began in earnest during the 14th century -- re-emerged in late June of this year when the Indian government had the "temerity" to want to transfer 99 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running the popular Hindu shrine (including the cave that houses a large ice stalagmite itself, revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Siva, the god of destruction and reproduction). Hundreds of thousands of Hindus visit the area as part of an annual pilgrimage to the cave.
Please view the poignant, elegantly produced video by Kashmiri filmmaker Ashok Pandit, "And the World Remained Silent," (linked here, Parts 1 and 2) which chronicles in gory detail the brutal ethnic cleansing of some 350,000 indigenous Hindus from Kashmir during early 1990, orchestrated by Pakistan. and it's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. (Focus on the time period 2:15 to 4:00 minutes, from Part 1 above, and witness the jihadist speech of the late, much ballyhooed "modernist reformer" Ms. Bhutto. She was a jihadist, plain and simple; the head of what remains a jihadist state.)
Despite the brutal Islamization of India -- dating back to the initial 8th century Arab Muslim jihad ravages, and the subsequent more extensive campaigns under the Ghaznavids (Islamized Turkic nomads who annihilated the indigenous Hindus of Afghanistan by the mid-9th century), through the Delhi Sultanate period (1000-1525 C.E.) during which an estimated 70-80 million Hindus were slaughtered -- due largely to bowdlerized educational and public discourse on Islam, even many modern Hindus remain ignorant of both this history, and the Koranic injunctions which inspired the brutal waves of jihad conquest, and Muslim colonization of India.
The Muslim chroniclers al-Baladhuri (in Kitab Futuh al-Buldan) and al-Kufi (in the Chachnama) include enough isolated details to establish the overall nature of the conquest of Sindh (in modern Paksitan) by Muhammad b. Qasim during 712 C.E. These narratives, and the processes they describe, make clear that the Arab invaders intended from the outset to Islamize Sindh by conquest, colonization, and local conversion. Baladhuri, for example, records that following the capture of Debal, Muhammad b. Qasim earmarked a section of the city exclusively for Muslims, constructed a mosque, and established four thousand colonists there. The conquest of Debal had been a brutal affair, as summarized from the Muslim sources by the renowned Indian historian R.C. Majumdar. Despite appeals for mercy from the besieged Indians (who opened their gates after the Muslims scaled the fort walls), Muhammad b. Qasim declared that he had no orders (i.e., from his superior al-Hajjaj, the Governor of Iraq) to spare the inhabitants, and thus for three days a ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter ensued. In the aftermath, the local temple was defiled, and "700 beautiful females who had sought for shelter there, were all captured". The capture of Raor was accompanied by a similar tragic outcome.
Muhammad massacred 6000 fighting men who were found in the fort, and their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoners. Sixty thousand slaves, including 30 young ladies of royal blood, were sent to Hajjaj, along with the head of Dahar [the Hindu ruler]. We can now well understand why the capture of a fort by the Muslim forces was followed by the terrible jauhar ceremony (in which females threw themselves in fire [they] kindled...), the earliest recorded instance of which is found in the Chachnama.
Practical, expedient considerations lead Muhammad to desist from carrying out the strict injunctions of Islamic Law and the wishes of al-Hajjaj by massacring the (pagan) infidel Hindus of Sindh. Instead, he imposed upon the vanquished Hindus the jizya (Koranic poll-tax, pace Koran 9:29) and associated restrictive regulations of dhimmitude. As a result, the Chachnama records, "some [Hindus] resolved to live in their native land, but others took flight in order to maintain the faith of their ancestors, and their horses, domestics, and other property."
Thus a lasting pattern of Muslim policy towards their Hindu subjects was set that would persist, as noted by Majumdar, until the Mughal Empire collapsed at the end of Aurangzeb's reign (in 1707):
Something no doubt depended upon individual rulers; some of them adopted a more liberal, others a more cruel and intolerant attitude. But on the whole the framework remained intact, for it was based on the fundamental principle of Islamic theocracy. It recognized only one faith, one people, and one supreme authority, acting as the head of a religious trust. The Hindus, being infidels or non-believers, could not claim the full rights of citizens. At the very best, they could be tolerated as dhimmis, an insulting title which connoted political inferiority...The Islamic State regarded all non-Muslims as enemies, to curb whose growth in power was conceived to be its main interest. The ideal preached by even high officials was to exterminate them totally, but in actual practice they seem to have followed an alternative laid down in the Koran [i.e., Q9:29] which calls upon Muslims to fight the unbelievers till they pay the jizya with due humility. This was the tax the Hindus had to pay for permission to live in their ancestral homes under a Muslim ruler.
Regarding the Islamization of Hindu Kashmir, although Mahmud of Ghazni made brutal forays into Kashmir in the early 11th century, it was not until the mid-14th century when the ruling Hindu dynasty was displaced completely by Shah Mirza, in 1346, and Kashmir was brought under Muslim suzerainty. During the reign of Sikandar Butshikan (1394-1417), mass Islamization took place as described by the great historian K.S. Lal:
He [Sikandar Butshikan] invited from Persia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia learned men of his own [Muslim] faith; his bigotry prompted him to destroy all the most famous temples in Kashmir-Martand, Vishya, Isna, Chakrabhrit, Tripeshwar, etc. Sikandar offered the Kashmiris the choice [pace Koran 9:5] between Islam and death. Some Kashmiri Brahmans committed suicide, many left the land, many others embraced Islam, and a few began to live under Taqiya, that is, they professed Islam only outwardly. It is said that the fierce intolerance of Sikandar had left in Kashmir no more than eleven families of Brahmans.
Lal also notes that,
His [Sikandar Butshikan's] contemporary the [Hindu] Raja of Jammu had been converted to Islam by [Amir] Timur [the jihadist, Tamerlane], by "hopes, fears, and threats."
When the Moghul ruler Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586, the majority of the population was already Muslim. Lal summarizes the chronic plight of the Kashmiri Hindus during a half millennium of Islamic rule, through 1819, which explains the modern demography of Kashmir:
When Kashmir was under Muslim rule for 500 years, Hindus were constantly tortured and forcibly converted. A delegation of Kashmir Brahmans approached Guru Teg Bahadur at Anadpur Saheb to seek his help. But Kashmir was Islamized. Those who fled to preserve their religion went to Laddakh in the east and Jammu in the south. It is for this reason that non-Muslims are found in large number in these regions. In the valley itself the Muslims formed the bulk of the population.
There is also a modern era nexus -- rooted in jihad-between the Hindus of Islamized Kashmir, and the Jews of Islamized Palestine. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements. Urging a "full struggle" against the Hindus of India (as well as the Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim Congress, he stated:
We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine.
And el-Husseini's jihadist, Koran (and hadith)-inspired Jew hatred was shared by a seminal modern Muslim ideologue from the Indian subcontinent, Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi (d. 1976), a major late 20th century Koranic commentator. An eminent scholar, Maulana Muhammad Shafi served as a professor and as a grand Mufti of Darul-Uloom Deoband, the well-known university of the Islamic Sciences in pre-partition India. In 1943, he resigned from Darul-Uloom, because of his active involvement in the Pakistan movement. When Pakistan came into existence, he migrated to Karachi devoting his life to the service of this new Muslim state. He also established Darul-Uloom Karachi, an renowned institute of Islamic Sciences patterned after Darul-Uloom Deoband, and considered today as the largest private institute of Islamic higher education in Pakistan. Here is Maulana Muhammad Shafi's commentary on the central antisemitic motif in the Koran, sura (chapter) 3, verse 112:
...verse 112 speaks of the general condition of the Jews. They played the most virulent role against the Holy Prophet [Muhammad] and the movement of Islam. It was not strange that they were the most malignant against the Holy Prophet because they had played a similar role against the Prophets before the advent of Islam. They had slandered Jesus Christ, they had plotted to kill him, they had slain so many Prophets before Jesus Christ. They had earned the wrath of Allah before the Holy Prophet by killing the Prophets and the Saints and by their vociferous opposition to the Divine Commands. This wrath increased when they deadly opposed the Holy Prophet and made treacherous and surreptitious plans to kill Muhammad and defeat Islam. They tried to harm the Muslims and prevented the common men from Islam. These activities enhanced the wrath of Allah, and curse became their eventual fate. The wrath of Allah manifested itself in conditional abasement, but permanent poverty. Their abasement could be suspended if they could cover a bond of Allah or they should be covered by a bond of the people. But the poverty and the general wrath of Allah was pitched without any suspension. Bond of God means adherence to some remnants of the Torah. Bond of men means either becoming the subjects of some Muslim State or some Christian State or some other constitutional State; or becoming a satellite or a protectorate of some powerful people, whoever they may be either Muslims, or non-Muslims, by means of some agreement, treaty, or merely political support. Their separate individual existence enjoying an inviolable sovereignty or commanding a good respect in the Comity of Nations is not implied in this verse because of the extreme wrath of Allah which is significant of their superlative Kufr [infidelity] against Allah and their extremely tremendous enmity against the Holy Prophet as compared to other non-Believers. For example, the modern State of Israel cannot survive if the Americans and Russians, etc., give up their support. [note: this commentary was written beginning in the 1960s] This is the bond of the people which has outwardly suspended their abasement. But so far as wretchedness (poverty) is concerned it is pitched on them permanently and the general wrath and anger of Allah surrounds them forever. Inner wretchedness can be reconciled with outer opulence. The Jews may have become billionaires but the wretchedness and poverty of hearts cannot leave them any moment. Parsimony has become a part and parcel of their internal self.
Nearly six decades ago, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (d. 1958), the preeminent historian of Mughal India, wrote admiringly of what the Jews of Palestine had accomplished once liberated from the yoke of jihad-imposed Islamic Law. The implication was clear that he harbored similar hopes for his own people, the Hindus of India, and those of their Muslim neighbors willing to abandon the supremacist, discriminatory, and backward mandates of Islam:
Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, Christians and Islamites, had been turned into a desert haunted by ignorant poor diseased vermin rather than by human beings, as the result of six centuries of Muslim rule. (See Kinglake's graphic description). Today Jewish rule has made this desert bloom into a garden, miles of sandy waste have been turned into smiling orchards of orange and citron, the chemical resources of the Dead Sea are being extracted and sold, and all the amenities of the modern civilised life have been made available in this little Oriental country. Wise Arabs are eager to go there from the countries ruled by the Shariat [Sharia; Islamic Law]. This is the lesson for the living history.
The jihadist carnage in Mumbai, and some 12,327 other acts of jihad terrorism since 9/11/2001 -- motivated by supremacist Islamic doctrine, and the atavistic hatred of Hindus, Jews, and other non-Muslims it inculcates -- provides ugly living proof that Sarkar's wistful admonition from 1950 remains almost entirely unheeded.
"Unfortunately, we have yet to see a distinguished popular condemnation in the traditional Arab or Muslim communities that strongly rejects what is ha
Who said that? What greasy Islamophobe dared to call into question the sincerity or adequacy of Muslim condemnations of terrorism?
Would you believe Khaled al-Jenfawi, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Seyassah daily? Anyway, in this story, "Muslims condemn Mumbai attacks, worry about image," by Karin Laub for The Associated Press, November 30, Muslim leaders and spokesmen worry a great deal about the possibility that these jihad attacks in Mumbai by a Tiny Minority of Extremists™ will lead people to think ill of Islam.
Of course, there is one thing they could do about that that would actually begin to make people think better of Islam, but no one even whispers anything about doing it in this article or anywhere else. And that would be to begin to saturate mosques and madrassas with the message that jihad warfare is never justified, that the imperative to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law must be decisively rejected, and that peaceful coexistence as equals with unbelievers is to be maintained indefinitely. If Islamic clerics stopped talking about conquering Europe and America, and began to teach the opposite, things might begin to improve. If Muslim leaders worldwide energetically pronounced takfir upon -- that is, declared to be non-Muslim -- all those who maintained belief in the Qur'an's literal words of warfare, and in the traditional Islamic doctrines regarding jihad warfare (whether hot war or otherwise), and upon anyone who wished to impose Sharia upon unbelievers by whatever means and at whatever speed, and if those leaders demonstrated their sincerity by actions instead of mere words, informed non-Muslims might begin to think better of Islam.
But these things will not happen. They're not even on the table. Instead, many of the same people quoted in this article work to brand any non-Muslim who points out the ways in which jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism as a "bigot" or a "racist." And that in itself, however effective a tactic it may be among the ignorant and easily intimidated, is revealing.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Muslims from the Middle East to Britain and Austria condemned Sunday the Mumbai shooting rampage by suspected Islamic militants as senseless terrorism, but also found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion.
Intellectuals and community leaders called for greater efforts to combat religious fanaticism. [...]
"The occupation of the synagogue and killing people in hotels tarnishes the Muslim faith," said Kazim al-Muqdadi, a political science lecturer at Baghdad University. "Anyone who slaughters people and screams `Allahu Akbar' (God is Great) is sick and ignorant."
In Britain, home to nearly two million Muslims, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala, said that "a handful of terrorists like this bring the entire faith into disrepute." [...]
A man identified as Sheik Youssef al-Ayeri said the killings are in line with Islam.
"It's all right for Muslims to set the infidels' castles on fire, drown them with water .... and take some of them as prisoners, whether young or old, women or men, because it is one of many ways to beat them," he wrote in the al-Fallujah forum. [...]
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to the attacks as terrorism, but added that the violence is rooted in "unjust policies" aimed at destabilizing the region. He did not elaborate. [...]
Saudi Arabia said in a statement carried earlier this week by the Saudi Press Agency that it "strongly condemns and denounces this criminal act." An editorial Friday in Saudi's English-language Arab News said that "no civilized person ... can be anything but revolted and sickened by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai."
However, Jonathan Fighel, an Israeli counterterrorism expert, said Saudi organizations have been funneling money to Muslim militants in Kashmir.
"This demonstrates exactly the double game and, I would say, the hypocrisy of the Saudi regime," said Fighel of the Israel-based International Institute for Counter-Terrorism.
Throughout the Muslim world, the attacks set off soul-searching.
"I think that Muslims should raise their voice against such actions. They should forge a coalition to fight such phenomena, because it harms them and damages their image," said Ali Abdel Muhsen, 22, a Muslim engineering student in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Muslims and Arabs must confront the violence "that is taking place in our name and in the name of our (Islamic) tenets," wrote Khaled al-Jenfawi, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Seyassah daily.
"Unfortunately, we have yet to see a distinguished popular condemnation in the traditional Arab or Muslim communities that strongly rejects what is happening in the name of Islam or Arab nationalism," wrote al-Jenfawi.
Would you believe Khaled al-Jenfawi, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Seyassah daily? Anyway, in this story, "Muslims condemn Mumbai attacks, worry about image," by Karin Laub for The Associated Press, November 30, Muslim leaders and spokesmen worry a great deal about the possibility that these jihad attacks in Mumbai by a Tiny Minority of Extremists™ will lead people to think ill of Islam.
Of course, there is one thing they could do about that that would actually begin to make people think better of Islam, but no one even whispers anything about doing it in this article or anywhere else. And that would be to begin to saturate mosques and madrassas with the message that jihad warfare is never justified, that the imperative to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law must be decisively rejected, and that peaceful coexistence as equals with unbelievers is to be maintained indefinitely. If Islamic clerics stopped talking about conquering Europe and America, and began to teach the opposite, things might begin to improve. If Muslim leaders worldwide energetically pronounced takfir upon -- that is, declared to be non-Muslim -- all those who maintained belief in the Qur'an's literal words of warfare, and in the traditional Islamic doctrines regarding jihad warfare (whether hot war or otherwise), and upon anyone who wished to impose Sharia upon unbelievers by whatever means and at whatever speed, and if those leaders demonstrated their sincerity by actions instead of mere words, informed non-Muslims might begin to think better of Islam.
But these things will not happen. They're not even on the table. Instead, many of the same people quoted in this article work to brand any non-Muslim who points out the ways in which jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism as a "bigot" or a "racist." And that in itself, however effective a tactic it may be among the ignorant and easily intimidated, is revealing.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Muslims from the Middle East to Britain and Austria condemned Sunday the Mumbai shooting rampage by suspected Islamic militants as senseless terrorism, but also found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion.
Intellectuals and community leaders called for greater efforts to combat religious fanaticism. [...]
"The occupation of the synagogue and killing people in hotels tarnishes the Muslim faith," said Kazim al-Muqdadi, a political science lecturer at Baghdad University. "Anyone who slaughters people and screams `Allahu Akbar' (God is Great) is sick and ignorant."
In Britain, home to nearly two million Muslims, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala, said that "a handful of terrorists like this bring the entire faith into disrepute." [...]
A man identified as Sheik Youssef al-Ayeri said the killings are in line with Islam.
"It's all right for Muslims to set the infidels' castles on fire, drown them with water .... and take some of them as prisoners, whether young or old, women or men, because it is one of many ways to beat them," he wrote in the al-Fallujah forum. [...]
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to the attacks as terrorism, but added that the violence is rooted in "unjust policies" aimed at destabilizing the region. He did not elaborate. [...]
Saudi Arabia said in a statement carried earlier this week by the Saudi Press Agency that it "strongly condemns and denounces this criminal act." An editorial Friday in Saudi's English-language Arab News said that "no civilized person ... can be anything but revolted and sickened by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai."
However, Jonathan Fighel, an Israeli counterterrorism expert, said Saudi organizations have been funneling money to Muslim militants in Kashmir.
"This demonstrates exactly the double game and, I would say, the hypocrisy of the Saudi regime," said Fighel of the Israel-based International Institute for Counter-Terrorism.
Throughout the Muslim world, the attacks set off soul-searching.
"I think that Muslims should raise their voice against such actions. They should forge a coalition to fight such phenomena, because it harms them and damages their image," said Ali Abdel Muhsen, 22, a Muslim engineering student in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Muslims and Arabs must confront the violence "that is taking place in our name and in the name of our (Islamic) tenets," wrote Khaled al-Jenfawi, a columnist for Kuwait's Al-Seyassah daily.
"Unfortunately, we have yet to see a distinguished popular condemnation in the traditional Arab or Muslim communities that strongly rejects what is happening in the name of Islam or Arab nationalism," wrote al-Jenfawi.
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