Frank J. Gaffney, jr.
The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation's birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States' extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to downplay the momentousness of this major policy shift by portraying it during a stopover in Budapest as follows: "The Obama administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years." In fact, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in a characteristically brilliant, and scathing, dissection of this announcement, Team Obama's official, open legitimation of the Brotherhood marks a dramatic break from the U.S. government's historical refusal to deal formally with the Ikhwan.
To understand why the Obama administration's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood is so ominous, consider three insights into the organization's nature and ambitions:
First, here's the MB's creed: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." (Source: Husain Haqqani and Hillel Fradkin, "Islamist Parties: Going Back to the Origins.")
Second, here's the Ikwhan's mission in America:
"A kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within, sabotaging its miserable house with their [i.e., Americans'] hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." (Source: Muslim Brotherhood's "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goals of the Group," entered into evidence by the Department of Justice in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-finance trial. Archived at the NEFA Foundation.)
Third, here are excerpts from the Muslim Brotherhood's "phased plan" for accomplishing that mission:
Phase One: Discreet and secret establishment of leadership.
Phase Two: Phase of gradual appearance on the public scene and exercising and utilizing various public activities. It greatly succeeded in implementing this stage. It also succeeded in achieving a great deal of its important goals, such as infiltrating various sectors of the Government.
Phase Three: Escalation phase, prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers, through utilizing mass media. Currently in progress.
Phase Four: Open public confrontation with the Government through exercising the political pressure approach. It is aggressively implementing the above-mentioned approach. Training on the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero-hour. It has noticeable activities in this regard.
Phase Five: Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups are united. (Source: Undated Muslim Brotherhood Paper entitled, "Phases of the World Underground Movement Plan." Archived at Shariah: The Threat to America.)
In short, the Muslim Brotherhood is deadly serious about waging what it calls "civilization jihad" against the United States and other freedom-loving nations in order to secure their submission to the Islamic totalitarian political-military-legal doctrine called shariah. The MB's goal in this country is to replace our Constitution with theirs, namely the Koran. And they regard this task as one commanded by none other than Allah. (For more details on the nature, ambitions and modus operandi of the Ikhwan, see the Team B II Report, Shariah: The Threat to America). To this end, as Andy McCarthy notes in the aforementioned essay, the MB's senior official, Supreme Guide Muhammad Badi, has effectively declared war on the United States.
Were there any doubt that legitimacy is what the Ikhwan is taking away from this gambit, consider this assessment from an expert in Islamic groups, Ammar Ali Hassan, cited by Associated Press: "...The Brotherhood will likely try to float ‘conditions' or ‘reservations' on any dialogue to avoid a perception that it is allowing the U.S. to meddle in Egypt's internal affairs. But in the end, the talks will give a boost to the group, he said, by easing worries some in the Brotherhood and the public have of a backlash if the Brotherhood becomes the dominant player in Egypt. ‘Now the Muslim Brotherhood will not have to worry [about] moving forward toward taking over power,' Hassan said."
Unfortunately, the U.S. government's dangerous outreach to the Ikhwan is not confined to Egypt but is systematically practiced inside the United States, as well. For example:
Muslim-American organizations identified in court by the U.S. government - and, in many cases, by the Muslim Brotherhood itself - as MB fronts are routinely cultivated by federal, state and local officials. Representatives of homeland security, Pentagon, intelligence and law enforcement agencies frequently meet with and attend functions sponsored by such groups.
MB-associated individuals are sent as our country's "goodwill ambassadors" to foreign Muslim nations and communities. MB-favored initiatives to insinuate shariah into the United States - notably, the Ground Zero Mosque and shariah-compliant finance, conscientious objector status for Muslim servicemen and stifling of free speech in accordance with shariah "blasphemy" laws - are endorsed and/or enabled by official institutions.
A blind eye is turned to the presence across the country of shariah-adherent mosques that incubate jihadism. A peer-reviewed study published last month in Middle East Quarterly determined that 81% of a random sample of 100 mosques exhibited such qualities - constituting an infrastructure for recruitment, indoctrination and training consistent with the Brotherhood's phased plan.
Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, individuals with family and other ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have actually given senior government positions. The most recent of these to come to light is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin (who also happens to be former Rep. Anthony Weiner's wife).
It seems a safe bet that, as Team Obama legitimates Muslim Brotherhood organizations and groups overseas, it will feel ever less constrained about further empowering their counterparts in the United States. If so, the MB will come to exercise even greater influence over what our government does and does not do about the threat posed by shariah, both abroad and here.
The absolutely predictable effect will be to undermine U.S. interests and allies in the Middle East and further catalyze the Brotherhood's campaign to insinuate shariah in the United States and, ultimately, to supplant the Constitution with Islamic law. Consequently, the Obama administration's efforts to "engage" the Muslim Brotherhood are not just reckless. They are wholly incompatible with the President's oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" and the similar commitment made by his subordinates.
These officials' now-open embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a geo-strategic tipping point, one that must catalyze an urgent national debate on this question: Does such conduct violate their oath of office by endangering the Constitution they have undertaken to uphold?
At a minimum, such a debate would afford a much-needed opportunity to examine alternatives to the administration's present course - as well as the real risks associated with that its intensifying pursuit. For instance, one of the most astute American authorities on the Middle East in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, Dr. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a posting at The American blog yesterday:
"Rather than embrace the Brotherhood, the Obama administration should be seeking to ensure that the group cannot dominate Egypt. Most analysts agree that the Muslim Brotherhood is by far the best organized group in Egypt, but that it only enjoys perhaps 25 or 30 percent support. The secular opposition remains weak and fractured. If the Obama administration wishes to remain engaged in Egypt's future and shape the best possible outcome for both U.S. national security and the Egyptian people, it should be pushing for electoral reform to change Egypt's dysfunctional system to a proportional representation model in which the secular majority can form a coalition to check a Muslim Brotherhood minority for which true democracy is anathema."
The same goes for the enemy within. Instead of relying upon - let alone hiring - Muslim Brotherhood operatives and associates, the United States government should be shutting down their fronts, shariah-adherent, jihad-incubating "community centers" and insidious influence operations in America. By recognizing these enterprises for what they are, namely vehicles for fulfilling the seditious goals of the MB's civilization jihad, they can and must be treated as prosecutable subversive enterprises, not protected religious ones under the U.S. Constitution.
Let the debate begin.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Al-Azhar's declaration: A new leap into politics?
Noha El-Hennawy
Al-Azhar’s recently declaration backing a democratic civil state has triggered questions over the political role that the world’s oldest and most prestigious Sunni institution might play in post-Mubarak Egypt.
After deliberations with fellow clerics and intellectuals with different political and religious leanings, Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb last week issued an 11-clause document declaring the institution’s official position on the prospective political order. The statement envisions a “modern” and “democratic nation-state” based on a constitution that ensures full separation among the different branches of government and guarantees equality for all citizens. The document also calls for respecting freedom of thought and opinion and voices support for human rights, including children’s and women’s rights.
“This is more of a revolutionary change in the relationship between religion and the state on one hand and Al-Azhar and public life on the other,” said Georges Fahmi, a PhD candidate with the European University Institute, who recently wrote a dissertation on the role of Egypt’s religious institutions in politics.
By using the phrase “modern nation-state,” Al-Azhar dealt a blow to Islamist voices that call for the revival of the pan-Islamic caliphate, said Fahmi. Also, by affirming the state should derive legitimacy from a constitution that the people design, Al-Azhar is distancing itself from some Islamist political movements, which holds Shariah, or Islamic Law, as the constitutional foundation of any Muslim society, added Fahmi.
Another controversial assertion in the charter, according to Fahmi, is the reference to “the general principles” of Shariah, rather than the strict injunctions of Shariah - stoning or decapitating adulterers, for example. By referring to general principles of Shariah, Al-Azhar is providing room for a modern interpretation of Islamic values such as freedom, justice, and equality, rather than citing specific articles in the traditional Islamic penal code.
“The document comes at a juncture where three forces are struggling over Egypt’s identity,” said Fahmi, referring to Islamists, civil parties, and a third, more minor group composed of die-hard secularists that renounces Islam altogether. The second group recognizes the principles of Shariah but does not subscribe to a literal, rigid implementation.
“With this document, he [the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar] is backing the civil bloc that wants a modern and civil state which derives its principles from Islam,” said Fahmi, who believes that in return, Tayyeb expects these civil forces to back his fight against conservative clerics who remain an impediment to reforming the religious establishment.
The Egyptian Social Democratic Party, which belongs to that civil bloc, had issued a statement welcoming Al-Azhar’s declaration as “an important step” that put the nation on the right track toward “progress.”
However, not all Islamists met the declaration with the same fervor. Hardline Islamist lawyer Mamdouh Ismail, who is in the process of founding the Egyptian Renaissance Party, refused to comment on it.
“I will not comment on anything issued by Al-Azhar as long as it is not independent and remains headed by a person who was a member [of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party],” said Ismail in reference to Tayyeb.
In 2010, Tayyeb was appointed grand imam after the death of Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi. His open-mindedness, tolerance, exposure to the West and staunch opposition to radical interpretations of Islam raised hopes that he would spearhead genuine reform inside the religious establishment. However, he had reportedly encountered strong resistance from hawkish scholars.
“Tayyeb has read the moment well…The next step will be to use the backing that he gets from society to reform Al-Azhar,” Fahmi anticipated.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Al-Azhar has been a bastion of moderate Islam in the Sunni world. However, its influence has been waning since former President Gamal Abdel Nasser sought to clip its wings.
In 1952, Nasser’s regime abolished the family waqf (endowments) and then public endowments, stripping the clerics of their financial independence. A few years later, he brought Al-Azhar under the direct control of the state. The grand imam was no longer elected by his fellow clerics but appointed by the president. In the meantime, Nasser utilized Al-Azhar to bestow legitimacy on his pan-Arab and socialist policies.
The same pattern was maintained by President Anwar Sadat, who came to power in 1970. Sadat further weakened Al-Azhar by opening the door for radical Islamist groups, which promoted Wahhabi thought.
“It was these ideological newcomers that delivered the most debilitating blow to the religious foundations of al-Azhar, the ancient and long pre-eminent Sunni religious establishment whose Ash’ari [predominant Sunni Islam school of thought] theological traditions are famously open to multiple views of Islamic law and are tolerant of Sufism,” Hossam Tamam, an expert on Islamist groups, wrote in a 2010 article.
“As a result, the real decline of Al-Azhar dates to the early 1970s when it began to lose ideological influence in the face of the Wahhabi tide...” wrote Tammam.
After Mubarak held the helm of state, Al-Azhar kept losing its influence to radical groups, which sought to discredit the state-sanctioned religious establishment by arguing that it represented the regime’s interests rather than true Islam. Meanwhile, this same Wahhabi thought had permeated Al-Azhar itself, continued Tammam.
Whether Tayyeb’s charter constitutes a leap in Al-Azhar thought is a contested question. For prominent reformist scholar Gamal Qotb, the document is a mere attempt at “window-dressing.”
“Now we have to ask, does the content of this document reflect on the curriculum that Al-Azhar students are taught? Actually, it has nothing to do with it,” Qotb, a former head of Al-Azhar's Fatwa Committee told Al-Masry Al-Youm in a phone interview.
Meanwhile, Qotb criticized the statement for failing to focus on mechanisms for reform.
“Only in two vague and ambiguous clauses the document talks about the independence of Al-Azhar,” said Qotb, who has been promoting a precise and elaborate reform project since the 1980s. Yet, he complains that his project remains ignored.
To Qotb, a genuine reform of Al-Azhar is the best way to safeguard against radical Islamist groups.
“All [Islamist] groups emerged during the 20th century to compensate for the weakness of Al-Azhar. If Al-Azhar becomes strong and rational again, people will get away from all [Islamist] groups,” he said.
Yet, he questioned the ability of incumbent religious leaders including Tayyeb and Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa to bring about reforms given their shaken credibility. Both clerics had held close ties with the Mubarak's regime and their opposition to the revolution has discredited them in the eyes of many Egyptians.
“How would he [Tayyeb] bring about liberalism or democracy? Do Tayyeb’s and Gomaa’s practices and statements during the revolution carry any indications that they might be able to run things in the next phase?” Qotb asked rhetorically.
The last two clauses of Tayyeb’s document emphasize the need to ensure Al-Azhar's full independence from the government, to have top clerics elect its imam rather than give the president authority to appoint one, to modernize the curricula and to give Al-Azhar the exclusive authority to decide religious matters. In the meantime, the document gives the right to non-Azhar scholars, with enough credentials, to voice opinions on faith-related issues.
According to Hazem Kandil, a lecturer on political sociology, it is important to specify these credentials in order to de-legitimize ill-trained preachers who have monopolized the religious sphere.
“Al-Azhar should specify those credentials because this issue poses major problems,” said Kandil. “With the deterioration of Al-Azhar, people with no credentials came to the fore and talked about religion in audio cassettes and on satellite TV channels and people have been listening to them. They were either affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafis or belonged to no organization.
“Al-Azhar should make it clear that scholars who hold al-Alemeyya, the Al-Azhar equivalent of a PhD degree, or any of its equivalents from a foreign university, are the only ones eligible to preach,” contended Kandil.
Egypt’s Religious Establishment Takes On The Muslim Brotherhood
Barry Rubin
In a major new development an Islamic force has arisen to challenge the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and support a more moderate regime in that country. This is a surprising opponent but the only one that could be of significance: al-Azhar University. Why is Egypt’s Islamic establishment taking on Egypt’s Islamists? Simple: survival and self-interest.
The prestigious al-Azhar is a conservative traditionalist institution that has been dominated by Egypt’s regime and used to oppose revolutionary Islamists. The Egyptian government decided who would run al-Azhar, who would be the country’s chief mufti (authority on Islamic law), who would preach in the mosques, who could build a mosque, and what clerics could appear on television and other media. If you wanted to build a career as an important Islamic cleric in Egypt you needed to get the rulers to like you. Their Islamist critics called them “parrots,” not only because they repeated the government line but also because a parrot is used like the English word, “bird-brained.” Over the years, however, the establishment has made concessions to the new wave of radical interpretations. For the last few months, following Mubarak’s downfall, the al-Azhar leadership appeared ready to cut its own deal with the Brotherhood.
But the Brotherhood pushed too hard, demanding a totally new leadership for Egypt’s religious institutions. Facing a choice between resistance and total surrender (getting fired and perhaps facing a firing squad), al-Azhar’s heads decided to oppose the fundamental transformation of Egyptian society by the Brotherhood.
Thus, al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyib, whose resignation the Brotherhood had demanded, has issued a declaration on Egypt’s future favoring a “modern” and “democratic nation-state” based on a constitution including rights for women, checks and balances among governmental institutions, freedom of speech, and other such things.
Tayyib is allied with Egypt’s other leading official cleric, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa. Both men were closely associated with the Mubarak regime, so a sweeping change in religious institutions would get them fired and possibly even facing legal charges under a Brotherhood-dominated government.
There are lots of subtleties in the statement that hint at opposition to an Islamist state, total Sharia law, and a caliphate. It puts al-Azhar into an alliance with democratic reformers and nationalists against the Brotherhood and its even more extreme allies.
Obviously, one shouldn’t romanticize an Islamic establishment that served the dictatorship and is not exactly liberal. This is merely an alliance of convenience for senior clerics acting out of self-interest. For example, one of the main provisions of al-Azhar’s political declaration is to maintain the university’s independence rather than, as the Brotherhood proposes, subordinate it to a president and parliament in which the Brotherhood will be very powerful.
Another element here is the conflict between the credentialed Muslim clerics and the self-taught preachers who often play a leading role in the revolutionary groups. The al-Azhar statement says that only licensed clerics can produce religious rulings.
i
The Muslim establishment is preferable to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafists. Al-Azhar has thrown down the gauntlet. If the Brotherhood and its allies win parliament there will definitely be a thorough purge of the religious hierarchy. If not, the anti-Islamists will have to make concessions to the official clerics to “prove” their pious credentials by making Egypt somewhat ore Islamic than it has been for the last 60 years.
To read more about these issues and their historic background, Noha el-Hennawy has written a really excellent survey.
In a major new development an Islamic force has arisen to challenge the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and support a more moderate regime in that country. This is a surprising opponent but the only one that could be of significance: al-Azhar University. Why is Egypt’s Islamic establishment taking on Egypt’s Islamists? Simple: survival and self-interest.
The prestigious al-Azhar is a conservative traditionalist institution that has been dominated by Egypt’s regime and used to oppose revolutionary Islamists. The Egyptian government decided who would run al-Azhar, who would be the country’s chief mufti (authority on Islamic law), who would preach in the mosques, who could build a mosque, and what clerics could appear on television and other media. If you wanted to build a career as an important Islamic cleric in Egypt you needed to get the rulers to like you. Their Islamist critics called them “parrots,” not only because they repeated the government line but also because a parrot is used like the English word, “bird-brained.” Over the years, however, the establishment has made concessions to the new wave of radical interpretations. For the last few months, following Mubarak’s downfall, the al-Azhar leadership appeared ready to cut its own deal with the Brotherhood.
But the Brotherhood pushed too hard, demanding a totally new leadership for Egypt’s religious institutions. Facing a choice between resistance and total surrender (getting fired and perhaps facing a firing squad), al-Azhar’s heads decided to oppose the fundamental transformation of Egyptian society by the Brotherhood.
Thus, al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyib, whose resignation the Brotherhood had demanded, has issued a declaration on Egypt’s future favoring a “modern” and “democratic nation-state” based on a constitution including rights for women, checks and balances among governmental institutions, freedom of speech, and other such things.
Tayyib is allied with Egypt’s other leading official cleric, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa. Both men were closely associated with the Mubarak regime, so a sweeping change in religious institutions would get them fired and possibly even facing legal charges under a Brotherhood-dominated government.
There are lots of subtleties in the statement that hint at opposition to an Islamist state, total Sharia law, and a caliphate. It puts al-Azhar into an alliance with democratic reformers and nationalists against the Brotherhood and its even more extreme allies.
Obviously, one shouldn’t romanticize an Islamic establishment that served the dictatorship and is not exactly liberal. This is merely an alliance of convenience for senior clerics acting out of self-interest. For example, one of the main provisions of al-Azhar’s political declaration is to maintain the university’s independence rather than, as the Brotherhood proposes, subordinate it to a president and parliament in which the Brotherhood will be very powerful.
Another element here is the conflict between the credentialed Muslim clerics and the self-taught preachers who often play a leading role in the revolutionary groups. The al-Azhar statement says that only licensed clerics can produce religious rulings.
i
The Muslim establishment is preferable to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafists. Al-Azhar has thrown down the gauntlet. If the Brotherhood and its allies win parliament there will definitely be a thorough purge of the religious hierarchy. If not, the anti-Islamists will have to make concessions to the official clerics to “prove” their pious credentials by making Egypt somewhat ore Islamic than it has been for the last 60 years.
To read more about these issues and their historic background, Noha el-Hennawy has written a really excellent survey.
Greeks bearing real gifts
Leo Rennert
Israel scored a major coup Friday when the Greek government barred the departure of vessels trying to hook up with a pro-Hamas flotilla seeking to breach Israel's naval blockade of Gaza
Immediately affected are a U.S. vessel with 50 pro-Hamas provocateurs, with the Obama moniker of The Audacity of Hope, and a Canadian ship. The U.S. vessel tried to defy the Greek ban and took off, only to be halted by the Greek Coast guard and, after a no-nonsense encounter with Greek commandos, was forced to head back to Greece. Other vessels in Greek ports may suffer a similar fate. This development is the latest, but perhaps the most significant, event in a growing chain of mishaps which have bedeviled organizers of this would-be blockade-running flotilla. Earlier, two vessels were found to have been sabotaged. Also, under pressure from the Turkish government, a notorious Turkish vessel, the Mavi Marmara, bowed out, citing "technical difficulties." This is the same ship which featured a bloody encounter with Israeli commandos last year when radical extremists among the passengers used knives, iron bars and other lethal weapons to attack the commandos, some of whom were seriously injured. Fearing for their lives, the Israeli boarding party opened fire, killing nine Turkish assailants.
While the current flotilla was to have comprised 15 vessels, at last count, it's down to nine ships and, after the Greek ban, this number could decline further.
All in all, it's a great victory for Israel. Even if a truncated flotilla is able to regroup and head for Gaza, its smaller number of vessels should make it easier for the Israeli Navy to keep it from reaching its destination. The New York Times goes a step further and describes the flotilla as dead in the water and not likely to sail toward Gaza.
All this didn't just happen by pure chance. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pulled out all of Israel's diplomatic and political stops to hobble the flotilla expedition. Israeli embassies around the world were directed to make a maximum effort to get their host governments to denounce the flotilla. Even UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged member nations not to participate in the flotilla. President Obama, in full reelection mode, and Secretary of State Clinton also urged Americans not to participate and backed up their message with warnings that such participation might result in criminal proceedings since the flotilla's mission was to help a terrorist organization -- i.e. Hamas.
No coincidence also that Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou visited Israel last month -- the first Greek prime minister to do so in nearly 20 years. Netanyahu had gone to great lengths to get him on Israel's side against the flotilla.
And Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, having won a decisive election victory recently, apparently felt he had sufficiently exhausted his anti-Israel fulminations to please his domestic base, and now assured of another term, saw to it that the Mavi Marmara wouldn't sail this time.
Mainstream media undoubtedly will deplore all these successful Israeli efforts and shed crocodile tears for those benighted anti-Israel activists stranded at sea or in Greek ports. But their squawks will only confirm the scope of Israel's victory. As one of the flotilla organizers was reported to have remarked: "I didn't know the entire Mediterranean was owned by Israel."
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/greeks_bearing_real_gifts.html at July 02, 2011 - 09:57:42 PM CDT
Israel scored a major coup Friday when the Greek government barred the departure of vessels trying to hook up with a pro-Hamas flotilla seeking to breach Israel's naval blockade of Gaza
Immediately affected are a U.S. vessel with 50 pro-Hamas provocateurs, with the Obama moniker of The Audacity of Hope, and a Canadian ship. The U.S. vessel tried to defy the Greek ban and took off, only to be halted by the Greek Coast guard and, after a no-nonsense encounter with Greek commandos, was forced to head back to Greece. Other vessels in Greek ports may suffer a similar fate. This development is the latest, but perhaps the most significant, event in a growing chain of mishaps which have bedeviled organizers of this would-be blockade-running flotilla. Earlier, two vessels were found to have been sabotaged. Also, under pressure from the Turkish government, a notorious Turkish vessel, the Mavi Marmara, bowed out, citing "technical difficulties." This is the same ship which featured a bloody encounter with Israeli commandos last year when radical extremists among the passengers used knives, iron bars and other lethal weapons to attack the commandos, some of whom were seriously injured. Fearing for their lives, the Israeli boarding party opened fire, killing nine Turkish assailants.
While the current flotilla was to have comprised 15 vessels, at last count, it's down to nine ships and, after the Greek ban, this number could decline further.
All in all, it's a great victory for Israel. Even if a truncated flotilla is able to regroup and head for Gaza, its smaller number of vessels should make it easier for the Israeli Navy to keep it from reaching its destination. The New York Times goes a step further and describes the flotilla as dead in the water and not likely to sail toward Gaza.
All this didn't just happen by pure chance. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pulled out all of Israel's diplomatic and political stops to hobble the flotilla expedition. Israeli embassies around the world were directed to make a maximum effort to get their host governments to denounce the flotilla. Even UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged member nations not to participate in the flotilla. President Obama, in full reelection mode, and Secretary of State Clinton also urged Americans not to participate and backed up their message with warnings that such participation might result in criminal proceedings since the flotilla's mission was to help a terrorist organization -- i.e. Hamas.
No coincidence also that Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou visited Israel last month -- the first Greek prime minister to do so in nearly 20 years. Netanyahu had gone to great lengths to get him on Israel's side against the flotilla.
And Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, having won a decisive election victory recently, apparently felt he had sufficiently exhausted his anti-Israel fulminations to please his domestic base, and now assured of another term, saw to it that the Mavi Marmara wouldn't sail this time.
Mainstream media undoubtedly will deplore all these successful Israeli efforts and shed crocodile tears for those benighted anti-Israel activists stranded at sea or in Greek ports. But their squawks will only confirm the scope of Israel's victory. As one of the flotilla organizers was reported to have remarked: "I didn't know the entire Mediterranean was owned by Israel."
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/greeks_bearing_real_gifts.html at July 02, 2011 - 09:57:42 PM CDT
Europeans Are Major Force Behind Second Gaza Flotilla
Soeren Kern
The so-called Freedom Flotilla 2, a convoy of about ten ships hoping to break an Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, has been off to an inauspicious start. With two vessels disabled due to alleged “sabotage” and other boats held up in a port in Athens by the Greek government, the flotilla will not set sail for at least another few days and may be called off altogether.
Whatever its fate, the flotilla has considerable public support in Europe, where opposition to Israel often crosses the line into anti-Semitism. Although a handful of Americans, Canadians, and Middle Easterners (as well as a few Aussies and Kiwis) are among the 500 pro-Palestinian activists hoping to sail with the flotilla, the majority of its organizers, supporters and actual participants are from Europe, which has become “ground zero” in the global campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The Gaza flotilla is, in fact, an integral part of a growing European movement to delegitimize the state of Israel. It is rooted in the program of political warfare to achieve the “complete international isolation of Israel” that was launched at the UN conference against racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001.
European charities linked to left-wing and pro-Palestinian causes have raised an estimated €10 million ($14.5 million) to fund the flotilla. Many European politicians and members of the European Parliament as well as media outlets have expressed strong support for it in public. The flotilla has been organized from Britain and the main operational hub is in Greece.
Eight out of the ten vessels comprising the flotilla are European. They include the “Dignity” and the “Louise Michel” from France, the “Saoirse” (Gaelic for freedom) from Ireland, the “Stefano Chiarini” from Italy, the “Guernica” from Spain, the “Juliano” from Sweden, and two Greek cargo ships carrying 3,000 tons of supplies. The two other ships are the “Tahrir” from Canada and “The Audacity of Hope” from the United States.
The European Freedom Flotilla website has pooled information on flotilla campaigns in the various European countries. Some of these include: Belgium to Gaza, Free Gaza Denmark, Ship to Gaza Greece, Freedom Flotilla Italia, Ship to Gaza Netherlands, Ship to Gaza Norway, Free Gaza Scotland, Ship to Gaza Sweden, and so on.
Other pan-European groups directly or indirectly involved in the flotilla include the Brussels-based European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, the London-based Palestinian Return Center, and the Oslo-based European Network to Support Rights of Palestinian Prisoners.
Britain has hosted much of the organizing apparatus of the flotilla, which is being coordinated out of London by Mohammad Sawalha, a senior Muslim Brotherhood operative closely linked to Hamas and who was granted asylum by Britain in 1990.
Sawalha — together with Zaher Birawi, another Hamas activist living in Britain — is a director of Britain2Gaza, a coalition of left-wing and Islamist organizations participating in the flotilla that includes groups like: the British Muslim Initiative, the Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Palestinian Forum in Britain, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and the Stop the War Coalition. Sawalha is also the vice chairman of the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza, a British-based group that coordinates the Miles of Smiles land convoys to Gaza.
Britain is also home to the Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (which is working to “build a mass anti-Apartheid movement for Palestine”), Interpal, Freedom for Palestine, A Just Peace for Palestine, Stop Arming Israel, Oxford-Ramallah Friendship Association, Reading-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Viva Palestina, Medical Aid for Palestinians, the Scottish-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and many more.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague says the flotilla is unwise and has advised Britons not to participate in it. But he himself has contributed to the BDS campaign against Israel by his failure to honor a long-standing promise to amend British universal jurisdiction laws in a way that would make it safe for Israeli leaders to visit Britain without the risk of detention on frivolous allegations of war crimes.
In France, a fundraising campaign called “A French Ship to Gaza” collected more than €600,000 ($865,000) for the Gaza flotilla. The campaign was launched in October 2010 under the combined leadership of French NGOs for Palestine and a “Red-Green Alliance” of leftists and Islamists called the “National Collective for a Just and Lasting Peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Nationwide, more than 70 French organizations including political parties and trade unions have been involved in mobilizing activists and raising funds for the flotilla. Some 40 French nationals, including one French MEP, are on board the two French vessels that are participating in the convoy. More than 300 French politicians have signed a petition in support of the campaign.
Germany is sending more than 20 activists to participate in the flotilla, which is being coordinated by the German Initiative to Break the Gaza Blockade, a coalition of more than a dozen pro-Palestinian organizations, including: the Palestinian Community in Germany, the Palestinian-German Federation for the Right of Return, the German-Palestinian Union, the German Youth for Palestine, the Committee for a Democratic Palestine, and the Palestinian Society for Human Rights, which in May 2011 held the 9th Annual Conference of Palestinians in Europe titled “The Return Generation Knows its Way.”
In Ireland, the flotilla is being coordinated by Irish Ship to Gaza under the direction of Caoimhe Butterly, a pro-Palestinian activist who in April 2002 spent 16 days as a “human shield” in Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. Other pro-Palestinian activist groups in Ireland include: the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Alliance, and the Derry Friends of Palestine. About 25 Irish nationals were planning on sailing with the “Saoirse,” including Irish MEP Paul Murphy of the Socialist Party and United Left Alliance. But the vessel dropped out of the flotilla after being “sabotaged” while docking in Turkey.
In Norway, which hosts the European Network to Support the Rights of Palestinian Prisoners, some $250,000 was raised to send 20 activists to Gaza. In neighboring Sweden, the campaign Ship to Gaza Sweden has been selling “nautical miles to Gaza” for €100 ($145) each.
In Spain, the flotilla is being organized by “Rumbo a Gaza” (Course to Gaza). Despite massive unemployment in Spain, the group managed to raise enough funds to send 45 Spanish activists to Gaza on a boat called the “Guernica,” which also happens to be the name of a small town in the Basque country that was bombed by Adolf Hitler during the Spanish Civil War.
In Switzerland, more than 200 NGOs are supporting the flotilla. It is being coordinated by a Geneva-based group called Droit pour Tous (Right for All), which in March 2011 sponsored ‘The First International Conference on the Rights of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees.” Three members of the Swiss National Council, the lower house of the Swiss parliament, want to sail with the flotilla.
If Gaza has become an obsession for many ordinary Europeans, so too for Europe’s political class, which rarely misses an opportunity to rebuke Israel for a blockade the latter says is necessary to prevent weapons for reaching Iran-backed Hamas militants.
Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger visited the Gaza Strip in April 2011 and demanded that Israel lift its blockade. British Prime Minister David Cameron said Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a “prison camp” and at least 14 British parliamentarians have publicly backed the flotilla. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as several members of her government, has insisted that Israel end the blockade and the German Bundestag in July 2010 passed a resolution condemning Israeli policies in Gaza.
In Ireland, which recently needed a $113 billion bailout to save it from financial collapse, Prime Minister Enda Kenny is closely following the events in Gaza. “I have every sympathy with the people of Gaza,” Kenny told the lower house of parliament. Even tiny Luxembourg has something to say about Gaza: In February 2011 Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn visited the territory and demanded that Israel lift the blockade.
In Spain, the kaffiyeh-wearing Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose often toxic anti-Israel rhetoric has contributed to a notable rise in anti-Semitism in Spain, has called for a “strong, joint EU position” on Gaza and Israel’s blockade. Hamas militants recently gave European Union “Foreign Minister” Catherine Ashton an opportunity to do just that when they welcomed her to the Gaza Strip by firing a rocket into southern Israel, killing a man working in the Netiv Ha’assera kibbutz. Rather than condemn Hamas for the killing, the European Union, which takes pride in being the largest contributor of aid to the Palestinians, berated Israel instead.
A notable exception has been Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, whose government has prohibited eight boats participating in the flotilla from leaving Greek waters. Previously, Papandreou had described an Israeli commando raid on a similar flotilla in May 2010 as “condemnable and unacceptable.”
The irony of all the Gaza activism in Europe is this: The European single currency is on the verge of collapse. Many European countries are on the brink of bankruptcy. The European social welfare state is crumbling. Millions of Europeans are out of work and many are losing their homes. Europeans are losing the war they started with Libya. Muslim immigration to Europe is out of control. Islamic Sharia law is becoming increasingly common (here, here, here, and here) in many parts of the continent. Considering all the problems besetting Europe today, the issue many Europeans care about most is … the Gaza Strip.
The so-called Freedom Flotilla 2, a convoy of about ten ships hoping to break an Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, has been off to an inauspicious start. With two vessels disabled due to alleged “sabotage” and other boats held up in a port in Athens by the Greek government, the flotilla will not set sail for at least another few days and may be called off altogether.
Whatever its fate, the flotilla has considerable public support in Europe, where opposition to Israel often crosses the line into anti-Semitism. Although a handful of Americans, Canadians, and Middle Easterners (as well as a few Aussies and Kiwis) are among the 500 pro-Palestinian activists hoping to sail with the flotilla, the majority of its organizers, supporters and actual participants are from Europe, which has become “ground zero” in the global campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The Gaza flotilla is, in fact, an integral part of a growing European movement to delegitimize the state of Israel. It is rooted in the program of political warfare to achieve the “complete international isolation of Israel” that was launched at the UN conference against racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001.
European charities linked to left-wing and pro-Palestinian causes have raised an estimated €10 million ($14.5 million) to fund the flotilla. Many European politicians and members of the European Parliament as well as media outlets have expressed strong support for it in public. The flotilla has been organized from Britain and the main operational hub is in Greece.
Eight out of the ten vessels comprising the flotilla are European. They include the “Dignity” and the “Louise Michel” from France, the “Saoirse” (Gaelic for freedom) from Ireland, the “Stefano Chiarini” from Italy, the “Guernica” from Spain, the “Juliano” from Sweden, and two Greek cargo ships carrying 3,000 tons of supplies. The two other ships are the “Tahrir” from Canada and “The Audacity of Hope” from the United States.
The European Freedom Flotilla website has pooled information on flotilla campaigns in the various European countries. Some of these include: Belgium to Gaza, Free Gaza Denmark, Ship to Gaza Greece, Freedom Flotilla Italia, Ship to Gaza Netherlands, Ship to Gaza Norway, Free Gaza Scotland, Ship to Gaza Sweden, and so on.
Other pan-European groups directly or indirectly involved in the flotilla include the Brussels-based European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, the London-based Palestinian Return Center, and the Oslo-based European Network to Support Rights of Palestinian Prisoners.
Britain has hosted much of the organizing apparatus of the flotilla, which is being coordinated out of London by Mohammad Sawalha, a senior Muslim Brotherhood operative closely linked to Hamas and who was granted asylum by Britain in 1990.
Sawalha — together with Zaher Birawi, another Hamas activist living in Britain — is a director of Britain2Gaza, a coalition of left-wing and Islamist organizations participating in the flotilla that includes groups like: the British Muslim Initiative, the Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Palestinian Forum in Britain, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and the Stop the War Coalition. Sawalha is also the vice chairman of the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza, a British-based group that coordinates the Miles of Smiles land convoys to Gaza.
Britain is also home to the Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (which is working to “build a mass anti-Apartheid movement for Palestine”), Interpal, Freedom for Palestine, A Just Peace for Palestine, Stop Arming Israel, Oxford-Ramallah Friendship Association, Reading-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Viva Palestina, Medical Aid for Palestinians, the Scottish-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and many more.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague says the flotilla is unwise and has advised Britons not to participate in it. But he himself has contributed to the BDS campaign against Israel by his failure to honor a long-standing promise to amend British universal jurisdiction laws in a way that would make it safe for Israeli leaders to visit Britain without the risk of detention on frivolous allegations of war crimes.
In France, a fundraising campaign called “A French Ship to Gaza” collected more than €600,000 ($865,000) for the Gaza flotilla. The campaign was launched in October 2010 under the combined leadership of French NGOs for Palestine and a “Red-Green Alliance” of leftists and Islamists called the “National Collective for a Just and Lasting Peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Nationwide, more than 70 French organizations including political parties and trade unions have been involved in mobilizing activists and raising funds for the flotilla. Some 40 French nationals, including one French MEP, are on board the two French vessels that are participating in the convoy. More than 300 French politicians have signed a petition in support of the campaign.
Germany is sending more than 20 activists to participate in the flotilla, which is being coordinated by the German Initiative to Break the Gaza Blockade, a coalition of more than a dozen pro-Palestinian organizations, including: the Palestinian Community in Germany, the Palestinian-German Federation for the Right of Return, the German-Palestinian Union, the German Youth for Palestine, the Committee for a Democratic Palestine, and the Palestinian Society for Human Rights, which in May 2011 held the 9th Annual Conference of Palestinians in Europe titled “The Return Generation Knows its Way.”
In Ireland, the flotilla is being coordinated by Irish Ship to Gaza under the direction of Caoimhe Butterly, a pro-Palestinian activist who in April 2002 spent 16 days as a “human shield” in Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. Other pro-Palestinian activist groups in Ireland include: the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Alliance, and the Derry Friends of Palestine. About 25 Irish nationals were planning on sailing with the “Saoirse,” including Irish MEP Paul Murphy of the Socialist Party and United Left Alliance. But the vessel dropped out of the flotilla after being “sabotaged” while docking in Turkey.
In Norway, which hosts the European Network to Support the Rights of Palestinian Prisoners, some $250,000 was raised to send 20 activists to Gaza. In neighboring Sweden, the campaign Ship to Gaza Sweden has been selling “nautical miles to Gaza” for €100 ($145) each.
In Spain, the flotilla is being organized by “Rumbo a Gaza” (Course to Gaza). Despite massive unemployment in Spain, the group managed to raise enough funds to send 45 Spanish activists to Gaza on a boat called the “Guernica,” which also happens to be the name of a small town in the Basque country that was bombed by Adolf Hitler during the Spanish Civil War.
In Switzerland, more than 200 NGOs are supporting the flotilla. It is being coordinated by a Geneva-based group called Droit pour Tous (Right for All), which in March 2011 sponsored ‘The First International Conference on the Rights of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees.” Three members of the Swiss National Council, the lower house of the Swiss parliament, want to sail with the flotilla.
If Gaza has become an obsession for many ordinary Europeans, so too for Europe’s political class, which rarely misses an opportunity to rebuke Israel for a blockade the latter says is necessary to prevent weapons for reaching Iran-backed Hamas militants.
Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger visited the Gaza Strip in April 2011 and demanded that Israel lift its blockade. British Prime Minister David Cameron said Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a “prison camp” and at least 14 British parliamentarians have publicly backed the flotilla. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as several members of her government, has insisted that Israel end the blockade and the German Bundestag in July 2010 passed a resolution condemning Israeli policies in Gaza.
In Ireland, which recently needed a $113 billion bailout to save it from financial collapse, Prime Minister Enda Kenny is closely following the events in Gaza. “I have every sympathy with the people of Gaza,” Kenny told the lower house of parliament. Even tiny Luxembourg has something to say about Gaza: In February 2011 Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn visited the territory and demanded that Israel lift the blockade.
In Spain, the kaffiyeh-wearing Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose often toxic anti-Israel rhetoric has contributed to a notable rise in anti-Semitism in Spain, has called for a “strong, joint EU position” on Gaza and Israel’s blockade. Hamas militants recently gave European Union “Foreign Minister” Catherine Ashton an opportunity to do just that when they welcomed her to the Gaza Strip by firing a rocket into southern Israel, killing a man working in the Netiv Ha’assera kibbutz. Rather than condemn Hamas for the killing, the European Union, which takes pride in being the largest contributor of aid to the Palestinians, berated Israel instead.
A notable exception has been Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, whose government has prohibited eight boats participating in the flotilla from leaving Greek waters. Previously, Papandreou had described an Israeli commando raid on a similar flotilla in May 2010 as “condemnable and unacceptable.”
The irony of all the Gaza activism in Europe is this: The European single currency is on the verge of collapse. Many European countries are on the brink of bankruptcy. The European social welfare state is crumbling. Millions of Europeans are out of work and many are losing their homes. Europeans are losing the war they started with Libya. Muslim immigration to Europe is out of control. Islamic Sharia law is becoming increasingly common (here, here, here, and here) in many parts of the continent. Considering all the problems besetting Europe today, the issue many Europeans care about most is … the Gaza Strip.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Yale's New Jewish Quota
The university's shameful decision to kill its anti-Semitism institute.
By Ron Rosenbaum
Yale University. Click image to expand.YaleWho killed YIISA? It's a kind of academic murder mystery. YIISA—for those who have not caught the scant coverage of this deeply disturbing development—stands for the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism. Or should I say stood for that, till Yale, in a cowardly, clumsily-executed maneuver, abolished the program in the first week in June. To many observers, both inside and outside Yale, killing the program seemed a shockingly ill-considered act. Even supporters of the move, such as Yale's Rabbi James Ponet, conceded (in an email to me) that it was "foolishly" executed. And considering Yale's well-known anti-Semitic past—the university long had a "Jewish quota," allowing in only a limited number of Jewish students per year, that it abandoned only in the 1960s—the decision is a shameful one.
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Yale cited several reasons for killing YIISA, a program devoted to the cross-cultural examination of anti-Semitism that had been in operation since 2006. But many observers suspect the turning point was a YIISA conference last August called "Global Anti-Semitism: A Crisis of Modernity" which, while featuring 108 speakers from five continents, dared acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism in some Islamic cultures. There has been talk—though no proof—of fear of offending potentially lucrative donors from the Middle East. Charles Small, the director of YIISA, "blamed radical Islamic and extreme left wing bloggers for the bad publicity," according to the Yale Daily News, which also reported that Small "pointed out that it was the largest conference on antisemitism ever, and it would have been absurd for the conference to ignore Muslim antisemitism."
It is worth noting that discussing the existence of anti-Semitism in some Islamic cultures does not imply there is anything essentially anti-Semitic about Islam. Small denied emphatically to me that any such Islamophobia was evident in the conference or in YIISA's seminars. But while the backlash against YIISA's conference included predictable protests from the official PLO representative and the group's supporters in America, the more subtle—and yet ludicrous—objection to YIISA's conference and YIISA's work came—as Ben Cohen pointed out in the Forward—in the charge of "advocacy," leveled by some YIISA opponents on campus. The charge that the program exhibited too much "advocacy" against anti-Semitism, as opposed to academic analysis of anti-Semitism. It seems unlikely that Yale tells its cancer researchers not to engage in advocacy against the malignancies they study, doesn't it?
I should note before I defend YIISA further that I have spoken both at YIISA, and at Yale's Hillel-like Slifka Center (which, shamefully, in my view, failed to defend YIISA), and I also edited a 700-page anthology on the question of contemporary anti-Semitism, Those Who Forget the Past. Finally, I should add that I had a highly positive experience as a student Yale, with no noticeable exposure to anti-Semitism.
As for the integrity of the work the center was supporting, consider, for example, this list of YIISA seminars examining anti-Semitism from a comparative perspective. It gives you a sense of the cosmopolitan range of its cross-cultural studies of the prejudice.
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Apparently, I'm not alone in finding the center's work worthwhile. Closing YIISA generated a backlash. In the face of scathing articles in the New York Post by Abby Wisse Schachter (the daughter, incidentally, of Harvard's Ruth Wisse, one of the world's leading Jewish-literature scholars) and in the Washington Post by professor Walter Reich (he wrote, "Yale just killed the country's best institute for the study of anti-Semitism"), Yale had a PR problem.
One it solved by rushing into the breach with plans for a new acronym: YPSA! The Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism. An institution whose scholarly neutrality—absence of advocacy against anti-Semitism—would presumably be less offensive to anti-Semites.
In one blow Yale had, in effect, given censorship powers over the limits of the study of anti-Semitism to anti-Semites and the like, the people who cried "advocacy." Not just at Yale but all across America. What timid college administrator anywhere is going to touch the subject in the wake of this incident? Why risk arousing a lynch mob of Israel delegitimizers? The decision could have a nationwide impact, discouraging scholarship in the field.
In addition, Yale was essentially inventing a new kind of Jewish quota: putting a quota on the anger that Jews could express against those who wish for their extermination. After all, such anger would be "advocacy." Apparently YIISA exceeded its quota.
Let us step back a moment and listen to professor Reich in the Washington Post, and particularly to the way he deals with the advocacy question. Reich, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale Medical School, a professor at George Washington University, and a member of the YIISA board of advisers, is a calm, cheerful man, but you can tell from his tone the righteous anger he feels:
For the past five years, [YIISA] has flourished in New Haven, Conn. On a small budget it has sponsored research, visiting fellowships, papers and presentations on the most abiding and lethal hatred mankind has ever known—the one that brought us the Holocaust and that is once again racing around the world. A few institutes for the study of anti-Semitism have sprung up globally—a couple in Israel and some in Europe and North America. Yale's is the first in the States and the first to be closed down.
And here is how he described the conference that—merely by mentioning Islam—gave the anti-Semites a club with which to bully Yale:
Such eminent scholars as Bassam Tibi—a Syrian emigre, a distinguished professor at the University of Goettingen and a devout Muslim—spoke about anti-Semitism in that part of the world, as did other authorities. To be sure, some presenters expressed alarm and took an activist stance—as do some presenters at academic conferences on genocide, human rights, women's studies, African American studies, Hispanic studies, gay and lesbian studies, and nuclear proliferation.
So: It's okay for those who study racism, sexism, and genocide—or for other victims of oppression—to express advocacy, even activism, in conferences at Yale. But not Jews. Quota on that at Yale.
What's more disturbing, actually, after one digs into the matter a little, is the dismayingly docile role played by the Yale Jewish community, its Hillel-like Slifka Center and its most prominent rabbi, James Ponet (who was a contemporary of mine at Yale). I'm troubled by the community's compliant refusal to resist the hastiness of the decision to kill YIISA. And its inability to foster some discussion of what the hastily cobbled-together new acronym institution will be doing. The professor named to head it, Maurice Samuels, is well-liked (and in an email to me, he vouched that he would never disparage "advocacy" against anti-Semitism), but he has focused his academic work on the image of the Jew in 19th-century French literature. Some wonder whether this background is sufficient for the task of examining contemporary anti-Semitism.
A brief chronology to put this in perspective. YIISA, founded six years ago on the initiative of respected sociologist Charles Asher Small, was up for routine review.
The review followed that August 2010 conference held by YIISA on global anti-Semitism. Abby Wisse Schachter, who I believe was the first to report on this scandal, quoted Yale Deputy Provost Frances Rosenbluth, who said at the time of the conference that YIISA was "guided by an outstanding group of scholars from all over the university representing many different disciplines."
But after criticism of the conference by the official PLO "ambassador" and various anti-Israel bloggers on the grounds that the study of Islamic anti-Semitism is prima facie "Islamophobia," the conference on worldwide anti-Semitism seemed to lead Yale to a curious turnaround on the issue of YIISA and Yale's faculty.
Suddenly—surprise!—the "faculty review" of YIISA discovered, contra Deputy Provost Rosenbluth, that YIISA hadn't involved the faculty sufficiently. Rabbi James Ponet actually told me that YIISA's key mistake was holding the conference in August, when the faculty would be away enjoying their time shares or whatever urgent vacation plans they had. It seems to me that any lack of faculty participation in YIISA events by the Yale faculty throughout the years should be laid at the door of the Yale faculty, which did not give the danger of worldwide anti-Semitism a high priority, before, during, or after their precious beach time.
But the truly dismaying aspect of the affair to me was the timid and compliant response of the Jewish community at Yale and its representatives. When an institution like Yale, which had engaged in anti-Semitic practices for at least a half-century, kicks out an institute for the study of anti-Semitism based on a secret faculty report, does the Jewish community, led by its Slifka Center—and its rabbi, Ponet—insist on transparency? Or, at the very least, request that Yale release its critical report, insist on some time to evaluate it, see what YIISA's response was, seek a solution that would preserve five years of valuable work and study? Why not consider ways of improving YIISA if necessary? No. Instead of resistance or at least investigative wariness, the Yale Jewish community rolled over and chose not to rock the boat. In fact, Ponet sent cheerleading emails to me and other concerned alumni asking us to send messages of support to the Yale administration in favor of the killing of YIISA and the substitution of YPSA.
The most stressful moment in the long, uncomfortable email exchange I had with my classmate Rabbi Ponet came when I asked him what he meant when he said Yale acted "foolishly" in the initial stages of the controversy.
I was stunned by his answer. He said that by "foolishly" he didn't mean it was foolish of Yale to throw YIISA under the bus for secretive reasons. No, it was foolish because Yale didn't have its substitute, the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, "fully in place". So it was not a "foolish" decision on the merits, he seemed to be saying; it was just the inept spinning when Yale killed YIISA that troubled him.
Better spinning, of course, would have meant a smooth upgrade in acronyms, not the stealth bureaucratic assassination that was exposed by Yale's foolishness. It would have made the killing of YIISA for "advocacy" against anti-Semitism less of a scandal. They didn't "have it in place." Ponet's line sounds like a description of inept maneuvering in the Bulgarian politburo before the collapse of the dictatorship. Thank you for your criticism, Comrade Ponet, these bureaucratic coups must run more smoothly.
When I replied with astonishment that this was what he felt was the "foolishness" at the heart of the matter, Ponet, perhaps realizing he'd let something slip that he probably shouldn't have, fired off a Sarah Palin-like rant against the media, denouncing me for caring more about a "scoop" than the truth and demanding that I concede that academics were more concerned with truthfulness than journalists.
I had to laugh at that one, since Ponet would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to have noticed that much of the postmodernist movement in the humanities at Yale is predisposed to deny the existence of truth and the "illusion of objectivity" and exalt the idea of competing "narratives" that might all be "true" in a certain way. Since objectivity was an illusion, Ahmadinejad's "narrative" of the Holocaust, by these standards, must be considered as valid as anyone else's. Ms. Schacter even reported in her piece on YIISA that one Yale grad seminar actually met with the great Iranian thinker and heard (with no "advocacy," one hopes) his views on the Holocaust and the lack of "scientific" proof of it.
In regard to academic truth and journalistic scoops, I asked Rabbi Ponet whether it was the Yale political-science department that uncovered the truth about Abu Ghraib or the lowly reporters he sneered at who risked their lives (not their time shares) to get the truth? Would he have preferred not to have had this "scoop" uncovered?
He has yet to answer the email. Henry Kissinger famously said academic disputes are bitter because the stakes are so low. But here, alas, the stakes are high. Rabbi Ponet and Yale will have a lot to answer for as the lasting consequences of their foolish and compliant behavior in the YIISA affair becomes more apparent and frank discussion of anti-Semitism becomes verboten on American campuses.
Put Some Teeth In It
Daniel Greenfield
DON'T WORRY, BE MUSLIM
Forget all the worrying and fussing over Muslim immigration and terrorism. The future looks bright for Britain. We’re probably only days away from the first female Imam and drive through abortion clinics in local mosques. Mecca is going to host its first swimsuit competition on its black rock and Ramadan will unite with Gay Pride Day for a parade that no one will ever be able to forget.
At least that's Islam according to Tony Blair
“Good women are obedient,” says the Koran. “They guard their unseen parts.” Which in the Muslim world often includes their faces, their voices and themselves, until the whole woman becomes one unseen part. “As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.”
The liberal Britain which long since disavowed, “A woman, a dog and a walnut tree; the harder they are beaten, the better they be”, has welcomed it back in as, “A woman, a dog and a palm tree.” But there's good sound reasons for all that
Jews and Christians tended to court their wives, rather than abduct them and rape them in front of their husbands.
When your wedding canopy is a knife at her throat, and your “meet-cute” was burning her village, there’s good reason to fear her disobedience. And when your relationship is based on being the first man to grab her as she made a run for it, there is good reason to keep her inside or cover her from head to toe.
You may be her first rapist, but your cousins and friends will have no objection to being her second and third. When rape is legal, and every adult male around you is a potential rapist, then purdah and headbags are a natural way for fathers and husbands to protect their investment.
There is nothing spiritual about Muslim modesty. It is, as Blair said, “Practical”. In a society of rapists...
Read the rest of it in my Front Page Magazine article, "Don't Worry, Be Muslim".
BACHMANN INEXCUSABLY CONFUSES DEMOCRAT WITH REPUBLICAN
It's shocking and outrageous that Bachmann could confuse a Democrat like John Wayne Gacy with a Republican like John Wayne.
In other gaffe news, Bachmann was unable to fully recite the periodic table, had trouble naming all the dogs who played Lassie and once accepted a tax refund from the government. How can anyone possibly say she's qualified?
Meanwhile Obama will be headed off to his 57th state to continue his crusade against ATM's.
CHAVEZ SURGERY ONLY PARTLY SUCCESSFUL
Venezuela's Chavez says surgery removed small cancerous tumor, larger cancerous tumor to return to work ruling Venezuela.
WATCH WHAT YOU SAY IS THE NEW FREEDOM
Remember when Ari Fleischer criticizing Maher's comments about the 9/11 terrorists was trumpeted as a horrible violation of human freedom by a ruthless administration?
New York Times bemoaned the presidential assault on free speech and the thuggish attacks on the freedom of public figures to say what they wanted.
And then Mark Halperin accurately called Obama a dick on MSNBC and Jay Carney, Obama's Fleischer, called MSNBC to denounce it and now Halperin is indefinitely suspended.
Where's the outrage from Paul Krugman and Frank Rich? Absent.
Endorsing the ruthless thuggish suppression of any criticism by the administration was Media Matters
MSNBC rightly placed its senior political analyst Mark Halperin on indefinite suspension Thursday after the Time editor-at-large inexcusably called President Obama a "dick." This is how responsible news organizations behave.
While Halperin has apologized for his comments, it is simply unacceptable to call the president of the United States -- or any president -- a dick.
I bet that sounded even better in the original Russian.
Freedom of Speech? That was something we had under the old regime. You know the one with George W. Bush. Under the new regime, Limbaugh and FOX News were targeted by the administration, and a political analyst who accurately described Obama's obnoxious behavior gets sent to the media Gulag... with the eager endorsement of an organization that claims to analyze the media, but actually suppresses criticism of The One.
The media responses have not been altogether approving of the Media Matters Pravda line. Jonathan Chait at the New Republic said it best
Halperin acknowledged in his apology that he was 'disrespectful." Since when do political commentators owe the president respect? He works for the American people, not vice versa. This is not a monarchy, and we aren't supposed to speak of the president as if he's the national father. If Halperin thinks Obama is a dick, he should go ahead and say so.
Put another way: Would Halperin be apologizing and facing suspension if he called, say, Donald Trump a dick? If not -- and I'm pretty sure he would not
Obviously not. Then he'd be daring. If he called Bush a dick, he'd get a book deal. But call Obama a dick and you commit Lèse majesté. Which is another reason why the Obama era can never be allowed to happen again. This is not a monarchy and we are not the cult of some lazy political hack with a teleprompter and a tan enough skin to appropriate the sufferings of African-Americans for his own political benefit.
The 4th of July is coming up. The worst way to celebrate it is with obeisance to a new monarchy.
Le MEDIA LOSES Le CREDIBILITY
The New York Daily News cover proclaims "Le Perv May Walk Free". Why because the accuser loses credibility. But their source for calling Kahn "Le Perv" is that same accuser. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that The Daily News loses credibility?
But of course the media never loses credibility. Just their targets. Their target may now shift from Dominique Kahn to the Muslim maid, who shockingly appears to be part of some drug ring and a compulsive liar, but they will never admit fault.
The Bronx chambermaid's credibility crumbled as investigators linked her to a network of crooks and found that she had multiple bank accounts stuffed with a total of almost $100,000 in dirty cash, sources said Thursday night.
Prosecutors now believe there was little truth in anything the native of Guinea native told them since the NYPD yanked the one-time contender for the French presidency off a plane at Kennedy Airport on May 14, the sources said.
It's too early to make any definitive statements yet, but if the case against Kahn does fall apart, then the French criticisms of an American justice system where the accused are gleefully lynched in the press need to be addressed.
If this had been done to an American presidential candidate in France, we would certainly expect it.
The French are not immune to asking some serious questions about their system as well. In the months leading up to the campaign, Kahn reportedly feared being set up in a rape charge. If the case falls apart, then some questions should be asked of whether that actually did happen.
NEVERENDING SCOURGE OF ISLAMOPHOBIA GOES ON SCOURGING
In the happy multicultural paradise of BrooklynTown, a dispute between neighbors over noisy kids transformed immediately into ISLAMOPHOBIA (evil laugh).
Islamophobia, as we know, has killed more people than Gingivitis, Snoopy and Rice Cakes combined. And we must all be vigilant to hunt after it, and beat it to death mercilessly whenever possible. Or perhaps the next suicide bomber will feel unwelcome in our country.
This week's tale of horrifying Islamophobia was trumpeted on the front page of the Daily News as 'HATE GROWS IN BROOKLYN'. Growth implies a progression of something, but don't ask liberal tabloids for headlines that make sense.
The official story was that Simchon Schwartz, a Hassidic Jew had poured beer on a Muslim neighbor and called her an Arab terrorist. This actually isn't even Islamophobia, as even in his neighbor's allegation, he never mentioned Muslims. But again when you're making up crimes, then factual inaccuracies don't matter.
Anti-Arab statements are now also treated as Islamophobia. Even when the neighbor is actually a Turk.
The actual story? The police responded to an altercation between two neighbors, both of whom claimed the other had struck first and made racist comments about them. The police chose to believe one side. The Muslim side. The newspapers chose to believe one side. The Muslim side.
It was widely and apparently inaccurately reported that Simchon Schwartz was a Hassidic Jew, which added spice to the story. Then his daughter came forward, looking like a Jersey Shore reject, to state that she was dating a Muslim and that her father never had a problem with that.
That makes it blatantly obvious that the Hassidic Jew part is also untrue. And it makes the whole thing look even more ridiculous.
No one involved seems to know the difference between Turks, Arabs and Muslims. The infinitely extensible doctrine of Islamophobia now says it's a hate crime to call a Turk, an "Arab Terrorist". Simchon Schwartz is likely an Israeli expat with a troubled family who lives around a Hassidic neighborhood. Crown Heights has no shortage of them.
A Turk living next door got into an argument with him. There was alcohol involved. One or the other man struck first. Schwartz clearly hit harder. This is a common enough dispute in New York City and around the country. And around the world. The result would normally be an arrest and a fine. But the media and the Islamophobia Scam has turned this into a major story.
Much like when a 12 year old Muslim boy, Osman Darawy pulled off the headbag of a Muslim girl, the media shrieked ISLAMOPHOBIA and spent days denouncing him, while refusing to report that he is from a Muslim family.
Yesterday it was Osman Darawy. Today it's Simchon Schwartz. Tomorrow it will be some other Joe dragged into a political and media firestorm by the enablers of Islamic thuggery, who are always on the lookout for new cases of ISLAMOPHOBIA that they can use to bolster their scam.
SPRING INTO ACTION OR FALL INTO LINE
When Gaddafi might possibly kill people, we went into an illegal war. When Assad is killing people, we're urging negotiations (via Dan Friedman).
So who does Assad have pictures of Obama with anyway? A children's choir, a cheeseburger, a goat?
WHAT IF EVIL GOT MARRIED TO EVIL AND HAD EVIL BABIES?
It would be kind of like this. Soros Forging a Closer Alliance with Muslim Brotherhood.
What's next? A Hitler-Stalin pact.
RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN TURKEY AND ISRAEL IMMINENT
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed a local crowd in Diyarbakır, saying that: “We are the grandchildren of Saladin Ayyubi’s army that conquered Jerusalem.”
Funny, Saladin was a Kurd and Erdogan is busy stealing Kurdish seats in parliament. If Saladin were around today, he'd be at war with Erdogan or in one of his prisons.
A TALE OF TWO CONQUESTS
A few days earlier, Mr Erdoğan, this time in Trabzon, reminded his party’s supporters that on May 29 “We proudly celebrated the 558th anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul.”
Compare and contrast this with Sydney, where bowing to pressure from people who claim to be aborigines, but probably barely rank up an aborigine grandmother somewhere, is describing the settlement of Australia as an "invasion".
The Turks are proud of what they have, the Australian government is ashamed. Which type of people have more staying power, shamed conquerors or proud ones?
AN INTERVIEW WITH ED
Edward Cline, the author of the Sparrowhawk novels and occasional commenter at this blog, has an interview up at Capitalism Magazine.
There’s humor in every one of my novels, but humor must have a purpose, and not be there just for the sake of humor. Comic relief, it’s called. Comic relief can be used to underscore the good, or to undermine it. Shakespeare used it in all but a few of his dramas and tragedies, and so have other playwrights and novelists. Humor must fit into a plot and be consistent with a plot-theme. Otherwise it’s extraneous and there just to get a laugh. Much humor is inserted into otherwise good stories as a cowardly apology. It has no purpose but to assure readers that the author doesn’t really mean what he says
See the entire interview at Cap Mag
RECESSIONAL
Beck leaves FOX, a victory for the left, which was not able to drive out Limbaugh, but did succeed here. The difference is that Limbaugh was not dependent on a single company or a single man.
Replacing Beck is a panel discussion. One of those things everyone loves and can't get enough of. Especially when they include Juan Williams. I predict a huge uptick in ratings as the entire country rushes to tune in eager to hear a bunch of people talking to each other... on camera.
IMMIGRATION AND JEWISH LIBERALISM
At View From the Right, Lawrence Auster credits Bloomberg's support for immigration to his Jewish ethnicity.
Bloombrain's nation-saving immigration reform consists essentially of legalizing illegal aliens. Thus Bloombrain apparently believes that legalizing 11 million sub-literate Mexicans is going to add to America's entrepreneurial and technological creativity. And he believes it so much that he says it with a straight face to the august Council on Foreign Relations.
My theory: Bloombrain represents a florid extreme of the collective liberal Jewish narcissism I have spoken of previously. Such narcissists see every issue through the filter of Jewish experience and sensibililty. Since Jewish immigrants to America and their offspring became successful entrepreneurs and professionals, the same must be equally true of all immigrants, even Mexicans with 90 IQs.
If Auster has discovered a Jewish sensibility in Bloomberg, that's right up there with finding a cure for polio. Bloomberg is the least Jewish of the city's three Jewish mayors. And he avoids the topic except around election time, when he dusts off his Yiddish and visits Israel. Something that quite a few politicians do in between a photo op at a deli and a black church. If Beame and Koch were Bagels, Bloomberg is an English Muffin with a Kosher stamp somewhere on the bottom.
Bloomberg's rhetoric is virtually the same as Arnold Schwarzenegger. And of personalities ranging from John McCain to Rupert Murdoch. It's virtually the same consensus in parts of Europe that have hardly any Jews in them.
Blind support for unlimited immigration is less racial, than it is political. The progressive narrative says that a nation's identity is external, the product of nurture by the state. Bring any group of people, run them through the system and they will come out Dutchmen, Englishmen, Norwegians, etc. It is not people who define the state, it is the state that defines the people. The idea long predates the current immigration debates. And it has survived even in the age of multiculturalism.
Auster makes the mistake of treating the liberal politics of many Jews as anti-Christian neurosis. Which would hold up better if the average Latino immigrant were not a devout Catholic. And if Jewish liberals did not equally despise Jewish and Christian conservatives. The interpretation of Jewish liberalism as some quirk from the ghetto, rather than a common failing by many of the best educated and wealthiest Jews and non-Jews in the Western world, is not only outmoded, it hides the real scope of the problem.
And it's ridiculous when discussing younger generations whose ghetto experience comes from 15 minutes of the Fiddler on the Roof movie that they caught on TV. Who have no religion, let alone any sense of religious persecution, and who are likely to get married in an interfaith ceremony with a pastor and a rabbi. Who are not afraid of Christians, but are afraid of "religious extremists" of all denominations, except Muslims. Religious extremists being people who take religion of the non-Oprah variety seriously.
The time when any Jews felt the need to justify immigration as self-justification is long past. The average liberal American Jew from New York was born here, and immigration to him is a distant bit of family lore, not relevant to his identity. He certainly feels no shame or uncertainty over it. He does treat that background as universal, but in this he is no different than his Irish and Italian counterparts. The universalization of experience has become a cultural mandate. Part of the state as primary nurturer of citizens.
Steve Sailer at VDare jumps in with the following...
Instead, it’s largely the outcome of various stereotypical Jewish tendencies, such as neurotic anxiety, persecution complexes, and a weakness for he-who-says-A-must-say-B verbal logic, famously compiled in comedies such as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.
This is a little like using W.C. Fields and Benny Hill as representative.
These excerpts sum up the problem with trying to find a uniquely Jewish take on liberalism. There isn't one. Jews are statistically more likely to be liberals, but their liberalism is not particularly unique.
Bloomberg's support for immigration is no different than that of Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain. It's pro-business sentiments mixed with political pandering, diluted with an idealistic view of immigration. It's marked by a refusal to consider the consequences, because there isn't political room to accept them.
Jewish liberals will pay lip service to Jewish immigration, but they rarely know anything about it. Similarly Irish-American Democrats will push the relevant emotional buttons. And WASP's will mention the Mayflower. These are mere placeholders, not really rooted in anything deeper than the need to hang their dubious politics on a convenient symbol.
The issue has never been immigration, it is destructive immigration. And that is a discussion that is very difficult to have-- as Wilders has demonstrated. Not because it threatens anyone's ethnic identity, but because it threatens their politics. Their faith in the ability of the state to uplift and transform the people under its control.
95, WITHOUT DOGMA
Olivia de Havilland turns 95.
Mickey Kuhn, who, in Gone With the Wind, played de Havilland's character's son Beau Wilkes as a seven-year-old, has been communicating with de Havilland in recent years via letters and notes. He offers this assessment of her: "She's a lovely lady. She's just the epitome of class. And she's a delight to talk to."
Kuhn also notes de Havilland's concern about Stalinist atrocities and her resistance to efforts of the international Communist movement to infiltrate Hollywood. He states: "It's nice to know that she was one of those in Hollywood who saw through the Communist plot."
THE DOGS BARKAT
Religious Jews in Jerusalem were unable to unite around a candidate and so they got Nir Barkat, and now Barkat brought in Meretz, a radical left wing anti-Israel party.
The Chairman of the East Jerusalem Public Complaints Bureau, Aryeh King, affiliated with the National Union-National Religious Party, castigated the decision of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to appoint left-wing Meretz party council member Meir Margalit to handle the ultra-sensitive East Jerusalem file in the municipality.
“He leads the Committee against the Demolishing of Homes, an organization that supports a boycott of Israel, and rebuilds East Jerusalem court-order demolished homes. He will be in a position to approve or deny demolishing in East Jerusalem, and this is a severe conflict of interests. From now on, the municipality representative on any possible forum will be a Meretz man in favor of the division of the city. He has been defaming the State of Israel for years, and will now decide on East Jerusalem projects. The Mayor has made a ‘left turn’, and the public should relate to him accordingly.”
The Meretz left-wing party that Dr. Meir Margalit belongs to, supports a Palestinian state, the dismantling of most of the Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria, and the division of Jerusalem.
Why even bother appointing Margalit, when Barkat could just appoint Abbas?
The real question is will anyone who let this happen last time around learn from their mistake so that Barkat doesn't get to be the second coming of Teddy Kollek for another term.
DICTATORS NEED WELFARE TOO
a NEWSWEEK investigation of Pentagon contracting practices in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Bahrain has uncovered more than $14 billion paid mostly in sole-source contracts to companies controlled by ruling families across the Persian Gulf.
You didn't think we had bases there out of the goodness of their hearts and ours.
Ruling families hosting other U.S. bases in the Gulf seem to be profiting in the same way. Consider Kuwait, where Arifjan, the major U.S. base, serves as the chief military supply route to Iraq. Like the Al Nahyan family in Abu Dhabi, the al-Sabah clan runs Kuwait, as well as its national oil concern, Kuwait Petroleum Co., which has received some $4 billion in Pentagon contracts since 2005, much of it in sole-source contracts. The DLA explains, “Contracts providing fuel destined for Iraq are sole source due to Kuwaiti restrictions.”
Yet, according to contract documents, that money has bypassed the competitive bidding process that is supposed to accompany any -purchase—of firearms, flak jackets, or fuel—by the Pentagon.
Oh they're competitive. Anyone who competes with them dies.
DON'T WORRY, BE MUSLIM
Forget all the worrying and fussing over Muslim immigration and terrorism. The future looks bright for Britain. We’re probably only days away from the first female Imam and drive through abortion clinics in local mosques. Mecca is going to host its first swimsuit competition on its black rock and Ramadan will unite with Gay Pride Day for a parade that no one will ever be able to forget.
At least that's Islam according to Tony Blair
“Good women are obedient,” says the Koran. “They guard their unseen parts.” Which in the Muslim world often includes their faces, their voices and themselves, until the whole woman becomes one unseen part. “As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.”
The liberal Britain which long since disavowed, “A woman, a dog and a walnut tree; the harder they are beaten, the better they be”, has welcomed it back in as, “A woman, a dog and a palm tree.” But there's good sound reasons for all that
Jews and Christians tended to court their wives, rather than abduct them and rape them in front of their husbands.
When your wedding canopy is a knife at her throat, and your “meet-cute” was burning her village, there’s good reason to fear her disobedience. And when your relationship is based on being the first man to grab her as she made a run for it, there is good reason to keep her inside or cover her from head to toe.
You may be her first rapist, but your cousins and friends will have no objection to being her second and third. When rape is legal, and every adult male around you is a potential rapist, then purdah and headbags are a natural way for fathers and husbands to protect their investment.
There is nothing spiritual about Muslim modesty. It is, as Blair said, “Practical”. In a society of rapists...
Read the rest of it in my Front Page Magazine article, "Don't Worry, Be Muslim".
BACHMANN INEXCUSABLY CONFUSES DEMOCRAT WITH REPUBLICAN
It's shocking and outrageous that Bachmann could confuse a Democrat like John Wayne Gacy with a Republican like John Wayne.
In other gaffe news, Bachmann was unable to fully recite the periodic table, had trouble naming all the dogs who played Lassie and once accepted a tax refund from the government. How can anyone possibly say she's qualified?
Meanwhile Obama will be headed off to his 57th state to continue his crusade against ATM's.
CHAVEZ SURGERY ONLY PARTLY SUCCESSFUL
Venezuela's Chavez says surgery removed small cancerous tumor, larger cancerous tumor to return to work ruling Venezuela.
WATCH WHAT YOU SAY IS THE NEW FREEDOM
Remember when Ari Fleischer criticizing Maher's comments about the 9/11 terrorists was trumpeted as a horrible violation of human freedom by a ruthless administration?
New York Times bemoaned the presidential assault on free speech and the thuggish attacks on the freedom of public figures to say what they wanted.
And then Mark Halperin accurately called Obama a dick on MSNBC and Jay Carney, Obama's Fleischer, called MSNBC to denounce it and now Halperin is indefinitely suspended.
Where's the outrage from Paul Krugman and Frank Rich? Absent.
Endorsing the ruthless thuggish suppression of any criticism by the administration was Media Matters
MSNBC rightly placed its senior political analyst Mark Halperin on indefinite suspension Thursday after the Time editor-at-large inexcusably called President Obama a "dick." This is how responsible news organizations behave.
While Halperin has apologized for his comments, it is simply unacceptable to call the president of the United States -- or any president -- a dick.
I bet that sounded even better in the original Russian.
Freedom of Speech? That was something we had under the old regime. You know the one with George W. Bush. Under the new regime, Limbaugh and FOX News were targeted by the administration, and a political analyst who accurately described Obama's obnoxious behavior gets sent to the media Gulag... with the eager endorsement of an organization that claims to analyze the media, but actually suppresses criticism of The One.
The media responses have not been altogether approving of the Media Matters Pravda line. Jonathan Chait at the New Republic said it best
Halperin acknowledged in his apology that he was 'disrespectful." Since when do political commentators owe the president respect? He works for the American people, not vice versa. This is not a monarchy, and we aren't supposed to speak of the president as if he's the national father. If Halperin thinks Obama is a dick, he should go ahead and say so.
Put another way: Would Halperin be apologizing and facing suspension if he called, say, Donald Trump a dick? If not -- and I'm pretty sure he would not
Obviously not. Then he'd be daring. If he called Bush a dick, he'd get a book deal. But call Obama a dick and you commit Lèse majesté. Which is another reason why the Obama era can never be allowed to happen again. This is not a monarchy and we are not the cult of some lazy political hack with a teleprompter and a tan enough skin to appropriate the sufferings of African-Americans for his own political benefit.
The 4th of July is coming up. The worst way to celebrate it is with obeisance to a new monarchy.
Le MEDIA LOSES Le CREDIBILITY
The New York Daily News cover proclaims "Le Perv May Walk Free". Why because the accuser loses credibility. But their source for calling Kahn "Le Perv" is that same accuser. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that The Daily News loses credibility?
But of course the media never loses credibility. Just their targets. Their target may now shift from Dominique Kahn to the Muslim maid, who shockingly appears to be part of some drug ring and a compulsive liar, but they will never admit fault.
The Bronx chambermaid's credibility crumbled as investigators linked her to a network of crooks and found that she had multiple bank accounts stuffed with a total of almost $100,000 in dirty cash, sources said Thursday night.
Prosecutors now believe there was little truth in anything the native of Guinea native told them since the NYPD yanked the one-time contender for the French presidency off a plane at Kennedy Airport on May 14, the sources said.
It's too early to make any definitive statements yet, but if the case against Kahn does fall apart, then the French criticisms of an American justice system where the accused are gleefully lynched in the press need to be addressed.
If this had been done to an American presidential candidate in France, we would certainly expect it.
The French are not immune to asking some serious questions about their system as well. In the months leading up to the campaign, Kahn reportedly feared being set up in a rape charge. If the case falls apart, then some questions should be asked of whether that actually did happen.
NEVERENDING SCOURGE OF ISLAMOPHOBIA GOES ON SCOURGING
In the happy multicultural paradise of BrooklynTown, a dispute between neighbors over noisy kids transformed immediately into ISLAMOPHOBIA (evil laugh).
Islamophobia, as we know, has killed more people than Gingivitis, Snoopy and Rice Cakes combined. And we must all be vigilant to hunt after it, and beat it to death mercilessly whenever possible. Or perhaps the next suicide bomber will feel unwelcome in our country.
This week's tale of horrifying Islamophobia was trumpeted on the front page of the Daily News as 'HATE GROWS IN BROOKLYN'. Growth implies a progression of something, but don't ask liberal tabloids for headlines that make sense.
The official story was that Simchon Schwartz, a Hassidic Jew had poured beer on a Muslim neighbor and called her an Arab terrorist. This actually isn't even Islamophobia, as even in his neighbor's allegation, he never mentioned Muslims. But again when you're making up crimes, then factual inaccuracies don't matter.
Anti-Arab statements are now also treated as Islamophobia. Even when the neighbor is actually a Turk.
The actual story? The police responded to an altercation between two neighbors, both of whom claimed the other had struck first and made racist comments about them. The police chose to believe one side. The Muslim side. The newspapers chose to believe one side. The Muslim side.
It was widely and apparently inaccurately reported that Simchon Schwartz was a Hassidic Jew, which added spice to the story. Then his daughter came forward, looking like a Jersey Shore reject, to state that she was dating a Muslim and that her father never had a problem with that.
That makes it blatantly obvious that the Hassidic Jew part is also untrue. And it makes the whole thing look even more ridiculous.
No one involved seems to know the difference between Turks, Arabs and Muslims. The infinitely extensible doctrine of Islamophobia now says it's a hate crime to call a Turk, an "Arab Terrorist". Simchon Schwartz is likely an Israeli expat with a troubled family who lives around a Hassidic neighborhood. Crown Heights has no shortage of them.
A Turk living next door got into an argument with him. There was alcohol involved. One or the other man struck first. Schwartz clearly hit harder. This is a common enough dispute in New York City and around the country. And around the world. The result would normally be an arrest and a fine. But the media and the Islamophobia Scam has turned this into a major story.
Much like when a 12 year old Muslim boy, Osman Darawy pulled off the headbag of a Muslim girl, the media shrieked ISLAMOPHOBIA and spent days denouncing him, while refusing to report that he is from a Muslim family.
Yesterday it was Osman Darawy. Today it's Simchon Schwartz. Tomorrow it will be some other Joe dragged into a political and media firestorm by the enablers of Islamic thuggery, who are always on the lookout for new cases of ISLAMOPHOBIA that they can use to bolster their scam.
SPRING INTO ACTION OR FALL INTO LINE
When Gaddafi might possibly kill people, we went into an illegal war. When Assad is killing people, we're urging negotiations (via Dan Friedman).
So who does Assad have pictures of Obama with anyway? A children's choir, a cheeseburger, a goat?
WHAT IF EVIL GOT MARRIED TO EVIL AND HAD EVIL BABIES?
It would be kind of like this. Soros Forging a Closer Alliance with Muslim Brotherhood.
What's next? A Hitler-Stalin pact.
RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN TURKEY AND ISRAEL IMMINENT
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed a local crowd in Diyarbakır, saying that: “We are the grandchildren of Saladin Ayyubi’s army that conquered Jerusalem.”
Funny, Saladin was a Kurd and Erdogan is busy stealing Kurdish seats in parliament. If Saladin were around today, he'd be at war with Erdogan or in one of his prisons.
A TALE OF TWO CONQUESTS
A few days earlier, Mr Erdoğan, this time in Trabzon, reminded his party’s supporters that on May 29 “We proudly celebrated the 558th anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul.”
Compare and contrast this with Sydney, where bowing to pressure from people who claim to be aborigines, but probably barely rank up an aborigine grandmother somewhere, is describing the settlement of Australia as an "invasion".
The Turks are proud of what they have, the Australian government is ashamed. Which type of people have more staying power, shamed conquerors or proud ones?
AN INTERVIEW WITH ED
Edward Cline, the author of the Sparrowhawk novels and occasional commenter at this blog, has an interview up at Capitalism Magazine.
There’s humor in every one of my novels, but humor must have a purpose, and not be there just for the sake of humor. Comic relief, it’s called. Comic relief can be used to underscore the good, or to undermine it. Shakespeare used it in all but a few of his dramas and tragedies, and so have other playwrights and novelists. Humor must fit into a plot and be consistent with a plot-theme. Otherwise it’s extraneous and there just to get a laugh. Much humor is inserted into otherwise good stories as a cowardly apology. It has no purpose but to assure readers that the author doesn’t really mean what he says
See the entire interview at Cap Mag
RECESSIONAL
Beck leaves FOX, a victory for the left, which was not able to drive out Limbaugh, but did succeed here. The difference is that Limbaugh was not dependent on a single company or a single man.
Replacing Beck is a panel discussion. One of those things everyone loves and can't get enough of. Especially when they include Juan Williams. I predict a huge uptick in ratings as the entire country rushes to tune in eager to hear a bunch of people talking to each other... on camera.
IMMIGRATION AND JEWISH LIBERALISM
At View From the Right, Lawrence Auster credits Bloomberg's support for immigration to his Jewish ethnicity.
Bloombrain's nation-saving immigration reform consists essentially of legalizing illegal aliens. Thus Bloombrain apparently believes that legalizing 11 million sub-literate Mexicans is going to add to America's entrepreneurial and technological creativity. And he believes it so much that he says it with a straight face to the august Council on Foreign Relations.
My theory: Bloombrain represents a florid extreme of the collective liberal Jewish narcissism I have spoken of previously. Such narcissists see every issue through the filter of Jewish experience and sensibililty. Since Jewish immigrants to America and their offspring became successful entrepreneurs and professionals, the same must be equally true of all immigrants, even Mexicans with 90 IQs.
If Auster has discovered a Jewish sensibility in Bloomberg, that's right up there with finding a cure for polio. Bloomberg is the least Jewish of the city's three Jewish mayors. And he avoids the topic except around election time, when he dusts off his Yiddish and visits Israel. Something that quite a few politicians do in between a photo op at a deli and a black church. If Beame and Koch were Bagels, Bloomberg is an English Muffin with a Kosher stamp somewhere on the bottom.
Bloomberg's rhetoric is virtually the same as Arnold Schwarzenegger. And of personalities ranging from John McCain to Rupert Murdoch. It's virtually the same consensus in parts of Europe that have hardly any Jews in them.
Blind support for unlimited immigration is less racial, than it is political. The progressive narrative says that a nation's identity is external, the product of nurture by the state. Bring any group of people, run them through the system and they will come out Dutchmen, Englishmen, Norwegians, etc. It is not people who define the state, it is the state that defines the people. The idea long predates the current immigration debates. And it has survived even in the age of multiculturalism.
Auster makes the mistake of treating the liberal politics of many Jews as anti-Christian neurosis. Which would hold up better if the average Latino immigrant were not a devout Catholic. And if Jewish liberals did not equally despise Jewish and Christian conservatives. The interpretation of Jewish liberalism as some quirk from the ghetto, rather than a common failing by many of the best educated and wealthiest Jews and non-Jews in the Western world, is not only outmoded, it hides the real scope of the problem.
And it's ridiculous when discussing younger generations whose ghetto experience comes from 15 minutes of the Fiddler on the Roof movie that they caught on TV. Who have no religion, let alone any sense of religious persecution, and who are likely to get married in an interfaith ceremony with a pastor and a rabbi. Who are not afraid of Christians, but are afraid of "religious extremists" of all denominations, except Muslims. Religious extremists being people who take religion of the non-Oprah variety seriously.
The time when any Jews felt the need to justify immigration as self-justification is long past. The average liberal American Jew from New York was born here, and immigration to him is a distant bit of family lore, not relevant to his identity. He certainly feels no shame or uncertainty over it. He does treat that background as universal, but in this he is no different than his Irish and Italian counterparts. The universalization of experience has become a cultural mandate. Part of the state as primary nurturer of citizens.
Steve Sailer at VDare jumps in with the following...
Instead, it’s largely the outcome of various stereotypical Jewish tendencies, such as neurotic anxiety, persecution complexes, and a weakness for he-who-says-A-must-say-B verbal logic, famously compiled in comedies such as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.
This is a little like using W.C. Fields and Benny Hill as representative.
These excerpts sum up the problem with trying to find a uniquely Jewish take on liberalism. There isn't one. Jews are statistically more likely to be liberals, but their liberalism is not particularly unique.
Bloomberg's support for immigration is no different than that of Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain. It's pro-business sentiments mixed with political pandering, diluted with an idealistic view of immigration. It's marked by a refusal to consider the consequences, because there isn't political room to accept them.
Jewish liberals will pay lip service to Jewish immigration, but they rarely know anything about it. Similarly Irish-American Democrats will push the relevant emotional buttons. And WASP's will mention the Mayflower. These are mere placeholders, not really rooted in anything deeper than the need to hang their dubious politics on a convenient symbol.
The issue has never been immigration, it is destructive immigration. And that is a discussion that is very difficult to have-- as Wilders has demonstrated. Not because it threatens anyone's ethnic identity, but because it threatens their politics. Their faith in the ability of the state to uplift and transform the people under its control.
95, WITHOUT DOGMA
Olivia de Havilland turns 95.
Mickey Kuhn, who, in Gone With the Wind, played de Havilland's character's son Beau Wilkes as a seven-year-old, has been communicating with de Havilland in recent years via letters and notes. He offers this assessment of her: "She's a lovely lady. She's just the epitome of class. And she's a delight to talk to."
Kuhn also notes de Havilland's concern about Stalinist atrocities and her resistance to efforts of the international Communist movement to infiltrate Hollywood. He states: "It's nice to know that she was one of those in Hollywood who saw through the Communist plot."
THE DOGS BARKAT
Religious Jews in Jerusalem were unable to unite around a candidate and so they got Nir Barkat, and now Barkat brought in Meretz, a radical left wing anti-Israel party.
The Chairman of the East Jerusalem Public Complaints Bureau, Aryeh King, affiliated with the National Union-National Religious Party, castigated the decision of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to appoint left-wing Meretz party council member Meir Margalit to handle the ultra-sensitive East Jerusalem file in the municipality.
“He leads the Committee against the Demolishing of Homes, an organization that supports a boycott of Israel, and rebuilds East Jerusalem court-order demolished homes. He will be in a position to approve or deny demolishing in East Jerusalem, and this is a severe conflict of interests. From now on, the municipality representative on any possible forum will be a Meretz man in favor of the division of the city. He has been defaming the State of Israel for years, and will now decide on East Jerusalem projects. The Mayor has made a ‘left turn’, and the public should relate to him accordingly.”
The Meretz left-wing party that Dr. Meir Margalit belongs to, supports a Palestinian state, the dismantling of most of the Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria, and the division of Jerusalem.
Why even bother appointing Margalit, when Barkat could just appoint Abbas?
The real question is will anyone who let this happen last time around learn from their mistake so that Barkat doesn't get to be the second coming of Teddy Kollek for another term.
DICTATORS NEED WELFARE TOO
a NEWSWEEK investigation of Pentagon contracting practices in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Bahrain has uncovered more than $14 billion paid mostly in sole-source contracts to companies controlled by ruling families across the Persian Gulf.
You didn't think we had bases there out of the goodness of their hearts and ours.
Ruling families hosting other U.S. bases in the Gulf seem to be profiting in the same way. Consider Kuwait, where Arifjan, the major U.S. base, serves as the chief military supply route to Iraq. Like the Al Nahyan family in Abu Dhabi, the al-Sabah clan runs Kuwait, as well as its national oil concern, Kuwait Petroleum Co., which has received some $4 billion in Pentagon contracts since 2005, much of it in sole-source contracts. The DLA explains, “Contracts providing fuel destined for Iraq are sole source due to Kuwaiti restrictions.”
Yet, according to contract documents, that money has bypassed the competitive bidding process that is supposed to accompany any -purchase—of firearms, flak jackets, or fuel—by the Pentagon.
Oh they're competitive. Anyone who competes with them dies.
Luxury Spa Brand Helps Hamas With Every Soap and Lotion Sold…
Tiffany Gabbay
For everyone who’s ever used a face cream, anti-wrinkle treatment, “bath bomb” or body “butter” — did you ever think that while performing your daily beautification rituals, you might actually be supporting Hamas and its sympathizers?
Well, if you use a brand of high-end spa products by a company called LUSH, you are. Some may not have ever heard of the luxury cosmetics company Lush, but on the hip streets of Soho, West Hollywood, South Beach and Mayfair in London, the boutique soap-pusher has become a household name. Billed as a purveyor of “fresh, handmade” cosmetics, Lush’s products promise to pamper you head to toe with luxurious all natural lotions, soaps, bath gels, lipsticks, shampoos and perfumes.
Seems innocent enough, right? Think twice.It turns out British-born Lush supports a number of far-left causes — spun on its website as “ethical campaigns” — running the gamut from: global warming to oil spills; gay marriage to a “no one is illegal” campaign; to advancing the fight against nuclear energy. All polarizing issues that carry an inherit risk of alienating customers — but when Lush announced its support for the anti-Israel, jihadi sympathizing OneWorld campaign — the company’s foray into the murky waters of the Israeli Palestinian conflict went beyond the pale.
With a reported $350 million in annual revenue (some reports even say $500 million) and locations in over 40 countries, Lush’s far-reach and influence cannot easily be dismissed.
You might remember OneWorld — the group started by various recording artists whose stated aim is to “free Palestine” from its Israeli “oppressors.” With the help of well-known music group Coldplay, OneWorld launched a song titled “Freedom for Palestine.” The pro-Palestinian song pushes a revisionist narrative, which paints Israel as “illegal occupiers” committing “crimes against humanity.”
The fact that West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are territories under dispute and not in fact “illegally occupied,” — and that the charge of Israel committing “crimes against humanity” is erroneous — doesn’t seem to be of consequence to OneWorld and its supporters.
Lush’s website even hosts a separate section just for the OneWorld campaign. Below is a screenshot of the dedicated page:
Lush’s OneWorld page featuring the following statement:
This month we have the exciting opportunity to help secure a UK chart position for a song called ‘Freedom for Palestine’ by a collective of musicians called OneWorld. The aim of the song is to raise awareness of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the resulting poverty and other human rights abuses.
Still, despite outraged customers requesting Lush to sever ties with OneWorld, Lush’s crusade to “free the Palestinians” continues. After receiving a written complaint from a former customer and blogger who found the company’s anti-Israel bend repugnant, Lush stuck to its guns and continued to vilify Israel in a written response. Below is reportedly Lush’s reply written by “customer care manager” Vicky Jansson.
Chock-full of historical inaccuracies, this is a perfect example of what happens when a cosmetic company believes itself to be a think tank on foreign policy:
Thank you for your email. I‘m sorry to hear you’re disappointed with Lush’s support for the OneWorld project. The history between Israel and Palestine is long, complicated and often under dispute. However, what is very clear is the level of suffering occurring today, in part due to the construction of the wall which is cutting Palestinian people off from vital health services and has dramatically increased poverty in the area. History does not excuse such suffering. It will take both sides to come to a solution, but what is also clear is that this is not a conflict of two equal sides and thus the onus must be on the dominating force, Israel.
Jansson then goes on to liken Palestinian’s experience to the long suffering plight of Tibetans. She failed to leave out the fact that Tibetans do not mobilize terror squads, spawn suicide bombers, or lob rockets into civilian population centers in neighboring China.
Perhaps most hypocritical is Lush’s involvement in human rights campaigns for both gays and women, given that both communities suffer unspeakable persecution in the Muslim world. Out of the 40 countries Lush has a presence in, Israel is not one of them, yet Saudi Arabia — where women aren’t even allowed to show their face let alone make it more attractive with cosmetics — found a place in Lush’s heart.
Conversely, Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, recently hosted its own gay pride parade and consistently elects women to the highest ranking offices in the land. One doubts the possibility of ever seeing that occur in Gaza or West Bank.
The blogger who originally complained to Lush and broke the story online might have summed it up best in a reply to Jansson. Below is a brief excerpt:
…it is clear that the people at Lush have absolutely no understanding about it [the history between Israel and Palestine], because they have accepted the narrative of political activists whose objective is nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish State. Have you ever thought about the possibility that almost every piece of information being promoted by those people is a lie? Have you, or any of your Lush colleagues ever been to Israel (and I don’t include trips to the ‘West Bank’ under the protection of anti-Israel groups) and spent time with Israelis? Clearly not, because if any of them had they will know that the narrative presented on the Lush website is a total lie.
The entire thread of letters to and from Lush can be read here.
Interestingly enough, Lush might now be trying to conceal its support for OneWorld — perhaps after dismayed customers contacted the company about its dubious world-view and affiliations. The OneWorld page, which first featured prominently on Lush’s site, is now rather difficult to find — slipping inconspicuously to the very bottom of a laundry list of other Lush-sponsored causes. In a passive-aggressive way, Lush doesn’t seem to want to give up OneWorld, but on the flip-side, doesn’t necessarily want to shout its support from the rooftops either. Is Lush trying to downplay its controversial ties in order to mislead unsuspecting customers?
Below is a video about Lush’s “ethical campaigns” featured on the company’s site:
Lush Cosmetics – A Lush Life, We Believe from Jack Constantine on Vimeo.
For the record, Lush has dozens of stores in the U.S. Here is a list of all their U.S. locations.
How Billionaire George Gund III Funds Jew-Hate
David Swindle
The phenomenon of leftist billionaires funding anti-capitalist activism seems on the surface to be a contradiction. How could those who should understand the way individual freedom and initiative creates wealth with the power to do good seek the destruction of the system that produces this wealth? The answer is a complex one, although for those who inherited wealth, rather than making their own fortune, guilt clearly plays a role. This seems to be the case with billionaire former sports mogul George Gund III. He used to own the San Jose Sharks and Cleveland Cavaliers. Today he’s the co-founder of two foundations which provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to dozens of radical causes. In a rare public interview, Gund has commented on his admiration for those who led lives that challenged the established cultural order, like Zen artists. This affinity for the “outsider” has driven Gund to bankroll the films and activism of Iara Lee, his Korean-Brazilian wife 27 years his junior. Since 2003, Lee has globe-hopped throughout the Middle East, filming sequences for a documentary she and Gund released this spring as “Cultures of Resistance.” Last year she rose to prominence after releasing footage she shot on the Mavi Marmara during a clash between jihadist IHH activists and Israeli commandos during the “flotilla” confrontation.
In spite of their supposed sympathy for outsiders, the couple chooses to focus most of their activist money against the most tolerant Middle Eastern state. Israel is their primary target. The couple is completely indifferent to the reality that the rights of gays, women and religious minorities are protected more diligently in this supposedly “apartheid” state than in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Thus, the Iara Lee and George Gund III Foundation (ILGGF) (founded 2004) and the Caipirinha Foundation (founded 2006) have funneled more than half a million dollars to activist groups committed to demonizing Israel and supporting Hamas.
The most troubling of Lee and Gund’s anti-Israel donations has been the Caipirinha Foundation’s grant to the The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedom and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) which sponsors flotillas that seek to disrupt Israel’s military blockade of Gaza. The IHH also has ties to Hamas, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood, a fact which prevented the IHH from participating in the next flotilla scheduled for the end of this month. Lee has defended the IHH in a video and blog post at The Huffington Post.
The dollar amount of Caipirinha’s grant is not yet available. The donation was likely made in 2010 as it does not appear on the organization’s 2007, 2008, or 2009 records. Caipirinha used the Zakat Foundation of America as a “fiscal sponsor.—that is, as a non-profit intermediary to funnel tax-exempt donations to another organization that’s too openly radical to qualify for 501©3 status, the progressive non-profit world’s version of money laundering.
In 2009 the ILGGF gave $50,000 to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a George Soros-sponsored non-profit which disproportionately targets its Human Rights concerns on Israel. In both 2008 and 2007 the ILGGF made donations of $60,000 to HRW, making their three-year total $170,000.
In 2009 the foundation also provided $100,000 to the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization which in 2007 urged the international community to help Hamas and Fatah form a coalition government and for Israel to negotiate with it. In 2008 the ILGGF provided the ICG with $100,000 and $25,000 in 2007 for a three-year total of $225,000.
In 2009 Caipirinha donated $10,000 to the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation to fund a 30-second ad. The ILGGF has previously donated $10,000 to the campaign in 2008 and 2007 for a three-year total of $30,000
The ILGGF and Caipirinha have also supported the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). In 2009 Caipirinha donated $5000 specifically for publicity for anti-Israel activist Phyllis Bennis, a fellow of the IPS who has previously characterized Israel as an apartheid state, vigorously promoted the so-called “right of return,” and endorsed the 2000 Palestinian Intifada. The ILGGF donated $10,000 to the IPS in both 2007 and 2008 for a three-year total of $25,000.
In 2009 the Caipirinha Foundation donated $20,000 to the “Free Gaza” Movement (FGM) through the “fiscal sponsor” of American Educational Trust. (The AET is a tax-deductible foundation, whereas direct donations to FGM cannot be written off on tax returns.) According to the FGM, Israel’s creation was a “catastrophe” and a “historical injustice.” Like the IHH (which it coordinated efforts with in 2010), the FGM sponsors flotillas to attempt to disrupt the naval blockade Israel set up to prevent Hamas’ rockets from reaching terrorists in Gaza. Lee herself went last year and recruited Holocaust denier and “independent scholar” Norman Finkelstein to join her this year.
The Caipirinha Foundation was especially active in 2009, making many smaller donations to leftist, anti-Israel groups. Caipirinha donated $65,000 to four groups claiming to provide “emergency medical supplies” and “relief aid” in Gaza: $5,000 for Kinder USA, $5,000 for the Eschaton Foundation, $5000 for American Near East Refugee Aid, and $50,000 for Grassroots International. Caipirinha also provided $4000 to the International Solidarity Movement through the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute and $5,000 to Code Pink.
Lee and Gund’s total is $544,000 in three years – and that’s only for groups heavily focused on Israel and does not include 2010 since records are not yet available.
Now that Gund is no longer active in the sports world, where does he get his money to fund his wife’s anti-Israel friends? The estimated net worth of the Gund family in 1999 was $1.7 billion. According to SmartTrend News the Gunds own 9% of Kellogg, and have since the 1920s when George Gund Jr. sold his decaf coffee company (later called Sanka) to the breakfast cereal giant.
The stock donated by Lee and Gund in 2007 ($489,433) and 2008 ($273,520) to the Caipirinha Foundation is Kellogg’s and comes from the corporation’s continued growth in a bad economy.
In the end, it is perhaps not a great mystery why Gund would sympathize with Zen artists. The philosophy is based on learning how to transcend caring about the world, its people, and the practical realities of day-to-day life. Owning a large chunk of one of America’s most successful corporations, while trying to earn the Left’s forgiveness for having inherited his wealth, helped George Gund achieve just that.
Ami Isseroff
FresnoZionism
Ami Isseroff died this week. A remarkable intellect, Ami was uncompromising both in his Zionism and, believe it or not, his socialism. “I’m opposed to occupation, a member of the ‘peace camp’ and always will be,” he told me. But despite this, he well understood the nature of the Arab leadership and had no illusions about what would result from precipitous concessions. He kept his Zionist compass intact when many of his left-wing friends were losing theirs. Ami proved that it’s possible to be a left-wing Zionist today. Naturally he took vicious hits from both the Left and the Right. That didn’t stop him. An amateur historian (though he had a doctorate in Psychology and worked in computer software), he always knew the facts far better than his opponents.
I first made his acquaintance shortly after I started blogging in 2006. Ami was always helpful to a fault, despite the fact that he and I disagreed about almost everything except the importance of the Jewish state.
We often argued. Insofar as I can remember, he never gave in on anything. Usually I just let the argument peter out. He believed that I should write “West Bank” instead of “Judea and Samaria” because “nobody to the left of Meir Kahane will read you.” I responded that I refused to let the Jordanian occupation define the Jewish homeland. We never settled this, of course.
He hated religion. I thought Judaism was a positive force. Once I wrote something that included the word ‘hashem‘. Almost immediately, I received an email: “‘Hashem?’ Did you lose your mind?” We didn’t settle this, either.
Ami was, above all, practical. “What you are doing is supposed to be hasbara, not making yourself feel good. Always ask yourself what the effect of your writing will be. And never lie.” He often made the point that only a tiny percentage of the world’s population is Jews, so why do we aim so much of our efforts at them?
He was fond of sending emails entitled “Hasbara this” describing things done by the Israeli government, the IDF or in Israel’s name that he felt were public-relations disasters.
His greatest scorn was reserved for Israeli politicians who made empty threats and right-wing bloggers who made Israel appear to be belligerent. One well-known blog had a banner that read “There is only a military solution.” This annoyed Ami no end — he tried to get the blogger to remove it (finally it was changed to “There is no diplomatic solution.” He wasn’t mollified). He would say “Israel must always be for peace first and foremost,” although he understood the need to be prepared for the worst.
Here’s an example of his writing, from an important 2008 article called “The future of Jewish anti-Zionism – a Zionist analysis“:
In large part, the Arab Palestinian anti-Israel movement is led not by Palestinian Arabs or anti-Semites, but by Jews. Halper, Beinin, Rose, Pappe, Chomsky, Finkelstein and Brian Klug, rather than Alloush, Abunimah, Fayyad Husseini, Qaukji, Tamimi and abu Youssef, are the intellectual mainstays of the movement to wipe out the Jewish state. Their English is much better, and they can cast their ideas in slogans acceptable to western culture. “Secular Democratic State” sounds so much better than “Drive the Jews into the Sea” to a good progressive, doesn’t it? It is hard to label them as “anti-Semites.” It is hard to discredit their lies. If a Jew and an Israeli says that Zionists commit war crimes, it must be true.Their appearances and their books and articles are lauded in the Arab world, and reprinted in Al-Ahram and Roz el Youssef alongside the latest “proofs” of the authenticity of the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not since al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) have Jews enjoyed such a Golden Age.
But he also wrote this (2007):
ZOA speaks for the extreme end of the revisionist movement, generating a message that alienates all but the most committed Zionists. The Zionist right in the US has struggled mightily to convince everyone that Zionism is synonymous with settlers and settlements and with the Greater Israel movement. That is exactly the point that the anti-Zionists are trying to make of course. The opposition score a goal every time Mort Klein and the ZOA come out against another peace initiative.
Ami believed that the Internet was the theater in which the information war between Israel and her enemies would be fought, and did what he could to create effective grass-roots support for Israel in cyberspace.
He was responsible for numerous blogs and informational websites, including MideastWeb, a resource for historical information, documents, timelines, etc. and ZioNation, an opinion blog. Unlike many writers — including academics and professional journalists — he understood the difference.
I last saw Ami in his home in Rehovot this January. He had already suffered a stroke which made typing difficult; but he continued his blogging and correspondence with help from his family and many friends. I learned many things from Ami, but one of the most important was that the labels of ‘left’ and ‘right’ often obscure reality more than elucidating it.
May his memory be a blessing and an inspiration.
Last whimper from the Gaza flotilla?
theoptimisticconservative
The US and Canadian Boats to Gaza – M/V Audacity of Hope and M/V Tahrir, respectively – tried to make an unauthorized departure on 1 July from the Greek port they have been detained in. The Greek coast guard promptly intercepted them (don’t miss Challah Hu Akbar’s coverage at the link). This may be the final ride of the 2011 flotilla. Its prospects are certainly dimming: now that AOH and Tahrir have violated a directive from the Greek authorities, which had ordered them to remain in port pending the investigation of a complaint filed against them, the ships can be held there for as long as the Greeks see fit, and their crews might well be charged in court. Positive as this outcome would be, it falls short of the leadership by which the Western nations should have shut down the flotilla in the first place. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, there was a point at which all of the ships participating in the 2011 flotilla were flagged by North American or European nations. (A Jordanian ship has since been announced, although there has been little information about it.)
Of all the nations on earth, it ought to be the nations of North America and Europe that prevent ships under their flags from being used in such a cause. If for no other reason (e.g., that Israel is a US ally and fellow Western democracy), our concern about order in the unforgiving environment of the seas should prompt us to exercise our prerogative as flag states. There exists no “right” to attempt to break a blockade under the flag of any nation; rather, the authority of a flag state to prevent such an attempt is absolute. The flag state may not always have the means to prevent such an action. But the US, Canada, and the nations of Europe certainly do. In our case, the only question is whether the authority will be used.
The nations of the 2011 flotilla have not used it. Instead, Israel has had to mount a campaign of lawsuits and sabotage to prevent the flotilla from getting underway. To date, Greece has been induced to hold at least six ships in port because of procedural complaints filed against them; two ships have been sabotaged (the second, the Irish ship M/V Saoirse, was reported on Wednesday); and the Israeli law center Shurat HaDin has filed a lawsuit in US federal court to prevent the M/V Audacity of Hope from participating in the flotilla. (Texas Governor Rick Perry wrote on Thursday to urge the Obama administration to intercept and/or prosecute the American flotilla participants, citing Title 18 Section 962 of the US Code.)
These creative efforts get an A+ for ingenuity and determination, but they should not have been necessary. Nor should the US or any of our allies be working through covert, undeclared pressure on Greece or Turkey to prevent the ships under our flags from departing their ports to mount the flotilla operation. We should state our purpose overtly as a matter of policy. Merely warning our citizens that this is a bad idea is insufficient; out governments should be denying them the ships.
We should do so especially because of the evidence of participation in the flotilla by Hamas and IHH. Dutch media have reported this week that all the embarked Dutch journalists have pulled out of the flotilla (here and here), in large part because of the presence of a Hamas leader. One of the chief organizers of the flotilla is Mohammed Sawalha, who has extensive Hamas connections.
But the participation of IHH members, widely reported in Turkish media, is in one way even more significant. It was IHH participants who attacked Israeli soldiers during the 2010 flotilla incident, and their presence this year lends special credence to the Israeli report earlier this week that flotilla participants from the terror groups were planning another attack on the IDF. In line with this purpose, one of the American flotilla planners has forthrightly announced that the flotilla is part of
… a larger strategy, to transform this conflict from one between Israel and the Palestinians, or Israel and the Arab world…to one between the rest of the world and Israel…
There can be no excuse for permitting Americans to involve the US flag in this. There is no “order” in the maritime environment without the exercise of authority by someone functioning, in essence, as a territorial sheriff. But the good news is that the enforcement of such order properly extends to preventing disorderly and escalatory acts by those operating under national flags. Individual governments are the highest authority, and in maritime terms, the US is chief among them. The Obama administration’s public passivity regarding the Americans in the flotilla and their US-flagged ship sends a significant and destructive signal about our posture on maritime order. It says we don’t care about it.
That is a dangerous signal to send in 2011, with China conducting aggressive naval operations in the Japanese islands, Iran operating submarines beyond the Arabian Sea, and US leadership ineffective against the Somali piracy problem. Maritime order doesn’t keep itself – but visibly enforcing it once can provide a lesson that lasts for decades.
J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.
The US and Canadian Boats to Gaza – M/V Audacity of Hope and M/V Tahrir, respectively – tried to make an unauthorized departure on 1 July from the Greek port they have been detained in. The Greek coast guard promptly intercepted them (don’t miss Challah Hu Akbar’s coverage at the link). This may be the final ride of the 2011 flotilla. Its prospects are certainly dimming: now that AOH and Tahrir have violated a directive from the Greek authorities, which had ordered them to remain in port pending the investigation of a complaint filed against them, the ships can be held there for as long as the Greeks see fit, and their crews might well be charged in court. Positive as this outcome would be, it falls short of the leadership by which the Western nations should have shut down the flotilla in the first place. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, there was a point at which all of the ships participating in the 2011 flotilla were flagged by North American or European nations. (A Jordanian ship has since been announced, although there has been little information about it.)
Of all the nations on earth, it ought to be the nations of North America and Europe that prevent ships under their flags from being used in such a cause. If for no other reason (e.g., that Israel is a US ally and fellow Western democracy), our concern about order in the unforgiving environment of the seas should prompt us to exercise our prerogative as flag states. There exists no “right” to attempt to break a blockade under the flag of any nation; rather, the authority of a flag state to prevent such an attempt is absolute. The flag state may not always have the means to prevent such an action. But the US, Canada, and the nations of Europe certainly do. In our case, the only question is whether the authority will be used.
The nations of the 2011 flotilla have not used it. Instead, Israel has had to mount a campaign of lawsuits and sabotage to prevent the flotilla from getting underway. To date, Greece has been induced to hold at least six ships in port because of procedural complaints filed against them; two ships have been sabotaged (the second, the Irish ship M/V Saoirse, was reported on Wednesday); and the Israeli law center Shurat HaDin has filed a lawsuit in US federal court to prevent the M/V Audacity of Hope from participating in the flotilla. (Texas Governor Rick Perry wrote on Thursday to urge the Obama administration to intercept and/or prosecute the American flotilla participants, citing Title 18 Section 962 of the US Code.)
These creative efforts get an A+ for ingenuity and determination, but they should not have been necessary. Nor should the US or any of our allies be working through covert, undeclared pressure on Greece or Turkey to prevent the ships under our flags from departing their ports to mount the flotilla operation. We should state our purpose overtly as a matter of policy. Merely warning our citizens that this is a bad idea is insufficient; out governments should be denying them the ships.
We should do so especially because of the evidence of participation in the flotilla by Hamas and IHH. Dutch media have reported this week that all the embarked Dutch journalists have pulled out of the flotilla (here and here), in large part because of the presence of a Hamas leader. One of the chief organizers of the flotilla is Mohammed Sawalha, who has extensive Hamas connections.
But the participation of IHH members, widely reported in Turkish media, is in one way even more significant. It was IHH participants who attacked Israeli soldiers during the 2010 flotilla incident, and their presence this year lends special credence to the Israeli report earlier this week that flotilla participants from the terror groups were planning another attack on the IDF. In line with this purpose, one of the American flotilla planners has forthrightly announced that the flotilla is part of
… a larger strategy, to transform this conflict from one between Israel and the Palestinians, or Israel and the Arab world…to one between the rest of the world and Israel…
There can be no excuse for permitting Americans to involve the US flag in this. There is no “order” in the maritime environment without the exercise of authority by someone functioning, in essence, as a territorial sheriff. But the good news is that the enforcement of such order properly extends to preventing disorderly and escalatory acts by those operating under national flags. Individual governments are the highest authority, and in maritime terms, the US is chief among them. The Obama administration’s public passivity regarding the Americans in the flotilla and their US-flagged ship sends a significant and destructive signal about our posture on maritime order. It says we don’t care about it.
That is a dangerous signal to send in 2011, with China conducting aggressive naval operations in the Japanese islands, Iran operating submarines beyond the Arabian Sea, and US leadership ineffective against the Somali piracy problem. Maritime order doesn’t keep itself – but visibly enforcing it once can provide a lesson that lasts for decades.
J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.
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