Posted 11/10/2003 07:30:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Blogger Exodus

I've moved to the new digs, please adjust your blogrolls.

Posted 11/05/2003 10:00:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Exodus from Blogger

My long-overdue move is in process.

The gracious folks at Bloghosts are making the transition much easier than I feared, though it's taking a bit longer than I hoped. The new site is open but the content is extremely thin... that'll be fixed soon. A new design is also in the works, I'm excited about the make-over.

Allahu Akbar

Posted 11/03/2003 10:50:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Our Friend Abdel Rachman

I've been curious about the absence of Abdel Rachman from the networks, and was almost glad to see him during the Senate's hearings about our aid money going to fund the terrorists. Rachman was his usual deluded self:

The PLO/PA representative in Washington, Hassan Abdel Rahman, also testified. He initially claimed that the PMW film's translations of PA schoolbooks and speeches are "mistranslations." When challenged by the Senators on this point, Rahman then claimed that even if they were not mistranslated, "they are just expressions of religious belief, and it does not matter what they are saying, if it's a religious belief."

ZOA President Klein's testimony refuted a number of Rahman's allegations. In one dramatic example, in response to Rahman's claim that the PA wants to live in peace with Israel, Klein held up a piece of Rahman's own official PA stationery, which shows a map of all of Israel labeled "Palestine."

In response to Rahman's claim that most people in America and Israel support the creation of a PA state, Klein cited a recent McLaughlin poll showing 71% of Americans opposing such a state, and a recent Geocartography poll showing that 61% of Israelis opposing it.

In response to Rahman's claim that most PA Arabs oppose terrorism, Klein cited polls showing that roughly 70% of them support suicide bombings. He also noted a poll taken earlier this month that found that 59% of PA Arabs support continuing violence against Israel, even if Israel surrenders all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and eastern Jerusalem.

Refuting Rahman's claim that Israel had stolen Arab lands from "Palestine," Klein explained that there never was an independent country called Palestine, and challenged Rahman to "name one Palestinian king or queen." Rahman did not respond.

I wonder if the Senate was as entertained as I was.

Posted 10/31/2003 03:14:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Moving

I'll be off line for a couple of days as I go through my blogspot exodus. Hopefully everything will run smoothly.

Shabbat Shalom

Posted 10/30/2003 09:24:00 AM by Ocean Guy
More about Jews on Campus

Natan Sharansky's article that appeared in last week's Forward has resulted in a rebuke by Hillel's Interim President, Avraham Infeld. Mr. Infeld, though, doesn't offer much of a counter-argument, in fact his comments identify a gaping hole.

Infeld, however, said the situation was not as dire as Sharansky had portrayed it.

"If I were to look at the 400 campuses where Hillel has a presence, I don't think there are serious battle issues on more than 25 or 30 of those campuses," Infeld said. "And on those campuses the Arab students are organized, the Arab students have mobilized the faculty and we're having a more difficult time. But that's not representative of the entire country."

In his article, Sharansky cited the example of a Harvard University student who told him she was afraid to participate in pro-Israel activities for fear that her professors would retaliate against her.

The president of Harvard Students for Israel, Josh Suskewicz, told the Forward that outspoken pro-Israel faculty members, such as law professor Alan Dershowitz, have helped to create a campus climate free of intimidation. But at the graduate level, students have said they felt intimidated by professors who are hostile to Israel, said a Harvard Hillel rabbi who asked not to be identified by name.

Infeld agreed that hostile faculty can be a problem, but said the problem is limited in its scope.

"There is no question that faculty on campuses speaking out against Israel can be very intimidating to the Jewish student," Infeld said. But, he added, faculty intimidation is a problem on only a few campuses.

From his comments, it seems to me, that Mr. Infeld ought to be writing in Forward about the 25 or 30 campuses where there is a problem. Maybe he ought to be publicizing the problem of faculty intimidation and where it exists.

There has been an identifiable global trend of increasing anti-Semitism over the past few years. We should not ignore it and hope that it will simply go away. As I said last week, I thought Mr. Sharansky's column offered hope while describing a gloomy situation. One of the best ways to eliminate the gloom is to shine light on the facts. The brighter the light the faster the gloom disappears. Mr. Infeld is in a position to bring the light to bear on the problems where they exist. To be sure he should and cannot ignore the good things happening, but we'd all be better served by knowing where problems do exist. Mr. Sharansky may have opened some eyes... Mr. Infeld ought not to try to put blinders on us by minimizing the problems.

Posted 10/30/2003 09:20:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Party Affiliation

I am not comfortable with either the Democrats or the Republicans. The Democrat's hard turn to the way left and increasingly reactionary rhetoric pushed me to change my party of record. I made the change as a sign of displeasure with the Democrats more than real acceptance of Republican aims. I am not alone.

"Coleman Republican" appears to be a new moniker for Moderate Jewish Republicans.

The trend of Jews running under a moderate Republican banner has been a long time in coming, some analysts say.

"It shouldn't be surprising," said Pennsylvania pollster G. Terry Madonna. "Many [Jews] are pro-business and socially liberal. Many Democrats are not pro-business. Breaking into the party machinery in cities and suburbs isn't easy. The Republican Party is a little more open and flexible."

Some see internal Democratic Party politics as the source of Jewish alienation from the party of Franklin Roosevelt.

"Those Jews who are staying in urban areas are fed up with the Latino and African American tribal politics [of the urban Democratic machines], which are not serving cities particularly well," said Joel Kotkin, a public policy fellow at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif...

...A surge of Jewish Republican office-seekers would come in the wake of a steadily evolving shift that began in the 1970s, when Jews began taking a prominent role as Republican theoreticians and policy-makers and continued more recently with a slow shift of Jewish opinion, particularly among younger and more affluent Jews.

The "Coleman Republicans," most of whom are running in heavily Jewish districts — and several of whom are Orthodox or observant — are not shy about leveraging issues of Jewish concern to further their candidacies.

Non-Jewish Democrats have, for the most part, become anti-Israel and anti-Jewish if not outright anti-Semitic. The opportunity to affect policy is more open to moderate Republicans than it is for moderate Democrats. I expect the trend of Jews running under and voting for moderate Republicans to gain momentum.

For another angle on the same underlying issue, see Judith Weiss on the anti-war movement.

Posted 10/29/2003 09:53:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Syrian TV

The folks at MEMRI have a translation of the Ramadan Mini-Series, The Disapora being broadcast from Syria via satellite. The Prologue: (appearing on screen in text)

Two thousand years ago, the Jewish sages established a global government, aimed at ruling the world, subjugating it to the precepts of the Talmud, and segregating Jews completely from the other peoples. Then, the Jews turned to inciting wars and internal strife and the [various] countries condemned them. They falsely presented themselves as persecuted, and waited for their savior, the 'Messiah,' who would complete the vengeance upon the 'gentiles' that their God Jehovah had begun. In the early 19th century, the Jewish global government decided to escalate the conspiracies. It dissolved itself in order to create a new secret Jewish global government headed by [Mayer] Amschel Rothschild.

The scene described, would be funny on SNL but the Arab mind sees it as a documentary:

The first scene, set in Frankfurt in 1812, shows the death of Amschel, the patriarch of the Rothschild family. Amschel Rothschild lies on his deathbed in what appears to be a cave illuminated by candles in Jewish candelabra. He instructs his "illegitimate" son to summon his four brothers, and when he leaves to call them, the following narration is heard: "Kill the best of the non-Jews, destroy their religion, annihilate their lands. Israel will not survive if the foreign peoples survive, the Jews are the offspring of God like the child is the offspring of his father. As man has hegemony [over the lower animals], thus the Jews are superior to all the peoples of the world, because the seed of strangers is like the seed of the ass. The delivering Messiah will not come until the peoples that are not Jews are extinct and control will be in the hands of the Jews alone."

Enter Rothschild's five sons. The dying patriarch says to them: "The non-Jewish nations – they are all of the filthy seed of the ass. Rule over them secretly and publicly, by force and by repression, by deceit and by trickery. Do not let any nation share power over this world with you… God has honored us Jews with the mission of ruling the world through money, knowledge, politics, murder, sex – by all means…

Posted 10/28/2003 12:59:00 PM by Ocean Guy
More on Life and Death Decisions

Carl Hiaasen speaks for me on this one:

It doesn't get any lower than that -- capitalizing on the plight of a brain-damaged woman to score points with religious fundamentalists.

Not since George C. Wallace fought desegregation in Alabama has a governor so brazenly thumbed his nose at a judge, and Bush had plenty of help.

His Republican pals in the Legislature hastily passed a bizarre law giving him the one-time authority to intervene in the Schiavo family tragedy.

And this is the same GOP that rails incessantly against government intrusion into private lives. What a gang of phonies...

...The governor well knows that the law inserting him into this case is ineptly written, baldly unconstitutional and doomed to be overturned.

He also knows that the odds are minuscule that Terri Schiavo will ever improve, and that she'll likely spend her remaining days in the same condition in which she's been since 1990.

That lawmakers gave Bush only 15 days to act is proof that it was theater from the beginning, that concern for the Schiavo family was merely a front for appeasing the ideological fringes of the GOP.

That the governor went ahead and ordered Schiavo reconnected to that feeding tube was the most cynical, morally bereft moment of his administration.

The gratitude and relief expressed by her parents is understandable, but it will be temporary -- and Bush knows that, too.

Long after this obscene piece of legislation is nullified, long after Terri Schiavo is left to die in peace, Bush and the others who staged this cruel charade will be touting their righteous stand to fundamentalist supporters.

Meanwhile, all of us who have watched loved ones fade away and struggled with life-and-death decisions can only shudder at the prospect of surrendering such heavy responsibility to a total stranger.

Not a doctor, not a judge, not a clergyman -- but a vote-grubbing politician.

Posted 10/28/2003 09:40:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Life and Death Decisions

Over the course of 11 years I watched three people I love, experience slow and painful deaths. Feeding tubes kept them all alive a little longer than otherwise possible. During those years I've had countless discussions with other family members about end-of-life issues. I've held medical power of attorney for someone incapable of acting in his own behalf. I can confidently say that I have given more than enough thought to the way I'd prefer my end-of-life care to be handled.

I never want to live like Terri Schiavo, being kept alive artificially with no ability to give love to those close to me. I want the right to die naturally with some sort of dignity. It is wrong for Governor Bush to have the right to make that decision for me. Michael Schiavo may not get your sympathy, but it is no reason to assume that it's not right to allow Terri to die naturally. Because you think you know better than he is no reason to allow a government official to force his will on them in the name of everyone in the State. I would consider it torture for anyone to make me live in the state she is in. She may not be able to say, "Keep me alive," but she can't say "Leave me to die in peace," either. The Law recognizes a special relationship in marriage. Those who take the parents side seem to disagree.

The life and death decisions that can be made in such situations are incredibly varied; the circumstances are limitless, as are the individual feelings we all may have when faced with those circumstances... either as the patient or the care-giver/decision maker. One thing is for certain: I want someone that I love making those decisions for me when I can't. I don't want Governor Bush or any other politician to have the power to decide for me, especially if the decision is against my wishes.

It is particularly offensive the way that the Florida Legislature rushed to take this ill-advised action to overturn six years of court decisions. The courts may not be perfect, but they are by far the best way to handle disputes in these cases.

It is a deeply troubling moment when a stranger, a governor, a legislator, a president is given the power to write the end of our ethical, medical, family tales. Yes, this is how we lose our freedoms: One signature at a time.

Posted 10/27/2003 10:59:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Where are the Millions?

More accurately the title ought to be Where are the Billions, but the idea is the same... the question is the same one I've been asking

"Where are the millions?" is the name of a popular Arab song in which Lebanese singer Julia Botrus denounces the failure of the Arab world to go to war against Israel. The song is played repeatedly on Palestinian Authority radio and TV as a cry of despair aimed at mobilizing the Arab masses on the side of the Palestinians in their fight against Israel. In recent weeks, amid reports that PA Chairman Yasser Arafat is in poor health, many Palestinians are also beginning to ask the same question, but in a different context: They are demanding to know what has happened to hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the Palestinian people...

... Hassan Khraisheh, one of nine members of the Democratic Bloc, said he and his colleagues believe that Arafat's adviser on economic affairs, Muhammad Rashid (also known as Khaled Salam), is holding at least $200 million in a secret bank account. Rashid is now living in Cairo after he reportedly fell out with Arafat.

According to Khraisheh, only Rashid, who is chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund, and Arafat know where the money is deposited. A delegation from the fund visited Egypt lately in an attempt to find out what happened to the money.

"Rashid refused to cooperate in revealing where the money is," Khraisheh said. "He also refused to meet with the PLO ambassador in Egypt to talk about the issue."

"This is money that belongs to the Palestinian people," Khraisheh added. "It could have been invested in establishing a social welfare system instead of shady deals. The Americans and the Egyptians are protecting [Rashid], and Arafat provides him with cover. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars. How is it that one person can control such huge sums? When we asked Arafat about it, he said, 'Muhammad Rashid is my man. He is my financial adviser.' This is Arafat's method. The source of Arafat's power is money."

How can anyone possibly consider giving these criminals and murderers Sovereignty over anything?

Posted 10/24/2003 10:44:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Kid DY-NO-MITE as a Columnist

I don't know how I've missed Jimmie Walker's commentary but this column on the Rush Limbaugh firing. There are a couple of old columns too where I pulled this bit of wisdom from August of last year about "What did they know and when did they know it?:

What we did know wouldn't have helped in this "Politically Correct" culture. Imagine a memo from FBI Director, Robert Mueller, to American airports and the FAA ..."Twenty or so Middle Eastern men, who were learning to fly in American flight schools, are perceived to be Bin Laden terrorists. It is thought that they are planning to hijack commercial airliners. Please detain, question, and search ALL Middle Eastern men until further notice." There would have been more of an explosion from this memo than the actual World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings!

Can you imagine the political and human fallout from this? We would hear from every organization from the NAACP, ACLU, NCAA, KKK, Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson, Jane Fonda, and Bono.

I know it's dated, but I'll have an eye out for his next article.

Posted 10/23/2003 04:04:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Sharansky on Visiting US Universities

Forward also prints Natan Shransky's report of his visits to a few University Campuses.

When I sat for Sabbath dinner with 300 Jewish students at Columbia University in New York — together with Glenn Richter, who in 1964 at the university launched the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry — and I told them about those days, the events seemed to them all but unimaginable. Today, when Jewish activity on campus is directed almost entirely inward, when Jewish student organizations feel like walled fortresses in enemy territory, when pro-Israel students hardly dream of taking leadership positions in campus struggles for human rights, those days seem like a distant dream.

Years of massive investments of money and effort by Arab states and the Palestinians have changed the picture. One after the other, departments of Middle Eastern studies have been set up on university campuses, with generous Saudi funding — departments that worked to establish pseudo-scientific theories, presenting Israel as the last colonial state, a state whose very existence is immoral regardless of borders, a state that should not exist. Differing views are as a matter of course not tolerated. When Jewish community leaders decided in the last few years to begin investing funds to create chairs in Israel studies, they discovered there is no one to teach them. There are no experts, no writers. The field has been abandoned.

Not only in the intellectual arena have we abandoned the field. In the public relations field, too, the Palestinians have learned, unlike the Israelis, to appreciate the importance of the university as the shaper of the next generation, and to concentrate their efforts there. Articulate, effective speakers have been dispatched to campuses to mobilize the idealistic students for their own political interests.

They have been sent to explain that despite the fact that in the Arab nations, as in the autonomous areas of the Palestinian Authority, there are no rights for women, minorities, gays or nearly anyone else, that despite all this they are the true bearers of the banner of human rights; that all true seekers of justice should act on their behalf, and against Israel's.

The absurdity cries out to the heavens, but no one seems to notice. The banner of human rights, once identified to a great degree with Jews, has become a weapon against them. Liberal and democratic discourse on human rights serves mainly as a vehicle for attacks against Israel, and increasingly against Jews.

What's happening on campus is not any different from what's happening in National politics. Why Forward continues to lionize the Democratic Party is a mystery. In the face of continuing evidence that a large portion of its members are, in fact, working against Israel's interests and increasingly against Jews, one would think a thoughtful journal would be working to reverse the trend. Have they fallen for the moral relativists’ ruse? Mr. Shransky offers both hope and reason for grave concern:

For six days I traveled across the United States. I did not meet with administration officials or do any politicking. Just campuses. Meeting students, instructors, Jewish and non-Jewish activists. A marathon of 13 campuses in six days. I discovered an enormous thirst for knowledge, for straight answers about these supposed "human rights violations" and "war crimes." I learned that combining human rights, a popular, burning issue among students, and Israel, a very unpopular issue, works to Israel's advantage, because even the most pro-Palestinian students, including Arab students, had to back down when the discussion centered squarely and honestly on human rights and democracy.

But I also learned that every such victory was a limited one, like capturing a single hill in enemy territory. The overall picture is deeply worrying. On every campus I visited, Jewish students make up between 10% and 20% of the population, but no more than a tenth of them, by my estimate, take part in Jewish or pro-Israel activity. Another tiny but outspoken fraction serves as the spearhead of anti-Israel activity, for there is no better cover for hiding the racist nature of causes like an anti-Israel boycott than a Jewish professor or student eager to prove that he is holier than the pope. And the rest? The rest are simply silent. They are not identified, not active, not risk-takers. Nearly 90% of our students are Jews of silence.

To the credit of the activists, it must be said that they do impressive work. But they are few, and many are tired and discouraged. One student who was active in pro-Israel organizations told us that at a certain point he could no longer stand the peer pressure of those around him who viewed him as a pro-Israel obsessive

Posted 10/23/2003 03:29:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Error in Logic

In this week's Forward rightly takes to task Haley Barbour, an old-time Republican figure, for chumming up with an allegedly racist and anti-Semitic group. They should have stopped there.

The real point of the article is summed up here:

Barbour's appearance also drew criticism from the press secretary of the Democratic National Committee, Tony Welch. "Barbour is just another in the long line of Republican Party compassionate conservatives who talk compassion but [are] more than willing to cozy up to one of the most bigoted groups in our country," Welch said. "The more we look, the more this looks like the same old divisive Republican Party."

To declare the Republican Party, in its entirety, guilty because of the actions of one is wrong. Did Forward or the DNC condemn the Democratic Party for allegiance to, and support of, Cynthia McKinney or any of the other anti-Semitic people and organizations who support the Democratic Party and its candidates?

The old assumption that Democrats are more in tune with Jewish values than Republicans are, is not easy to defend. Many of us have looked outside the Democratic Party we once supported, because the Party has taken our votes for granted while taking more and more positions that are anti-Jewish and/or anti-Israel. Jews, just like the Democratic Party, have a variety of ideas on the entire spectrum of issues. The days of voting straight-party tickets are gone. Forward should recognize that and stop playing to old fears springing from the old assumptions that Democrats are good for Jews and Republicans are bad. It's not that simple.

Posted 10/23/2003 11:05:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Good Neighbors?

Here's another bit of evidence that the Arabs don't need a second palestinian State whose prospective citizens continue to show they are incapable of governing themselves.

The two men, Samer Ufi and Mohammed Faraj, both in their twenties were shot Thursday by masked militants from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in front of a crowd of people. Their bodies were then displayed at the camp's central square.

On Wednesday a videotape of the confessions was distributed to residents of the West Bank refugee camp.

The two men were abducted two weeks ago with six other men in a kidnapping planned by two militant groups, the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade and Islamic Jihad. The men were suspected of giving away the hideout of a wanted Al Aqsa militant, Palestinian security sources said.

A source in Al Aqsa said the men had been kidnapped and interrogated by Islamic Jihad, but that the two groups had carried out the killings together "to share the honor."

Unfortunately it's also evidence of why the neighboring states don't want these people as citizens.

Posted 10/20/2003 10:02:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Revisiting History

You simply must see these articles in Life Magazine from January 7, 1946. Here's the tease quote:

"We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease."

The more things change the more they remain the same. Here's more:

They blame us for the corruption and disorganization of UNRRA. They blame us for the fumbling timidity of our negotiations with the Soviet Union. They tell us that our mechanical de-nazification policy in Germany is producing results opposite to those we planned. “Have you no statesmen in America?” they ask.

The skeptical French press

Yet whenever we show a trace of positive leadership I found Europeans quite willing to follow our lead. The evening before Robert Jackson’s opening of the case for the prosecution in the Nurnberg trial, I talked to some correspondents from the French newspapers. They were polite but skeptical. They were willing enough to take part in a highly publicized act of vengeance against the enemy, but when you talked about the usefulness of writing a prohibition of aggressive war into the law of nations they laughed in your face. The night after Jackson’s nobly delivered and nobly worded speech I saw then all again. They were very much impressed. Their manner had even changed toward me personally as an American. Their sudden enthusiasm seemed to me typical of the almost neurotic craving for leadership of the European people struggling wearily for existence in the wintry ruins of their world.

Hat Tip: Greatest Jeneration

Posted 10/20/2003 08:08:00 AM by Ocean Guy
More on the Ford Foundation

Lynn at In Context has more on the Ford Foundation and it's thin veil of balance in regards to its Middle East policies.