10 Things I Did Today

1. Ate a slice of blueberry pie

2. Wrote my autobiography on the back of a postage stamp

3. Calculated the coefficent of X, Y, Z and Calcutta

4. Defied a union boycott

5. Communicated with the dead

6. Ate another slice of blueberry pie

7. Offered the dead some blueberry pie

8. Convinced the dead to devour the union boycotters in exchange for blueberry pie

9. Wrote a Dear Abby letter to Dear Sally

10. Transcended this mundane existance and explored higher realms of thought on the A Train

President Bush Welcomes Terrorism to the White House

We go live to the White House for this historic event

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you. Mr. President, it is my honor to welcome the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people to the White House.

(It is an honor to disgrace the White House by inviting a top terrorist to the White House, truly another great day in American history)

We meet at a time when a great achievement of history is within reach, the creation of a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state.

(to be followed shortly by the sovereign state of Candyland in which everyone will play in jello fountains and eat twizzlers all day)

President Abbas is seeking that goal by rejecting violence

(and all the PA radio and tv broadcasts praising suicide bombers testify to his rejection of violence)

I believe the Palestinian people are fully capable of justly governing themselves, in peace with their neighbors.

(I believe the moon is made of green cheese, this is a more credible belief since it is more likely that in the last few decades the moon turned to green cheese than that the Palestinian arabs who have always embraced terrorism and continue to embrace terrorism will suddenly stop when promised McDonalds franchises)

President Abbas's election four months ago was a tribute to the power and appeal of democracy

(no it was a tribute to the fact that Abbas got the endorsement of the terrorist group Fatah and that Hamas did not field a candidate)

Palestinians voted against violence, and for sovereignty, because only the defeat of violence will lead to sovereignty.

(this explains Abbas' campaign photos surrounded by armed Fatah gunmen, he was promoting the defeat of the gunmen he was posing with)

Mr. President, the United States and the international community applaud your rejection of terrorism

(speak for yourself and your Saudi friends, Mr President... the United States does no such thing)

Mr. President, you have made a new start on a difficult journey, requiring courage and leadership each day -- and we will take that journey together.

(then we will get married in Vermont and have breakfast in bed....unless Bush is already engaged to the Saudi crown prince he was photographed holding hands with)

Israel must continue to take steps toward a peaceful future, and work with the Palestinian leadership to improve the daily lives of Palestinians, especially their humanitarian situation.

(about the only step Israel could take that would accomplish that would involve killing every terrorist leader beginning with the one next to the President of the Saudi United States)

Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudice final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Therefore, Israel must remove unauthorized outposts and stop settlement expansion.

(sure when Bush stops prejudicing the final status of Texas in its negotiations with Mexico. Its time to stop expansion of the Texas settlements and remove unauthorized towns.... anyone remember when people were still foolish enough to call Bush, Israel's best friend in the white house?)

The barrier being erected by Israel as a part of its security effort must be a security, rather than political, barrier.

(you mean the barrier being put up to keep the homicidal swarms of palestinians out, yes it's a security barrier...just like the fence around the White House)

And its route should take into account, consistent with security needs, its impact on Palestinians not engaged in terrorist activities.

(which Palestinians would those be... imaginary ones?)

Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 Armistice lines must be mutually agreed to.

(if we needed a better demonstration that Sharon's claims that America would let him keep anything are so much hot air...it's also appropriate around Yom Ha'Shoah to demand that Israel retreat to the Auschwitz borders)

A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity of the West Bank, and a state of scattered territories will not work.

(since Bush obviously failed geography, the so-called Palestinian state is on both sides of Israel, if it has contiguity, that contiguity has to cut across Israel)

This is the position of the United States today, it will be the position of the United States at the time of final status negotiations.

(only if you're President by then, instead of delivering speeches in Riyadh or the Commerce Club for 10,000 dollars a pop and writing your memoirs, 'Dude, Where's My Presidency?')

To help ensure that the Gaza disengagement is a success, the United States will provide to the Palestinian Authority $50 million to be used for new housing and infrastructure projects in the Gaza.

(new housing = smuggling tunnels under houses, infrastructure projects = bomb making factories)

These funds will be used to improve the quality of life of the Palestinians living in Gaza, where poverty and unemployment are very high

(the Pallies already get more per capita aid than any other people in the world, yet they're unemployed and poor... gosh you'd almost think that throwing dollars at them doesn't work and the money gets diverted elsewhere)

Terrorists given second chance to kill Jews

For the terrorist who didn't get it right the first time, Sharon will be offering a second chance by releasing 400 palestinian arab terrorists, many of them charged with attempted murder. This time they'll have the chance to successfully get it right. They will however be forced to sign a paper promising to be terrorists anymore; an agreement they'll no doubt abide by.

Meanwhile two more 13 year old girls were jailed for blocking roads to protest the forced expulsion of Jews from Gaza.

War on Terror to be renamed War on Violent Extremism

No it's not satire, it's actual Bush administration policy. The War on Terror will now become the 'War on Violent Extremism' which presumabely includes the KKK, the WWF and angry drunks who argue over politics in bars. If anyone needed a better demonstration of the watering down of America's fight against Terrorism, it's that we're no longer to be even using the world 'Terror' anymore. Of course we were never using the word 'arab terrorism' to begin with so it's no wonder we were pulling 7 year olds and medal of honor winners out of line at the airport instead of arabs and muslims. Now presumabely law enforcement officials will no longer be told to look for terrorists, but 'violent extremists'

"A senior US official told the Post that, while the use of the phrase global war on terrorism “is catchy, there may be a better way to describe it”.

“What we really want now is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism,” the official was quoted saying.

General Myers used the new term yesterday, noting that the US had detained 68,000 people “since this conflict against violent extremism began”

Here's a better way to defeat 'violent extremism', stop using euphemisms.

JFK made Oliver Stone drive drunk!

Reports that director, leftist and lunatic Oliver Stone was arrested driving drunk and with drugs in his car is clearly a plot by the Cuban mafia to discredit his pursuit of the real assasins of JFK. It has been confirmed that a team of CIA/Mossad agents were hiding in his glove compartment and that the booze was actually fired into his mouth by a marine trained sniper who had defected to the USSR. More on this story as he turns it into a movie.

The enemy in vanquished, the children play

Jewish children in the settlements drive past a destroyed Palestinian Arab house, from which shots were once fired, in safety now that it has been cleared out. From here gunmen lurked waiting to kill, with them gone there is a measure of peace and children play. So it is with the War on Terror, peace can only come with the destruction of the terrorists.

If I were Tagged, I'd still be Tagged

Since CosmicX has tagged me now five questions I must answer and answer them I shall

If I could be a scientist…I would finally once and for all finish Einstein's work and demonstrate that quantum physics is an obvious fraud composed of nonsense and moonbeams and then invent artificial gravity so I'd never have to use public transportation again.

If I could be a farmer…I would grow a mutant crop of truth apples laced with truth serum that would force everyone who ate them to speak the truth thus finally bringing truth to the world.

If I could be a musician…I would use my musical abilities for good and influence people by composing a lyrical and moving song calling for the trial and execution of every DJ who plays a hit song more than three times a day.

If I could be a chef…I'd weigh six hundred pounds with my chef's hat.

If I could be a world famous blogger…I'd have other people to actually tag.

The PsyOps War Against Israel

"Various Arab armed forces these past decades have resorted to military means to eliminate Israel from the world's map. All have failed. More than that, the wars each time strengthened Israel, and the Arabs have thus achieved the very opposite of their ambitions. This opens the way to the alternative approach of psychological warfare, a familiar element in all modern wars. PW, in the shorthand the experts use, mobilizes allies and undermines enemies. What is required is a master idea, and people to propagandize in words clever enough for the general public to accept it as the truth.

The master idea in this case is simplicity itself: Jewish nationalism, or Zionism, is an absolute evil, Palestinian nationalism is an absolute virtue. To establish this, the Jews must be shown to be wicked and wrong in every matter great and small, so that the Palestinians appear victims through no fault of their own, innocent people in special need of redress and rescue. With skill and persistence, the Palestinians and their Arab supporters have built up a worldwide PW lobby with helpers in the United Nations, the European Union, the Red Cross, the churches, the universities, and so on. One step at a time, they are subverting the legitimacy of Israel. Their multiple voices and pressures have persuaded the worldwide Left to believe that Israel is a state that ought to be dismantled forthwith. At the very least, they sap Israeli will to survive, and fortify Palestinian will to prefer armed struggle to the necessary compromises of peace.

Like much else, the Palestinian master idea is rooted in the Cold War. Backing the Arabs, the Soviet Union suffered a major defeat in the Six Day War of 1967. Trying to recover, the Soviet leadership immediately began to equate Israel with Nazi Germany, its deadliest foe. Hitherto tending to sympathize with Israel, the Left everywhere and unanimously swung against it. Here was a manipulation of opinion of the kind immortalized by George Orwell in 1984 as a Two Minute Hate. The Marxist lexicon — "imperialism," "colonialism," "occupation," "settler society" — was deployed to curse Israel. By 1975, the United Nations was declaring that Zionism is racism, and a state built on racism can only be a focus of outrage, the proper target of sanctions and boycotts. Successful American pressure on the United Nations rescinded that resolutions. The Left's inherent anti-Americanism then joined forces irrevocably with the pro-Palestinian PW.

...

The burning of books and the boycott of Jewish businesses organized by Hitler and Goebbels are models of PW designed to rally supporters and intimidate enemies. The approaching violence was evident, and so was what Einstein at the time called the "psychic illness of the masses." Yet some Jews preferred their form of rather pathetic wish-fulfillment to the terrifying reality. Felix Jacoby, for instance, a historian at Kiel University in Germany, opened his 1933 lecture course by declaring that he had voted for Hitler since 1927, and could only compare him to the emperor Augustus. Dr. Hans-Joachim Schoeps even tried to form a movement of Jews for Hitler (though other Jews replied with the grim joke that his real slogan was Raus mit Uns, or "Out with Us"). The same psychopathology is at work in Israel today. By and large, Israeli intellectuals have succumbed to Palestinian PW, and do whatever they can to weaken the will for a national existence. Appealing for mobilization against Israel in a Raus mit Uns spirit, they speak at international conferences and publish in chic outlets as though they believe with the Palestinians that the Zionist state is a misconceived project to be brought to an end as soon as possible."

From: WHAT'S IN A BOYCOTT?The campaign to delegitimize Israel has smelly historical rootsby David Pryce-Jones- Read it all here

How Muslims enslave non-Muslim girls to Islam

A disturbing but interesting article on FrontPageMagazine.com by a former Muslim 'missionary' describing the priority they placed on bringing non-Muslim girls to Islam by any means necessary. Though some of the devotional Christian material is a bit too much, it's a horrifying glimpse into the ruthlessness and evil of the tactics of the enemies of human civilization.

"The goal of these (proselytizing) groups was to convert Egypt into an Islamic state over a period of 50 years. Members of the royal Saudi family, who were related to the Wahabi movement and oil princes from the Gulf, financed this plan. Money was spent lavishly to seduce Christian women and girls any way possible. The cost in the seventies and early eighties was about five thousand Egyptian pounds for the entrapment of each girl. The money was split so that the Muslim man who lured the Christian woman into conversion received half and the members of the police and collaborating associations would receive the other half.

The work of the proselytizing associations in Egypt continues to take place and the payments for deceptive conversions are now higher. Today the average payment for an ordinary girl is ten thousand Egyptian pounds and payments can be as high as two hundred thousand Egyptian pounds if the girl is from a well-known Christian family, or is the daughter of a university professor, a deputy minister, or related to someone from the clergy.

Like my father, I too was involved with a proselytizing association. After we succeeded in converting a Christian woman, we would antagonize the Christians by parading the converted girl through the streets. We played loud music and waved flags while shouting “Allahu Akbar” to declare the victory of Islam.

We were focused on converting Christian girls and women because we believed this was a greater form of humiliation for Christians. In the East, a man’s honor is in his daughter, sister or wife and so disgracing any of them is the ultimate humiliation for him.

We used all kinds of tricks to get Christian women. We primarily sought to appeal to their emotions and impulses. We would also get these women involved in moral scandals and used that to coerce them to do whatever we wanted. This is what I did, while I was involved with a proselytizing association. Besides receiving payment for this work, I was convinced I received an additional reward because each time I caused a Christian woman to convert to Islam I would be awarded with an acre of land in heaven."

Though this particular story is set in Egypt and involves Arab Christian women, these same people with the same methodology and goals are at work in Europe, America Israel (if anyone doubts this is true they should take a look at stories from women's rights activists who have saved Jewish women from 'married' life in Arab villages) and Australia.

Ahmed Shalakamy who was the 'missionary' here describes convincing the women he targeted that he was in love with them, that Islam was more tolerant and merciful and respected women, even that he wanted to convert to Christianity and finally drugging them if all else failed. The ultimate goal was Jihad in which the women were captured and their men disgraced by it just as Mohammed the murderous barbarous prophet of Islam had done.

Sitting Bull Yeshiva: Hey he's got a black hat

Tiny Majority of Extremists Hijack Nazism

Western regional district Neo-Nazi leader Ulf Heinermann called a news conference today to denounce the news media for its negative portrayal of Nazis and Nazism.

"The largest part of Nazis are good god fearing peaceful people who seek nothing more than to be able to get along with their neighbors and be respected for their way of life," Ulf said, "nevertheless the media pays the most attention to a tiny minority of extremists who have hijacked Nazism and portrayed Nazis as brutal warmongering peoples. Like our Muslim friends, we too have been targeted and slandered for our beliefs by a vast Jewish conspiracy and we seek to receive our fair share of sympathy and ACLU defense lawyers as they have."

Yated reports how much Shinui got

"NEWS:Shinui to Receive NIS 625 Million for Supporting the Budget," the headline at Yated reads but missing is the information how much religious parties have gotten for supporting the budget and joining the government and supporting the forcible deportation of Jews from Aza and Yehuda and Shomron. Funny how they overlooked that little detail.

I am Numero Uno for 'Satmar Al Jazeera'

I am proudly the first search result for 'Satmar Al Jazeera' on google

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=satmar+al+jazeera&btnG=Google+Search

with my blogging aims accomplished I could almost retire if it wasn't for the burgers Matt keeps sending me

60 Minutes II DOA

60 Minutes II or 60 Minutes lite, the attempted spinoff of 60 Minutes helmed by a grim faced marine haircutted Dan Rather was crippled sadly when its Kerry activists posing as producers and reporters attempted to run a false report before the election about George W. Bush accusing him of desertion based on forged documents printed up in Microsoft Word. Dan Rather has since gone on to other things, mainly begging at John Edwards door for one last kiss and 60 Minutes II, always despised and resented by the 60 Minutes staff has been put out of its misery.

Sic Transit Rather Dan

New LA Mayor includes Muslims, excludes Jews

"It doesn't matter whether you grew up on the westside or the eastside, whether you're from south Los Angeles or Sylmar," Antonio Villaraigosa told cheering supporters at a victory celebration downtown. "It doesn't matter whether you go to work in a fancy car or in a bus, or whether you worship in a cathedral or a mosque. We are all Angelenos and we all have a difference to make."

It's so nice of LA's first Latino Mayor to recognize the many contributions Muslims have made to Los Angeles, (and what are those exactly? not counting the LAX shootings) while ignoring Jews entirely. But that seems in line with South America's new policy of bashing the Jews and supporting the Muslims.

Moloch Preschool

I’m Really Sorry Those Muslims Went Crazy

"I’ve been asked by my editor, Mark Whitaker, to address some of the criticism that’s been leveled at NEWSWEEK from the blogosphere over the past 48 hours. Arianna Huffington has been kind enough to provide me with the space to do so, for which I’m grateful. My goal is to open a dialogue with her readers about what happened at Gitmo, how we reported it, and what we can do going forward to stop it from happening again. But before we do, I want to make clear, on behalf of myself and the entire NEWSWEEK staff, how deeply sorry I am that those Muslims went crazy.

As a journalist, you never set out to give Muslims an excuse to go crazy. On the contrary. Since September 11th and the start of the war on terror, NEWSWEEK’s editorial guidelines have explicitly instructed its reporters to answer seven core questions when compiling a news story: “who?”, “what?”, “when?”, “where?”, “why?” “how?”, and “will this give Muslims an excuse to go crazy?” In fact, we followed that protocol to the letter in reporting the Gitmo story. Mark and I met personally with Michael Isikoff before it went to press and asked him how many people he thought would be killed when Muslims got wind of it. Michael was sanguine. He said he’d be surprised if there was anything more than a few buildings burned down, or maybe a woman or two stoned to death. All in all, we thought that was a pretty sweet deal. It turned out we were wrong. To the families of the victims in Afghanistan, I extend my sincerest condolences. And I promise, we’re going to redouble our efforts to make sure that the next time we give Muslims an excuse to go crazy, it’ll be for something that actually happened."

From: Arriana Huffington's Toast

a mockery of a people

"The Palestinians aren't really a people in the normal sense of the word. In a very genuine way, they are simply the dark shadow of the Israeli people. Without Israel, they have no reason to exist. The Palestinians were conjured up out of nothing to serve the specific purpose of demonising Israel, and if Israel were to disappear, the Palestinians would vanish right along with it.

Their entire existence is centered around a negation of someone else's identity. Why do the Palestinians exist? To destroy Israel. What do they tell their children their purpose is? To kill Jews and become martyrs. What role should a Palestinian state fill in world history? To be the launching pad for the extermination of Israel.

Five seconds after Israel would be hypothetically destroyed (which God forbid of course) Syria, Egypt and Jordan would start fighting like wild beasts over how to divide the carcass up between them. Any Palestinians who objected would be shot out of hand. And there would be no Palestinian state.

Ever.

How long can "Palestine" exist simply as a shadow of someone else? Can hatred and nihilism and taking the enemy's most sacred symbols and twisting them into some mockery serve as a basis for national existence? Are the Palestinians nothing but Orcs?"

From: SilentRunning

Breslov Hassidim with Missiles and Grenades

Absurd, certainly, but this is only the latest in the long parade of attempts by Shabak to finally catch some 'Jewish extremists' plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock, even if they have to manufacture them, themselves. This time they arrested several Breslov Hassidim who were supposedly trying to obtain a missile and some grenades to fire at the Dome from their Yeshiva. Though if they were going to throw grenades from their Yeshiva, those guys would have had a throwing arm that would qualify them for the New York Yankees.

On investigation, no missile or grenades were actually found. None of the men involved had military service or had the faintest idea how to use such weapons or any weapons really. The missile they were supposedly trying to acquire is aircraft mounted on an F-16 and fires Sidewinder missiles that are meant to target other aircraft. What in heaven's name they would have done with any such launcher and missile had they even gotten hold of them is best left to the imagination of various assorted lunatics but the Dome of the Rock would have been very safe indeed.

To top it all off, the Israeli courts, not know for their sympathy to religious Jews has freed them; which rather suggests that once again Shabak has no case. You would think that their fearsome inteligence could at least concoct a conspiracy that doesn't look like it was produced by Oliver Stone and Barry Chamish's love child. Throw in some of their trademark cuban monsters and sabbatean conspirators and it would still be more plausible.

HOW Harvard Oppresses Women

Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard, who had gotten into trouble for daring to suggest that there were possible less women in the maths and sciences because of biological gender differences rather than inequity has now signed off on a 50 million dollar package in order to change this inequity. What does this package contain? It can be divided into two categories, blatant quota based affirmative action and the wierd.

Creating a fund to support the hiring of faculty members who would add to the diversity of the faculty

Translation: Spending money to hire people for the maths and sciences based on gender, ethnicity and race rather than ability. A good way to destroy scientific fields that depend on ability rather than political correctness.

Improving university-wide data collection on faculty demographics and the use of surveys to measure attitudes of members of certain groups about how they are treated by the university.

Essentially a very expensive complaints box. Who are the members of these certain groups? Undoubtedly minorities whom the university will give a forum to complain about being discriminated against, which we will discover can only be remedied with prefferential treatment.

Starting new “dual career” programs to help find professional opportunities for the partners of faculty members.

Why in the world should the university be in the buisness of hiring spouses of faculty members? Isn't this nepotism and isn't this pretty much how we end up with people's brother in laws running things they're not remotely qualified for?

Creating programs on diversity for department chairs.

Yes but those programs themselves had better be diverse too. A diverse array of diverse programs teaching diversity. Or as Shakespeare put it, a tale full of sound and fury told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

Reperations for Sterlizations

North Carolina, hope of flight and apparently sterilizations without consent is proposing to pay reperations to the tens of thousands of victims of compulsory sterilizations performed in hospitals across the state. Now there's a lot of talk about reperations and it almost seems as if we've become like the Japanese, willing to absolve evil with a dollar figure. Rather than punishing Nazi war criminals we took checks from them. Families of murder victims now sue their murderers in criminal court. But financial rewards don't punish or uproot evil, they only put an exact dollar figure on it so that future villains can look at it like an insurance executive, determining what their worst case payout will have to be.

In place of that I propose convictions not reperations. Many of the doctors responsible, the politicians are still undoubtedly alive. Prosecute them. If done in wartime this would be a war crime, prosecute it in peacetime as one. Yes they were following orders but these were evil orders in violation of basic constitutional and human rights. If nothing else it will stand as a testament that you cannot simply do wrong and then expect the taxpayers to foot the bill with reperation payments. Those responsible, whether they were issuing or following orders, should be held responsible.

The psychosis of a left wing martyr

In the mythology of the left that considers America to be a terrorist regime, Salvador Allender is one of the martyrs destroyed by America's zeal to battle Communism. The problem is that like most of the left wing's heroes, Allende was a psychotic lunatic. A new article reveals that he was anti-semitic writing, "The Jews are characterized by certain types of crime: fraud, deceit, slander, and usury." On top of that during his reign as health minister from 1933 to 1941, Allende embraced distinctly nazi-like ideas such as sterilizing and castrating social groups.

Prayer for the State of Israel

Our Father who are in heaven, Protector and Redeemer of Israel, bless thou the State of Israel which marks the dawn of our deliverance. Shield it beneath the wings of thy love; spread over it thy canopy of peace; send thy light and thy truth to its leaders, officers, and counselors, and direct them with thy good counsel.

O God, strengthen the defenders of our Holy Land; grant them salvation and crown them with victory. Establish peace in the land, and everlasting joy for its inhabitants.
Remember our brethren, the whole house of Israel, in all the lands of their dispersion. Speedily let them walk upright to Zion, the city, to Jerusalem thy dwelling-place, as it is written in the Torah of thy servant Moses: "Even if you are dispersed in the uttermost parts of the world, from there the Lord your G-d will gather and fetch you. The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it."

Unite our heart to love and revere thy name, and to observe all the precepts of thy Torah. Shine forth in thy glorious majesty over all the inhabitants of thy world. Let everything that breathes proclaim: The Lord God of Israel is King; His majesty rules over all." Amen.


Mark Twain Israel

Yated Neeman dishonors the Holocaust dead

We honor the dead. We pay respect to them. We remember those who died, and all those who died, died Al Kiddush Hashem. Those who fought and those who prayed. Those who were shot at the doorstep of their homes and those who were thrown in pits. Those who hurled grenades from attic windows and those who died in the gas chambers. They are all our brothers and sisters. They are all our people.

We honor them and the Yated Neeman dishonors them. What could be better in time to remember the Shoah than an article calling the Warsaw Ghetto fighters men and women who committed "suicide for motives that were nothing but meaningless arrogance or momentary insanity." Does Yated in its self-righteousness, in its stiffness of neck and hardness of heart find goodness in spitting on the graves of the dead? Is the self-righteous tone that leaks from the pages of their screeds a reflection of their holy work? Is this what Hashem wants from his faithful servants, to ridicule the martyred dead as lunatics who died for "three lines of history."

If Yated felt the need, like a dog returning to lick its vomit, to mount yet more attacks on Israel and the IDF; is there a shortage of living Israeli leaders to attack for them? Does Yated need to dig up graves to befoul the dead when it can befoul the living?

Yated in its miserable ignorance of history, calls the Warsaw Ghetto uprising an act of arrogance and suicide.

"I am positive that the people who championed the rebellion with all of their chimerical heroism did nothing but bring about their own premature death and that of hundreds and thousands of their brothers in the ghetto. It is certain that the rebellion had no logical basis; it was merely an outburst of despair and a lack of spiritual courage to bear life's suffering."

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising began after the Germans had announced the liquidation of the Ghetto to Auschiwtz. Auschwitz was death. The uprising was not undertaken lightly. It was begun when it was clear that the fate facing the Jews of Warsaw was death in the Nazi gas chambers; a fate that was now upon them.

It was not irrational. It was not illogical. It was a desperate gamble between extermination and the hope that the uprising linked to a polish revolt would slow down the Germans and buy enough time for Soviet troops to liberate Warsaw. Was there greater spiritual courage in marching to the gas chambers or resisting every step of the way? That is not a debate that I will hold here but it is enough to say that is obscene to damn one or the other as a lack of courage. Those who resisted hoped to save lives and to stand firm and wake the conscience of the world. They accomplished great and miraculous things.

Some died but not all. Many made it to Eretz Yisrael where they continued to fight for the Jewish people, even as Yated bravely fights cell towers and issues new instructions about 'Kosher cell phones.' We cannot answer who had more courage in facing the Holocaust but we can certainly answer who had more courage; those boys and girls often in their twenties with smuggled and makeshift weapons holding off the German army well past the point that any military expert could have conceived of, or the scribblers of Yated penning hateful slanders over their graves.

The Yated article formulates not only courage but the only acceptable Torah approach in this manner: "Therefore it is clear that people believing in G-d, who live and die by His will, do not do deeds that are liable to hasten their death even by one moment."

This substitutes in place of the Torah a concept that each individual must simply live as long as possible by not taking the least of risks. Anyone therefore who resisted the Nazis, whether it was in armed revolt or by smuggling out people of the ghetto or smuggling food did not believe in G-D. Only those who were fully compliant believed in G-D. For Yom Ha'Shoah this is the foul obscenity Yated thrusts upon us.

In their revisionist version of history, Jews who resisted the Nazis were atheists lunatics out to commit suicide in childish fantasies of heroism. Jews who believed in G-D merely suffered because clearly their suffering was intended from heaven. "Such Jews were our brothers in the ghettos," the article says to exclude those Jews who fought, those who died fighting for other Jews; they are not Yated's brothers.

Indeed they are not. They are our brothers and sisters. They are our brethren. But not Yated's. They are of the Jewish people and Yated is of a foreign people that defaces the graves of the dead as a religious duty and preens before the mirror of their own self-righteous arrogance at the holiness of the act. The article's theme is the claim that the 'Zionists' mocked the dead, its achievement is to mock the dead themselves. It distorts a history it barely knows, lies compulsively and emerges triumphant in its own filthy mind against boys and girls the Nazis themselves could not triumph over.

We honor the dead. We pay respect to them. We remember those who died, and all those who died, died Al Kiddush Hashem. Those who fell under the tanks and those who marched out to meet the murderers of their people guns in hand. Those who danced into the gas chambers singing "Ashreinu," 'How Fortunate Is Out Lot" and those who took cyanide pills in the boxcars. Those who touched heaven with their hearts and those who hammered on burning steel with scarred hands. They are all our brothers and sisters. They are all our people.

Shema Yisrael Hashem Eloheinu Hashem Echad

Israel deploys new diplomatic tool for Palestinian negotiations

English to Pig-Latin Translator

Israel: Please stop the terrorism

Palestinian Translation: Easeplay opstay ethay errorismtay

Israel: Can't we just have peace?

Palestinian Translation: An'tcay eway ustjay avehay eacepay?

Israel: That's a sink not a urinal!

Palestinian Translation: At'sthay away inksay otnay away urinalway!

A Haredi Zionist's Emotional History

"Suddenly it happened to me. Late one night, I was watching an old movie on television about the early pioneers in Eretz Israel. When I turned off the television, I realized that I'd felt some sort of emotional enlightenment, a sense of connection and identification with that story: the forbidden, Israeli story that began with a collective Jewish dream about the Promised Land and continued with a small group of European Jews intent on renewal who, unlike the secular and religious Jewish majority in Europe and the eastern countries, articulated the idea of the state and its realization and eventually established it as well.

The national religious or Mizrahi movement, which brought about a real revolution in traditional ultra-Orthodox thinking regarding the secular. With poetic and romantic inspiration, the chief articulator of this viewpoint, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, was able to produce a complex mixture of criticism of and solidarity with the secular, for the sake of the "common" goal - and what was defined as the beginning of the messianic redemption, the ultimate aspiration of the traditional Jewish dream. This group was just as authentic as its rival, because it assumed active responsibility and decided upon its attitude toward the Zionist and the secular from a religious standpoint.

Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) while they portray themselves as having a clear ideological doctrine in regard to the secular Zionist, in reality they suffer from a lack of clarity and ideological coherence. On the one hand, their rhetoric and the "Haredi text" in regard to the secular Zionist has remained hostile and distant. This is portrayed as the authentic experience of "the Haredi community." And yet, for practical reasons, they have decided to participate in the democratic game of Knesset elections.

This complex dissonance did not arise as the result of a conscious and well-elucidated compromise, but out of a kind of passivity. From between the seams of commitment to the traditional Haredi text and rhetoric, a repressed sense of identification with the new Hebrew culture and with the desire to take part in such a strong and successful Jewish phenomenon - Zionism - burst through nonetheless. And so a huge discrepancy was created between the desire and reality, between theory and practice. The hostility, anxiety and distancing were directed at the abstract concept of the "secular Zionist" and the identification and the desire to take part were channeled into a practice of "give and take" (mostly the latter).

And so, while Rabbi Schach maintained a halakhic outlook that grew ever more disconnected from the public, we, his ideological subjects, were already becoming part of the Israeli collective - paradoxically involved in the state's day-to-day life, admiring it and trusting in its strength. The Palestinian enemy no longer only posed a threat to life in the physical sense, but also to "the state" and what derived from it: Israeli identity, the Israeli flag and Israeli pride. The Haredi minority group continued to oppose the (modern) Sephardi pronunciation of Hebrew and spoke only Yiddish, but we, the majority, fully dedicated ourselves to the Zionist language revolution. We spoke only Hebrew.

From the 1970s on, we were already right-wing patriots, upon whom passivity was imposed by a Torah prohibition. The feeling of Israeliness actually grew stronger among us, the young Haredim, unintentionally and unwittingly and in sharp contradiction to the so-called Haredi text. We were a generation in whose consciousness the Israeli reality became inseparable from Jewish history. We became Israelis out of concern for the preservation and survival of the things that are so strongly identified with the term "Jew" and out of fear of losing them.

Like the rest of the cultural influences of secular Israeliness on the Haredim, this influence is slow- acting, with a time lag of about 30 years. As a collective, most of the Haredim now see Israel as a small state surrounded by enemies, while those belonging to the mainstream of Israeliness try to fit in as equals among the nations of the region and everywhere else."

Settlement rabbis continue to say Hallel

"Rabbis of settlements considered the most right-wing in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip have directed their communities to continue to say the Hallel prayer, an expression of joy for the establishment of the state, on Independence Day.

Despite disenchantment with the present government's anti-settlement policies, these religious Zionist rabbis see in the creation of the State of Israel a miracle that set in motion the burgeoning redemption of the Jewish people.

"We are opposed to the government, but we still believe that the establishment of the state was a tremendous act of loving-kindness by God," said Rabbi Yigal Kaminetsky, rabbi of the Gush Katif communities."

From Princeton to the NSC

Michael Doran, a conservative near-east studies prof and protege of Bernard Lewis, whom Princeton refused to grant tenure for his views; will now have a much higher position; head of Israeli-Palestinian affairs on the National Security Council. Princeton refused him tenure attempting to replace Doran with a nephew of terrorist supporter and fake palestinian, Edward Said. A victim of a scholarly vendetta, Doran will now have a chance to make the policy that his former colleagues who hounded him can only write papers about.

Doran has attacked the school of thought that claimed that the center of all things is the palestinian question. While he is opposed to a number of Israeli policies including settlements and is not likely to be as conservative as Elliot Abrams, he is still a far preferable choice to any of the Edward Saidist arabists in the State Department.

From two Months to Forever

Neriah Ofan, a father and husband, has been placed under indefinite administrative detention on baseless allegations. His real crime was organizing protests against Sharon's forced expulsion of Jews from their homes. He will recieve no trial and no charges against him will be brought to court. He will simply be detained at the pleasure of the authorities indefinetly.

Meanwhile in Tel Aviv a man who raped his 11 year old cousin for two years has been given two months of community service with no jail time whatsoever after a psychological evaluation found that he had no pedophiliac tendencies, despite the pedophilia he had committed and found that he had "difficulty sleeping at night, and found the possibility of jail very distressing."

This is of course most shocking and I think we should excuse all criminals who find the possibility of jail troubling, from going to jail. We certainly don't want to add to their trauma.

Meanwhile in comparing traumas the little girl he raped "began to lose her religious faith, had difficulty sleeping and suffered from recurring nightmares. She also lost all of her hair, and had to wear a wig." Yet it is not her suffering that is primary in the mind of the court but the suffering of her rapist

But this is the logical outcome of Oslo too. The logical outcome of post-zionism in which activists are concerned over jailed Hamas and Fatah terrorists but the murder of Jewish children in the territories are meaningless to them. In which the whole moral framework of right and work was upended to make the guilty innocent and the innocent guilty and to murderers into heroes of peace and their victims into obstructions to peace.

We say 'He who is merciful to the cruel will come to be cruel to those he should have mercy on,' and the warped values of the left continue demonstrating this with codes that cater to the rights of the perpetrator and not the victim. The world's embrace of the terrorists and the 1 billion muslims that want to wipe out a few million Jews as victims and the Jews as the perpetrators is simply the ultimate extension of that same warped value system.

And so Ofer sits in jail and a child rapist who was whining because he was afraid of prison goes free. From two months to forever.

Jews plague Latin America

Latin American and Arab nations met at a summit to discuss some common issues. What common issue can you imagine they might both have?

A. Large scale economic impoverishment

B. Corrupt tyrannical regimes

C. The Jews

If you guessed C, the answer as usual is yes. The ceremony began with an opening speech demanding the Jews get out of Palestine. The conference ended with a resolution calling for the Jews to get out of Palestine as well as...

"an international conference to define what terrorism is, and endorsed the right of peoples to "resist foreign occupation in accordance with the principle of international legality and in compliance with international humanitarian law."

I bet all the latin american countries can now enjoy looking forwards to their own terrorists discussing the principles of legality in kidnapping and executing bishops. I would also suggest the following.

"an international conference to define what cocaine and heroin are and what drug dealing is and endorsed the right of peoples to purchase and distribute various substances in accordance with the international principle of getting wasted and being a drug lord"

Re-writing the Israeli National Anthem

As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart
With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,
Then our hope - the two-thousand-year-old hope - will not be lost
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem

It was good enough for over five and a half decades but now there are calls to rewrite Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. The most recent proponent of this is an op-ed piece in the Jerusalem Post by one Meisels. The anthem he claims is simply not representative of most Israelis, which would come as a shock to most Israelis who sing it anyway.

The anthem he claims only represents socialist european Jews and does not represent Sefardim, Arabs, Orthodox Jews and possibly Martians. Sefardim, according to him, are not represented because Sefardim did not yearn 'east.' Meisels is sadly too ignorant to realize that firstly Mizrach is an idea dating back to ancient times back thousands of years when Eretz Yisrael was Mizrach and outside of Eretz Yisrael was be'maarava or in the west.

Secondly this line in the anthem is based on the famous poem of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, a famous Sefardi Rabbi from Spain, relative to which indeed Israel is east. Sefard indeed means Spain and much of the Sefardi Jews did not live in the Middle East but Western Europe and America and South America.

Thirdly by his logic it would also disenfranchise Russian Jews and many Eastern European Jews who lived to the east of Israel and therefore actually yearned west. What was to be done about South American and Jews in South Africa who lived to Southwest and Southeast of Israel; suggests anyone singing the anthem had better bring a compass and an atlas to determine exactly which direction his ancestors yearned in.

Orthodox Jews are of course unhappy with Hatikvah because it fails to mention G-D. And while Hatikvah certainly does not mention G-D, neither does it reject him as some anti-zionists would like to pretend. Hatikvah is based essentially on religious writings, its sentiments come from Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, from Tehilim and expressing the collective Jewish striving to return to the Holy Land. The line which anti-zionists consistently whine about is 'Am Hofsi', to live as a free people in our land, which in their view is supposed to refer to spirtual anarchy. Indeed it refers to no such thing, it is simply a hope for the end of living as strangers under foreign rule.

Arabs of course are unhappy with Hatikvah but then arabs are unhappy that Israel exists period. No the anthem does not reflect their point of view, it is not their anthem; it is ours just as it is not their land. Israel is a Jewish state, its anthem is a Jewish one. That it has various minorities in it, does not require a rewriting of the anthem. For that matter will the American National Anthem be rewritten for anyone who does not identify with the War of 1812 or the French National Anthem for monarchists and fascists? Absurdity must have its limits.

Meisels proposes rewriting or adding a second verse to Hatikvah in his own words; "stressing Israel as an open, modern, vibrant, liberal democracy promoting equality among all its citizens without prejudice based on religion, race, creed, age or sex." One wonders if rather than rewriting Israel's national anthem it wouldn't just be easier for him to move to Sweden. Also his proposed change would really fail to meet the needs of all the groups he has mentioned.

The Sefardim who have consistently voted right wing and religious parties hardly want a liberal democracy that eliminates state based religion. Orthodox Jews don't want any truck with any of the above. Arabs wouldn't much like it either, particularly the part about 'prejudice based on sex' which might interfere with their polygamy and wife-beating. So whose needs does Meisels rewrite really meet? Like most liberals the changes he is proposing in favor of the 'oppressed minorities' utterly fail to meet their approval or are changes they have any desire for.

Finally such a change would utterly eliminate the whole meaning of Hatikvah which expresses the strivings of the Jewish people in a universal and transcendant way to return to their homeland and replace it with a particular political viewpoint of what Israel should be. Hatikvah is not about diversity and tolerance. It is about Jews returning to their land. To add a second verse stating that it is a land which favors no race or creed or religion is to abolish the first part of the anthem and the uniqeness of that striving.

The ultimate dillema that divides the left from the right is whether Israel is to be a Jewish state or just a state. Hatikvah plants itself squarely on the side of the Jewish state. It must not be rewritten to suit the aims and ambitions of those who would dejudaize the state of israel as they seek to dejudaize its anthem.

Want a good excuse to wear aluminum foil in Boston?

"BOSTON - Attention, time travelers: Amal Dorai hopes you enjoyed the party he's throwing this weekend. Dorai, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is hosting a Time Traveler Convention on campus this Saturday...Dorai only asks his guests to show proof they come from the future: Bringing the cure for cancer, a solution for global poverty or a cold fusion reactor would suffice. The convention starts at 8 p.m. For dramatic effect, time travelers are encouraged to show up at 10 p.m. sharp. In between, revelers will take in a lecture on time travel by an MIT physics professor and listen to student bands belting out time-themed songs." 

 And what people wouldn't make the monumental effort of traveling through time for a lecture and a rendition of Timeless by a student band? Still might be a good reason to dress up in aluminum foil, march in there and proclaim, "I Come From The Future' while trying to pass off a Tic Tac as a cure for the common cold.

Matisyahu wants to drink your blood!

Song of the Partisans

Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg
Khotsh himeln blayene farshtein bloye teg.
Kumen vet nokh unzer oysgebenkte sho
Es vert a poyk ton undzer trit - mir zeynen do!

Never once say you walk upon your final way
though skies of steel obscure the blue of day.
Our long awaited hour will draw near
and our footsteps will thunder - We are Here!

Vun grinem palmenland biz vaysn land fun shney
Mir kumen on mit undzer payn, mit undzer vey
Un vu gefallen es iz a shprits fun unzer blut
Shprotsn vet dort undzer gvure, undzer mut.

From a land of green palms to a white land of snow
We march on with our pain and with our woe;
And there where a spray fell of our blood
there our strength and courage yet will bud

Es vert di morgenzun bagilden unz dem haynt
Un der nekhtn vet farshvindn mitn faynd
Nor oyb farzamen vet di zun in dem kayor
Vi a parol zol geyn dos lid fun dor tsu dor.

The morning sun will rise and brighten the day
and yesterday's night will fade away
But if the sun delays in rising to the dawn
then like a watchword pass this song on and on

Dos lid geshribn iz mit blut un nit mit blay
Es iz nit keyn lidl fun a foygl af der fray
Dos hot a folk tsvishn falendike vent
Dos lid gezungen mit naganes in di hent!

This song is written with blood and not with pencil lead
it's no song sung freely by birds flying overhead.
So a people among the falling walls made their last stand
and this song they sung with pistols in their hand

Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg
Khotsh himeln blayene farshtein bloye teg.
Kumen vet nokh unzer oysgebenkte sho
Es vert a poyk ton undzer trit - mir zeynen do!

Never once say you walk upon your final way
though skies of steel obscure the blue of day.
Our long awaited hour will draw near
and our footsteps will thunder - We are Here!


Hersh or Hirsch (short for Herschel) Glick began writing poetry at 13. He died at the age of 22 in the Ghetto with most of his works forever lost. Nevertheless this song, the Partizaner Lied, the Partisan Song; was a rallying song for the Jews resisting the Nazis that to this day continues to represent the courage of the partisans fighting a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds as a symbol of the struggle of the Jews against their enemies throughout history.

Female agents captured Top Al Queda leader

"Pakistani agents wearing burqas seized al-Qaeda suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi by ambushing his motorbike in a rural town, police told the BBC. The man alleged to be a top al-Qaeda organiser was riding pillion and managed to run into a house where agents flushed him out with tear gas. He has been held at an undisclosed location since his capture at Mardan, 60km (37 miles) from Peshawar."

Seems like poetic justice for the allies of the Taliban who thought women belonged beaten and behind a Burqa.

The Holocaust: Understanding and Memory

As Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, comes again; the predictable discussions and debates over it return again too.

In Judaism there are holidays and fast days, both mandated by G-D or men with a specific meaning. Their first aspect is remembrance. Remember the Exodus from Egypt. Remember the miraculous salvations of Chanukah and Purim. Remember the destructions of the temples. Remember what Amalek did to you. Remember. Most of all remember. And we remember.

Holocaust museums have gone up all around the world. The stories of survivors have been printed in untold numbers of books and video and audio taped interviews collect those stories. Children are acquainted with the Holocaust. Films are made about the Holocaust. A day has been set aside to remember the Holocaust. We know the names, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen Belsen. We know the history, Kristalnacht, the Final Solution, the Wannasee conference.

We remember the dead. The bodies buried in lime. The pits full of arms and legs reaching out of the earth. Burning heaps of bodies. And we remember how they died. Men and women waiting for the gas chambers or to be gunned down and thrown into the pits. Children taken out and shot. The Ghettos, the barracks, the barbed wire. We remember the individual survivors and their stories. We connect and empathize with them but beyond memory there is understanding. To understand the meaning of the Holocaust. On the actual events, beyond the ranks of the Holocaust deniers, there is little debate. But on the meaning, debate never seems to end.

To the liberals, the cosmopolitans, to many Europeans; the Holocaust is an explosion of racism and nationalism. In that interpretation of history, the German people embraced nationalism which in turn led to racism which in turn led to genocide which is the logical end result of racism. To them the lesson of the Holocaust are the dangers of prejudice against other ethnic and racial groups and the evils of nationalism. The Jews are not truly relevant to the Holocaust, whose essence lies not in in the Jewish experience but in the German political culture that allowed the right wing to dominate it. To them Jews are not the subject of the Holocaust but one example of the victims of prejudice that has many other historical examples and remembrance of the Holocaust must teach tolerance for all.

This model erases the Jewishness of the Holocaust both by internationalizing it to include all the other 'Holocausts' and by making the Jews simply the casual victims of rampaging prejudice. It could after all have been any other group, this point of view goes, and in fact during the Holocaust was. The Jews were merely convenient. Jews however have no special claim on memory or the Holocaust nor do the Germans have a special role to play in it. The real villain was the rampaging virus of nationalism and prejudice and when Jews appear to be nationalistic or prejudiced, it's entirely fair and not at all obscene to call Jews, Nazis.

Just as the Nazis sought to erase Jews both from life and history; the liberal view of the Holocaust erases Jews from the Holocaust to replace them with an ad for tolerance and multiculturalism. It replaces the experience of Holocaust survivors to partisan liberal politics. It dejudaizes the Holocaust and finally turns it against the Jews themselves.

The USSR, which in fact engaged in its own form of Holocaust denial by refusing to recognize a specific effort to exterminate Jews, only 'Soviet citizens' and then only recognizing the 2 million that had been killed on its own territory; began this process as early as 1952 when in the beginning of the Doctors Plot, which was to mark Stalin's Holocaust that would exterminate the Jews of the USSR; was marketed in France by pointing to the role Doctors had played in the Holocaust in medical experimentation as a propaganda justification for the plot. Thus the Holocaust itself, less than a decade after, had already become dejudaized and turned against the Jews with the aim of making Jews the Nazis and to carry out yet another Holocaust against them.

It should come as no surprise then, that the left, which took most of its best ideas from Communism, should be implementing these same policies more than half a century after. The new view of the left is that once upon a time Jews were persecuted but now Jews have become the Nazis and persecute others, primarily arabs in Israel but also liberal activists fighting for Arab Palestinian causes. And the Arab masses of Islam, following in the footsteps of the Mufti of Jerusalem who personally helped advise and execute the Holocaust for Hitler, thus become the victims of the Jews. Their Jewish victims become merely the targets of the understandable and rightfull anger of the victimized Arabs and the second Holocaust which they have sought to execute upon us.

This is the other kind of Holocaust denial. The neo-nazis and the Arabs practice a Holocaust denial that denies the events of the Holocaust. The left practices not a denial of the events and atrocities but a denial of their jewishness. Where remembering is a sufficient defense against the holocaust denial of the right, it is insufficient against the holocaust denial of the left which does not deny their testimony but its relevance. The right says it never happened, the left says it had nothing to do with Jews and Jews have no claim on it.

It is not enough therefore to remember what happened but why it happened to defeat this second more insidious kind of Holocaust denial. To remember it as a Jewish Holocaust, rather than a generic one. To remember the victims as Jews rather than random victims of global prejudice and nationalism.

In Judaism our holidays first tell us to remember and then they tell us what to remember. Remember that I took you out of the house of slaves to be my people. Remember what Amalek did in that he feared men but not G-D. Remember Chanukah when we rededicated the temple and ourselves to the service of G-D. Remember the fall of the temple due to conflicts between brothers. Remember not just what happened but why.

The Holocaust museums, memorials and studies have their own agendas, to internationalize, to broaden, to dejudaize, to forget. We must remember not merely what happened but why. That it was not intolerance but anti-semitism. A hatred of Jews. A hatred of the G-D whose word Jews brought before man. We must not forget, not only to remember the living but to remember that Bekol Dor Ve'Dor Omdim Aleinu Le'Kaloteinu, in every generation they arise to destroy us. The Holocaust was not a unique one time event, it is part of the continuity of anti-semitism and the drive by our enemies, by the Amaleks that pervade every time and place, every nation and era; to destroy us.

Remember.

The Labor party once again shows its class

The Peretz campaign responded that ....Barak was scared of running against him.

Peretz called Barak a "crybaby" and said the reason he joined the race was to make sure that Barak would not return to the Labor leadership.

Peretz also blamed Barak for a police inquiry that Yaniv initiated investigating alleged forgeries in registration forms of new members who Peretz brought into the party. Yaniv will be questioned on the matter at National Fraud Squad headquarters in Bat Yam on Wednesday.

"Amir Peretz's problem is with the police and not with me," Barak said.

capped off by this brillant Barak quote

"We need a candidate who can win in elections and not just in the polls," Barak told the central committee.

Where's Goldwyn when you need him?

The Bias of a New Media Age

To all who thought that the internet would usher in a new era overthrowing mainstream media and restoring the marketplace of ideas must continually contend with the simple fact that every marketplace has its merchants and its gatekeepers and nothing comes free. Google has become the Xerox of our time, the company become synonymous with product and finally a verb. But Google has accepted ads for Hamas, filled its Google News site with anti-semitic sites ranging from neo-nazi sites like the Vanguard Network to the left wing anti-semitic sites like Conspiracy Planet. In the latest news it rejected a Conservative ad precisely worded like a Liberal ad.

Where CBS, CNN and ABC at least held themselves to some standard of ethics and impartiality even if they constantly violated and got around it. Internet sites like Google have no standards, just advertising slogans. And what goes for Google, ultimately also goes for Yahoo and any internet site as well. The bias of a new media age is here and it will be much more difficult to address when dealing with entities that have no ethical standards, real or percieved, that often are not even based in the United States and beyond the control of the FCC or public opinion.

Bushed by Political Fatigue

In every boxing match in which both of the two contenders refuse to go down, there comes a time when both boxers are not fighting but staggering against each other. Like a drunken late night argument that has gone on much too long, in which the participants groggily look at the clock wondering what this was all about and when they can finally go to sleep; American politics has wound down.

The ads for Air America, the new liberal talk radio network, (as opposed to old ones like NPR or Pacifica) feature sympathetic liberal commentators looking down understandingly like therapists at the passerby under the slogan, 'Bushed.' And indeed that is what the country or at least the talking head section of the country, the left and right wing chattering classes who know all the ins and outs of all the talking points, who can lecture at lenght on why we should or shouldn't drill in Alaska, on the pros and cons of malpractice insurance caps and the details of each Senator's vote on the Patriot Act; is going through.

It has been a brusing four terms of non-stop combat. The two terms of the Clinton administration in which the right and left confronted each other across a stalemated executive and legislative divide and the second term of a Bush administration that has seen the country tear itself a part and then give a resigned sigh and sit back down to wait it all out. Like that late night argument, all the points have been made and there is nothing new to say. Everything that can be said about Iraq and Afghanistan and Tax Cuts has been said. The bright young sloganeers grinding away and rerunning tapes of enemy politicians in the eternal hunt for sound bites to taunt them with have run out of slogans and out of ideas. The seasoned old hands on the hill and in the house meanwhile have gone on making the same dirty deals they always did while in the background Senator McCain grouchily aspired to outrage.

But for all the occasional explosions of activity the country is torpid, slumbering beneath a haze of exhaustion and battle fatigue. The top political news story of the past few days has been Laura Bush reading prepeared jokes from a professional comedy writer at a correspondents dinner. The death toll in Iraq grinds on with more dead young American men being ground through the mill of a war that even arguing over has come to seem futile to the left and the right.

9/11 recedes into memory as an atrocity whose final resolution remains withheld from us as the corrupt fumblings of New York's Governor and Mayor replaces the towers with an abomination of ugly design manufactured by corrupt backroom deals, as the War on Terror becomes a futile attempt to bring democracy to savages and as conspiracy theorists and assorted loons pick over the ruins; their warped minds sparking with twisted ideas.

Meaning is withheld from us. Truth is withheld from us. The country is weary, seeking peace and knowing it will not find it. The talking heads, the bloggers, the pundits, the aristocracy of the angry word are tired and lacking peace or victory settle for belligerent mumblings amid the orgy of snores. And over it all rules King George, a man who had a moment of destiny that could have changed the world; who could have writen a determined page in history and instead stands over the ruins of an incoherent policy even his own enemies have grown weary of criticising.

George's destiny will not be to become a Reagan or an FDR or even a Kennedy; but ironically another Clinton. His two terms represent the triumph of mediocrity and the failure of this great nation which once produced equally great leaders to lead it; to find a man to lead them. And we the tired masses await without hope of redemption; the hour of the clock that will bring this presidency to its close.

The Disengagement Haggadah - Perek Beit

Of four sons we spoke, one Wise, one Wicked, one Simple minded and the Fourth one unable to even ask

"Why are we engaging in this disengagement," the Wise Son asks? "Do we not love our land, every place where our feet step upon it is holy? Do we believe the evil men and the leaders in far-off lands when they promise us peace and security when time and time again their promises have proven false? Do we not see that retreat will only bring the enemy closer to our homes?"

And then you may reply to him, our fathers were strangers in a strange land and often filled with self-hatred from all their persecutions. They believed that by appeasing those men and nations who in their minds held power over them, they could best preserve themselves and by abandoning Judaism, they could best blend in and be free of being persecuted until they came to hate their Judaism and that complex is still with them today.

"What are these settlers to us?" the Wicked Son asks. "They are not my brothers and no part of my people! Throw them out and throw our soldiers out too, it is because of them that we have no peace with our arab neighbors. Throw out the parochial chauvinist religion of this Judaism too and let us embrace humanism and secularism."

Blunt his teeth then and tell him, do you think it is only the settlers that the arabs hate? No it is all Jews whom they hate, regardless of whether they wear beards or hats, whether they are socialists or hassidim. Though you may reject Judaism and the Jewish people, this will not appease the arabs who hate you; only deny a place among the Jewish people and participation in the salvation of G-D that will come to us.

"What should we do? What does this all mean?" The Simple Son asks. "I do not understand all these claims and the media tells me if not for the settlers there would be peace."

Tell him then the story of Jewish history beginning with Avraham our father who dwelled in the land and whose ancestors were promised it by G-D himself in an eternal covenant and we have clung to the land even in exile, struggling to return to live once again on the land of our forefathers. We disobeyed G-D who warned us against making covenants with the inhabitants of the land and every time we have made such covenants the protection of G-D was withdrawn from us and the enemies we made such covenants with gained power over us.

The Fourth Son who is unable to even ask watches TV and then reports for duty when he is called on to evict the settlements without even understanding what is wrong.

Tell him then, Kol Dmei Achicha Zoakim Elai Min Ha'adamah, the voice of the blood of your brother cries out from the earth. The voices of your brothers and sisters murdered on this land by the arabs since the days of the Jewish return from Exile and the second temple, the arab mercenaries who slit open the stomachs of Jewish refugees fleeing the Roman legions in search of Gold to the Arab looters massacring the Jews of Hebron and the Arab children who moved among the bodies searching out the wounded from the dead to finish them off; Arab legionaries shelling our holy city, arab mobs who slaughtered the nurses of Hadassah and the arab terrorists who murdered the Jewish children of Maalot and explode themselves throughout our cities willing to die in order to spill the blood and tear apart the bodies of men, women and children sitting in cafes, at seders and weddings; all their victims, the voices of the Jews murdered by the arabs in their relentless greed for our holy land cry out and command you to desist.

The Disengagement Haggadah

Why is this disengagement different from all the peace initiatives that came before it?

On all the peace initiatives that came before it, we offered to give up land in exchange for peace; in this disengagement we give up land with no promise even of peace.

On all the peace initiatives that came before it, we retreated from land to bring peace with the enemy; now with this disengagement we retreat to bring war with our brothers.

On all the peace initiatives that came before it, we gave up land to end the shedding of blood; but in this disengagement we give up land so that we may shed our own brother's blood.

On all the peace initiatives that came before it, we embraced with hope for a better tommorow; this disengagement we proceed out of bitterness, defeatism and hopeless spite.

(Hat Tip: CosmicX)

A different year: A different Pesach, a different Sharon

This is an excerpt from a speech Sharon gave to the Knesset after the Seder massacre in Netanya. It was a different year, a different Pesach and most of all, a different Sharon.

"Our dead lie in a long row: women and children, young and old. And we stand facing them, facing the vacuum created by their murders, and we are speechless. On the recent evening of the seder, while I was sitting with my family at the table, I received the terrible news of the massacre in Netanya. There is no more dreadful moment in the term of a prime minister, than that horrendous moment when the telephone rings, or a note is passed during a meeting, and carrying Job's tidings.

And then the sights and sounds come rushing in, the sights of destruction, the cries of the wounded, the sirens. Then the awful silence of the funerals, the faces and human stories which stare at us from the newspapers: the face of Rachel Koren, whose husband and two children were buried on the same day, side by side; a short distance from her, the face of Karmit Ron, forever separated from her husband, 21-year-old daughter, and 17-year-old son; the face of Adi Shiran who was buried while both her parents are unconscious, fighting for their lives in the hospital;


It is not a coincidence, members of Knesset. It is not cruel fate. The murderous gangs have a leader, a purpose, and a directing hand. They have one mission: to chase us out of here, from everywhere - from our home in Elon Moreh and from the supermarket in Jerusalem, from the cafe in Tel Aviv and from the restaurant in Haifa, from the synagogue in Netzarim - where the murderers slaughtered two over 70 worshipers, walking in their prayer shawls to morning prayers - and from the Seder table in Netanya."

2 quotes on British anti-semitism

"Britain IS currently playing host to the biggest ever annual number of violent anti-Semitic attacks, both on people and on property, since the 1930s. Who can blame the teachers, so conscious of their uncoolness, for wanting to get 'down wiv the kidz'? They're too respectable to daub swastikas on a synagogue - but it sure feels good to band together and bully them Israeli academics!Just imagine; for once, the swots aren't having their books ripped up in front of them by a gang of thugs - THEY'RE the ones doing the ripping."

"...in this country it tends to be academics who react to anything from mild censorship to book-burning with 'That's how Hitler started!' That they are now doing something Hitler would thoroughly approve of, and did - barring contact with Jews - seems to have escaped them."

The money quotes. Read it all here