For the last five years Democrats have been accusing Republicans of 'terrifying' Americans with the threat of terrorism to win support for their agenda. Democrats ought to know because terrifying Americans has been the basis of their own power base.

The Democrats have used the Federal government to build up programs and legislation and departments doled out to specific groups and then threaten them with the prospect of having it taken away should the Republicans get in. Like drug dealers, they've made people dependent and then undermined their self-esteem to the point that they're no longer able to make any decision without their approval.

Modern Democrats have built their power base by peddling fears to niche demographics, to Blacks and Hispanics, to Women and Liberal Jews and Gays. If Republicans have spent the past decades repeating, "Vote For Us To Keep Communism and Islamic Terrorism Away," Democrats have spent it saying "Vote For Us To Keep Republicans Away."

Where Republicans warn about the threat of attacks, Democrats frighten entire minority groups with the prospect of virtual slavery. Blacks are frightened with the prospect of rule by racists determined to stamp out their rights. Jews are frightened with the prospect of a Christian America. Gays are frightened with the prospect they'll be locked up when the Republicans get in. Women are frightened with the prospect of banning abortion.

No other issue seems to dominate talk about women's rights as much as abortion. At some point toward the end of the 20th century, access to abortion had become the sum total of feminism, the golden ball always precarious teetering over an abyss and endangered which had to be protected above all else. Every other issue took a back seat to this one.

Politicians love to reduce an entire demographic to one single issue they can manipulate. For Jews that's Israel and Democrats and Republicans make heartfelt pledges to protect and support Israel, only to betray them as soon as they win elected office. For Feminists abortion is their Israel. That single 'do or die' issue around which everything comes to revolve.

Of course Democrats are as solidly behind abortion as they are behind gay marriage or Israel or any of the other single issues they use to manipulate minority demographics. They make great campaign slogans to reel in millions but the moment a stand has to be taken that could actually cost them votes, you quickly find the Democrats hiding behind the rubber tree plant.

The secret is that the Democratic Party needs things to be just as they are. They need their pet populations to stay on the plantation and cast their votes for the jackass each and every time out of fear. They need to constantly terrify women with the prospect that abortion will be banned any day now and millions of women will be dying from illegal abortions. They need to terrify blacks with Klansmen dancing around a burning cross on the White House lawn. They need to terrify Jews with A Handmaid's Tale going from fiction to fact. They need to terrify period and they do it by working as partners with the opposite side to make sure key issues remain in play.

After 8 years of a Republican President and a Republican Congress, abortion is still legal, gays haven't been rounded up, civil rights are where they were all along and America hasn't been declared a Christian Republic. The bogeymen of the Democratic party were proven to be just that bogeymen but that doesn't really matter. Fear has its own logic.

The Democratic Party has enslaved millions by repeatedly threatening them with single issues that bring out a gut reaction, that make them feel threatened and on the verge of being reduced to second class citizens, deprived, enslaved. In doing so they've reduced those very minorities to permanent second class citizen status and enslaved them. They've made them permanently afraid from thinking and voting for themselves. They've chained them down and patted them on the heads and told them when to bark and when to sit. While the rest of the country chooses between two parties, they have no choices left.

The particularly sad spectacle is the extent to which women have been co-opted by it and women's rights into an adjunct of the Democratic Party to be sacrificed whenever something more important comes up. Now as Islam's expansionism brings growing attacks and abuse of women, instead of standing up for themselves, feminists welcome it and pretend that the real threat comes from Idaho rather than Riyadh.

Even long before women could vote, there were women's movements that spoke out and fought for issues particular to women in a voice particular to women. They were often ridiculed and assaulted but they persevered. Today when women have long had the vote, women's movements wind up being reduced to being adjuncts of the usual political factions.

It's striking to note that early women's struggles whether it was in England over the Contagious Diseases Act that treated women as prostitutes for the Empire's Armies or in America over Prohibition; women confronted injustices and problems that threatened women and spoke out over male ridicule to change the way things were done. It's also striking to note that many of those women were deeply religious and identified themselves as such. It's fashionable today to condescend to those times but the reality is women's movements accomplished more then with a lot less to work with and far more to threaten them, than they have now.

From the causes they pursue it seems as if modern day feminist heroes are sexual predators like President Clinton or the Islamic terrorists in Guantanamo Bay. Rather than defending or protecting women, feminist do more to enslave them than anything else.

Once upon a time three nice people wrote an op-ed for the Jewish Week. By nice, I don't at all mean that they're nice people. In fact as people go, they're pretty much the opposite of nice. These three people tend to put 'Rabbi' in front of their name, not because they are, but because it's also the fashionable thing to do these days.

They are of course outraged. What are they outraged by? The refugees of Gush Katif? The thousands dead on 9/11? The millions murdered and tortured to death by Saddam and the Ayatollahs? Don't be silly. It's not fashionable to be outraged by such things. That is the resort of extremists, patriots and such awful people who are responsible for everything that's wrong with the world. No they're outraged because terrorists are being waterboarded in Guantanamo Bay in order to obtain information from them to stop future attacks.

Are you outraged yet? Well they are and they (they being Jeremy Kalmanofsky, David Rosenn and Melissa Weintraub) wrote an op-ed about it too in the Jewish Week. Thus the North American branch of Rabbis for Human Rights or Rabbis for Terrorism or Imams for Terrorism has been very agitated about Guantanamo Bay. Their Op Ed was meant to prove that black was white, dogs are cats and that the Torah is steadfastly opposed to torture. That was a challenging task you could only admire, especially from three phony Rabbis who can quote you chapter and verse of the works of Noam Chomsky and keep a copy of Howard Zinn in the breast pocket to stop any rubber bullets, but who still think Torah is an Indian Food dish.

Let the mild amusement begin.

"The Torah and its leading interpreters agree that war might sometimes be a necessary evil, but is not less evil for being necessary. Authoritative teachings have tightened — not relaxed — ethical limits on damage to life and property during battle, and have sought to cultivate our compassion and minimize our cruelty."

Whatever and whoever its leading 'interpreters' are, it seems they missed the fact that war itself can be a Milchemet Mitzvah. They also don't seem to grasp the fact that in the Torah G-d commands Israel to engage in war. If war is an evil and G-d commands it, is G-d commanding people to do evil? (this is a position that makes perfect sense to a liberal theologian who doesn't believe in G-d anyway but makes no sense to anyone who does believe in G-d)

Nowhere does G-d say that war is a necessary evil. War is not a necessary evil, it is those who make it necessary who are evil. Against evil, war is a necessary good. Furthermore the Torah is realistic about combat and the stresses of war and while avoidance of sin is highlighted in order to be worthy of G-d's aid, the Torah does not propound delusional doctrines that wars are fought while being Miss Manners and in wartime, plenty of peacetime prohibitions are relaxed.

"Instead of suspending our moral compass during war we must be twice as vigilant to keep from losing our best selves amid war’s inherent brutality. Accordingly, we believe that Jewish sources would favor a near total ban on torture"

What the gentleman and lady fail to grasp though is that wartime measures are not a suspension of our moral compass. They are an integral part of our moral compass. A society that cannot do what it takes to defend its citizens against the enemy is immoral. A society run by Carters and Clintons who allow terrorists to murder Americans and shrug their shoulders has no moral compass. It is a government that has failed in the most basic duty of a government towards its citizens, that of defending them, as such it has no right to exist.

Our best selves are found at home when we build up our society and aid the weak and promote great works and it is found abroad when we slay those who mean to destroy us. Excessive cruelty on the battlefield is just one evil extreme, the other evil extreme is cowardice and hiding behind false moral doctrines while the enemy wins.

Torture for the sake of sadism is evil. Torture for the sake of saving lives and defeating the enemy is a noble good. Just as murder with no cause is evil while murder in self-defense is a noble good. It is not the act that counts in these cases but the purpose of it. We are not waterboarding terrorists because it's fun but because they have vital information we need to save the lives of our citizens. It's that simple.

"The principal Jewish justifications for violent force are self-defense and pre-emption — forestalling an impending attack. The central formulation of pre-emptive self-defense is articulated in the law of the rodef, or “pursuer.” ...But Jewish law unambiguously restricts this license to preventing an impending crime. The rodef argument can never license retaliation after damage has already been done or after the threat of further violence has passed. "

The complete stupidity of this is truly awe-inspiring. The law of Rodef does not apply to entire nations. Nor does it apply to a governmental legal system. It's like claiming that the police should be governed by the same laws as govern a homeowner dealing with a burglary. The 'Rabbis' are conflating wartime laws and civil laws and picking and choosing what they like from either category and kneading that into one big pile and ignoring context and the balances of the laws. They really should stick to what they know, Zinn and Chomsky.

On top of all that, interrogating prisoners is not retaliation, it's meant to extract information.

"Given the contours of the rodef principle, we find it bizarre that Rabbi Broyde ignores the distinction between the killing of armed combatants and the treatment of prisoners in interrogation rooms. An enemy soldier holding a gun, or a terrorist strapped with an explosive belt simply cannot be compared to a prisoner who is already disarmed, in custody and at our mercy."

The distinction is quite clear. We shoot the former and interrogate the latter. Obviously we don't interrogate armed terrorists or shoot prisoners. Nor does Rodef apply to prisoners taken in wartime by a government. This is a point liberals never seem to be able to grasp when they demand civil criminal laws apply to enemy insurgents captured on a battlefield. Are Kalmanofsky, Rosenn and Weintraub really this stupid or is it an act?

"But this now-detained prisoner may possess information that would save lives in the future. Shall we put him in an ice-cold shower until he reveals some detail that will give our side a strategic advantage?"

Some 'detail' like, Al-Queda will be flying planes into the towers on September 11th. Just more 'details'.

"The right answer is no, according to Jewish legal and moral reasoning. By all accounts, information obtained under duress is very frequently false, confessed simply to get the torturers to stop. Probably for this reason, Judaism legislates a nearly absolute prohibition on self-incrimination — stronger, indeed, than the American Fifth Amendment."

At no point in time does Jewish legal and moral reasoning say any such thing. Information obtained in any kind of interrogation is often false, information obtained under duress has an improved chance of actually being true when it's applied to otherwise hardened men who would never voluntarily confess. The process of interrogation is meant to be able to dispose of the bad information in favor of the good information. That is what the duress is for.

Finally Judaism's prohibition against self-incrimination is within the setting of civil legal cases managed by the Sanhedrin in the Land of Israel. It DOES NOT apply, in a foreign land, in a military campaign against a foreign enemy. On top of that it's a prohibition against self-incrimination that only applies to confessions gathered for legal cases.

That same law also says that conviction in a capital case requires the testimony of two male witnesses with forewarnings. This is not how our legal system works. I do not believe "Rabbis" Kalmanofsky, Rosenn and Weintraub are so consistent that they want the US legal system to work this way.

"Torturing a shackled prisoner mocks our pious claims about the sacredness of human dignity of the defenseless."

No, feeding that prisoner expensive meals, giving him a Koran, letting him have a comfortable life while his victims are buried in the ground and his associates plan more attacks without forcing him to cough up every single piece of information he has, mocks our pious claims about the sacredness of human dignity of the defenseless.

The defenseless are not terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, they are the victims of the terrorists. A terrorist is not defenseless. He had weapons to defend himself with. He had the courage to kill but not the courage to die. A society that treats him as a sacred object and gives him the dignity he has no right to, is one that treats his victims as dirt and spits on their dignity and their right to live.

"State-sponsored torture is a moral horror and international crime. And religious apologies for such torture warp the Torah. As religious teachers, we are proud to study and teach a tradition that forbids this abhorrent practice"

What tradition is that exactly? If we are to believe these lying idiots, the Torah demands that we comply with ACLU regulations when waging war. The same tradition which had G-d command the extermination of entire peoples, in which King David brought the mutilated parts of the enemy as a dowry, in which Shimson pulled down an entire tower would frown on putting a captured enemy in a cold shower for information that could save lives?

In the Torah captured enemies were routinely killed. Not kept in a resort, fed three meals a day prepared by a chef complete with a menu. Not given exercise and entertainment and a chance to attack prison guards. Killed. That was it. That is our tradition and if we actually kept it, the fake Rabbis in question would be shrieking loudly enough to shatter every window in North America and Canada too.

Melissa Weintraub, belongs to the North American branch of Rabbis for Human Rights, whose head in Israel "Rabbi"Arik Ascherman engages in Rachel Corrie style protests against bulldozing terrorists' homes and has been part of sting operations meant to setup and jail prominent settlers by bringing in Arabs to create a disturbance and then charge the settler with violent assault.

Having someone burst onto your property, vandalize it and when you defend yourself, a third party by prearrangement summons the police who are already waiting, is a tactic typical of totalitarian regimes. This works out well because defending totalitarian regimes is what modern human rights activists do best.

Fight tyranny in North Korea, Iran or Iraq? No way. Go there as human shields to protect tactical installations from American bombings. Where's my ticket? The modern human rights movement exists only as an Orwellian inversion of language. If they were honest, they'd call themselves Defenders of Brutal Tyrannies or Terrorist Axillary Brigade but that might make their shaky moral high ground even shakier.

The nation's most senior Muslim cleric blamed immodestly dressed women who don't wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to abandoned "meat" that attracts voracious animals. In a Ramadan sermon, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.

Sheik Hilali said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress ... "and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years". "But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he asked. "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem." The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men."

A common Muslim claim is to say how much Islam provides rights for women, how much Islam respects women. The truth is very different and the clerics displays that truth.

To a Muslim a woman's body is meat, disgusting but made desirable by Satan to men. Women are nothing more than walking talking meat whose presence corrupts men and makes them sin. The only place a woman belongs is at home, in her room, wearing her Hijab. Anything else makes her fair game for rapists.

Mohammed himself said that most of the inhabitants of hell are women. Muslim scholars have described women as animals whom Allah gave the power of speech so they could interact with men for reproductive purposes.

Muslims see women the same way they see America and Europe, dirty, disgusting, satanic but desirable. They do not integrate into American or European society because they do not love their new countries, they despise them but desire them for their material and physical abundance. Their relation to these countries is not love but lust fused with hatred into a desire to rape.

Along with the gang rape epidemic across Europe and Australia comes the rhetoric. In France Muslim rappers write songs that speak of raping France like a woman. When they loot, burn and kill in Paris or Sydney, it is that same perverted desire that drives them. They cannot become Americans or Europeans for the very same reason they cannot love a woman. Love or citizenship in a democratic nation with values demands virtues of them they do not have. So they turn rapist instead.

While Europe and America fruitlessly woo Muslims, the Muslims only grow more vicious and demanding. They cannot understand that these nations want to genuinely accept them and welcome them into their family. They see only an invitation to brutality. Europe is burning and America is next and still our politicians continue to coo to the Muslims beasts marauding through the streets in the hopes of making them see their beauty, offering every compromise, until tragically and finally, they have nothing left.

When reading Parshat Noach, there are basic questions that arise. G-d has decided to destroy all flesh upon the earth, why is Noach then burdened with the task of transporting the animals to safety. Why is it his job in the first place?

Part of the answer requires asking why was Noach spared in the first place. We're not given any details what made Noach special except for his father Lemach's statement about Noach's name. He names him Noach, or Rest, saying; "He will comfort us from our work and the toil of our hands, which cometh from the ground which the LORD hath cursed."

It sounds as if this means that life is about to get easier for mankind but instead what happens is a great flood that destroys all life on earth. When the flood is done and Noach has returned to the earth and brings sacrifices to G-d, G-d states that he will not again curse the earth because of man and that all the seasons of life on nature Lo Yishbatu, Will Not Stop. Yishbatu comes from the same root as Shabbat, the day of rest and is a word that refers to resting. It seems that Lemach's hope for Noach only winds up being fulfilled after the flood itself, but rather than promising that man will be able to rest in working the earth, instead it is promised that the seasons will not rest because of man.

The first day of rest of the earth, the first Shabbat, occurred after G-d had completed the creation of the world. Everything in the world had come into being from the oceans and sky to the animal kingdom and finally man, the world was at last complete and G-d rested. Adam named every animal and was given stewardship of the garden of eden, to work and watch over it. But the rest did not last very long, Adam and Chava violated G-d's will and the completion of creation by listening to the serpent and eating from the tree and the earth was cursed for that.

Creation was no longer complete and the Shabbat was over. Work resumed and Adam was expelled from the garden of eden and into an incomplete creation in which he would have to toil on the earth. Following him were two sons, Kayin and Hevel (Cain and Abel) who took different paths. Hevel was a shepherd and Kayin worked the earth. Both Hevel and Kayin brought sacrifices to G-d of the work of their hands, yet G-d rejected Kayin's and accepted Hevel's. Why?

Sacrifice is primarily a means of showing gratitude to G-d by recognizing his supremacy in the natural order of the world. When a man brings a portion of his work to G-d, he is recognizing the G-d as the source of his productivity. Hevel brought from the best that he had to G-d while Kayin just picked out some of his produce and brought it over. While Hevel was accepting the supremacy of G-d, Kayin was essentially treating G-d as an equal or inferior even. Kayin did not recognize the supremacy of G-d in the natural order, instead he gave him what he had himself.

In doing so Kayin was repeating the sin of his parents who had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge in order to become equal to G-d, for which the earth that Adam and Kayin worked was cursed in the first place. Adam and Chava had subverted the natural order, listening to a member of the animal kingdom in a plot to subvert G-d's dominion. Hevel by contrast upheld the natural order by working as a shepherd.

The natural order begins with G-d, then man and then the animal kingdom. From greater to lesser. Before his sin, Adam had named the animals and thus defined their identities. After the sin Hevel took the proper road maintaining leadership over the animals while Kayin continued to 'Serve the Earth.' In the proper fulfillment of the natural order, G-d leads man who leads the animal kingdom. When the order is disrupted man sinks to his lower nature, takes counsel from his animal nature and even sinks down to the earth from which he came.

The great leaders of Israel were often shepherds. Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov maintained herds of sheep. By contrast the Egyptians worked the earth treating the Nile River which irrigated their crops as a deity. Moshe was a shepherd too and his treatment of the sheep in his charge demonstrated his fitness to lead Israel. Shaul, the first king of Israel, was a shepherd so was David. But Shaul demonstrated his unfitness to rule when instead of leading the people in the war on Amalek, he allowed himself to be led by them. As had happened to Adam, the inferior led the superior.

As the generations passed over the death of Hevel, instead of leading the animal kingdom, man went on to pervert the entire world down to the animal kingdom as well and thus G-d pledges to destroy the world, and specifically naming man and almost the entire animal kingdom, by types of creature. The world is flooded and rests as man and all life is cut off from the earth. The acts of creation that spread dry land across the surface of the waters and brought forth life are undone.

When the waters recede and Noach and the animals are released into a new world, a recreated world and Noach having become the first proper shepherd of life after the death of Hevel, is given new authority over the animal kingdom. All the animals of the world will now fear him and he and his descendants have the right to hunt and eat them. Having saved the animals, Noach has like Adam before him become a partner in the creation of the world's animal life.

Yet instead Noach turns to the earth again. Vayahel Noach Ish Haadama, And Noach the Man of the Earth Begins, we are told. What does he begin, after being cut off from the earth by water, he becomes a man of the earth again, plants a vineyard, gets drunk and is ridiculed by his son. The natural order of the world has been subverted again and in consequence the line of one of Noach's sons is cursed to become the slaves of slaves. And the descendant of that son, Nimrod, turns to founding the civilizations of Babylon and Assyria that will become the enemies of G-d and constructing a tower to make war on G-d, yet again an assault on the natural order.

The more man deviates from the natural order, the more corrupt the condition of the world becomes. Adam and Chava, Kayin and Noach all showed potential for upholding the order but wound up undermining it too. The first Shabbat could not endure because of that and when G-d states on recieving Noach's sacrifice that he will no longer curse the earth because of man, it is not properly a blessing but a recognition that man's heart contains evil from the beginning. Thus Noach relieves the curse on the earth not through his righteousness but because G-d recognized the futility of tying the nature of the world to man.

It is a mercy but one that hinges on the recognition of human weakness and potential for corruption. Man would no longer have to labor as hard on the earth, but not until Israel accepted the Torah and the Shabbat, the Day of Rest, in recognition of the original creation of man and the creation of the covenant of Israel with the Exodus, was there another piece of the earth that would have a similar close relationship with man at that, the Land of Israel, on which the eyes of G-d are set all year round and from which man is expelled when he defiles it. It is a land from which man was obligated to tithe the work of his hands as Kayin and Hevel had. It recreated the natural pre-noachide order of the world as it had been and as it had been meant to be and as it will be.

The 'official' translation of Sheikh Hilaly's sermon that's being widely distributed across numerous websites and blogs has a fundamental error, that also demonstrates why Arab translations can't be trusted.

Sheikh El-Hilaly's sermon referenced the Muslim gang rape cases blaming the women and describing them as uncovered meat. Hilaly argued that he was referring to adultery rather than rape and the translation, mistranslates him as describing adultery but when in viewed in context this translation is clearly FALSE. All blogs using this translation should be aware of that.

This is the official SBS translation.

"When it comes to adultery (rape), it’s 90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years."

"But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it."

Hilaly's statements clearly cannot be referring to adultery.

1. The very next paragraph that continues his train of thought refers to a rape crime, not adultery.

2. No one in Australia (Long Bay) gets sentenced to jail for adultery. However the gang rape leader in Australia's notorious Muslim gang rape trial, did get sentenced to 55 years in jail.

The translation's use of adultery is yet another example of Arab translators trying to cover up for their brothers, as American intelligence agencies and the military have repeatedly found out. I don't have access to the Arabic original but it's possible that the term Hilaly used was a general one for immoral sexual conduct. This is likely to have been 'Zina' (similar to the Hebrew 'Znut') which is commonly used to refer to adultery but is in actuality (just as in Hebrew) a general term for immoral sexual conduct. Rape too can be referred to as Zina or 'Zina bil Jabr' ,'Forcible Immoral Sexual Acts.'

The translator here likely chose the common meaning of the term to obscure its actual literal meaning and thus the actual statement Hilaly made, which can be clearly seen from the context.

Beyond Hilaly's blaming women for rape and even declaring that men should be let off lightly for rape and women imprisoned for life (something that is actually in many Muslim countries, especially Pakistan under Hudood laws), Hilaly's other rants about Jews and Christians and women are just as revealing.

Muslims online typically talk about how much Islam respects Jews and Christians (People of the Book) and talk about how respectful Islam is towards women. In his sermon, Hilaly, Australia's top cleric said of Jews and Christians.

"Those atheists, people of the book (Christians and Jews), where will they end up? In Surfers Paradise? On the Gold Coast? Where will they end up? In hell and not part-time, for eternity. They are the worst in God’s creation."

He described women as 'uncovered meat' (Muslim women are presumably covered meat) and as 'Satan's soldiers.' A statement not likely to be reserved for non-Muslim women alone, since Mohammed told Muslim women that the majority of hell is populated by women.

Hilaly is not just some odd nutjob, as embarrassed Muslim leaders are trying to dismiss him as. He's Australia's top Muslim cleric and his words represent the true face of Islam.

USA Today

Jill Cavanaugh

In coordination with Islamic advisers and to celebrate the presence of Muslims in America, the President has signed into law the official commemoration of Appease-A-Muslim Day.

"Appease a Muslim Day," said the President, "is just our way of thanking our fellow Muslim-Americans for not having killed us in large numbers on our own soil over the last year. They've given us the great gift of peace of mind and now it's our turn to give back."

With the support of the Federal government and the Department of Appeasing Muslims, states and local municipalities will all be participating in Appease-A-Muslim Day. As a good citizen why aren't you participating too?

Authorized activities for the day include such fun things as;

1) Loudly proclaiming that Allah is the one true deity and that Mohammed is his prophet.

2) Boycotting Israel, Thailand, France, Denmark (for full list of nations being boycotted by Muslims please visit www.theummahwilldestroy.org)

3) Beat up anyone who isn't a Muslim until they accept Islam. Jews in particular. It's fun for the whole family.

Enjoy Appease-a-Muslim Day and try to come back alive.

"Galician blogger Alejandro de Llano related in his blog that he was charged with the crime of supporting Israel.

Two years ago, the Galician nationalist Major of Oleiros began a campaign whose slogan was “Stop the beast. Sharon murderer” and “Stop the new Nazis”. The Major is known for his love for Castro and Palestinians.

Alejandro de Llano wrote the Major to criticize his campaign and to tell him that this could be even a crime of deriving public money to support international terrorism.

That was two years ago.

On October 13th, 2006, he has received a summons from a Criminal Judge announcing him that he is held responsible of the crime of supporting Israel and also of acting against Palestinian people. They did not give him a copy of the summons and they did not let him make any copies."

Update: The winners are in of yesterday's Draw Putin Contest and we have some serious work by some very talented children for you.

1st Prize: Lemon Lime Moon



2nd Prize: Alexander Pukeupski with Mona Putin



3rd Prize: Tie between

Little Katrina with Rivers of Blood



Lemon Lime Moon with Putin Man of the People: Statue of UnLiberty



Vlad the Impaler: Created by Lemon Lime Moon : Inspired by 'Keli-ata'



Honorable Mention

Several hundred children from across the country took part in a “Children draw Putin” competition for his 54th birthday with the top 100 pictures going on display in the capital. What isn't being reported is that the competition was actually an assignment for schoolchildren. These were the following 'themes' they were encouraged to incorporate in their work.

'Putin with his black Labrador Kony, Putin on a fighter jet, Putin on a submarine,
Putin greets the launching of the rocket complex “Bulava.” ,Putin with the Patriarch Alexiy II, Putin with wife and children, Putin with Bush or any other foreign leader Putin as an intelligence officer, Putin wearing a kimono robe, Putin skiing, etc...

“I love Russia!” proclaimed one picture, with Putin shown releasing doves on a hillside. The president was also depicted in Judo garb with a black belt, fixing the engine of his car or holidaying in a Black Sea resort. Some took a more worldly line — with one showing the president, also sporting his black belt, fighting the four evils of crime, corruption, inflation and drug abuse, against a backdrop of the map of Russia.

All these images of the Great Leader call forth the obvious hagiography directed at Stalin or the endless murals of Saddam depicted as professor, soldier, devoted man of religion and builder or the portraiture of Kim Jong-Il in North Korea. Part of the revival of the USSR has been the attempt to transform Putin into a 'Great Leader' along the lines of past Soviet icons such as Lenin and Stalin.

Russia has rebuilt its economic empire by leveraging its gas and seizing private companies. It has used its arms industry to once again arm and fuel the Marxist regimes and Arab terrorist groups fighting America. From the Latin American coalition of Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and soon Nicaragua with the election of Daniel Ortega and the USSR's old clients, the Sandanistas; to the Middle East where Russia supplied weapons to Saddam before the invasion, to Hizbullah whom it is rearming and training with the aid of two Chechen divisions now stationed there and Iran whose nuclear reactor Russia is building.

Back at home Russia is aggressively forcing its old republics back into its sphere and lashing out at those nationalities and Republics that don't comply as Georgia is finding out as Georgians are being deported in large numbers from Georgia in conditions meant for cattle that have already killed one person, homes and businesses seized and Georgian wine and products boycotted.

Other paintings by the children are more explicitly nationalistic and jingoistic. One shows Putin's giant fist punching George Bush in the face and another has Putin trampling the American flag while raising up the Russian flag.

This is part and parcel of Russia under Putin having gone back to the old days of inciting xenophobia aimed at America and England. America is portrayed in the Russia media and the Russian overseas media aimed at Russian immigrants much as it is in Iran. Putin's government cobbled up the absurd spy story which had English spies hiding secret transmitters in a rock in the park, the sort of nonsense that was a staple of the Soviet era. Today the Russian media continually plays up America as the enemy and Putin's government despite its assurances to American diplomats, particularly the useless Condoleeza Rice, acts that way.

The old boss is back.



But meanwhile I'm declaring a 'Draw Putin' contest for Sultan Knish blog readers. Submit your entry to Sultan Knish via email or in comments. First prize is display in the Gallery of Knish and a real Knish made out of Putin's dog. Second prize is the tail of the dog. Third prize is all of Russia.

Behind the Anti-Israel disguised as a Pro-Israel lobby I wrote about last week is George Soros, a shadowy figure who spends tens of millions of dollars to make sure countries elect the kinds of governments he likes. Last time around George Soros threw $25 million at the Democrats and liberal organizations like MoveOn in order to defeat Bush. This Cardinal Richelieu of the left has spent over 2.5 billion dollars on institutions, think tanks and lobbies that promote his agenda. Yet despite being ethnically Jewish, Soros has never visited Israel and never displayed anything but contempt for Zionism.

After decades of ignoring the existence of the Jewish people though, Soros has become interested in Jews again or at least in Israel. And when the devil gets interested in you, it's never a good thing. Soros didn't begin exactly contributing money to Jewish causes (something he reserves for left wing activists and Eastern European academics) but he began giving speeches and writing editorials. At the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Soros compared Israel to the Nazis. In a recent Boston Globe editorial Soros wrote:

"...the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish among Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq...Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because both have deep roots in their societies; President Bush bought into this flawed policy (Israel fighting terrorists), uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence..."

What will Soros' new Israel lobby be dedicated to then? Certainly not 'uncritically' supporting Israel. Perhaps critically supporting Israel while uncritically supporting anyone who wants to murder Israel. That's certainly been the motto of Peace Now for two decades plus and that's not about to change. Soros has banded together a collection of pro-terrorist lobbyists who operate under a Jewish and Israeli banner. They're no more Pro-Israel than the ACLU or Amnesty International are Pro-American. Any lobby they start will be consistently critical of Israel and of any administration that doesn't pressure Israel to make a deal with the terrorists.

Why the sudden interest in 'supporting' Israel from Soros? His statement from several years ago may provide a clue.

"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies. If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can't see how one could confront it directly."

Translation people hate the Jews because Israel and America fight terrorism. For Soros, a European, that translates into a political backlash at home. Suddenly his other evil billionaire friends don't like him as much, the hotel bellboys mutter 'kike' behind his back and Muslim dictators accuse the Jews of wanting to control the world. The latter bothers Soros because he really does want to control the world, just not as a Jew. Still sadly the Mahatirs of this world have trouble making that distinction and Soros has an answer, bully Israel into huddling in a corner and never fighting back. All it will take is severing American Jewish support from Israel, Soros believes, by replacing a Pro-Israel lobbying group with an Anti-Israel one.

Will it work? Well you'd be surprised how much cash can buy. In his previous election bid Wesley Clark positioned himself as a descendant of Jews and Pro-Israel. Then George Soros gave Wesley Clark $75,000. Now Clark is delivering speeches condemning America's support for Israel's campaign in Lebanon. What did it take to get Clark to switch sides? Yup you guessed it, 75,000 dollars. Undoubtedly with the promise of more to come.

Now besides the bumper stickers reading 'Wesley Clark is a Shameless Whore,' how much can Soros' money buy? Soros is the 27th richest person in the world with an estimated worth of 8.5 Billion dollars. In other words he has a lot of money. He's 70 years old and isn't keen. He isn't leaving an inheritance. His money will be spent right here doing as much damage as he can before he finally goes to that place with the fires and the poking demons.

Now what makes a man do such things one wonders. Especially someone who is at least technically a Jew. When George Soros was a young man in England he broke his leg and appealed to the Board of Guardians, the British Jewish charity for a stipend while he recovered. Instead the Board suggested he recieve a government stipend. Soros wrote them an angry letter demanding to know if this was a way for 'one Jew to treat another Jew.'

The same question should be directed back to Soros, is this a way for one Jew to treat another Jew, but the answer for Soros was obvious even back then. Soros was angrily demanding a stipend from the Board of Guardians because he was already recieving money from the government and 'double dipping' would solve his financial problems.

But the real answer goes back to even before that, before the broken leg or the hatefull statements or the phony pro-Israel lobbies. It goes back to Soros' family whose name wasn't Soros after all.

Soros' father born into an Orthodox family discarded his last name along with his religion in order to blend into Hungarian society. Soros' mother converted to Catholicism. Before the Nazis came the family vacationed in Nazi Germany. When the Nazis came he obtained Christian identity papers for his family and when sent his son, George, to pose as the godson of Baumbach a top Nazi official in Hungary whose job was to confiscate Jewish property. Soros got his finacial start in currency trading as a Nazi collaborator helping Baumbach trade the money he stole from murdered Jews and later used that money to buy a ticket out.

Soros began building his future with money stolen from murdered Jews. The money he's using today to pay politicians to attack Israel is rooted in that same money. Soros has described 1944 as the most exciting year of his life, while millions of Jews were being murdered, Soros was cashing in. He's still cashing in now. Apologists for Soros claim he was only 14 when he began working with Baumbach and times were tough. Times were tough for my father too. He was 13 when the Nazis entered Poland and he escaped through the sewers and joined the Partisans. Everyone has a choice to make. Soros made his and he's still damned for it.

He collaborated with Nazis then. He's collaborating with the Muslims now. Thank the devil for the so-called Pro-Israel left who are happy enough to collaborate with Arafat, with Hamas and Hizbullah believing that as Soros did, they can ride out the wave of genocide that follows.

(Protester with sign reading 'Olmert Where Are The Captured Soldiers')

An incident that is generally going unreported in the media or on the rare occasions that is being reported is being dismissed as a 'disturbance created by hooligans' (a Soviet era euphemism) was the assault by Shabak agents on Beitar activists protesting Olmert's Russian visit at the Moscow Great Synagogue.

In a scene more reminiscent of KGB crackdowns on protesting Jews, on the 18th of October at 9 o'clock, as Olmert was speaking 15 members of the Moscow branch of the Beitar movement stood up on the balcony of the Ezrat Nashim with signs reading 'Olmert Betrayed the Captured Soldiers and the Residents of Sderot', 'Olmert Where Are The Captured Soldiers' and 'You Lost, Now Resign.'

As soon as they unrolled the signs, they were attacked by Shabak agents who tore away their signs and tore them up, assaulting both male and female protesters, tearing up the signs, twisting their arms behind their backs and pushing them out of the hall into a smaller hall. (The agents themselves were all of russian-speaking descent.)

Though this was Russian territory, the agents took away their passports, demanded information about their places of residents and where they went to university and to write explanatory notes to the FSB (the current incarnation of the KGB) for their actions. The FSB and special forces were called in and the agents threatened and mocked them saying, 'There'll be another Amona now."

Only calls to Olmert's press secretary threatening a press conference finally obtained the release of the activists 20 minutes later, but they were warned that their universities would be informed of their actions.

The entire story shows the disturbing extent to which Shabak works hand in glove with the FSB and an abuse of authority on foreign soil that has also occurred in Europe and America.

Gaza's Greenhouses In Jewish Hands



Gaza's Greenhouses One Year Later

In this picture released by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), an Israeli soldier stands guard next to a tunnel during an operation near Rafah, southern Gaza strip, October 18, 2006. Israeli troops killed four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and widened a four-month-old offensive by sending tanks to take up positions around the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. REUTERS/IDF/Handout

Via Little Green Footballs

If it wasn't for those intrepid folks at ABC News, we might you know have to assume that the FBI is possibly questioning 'Something' instead of 'Someone', interrogating chairs, tables and other inanimate objects. Thanks to ABC News we know they're interrogating someone, thus a human being, possibly male, possibly female, possibly of any conceivable race or age.

Thank you ABC News.

Word is that evil Billionaire George Soros is coordinating with the Bronfman family of intermarried bootleggers a plan to set up a dovish alternative lobbying organization to AIPAC consisting of such notoriously Pro-Israel organizations as American Friends of Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Religious Action Center and the Official President Ahmedanijad Fan Club (complete with glow in the dark decoder ring.)

Now if these folks were honest (and if June happened in the middle of July) they'd just call themselves a Pro-Palestinian Lobby or merge with CAIR to form a supervillain group that sit on the top floors of skyscrapers and issue constant press releases demanding that Israel withdraw from everywhere on earth except Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Unaccountably though they insist on calling themselves Pro-Israel instead. Probably because like gay Republicans, they know that overall values have diminished a lot but still not to the extent that a large scale Anti-Israel lobbying organization can win widespread support in the Jewish community. Instead of honestly calling themselves a Pro-Palestinian lobby, they instead claim to be a pro-peace alternative to AIPAC which they label right wing. This is of course a shameless lie.

AIPAC is a flawed organization but it exists purely to support Israel. AIPAC doesn't represent a pro or anti peace position, its position is to support the position of the current Israeli government. Anyone setting up an alternative lobby is setting up an organization meant not to support Israel but to lobby the American government to pressure Israel. Soros' Anti-Israel lobby is meant to do exactly that, pressure Israel to make concessions to the terrorists while undermining American-Jewish support for Israel.

Calling it the President Ahmedanijad Fan Club would have been much more honest. Thank the Devil for the Pro-Israel Left.

For the last half-decade liberals have been lecturing us that we need to be more like the French. To avoid war and seek peace with our enemies. To oppose Israel, shrug of terrorism and go about life with that Gallic casualness. As proof of the alternative they point at the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the thousands of US soldiers killed and wounded in battle, the disruption to our society, the constant fear of attack.

But of course the thing about war is that when the enemy is determined to kill you, you don't get to choose between war and peace, you only get to choose the terrain of battle. You can either take the initiative and go to them or wait for them to come to you. After they came to us in New York, we went to them in Afghanistan and Iraq. The French were determined to keep sitting where they were believing they could sit the storm out by fearsomely working to counter the US.

Did it work?

While American troops are fighting in Iraq, French police are fighting in Paris. The head of the police union has described it as an 'Infitada.' French police enter Muslim areas of Paris protected by armored cars and in full armor. And the casualties? At the current rate 14 French Police officers are injured each day. 3842 police officers were injured in 2004. By the end of 2006 they believe that number will reach 5000 injured officers or %15 of the police force. A casualty rate that competes with the number of US troops wounded in Iraq.

Bad? Pretty bad indeed.

The US went abroad to fight Islam and instead began playing police and that is where the casualties come from. The French stayed home with 5 million Muslims pretending Islam was great and got a civil war instead. It's not just France either. Staunchly anti-war countries like Sweden and Belgium are facing the same uptick in Muslim violence. While allied nations like Britain worry about bombs in buses, the European countries that have already surrendered to Islam are facing a civil war instead as its Muslim settlers are determined to complete the conquest.

French police are discovering that Muslim parts of France are foreign territory to them.

'Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the Action Police trade union warned of an "intifada" demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.

"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."

Recently the liberal's cause celebre was armor for US vehicles in Iraq. France didn't go Iraq. Iraq came to them. Now they're the ones who need armored vehicles in their own cities. And it's a very familiar scene indeed. Rock throwing youths, Molotov cocktails, tear gas, fires. Did the French really think they could encourage Israel's Arab minority to rise up and demand their own state and that they own Arabs and Muslims wouldn't do likewise? Did they think being French was some sort of immunity?

France tried to dodge the war but the war can't be dodged. Those countries that don't ride out to meet the hordes of Islam will have to fight them at home instead. The riots, the murders, the bombings, the gang rapes, the streets of torched vehicles and looted shops are familiar enough. They're what comes with living in a war zone and sooner or later every Muslim populated territory becomes a war zone.

There's no dodging the war or the casualties. For now at the very beginning the Paristinians are still limiting themselves to rocks and Molotov cocktails and clubs and fists. And even so thousands of officers are down. What happens when they upgraded to Kalashnikov's and RPG's?

The war is coming home.

Behind a lot of the sympathy we see directed at criminals and terrorists is the underlying false premise that equates their motives and morality with ours. We assume that they are people just like ourselves, that their humanity and innate morality is equivalent to our own. It is only 'circumstances' which have forced them to steal, to kill, to molest children, to blow themselves up in crowded streets. It is not they who are to blame but the 'circumstances.'

You might argue that this line of argument goes back to class warfare, to the French revolution, to Communism, to Clarence Darrow and the entire spread of liberalism across Europe and America. Where the right divided up sinners from saints, the left argued that the sinners were not truly any different than the saints but only societal hypocrisy and economic and social divisions maintained the illusion and the circumstances to insure that division.

In reality both sides were partly right. Sometimes people are stealing out of need. Sometimes their lives have been driven into such a corner that they have little choice but to kill. But like most beliefs, this position is quickly taken to extremes. Most murderers in the end kill because they wish to, because they have a desire to or because they don't care enough about human life not to. By making 'circumstances' king 'free will' had been all but eliminated from the human moral calculus. People no longer did evil because they had a choice but because they had none. Being born poor, abused as children or oppressed by a cruel unfeeling government had so narrowed their choices that they had no true free will and we could only sympathize with them.

The conventional view of such naivete may be that it is idealistic. That liberals, progressives, the enlightened elites who are themselves privileged children of the upper middle class and the upper class and the educated class, reject the idea of evil and unable to believe the monsters they see are truly any less 'people' than themselves decide that their crimes must have been justified because as they themselves could only kill under great need or oppression, then this is the only reason murderers and terrorists do what they do.

The unconventional view is somewhat different. It is not because of idealism that liberals are driven to justify the motives and morals of murderers. When they look inside the mind of a killer, a Black Panther, a Hamas Terrorist, they do indeed see themselves. Not the idealized self who is truly a deep and thoughtful person who has been driven to do what he does by circumstances. Instead they see a part of themselves they would rather not see. A part that glories in the killing and the violent act itself.

When the peaceloving liberal defenders go on to justify every act of terrorism and violence as brought on by circumstances and oppression, as they do their best to whitewash the killers; one cannot help noticing how they cheer on their deeds. One cannot help noticing the Che T-shirts, the Hizbullah banners waved at Anti-war rallies, the keffiyahs and the red banners with gold stars and the rest of the terrorist and mass murderer chic. As once upon a time one could not help hearing chants of 'Ho Chi Min Will Win' at Vietnam anti-war rallies.

When morality is independent of circumstances then it does not matter the conditions, we must nevertheless do what is right. When morality is purely circumstantial, situational, purely dependent on social circumstances then the privileged upper middle class white boy or girl can look into the heart of darkness and justify its tug on him or her by joining it in spirt, by waving a red or green banner, by defending and exculpating terrorists and killers. By joining the 'revolution.'

As upper middle class boys and girls they couldn't conceive or approve of murder, violence, mayhem, rape, looting, bombings, shootings and the like. It may appeal to the darker side of their nature but few people go out and kill with no better excuse than that they want to. Violence may be its own reward but violence needs a pretext. It needs justifications and excuses. Human morality requires that a killer's worldview be sufficiently twisted as to believe that what he is doing is the right thing. He needs a higher cause that overrides all moral laws.

The French Revolution and Communism wound up consisting of members of the middle and upper classes and educated elites who believed they had a right to carry out any atrocity in the name of the oppressed people. The majority of their own members who weren't willing to go all the way in this, wound up on the butcher's block themselves. The Guillotine chopped heads daily and in the basements of the Lubyanka NKVD men wearing bloodied butcher's aprons did their own work out of sight. The pretext for the violence was the oppression of the poor, the peasants, the workers by the monarchy; but in both Paris and Moscow the the butchery began well after the monarchy had been overthrown and had no more power. The monarchy, the oppression were just pretexts for the butchery.

When morality is situational, when circumstances can turn wrong into right and evil into good, then justifying murder is only an excuse away. Excuses are by definition selective. The French mobs who wept over the prisoners of the Bastille had no such mercy for those they themselves imprisoned. The fighters for freedom had no qualms about ruthlessly suppressing even their own moderates with a sharp blade. So too the anti-war protesters are horrified and outraged by women's underwear on an Iraqi's terrorist's head but have no interest in hearing about Saddam Hussein's rape and torture rooms.

The left routinely accuses everyone who supports national security or the war of letting patriotism override all morality until we are willing to countenance any act in the name of national security. Yet these people same see a Palestinian suicide bomber blow himself up on a crowded bus leaving a burning shell and hunks of bloody flesh dangling from it and shrug and say sympathetically that 'when people are oppressed they have no choice.' The irony escapes them that it is they who are willing to justify any act and do. Not in the name of patriotism but in the name of something far far worse.

Morality that is situational is ultimately no morality at all. There is always an excuse to discard that morality into the gutter when things get tough or when you feel things are tough or when someone else tells you they're tough. The sort of people who think that circumstances are an excuse for evil, are people who have discarded free will and absolute morality in favor of a belief that circumstances dictate morality and that we do not choose between right and wrong but follow a path chosen for us by our circumstances. It's a belief that allows the embrace of any crime no matter how horrific as long as your political and socio-economic status justifies it. Those who make the excuses, the protesters, the reporters, the activists, the academics and lawyers can share in the violence that is then unleashed.

Neither Robespierre nor Lenin wielded a blade. Instead they provided the rhetoric and the organization and let others do the killing for them. Their modern day counterparts lack mobs in the streets of New York and Paris to do the work for them. The 70's was the last gasp of hope for that. Instead much like the telecoms and the corporations, they've outsourced the mobs and the killing to Iraq, to Pakistan, to Israel. They provide the propaganda, Hizbollah, Hamas and Al Queda provide the dead bodies. They counsel peace in the newspapers and write angry letters and post on blogs and the terrorists back up their arguments with a rising body count. Viva La Revolution.

The inverted rhetoric of peace isn't the product of naivete. It's the product of a secret desire to carry out the very crimes they're whitewashing. Few like Adam Gadahn and John Walker Lindh will actually go all the way and convert to Islam and join Al-Queda. Most will just be satisfied sitting at their keyboards, fumbling with their video cameras and protest signs. A handful will go further and join ISM or become a human shield and get the thrill of being photographed with actual terrorists and get to hold their weapons. But the line separating them is only one of practicality.

Terrorism is difficult and time consuming and dangerous. It's much easier to work at a dot com and produce Refuse and Resist videos than it is to strap an actual bomb to yourself. That takes a little too much fanaticism and Hashish for the average son or daughter of the Western middle class. But inside underneath their Abercrombie and Fitch they keep a little secret. A dark nasty secret.

They've looked into the heart of darkness, into the evil of the terrorists and murderers they whitewash and found it thrilling and absorbing. Rather than face the darkness inside themselves, they whitewash it and they can't do that without whitewashing its perpetrators too. What follows is an utterly distorted morality in which good is bad and right is wrong and wrong is right. A morality in which the villains are heroes, their victims criminals, their country and all conventional morality the enemy and they are the righteous warriors fighting for justice and truth against oppression and evil. But the reality, the reality is as close as a suicide bombing, as Saddam's torture rooms and chemical warfare. It's as close as the evil they excuse because it's become a part of them.

Lord Janner in Parliament

Lord Granville Janner was President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, representing most British Jews for 6 years. He's the founder of the Commonwealth Jewish Council and Chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust. In short he's the most prominent and senior openly Jewish politician in Britain whose Jewishness is a major part of his identity who has repeatedly spoken out on Jewish issues.

On the 27th Lord Janner got into an argument with Lord Brammall in one of the rooms adjoining the Lords chamber over Israel. Lord Brammall, who was the Chief of the Defense Staff during that heroic era in English history known as the Falklands War has never missed an opportunity to get in a rant about Israel, no matter what the topic might actually be.

To give you a sense of his style, on January 16th 2003, when the topic was Reform of the Palestinian Authority, Lord Brammal in the predictable style of terrorist advocates made this convoluted remark linking the War in Iraq to making the West Bank and Gaza Judenrein.

"My Lords, will the Minister go further? Does she agree that any invasion of Iraq that has not meanwhile ensured a withdrawal of those illegal settlements, or at least meaningful negotiations towards it, risks incurring intense odium throughout the Middle East, which could invalidate any benefit that military action may bring?"

When the topic was the terrorists killing Jews, Bramall returned to his same old bugbear claiming that Israel could stop the terrorists by making Gaza and the West Bank Judenrein again and by extension that it was Israel's fault that Israelis were being killed for not making concessions.

On that day however Lord Bramall went beyond more rhetoric as the argument escalated physically striking Lord Janner. British newspapers reported the story as 'War Hero Hits Fellow Peer in Lords' a headline which begins by praising the perpetrator. It's no surprise then that in the Lords whose members pride themselves on addressing each other as "My Noble Lord" no disciplinary action whatsoever was taken against Lord Bramall, anymore than George Galloway or the Mayor of London were ever held accountable for their noxious anti-Semitic behavior.

Is it 1939 in Britain yet?

It's a small victory but it's worth noting: The plan to enforce Islamic law by legitimizing Muslim cabbies refusal to pick up people in violation of Islamic law has been jettisoned due to public outcry. Thanks to all the readers of this blog who emailed, called and did their part to keep a part of this country free.

"(BUSINESS WIRE)--A proposed pilot program aimed at preventing travelers from being denied taxi service because they have alcohol in their possession has not and will not be implemented, Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) Executive Director Jeff Hamiel said today.

"The test program was developed in concert with representatives from the Muslim American Society and airport taxi industry in an effort to ensure travelers are not refused cab service for carrying alcohol," Hamiel said. "However, based on public response to the proposed test program, it is clear that its implementation could have unintended and significant negative impacts on the taxi industry as a whole."

Public response to the proposed program has been overwhelmingly against creation of a two-tiered taxi service system."

(since it seems to be the fashion among bloggers lately to write love letters to Mr. Rieger (annual salary $705,000 paid by your charitable donations)...not to be left out, here's mine.)

From: Paul of Tarsus, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Adam Shapiro, Finkie Kochleffel,

Subject: Lavish Praises for Distribution of emergency help money.

Dear Darling Mr. Rieger,

I am writing this letter after reading an article by Ms. Helen Freedman of AFSI that can be read in its entirety here. Ms. Freedman a well known lunatic right wing extremist complains that the UJC has chosen to distribute aid to both Jewish Israeli and Arab citizens of Northern Israel with a THIRD of the money going to Arabs.

How dare Ms. Freedman suggest that the ever loyal Arab citizens of Israel not have a FULL and EQUAL share in all aid monies provided by Jews for the sake of their brethren? Is she really suggesting that Jewish donations should only go to Jews, rather than the Arabs who cheered when the missiles fell and when their children died said Hizbullah wasn't at all to blame?

Should their support of the enemy somehow deny them the right to the charity funds raised abroad by Jews for the welfare of their own brothers and sisters? Should we for some inexplicable reason not provide money to the enemy whose Knesset MK's openly stated that they advised the terrorists to kidnap Israeli soldiers?

For Shame, I say! For shame! (For double shame)

Are we to be known as the sort of people who stop donating money to the people killing us? A thousand times nay! We should give them even more money! Personally I say we should double our donations for every time they cheer on the terrorists. Maybe triple. That will show them.

Surely after a while these loyal citizens of Israel will get so fed up with our generous donations, that they will abandon all support for terrorism and finally at last the joyfull day will have come when we will have at last won their hearts, minds and livers ushering in that New Middle East, Shimon Peres keeps talking about.

My dear darling Mr. Rieger (your name is like a symphony in my mouth) I will be very thrilled to have 1/3 of my money used to underwrite Arabs in Israel. I will be almost as thrilled to have 90 percent of my donation underwrite the swollen six figure salaries of UJC executives in every major and minor city in America. Truly you have shown us the real example of Jewish charity that hatefull narrowminded people like Ms Freedman and a certain Sultan Knish could not even begin to comprehend. For true charity is not charity to our brothers or neighbors but to our worst enemies driven by a delusional self-hatred that only our enemies are worth loving and never our own brothers and sisters.

Thank you, a thousand times thank you for you represent the true humanistic ethical spirt of Judaism that resounds forth from Reform Temples and JCC's. You make me proud to be a Jew Mr. Rieger and you are performing a great service to your country, Syria or Iran is it?

Lovingly Yours

Amalgmated Union of Deranged Liberal Jews


P.S. Please avoid reading the following book by all means.

P.P.S. A better use for your money than donating it to the UJC could involve throwing it out the window, making paper airplanes out of them or using them to carpet the limousines that UJC executives ride around in, paid for by your donations.

To donate to actual charities that help Jews in need, rather than terrorists and wealthy executives, consider Le'Maan Achai, Be'Ahavat Yisrael and Meir Panim. They actually do something unusual the UJC would never contemplate. They help Jews.

If you see or get any requests from the UJC or any associated federation, think paper airplane. It's what they do with your money anyway.

I recently reported on Muslim cabbies controlling 75 percent of the cabs outbound from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and refusing rides to passengers carrying alcohol as a violation of Islamic law in Islamic Law: It Can't Happen Here, Right?

I warned then that, "...by stages. Muslim cabbies can begin with alcohol because there's already a suspicion of it in Western societies. It's a short step from barring passengers with alcohol to barring passengers with ham sandwiches. According to Islam both are forbidden after all. Then transport to women they consider immodestly dressed, to Israelis, to people sporting crosses, etc. There's a lot of things Sharia, Islamic Law, forbids after all."

Well as it turns out the next step is refusing transport to blind people with seeing eye dogs because among the many things Islam hates, it hates dogs.

‘Unclean’ guide dog banned by Muslim cab driver.

"A Muslim minicab driver refused to take a blind passenger because her guide dog was “unclean”.

Abdul Rasheed Majekodumni told Jane Vernon she could not get into his car with the dog because of his religion. Islamic tradition warns Muslims against contact with dogs because they are seen as impure.

Mrs Vernon, who works as a legal officer for the Royal National Institute for the Blind, added: “The owner of the minicab firm, Niven Sinclair, was also very insensitive, telling me that what had happened to me wasn’t really very important, and I should have more respect for other people’s culture. They have shown very little respect for my rights as a disabled person and have never once offered me an apology.”

And it's not just England. 'Australian Muslim Cabbies Refusing the Blind and Drinkers'

MUSLIM taxi drivers are refusing to carry blind passengers with their guide dogs or anyone carrying alcohol.

At least 20 dog-aided blind people have lodged discrimination complaints with the Victorian Taxi Directorate. Dozens more have voiced their anger. And there have been several complaints that drivers refuse to allow passengers to carry sealed bottles of alcohol.

Victorian Taxi Association spokesman Neil Sach said the association had appealed to the mufti of Melbourne to give religious approval for Muslim cabbies to carry guide dogs."

And Norway: Blind People Rejected by Muslim Taxi Drivers.

Grethe Olsen, accompanied by her guide dog Isak, experienced being rejected by no less than 21 taxis before finally getting a ride. Olsen thinks the taxi drivers said no for religious reasons. The Norwegian Blind Association confirms that this is a well known problem all over the country, especially in cities with many immigrants.

Now blind people, the handicapped are a recognized minority but as always with liberals, the loudest, least law abiding and most hate-filled minority trumps all the others. In the same way that Muslim mysoginy trumps feminism and Muslim homophobia trumps gay rights, Muslim disgust for dogs trumps the rights of the handicapped. And as usual civil rights now becomes hostage to Islamic religion used to hijack the public sphere and make it subject to Islamic law.

This has now happened in four countries that we know of and three continents. When that does that become a global pattern? And so the Cab Jihad continues.

"Foley Investigation Heating Up," "More Foley Revelations," "GOP Knew Foley Ate Babies." The media has with predictable abandon transformed itself into the 'All-Foley-All-The-Time" radio station and 'All The Foley News That's Unfit To Print.'

None of this has anything remotely to do with the actual importance of the case but a media whose press services report altercations with Paris Hilton as a leading headline don't remotely case about that anymore. If Walter Cronkite injected liberal bias into his stories, modern anchormen are nothing more than blow dried male and female models who are barely capable of reading from a teleprompter without stumbling and their scripts are written for them by Ivy League Harvard grad producers who only took this job because they couldn't get a job writing for the Simpsons.

The Foley story was held back by those in the know and then 'blown up' in order to impact the elections. After taking a beating in the elections for eight years straight, the Democratic party has long since given up trying to win on the issues. Instead they're hoping to slime the opposition enough with manufactured scandals and a tame press has been all too eager to bark and run in circles at their direction. "There boy, there boy. Foley's a pedophile you know and the GOP was covering for him."

But if hitting on 17 and 18 year olds makes an adult man a pedophile, America's jails will be bursting with felons. Foley isn't a pedophile. Like Bill Clinton and numerous politicians on both sides of the aisle, he was a powerfull man who abused his government position to solicit sex. Anyone who does that, in a government job, in a corporate job, whether it's actual employees, interns, pages, etc should be fired. It's that simple really.

Democrats would like to pretend that Foley instant messaging pages with sexual requests while Clinton's serial groping, exposing himself and running an adulterous affair with an intern out of the White House in the Oval Office itself were his 'private buisness.' This kind of ridiculous hypocrisy makes the entire affair nothing more than a partisan fox hunt by one political party against the other.

The mark of the politics of the time is an utter lack of shame or decency. Where Republican congressmen famously led a delegation to ask President Nixon to resign, Democratic congressmen made a point of leading a delegation to support Bill Clinton. Democrats are now demanding that the GOP leadership resign because they knew about Foley. Shouldn't the Democratic leadership then resign because it not only knew about Bill Clinton but it continued relentlessly covering up, defending him and sliming his accusers to this day?

Democrats and Republicans both believe if they shout shrilly enough about something it becomes a scandal. The Democrats have the media on their side which gives them the advantage. Unfortunately for them just because this choir of the damned shrieks its infernal racket doesn't mean the American people care.

It is the Democrats themselves with their approach to the Clinton scandal 'Character Doesn't Matter' who have set the tone for the American public. A purely moral outrage is no longer sufficent for the public to care. They will watch the tabloid shows, devour the newsprint but shrug at calls for resignation. The Democrats thought they were protecting Clinton but they set a precedent for dismissing immoral behavior by a politician, that they are discovering they cannot simply waive whenever the matter suits them. Once the level has been lowered and the standard dropped, it's lowered for all politicians, Democrat and Republican. Democrats want one standard for themselves, another for Republicans but only the perverted morality of party members works that way. To the public whatever goes for one party, also goes for the other. The Democrats significantly raised the bar for public outrage. Now they have to live with the consenquences and more importantly, so do we.

But there's nothing new under the sun. The subjective fallacy of history is for people to believe things are always getting worse. The reality is it's usually been worse.

Take Daniel Edgar Sickles. Not ringing any bells? Try Congressman Sickles then. You likely never read about him in any of your history books. If you came across his name it probably told you he was a Civil War Hero and was a major force in the construction of Central Park. You're less likely to learn that Congressman Daniel Edgar Sickles was a murderer.

Unlike someone like Senator Ted Kennedy whose actions are open to debate, Congressman Daniel Sickles weren't. He committed murder in the middle of the street, before dozens of eyewitnessness. He shot an unarmed man in cold blood. He continued firing at him even after he had mortally wounded him until he finally killed him.



The man he murdered, Philip Barton Key (descendant of Scott Francis Key composer of the National Anthem) was the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He had not been physically threatening Sickles in any way, but he had been having an affair with his wife.

The case should have been an open and shut murder case but it wasn't. Daniel Sickles should have been convicted of murder but he wasn't. Instead he went out a free man. Why? Because more important than who Philip Barton Key was, was who Daniel Edgar Sickles was. Sickles was more than just a United States Congressman. He was a personal friend of President James Buchanan. He had been secretary to Buchanan when the latter was the Minister to England.

The cover up began at the top. President Buchanan personally intimidated a page who had been a eyewitness to the murder into leaving Washington D.C. warning him he would be jailed if he didn't. He thwarted the investigation at every turn and made certain to appoint a man to prosecute the case (ironically in place of the murdered Key) who had no courtroom experience. He refused all pleas by the Key family to investigate the case at all.

Daniel Sickles meanwhile was living it up in style in prison. The warden turned over his own office to him. His 'cell' was constantly full of high ranking visitors, every comfort from home was sent to him, including his dog. And the press, the press loved him writing up stories of his martyrdom suffering in prison for 'defending his home.'

Because you see Congressman Sickles was more than just another politician, he was a scion of Tammany Hall, a part of the dirtiest heart of the Democratic Party. He had been corrupt from the very beginning pulling in money every way he knew how. His own congressional salary wasn't even sufficent to pay for his house but there were a hundred ways he knew to make money. He had friends and partonage everywhere going right to the top of the White House.

When the trial began, Congressman Sickles had a massive legal team packed with the best in the buisness, O.J. Simpson style. The trial was of course to be known as The Trial of the Century and wound up innovating that fradulent legal defense known as 'Temporary Insanity.'

Sickles' lawyers insisted that he had been so 'outraged' by his wife's adulterous affair he had lost control of himself. The papers painted him as a moral man pushed beyond his limits by the grievous outrage of the adultery. But of course Daniel Edgar Sickles wasn't just financially corrupt. Tammany Hall controlled much of the organized crime in New York, including prostitution. Sickles himself had been notorious in this regard, even bringing a prostitute along with him to meet the Queen when he was serving in England. He had committed numerous acts of adultery with other men's wives and all of this was common knowledge.

The prosecution of course was forbidden from introducing any of this as evidence. The case quickly turned his wife, Teresa Bagiolli Sickles and Philip Barton Key into the villains, dragging out every dirty detail of their affair for public consumption and introducing even a letter Sickles had dictated to his wife and forced her to sign, confessing all her actions.

Sickles was soon a free man. He was forced to leave politics but remained a behind the scenes lobbyist who had the ear of the President. He became a Brigadier General in the Civil War. He commanded the Department of the Carolinas, making him a military governor over much of the South. He became the US Minister to Spain, where he continued carrying on numerous affairs and eventually married a Spanish lady whom he left behind, but made sure to bleed dry of her money to subsidize his lifestyle.

He was appointed president of the New York State Board of Civil Service Commissions and Sheriff of New York (both posts that for a corrupt man were the equivalent of getting the keys to the safe) and then chairman of the New York State Monuments Commission where his corruption finally caught up with him again. So greedy was Sickles that he even stole the money apportioned for a memorial that had been meant to commemorate his own Civil War 'heroism.'

To the end of his day well into his 70's Sickles lived a lavish lifestyle subsidized by others decorating his apartment with the underwear of his female conquests. Like Aaron Burr, another prominent debauched, corrupt and murderous Democrat, Sickles never paid for his crimes. History has forgotten him mainly because he was a little too embarassing to remember but he is a lesson in how bad things can get when the public gives up its sense of moral judgement and the hands of politicians are loosened to do all they like.

Whether it's Bill Clinton, Foley or Sickles; the cost of ignoring corrupt and debauched behavior in politicians and worse covering up for them, is evil and breeds evil.

10. Character doesn't matter

9. A politician's sex life is his own buisness. What's your problem with it anyway, are you a homophobe?

8. While tens of thousands are dying in Iraq, we're focusing on some supposed emails between consenting adults.

7. We voted against the pedophilia, before we voted for the pedophilia.

6. The whole thing is a vast right wing conspiracy.

5. If she had been a female intern, no one would have thought twice about it.

4. Just like the Chandra Levy case, this is sensationalistic media coverage meant to victimize a Democrat.

3. When will the Religious Right finally stop persecuting same-sex couples?

2. NO WAR FOR OIL!!! NO WAR FOR OIL!!! NO WAR FOR OIL!!!

1. He really thought he was IM'ing Cindy Sheehan.

----------------now hypocrisy comes in two flavors---------------------------

'And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba and went to Haran' - וַיֵּצֵא יַעֲקֹב, מִבְּאֵר שָׁבַע; וַיֵּלֶךְ, חָרָנָה

Why, is the age old question asked, do we need to be told that he left Beer Sheva. It would be enough for us to know that he went to Haran. Is it not understood that in going to Haran, he also left Beer Sheva? Yet Rashi says that in telling us that he left Beer Sheva, it is telling us that when a Tzaddik leaves a city, panah hodah, panah zivah, panah hadrah, its crowning glory, its splendor goes out with him leaving the city more empty than ever.



On Erev Yom Kippur Rabbi Joseph Singer left New York City for the last time. Panah Hodah. Panah Zivah. Panah Hadrah.

Lama Neamar Tzaddik Nistar, why do we say a Tzaddik, a righteous man, is hidden. Ki Le'Anshei Haolam Hu Nistar Asher Lo Rotzu Li'Reot Otoi. For he is hidden from the people of the world who do not wish to see him.

Rabbi Joseph Singer was a refugee from Poland, he fled Nazis and Communists and wound up in New York in a narrow crumbling shul crammed between the adjoining buildings. Yet if you stepped inside the shul you found it surprisingly deep stretching far into the heart of the street. Amidst the narrow walls grew a temple of iron and wood, carpets and high walls and above it all shining lights. Of this temple Rabbi Joseph Singer was the High Priest once and his soul passed on before the avodah of Yom Kippur could begin, for surely nothing that he could have asked for on behalf of the Jewish people, could the Lord have denied him.

He rose each morning, early for his service, a stooped small man with traces of red still in his beard you could remember but not see, and descended downstairs to the small cramped basement room of the stanton street synagogue below the street, his frail body stepping down wooden stairs worn and smoothed by the passages of so many decades of feet. Downstairs an old sink stood before the plastered leaded glass door into the synagogue. Inside a thick pipe led to the boiler, hot water for the old men's tea hissed in the percolator, a black rotary dial phone sat beneath taped up scrawled notes of phone numbers of men who might make a minyan and next to it behind glass were the lit up names of the dead.

In time the old men would gather and with them one or two from the village, artists, burnouts, post-hippie hippies; to pray. On the other side of the bridge, the right side of the bridge and the subway tracks, is the Bialystoker Synagogue, grand, ornate and carpeted in red with room for thousands. Its Rabbi, was his third cousin. To Rabbi Yosef Singer though fell a humbler lot. The ancient worn wooden benches once attached to Singer sewing machines, the yellowed telephone pages resting on them, the tangled telephone wires, the old fridge and the massive steel fan spinning on. There was nothing ornate by him, only dignified by the dignity of age and long use. Some Rabbis, Some synagogues are ornamental. There was nothing ornamental about either Rabbi Joseph Singer or his shul. They were both old and worn and used every single day.

Lama Neamar Tzadik Nistar, Lefi She'Yekar Geduloto Nistar Min Haolam - Why do we call a Tzaddik hidden, because his precious worth is hidden from the world



Lama Neamar Tzadik Nistar, Lefi Shescharo Nistar Min Haolman - Why do we call a Tzaddik hidden, for his reward is hidden from the world.

Rabbi Joseph Singer will never be the subject of biographies or hagiographies. Pictures of him will never hang on walls, though they ought to. His Shiva is being held on Long Island far from the community he dedicated his life to. He came to America in the 30's leaving behind his home, leaving behind a world that the Nazis and Communists would soon engulf. He held down a dozen jobs, he rushed back and forth from community centers to his shul to his home. He worked to the bone for people who never grateful for it, yet this did not trouble him in the least. He obtained donations of clothing for them, donations of food, he blessed them, he pleaded with them to come for a Minyan. He was angry at no man. He never said a cross word to anyone in his life.

The hippies and aging activists and yuppies he worked with found him charming, an aging artifact of Eastern Europe in a synagogue authentic to its aged bones. Some even wrote about him. They found the diminutive man rushing about to serve them charming, they found his views less so. Woody Allen came to shoot a movie and wound up arguing with Rabbi Singer over the rights of Palestinian Arabs and Judaism. Woody Allen told Rabbi Singer that Judaism was a worn out fossil. Rabbi Singer told him that the Torah was eternal and without it the world count not endure and that it would endure forever.

Finally the yuppies and aging activists whom he could occasionally convince to come to shul and who thought he was a funny old fossil, drove him out of his own shul, slandered him, smeared his reputation in the hateful organs of the itinerant left, like the Village Voice. They drove out half the membership, repainted the inside, replaced some of the fixtures, threw a benefit concert with Neshama Carlebach, obtained trainee Rabbis from Yeshiva Chovevei Torah, leaning just this side of Reform Judaism, and still have trouble gathering a Minyan. They can be seen sometimes in the trendy rebranded Stanton Street Shul, hipsters with bow ties and checkered suits, a handful of joking young men idling in front of the ancient building with the door open. The master has gone and the house is empty.

Lomo Tzaddik Nikra Nistar, Ki Hevlei Haolam Nistar Me'einav - Why is a Tzaddik called hidden, for the good things of the world are hidden from his eyes.



Rabbi Joseph Singer never saw much in the way of a reward from this world. His children became successful and married well but they all moved away from the old neighborhood. Though he helped tens of thousands, he was never considered a community leader in the way that the men whose hands were always greedily grasping were. A small thin man in a community whose leaders ran to fat. A man whose charity was not to be expressed in chinese auctions, fundraisers, dinners or social events but in the way he day after day spent his life working to help others without asking for anything in return.

Rabbi Singer sat humbly at the tables of great Rabbis never desiring anything more for himself. The man who worked all his life for others desired nothing more than to continue that labor and even that was denied him by the smug self-righteous yuppies who took over his shul and all the credit for the decades of work he had put into it. The man who had never taken anything for himself wound up smeared as a greedy thief and dragged into court by trust fund babies, directionless activists, children in their 30's and 40's still engaged in perpetual rebellion against whatever father figures they could find. They found one in Rabbi Joseph Singer.

I remember a poem taped to a wall in the Educational Alliance, where Rabbi Singer spent many hours, that ancient institution where Sholom Aleichem had once met Mark Twain, through which generations of immigrants had passed. It was typewritten but not remotely well written. The rhyme was crude and the style was childish and so was the love that seeped from it. But it had not been written by a child. Like Paul Cowan's, An Orphan in History, a book filled with warm remembrances of Rabbi Singer, it was a poem of love. I remember it as it hangs there taped with a single strip of scotch tape to a peeling wall. I remembered the browned paper, the newsprint, almost everything but the words. All but the last couplet. "When history finally calls it a day, Rabbi Singer will surely be remembered in a special way."

Some Rabbis give speeches, some deliver lectures. Many sit in offices all day. Rabbi Singer had no true office. His office was his community and he used no desk chair but his feet. There will be no biographies of him, nothing but the memory of those who knew him. Some Rabbis deliver lectures on cassettes and write books, Rabbi Yosef Singer's life was the lecture. To see him was to understand how a righteous man lives, not in the sun of glory but in the quiet shade of the moon. Not to do for oneself but to do for others. To live humbly and to serve the Almighty and walk in his ways all the days of your life.

I have not been much to the Lower East Side in a long time and the poem is likely gone. Walls are repainted and old things regularly tossed out. Rabbi Joseph Singer was tossed out, forgotten but never by Him who decides the truth of history and spanned the orbit of the world. There are funerals to whom hundreds of thousands gather. To Rabbi Singer's funeral, at least one will come and as for Moshe our teacher, the Lord will gather him in.

Lama Tzaddik Nikra Nistar, Ki Hu Nistar Min Ha'Ayin Ve'Mevin La'Lev - Why is a Tzaddik called hidden for he is hidden eye from the eye yet known to the heart



Rabbi Yosef Singer's appeal was hidden like that of his shul. It was not the appeal of the senses, of the visually grand, the ostentatious, the outwardly respected. It was the appeal of the heart. The appeal of the nistar min ha'ayin, what is hidden from the eye, was Mevin La'Lev, revealed to the heart, to those who had a heart.

His appeal was not limited to Jews. He was stopped and greeted on the street by people from the neighborhood, blacks, puetro ricans and local artists. He would stop by for a few minutes of friendly conversation with the local priest. If you had a question he would answer it. If you needed help he would give it. If you wanted to know his beliefs, he would never be ashamed of them.

Often described as elfin by writers, he was never a plaster saint. He always had a ready joke, a laugh. His face was set not in stone but in a sort of dignified warmth always ready to spill over. He was quick to help and quick to smile, to offer encouragement, to share the comfort of his soul.

Succos is coming again and I remember him in the Succah, his wife Rebbetzin Singer bringing out the dishes she had cooked and the very Italian Chief of Detectives for the local precinct praising her cooking, saying that he had never encountered cooking like hers in any community. I remember the concentration on his face as he recited the bracha over the Lulav and Esrog, his entire body tightening like a spring aimed in the direction of his Creator.

I remember sunlight on an old man's face who somewhere never seemed old.

Lama Neamar Tzadik Nistar, Lefi She'Bizman Petiroto, Hodo Nistar Mimanu Ve'Nigleh Rak Le'Hakadosh Baruch Hu - Why is a Tzaddik called hidden, for on the hour of his death his glory is hidden from us and revealed only to the Holy One Blessed Be He

Like Moshe our teacher, Rabbi Joseph Singer suffered from a speech impediment. It was difficult to understand what he was saying much of the time. His speech sounded mumbled, he whispered, he pleaded when speaking.

Why was the speech of Moshe our teacher impeded, for had his speech been unimpeded then when he had pleaded for Israel his people, his request would have been so pure, God would have been unable to refuse him anything.

Another answer. Why was the speech of Moshe our teacher impeded, so that men might pay attention to his deeds not his words and to his words because of his deeds, rather than his deeds because of his words.

Rabbi Joseph Singer was not a speaker, he was a doer. He spoke much but he did far more. He was not to be seen delivering speeches but delivering packages. He was not to be seen accepting honors but honoring others with his presence. Va'yetzei, he has left us now, but the preciousness of the legacy he has left in the hearts of many, in the families he preserved, in the comfort he provided, in the basic necesitties he aided with, in the lives he changed is beyond the measure of any but He who dwells in the highest of heavens.

Let us but be remembered that we knew him.

Lama Tzaddik Nikra Nistar, Ki Im Tzidkato Nistar Min Ha'Anashim, Ein Davar Nistar Min Ha'Elohim - Why is a Tzaddik called hidden for though his righteousness may be hidden from men, nothing is hidden from God...


---------------Two more narratives of Rabbi Yosef Singer-------------------

* This one is from a visitor to his shul, at the Stanton Street Synagogue, Bnai Jacob Anschei Brzezan.

* This is from a man who encounted Rabbi Joseph on a visit to Poland