What is the change, and how is it being brought about?
The wind is starting to blow in Ma'aleh Levona and the wind of change is coming over the land. The issue is what is the change, and how is it being brought about?…
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
176 - Christopher Rose
More evasion, Ruvy. You said you could hear planes overhead - obviously Israeli planes, right? So I said I hope Israel isn't breaking the ceasefire , which it has done before - that is a fact, not propaganda.
You said "I see easily now how people can think like Chris Rose and others on BC - assuming always that Israel is in the wrong no matter what it does." Which is untrue and you know it.
Saying "I call it as I see it" is an intellectually lazy copout, which I'm also sure you know.
So, if you are big enough to apologise, go ahead and do it.
177 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
This piece received from the author. It is filled with the generalizations and labelling which I generally eschew, but it is also filled with a very real statement about what is acceptable in Europe as opposed to America - and where the dangers for Jews are. And unfortunately, we Jews do have to look after each other, as some blogger at the Daily Kos stated. One of the big lessons of World War II and the events leading up to that war and immediately after that war is that we can rely only upon ourselves - and G-d. If you are a Jew and you do not believe in G-d, you have only your fellow Jew to save your ass.
For you, Mr. Rose; enjoy.
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Is the Democratic Party Going European?
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Yated Ne'eman
August 23, 2006
Anti-Israel fervor in America still has a long way to go to catch up with that in Europe. Popular opinion in America, for instance, remains largely sympathetic to Israel. No one would make that claim for Europe.
No mainstream American paper would publish a screed like that of Norwegian novelist Jostein Gaarder in Norway’s Aftenposten, which employed ancient anti-Semitism canards to attack Israel and deny its right to exist. Gaarder berates Israel for failing to accept Christianity’s humanitarian message and for clinging to the primitive law of "an eye for an eye." He appears unaware that Jewish history might have given Jews some cause to doubt the sincerity of that humanitarian message, and does not know that lex talionis is not Jewish law.
Gaarder berates Israel for treating its citizens’ blood as redder than that of Lebanese " as if there were any nation in the world that does not view its first duty as the preservation of the lives of its citizens " and lays the blame on the "ridiculous" idea that Jews are G-d’s Chosen people.
While it is doubtful that any major American paper would publish an opinion piece invoking so many classic anti-Semitic stereotypes, and attacking Israel in specifically religious terminology, such views are being expressed in America. On the angry Left blog sites, which play an ever larger role in Democratic Party politics, attacks on Jews are commonplace.
After spending several months campaigning for Senator Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut, Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, revised his lifelong view that intolerance and hate-speech are more likely to be found on the Right. In a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Davis provided a sampler of the anti-Semitic attacks on Senator Lieberman posted on some of the most widely read and influential Democratic blog sites.
Lieberman was accused of supporting the war in Iraq so that American soldiers, not Israeli ones, would die. One post on Daily Kos, the most influential Democratic blog, read, "Jews only care about the welfare of other Jews . . . Ignore all the Jewish propaganda about participating in the civil rights movement of the ‘60s." Another Daily Kos reader described Lieberman as a "racist and religious bigot." And a reader at Huffington Post opined that Lieberman "cannot escape the religious bond he represents. His wife’s name is Haggadah or Diaspora or something you eat at Pesach." Yet another blogger made fun of the beard Lieberman grew during the Three Weeks, and suggested that he dye it "blood red."
Venomous caricatures of Israel as the new Third Reich have long been standard fare in respectable papers in Europe, but the migration of such views across the Atlantic is deeply worrying, if only because America is Israel’s one absolutely indispensable ally.
A deep ambivalence towards Israel has infected the Democratic Party, which many political analysts are currently projecting to take over one or both houses of Congress in the next elections. A recent Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll comparing voter attitudes on the war in Lebanon and towards Israel shows Republicans to be far more supportive of Israel than Democrats. Though the Democratic Party is the political home of the vast majority of American Jews, 54% of Democrats advocate that the United States adopt a more neutral " i.e., less pro-Israel " stance to the Middle East, as opposed to only 29% of Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans felt the Israeli bombing in Lebanon was fully justified, as opposed to only 29% of Democrats.
Increasingly, mainstream Democrats are adopting the attitudes of the European Left. In the recent Senate hearings on John Bolton’s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations, Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic standard-bearer, repeatedly criticized Bolton for the fact that America is consistently the odd-man out at the United Nations, and stands outside the consensus of our European "allies."
One shudders to think where Israel would be if the United States ceased to be the "odd-man-out" at the U.N. Recall that six of those so-called European allies, including France, voted in favor of a resolution of the U.N. Human Rights Commission specifically legitimizing terrorism against Israeli citizens to further Palestinian liberation. Bolton’s U.N.-skepticism is a welcome antidote to the European view that only legitimate use of force is that sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council. That is especially true given that most of the resolutions passed by that august body are condemnations of Israel, and its Secretary-General barely conceals his visceral animus for Israel, while being only to happy to be photographed together with Hassan Nasrallah.
INCREASINGLY, THE AMERICAN LEFT shares with its European counterparts a naïve Enlightenment belief that all problems can be solved by rational men around a conference table. In that view, there are no irreconcilable goals; all men are basically interested in increasing their allotment of material goods, and all conflicts can be resolved by slicing the pie slightly differently.
In this happy world, talk is always good, and military action is always bad. On a recent BBC Hardtalk program, the supercilious British interviewer kept haranguing Binyamin Netanyahu about the necessity of a ceasefire and a political solution. (Netanyahu’s restraint in not wiping the smile off his face seemed to this viewer almost superhuman.) It never occurred to the BBC interviewer that there could be circumstances in which defeating an enemy must precede talk. And he chided Netanyahu for constantly reminding him of how ruthlessly (and rightly) the Allies in World War II pursued a policy of unconditional surrender against Germany and Japan.
The automatic rejection of the use of force explains the obsession of the Europeans and The New York Times with body counts in any conflict " whoever kills the most is automatically the bad guy, regardless of who started the war. It was left to Netanyahu to point out to another BBC interviewer that Germany suffered more casualties in World War II than America and Britain combined, without its superior moral position being thereby established.
Terms like good and evil, when applied to nations, fill liberals with disgust because they suggest that there are nations that seek more than incremental goals " like imposition of Sharia on infidels around the world, for instance. The liberal worldview cannot comprehend why a nuclear Iran would be any less deterred than the FSU by mutual assured destruction. Liberals simply cannot credit the impeccable religious logic of the late Ayatollah Khomeini (quoted in Iranian textbooks) " either we will annihilate the infidel powers and become free or we will die trying, and go to the greater freedom of martyrdom " as being serious. And the mindset of a young British-born Muslim couple who planned to blow up a passenger plane by igniting their infant’s baby formula is beyond them.
This sterile vision of all men as pursuing limited goals as rational game-players leads to consistently downplaying the importance of will in affairs of state. In 1938, Europe chose to believe that Hitler, ym"Sh, would be satisfied with the Sudetenland, and failed to recognize that he was testing the will of the West before embarking upon his plan for world conquest. Similarly, Nasrallah tested Israel five months after the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon with the kidnapping of three soldiers, and was astounded by the meekness of the response. That weak response proved to be disastrous for Israel.
Those who assume that all grievances can be assuaged will inevitably fail to comprehend the jihadists’ all-consuming rage or to recognize that they terrorize the West, not because they have some demands that can be negotiated, but because terror is the only thing that they do well and that provides them with a sense of power. Westerners would prefer to believe that if only the Israeli "occupation" ended " or in the worst case, the mistake of Israel’s creation reversed " that Islamic rage would disappear, just as they once hoped that Hitler would stop with Czechoslovakia.
People who believe such things are a long-range danger to themselves. But they are an immediate danger to Israel. Let us pray that the American Left does not follow its European counterparts in that direction.
178 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, your remarks here are frankly total bullshit. If it wasn't for the Europeans and the Americans, the fate of the Jews in Europe during WW2 would have been even worse than it actually was.
Therefore your statement that "One of the big lessons of World War II and the events leading up to that war and immediately after that war is that we can rely only upon ourselves" is either another lie or more blind propaganda. Either way, it's pure bullshit.
Furthermore, some Norwegian newspaper is hardly the European mainstream and you seem to now be calling for some repression of freedom of speech for Europeans. Again, frankly, please stop such stupid bullshit.
If you actually took the trouble to search the term "Israel as the new Third Reich" in Google News, you'd find the majority of the results are from American sources, so where you get the idea from that this is a common European view I have no idea at all.
Clearly you're still under the twin evil influences of cult zeal and war fever - an increasingly ugly combination in my opinion.
Let's not forget that you are the one that has repeatedly called for an end to USA involvement in your adopted homeland, a country that still doesn't recognise the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has quietly built up an arsenal of over 300 nuclear weapons.
Iran is not currently able to deliver a nuclear weapon of any kind anywhere, so your hypothetical situation is entirely moot. Even if it was, the prospect of being annihilated by the USA and your own country's arguably illegal nuclear weapons would undoubtedly stay its hand.
You have also repeatedly called your own democratically elected government traitors and even endorsed the idea of a nuclear strike by Iran on Tel Aviv. I think you need to urgently address your own conscience and part in all this rather than making entirely bogus accusations.
I have already rebutted your bogus allegations of the BBC being anti-Israel, in response to which you have done no more than switch targets to some obscure Norwegian newspaper.
Furthermore, I still await your apology for your insulting and either deliberate or merely dogmatic misrepresentation of my views, a thing you have said you have no problem doing but have not in fact actually done.
179 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
The following post was received ia e-mail. It's author is a Christian Lebanese Arab, an American publisher...
Israel's terminal illness
By Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.com
August 18, 2006
We've all known brave soldiers who fought courageously in multiple conflicts only to succumb to lingering and debilitating illnesses
years later.
Likewise, history tells us of nations that never lost a battle in combat only to die because they lost their sense of purpose, their will to survive.
I think that's what is happening in Israel today. I think the Jewish state is terminally ill.
Israel may have won three major wars in its 60-year history, but it will be lucky to survive another decade of morally bankrupt leadership.
It's not just former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who is comatose. It seems the whole current Israeli government is brain dead.
How else can one explain Israel's agreement to Lebanon cease-fire terms that amount to unconditional surrender?
I know few other commentators who have explained the development in these stark terms, but this is the reality of what Ehud Olmert's
government has done. It represents, in my opinion, one of the biggest strategic blunders in the history of the country.
Let's review what Israel has done:
It launched a war on Iran-directed Hezbollah terrorists after they kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, killed eight others and rocketed
northern Israel towns. From the beginning, Israel demanded the return of its troops and the disarming of Hezbollah terrorists.
What did Israel get in the cease-fire deal? No return of the kidnapped troops and Hezbollah terrorists remain under arms.
For the life of me, I don't understand why Israeli civilians are not massing in the streets of Jerusalem demanding the immediate resignation of Olmert and his Cabinet. The Israeli army is returning from Lebanon with its tail between its legs.
How can you ask soldiers to kill and die for a simple objective that is later abandoned without explanation or reason?
Does Olmert not understand what his surrender means? It means he has given aid and comfort to Israel's enemies. He has handed Hezbollah its biggest victory since former Prime Minister Ehud Barak unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, handing the southern part of the country to Iran's proxy army and positioning it to claim it had defeated the Jewish state.
He has also proved to Israel's other terrorist enemies - those in Hamas and the Palestinian Authority - that rocket attacks, assassinations and kidnappings are winning tactics against the Jewish state. Prepare to see more of them under the terms of this "cease-fire."
He has demonstrated for the entire world that Israel has lost the kind of resolve it had in previous military campaigns. When the going
gets tough, today's Jews evidently will just sue for peace.
Hezbollah has won. That's the unimaginable bottom line after this conflict. The terrorists have won - not in the battlefield, mind you.
But they won before the war ever began because weak-kneed, cowardly, morally unfit leaders in Jerusalem would never permit Israel to win.
With Hezbollah's victory, Iran and Syria have been emboldened as well. This is bad news not just for Israel, but for the entire world.
If you think I overstate the case, ask yourself this fundamental question: Is Israel more secure after abandoning its conflict in Lebanon or less secure?
You know the answer. Everyone knows the answer.
Israel may have one of the greatest military machines in the world. It may have an intelligence apparatus that is the envy of
superpowers. It may even have right on its side.
But Israel is being led by men unworthy of its history, unworthy of its sacrifices, unworthy of its hard-fought victories of the past and
unworthy of God's sovereign promises to bless the Jewish state forever.
It's clear the only enemy that could ever destroy Israel is the kind of internal moral rot we are witnessing today in Jerusalem. Israel
has just one shot at surviving its terminal illness - cutting out the cancer that is the Olmert government.
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I firmly agree with the author's diagnosis - but the cure will have to be far more radical surgery than replacing one bought out thief with another...
180 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
This piece is about a UN assessment of the "Palestinian Situation." It is the ususal anti-Israel UN trash that has earned this organization the moniker of "Useless Nothings."
Th idiots appear to have learned nothing from the events occurring around them and continue to make excuse after excuse for the thugs who oppress the Arabs under their charge.
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UN OFFICIAL PAINTS GRIM PICTURE OF PALESTINIAN SITUATION; URGES RENEWED
INTERNATIONAL EFFORT New York, Aug 22 2006
4:00PM
Briefing the Security Council today on the situation of Palestinians in the Middle East, the
top United Nations political officer painted a grim picture of developments over the past 12 months, warning that the vision of Israel and Palestine living peacefully side-by-side has slipped "further away," and stressing the need for a renewed international effort in the region.
In an open meeting of
the Council, which also heard speeches from almost 30 countries, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, listed six main reasons why the situation had changed so much from a year ago, when Israel was
disengaging from Gaza and part of the northern West Bank and the world community was working to ensure both sides would return to the Road Map for the region.
"Far from advancing towards the vision of two States, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security, we have seen that vision slip further away during the past year."
Listing the reasons for such developments, he said the first was the "political positions and actions of the parties," noting that the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has not fully committed itself to basic principles of the peace
process, while Israel has itself failed to implement Road Map obligations, including freezing settlement activity.
Mr. Gambari also highlighted the financial difficulties faced by the Palestinian
Authority, but said that the "most terrible" measure of the state of the peace process was the death and destruction from violence, as he cited examples of the suffering on both sides.
"The cycle of attack and counter-attack leads only to increased human suffering which is intolerable on all sides. In the past year a total of 41 Israelis have been killed, and nearly 480 injured, by Palestinian violence. In the same period, over 450 Palestinians have been killed, and over 2,500 injured by
Israeli violence."
He highlighted also that no progress has been made in securing the release of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, despite calls for his nconditional release, while efforts to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners have also been unsuccessful.
A fourth reason for the lack of progress towards a negotiated two State solution, said Mr. Gambari, was the fact that settlement activity continues and so too does the building of The Barrier, large parts of which are on occupied
Palestinian territory.
He also highlighted the high degree of poverty, noting that "impoverishment in the Palestinian territories is more severe now than it has ever been," but concluded by saying that perhaps the most worrying development of the past year
was in the attitudes of ordinary people.
"The sixth measure of the state of the peace process is perhaps the most worrying development. Difficult to quantify, but easy to discern - in the attitudes of ordinary men and women. Opinion polls suggest a woeful decline in
confidence in the peace process and in the prospects for a negotiated settlement on both sides."
"Positions may be hardening, and could harden further unless a credible political process is somehow revived," he said, as he emphasized the importance of Security General Kofi Annan's recent call for greater global involvement and
the need to look at peace in the whole Middle East region as a whole.
"There are many concrete steps, some immediate, which need to be taken in order to get out of the current crisis and back towards a political path. And as the Secretary-General stressed on 11 August, something more is needed - a renewed
international effort, in which the various crises in the region are addressed.as
part of a holistic and comprehensive effort, sanctioned and championed by this Council."
2006-08-22 00:00:00.000
181 - Christopher Rose
Still waiting...
182 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Mr. Olmert Reaping the Winds of Change He Has Sown
Arutz Sheva's lead story
IDF Reservists, Protestors: ´Olmert, Peretz, Livni " Resign!´
By Hana Levi Julian
A group of 500 reservists and supporters called for the top three officials in the government to resign during a protest held outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Jerusalem office Tuesday night.
With reservists protesting outside the Knesset, and politicians in the opposition and even many from Olmert’s coalition calling for a comprehensive investigation into the management of the war, the continuing special session of the Knesset began to address the issues faced by reservists both during the war and after.
IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Kaplinski addressed the special Knesset session on the current status of reservists and those who were released after their stint in Lebanon, as well as the issue of the reservists who were called up to Lebanon on emergency orders. He acknowledged that there were failures.
He told the reservists’ lobby at the Knesset, "We succeeded in correcting many of the errors [that became evident in the early days of the war], but it remains to be determined if we are moving in the right direction. We have a step-by-step plan to return to preparedness and we are now beginning the process of returning to fitness."
A daily demonstration by a group from Haifa is slated to begin Wednesday near the central bus station in Jerusalem under the banner, “Olmert must resign immediately." Supporters are being handed petitions to sign demanding the Prime Minister's resignation.
Another protest is scheduled for this coming Friday and is to be led by the family of Sgt. Refanael Muskal who was killed in southern Lebanon a month ago. Marchers will present Olmert with a letter demanding his resignation at the end of the demonstration.
“The leadership failed and it must go,” said Riva Muskal, mother of the fallen soldier. “We don’t need public inquiries to tell us that.”
Still another march is scheduled for this coming Sunday, August 27th at 10:00 a.m. Marchers will start off from Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and walk to Jerusalem, ending their march across from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Amir Peretz were not spared criticism, as the ranks of protestors demanding the resignation of all three top government officials continue to swell. Reservists are lining up to join demonstrations together with dead soldiers’ grieving families and other civilians, some of whom lost homes or other property destroyed by Katyusha rocket fire.
A group of 20 reservists supported by the bereaved families of soldiers who fell in the war marched on Monday in protest of the government’s mismanagement of the war, beginning at the entrance to Jerusalem and ending at the Prime Minister’s Office, where they called for the resignation of the Prime Minister and Defense Minister Peretz. They then moved to the Rose Garden later in the evening.
Some 150 demonstrators crowded Rabin Square in Tel Aviv last week to demand that the political leaders responsible for managing the military operations step down.