THE ALLAH THAT FAILED
Let’s say there’s this fellow named Joe. He makes a living as a highway bandit robbing travelers. Any victim who gives him any trouble he kills. Joe has a special hatred for Jews. “Kill Jews wherever you find them,” he tells the members of his gang. At age fifty, Joe tells his best friend that he fallen in love with his daughter and wants to marry her. She is six years old. They are married and Joe starts having sex with the little girl when she is nine years old. Joe tells his gang that God talks to him. As the Messenger of God, every word of Joe’s is the Word of God. Anyone who refuses to believe this, Joe has his gang members kill them. Here’s the question: Is Joe a criminally insane pervert and moral monster, or is he worshipped by hundreds of millions of devout followers who deeply believe that he is the most moral human being who ever lived? The answer is: he is both. Joe’s real name is Ubul Kassim, an Arabian bandit chieftain who became known as Mohammed (“The Praised One” in Arabic) and founded the religion of Islam…
Whatever Happened to Never Again?
It wasn’t that long ago that a good many European Jews swore an oath: Never Again. Never Again will Nazi-like anti-Semitism be tolerated. Never Again will Jews be meekly herded down a path that leads to Zyklon-B showers. So in response to the explosion of anti-Semitism in France, what is the advice of France’s chief rabbi, Joseph Sitruk? Replace yarmulkes with baseball caps. "I ask young Jews to be alert, to avoid walking alone, to avoid wearing the yarmulke in the street or in the subway and consequently becoming targets for potential assailants," Rabbi Sitruk cautions. "I ask them to replace the yarmulke with the baseball cap.” This is the best way, he warns, “to protect our young people." Au contraire, Monsieur Rabbi. The best way for your young people to protect themselves would be for them to learn how to beat the crap out of those who attack them. Someone needs to make Rabbi Sitruk write 500 times on a blackboard the French translation of: The Best defense Is A Good Offense…
THE INTELLECTUAL’S CURSE
None of all the momentous events that occurred in 2003 -- the recovery of the US economy, the invasion of Iraq and military overthrow of Saddam’s regime, the capture of Saddam, the capitulation of Libya’s Kaddafi, you name it -- was the most important. The single most important event of 2003 is the one that didn’t occur: there was not one single successful terrorist attack in the United States.This is the single greatest achievement of the year -- and note the identifier achievement. This is not a lucky accident -- although luck and chance played a role as in most everything else in life. But those who are truly wise know that to a very considerable extent, you make your own luck, and this is what George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft have done.One of the most amusing sights of 2003 was to see so many people turn their brains into jello over John Ashcroft. Anyone who has personally known Ashcroft can testify to his decency and integrity. Yet he and his Patriot Act became the focal point of hate for both the Loony Left and the Loony Right -- the Hollywood Left and Dizzy Dean Democrats see eye-to-eye with Jane Fonda Libertarians like Lew Rockwell, Pro-Moslem Conservatives like Grover Norquist, and Hate-Israel Paleocons like Pat Buchanan…
TO YOUR HEALTH
The older you get, the more staying in shape is like being the Red Queen of Wonderland: You have keep running faster and faster to stay in the same place.I want to wish you all a healthy and strong 2004. I can’t tell you how to achieve this, however, because I’m not you and we all have our individual differences and preferences. What I could do is tell you what works for me. This means I don’t have to insert any boilerplate blather about “consult your physician before doing any of this stuff.” You get to make up your own mind about that, and adapt for yourself whatever you think may be useful...
OF INTELLECTUAL BONDAGE: How The Left Dominates Israeli Universities
If you thought American Universities were repositories of masochistic appeasement of enviers of Western Civilization, compare them to those of Israel’s. If you need to sober up after all those Christmas parties, this article will do it quickly. –JW
“How could you report the war in Iraq if you sided with the Americans?”
“How can you say that George Bush is better than Saddam Hussein?”
These are some of the milder questions I received from an audience of some 150 undergraduate students from Tel Aviv University’s Political Science Department. The occasion was a guest lecture I gave last month on my experiences as an embedded reporter with the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division during the Iraq war.
Many of the students were visibly jolted by my assertion that the patriotism of American soldiers was inspirational. The vocal ones among them were appalled when I argued that journalists must be able to make moral distinctions between good and evil, when such distinctions exist, if they wish to provide their readership with an accurate picture of the events they describe in their reports.
“Who are you to make moral judgments? What you say is good may well be bad for someone else.”
“I am a sane human being capable of distinguishing good from evil, just like every other sane human being,” I answered. “As criminal law states, you are criminally insane if you can’t distinguish between good and evil. Unless you are crazy, you should be able to tell the difference.”
When the show was over, and the students began shuffling out of the lecture hall, a young woman approached me.
“Excuse me,” she said with a heavy Russian accent. “How can you say that democracy is better than dictatorial rule?”
“Because it is better to be free than to be a slave,” I answered.
Undeterred, she pressed on, “How can you support America when the US is a totalitarian state?”
“Did you learn that in Russia?” I asked.
“No, here,” she said.
“Here at Tel Aviv University?”
“Yes, that is what my professors say,” she said.
In the weeks that have passed since I gave that lecture, I have not been able to get those students out of my mind. While campuses throughout the Western world are known as hotbeds for radicalism, it is still hard to believe that Israeli students, who themselves served in the IDF, and who as civilians have experienced more than three years of unrelenting terrorist attacks on their cafes, night clubs, campuses, highways and public buses, could subscribe to such views.
How can they believe it is impossible to make moral distinctions between those fighting terrorism and totalitarian regimes and those perpetrating terrorism and leading such dictatorships?
It is an open secret that many of the most prominent Israeli academics and professors are also identified with the radical leftist fringes of the Israeli political spectrum.
The Hebrew University’s Political Science Department was dominated for years by the leaders of Peace Now. Tel Aviv University’s Social Science and Humanities Faculties are the professional home to some of the leaders of the even more radical Ta’ayush and Yesh Gvul organizations.
Israeli professors have signed petitions calling for boycotts of Israeli goods. Some have even supported the boycott of Israeli academics by foreign universities and academic publications.
Israel Radio reported this week that the letter written by 13 reservists from the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit in which they announced their refusal to serve in the territories was written for them by a Tel Aviv University professor.
Prof. Rafi Yisraeli from the Hebrew University notes, “It is ironic that the university presidents and Minister Natan Sharansky are now organizing a campaign to stop the boycott of Israeli academics in foreign universities.
A year ago, I discussed the issue, as well as the rampant anti-Semitism on European campuses ,with the president of the University of Paris. He told me, ‘What do you want from us? All we are doing is repeating what we hear from Israeli professors.'”
Case in point is Tel Aviv University law professor Andrei Marmor. Marmor is currently a visiting faculty member at the University of Southern California Law School. Recently he published a policy paper at USC where he argues that Israel’s territorial claims to land it secured during the 1948-49 War of Independence are no different from its claims to land secured in the 1967 Six Day War. In his view, both are illegitimate. Marmor goes on to argue that Zionism cannot claim to be a liberal movement unless it accepts the “right of return” of Palestinians to Israel.
In the mid-1990s, a Tel Aviv University graduate student conducted a survey of the political views of university professors. The student discovered that not only were the professors overwhelmingly self-identified with far left and Arab political parties, most also expressed absolute intolerance for the notion that professors with right-wing or even centrist views should be allowed to teach in their departments. “Over my dead body,” said one.
All of this is well known. Yet knowing of the professors’ radicalism, and seeing the effects of such dogmatic views on university students, are different things.
Since my exchange with those students, I have spoken to professors and students at the five major liberal arts universities in Israel to try to understand how the intellectual tyranny of the radical Left on campuses impacts their educational and professional experiences.
Students speak of a regime of fear and intimidation in the classroom. Ofra Gracier, a doctoral student in Tel-Aviv University’s humanities faculty explains the process as follows:
“It starts with the course syllabus. In a class on introduction to political theory for instance, you will never see the likes of Leo Strauss or Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. You will only get Marx and Rousseau and people like that. So, if you want to argue with Marx, you are on your own. You don’t know anything else.
“But say you want to dispute your professor. I was taught this class by Yoav Peled, an avowed communist. He was explaining why capitalism is evil. I mentioned the Asian economic miracle – South Korea, Japan, Singapore. He went nuts and spent the rest of the class screaming at me.
“Then there is the grading system. In a history course I took, I took a Zionist line in a research paper. My professor gave me a low grade and explained that my grade was the result of my argument.
“Most people toe the leftist line even when they disagree because of the grade discrimination. If you get low grades, you can’t get accepted to a master’s program and if, in the master’s program you get low grades you won’t be accepted into a doctoral program.”
Avi Bell, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University’s Law School, relates a separate but related problem. “Last year I taught a course on the legal aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Most of my students were clearly Zionists and also knowledgeable about Israeli history.
And yet, when I received their seminar papers at the end of the term, I saw that most of them wrote anti-Zionist arguments. “The reason this happened is because there is a dire lack of scholarship in certain areas. For instance, if you want to research the issue of Palestinian policies of land discrimination against Jews, you have to go to primary sources.
No one has written a book about it even though it is a huge issue. But if you want to research the question of alleged Jewish land discrimination against Arabs, you have a bookshelf full of books at your disposal.”
Indeed, Dr. Martin Sherman of Tel-Aviv University’s Political Science Department was unable to get the university’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies to publish his original work on the hydro-strategic impact of a Palestinian state on Israel.
Sherman, with degrees in physics and geology and practical experience as a water adviser in the Ministry of Agriculture, is a recognized expert in the field.
“My paper showed conclusively that the establishment of such a state would involve the transfer of control over 60 percent-70 percent of Israel’s water sources to the Palestinians. They wouldn’t have it. I was strung along by Shai Feldman [the head of the Jaffee Center] for months and months, until it was finally made clear that it wouldn’t be published.”
Citing alternate publications in research papers is also not allowed. Another graduate student explained that her professor gave her a low grade on a paper because she cited research published in Netiv magazine. “That is a right-wing propaganda sheet, published in the Occupied Territories,” she was told. Her argument that most of Netiv’s articles are written by academics and are based on original research didn’t matter.
She ran into a similar problem when she cited an article published in the Shalem Center’s journal Azure.
Most of the academics and students that I spoke with were happy to discuss their situations and yet averse to the notion of being quoted by name. “I am up for tenure,” and “I still need my dissertation proposal approved,” were some of the most frequent explanations.
A survey carried out by the left-wing Israel Democracy Institute on Israeli attitudes toward the state was published on Thursday in Haaretz. According to the findings, a mere 58% of Israelis are proud of being Israeli, while 97% of Americans and Poles are proud of their national identity.
Mexicans, Chileans, Norwegians, and Indians all have higher degrees of pride in their national identities than Israelis. Is it possible that our academic tyrants have something to do with the inability of 42% of Israelis to take pride in who they are?
The First Day of Christmas
Merry Christmas! Wait — that was yesterday, wasn’t it? Nevertheless, today, December 26, is the First Day of Christmas. Ancient Christians celebrated “The Holidays,” as our militant secularists insist on referring to them now, starting with the day after the birth of Jesus and ending on January 6th, the visit of the Magi in Matthew 2:11 known as the Epiphany. Start with 12/26 and end with 1/6 and you get: the Twelve Days of Christmas.
You may be really tired of hearing Christmas songs by now, including this one, yet you may still be wondering what the heck partridges in a pear tree and eight maids a-milking have to do with the birth of the founder of Christianity. So I thought we might take a break from Serious Thoughts About World Events, and take a look at the song’s origin and meaning.
The earliest printed version of The Twelve Days of Christmas is in a children’s book published in London in 1790, Mirth Without Mischief. It is called a “memory and forfeits” game played by children in the form of a song, where the leader recites a verse, each player in turn repeats it, the leader keeps adding verses until a player’s memory fails him and has to forfeit a piece of candy (if a girl, a kiss on the leader’s cheek).
Kids in 18th Century England, however, learned the game from French kids, who had been singing their version, “In Those Twelve Days” since at least 1625. We know the song was originally French, as for example, partridges were introduced into England from France in the 1770s.
Even though The Twelve Days of Christmas was a kids’ song-game, it nonetheless had a deep religious meaning. Unlike the PC Happy Holidays of today, centuries ago Christmas was above all a religious celebration. All of the song’s twelve gifts are Christian symbols.
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
A Christian’s “true love” is God.
A partridge in a pear tree…
The partridge is Jesus; the pear tree stands for the Cross. The French revered the mother partridge, which would feign injury to draw predators away from her nest and willing to sacrifice herself for the life of her children, and used the bird as a symbol for Jesus who lamented in Matthew 24:37: “O Jerusalem… How often would I have sheltered thee under my wings, as a hen does her chicks, but thou wouldst not have it so.” Why a pear tree? Because it’s a song in English full of alliteration: partridge-pear, two-turtle, maids-milking, swans-swimming, lords-leaping, pipers-piping, drumers-drumming.
On the second day…two turtle doves…
The sacrifice Joseph and Mary made for Jesus (they actually sacrifice two turtle doves in Luke 2:24). The French original refers to the two gifts of the Old and New Testaments.
On the third day…three French hens…
The three things that abideth of I Corinthians 13:13 — faith, hope, and charity. In the French original, the three persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost.
On the fourth day… four calling (in the English original, “colly” or black) birds…
The four Evangelists and their Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.
On the fifth day… five golden rings…
Not rings on your finger, but ring-necked pheasants in keeping with the bird theme of the first seven verses; the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament known collectively as the Books of Moses.
On the sixth day… six geese a-laying…
The six days of Creation.
On the seventh day… seven swans a-swimming…
The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, much discussed by Augustine and Aquinas: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord.
On the eigth day… eight maids a-milking…
The eight Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:3-10.
On the ninth day… nine ladies a-dancing…
The nine fruits of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
On the tenth day…ten lords a-leaping…
The Ten Commandments.
On the eleventh day… eleven pipers piping…
The eleven loyal Disciples. We all know what happened to the twelfth.
On the twelfth day…twelve drummers drumming…
The twelve points of The Apostle’s Creed.
That’s the meaning. Now on to the myth. There is an “urban legend” floating in the Internet ether that the Twelve Days is a Catholic protest song, a secret catechism sung by English Catholics after Elizabeth I abolished “the old worship” in 1559, forbidding the open practice of Roman Catholicism (finally repealed by Parliament in 1829). Yet all twelve enumerated gifts of the song were believed in common by both Catholics and Anglicans — there is nothing in it exclusively Catholic needing to be secret and hidden. Further, the song originated in France, not England.
This myth was created by a Byzantine Catholic priest in Granville, New York named Hal Stockert in 1995. He claimed he had done all sorts of research in 16th Century Latin texts and letters from Irish priests. When pressed to provide it, his dog had devoured his homework: “All of my notes were ruined when our church had a plumbing leak and the basement flooded.” Oh, he did make an electronic copy, but sadly it is on “a computer floppy disk that is so old that nobody has a machine that can read it anymore.” Look me in the eye, Hal. You’re lying.
I have to tell you it was my 11 year-old son Jackson who gave me the idea to write this. The most wonderful Christmas present a man can have is his family and I am truly blessed with my wife and two boys. Christmas gives us the opportunity to reflect upon and appreciate the blessings we all have in our lives. Merry Christmas — all the way to January 6th.
THE ENGLISH GODFATHER OF PALESTINIAN TERRORISM
The founder of the Palestinian terrorist movement was Amin al-Husseini. As Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, he organized Arab rampages killing Jewish settlers in Palestine throughout the 1920s, formed an alliance with the Nazi Party of Germany in the 1930s, met with Adolph Hitler in Berlin in November 1941 to encourage him to slaughter Jews in Europe so they couldn’t escape to settle in Palestine, ordered Arab families to flee Israel upon independence so Arab armies could invade in 1948, founded the Palestine Liberation Organization, mentored his nephew Rahman Abdul Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, and turned the leadership of the PLO over to him. His nephew assumed the alias of Yasser Arafat.
ONE BILLION ALLIES
If I ask you to think of India, the image that most likely appears in your minds eye would be the Taj Mahal. Arguably the most famous building in the world and considered by many to be the most beautiful structure mankind has ever created, it was completed in 1648 by the ruler of India, Shah Jehan, to immortally entomb his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal.There is a painful problem with this image, however, for the great majority of folks in India: the Taj Mahal isnt an Indian building. Its Moslem, and thus for Indians a symbol of Islamic imperialism.
Bitterness and Bad Karma
Bill Safire is normally the only thing worth reading in the New York Times, and he proved it with his latest column (datelined 12/8/03), which is devoted to completely messing up the mind of every Bush-hating Democrat in America.
Eco-Imperialism’s Deadly Consequences
The United Nations' global warming bureaucracy is meeting (vacationing?) in Milan this week pondering how to revive the beleaguered international global warming treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol. This week's news that Russia might say "nyet" to the treaty all but seals its doom.