Howard, your statement about willing to stand in a place and have Qassam's fired at you reflects badly on your intelligence which I respect you for. People in Sederot and in many other communities in the area have been under bombardment for SEVEN years and they are going crazy. They say you do not get used to it, it eats away at you. Sure the odds of surviving a single attack are in one's favor but this is a war of attrition. That is why Barak's inane plan of "Iron Dome" defensive systems are ridiculous. Even if it were 90% effective (something I doubt very much) it wouldn't help since the alarms would still go off and the people would still have to run for cover. In any event, HAMAS has also taken to firing GRADs or Katyushas which are far more destructive.

If HAMAS doesn't stop the firing, Israel will eventually go and retake Gaza, but in my opinion this would only really help unless the Gush Katif settlements were rebuilt.

Posted at January 26, 2008 8:55 PM in response to Hamas Defeats Israeli Blockade. What Next?

The point is how easy it is for "men of principle" to sell out everything they believe in for cash. Some years ago someone wrote a book about many of the young New Dealers that FDR brought into his administration to carry out reforms and "help the poor and downtrodden". They found that in the years after they left government service a lot became money-grubbing influence peddlers, lobbyists, lawyers and businessmen who were on the fringes of the law.
Ideology doesn't make people good. Character does.

Posted at January 17, 2008 11:18 PM in response to Former GOP Congressman Indicted As Al Qaeda Agent!!!!

Fred Dutton, who died a few years ago, was a former Deputy Attorney General in the Kennedy Administration in the Civil Rights department. He later was one of the managers of Robert Kennedy's Presidential Campaign in 1968. Really cared about the poor and downtrodden. A few years later he became chief lobbiest for the Saudi Arabian government, a country that still more or less has slavery to this day. Go figure it.

Posted at January 17, 2008 8:26 AM in response to Former GOP Congressman Indicted As Al Qaeda Agent!!!!

The Bar Kochba rebellion broke out when the Romans attempted to suppress Jewish religious life and when it was announced that they intended to build a pagan temple in the location of the previously-destroyed Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The Jews would not have revolted against Roman rule had the Romans respected Jewish communal and religious autonomy. The same applies to the first rebellion approximately 70 years earlier.
The Romans were an imperialist conqueror. They had no business being in Judea. The Jews were no threat to them.

Posted at January 6, 2008 7:39 AM in response to Pakistian, Palestine and Israel

Ridiculous analogy. No one says "Muslims are genetically inferior". Islam is a religion, an ideology, not a race. It is this IDEOLOGY that is the problem. Pakistan and India were born from the same mother, as I pointed out above. They were both under British colonialism for 300 years. You explain to me why they turned out so different.

Posted at January 5, 2008 9:15 PM in response to Pakistian, Palestine and Israel

I am surprised that I have to point out the following facts to you, but I apparently have to do so....

You are quite right, 60 years ago "civilized Europe" was not in a position to go preaching to other people about morality. But what did they do? They confronted their ugly history head on, grappled with the moral issues and draw conclusions. We today now have the borderless EU covering most of the continent, including countries that used to be bitter enemies for generations now living together in harmony. Religious and ethnic minorities are generally respected. The Western Churches, both Protestant and Catholic have made major efforts to look at their history of support for dictatorial regimes and endemic antisemitism and to eradicate those aspects of their traditions that allowed those attitudes to exist (I am saying this as an Orthodox Jew).

Thus, today, if G-d forbid, someone were to hijack a plane and crash it into the the big skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (which is taller than the WTC was), you and I would be horrified along with virtually everyone else in the Western World. We wouldn't say "the Muslims did it to themselves in order to make Western Christians and Jews look bad" and no one would look on the Osama Bin-Laden-like character who was behind it, whether he be Christian, Jew, Hindu or whatever, as being a hero, regardless of whatever cause he claimed to be championing. Yet today, in the Arab/Muslim world, Bin Laden is viewed by MOST Muslims as a great hero, all sorts of excuses are made for the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks (e.g. "the Mossad organized it in order to make Muslims look bad", etc). Public opinion polls show this. Street celebrations were held all over the Muslim world when it happened. (Orwellian double think-at one and the same time, many Muslims believe the myth about the Mossad, yet are happy it happened).

In pre-Independence India, Gandhi (whom you may recall I am no fan of), Nehru and the Indian National Congress didn't support Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". The opposed both British Colonialism AND Fascism at the same time. Compare how post-Independence India and Pakistan have fared. Both were under British Colonialism for 300 years. India has remained, except for one period in the 1970's a democratic, constitutionalist state. Pakistan is wracked by coups, assassinations and fratricidal (intra-Muslim) violence. They were born together from the same mother. You explain the difference.

If we in the West were to hear clear, loud denunciations of the violence and extremism prevalent in the Arab/Muslim world, then we in the West could say that they are attempting to uproot their moral pathologies just as the West did after World War II, but this is NOT happening, except for some brave individuals. If we saw large demonstrations against the Iran/Iraq war or against the fratricidal slaughter in Algeria or Iraq, then I would say you may be right, but this is NOT happening. I see indifference. If I saw demonstrations that said "Americans out of Iraq, Terrorists out of Iraq" or "Israel out of Palestinian territories while at the same time Palestinian resistance must be non-violent", then I would think differntly, but we don't.
Your moral equivalence is a dead-end street.

Posted at January 5, 2008 9:11 PM in response to Pakistian, Palestine and Israel

The Pakistanis couldn't care less about the Palestinians, just like their Arab brothers don't care about them. What enrages them is that a "dhimmi" people, the Jews, have managed to exercise their right to national self-determination in what the Muslim's consider the "Dar El-Islam", the realm of Islam, which they view as stretching from the Atlantic to Southeast Asia. They oppose any minority groups having any rights in that area.
If the Pakistanis and the rest of the Arab world cared about the Palestinians and their other brother Muslims, they would have demanded that the battle in the refugee camp in Northern Lebabanon be stopped, and they would have protested the Algerian civil war, and the Lebanese Civil War and the Iran-Iraq war. If they cared about the "suffering of the Gazans" they would advise them to stop lobbing rockets into Israel.
Look at the Shiite-Sunni slaughter going on in their own country, plus other violence in the North-West Frontier region plus Kashmir. Ever hear of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Massacre in Pakistan? It was a couple of years ago. A suicide bomber, out of love for him fellow Muslims went into a Shi'ite mosque and blew it up, killing dozens. The local Shi'ites went on a rampage, saw a KFC franchise, all of whose workers and owners were brother Pakistani Muslims, and realizing that it was an American company, butchered all the people in there. I think the Pakistanis have a lot of work to do in their own country.

Posted at January 5, 2008 8:49 AM in response to Pakistian, Palestine and Israel

Let's not look at just the last 10 years. Let's look a little further back. The vast majority (more than 99%) of Muslims have been killed in the last 50 years have been killed by fellow Muslims. That includes Iraq. Muslims have killed far, far more Muslims than Americans have.
Just a refresher for you:

(1) Iran-Iraq war----brother Muslims, mostly Shi'ites killing each other. Certainly hundreds of thousands of dead on both sides.
(2) Algerian civil war-100,000 dead. All Muslims.
(3) Lebanon civil war included intra Muslim-killing involving thousands of dead.
(4) Pakistan--ongoing turmoil, Shi'ite-Sunni violence
(5) Syrian repression of Hama-I heard numbers up to 20,000 dead.
(6) Jordan-Palestinian war in 1970. Thousands of dead, mostly Palestinians.
(7) Egypt involvement in Yemeni civil war, 1966-7. Egypt used poison gas. Thousands of dead.

Please don't tell me that the US is responsible for the sectarian killing in Iraq. Although the war was bungled, the energy for the killing comes from the Muslims themselves. If someone were to distribute weaons in your neighborhood to you and your neighbors, I don't think you would all start killing each other. This is like those who claim the US was responsible for the genocide in Cambodia. Cambodians were responsible for it, even if the US carried out a foolish policy there prior to the Khmer Rouge's takeover.

Posted at January 5, 2008 8:25 AM in response to Pakistian, Palestine and Israel

An "emigrant" is someone who voluntarily leaves one country, takes his property with him or disposes of it for a fair return and then goes to another country of his choosing. Many of the Jews of the Arab countries who fled to Israel or elsewhere as as result of the creation of the State of Israel were frequently actually terrorized or at least under threat and dispossesed of their property. I think this qualifies them for the term "refugees".

Posted at December 26, 2007 9:53 AM in response to Time To Enage Hamas & Alterman On The Lobby

You apparently didn't read my posting very carefully. You know darned well I frequently write the word "Palestinian" without quotes all the time because I do acknowledge that there are people who call themselves "Palestinians", I simply note that they do not have a national identity in the normal, Western sense of the word, any more than do Welshmen, Northern Irelanders, Italian-Americans, Nevadans, Lapplanders, etc.

My putting the word "Palestinians" in quotes there was actually referring to them as an "autonomous national delegation" representing this people in peace talks with Israel, which as Danny Rubinstein pointed out in the article I mentioned, does not now exist.

Posted at December 26, 2007 9:47 AM in response to Time To Enage Hamas & Alterman On The Lobby