Yesterday Israelis commemorated Yom Ha'Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Next week is Israel's 60th Independence Day. That Independence Day immediately follows Yom Ha'Shoah is appropriate. Together these two days encapsulate the message: Never Again.

The existence of Israel is in no way compensation for the eradication of Europe's Jewish communities. The Nazis killed six million Jews and destroyed some of the world's most vibrant centers of Jewish life. The existence of Israel does not bring any of that back but, at the same time, it is a guarantee that there will be no second Holocaust. All kinds of bad things can happen to Jews but one thing cannot. Jews will never again be in a position in which they lack the ability to fight back with at least as much force as those attacking them.

The 6 million Jews killed between 1939 and 1945 could not defend themselves, could not protect their children, and could find no refuge.

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I guess the Wright story is passe. Daniel Pipes, the one-time academic and now full-time race warrior, is back to proving that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

If only Barack had just said so. If he's a Muslim, he obviously has no serious involvement with a Christian cleric who is, like so many Christians, really into Jesus Christ.

Of course, Pipes -- whose very lucrative business is convincing Jews that all Muslims are out to kill them -- probably hasn't paid any attention to the Wright controversy. Did the White Citizens Council devote attention to, I don't know, Hungarians?

Pipes' business (and I use the word carefully) is libeling Muslims, all Muslims (except those few Uncle Ahmeds he digs up who, for fat fees, go on lecture tours to reveal that all the world's problems are caused by...their fellow Muslims).

It's a nice racket.

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The irrepresible Bibi Netanyahu is now attacking Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for contemplating returning the Golan Heights in exchange for a binding peace with Syria.

Nothing surprising about that except Daniel Levy now has the proof that when Netanyahu was Prime Minister he agreed to a full Golan withdrawal in return for peace. He is now attacking Olmert for contemplating a withdrawal he himself agreed to.

Nice.

It is also interesting that Bibi, who offers himself as an inflexible hawk, is apparently not quite that inflexible. He's kind of Barak in reverse.

Israel's next election will likely be between Bibi (who talks hawkish but is capable of surprising us by moving left), Barak (who will run as Labor but is probably less pragmatic and flexible than Netanyahu) and Olmert (who is the most pragmatic and flexible of the three but does not have the political clout to put over the Israeli-Palestinian peace he desires).

Anyway, read Levy. The sheer hypocrisy of it all!

Does the Obama campaign have any idea how much damage this preening fool of a minister is doing to this campaign?

Pretty much everyone I know supports Obama, morally and financially. But, to a person, they are beginning to believe that Obama will not be the 44th President, no how, no way.

No, they don't think Hillary will be either. They think, and I'm beginning to think, that McCain is going to be sworn in on 1-20-09.

It is not Wright himself that bothers us. It is that Obama does not utterly and completely repudiate a man who is willfully and with malice aforethought doing him profound and possibly fatal damage.

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