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December 30, 2005
Pioneer Jewish Photographers
The book was carelessly shtupped in the "just returned" shelf. I was browsing this shelf in my local library when the title caught my eye: Documentors of the Dream: Pioneer Jewish Photographers in the Land of Israel 1890-1933.
I checked it out, expecting the usual photos of Christian holy places, Arabs on camels--G-d I hate camels, they spit and bite and smell like you know what--and photos of dunes, lots of sand dunes.
Wrong.
This book and its contents are a complete knock-out. And for a Jew and a lover of Zion, well, a complete revelation.
To quote from the flap: Documentors of the Dream is the first comprehensive book to chart the origins and development of Eretz Israel as seen through the eyes of Jewish photographers and their images are largely unknown and unpublished in the world of photographic history. It is a curious fact that Israel, the embodiment of a culture, language, and history, a symbol of nationhood for Jews, almost never appears in photographs of the Holy Land. Most photographs of the period reflect a predominantly Christian world in a period of colonial expansion. Documentors of the Dream is a stunning and beautiful testament to an emerging art form and the emerging nation it captured.
After I inhaled the photographs in this book I gave it to Karen and begged her to look at it. Usually, Karen isn't all that interested in my art books. She's busy reading all these psychology papers that I find, frankly, incomprehensible. But she sensed that this time there was something different about the book I was offering and dutifully she set about going through it with her usual care and rigor. The next day Karen said to me: "The pictures in the book are just amazing. It's Israel before any sleaze set in."
You think you know what Israel looked like back before statehood? Look at the photo taken of Rav Kook with Rabbi Harlap in The Mercaz haRav Yeshiva, Jerusalem, in the 1930's, by the incomparable photographer Tzadok Bassan, pg.105.
Deeply touching are Avraham Soskin's intimate photos of British and Palestinian WWI servicemen. Note that the Palestinians in Palestine are always Jews. The Arabs are always called, well, Arabs, never Palestinians. It's a triumph of PR, actually a triumph of the big lie, that the Arabs have coopted the name Palestinians for they never referred to themselves as anything but Arabs until recently.
How did Israel let them get away with that?
Who said Jews are smart?
But I digress.
If you love somebody and you're looking for the perfect gift to give, well, this is it. A beautiful and illuminating art book that has amazing pictures you can look at again and again, and text that just never fails to astonish. This fine volume was published back in 1998, but you know what, it gets my nod for the best art book of 2005.
The other night, I dreamed of Ariel and woke drenched in a cold sweat. I got out of bed, went downstairs and made myself a cup of tea. In the living room, I sat in the Eames chair where Ariel spent most of the last year of his life learning, reading, talking to people. Making believe that Ariel was looking over my shoulder, I slowly leafed through the book, pausing at the photos of the Rebbeim and the Hasidim--the photos I knew Ariel would take particular pleasure in.
We spent the longest time on page 53 with Tzadok Basson's portrait of a Jerusalem Hasidic family: The noble and handsome patriarch Israel Shimon Schein Azulai with his two grandsons, Avrech Azulai and Chaim Yosef. Beautiful children with light--holy light--coming directly from their eyes.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:39 PM | Comments (11)
Hollywood Republican Redux
Now that we're at the end of the year, and because Seraphic Secret is not such a secret anymore, here is my article, Help, I'm a Hollywood Republican, which was originally published by The Jewish Press.
Happy New Year.
Happy Chanukah.
A meaningful and lovely Shabbos to all.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:36 AM | Comments (4)
December 29, 2005
Idiot's Guide to Victimhood
Dr. Sanity brings you her Idiot's Guide to Victimhood. The Palestinians have obviously read this essay and absorbed it thoroughly. Yup, their ability not to take any responsibility for anything is just awesome. The Arabs are the luckiest people on the earth. Their enemies are Jews.
Imagine if the Palis were facing oh, say, the Chinese. Now there's a ruthless enemy. Look at what they've done in Nepal since 1950. Killed about a million innocent people. Destroyed every Buddhist Temple in sight. And that nice Dalai Lama, not one step closer to returning to his homeland. And world response?
Nothing.
And next time the Palis start kvetching about how mean and nasty the Israelis are, remind them how the Jordanians tried to wipe them out back in September 1967. Now that was nasty. So nasty that the Palis literally came crawling across the Jordan River begging those mean Israelis to save them from their Arab brothers. At the end of that particular Arab bloodbath, the Jordanian Hashemites murdered about 15,000 Palis, a body count the Israelis have never come close to.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:03 PM | Comments (9)
Iwo Jima... Today
Thanks so much to Little Green Footballs. This is what would happen if today's media were covering the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:36 PM | Comments (4)
December 28, 2005
Dershowitz's Piece of Peace
The day this book arrived in my mail box a homicide bomber murdered five Jews in Hadera, Israel.
The day this book arrived in my mail box the President of Iran informed the world that the "Zionist entity" -- he does not say Israel -- should be wiped off the face of the earth.
The day this book arrived in my mail box I finished reading a detailed narrative of the great Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's March through Georgia.
Professor Dershowitz is an eloquent defender of Israel. In fact, this book should have been titled: The Case For Israel II, a sequel to his previous book The Case for Israel. I say this because the moment this book rolled off the presses -- it was irrelevent.
You see, Professor Dershowitz's thesis is that with the death of the terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, the dynamics in the Middle East changed. "A season for peace may be on the horizon," says Dershowitz.
Dershowitz's plan for peace is, for the most part, Oslo redux.
With great elegance, and great naivete, Professor Dershowitz identifies twelve geopolitical barriers to peace, and he explains how to move around them and push the process forward.
Just like that.
As if terrorists were not in complete control of Palestinian society.
Dershowitz is fearfully logical. But his logic forces him to confront some pretty uncomfortable truths. For instance, he has a whole chapter titled: What if a Palestinian State Became a Launching Pad for Terrorism?
Guess how long the chapter is? A hundred pages? Fifty pages? Ten pages?
Sorry, it's three pages long, er, short.
Okay, so the very idea makes Professor Dershowitz, uh, lose sleep. It should. Palestinian society is basically a gruesome death cult. Their media is saturated in the most vile anti-Semitism you have ever seen. Local governments are nothing but self-serving thugocracies. Kidnapping and shakedowns are the only growth industries in Gaza. Imagine a state run by the Corleone family and you get a pretty good idea of Palestinian culture.
And don't fool yourself, the PA does not really exist. The PA at this point is merely a political illusion propped up by the western press.
The real power lies with the clans and the tribes. They are the ones who always run things in Arab society. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know the Arab world.
Which is why Israel is buiding the security fence. There is no partner for peace. At least Hamas is honest: they call for the complete destruction of Israel. Ditto for Hezbollah. Ditto for Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Ditto for Islamic Jihad. Ditto for Black September. Ditto for -- well you get the point.
Of course any Palestinian state that arises (Gosh, there's a depressing thought) will be a terrorist state; that's all they've ever planned for. That's all they know: to destroy, not to build. It's so much more fun to run around with a Kalachnikov and give interviews to Paris Match than to provide social services. I mean who wants to pick up the garbage?
So, how does Professor Dershowitz resolve this existential question of a possible, no probable terrorist state?
I quote: Until and unless that frightening scenario is addressed, with concrete guarantees from the international community, it is likely that distrust among moderate Israelis will persist... Only the United States, with the cooperation of European nations, could provide the needed guarantees."
Yup, you read correctly: international community.
Like whom, France, Germany? Hey, how about that other great European power...Belgium?
Professor Dershowitz's unfortunate refrain of "international guarantees" appears again and again in the pages of this book.
I know one person who probably really likes that whole notion: Kofi Annan.
It's really depressing.
At this point in the book, I badly wanted a drink, something really strong -- except I don't drink. Liquor gives me migraines. So I had a cup of coffee instead.
It's absolutely lunatic, if not downright suicidal. No nation is going to place her security in the arms of another country.
Let me say this: Dershowitz does a wonderful job of arguing Israel's case. No one does a better job. It's particularly gratifying to see him shredding the academic anti-Semites like Tony Judt of NYU and Noam Chomsky of MIT.
But, his arguments for peace are about as dead as Arafat.
Oh, Sherman's March through Georgia?
That was the nail in the coffin of the Confederacy. You see, the civilians who lived in the South did not suffer any real consequences for their deplorable life-style. Sure, they sent their sons and fathers off to war. They rationed food. Good coffee was hard to find. And their slaves were getting kind of surly. But all in all, life was, well, livable.
Until Sherman's well disciplined army came marching through. He burned their plantations. He ripped apart their corrupt society.
He made them understand that support for evil has a fearful price.
And guess what, the South capitulated once the civilian population got a taste of real suffering.
And then there was peace.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:55 PM | Comments (23)
We're Baaaaaack!
Okay, the software problems have finally been fixed. Thanks to my good friend Jackie Danicki for taking time out of her incredibly busy schedule to dig into the guts of Seraphic Secret and unearth the code glitches.
Thanks to all our readers who kept writing in and telling us how much they missed our postings.
So much has piled up that we hardly know where to begin. Give us a bit of time and we'll blog properly later today.
Needless to say, we missed you.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:12 AM | Comments (17)
December 23, 2005
Meltdown
Our deepest regrets and apologies. Movable Type is having a major technical meltdown. We thought we had the problem solved; alas, it persists.
In the meantime, Karen and I want to take what little space we have to wish our Jewish readers a happy and meaningful Chanukah.
To our Christian readers we wish you a merry Christmas and thank you for your loving support for us and for Israel.
A lovely and meaningful Shabbos to all.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:14 PM | Comments (5)
December 21, 2005
No Comment
Dear Readers, Please be advised that due to technical difficulties you are getting a weird message when you try to view comments. We are working around the clock to try to fix the problem.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:32 PM | Comments (1)
Journalistic Grunt
Here's an interview with Robert Kaplan, author of the invaluable Imperial Grunts. Thanks so much to Steve Finefrock for sending it to me.
Kaplan is one of the few working journalists who actually bothers to live with our soldiers, and not in four star hotels. He knows them intimately. He loves them; hence he gets war right.
Kaplan understands journalistic elites, and geopolitics. Read this interview in its entirety. It is highly revealing.
Live with TAE: Robert Kaplan
Born in Brooklyn 53 years ago, Robert Kaplan was raised in a working-class section of Queens where his father was a truck driver and his mother a homemaker. Recruited as a swimmer, he attended the University of Connecticut, where he took not a single history, economics, or political science course, but learned to write. He started in journalism at the Daily Herald of Rutland, Vermont, and commenced to energetically educate himself in world affairs.
A vagabond investigator of some of the world’s most troubled regions, he has written a host of books on places like the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa. Reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1980s, he was one of the first journalists to profile contemporary Islamic radicals. His latest book, Imperial Grunts, is a ground-level portrait of American infantrymen serving around the globe.
Robert Kaplan was interviewed in Washington, D.C. by TAE’s editors.
TAE: Tell us how you got started writing about some of the world’s most benighted places.
Kaplan: Starting not long after college, I spent 16 straight years overseas living out of cheap hotels and youth hostels as a freelance reporter, sending in stories by mail and yellow telex tapes. I spent lots of time in North Africa and the Middle East, and two years embedded with the Israeli military. In 1988, I had my first book published. And then it just went from there.
Today, I live in western Massachusetts, mainly because of the solitude it provides. The more isolated a writer’s environment, the more powerful and honest the results—because writing, above all, is ferocious truth telling. And each year, I spend about six months overseas.
TAE: What draws you to the topics of war and ferment in which you’ve specialized?
Kaplan: I’m very curious. And travel is more than just going to different places. All too often, people who travel all over the world only socialize with elites like themselves. For me, that’s not travel. Travel requires getting to another socioeconomic class than the one you inhabit. And that means getting away from stable places with very affluent business communities and getting to war-torn places where you have to make a sociological and cultural adjustment.
I also find that places on the brink of collapse are intellectually fascinating because they’re like a real-life experiment with Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Ibn Khaldun. You can’t really understand Hobbes unless you’ve been to Sierra Leone when it’s cracking up. Hobbes once said that “life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And he’s exactly right, because freedom is nothing without authority. That concept has no real meaning in the classroom unless you’ve seen a place with no authority—where just walking down the street is absolutely terrifying. That’s why the most fundamental human right is personal security. That’s something that is very hard to communicate to people who’ve never been outside of an affluent, physically secure environment.
TAE: For all the talk of American imperialism, isn’t the main “foreign influence” in Iraq today—the main outside threat to Iraqi self-determination—the international jihadis who make up the al-Qaeda resistance?
Kaplan: Absolutely. One of the big myths of the Left is that we have troops around the world propping up dictatorships. This reflects a 1970s time-warp mentality. In every case I can name—from the Philippines to Georgia, from sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East—we’re stationed at the request of newly elected, internationally recognized, democratic governments. And this makes sense: You can’t have a stable democracy without a professional military.
If the United States were to pull out of Iraq you would have a real bloodbath, plus a reversal in a lot of the positive trends towards liberalization we’ve seen in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Dubai, and many others. I mention all these places individually because they’re not getting enough coverage in the media. Even Syria—despite all the trouble we’re having—is a much less autocratic place now than it was four years ago. None of this would have been possible if the United States had cut and run Mogadishu-style once things got rough in Iraq.
TAE: Is it plausible that the elections and constitutions and various liberalizations now taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan are inspiring a kind of “Arab Spring” in the places you just mentioned?
Kaplan: Yes. Three weeks after the first successful Iraqi election, Lebanon’s Walid Jumblatt stunned the world by saying “this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.”
But because we’ve had such a surge of democratization in the Arab world in such a narrow frame of time, we’re going to have to stick it out in order for the progress to hold. If we don’t stick it out in Iraq, Lebanese democracy is just ephemeral; the Syrians will ultimately reconstitute Lebanon in their own totalitarian image. If we don’t stick it out in Iraq, Libya will go backward after going forward, and in Egypt Mubarak will be succeeded by another Brezhnev-type leader. And on and on.
TAE: What are the chances that the strong underground forces for freedom that are bubbling in Iran will push aside that nation’s theocracy in the next ten years?
Kaplan: I used to be optimistic. In the mid-1990s I saw an Iranian counterrevolution as the biggest coming surprise. But I was wrong. At this point, the theocracy is a system with divisions of power that are very well entrenched, and hard to overthrow.
And Iran is not Iraq—we couldn’t just go in there and topple it. There’ll be a slow evolution at some point, but I think the reality is that as long as we’re overextended in Iraq, we have to try to get as far as we can in Iran together with our allies. And only when the Iranian regime crosses a line in the sand with regard to their nuclear development should we—or will we—take any action.
TAE: Have you spent enough time with Iraqis recently to have drawn any conclusions on their current state of mind?
Kaplan: I think there’s a large, silent majority in Iraq whose worst nightmare is that we’ll leave abruptly. They don’t want us there with 140,000 troops, but they don’t want us to leave either. They essentially want what the Administration and responsible Democrats [?] want—a gradual takeover by their own forces over a few years.
TAE: If we gave you only two options, would you say that over the last three years in Afghanistan and Iraq the U.S. has achieved more than we should have expected, or less than we should have expected?
Kaplan: In Afghanistan we’ve achieved more than we should have expected. You have to compare today’s Afghanistan to the high-water mark of its own governance in the 1950s and 1960s under King Zahir Shah. Even then, the government did not control the whole country and did not extend its writ into villages and towns. By that standard, we’ve achieved a lot more than anyone could have expected. And among the Afghan people, there’s relatively little anti-Americanism.
In Iraq, we’ve achieved a lot more than we have in Haiti or Kosovo—but still achieved less than we should have expected. My litmus test for Iraq is the flak jacket. As long as we still have to wear flak jackets all the time, then we’re not where we need to be.
TAE: How rapidly should U.S. forces be withdrawn from Iraq over the next few years, and what should the criteria be?
Kaplan: First of all, I don’t believe in a timetable. Troops should only be withdrawn as rapidly as the situation allows. And when we do pull down the number of troops—which we will—it’s important to get the political body language right. We cannot seem as if we’re cutting and running.
When Prime Minister Barak of Israel withdrew from Lebanon, for example, he got the political body language wrong. That resulted in the Palestinians misunderstanding his actions, and it became a significant cause of the first intifada. The Israeli prime minister was right to withdraw, but it wasn’t couched in the right phrases with the right context. So we have to be very careful about our withdrawal.
TAE: We hear much in the establishment media about morale problems in U.S. military ranks, and reporters often seek out disenchanted troops to put in front of microphones. Have you encountered widespread morale problems among American fighters in Iraq?
Kaplan: Absolutely not. I’ve only met two kinds of soldiers in the combat arms community: Those who have served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and those who are pulling every bureaucratic string to get deployed there.
I spent the summer of 2004 with a group of marines in Niger and sub-Saharan Africa, and every marine in that platoon was trying to get to Iraq. A few months later, one of them got lucky and ended up leading Iraqi forces into combat in the second battle of Fallujah. He was a sergeant from Georgia, and after the battle, he sent me a long e-mail flush with pride. And that’s not just a cutesy-pie story—that’s basically what I encounter all the time.
The only disenchantment is found in the Reserves and the National Guard, mainly because they signed up for a short time and end up serving many months. That’s a system that needs reform. But generally speaking, morale is better than it’s been in a very long time.
Keep in mind there is very little combat going on now. Most deployments feature more humanitarian missions than combat. Even in Iraq, the troops really have to search far and wide to find combat activities.
TAE: How do our soldiers understand for themselves, and explain to others, the value of the work they are doing in Iraq?
Kaplan: Soldiers are very aware of why they’re fighting—and that awareness stems from their own practical day-to-day experience, which is not killing people. By and large, they’re rebuilding, patrolling, and helping the Iraqi people.
Second, it’s important to realize that most soldiers don’t sit around discussing abstract questions like whether or not we should’ve intervened. They do, however, take policy and command directives, break them down, and then argue, complain, and fervently discuss them.
Since the dawn of time, the most popular hobby amongst soldiers has been complaining at night in the barracks. If you don’t hear complaints, then you know morale is bad—because that means people are silent. And I think that many journalists misconstrue this, because they don’t understand—and they haven’t read the history of—barracks life.
TAE: As in any institution with millions of members, there are rogue soldiers—and today we know their names and faces very well, as with Lynndie England. At times this has threatened to paralyze our war on terror. How common are rogue soldiers, compared to soldiers who do the right thing?
Kaplan: They’re statistically infinitesimal. This is the most disciplined, restrained military the U.S. has ever had, under more scrutiny than it’s ever had. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: Nothing was a greater privilege in my professional life than being with 18- and 19-year-old marines as they turned into restrained adults the minute that combat commenced. To say that we shouldn’t give our soldiers authority is like saying we shouldn’t fly planes because they occasionally crash.
TAE: Have you talked to any of the troops about their feelings on Abu Ghraib?
Kaplan: Yes, and there are several levels to this. First and foremost, every soldier I’ve talked to has wanted to scream, “What were those idiots thinking? Who were their commanders? They should all be put in prison because they’ve besmirched our name! And even though 99 percent of what we do is good, nobody is writing about it because of these few idiots!”
That’s the first level. The other level is that after about six weeks of blanket coverage, they started disliking the media. They knew that the first few days of coverage were legitimate, because this was a terrible abuse. But after a few weeks, when the new revelations became smaller and smaller and less and less significant, the continuing blanket coverage obscured the great work that the U.S. Army was doing.
At that time, for example, they were involved in very restrained, close-quarters urban combat in Karbala, fighting that made Black Hawk Down look easy. Yet very little was written about it. And that’s when I heard soldiers start saying that the media was part of the problem.
TAE: You argue in your new book that evangelical Christianity has played an important role in making the U.S. military more moral, more disciplined, and more discerning. Explain that for our readers.
Kaplan: After Vietnam, one of the many motors that helped transform our military into a disciplined organization capable of complex exercises was the resurgence of religion. Perhaps most importantly, religious Christianity cut down on drinking and misbehavior. That in turn weakened the lure of the officers’ clubs, which narrowed the barrier between officers and enlisted and non-coms. I attended quite a number of religious services during my reporting for Imperial Grunts, and I never found them intimidating, proselytizing, or coercive. And the religion bucked up morale during difficult moments.
TAE: Is Islam a religion of peace, or is there is a bellicose spirit right at the heart of Islam?
Kaplan: Islam is a religion that’s willing to fight. It’s a great religion for poor, downtrodden people, and there are so many around the world. It’s direct. It’s stark. It’s in a specific language. The Koran has fewer ambiguities than other religious texts. In a way, it’s very populist. It actively proselytizes. And even though I wouldn’t call it a war-like religion, it can adjust itself to war more easily than others. But Old Testament-oriented Christianity can also do that. The Old Testament is all fire and brimstone, while the New Testament is more milk and honey. And evangelicals put a significant emphasis on the Old Testament.
TAE: Where are the moderate Muslims today? Why don’t we hear more from them after outrages are committed in the name of Islam?
Kaplan: I think they’ll be more outspoken if we can stick it out in Iraq. Look at the fact that some Sunnis were bombing mosques during Ramadan. How come nobody’s protesting in the Arab world? But once our success is assured, I think they’ll speak up.
Meanwhile, we do have Ayatollah Sistani. If Nobel Peace Prizes actually went to people who deserved them, it would have gone to him this year. Sistani exercised tremendous enlightened restraint in the face of so much violent provocation, and he really kept his community together. I do think we’ve gotten lucky with the Shiite leadership in southern Iraq.
TAE: You’ve argued that Democrats will not be trusted to wield the sword of U.S. national defense so long as a fierce U.S. combat soldier who draws inspiration from the Bible is something that makes them uncomfortable. Why are the Democrats seen as so weak on national security, and will that change?
Kaplan: Look at last year’s election, which, to a certain extent, was a referendum on the Iraq war. More than 70 percent of active-duty military personnel, Reserve, and Guard voted for the Republicans. And from my anecdotal experience—which was with the front line infantry and the Special Forces, who have always been more conservative—the Republicans probably received more than 90 percent of the vote.
With numbers like those, you have to ask yourself why. It wasn’t for policy reasons; a lot of people in the barracks will openly say that Bush and Rumsfeld made a number of mistakes. It was cultural. People in the military don’t feel like the Democrats are one of them. They feel as if the Democrats are from another America—from the same America as the elite media.
So the Democrats have a cultural hurdle to overcome, and it’s essential for the well-being of our democracy that they overcome it. A two-party democracy is only as strong as the opposition party, and if the opposition party simply can’t get elected, then the party in power starts performing worse and worse because it doesn’t feel the competition. It’s happened in other democracies, and I’m afraid of this happening in the U.S.
It’s also important that the military doesn’t become associated for too long with one political party. But for that to change, the Democrats must overcome their cultural problems. And generally speaking, that means changing their skewed ideas of what it means to be a Southerner or an evangelical in uniform.
TAE: Why do so many reporters, academics, and some everyday Americans think that people who go into the Army or Marines must be folks who didn’t have bright prospects in college or the civilian work force?
Kaplan: To be diplomatic, I think it’s class prejudice and snobbery. Because most of the people I meet in the lower ranks aren’t poor or from the ghetto—they’re the solid working class, which does still exist. They’re from non-trendy places in between the two coasts, or from working-class urban neighborhoods.
Look, for example, at one of the Special Forces teams I was with in Algeria. The executive officer, a graduate of The Citadel, was from a farming family in Indiana. The master sergeant was from a farming family in New Hampshire. The warrant officer grew up in an Italian section of Queens, New York. That’s America. Whites in the barracks get very insulted if you confuse them with so-called white trash, and African Americans in the barracks get tremendously insulted if you confuse them with people in the inner city. With both groups, some of them may have come from the underclass, but they’ve long since separated themselves from it. They have no class envy.
TAE: Most European democracies have completely lost their fighting spirit, and are thus left with unimpressive military forces. Why is the U.S. a comparative exception today among modern Western nations in the survival of a righteous martial spirit among its population?
Kaplan: I think Australia still has it, and Japan is regaining it. People are a little uncomfortable with that, given Japan’s military history, but their reconstituted spirit is understandable given their terrific fear of a reunited greater Korea. And even Singapore has a very feisty, strong military. So we’re not the only ones.
But in all these cases, I think it’s because there is a sense of specific nationhood, anchored to a specific geography, which gives it a moral accountability. Once you’re de-linked from geography and you only think in terms of universal values, you’re no longer motivated. That’s why Europe has a specific problem. The old nation exists less and less in Europe.
TAE: Much of the American elite has also lost its “martial spirit.” How has the American elite changed over the years, and why do you think they have?
Kaplan: In the early 1960s, I remember hearing my truck-driving father talk about the “Establishment”—people like Averil Harriman, John McCloy, Charles Bolin, George Tannin. Even though these people were very liberal, they saw themselves as Americans. Today’s similar figures wouldn’t see themselves in the same light, because they so often socialize and cross paths with people from other countries.
So the American elite exists less and less as an institution, while the global elite exists more and more. Today’s media elites, for example, care more about the thoughts and writings of their “esteemed” colleagues in Britain or France than their counterparts at the Chicago Tribune or the Omaha World Herald. That was not the case when I was growing up.
TAE: Do you think part of the problem that elites have with George Bush is the fact that he comes across as so American?
Kaplan: Definitely. The reality is that President Bush comes across as a kind of throwback, an archetypal figure from an earlier America. So no matter what he says, post-national elites in Washington and New York are going to feel culturally alienated by him. That’s something he just has to deal with.
TAE: Give us your overall view of journalists today.
Kaplan: We live in an increasingly large and complex society, and it’s becoming separated out into fragments. And each group—journalists, lawyers, soldiers—tend to socialize with each other, to date each other, to marry each other.
But journalists have a problem that other professional groups don’t have, because their job requires objectivity. As they become one social caste whose elite members tend to live in certain places, with similar zip codes, in similar high-income environments, that becomes very hard to get around.
Moreover, newspapers like the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Baltimore Sun used to be almost as significant as the New York Times. Those days are over. So the elite newspapers—which are only on the coasts, not in the heartland—now drive the debate. The result is that journalistic objectivity has become very problematic.
TAE: Give us some guesses as to what the world’s flashpoints and hotspots will be ten years from now, in 2016.
Kaplan: I think the focus of our military and security concerns is going to move to Asia, because the strength of the Chinese economy will have military consequences. They’re going to spend a lot of money on submarines—both diesel and nuclear—and develop an imperial navy. Over the next 50 years, the Pacific Ocean will no longer be the American lake that it’s been for the past 50. Unless we begin military cooperation with Indonesia, for instance, at some point the Indonesian military will be captured by the Chinese in some form.
We have to figure out how to manage the re-emergence of China as a military power. I also think that the Indonesian, Malaysian, and southern Philippine archipelago will grow in importance as possible venues for world terrorism. And I think that President Chavez of Venezuela is a potential Castro. Because he’s got a continental nation rather than an island, he could be more dangerous than Castro ever was. I think we need to develop a more realistic outlook on India. The future of the Middle East will be determined by Iran, and any major shift there will have consequences across the region. Even a subtle pivot by Iran toward greater cooperation with America would deal a serious blow to radicals through the region.
Published in Whatever Happened to Small Government? January/February 2006
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:24 AM | Comments (3)
December 20, 2005
Seraphic Thanks
Want to thank an American soldier? Here's how to do do it. I urge all my readers to take a moment and send a note to a soldier overseas. It's hard work being a soldier. It's mostly really boring downtime punctuated by moments of gut churning fear. It helps to know that the folks back home are thinking of you.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:26 PM | Comments (2)
Just Because
Karen and I have written about Ariel and what it feels like to lose a child. Many of our readers and commenters have also lost children. This post comes from that superb military blog The Mudville Gazette, from a father who lost a son in Iraq. He lost Mike, Just Because...
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2005
We All Have the Stupids II
Karen writes: The back story of the original idea of the AIDS T-shirt is more interesting than the lunacy of those who posed with the final version.
It turns out that the people who are willing to proclaim that they "All Have AIDS", aren't willing to individualize it to themselves, and hence, in their agreeing to wear the shirt prove how meaningless the whole campaign is. Originally the T-shirts read, "I Have AIDS." Well, in the words of the "brains" behind the solidarity for AIDS, Kenneth Cole, "People were not jumping at it, which speaks to the stigma of AIDS," (My vote for the understatment of the century.)
Well, the shirts were modified to read, "We All Have AIDS." And oh boy, then the mindless stars were willing to jump on the bandwagon.
In a perversion of history Mr. Cole stated that the idea came to him as he thought of the story of the Danish king, Christian X, who in solidarity with the Jews in his country donned a yellow star. Well, the King's idea was that Jews should not be singled out, and it was clear that he was not Jewish and he was mocking the Nazis! This is quite different than everyone proclaiming that they have AIDS!
While we're on the topic of the distortion of disease into a political issue, there is the opposite crime committed by liberals. They demonize or criminalize some diseases. I have seen obituaries which read that the person died of throat cancer. The next sentence reads, that the deceased, "...was known as a heavy cigar smoker for much of his life."
What is that?
An accusation of blame? On the other hand, when people are known to die of AIDS, would you ever read that they "are known to have engaged in homosexual acts which might have lead to contracting AIDS?" How dare they bring up smoking as the cause of their cancer in the obituary? What is this, an obituary or an insurance claim? Why does illness have to be politicized?
There seems to be a moral confusion here. If you smoke you are accused of killing yourself or harming others with second hand smoke.
If you have AIDS you are shielded, even though you might spread it to others, and you are given glamourized status, absolved from responsibility of engaging in risky behavior. But whoa, the guy who smoked--- he's demonized in his obituary, blamed for causing his own death.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:47 PM | Comments (12)
December 16, 2005
Nuclear Jews of Iran
The really, really good news is that when the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, he and his mad mullah buddies eventually expelled several thousand Jews from Iran.
Taking their cue from European anti-Semites, the Persians "taxed" the Jews before allowing them the privilege of leaving Iran, letting them to sell their properties and businesses at "fair" meaning, ruinous rates, thereby assuring that a whole generation of Jews left Iran feeling, well, kinda pissed.
That really is the good news.
The other good news comes from Iraq. Millions have risked life and limb, stained their fingers with a deep post-modern purple--all in the name of democracy.
This is a milestone in the Arab world.
President Bush, his advisors, and the Republican party have stood their ground in the face of growing domestic and foreign opposition. At the same time our soldiers carry on the most brutal kind of warfare: urban counter-terrorism.
Excuse me if I don't use the fashionable term "insurgency." It seems to me that when you indiscriminately slaughter men, women and children, kidnap then chop off people's heads, well, you qualify as a terrorist.
But that's just me. Maybe I'm just, y'know, rigid.
And now an intolerable evil once again faces the world.
Read Charles Krauthammer on Iran, perhaps our finest political thinker.
Much ink has been spilled regarding a potential Israeli strike on the various Iranian nuclear facilities that are scattered about that vast and ancient land.
And most that has been written is utter nonsense.
As to the question of whether Israel has the right to attack and destroy Iran's nuclear sites, only an over-educated fool with a Ph.D in "Useful Idiocy" would even ponder such a question for more than a fraction of a moment.
This is a case of us or them.
And so, let's return to all that really good news I was referring to when the mad mullahs expelled so many Jews when the Ayatollah ascended to power.
Let's play make-believe.
You're an Iranian Jew living in Israel. You speak Farsi.
Perfectly.
In fact, you're conversant in various dialects. That's because your mother comes from Tehran, and your father comes from, oh, let's say, Hamadan. It's like having a Brooklyn accent. Almost impossible to learn. It comes to you with your mother's milk.
So, you speak Farsi. You're at ease with the food, culture and customs of Iran.
But, and this is sooooo beautiful, but: you burn with a white-hot hatred of what was done to your parents, to your community, to your people.
You.
Want.
Revenge.
And you are going to get it.
For scores of Iranian/Israeli men and women have been recruited into the Mossad.
In America, our university language students go to "Language Camp." They study Arabic or Farsi intensely for a few months, and then work for the CIA or the NSA as translators.
Impressive, huh?
Not.
In Israel, these young Iranian Jews who already speak Farsi fluently -- Hey, bet you can't say: 'speak Farsi fluently' five times in a row really fast -- So, these young Iranian Jews are thrust into isolated training camps. These Jews become Shi'a Muslim. They speak only Farsi. They go native to such a degree that the "self" becomes a distant rumor. Talk about identity crisis. Sheesh.
They do this for over a year.
Well, some do it for over a year.
Most wash out.
Only a small fraction of potential agents endure, only a tiny fraction thrive under what can only be described as "not too normal conditions."
Not only do these agents go native in language, religion, food, dress and thought, but they also go through close combat and weapons training. In other words, they learn how to kill.
Sooooo, my advice to any scientist working on Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program: go find another line of work, something safe and secure, say... food taster for the President of Haiti.
Contrary to what you've been reading in the lazy and robotic mainstream media, the Israeli plan for Iran is not just to rely on the power of the air force. The lessons of the Yom Kippur War are still fresh and incredibly painful in the minds of the Israeli War Staff. They will never forget looking on in horror as illiterate Arab soldiers guided SAM 6 Soviet missiles which neutralized the vaunted Israeli air force. That war ended up as a slug-fest between tanks and armored vehicles, usually with odds of up to ten Arab tanks to one Jewish tank--which was considered perfectly fair and acceptable to the IDF, considering the wretched loading and gunnery of the Arab tank crews.
The Israeli air force was practically useless as long as that SAM umbrella was operable
Sidebar for War Geeks: A friend of mine, an IDF tank commander, commented about the Egyptian forces during the Yom Kippur war: "For the most part they fought bravely, but not particularly well."
It is doubtful, in fact tactically undesirable, for the Israelis to ever again rely soley on one single branch of the service to win any war.
And so it is with Iran and her rogue nuclear installations. Here Israel will coordinate attacks on several fronts using several services simultaneously: air, navy (submarine), and the oldest weapon in all of warfare: the single soldier.
It's not well known, but preceeeding the 1981 Israeli strike against the Iraqi Osirak nuclear facility, the Israelis assasinated several European scientists who were collaborating with Saddam.
The Israelis gave plenty of warning to these mercenary scientists. Told them to back off, or else.
Saddam promised full protection. Said the Jews would never get through his cordon of agents. Alas, Saddam's men were fine murdereres and torturers but incompetent defenders. Duh!
Some Hollywood insider info you might like to know: Word is that Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner are outraged about this act of Jewish self defence and are preparing an Oscar worthy film. It's to be financed by that paragon of virtue, Prince Bandahar. Steven calls this picture "Prayer for Peace II" and it will have its premier in 2007 in Saudi Arabia at the "City of Mecca Film Festival." Only problem is Jews are not allowed in Saudi Arabia. But Steven and Tony, culturally sensitive liberals that they are, have agreed not to attend. As if they have any choice in the matter. Beheading is the punishment. Anyway, word is they are sending Michael Moore in their place to make opening remarks.
But I digress.
At the moment, Iran is nicely penetrated by Israeli/Iranian agents. They are in every city, every province where the nuclear facilities are located.
Israel will not allow Iran to go hot.
Courageous Jews live quietly, determinedly as strangers in a mad and volatile land; a land whose Prime Minister has repeatedly denied the Holocaust, has repeatedly called for the extermination of the Jewish state, the Jewish people.
You do not negotiate with such people.
You do not try and understand why they hate us.
Unless you're French.
Or Howard Dean.
As George Orwell said: People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
Karen and I wish our readers a peaceful and meaningful Shabbos.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:11 AM | Comments (30)
December 14, 2005
Karen's at City Hall, Where's Robert?!
The continuing saga of Robert's life-long love affair with Karen. It's a looooong story that started in fourth grade, in the Yeshiva of Flatbush.
You know that scene in the movies where the bride is left standing at the altar and the groom is a no-show?
Well, obviously that wasn't us. But, we did have a close call.
A few weeks before the wedding, Karen and I are scheduled to go to City Hall to apply for our wedding license.
Full disclosure: I have a minor problem with the New York subway system. Well, maybe not so minor. It's actually a major problem. And the problem is: unless I know my route intimately I tend to get kind of um, confused. Which is another way of saying that I get completely lost.
Now, I usually do my homework, plan my route very carefully. I make copious notes, I'm like a soldier going into a battlefield. But something happens when I'm on the subway. There's the shrill screech of steel upon steel. The hypnotic flash of lights. The clackety-clack of the rails that smears my brain into a flustered twilight. And then let's not forget the very strange people who talk to themselves and then talk to me—why, oh why do they always confide in me, and why in heavens name do I talk to these loony people who smell like the landfill right outside Lefrak City?
Anyhooo.
I leave work early so I'll be sure to meet Karen right on time. I'm one of those people who always shows up early for meetings. I'm never fashionably late. Even in Hollywood I come early to meetings which is not too smart—but there you go.
I have no intention of being late for my wedding license. I've been waiting for this since the fourth grade, since I first saw and fell in love with Karen.
I am not going to be late, I tell myself. Not. Not. Not. The power of positive thinking.
As if.
Not only do I get lost. I'm pretty sure that I end up in, get this, Harlem. I cleverly intuit this because I'm the only white person aboard the subway, the only person wearing a yarmulke. And people are, and I'm not imagining this, glaring at me.
I have this almost overwhelming impulse to stand up and announce that ever since I've been a little boy I've had a picture of the great Willie Mays taped to my bedroom wall.
Thankfully, I resist this lunatic urge.
When I finally do find my way back to the right subway stop, I cannot for the life of me find the right building. I must be the only person in Manhattan who doesn't know where City Hall is.
And I'm sweating like mad because I know that Karen is anxiously waiting for me. I'm scared that she's scared that I've gotten cold feet and left her standing almost at the altar. What an awful cliche. I feel like screaming. But there are already enough screamers in the streets of New York.
Understand, this is 1977, practically prehistoric times, there are no cell phones. There is no way to communicate with her. No way to explain what a dope I am.
Finally, somehow, I stumble upon the right building, and Karen is standing on the steps waiting. She sees me. I rush over, start to explain.
"You got lost."
"Um, yeah."
"I figured. Let's go."
As we walk into City Hall, I look at Karen's profile. Back in 7th grade, in Yeshiva of Flatbush, there was an assembly one day for our grade and I was seated one row behind Karen. I just sat and stared at Karen's profile throughout the whole period. I was so happy just to sit and gaze at her.
Going into City Hall, the same happiness seizes me. Past and present merge. I am happy. I am content.
Karen adds: I'm sitting here laughing as I read this because Robert wrote "wedding license" instead of "marriage license." I have this image of him getting a special certificate to allow him into the wedding ceremony.
Anyway, there are two reasons that I stayed calm and collected:
A. I felt it was just too humiliating, a downright cliche, to get angry and perceive Robert's tardiness as his subconscious resistance to marriage, and
B. He was so apologetic and contrite, and didn't try to make any excuses. This is not to say that my teeth were not clenched and my tone quite businesslike as we went through the paper work with the city clerk.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:15 PM | Comments (26)
December 13, 2005
Ushpizin
It's entirely appropriate that the best Israeli film ever made is a religious meditation on faith, miracles and love.
Ushpizin is a gentle and comedic story about Moshe and his wife Mali, Baalei Teshuva, Jews who have become observant after leading secular lives. Moshe and Mali are coping with severe money problems at the outset of the holiday of Succos. So poor are they that they can't even afford to purchase a Succah, the temporary booth, or the Lulav or Etrog, needed to celebrate the holiday. Also at the heart of this tale is the oldest of Jewish stories, this loving couple's inability to have a child.
Moshe and Mali pray fervently for a miracle.
And the greatest miracle of all, is the making of this fine and glorious film.
A bit of background. Shuli Rand, who wrote the script and stars as Moshe, used to be a secular Israeli actor until he became a Baal Teshuva. His co-star, Michal Bat-Sheva Rand, is his real-life wife who is also a Baalat Teshuva. They are now Breslov Hasidim.
Shuli Rand is a superb actor, able to mix just the right amount of drama and comedy. The way he uses his body so completely, so effortlessly in every scene reminds me of Charlie Chaplin. He's got that Jewish down-at-the-heels tramp thing going. He's that good. Michal Bat-Sheva Rand is a great reactive actress, the hardest type of film acting there is. The whole time I was watching this film I was in awe of the subtleties in their performances.
The Breslov are unique in that they take an hour a day to meditate, to talk to HaShem, carry on regular conversations with G-d. The Breslov are, as a cousin in Israel once characterized them, one of our more "crunchier" Hasidic groups.
I happen to love their shtreimel, the fur trimmed hats they wear on Shabbos. In the film we learn that the fur is from the tail of foxes.
Who knew?
Back to the film. Ushpizin is Aramaic for Holy Guests and on the holiday of Succos we pray for guests to enter our Succah so that we will have the opportunity to feed and take care of them.
In the film, guests do show up at Moshe and Mali's Succah. But these are not just any guests but escaped prisoners who used to be friends with Moshe in his younger and wilder days.
Naturally, the drama deepens. The main characters are tested. I won't spoil the story by giving anything away.
Ushpizin is beautifully written by lead actor Moshe Rand. Technical credits throughout are first rate. The script is lovingly structured with just the right number of set-ups and payoffs, one of which just made me gasp in professional admiration.
When I worked with Sidney Lumet on A Stranger Among Us, the studio was pressuring us to water down the specifics of the Hasidic life and make the film more "universal." Sidney stepped up and told the executives: "The more specific you make the culture in a film, the more universal does it become."
Ushpizin is so specific, so dead-on in its depiction of life in Meah Shearim, the Jerusalem Hasidic neighborhood where much of the film was shot, that everyone who sees this film will glimpse their lives in the faith and love exhibited between Moshe and Mali.
When the film ended, Karen and I wept because Ariel was not here to see it. He would have adored it.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:35 AM | Comments (25)
December 12, 2005
Dennis Wants to Reform the Reform
Dennis Prager is very unhappy with the latest convention of the Reform wing of Judaism.
I am taking the liberty of printing Dennis Prager's entire article because the LA Times makes you register and I wouldn't want them to get hold of your e-mail address. It is a really lousy paper.
Religious Zealots, Arranged Right to Left
Liberals who want you to be liberal are moral, but Christians who want you to be Christian are bigots.
By Dennis Prager
Nationally syndicated radio host Dennis Prager was awarded the American Jewish Press Assn.'s Excellence in Commentary Prize for 2004.
Americans constantly hear and read about the dangers emanating from the religious right. But what about the dangers from the religious left? Ever hear about those dangers? In fact, do you ever hear about a religious left at all?
Probably not. My Google search of "religious right" yielded 3,890,000 items. A search of "religious left" yielded 276,000. And that search included right-wing websites. My quick survey of a "mainstream," i.e. liberal, news medium revealed an even more lopsided result: New York Times' articles since 1981 mentioned the "religious right" 1,689 times and gave only 29 mentions to the "religious left."
As far as the news media are concerned, there is no religious left, only the religious right and "mainstream" denominations — and, of course, the religious right is regularly described as bigoted, narrow-minded and intolerant, not to mention a threat to the separation of church and state.
Yet, within Christianity and Judaism, the left is very much alive, and in Judaism it is dominant. This leftism was made apparent last month in Houston at the biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest of Judaism's denominations.
Let's begin with religious intrusion into politics. This is probably the least defensible charge thrown at the religious right. First, religious individuals and groups have as much right to attempt to influence society and state as secular individuals and groups do. Second, the religious left is at least as active in attempting to influence governmental policies as the religious right. Perhaps more so.
Take, for example, the Reform convention's resolution opposing the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court (even before hearings have begun). I am unaware of any Orthodox Jewish convention having passed a resolution against the nomination of secular or liberal judges to the Supreme Court.
A second example was the convention's resolution calling for "full voting rights" for the citizens of the District of Columbia. Now, why exactly is that not religious intrusion into politics? And how is that different than when Southern Baptists passed a resolution calling on the United States to keep marriage defined as between a man and a woman?
Such intellectual inconsistencies continued in the keynote address by the head of Reform Jewry, Rabbi Eric Yoffie. The rabbi reserved a portion of his address for an attack on the "religious right," whose leaders, he said, believe that "unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text, you cannot be a moral person."
As I do not believe Rabbi Yoffie knowingly told a lie, I can only assume that he did not mean what he said. His statement is false. I've never heard of a single mainstream conservative, fundamentalist or right-wing Christian who has said or even hinted at this. It is true that the Christian right largely believes that one must believe in Jesus Christ in order to attain salvation. But "saved" is hardly the same as "moral." Christian leaders acknowledge that there are moral non-Christians.
What we have here is left-wing projection: It is the left that believes that if you do not adhere to its values and politics, you cannot be a moral person. Howard Dean recently said that Democrats care if children go to bed hungry at night and Republicans don't.
Rabbi Yoffie also said that "we need beware of the zealots who want to make their religion the religion of everyone else." But isn't that exactly what liberals wish to do — make everyone liberal? Why, pray tell, are liberals who want everyone to be liberal considered moral and moderate, but Christians who want everyone to be Christian considered "zealots" and "bigots"?
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Jewish religious left's convention was how clearly it revealed the supremacy of leftist concerns over Jewish ones. History will record that a month after the Islamic Republic of Iran called for the annihilation of the Jewish state, 5,000 Reform Jews passed resolutions calling for District of Columbia voting rights and "workers' rights" but none about a call for what would amount to another Holocaust or about Islamic anti-Semitism generally, the greatest eruption of Jew-hatred since Nazism. History will likewise also note that two years after the United States made war on a bloodthirsty tyrant who paid the families of murderers of Jews $25,000 each, Reform Judaism passed a resolution condemning that war.
As an active member for 15 years of a Reform synagogue that I love, I can only take this as another sign that the movement has been taken over by people whom one rarely hears about — the religious left.
I am interested in hearing from Seraphic Secret readers who are active members of Reform congregations about this convention and your reactions.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:10 PM | Comments (26)
We All Have The Stupids
It's Friday night. Shabbos. Karen and I are sitting quietly in the living room, catching up on our reading. Suddenly, Karen shoots up on the couch and yelps:
"We all have AIDS! WHAT!?"
Karen has just seen the new publicity campaign to glamorize AIDS, the campaign created by Kenneth Cole to convince Americans that AIDS is an equal opportunity disease. Naturally, clueless Hollywood stars have rushed to appear in these ads.
Castro, who these same Hollywood stars just a-dore, has a different tactic with AIDS victims: he shtups them in gulags. But ask the Hollywood elite about this little totalitarian fact and they'll counter with something like: "Yes, but at least everyone has equal medical care."
But I digress.
They say the ads are to take away the stigma of AIDS. But there is no stigma to AIDS. This disease has been glamorized to the nth degree.
And it never should have been.
In truth, there should be a stigma to AIDS for a stigma would halt the various behaviors that spreads the disease.
Karen was in Israel when these disgusting print ads were first released and so she's just getting her first glance at them and her reaction is, well, pure shock.
Understand, in this marriage, I am the whacky side kick. Karen is the down-to-earth partner. Karen is the one who always counsels me to count to ten, take it easy, avoid confrontation.
But Karen is spitting mad. I have never seen her so angry.
For of course we all don't have AIDS. Here in America, at this point in time, AIDS is a disease which can be stopped in its tracks. No one has to get this disease. No one has to die from this disease.
If you don't know how to avoid AIDS, write to me privately and I'll explain it to you.
This glamorous print ad is just another monstrous lie which if taken seriously will end up killing more people.
Ask yourself, would they put out an ad that says: We All Have Cancer, a disease which kills far more people every year.
I don't think so.
The people who thought up and executed this vile ad are fools and liars.
Karen adds: The reason I was so angry was not because this was an ad, but because this was a declaration, a declaration that was so false and brazenly heartless. My reaction was, you say you have AIDS, I'll give you AIDS, here come here, give me your arm, come take some contaminated blood, let's see how you like having AIDS. What kind of person is so insensitive to the people who are really suffering, are they really willing to take on this disease? What liars. They do not have AIDS, they have colluded with those who portray AIDS as a "social disease" that unlike any other lethal disease has the protection that no other communicable disease is granted. If not for the confidentiality that AIDS patients are given this disease could have been vastly limited, (I know there are other ways of getting it) many years ago. It is to the shame of the political left and gay activists that have politicized a public health issue. Shame on you. There I have said it.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:37 AM | Comments (24)
December 11, 2005
Weekend Roundup
And you thought Germany was a different country. Thanks to Marc Shulman and his excellent blog, American Future, for bringing this to my attention.
I guarantee that The Assistant Village Idiot does not teach at one of our Ivy League Universities. He's way too smart and down to earth. Here he lays out The Social Virtues of Capitalism.
If you want to know what's going on with Iran's nuclear policy don't read the pacifict and clueless NY Times. Instead turn to The Strat-Sphere. His analysis is dead-on.
And from The Gates of Vienna, an incredible blog I was not aware of until this weekend, The New Kristallnacht.
Meanwhile, children writing letters to our fighting soldiers are not what you would expect. Read this and weep. Thanks to Sundries Shack for posting.
Watcher of Weasels has chosen my blog Murderous Peaceniks as one of their blogs of the week. I thank them.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:26 AM | Comments (4)
December 09, 2005
Glamorizing Evil
Stanley "Tookie" Williams is scheduled to be executed in two weeks. It is my fervent hope that the Governor does not grant clemency to this murderer of four innocent people. Williams was also co-founder of The Crips, and so he is also indirectly responsible for the murder of hundreds if not thousands of people.
The Talmud teaches that: If you enter a city that does not have capital punishment then this city will have no justice.
Elsewhere the Talmud teaches: If judges are not harsh when they should be harsh, then they will not be merciful when mercy is called for.
When I look at all the people agitating for Williams' life to be spared I do not see merciful people. On the contrary, I see terrible cruelty. I see people intent on glamorizing evil.
Karen and I wish you all a peaceful and meaningful Shabbos.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:26 AM | Comments (33)
December 08, 2005
What is Love?
And now for something completely different.
This is from one of those e-mails that just keep circulating. Normally, I don't post things like this. But the simplicity and honesty of the answers just touched me to the core. Hey, I'm just a softie. And so I present:
What is Love?
A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, "What does love mean?" The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think:
"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all even when his hands got arthritis, too. That's Love .
Rebecca - age 8
"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."
Billy - age 4
"Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving Cologne and they go out and smell each other."
Karl - age 5
"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs."
Chrissy - age 6
"Love is what makes you smile when you're tired."
Terri - age 4
"Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK."
Danny - age 7
"Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing,you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss"
Emily - age 8
"Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen."
Bobby - age 7
"Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday."
Noelle - age 7
"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well."
Tommy - age 6
"During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore."
Cindy - age 8
"My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night."
Clare - age 6
"Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken."
Elaine - age 5
My mother Z'L did that for my father every Shabbos their whole lives.
"Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford."
Chris - age 7
"Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day."
Mary Ann - age 4
"I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones."
Lauren - age 4
"When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you"
Karen - age 7
Obviously a novelist in the making.
"Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross."
Mark - age 6
"You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget."
Jessica - age 8
A wise child.
And the final one -- Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. Now this will melt your heart.
The winner was a four-year-old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said:
"Nothing, I just helped him cry."
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:33 AM | Comments (16)
December 07, 2005
Munich
This from the Jerusalem Post. An open letter to Steven Spielberg. Thanks to my friend Glen Holman for bringing it to my attention.
Moral Equivalence at Munich. This from Judith, at Kesher, one of the smartest blogs around.
And this from my friend Joe Schick at The Zionist Conspiracy. Here Joe tells us that good Jews just love terrorists.
I have little to add except to say that Steven Spielberg should keep in mind that he is only a film director.
I have no doubt that the film "Munich" will end up doing what Murderous Peaceniks always do--kill more people. In this case it will be Jews.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:36 AM | Comments (44)
December 06, 2005
Birds of Baghdad
Another fine dispath from Michael Yon. I fear that the only time people pay attention to our soldiers in Iraq is when the names of the dead are listed in the papers or pimped out by politicians such as Barbara Boxer. We owe it to our fighting men and women to think about the sacrifices they are making on a day to day basis. What other country is willing to shed the blood of its young to bring freedom to the far shores of a land that has no knowledge of democracy?
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:16 AM | Comments (4)
Orthodox Mystery
My friend Rochelle Krich's latest Molly Blume novel, Now You See Me, has just gone into its seond printing. It's a fine book and if you're looking for a perfect Chanukah or Christmas gift well, your search has ended.
Publisher John Wiley has sent me Alan Dershowitz's latest book, The Case For Peace, asking me to review it on Seraphic Secret. I will read the book this Shabbos and post my thoughts sometime next week.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:50 AM | Comments (4)
December 02, 2005
Murderous Peaceniks
Among the mighty mountain of books on my night table, there's always a few volumes about war.
To any clear thinking person it should be obvious that war is the final arbiter of all great conflicts. Those who speak of negotiated peace speak of fiction.
The great World Wars have made this world what it is and there are numerous lessons to be learned militarily in terms of the present War on Terrorism. Thus I draw your attention to two very fine books.
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, and A World at Arms by Gerhard L. Weinberg.
Tuchman's volume is about World War I, and Weinberg's about the World War II. Tuchman is a riveting historian who has the ability to tell a great story and make history come alive. Weinberg is more academic, there are thousands of footnotes. But he does detail, oh boy does he do detail.
An interesting theme crops up in both books, it's timely and intensely important.
Pacifists, Peace Movements, and their murderous aftermath.
Tuchman points out that the peace movements in France and England that preceeded WWI practically immobilized both countries' heavy industries to such an extent that when war finally did break out, France and England were at least sixteen months behind the Germans in heavy production. You see, the peace movements advocated a policy of--surprise--appeasement. Give the Germans what they want and they won't go to war.
As if.
Tuchman also points out that France and England were tragically behind Germany even in small manufacturing so that her soldiers marched to the front with not even proper winter uniforms. Her soldiers froze to death on the Western front.
Yes, it is true, millions of soldiers perished on the Western front from the new technology of machine guns, from Generals impaled on outmoded military doctrine.
But on a deeper level, millions were slaughtered because of the peace movements that self-righteously refused to recognise reality, that refused to confront evil.
By the way, one of the best films about WWI is King Vidor's The Big Parade, 1925. Also, not to be missed is Stanley Kubrik's Paths of Glory. The loooooooong tracking shots through the trenches were done before the Steadicam was invented and you can see Kubrik's obsession with long takes even at this stage in his career.
But I digress.
You would think that lessons would be learned from World War I. You would think that the pacifists and appeasers and so-called peace activists would have lost all credibility, but truth has a funny way of getting buried in the avalanche of big lies.
And, I suppose, the word "peace" has an almost narcotic effect on man. They hear the word often enough and they get, well, kind of stupid.
The peace movements that preceeded WWII were an almost carbon copy of the nonsense spewed before WWI -- except that communications had improved greatly. Newspapers like the NY Times wielded immense power. And of course, The NY Times, then as now, astonishingly dim, saw no reason to get involved in foreign conflicts. The peace movements in America, France and England were utterly penetrated by Hitler's and Stalin's ruthless agents. And Hitler in a replay of the Kaiser's attitude, well, Hitler absolutely adored the peace movements. He kept a close eye on them, and smiled the whole time. They were, he understood, his best allies. As long as these fools kept up their blather Hitler would be able to swallow whole countries.
Once again, the pacifists and peaceniks advocated appeacement. Just give Herr Hitler what he wants and surely he won't go to war.
Rule # 1 of Peace Movements: They cannot imagine nor confront evil.
Rule # 2 of Peace Movements: They do not care about history.
Rule # 3 of Peace Movements: They are always secretly financed and penetrated by the enemy.
Weinberg points out that by the time Great Britain declared war on Germany, England (and America) were two full years behind Germany in armament production. Once again, the peace camps made sure that the great Democracies were at their weakest at a time when they were literally fighting for their very existence.
Thus another world war dragged on for more years than should have been necessary and millions and millions of lives were lost when again, these lives could have been saved if evil had been confronted at an earlier stage.
It's not a great leap to the Viet Nam War. Because of the "peace movement" at home, we betrayed our allies and the North Vietnamese slaughtered hundreds of thousands of "political enemies."
After that, The Khmer Rouge were emboldened to commit genocide in Cambodia: a million men, women and children were murdered, mostly suffocated with plastic bags. These barbarians knew that America would not interfere, not after Viet Nam. Not after the Peace Movement.
And now the Peace Movement is on the march again.
About Iraq.
About the War on Terror.
God protect us.
And so, the next time you see a "peace demonstration," cloaked in all their moral vanity, keep in mind that these people will probably end up committing mass murder.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:04 AM | Comments (30)