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February 29, 2008
Movie Magazines
Lily Damita—Screen Secrets, September 1929
Artist: Edwin Bower Hesser
In the early days of tinsel town, glossy motion picture magazines fed the public's voracious appetite for all things Hollywood. The covers were done by brilliant artists. The circulation of some magazines reached as high as five and six-hundred thousand paid subscribers. Newsstand sales increased world-wide circulation to two and three million dollar figures. The influence of movie magazines was enormous—on box office and fashion. There were movie reviews. Behind the scenes stories. Writers went on location with the public's favorite stars and filed breathless reports. There were contests, endless beauty tips, and of course inside gossip on the latest Hollywood romances, heartbreaks and shocking scandals.
Here are some examples of the magazine covers that reached mailboxes in every corner of the U.S.A., from sophisticated cities, where jazz clubs were open all night, to tiny towns that lacked electricity and paved roads.
The snappy cover lines gives you an idea of the sizzling topics—dopey pop-psychology was all the rage—the public devoured: The Arch-Enemy of Beauty: Over-Exercise, The Secret Love Lives of the Stars, Hollywood Beauty Tips, Freak Diets, New Fashion, The Curse of the Platinum Blonde, The Low Down on Hollywood, Clara Bow Shops for a Baby, The Inside Story of a Hollywood Romance, Secrets of a Leading Man, Do You Want a Brand New Personality? Um, possibly, and my personal favorite: What Chance Have You in the Movies?
Sigh.
Eighty years later, change the names, shift a few minor details and it's all pretty much the same Hollywood shuffle. Though the cover art in the old movie magazines is breath-taking, and a good deal easier on the eyes than the post-modern graphic arts that makes my eye-balls bleed when I open a magazine or step into the fluorescent corridors of blinking, screaming cyberspace.
Bask in this gift to our Seraphic Friends.
Ann Harding—Photoplay, 1931
Mary Astor—Photoplay, February 1932
Lois Wilson—Photoplay, April 1927
Billie Dove—Hollywood, October 1931
Artist: Edwin Bower Hesser
Mary Brian—Picture Play, March 1930
Artist: Modest Stein
Francis Dee—Picture Play, May 1932
Artist: Modest Stein
Marlene Dietrich—Silver Screen, September 1931
Artist: John Rolston Clarke
Norma Shearer—Photoplay, April 1932
Artist: Earl Christy
Jeanette MacDonald—Photoplay, July 1930
Artist: Earl Christy
Irene Dunne—Photoplay, October 1932
Artist: Earl Christy
Constance Bennett—Modern Screen, October 1932
Mary Nolan—Motion Picture, June 1930
Artist: Marland Stone
Madge Bellamy—Photoplay, January 1929
Artist: Charles Sheldon
Marian Marsh—New Movie Magazine, September 1931
Artist: Rolf Armstrong
Picture Play Magazine, January 1926
Artist: Hal Phyfe
Images Courtesy of: Operator 99
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:26 AM | Comments (17)
February 28, 2008
Two Fighting Generals
General John J. Pershing
The Hamas covenant gleefully borrows from the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion and states that Jews were behind World War I, World War II, international Communism, capitalism and, sigh, Zionism, hence, concludes the official charter of the Palestinian people, the State of Israel must be destroyed and replaced by an Islamic State to be ruled by Sharia. The covenant calls for the death of all Jews, not just in Israel, but everywhere.
The Palestinian people voted overwhelmingly for this genocidal platform. The State of Israel, in effect, ratified this program by expelling every single Jew from Gaza, thereby making yet another—count 'em 23—Arab-Muslim state Judenrein.
Some push the notion of negotiating with Hamas, but guess what, the Hamas covenant clearly says that all negotiations are simply a tactic of jihad whose real goal is the annihilation of the Jewish State.
Okay, not a lot of wiggle room with genociders.
So: let's move on to basic warfare.
How would America respond to terrorists on its own borders?
Bret Stephens has the answer in his fine Wall Street Journal piece: The S'derot Calculus:
On March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa attacked the border town of Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson ordered Gen. John J. Pershing and 10,000 soldiers into Mexico for nearly a year to hunt Villa down, in what was explicitly called a “punitive expedition.” Pershing never found Villa, making the effort something of a failure. Then again, Villa’s raid would be the last significant foreign attack on continental U.S. soil for 85 years, six months and two days.
The citizens of Gaza attack Israel through various proxie armies and then claim to be innocent bystanders.
This can no longer be tolerated.
General Effie Eitam
General Effie Eitam, an Israeli hero, former commander of the IDF in South Lebanon, is the leader of the National Union-National Religious Party.
During the expulsion of 9,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza, Eitam defied the Israeli government and brought his wife and children into Gush Katif to witness and share the unbearable burden of Jews being expelled from their homes by fellow Jews.
Let's hear what this special man has to say about Gaza:
"The Hamas regime in Gaza can boast of one significant achievement—it managed to unite leftists and rightists in Israel. Both myself and Kadima's Haim Ramon understand that we need to act decisively and firmly in order to topple Hamas.
If the past we heard calls in the center of the political map urging talks with Hamas, its brutal attacks on Sderot residents led almost everyone to adopt the same view, and I also hope that it would lead to united deeds that have two aims: Military acts against Qassam launchers and their masters, and making it clear to the Gaza civilian population that electing a terror group to represent them is the main punishment they must bear.
The State of Israel left Gaza and provided its residents with a historic opportunity to elect their leadership — and they elected a radical, belligerent terror group that is Israel's most bitter enemy. And now, as was the case with many peoples throughout history, they are paying the price of their decision. It is immoral and impossible to task us with bearing even some of the price for their mistake.
Never before in history have we seen an entity that enjoyed impunity in the face of self-defense actions of the side under attack. Hamas declared a war on its neighbor with no discrimination between military and civilian targets, and with no provocation on our part. Yet we do not punish Gaza's residents; we merely realize our right for self-defense while facing a situation that is as clear, simple, and just as it gets.
The question of whether residents of Dresden had to bear the price for electing Hitler to lead them, or whether the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to bear the results of the Japanese government's policies in World War II is controversial to this day. Yet as opposed to other nations who simply turned whole cities and hundreds of thousands of civilians into direct victims—we have utilized the right for self-defense in a phased manner that does not result in direct casualties.
Therefore, Israel has the right to cut off the electricity that it supplies to Qassam workshops, the fuel it provides, which is used by launching vehicles, and the cement used to build tunnels and posts that will be used to fire at IDF soldiers one of these days. Israel's right to cut off the supply of these goods cannot face any legal or moral controversy; it also cannot clash with common sense, which demands that we ensure that our enemies would not "enjoy" Israel's economic and strategic power while attacking it.
The price paid by the Gaza population will benefit Israel. This is a legitimate and moral price, and claims regarding a humanitarian disaster are unfounded. We are no longer in Gaza, we made sure not to leave behind anything, and we withdrew to the last inch. Now Gaza is an enemy state. As such, we must address its indiscriminate hostility when it attacks civilians in contradiction of all international conventions and basic morals.
A situation whereby Israel, which is under attack, is asked to maintain the Hamas regime firing at our citizens is unthinkable. The demands for the prevention of a humanitarian disaster should be directed to international aid organizations. We most certainly need to also call on Egypt, Gaza's good neighbor, to do something that is called for and natural for a neighbor that is not in war with Gaza like we are—allow humanitarian aid to go through.
Yet instead of this, we see growing international pressure on Israel to do something completely unreasonable and continue supporting its enemies.
Therefore, before we send our sons to fight in Gaza's alleyways, reinforced with cement that we have transferred to Gaza through crossing points, and before we expose them to the fire of weapons smuggled into the Strip from Egypt - we must try to topple the Hamas regime, and certainly to weaken it through sanctions, while hermetically sealing off the border between the two warring parties.
The impossible situation whereby the Palestinians continue to fire Qassams, while receiving electricity for their Qassam workshops and fuel used by vehicles that fire Qassams, is deluxe terrorism that fits well with the dictum: "The master of the house has gone mad."
In this case, we are the master of the house, and the price we are paying is the security of Sderot and Gaza-region residents, and the stability of the entire State of Israel."
I'd like to know why General Eitam isn't the Prime Minister of Israel?
Original article on Y-net.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:58 PM | Comments (23)
Abbas: Moderate Terrorist
Mahmoud Abbas, Moderate Holocaust Denier, Moderate Terrorist
We're shocked, just shocked. The moderate President of the moderate Fatah, who attended the moderately Marxist Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow and wrote a sparkling dissertation on Holocaust denial, yeah a few Jews died during World War II, but mostly from y'know, disease, is whipping out some pretty snappy dialog these days.
This President of not very much (actually he seems to be co-President of Israel) and who receives billions upon billions of dollars in aid from the Europeans and from our brilliant State Department, is actually threatening violence against his beloved Jewish peace partners.
And we thought that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Hey, we have a great idea: let's hand over Judea, Samaria and half of Jerusalem to the Arabs. Maybe then we'll score some brownie points and the Arabs will like us—they'll really like us—and we'll all live together in peace and harmony, sip latte and sing Kumbaya.
Or: we can deny power and fuel to Gaza, stop talking to Abbas. Declare all boundaries as final and let the Arabs sort themselves out once and for all.
The world will then have to pay attention to genocide in Darfur, Kenya, Congo, Chad, Tibet, North Korea, the list of true horror shows is endless.
Anywhoo, this from Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate President of the moderate Fatah:
PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday said that he does not rule out returning to the path of armed "resistance" against Israel and took pride in the fact that he had been the first to fire on Israel and that his organization had trained Hizbullah.
In an interview with the Jordanian daily al-Dustur, Abbas said that he was opposed to an armed struggle against Israel - for the time being.
"At this present juncture, I am opposed to armed struggle because we cannot succeed in it, but maybe in the future things will be different," he said.
The PA president also expressed pride both in himself and in his organization, Fatah, for trailblazing the path of resistance.
"I had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965 and of being the one who taught resistance to many in the region and around the world; what it's like; when it is effective and when it isn't effective; its uses, and what serious, authentic and influential resistance is," Abbas said.
"It is common knowledge when and how resistance is detrimental and when it is well timed," he added. "We (Fatah) had the honor of leading the resistance and we taught resistance to everyone, including Hizbullah, who trained in our military camps."
Original article here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:31 AM | Comments (2)
February 27, 2008
Lethal Quassam Attack, Plus A Seraphic Suggestion
“Let's head to Gaza, there's a war to fight, jihadists to slice and dice.”
The first responsibility of a national government is to protect all its citizens. Not just some of its citizens.
Nor should a country, Israel, supply a proudly genocidal entity, Gaza, with the electrical power and fuel with which to kill the citizens of her country.
In fact, some would call this madness, or more accurately: national suicide.
But this is precisely what the current Israeli government is doing in regard to the terrorist state of Gaza.
Let's review:
1. The Arabs in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria overwhelmingly voted in favor of genocidal Hamas over genocidal Fatah.
2. Hama's covenant calls for the destruction of the Jewish State, it also labels all negotiations a tactic for jihad. Hamas plans to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state to be ruled by sharia.
3. Naturally, this happy go-lucky-Arab state, not Palestinian, mind you, just Arab, thank you very much, will be, Judenrein. What a shock.
4. So: we understand that the Europeans—appeasers to the core—don't get it. Who cares? Their countries will be swallowed by Jihadists in about 25 years anyway, unless a few good folks pick up arms and start fighting and killing the Islamofascists and their fellow travelers. Good luck, buddies, we're with you.
5. But gee willikers, when did the Jews in Israel turn into leftist Eurotrash?
6. At what point did Israel surrender her self-defense to, ahem, international (as in Rwanda?) peace-keepers.
7. We really, really, really want to know.
8. Because we see little difference between Ehud Olmert and Neville Chamberlain.
9. And Tzipi Livni. Good grief! You're like this one woman cheering squad for shtupping foreign mercenaries on Israel's borders. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with glorious French troops?
10. Hey, I have an idea: flatten Gaza.
FADE TO BLACK:
Shortly after a student at Sapir College in Sderot was killed and one other person was wounded by shrapnel in a Kassam rocket attack, a barrage of four Grad missiles struck the Ashkelon area. According to Channel 1, one person was wounded by shrapnel.
The Sapir College casualty has been identified as Roni Yihieh, 47, of Moshav Bit'ha near Ofakim. Yehieh, a father of four, was critically wounded when a rocket hit a parking lot on the western Negev campus, and died shortly after being evacuated to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.
At least five other people were reported in shock after the attack. Army Radio reported that everyone present on the college campus was being shepherded into sheltered areas. College officials have decided to hold classes as scheduled on Thursday, despite earlier reports that studies might be put on hold.
To read the complete story, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 05:54 PM | Comments (28)
City of Angels for S'derot
Paula Abdul
At last, some good news, and Hollywood stars with real voltage stepping forward to support Israel and the embattled residents of S'derot.
Hats off to Sly, Paula Abdul, and Jon Voight.
Los Angeles is proving to indeed be a "City of Angels.’" A host of Hollywood stars, including Paula Abdul, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight, will be participating Tuesday in a charity and solidarity concert for the rocket-battered town of Sderot in Beverly Hills.
The concert, entitled "Live for Sderot", which will include a performance by Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb and will be attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, will also launch the celebrations of the State of Israel's 60th anniversary in the city.
To read the complete story, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Dirty Harry, at Libertas.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:46 PM | Comments (12)
February 26, 2008
Movies as Moral Landscape
The Seven Samurai
Yesterday, in our post, we introduced Gila of My Shrapnel and her articulate dissection, Part I, Part II, of the intellectually bankrupt notes by the director of the film A Death in Jerusalem—a film that is, at best, an ethical black hole.
We said that all movies are, in one way or the other, a moral landscape.
The first moral choice a film maker makes is subject matter.
The second choice is point of view; choosing the main character and supporting characters.
An Arab propagandist cobbled together a film, Jenin, Jenin, actually a blood libel—there is no other phrase to describe this false narrative—a film that spreads the virus that the IDF massacred civilians in Jenin in 2002.
Of course, no such thing ever happened.
It's all a lie. The Big Jenin Lie.
In truth, the final death toll was 56 Palestinians, the majority of them combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers.
The IDF went into Jenin, a deadly urban environment, with ground troops, in order to avoid inflicting civilian casualties. In making this decision the IDF suffered terrible fatalities, in one single ambush thirteen Jewish soldiers were killed in a narrow alley.
Contrast this with the siege by the Lebanese army on the Palestinian town of Nahr el-Bared, which was indiscriminently shelled for months. Lebanese ground troops were barely used because urban combat is on the side of the terrorists. Of course, we have not seen any films about the massacre in Nahr el-Bared, though the Lebanese Army killed scores of civilians. It seems the world, especially the Arab-Muslim world, has a high tolerance for Arab on Arab massacres.
But as always, Pallywood grinds away with their side of the story—this dark hole of a phrase that passes for intellectual thought is a mask for a series of modern blood libels, one of the most notorious, The al Durah Affair.
My modest local library has Jenin, Jenin on its shelves. I checked it out, screened it and was sickened. It's like watching Nazi propaganda, a series of lies piled upon lies. I talked to the librarian, who knew nothing about the film. She reared back at the notion of plucking it from the shelves because, y'know, that would be censorship. I asked her how she would feel if there was a film in her library that claimed that blacks were never slaves in America, that The Middle Passage was an elaborate hoax. She, a lovely black lady, just stared at me and refused to entertain the notion that there was any intellectual linkage.
America wins wars when Hollywood helps fight those wars. When Hollywood chooses the path of moral equivalency, when Hollywood chooses the squishy, black hole of multiculturalism, then America loses and retreats. Witness, Vietnam. Witness the uncertainty as the American public gazes and blinks in bafflement at Iraq and Afghanistan, front lines in the war on Islamic jihad.
Movies can be world's most powerful propaganda tool, if properly utilized.
I am a screenwriter because as a young, alienated yeshiva student I wandered into a movie theater and saw The Seven Samurai. This towering film, the story of resistance to terrorism, inspired me to become a screenwriter.
Toshiru Mifune in The Seven Samurai
It's a perfect movie, and a movie of perfect moral clarity.
The most Jewish non-Jewish movie ever produced.
And now, as Jew-haters crank out slick propaganda designed to annihilate the Jewish state and the Jewish people, we are witness to Jews who prop up this juggernaut of hate. They are nothing new. The Maccabees declared war against the Hellenized Jews of the Greek-Assyrian Empire, and we must do the same. We too must fight the jihadists and their fifth columnist enablers—with swords, and most certainly with fine screenplays and morally sharp cameras.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Ari Kinsberg
Jenin Links:
I asked my friend Soccer Dad if he could provide me with some of his invaluable Jenin links and he graciously obliged:
Here's a briefing by Dr. Ephraim Sneh, and Maj. David Zangen Chief Medical Officer of the Jenin Area.
A Lost Soldier, Staff Sgt. Matanya Robinson
A Lost Soldier, Sgt. Shmuel Weiss
Soccer Dad adds: “Shmuel Akiva Weiss was a medic. When Matanya Robinson was shot, Weiss ran to treat him. That's when a sniper shot him. Remember the MDA is not internationally protected, not that the terrorist who killed Shmuel Akiva Weiss would have cared about such things.”
But there was something else the two men had in common.
Soccer Dad notes: A sad post-script, Stewart Weiss, who wrote the above article had a son who was later killed in combat too.
The Ongoing War blogs about the screening of Jenin, Jenin. Here's the summary of this fine and necessary blog: “Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media often report them inadequately and inaccurately. Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in 2001, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. Jihadism will end in Israel (New York, Madrid, London, Bali) only after people first understand the scale on which it's happening. This war is killing us.”
And finally, PR considerations in The Battle of Jenin.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:51 AM | Comments (19)
February 25, 2008
To Die in Jerusalem
The aftermath of a homicide bombing in Jerusalem
We have often pointed out that every film, in one way or another, is a rich moral landscape. Some films are pure propaganda. The work of Leni Riefenstahl in service to the Third Reich, propped up and glorified that genocidal regime. At the same time, Hollywood fought back with a series of movies that helped the allied war effort, movies that were inspirational to our troops and the folks at home.
Currently, we are awash in movies that serve to excuse and enable Islamic jihadists. These movies come from Hollywood in the guise of patriotic self-criticism—much akin to wife-beating in order to build a healthy marriage.
With the rise of cheap and highly mobile video cameras and editing consoles, full-length documentaries are produced and distributed on shoe-string budgets. And of course, because moral equivalence is all the rage among liberals, and hatred of Israel—a fig-leaf for Jew-hatred—is rampant among the chattering classes, we are witness to a deluge of films that enable Islamic jihadists and make light of Jewish victims.
One such film is To Die in Jerusalem, whose ostensible subject matter is this homicide bombing in Kiryat Yovel, 2002.
Gila of My Shrapnel, who survived the Machane Yehuda homicide bombing, writes articulately, eloquently, and with no shortage of wit about the cold, moral collapse at the core of this film.
The director's notes to the film reveal her thought process as a moral swamp, a film student drunk with mindless, Oprah chatter designed to disguise the true intent of the film: the elevation of moral equivalence between killer and victim, a cinematic, hence ethical point-of-view that leads to the glorification of Jew-killing.
If you care about movies, about the power of movies, this is essential reading.
If you care about Israel, about the war on terror, this is essential reading.
Because Israel and the Jews are the canary in the coal mine of civilization.
To Die in Jerusalem, Part I.
To Die in Jerusalem, Part II.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:27 AM | Comments (22)
February 24, 2008
Best of the Jewish Blogosphere # 155
I was supposed to donate blood this morning at one of our Orthodox shuls. The local Jewish Health Care Fund runs these programs every few weeks. They contacted me by e-mail, and I dutifully made an appointment.
So I go, fill in all the paperwork, assure them that I don't have AIDS, I'm not testing for AIDS, haven't eaten meat in England or Wales, have not indulged in cannibalism in Borneo, that I'm not a male or female prostitute, that I have not been tattooed, served time in prison, that I'm not homosexual, metrosexual, pansexual, polysexual—all these happy-go-lucky questions I check, check, check in the negative, while humming Singin' in the Rain.
Anywhoo!
Barbara Stanwyck in Night Nurse, 1931
The Nurse—I wish nurses dressed like nurses in the old days, with the starched white cap, squeaky shoes, and those blinding white outfits. I mean, I have no idea who's a nurse and who's a janitor when I step into a hospital these days. So, she calckety-clacks into her computer, frowns and says:
“You can't donate, Mr. Maverick.”
James Garner as Bret Maverick
“Avrech.”
“Says here you donated just a few weeks ago, Mr. Maverick.”
“They called me up, I came. It's Avrech, No M.”
“They shouldn't have called you so soon. That's a glitch in the system. We appreciate your enthusiasm but you can't give until March 9.”
“If I get up and walk out of this little booth without giving blood, everybody is gonna think I have some new and novel sexual disease.”
“Huh?”
“People might think I have, y'know, AIDS or something.”
“Sir, you cannot donate, I'm very sorry.”
“They gave me a free pass to the movies, do I have to give that back?”
Nurse Carole Lombard, Vigil in the Night, 1940
Nurse Ratchett consults with her supervisor. After a moment she returns.
“You can keep the pass since you went to all the trouble to come down here.”
As I make my exit, shoulders hunched, I'm pretty sure that everyone is staring at me, minds whirring away, cooking up elaborate scenarios as to why I've been rejected.
Bunch of yentas.
Sigh.
Home to discover Haveil Havalim #155, The Falling Asleep at my Computer Edition.
Now I can forget my humiliation. Drown my sorrows in Jewish linkage.
My friend Jack, whose thoughts are anything but random, hosts this splendid edition, and listen—literally—he's got an audio message/pitch/whatever at the top of the post. I love his little cackle at the end.
We'd like to thank Jack for including Seraphic Secret's Home Game in this fine round-up of the Jewish blogosphere.
I think we can all agree that since the great Soccer Dad handed the baton to Jack, the highest standards have been upheld, and Jack has managed to stamp the Best of the Jewish Blogosphere with his own unique sensibility. Yasher Koach, Jack.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:02 AM | Comments (21)
February 22, 2008
Captain Joe is Going to Shoot You Tonight
From Seraphic Friend Jameel at The Muqata a story about a Jew who refuses to be intimidated by Arab terrorists, a Jew who strikes fear into the hearts of those who fling rocks and Molotov cocktails at cars traveling 55 mph. Ladies and gentlemen: Captain Joe.
Soccer Dad shows why The New York Times is no more reliable when it writes about Israel than when it smears John McCain.
Nice way to go into Shabbos: Solidarity with S'derot. H/T Gregg
Another lie brought to you by the mainstream media, enabled by incompetent Israeli press officers. American hating Marxist radical Rachel Corrie did not die while protecting an Arab home. She was protecting a tunnel used by Arab terrorists to smuggle in arms and explosives to kill Jews. Israel Matzav has the copy and video that tells the entire sordid story. Needless to say Rachel Corrie was no peace loving martyr, she was just another in a long line of leftist, terrorist-enabling Jew-haters.
The Oscars. Karen and I DVR the endless proceedings, then rip through the evening, mostly paying attention to what's really important: gowns, hair, jewelery and footwear. The only part of the evening that gets to my core is the Death Montage, when all the actors, writers, directors and other great artists who have died in the past years flash before my eyes. I bawl like a baby. But listen, for you hard-core fans, my friend Dirty Harry at Libertas will be Live Blogging the Oscars, and his conservative and very witty commentary will, I guarantee, be more entertaining than the show. Though Dirty Harry probably doesn't look all that good in a Alexander McQueen gown. Oh well, can't have everything.
When Jihad Came to America, by Andrew C. McCarthy. Essential Reading.
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:43 AM | Comments (10)
February 20, 2008
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess!
Many persons who have followed my career on the screen and stage mistake me for a Jewess. This belief perhaps was strengthened when I married Ricardo Cortez, my third husband, the only one I ever really loved, and whom I am now trying to divorce.
Although I didn't find it out until almost a year after our marriage, Ric, instead of being a gallant Spanish caballero which I believed him, was the son of a kosher butcher, with a shop on First Avenue, New York City. His real name is Jacob Kranz.
Alma Rubens, silent film star turned hopeless drug addict, penned a fascinating, lurid confessional, This Bright World Again, that was serialized in newspapers in 1931.
Alma Rubens, Early Studio Portrait
Her insistence of her non-Jewish roots comes early in Chapter One. She wanted to get the Jewish thing out of the way—fast. She assured her readers that she was of French and Irish ancestry, reared as a strict Catholic. Alma was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in San Francisco.
But the truth is her father probably was Jewish.
Rubens, in a nasty move for the times, outed her husband Ricardo Cortez, who was poised to become a star. No doubt, Alma wanted to damage his fast rising career. Cortez, now sadly forgotten, played private eye Sam Spade in the original The Maltese Falcon (1931) and he is perfect. Cortez is far more dangerous and charming than the mannered, lip-curling Bogart.
Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, 1931
There's another Cortez film, unknown, but truly amazing, Symphony of Six Million, (1932) where he plays a brilliant Jewish surgeon. Is there any other kind? And get this, Irene Dunne plays a Jewish girl from the Lower East Side who is the love of his life. She's got a limp and she teaches blind kids. It's great watching Dunne do Jewish with that Kentucky shicksah twang. The film is unique in that it's the only Hollywood film I've ever seen that has a Pidyon Ha-ben, a Redemption of the First Born ceremony, in the story-line. This film, though melodramatic and at times stiff, is well worth seeking out and screening. It's Hollywood dealing affectionately with Jewish themes and characters before Jewish executives made such narratives almost invisible in American film.
Alma Rubens is truly a lost star of the silent screen, but her memoir, probably ghost-written, is absolutely riveting. It's been edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Alexander Webb and published as Alma Rubens, Silent Snowbird.
Translation: Silent = silent films. Snowbird = female cocaine-user.
As Rhodes and Webb write in their splendid introduction:
By 1918, actress Alma Rubens was a noted screen personality. By 1920, she was a major star. By 1929, she was hospitalized for drug abuse. By 1931, she was dead from its effects. Little more is generally said of Rubens, one of the great female stars of the emergent feature film industry of the 1910's and one whose popularity continued over a fifteen year period.
Rubens, exquisitely doe-eyed, dark-haired, and yes, she does look Jewish, broke into the film industry in 1914 with appearances in two three-reelers, The Narcotic Spectre and The Gangster and the Girl. In 1915 Rubens starred in The Lorelia Madonna produced by Vitagraph. Rubens got strong reviews for this film and producers noticed. D.W. Grifffith cast her in Intolerance (1916) as one of the girls of the marriage market in the Babylonian sequence. She worked with cowboy star William S. Hart in The Cold Deck, (1917).
From these associations, Rubens was offered a contract with Triangle, the studio formed by D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennet, and Thomas Ince. Rubens starred in films opposite Bessie Love and Douglas Fairbanks. Ironically, the three actors appeared in one of the most notorious pictures of the silent era, The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916) in which Fairbanks is a cocaine using detective named “Coke Ennyday.”
From 1918 until 1925 Alma Rubens became a Hollywood star before stardom was understood, before Hollywood celebrity was common. Her acting style was easy and naturalistic. She was comfortable in front of the camera and didn't display the formal stiffness that characterized so many early film stars. In a way, Alma was the girl next door. Except she was drop-dead gorgeous, sensuous without the threatening Theda Bara vamp thing that was all the rage at the time. Interesting to note that the studios promoted Bara as the exotic Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. In fact, Bara was a smart and ambitious young Jewish woman from Cincinnati: Theodosia Burr Goodman.
Typical of so many Hollywood women, Alma Rubens was impoverished and fatherless for most of her childhood. Her love life was a series of disastrous, ill-considered marriages. She married stage actor Franklyn Farnum in 1918. He was 20 years her senior. The marriage lasted about two weeks. He was, she said, drunken, and violent. In 1923 she married Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman, but separated after a few months. He too she charged as physically violent and mentally abusive. While working for Fox in 1926, she married Cortez.
Her mother, Teresa, was a powerful influence who manged to sock away money and buy some valuable real estate. Rubens, in her memoir, admits that if not for her mother's wise investments, all her Hollywood earning would have gone into her veins.
Alma Rubens, glamour portrait
Rubens claims that her addiction to morphine began in 1923, after marriage to Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman, screenwriter and head of production for Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. Rubens has just signed a contract for a thousand dollars a week.
Then came an illness, painful and nerve-wracking, though of short duration, but which proved to be the ultimate stumbling block upon which my career was wrecked.
It marked the beginning of my addiction to the use of narcotic drugs.
So, what exactly was the nature of Ruben's illness?
Ruben's goes on to explain:
My first shot of morphine, administered to ease my suffering, was given me by Dr. A., now one of the leading gynecologists in the country and a professor in one of our great universities.
Later, when my husband learned the exact nature of the treatment for my womanly weakness—the use of morphine—he called in another great physician, Dr. B., who said it would be a crime to operate on a girl of my tender age—and conceded that his contemporary's treatment was a most proper one.
Womanly weakness.
There is no further explanation.
But a friend who is a physician has this compelling diagnosis:
Rubens may have been referring to Endometriosis, a gynecologic condition where there is thought to be hormonally responsive tissue within the abdomen (endometrial fragments, hence the name), which can become extremely painful at different times during a woman's cycle.
In the days before hormonal therapy injections, and even now, when hormones don't work, narcotics were often prescribed.
The definitive surgical therapy—drastic, last resort, but 100% curative—is ovarian removal, but completely understandable why physicians would be reluctant to perform this on so young a woman.
We know that Rubens was first arrested for narcotics possession as early as 1919, so clearly she was using before she was given her first shot of morphine in 1923 as she claims.
Okay, addicts lie. They like to blame others for their addictions. No surprise there. But let's give Alma the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was just partying like so many Hollywood starlets then and now, and only seriously got hooked later on.
Rubens blames only herself for becoming a “dope fiend.”
A weak, worldly girl, who hadn't sufficient will power to cast aside the treacherous needle; the insiduous [sic] liquid, responsible for my loathesome [sic] yearning.
Shockingly frank about her frequent violence, Rubens stabs a physician with a pen knife as he attempts to treat her. When she comes home from a sanitarium, pretending that she's cured, she snarls to her mother and husband Ricardo Cortez: “You're both fools. I'm still an addict. And now I'm going straight to hell.”
Rubens then marches right into her bedroom and shoots up with narcotics she purchased from a corrupt sanitarium physician.
Talk about a full service treatment center.
The actress tracks down a black maid she recently fired for dishonesty from her Beverly Hills home. Rubens trades a $4,000 mink coat for a few day's supply of dope. Rubens catches the look of perfect revenge on her former maid's face as the exchange is finalized. Soon, Rubens is handing over expensive evening gowns, sable and ermine capes, silk lingerie and fine jewelry. Most of the time, Rubens sadly admits, she gets just enough narcotics to get through a few days.
Alma Rubens, studio portrait
There are wild, public incidents. Frequent violent outbursts. There's a loud, drunken orgy in a hotel room. Court orders to have Rubens committed are filed by Ruben's mother. Counter appeals are filed by Alma. At last, an ambulance pulls up to her ranch, Rubens is strapped into a strait jacket and whisked away for a “cure.” Before you know it Rubens escapes and hides away in a cheap hotel with a supply of dope, bathtub gin, and some bad boy junkie she's picked up G-d knows where. Reporters from The New York Times get wind of her addiction and start tracking her descent. It's a life so out of control that when she writes about the fist-sized infected abscesses on her thighs, I literally shivered. Reading the memoir I had a hard time believing that this was taking place in the roaring twenties and not today, in the Hollywood Hills or some crime-ridden ghetto.
Of course, like so many true confessions, much of what Alma writes is self-serving, and the reader has to pluck kernels of truth from some pretty sensational fiction cooked up by professional ghost writers anxious to sell a sordid yarn in order to boost newspaper circulation. But the core of the memoir reeks of truth—she's a sad, desperate Hollywood type I recognize—and Rubens pulls no punches as she details a harrowing plunge into addiction and moral chaos.
Alma's addiction became public knowledge in 1929 and film roles dried up. She played Julie in the 1929 part-talkie Show Boat. But really, it was all over. Her angelic looks were ravaged by drugs and hard-living.
In 1930 she was arrested in San Diego with narcotics found sewn in the lining of an evening gown. She had purchased the dope in Mexico and tried to smuggle it back into America. Rubens claimed that she was framed.
A few weeks later, Alma Rubens (February 19, 1897- January 22, 1931) died of drug-induced pneumonia. She was 33 years old.
Seraphic Secret Hollywood Profiles of Interest:
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick.
Susan Peters: The Unknown & Tragic Great Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako, Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:52 PM | Comments (26)
February 19, 2008
The Jew Haters of the Methodist Church
When an organization chooses to target the Jewish state, and only the Jewish state with one sided criticism—propaganda really—charges more suited to a totalitarian regime, then we are inclined see classic Jew hatred.
The United Methodist Women's Division chooses to ignore the terrorist entity of Hamas in Gaza, the terrorism of Fatah, the Islamic State of Iran that denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, they ignore North Korea, a regime that uses famine as a weapon to murder several million of its own citizens, ignores the genocidal regime of Sudan, and of course ignores the 22 Arab countries that make up the Arab League where human rights are abused on an hourly basis. Naturally, these women have no interest in the mass murder and refugees of Congo where 45,000 people die each month, and the devolving state of Kenya.
That's why the United Methodist's Women's Division is a gang of slick, terrorist enabling Jew-haters.
Among the latest exploits of the United Methodist Women’s Division is a children’s book intended to instill anti-Israel themes among Methodist younsters. Innocuously called, “From Palestine to Seattle; Becoming Neighbors and Friends,” the booklet portrays Israel as an oppressor of Palestinians while omitting all mention of terrorism. It was written by Mary Davis, a former United Methodist missionary in “Palestine,” where she led “study tours,” whose political content no doubt was predictable.
The United Methodist Women’s Division, with over $60 million in assets, $30 million in annual income, and nearly 700,000 members, is one of the most powerful women’s groups in America. Its mostly older members, strung across over 30,000 local churches, earn money for their New York-based headquarters with bake sales, Christmas bazaars, and church suppers. Few among them realize that their donations fund causes of the radical left, including anti-Israel activism.
In the children’s story, a Seattle Methodist pastor just returned from “Palestine” shares a letter from a young Arab boy in Bethlehem with his own children. The Arab boy, Tarek, has never been to McDonald's because the closest one is in Jerusalem, and travel there requires a pass by the Israelis. Naturally, the American children are disturbed. In an ongoing pen pal exchange, Tarek asks the American children why their country thinks all Palestinians are terrorists. The Americans are embarrassed. They summon up the nerve to ask Tarek why passes are needed to travel to Jerusalem.
To read the complete story by Mark Tooley, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend Miranda Rose Smith.
Today's Links:
From the mighty Professor Barry Rubin: Who Owns the Palestine Card? Professor Rubin argues that the Palestinian conflict is really just a fig-leaf for the larger regional conflict where the Shia are determined to destroy Israel and build a hegemony in the Middle East.
From Breath of the Beast. Obama's Campaign and the Real Meaning of the Che Flag. Or: How dopey are Barak Obama's supporters? Answer: There are no words. It's almost painful witnessing our friend Yaacov Ben Moshe slicing and dicing a Barak supporter as she defends the Che flag incident. I have to admit, I look at Barak Hussein Obama and his, ahem, fainting believers, and I smell George McGovern.
EU Politicians Make Empty Promises to Hirsi Ali H/T Phyllis Chesler
This is excellent because it's about Hollywood Good Guys. Via our good friend Dirty Harry at Libertas.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:55 AM | Comments (17)
February 18, 2008
Home Game
“I had to do something, I wasn't sure what it was, and then I saw some home video that people from Gaza were shooting and it was just so heartbreaking and I said to myself, people have to see this footage.”
Producer Avi Abelow is sitting in my office describing how his film Home Game came into existence. Avi is soft-spoken, modest, but a passionate young man. It turns out that he lives in Efrat, just a few blocks away from Karen's brother David and his wife Elana.
It's a small Jewish world.
“So I started collecting all the footage I could from the settlers in Gaza, the people who were being expelled from their homes.”
“Avi, I have an idea, let's not call them settlers, that's become a pejorative term, let's call them Pioneers. Language counts. Words have power.”
Avi smiles and continues: “Okay, I like that. Anyway, Before I know it I have hours and hours of video and it's all just amazing, but I have no idea how to pull it together. But thank G-d, my editor is a genius. He points out that during the 2005 disengagement, there was a basketball tournament taking place. In other words, normal teenage life was going on in the midst of this horrendous expulsion. So we decide to build the film around the basketball footage.”
“You found your metaphor.”
“Exactly. ”
Home Game is a film about the painful and tragic human cost of the Gaza disengagement, where 9,000 Jews were expelled from their homes by other Jews. It was a triumph for jihad, a success for Islamic terrorism, and a low-point in Jewish history. The expulsion proved that terror works, that those who call for appeasement never learn the dark lessons of history.
Gaza is Judenrein and is now a forward base for Hizbullah and a dozen other Islamic terrorist gangs. Rocket and mortar attacks on Israel have only increased since the expulsion. The Gaza tragedy is a national disgrace and a security nightmare.
The film is a multi-layered narrative that shows the residents of the Gaza villages during the various stages of the expulsion.
These multi-strands are anchored by the basketball tournament. The riveting footage is interwoven with frank yet charming studio interviews with several home team basketball players and a lovely, articulate young Israeli woman who picked up a video camera and became a reluctant but somewhat obsessive chronicler of the horrifying expulsion that pitted Jew against Jew.
There are moments that are so raw, so painful, that you feel as if you're a peeping tom in a terrible family squabble. I almost wept as an anguished female soldier kneels and tries to console her friend while at the same time expelling her from her home. Meanwhile, an irate young man howls at the female soldier's commanding officer: “Look at what you've done to her, look at what you've turned her into. She used to be such a fine girl. Look what you're making her do to her friends.”
Another IDF Officer calmly explains to a Pioneer: “I'm just following orders.”
The Pioneer, an anguished and furious Israeli with a Yemenite Hebrew accent, explodes: “Don't say that. That's a terrible sentence. What will you say to your children tonight when you go home, what will you tell them, that you expelled Jews from their homes!”
The IDF officer does not respond, he just turns around and walks away.
Home Game builds in intensity. Meanwhile, the teenagers, kids who just want to have normal lives, try and lead normal lives as their world crumbles.
This is a powerful film, and I urge everyone, no matter what your political leaning, to purchase it.
Avi Abelow has plans for several more films about the Israeli experience through his new company 12 Tribe Films. We look forward to more great work from this fine young talent.
You can watch the movie online for three days by renting it.
Today's Links:
I have no idea what happened, but I never received Haveil Havalim #154 yesterday. I figured maybe I offended somebody out there in the Jewish blogosphere and was thrust into some kind of cyber leper colony. Anywhoo, I just came across #154 and Esser Agaroth has done a really neat job of collecting the Best of the Jewish Blogosphere. We'd like to thank Esser Agaroth for including our post The Decline and Fall of the State of Israel in this round-up.
Seraphic Friend Treppenwitz comments on the Olmert-Livni plan to surrender the Israeli-Gaza border to international troops. The Definition of Insanity.
Gaza to Denmark: Bomb and Slaughter the Danes. Hey, I wonder how much money the Danes have donated to the peace-loving Pals? Nice payback.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:27 AM | Comments (14)
February 17, 2008
Olmert's Gaza Incursion Plan is Folly
The planned incursion into Gaza is not to achieve victory, but to bring in a multi-national force after a cease-fire. And we all know how incredibly effective those multi-national troops have been in the past. Just look at what a great job the UNIFIL troops are doing on the Lebanese border where Hizbullah have rebuilt their bunkers and their rocket capacity to an even greater strength than ever before. And let's not forget the magnificent job the multi-national troops did in Rwanda when they stood by and watched, yes, watched, as close to a million souls were butchered.
But sure, by all means, bring in multi-nationals because as we all know they are just straining at the leash to help out the Jews.
What could possibly go wrong?
Olmert and Livni must go.
This government is a national disgrace, a danger to the existence of the State of Israel and to the future of the Jewish people.
Israel is considering a large-scale incursion into the Gaza Strip during which it would present an ultimatum to the international community for the deployment of a multinational force as the only condition under which it would withdraw, defense officials have told The Jerusalem Post.
To read the complete story, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Chaver, Kishke
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:05 PM | Comments (7)
Fatah Falls Apart?
This fine article analyzes the chaos that is Fatah. The fact that the Olmert government is negotiating with such a stew of thugs drives home how delusional the foreign policy of Israel, and the Western powers truly are.
By Barry Rubin
Rather than unite in the face of the Hamas challenge and the task of gaining support from the West Bank’s people, Fatah seems to be collapsing.
Or perhaps the feuds are not only over power but who gets to control the almost $7 billion scheduled to be given the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) over the next three years. A contributing factor is that Fatah has said it will hold a congress in March, the first full such meeting in almost 20 years.
There are at least five factions operating in Fatah today, and even that is an understatement. While PA “president” Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad enjoy Western support, they have very little from their own organization. These two are relative moderates who have no internal base of support. Even the very tiny group of those who can be called moderate is split since, for example, Ahmad Khouri (Abu Ala), is quarreling with Abbas.
Then there are the cronies of the late head of Fatah and the PA, Yasir Arafat, who have not developed any moderate tendencies but are using Abbas to cling to power. A typical example of this group is Hakam Balawi who was the PLO ambassador to Tunisia when Arafat’s headquarters were there, a particular favorite of Arafat. These people are basically careerists who simply stick with whoever is leader.
A third group are the hardliners, like Abu Ali Shahin, who views himself as a revolutionary fighter. Other powerful figures in this group include Farouq Qaddumi, the actual head of Fatah; Sakhr Habash (Abu Nizar), chief of the Fatah Revolutionary Committee; and Salim al-Zaanoun, head of the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO’s legislature. These people want a continuation of armed struggle against Israel and believe that total victory is still possible.
A fourth faction can be called the “young guard,” but this is also split among different contenders for leadership. Muhammad Dahlan, formerly the leading Fatah security (i.e., military) commander in the Gaza Strip is one candidate; Marwan Barghouti, the head of Fatah in the West Bank and now imprisoned by Israel, is another. Dahlan and Barghouti are also very much at odds.
Recently, Shahin has called Abbas a failed leader who should resign. Balawi claimed Dahlan was plotting against Abbas, and Dahlan in return accused Balawi of being an Israel spy.
As if this isn’t enough, the “young guard” knows that the current leaders will not give it any meaningful share of power in Fatah. The group, for instance, does not have a single member on the Fatah Central Committee.
In short, PA and Fatah politics are a mess. This has long been true but few noticed and it didn’t matter when Arafat was alive since he kept the lid on everything, while playing off his subordinates against each other, and provided unity.
Now, however, things are different. It is amazing that since Fatah and the PA are the West’s candidate to make good use of almost $7 billion, beat Hamas, establish a Palestinian state, and make peace with Israel, few observers take note of this disastrous situation or factor it into their policies. Unless Fatah changes its ways, and there is no reason to believe it will do so, one can only wonder if Hamas will be controlling the West Bank, too, within five years. Certainly, one can expect the aid money to disappear without helping the Palestinian people much and be sure that this divided, quarreling leadership will not be able to make peace with Israel.
Professor Rubin is Director of Global Research in International Affairs.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:09 PM | Comments (0)
Gaza: Ground Invasion High Alert
Seraphic Secret believes that a ground invasion of Gaza is unwise and unnecessary. Israel can accomplish more by cutting power and fuel to Gaza and then mounting an air campaign against this terrorist entity.
We fear that a ground offensive will result in far too many IDF casualties, and that no matter how hard the Jewish State tries to minimize civilian Arab casualties, this humanitarian gesture will inevitably boomerang into typical Jew-hating propaganda.
Just as America wisely chose not to invade the Japanese mainland in the closing months of World War II, knowing that the human cost would be too high, and thus ended the war with two bombs, Israel should make the same determination with the genocidal entity of Gaza.
Israel'smilitary has drafted plans for a large-scale ground invasion of Gaza to topple Hamas and destroy its military infrastructure.
As Israeli forces go on high alert after the killing of Hezbollah's senior guerrilla commander Imad Mughniyah last week, prime minister Ehud Olmert and defence minister Ehud Barak are coming under pressure to act to stop rocket attacks from the Islamic militants on southern Israel.
Fears of giving away too much detail have led to Barak warning media outlets not to publish specifics, but sources close to the government confirmed that if the go-ahead was given for a large-scale operation to take place, it would involve "a highly significant number of ground troops".
Sources told Scotland on Sunday: "The military leadership is telling the political leadership: 'If you send us to war, let us fight'."
"There would be no pussy-footing this time around," one source said. "There's much debate as Olmert doesn't want a large-scale military operation, but since he also doesn't want to negotiate directly with Hamas, there will come a time when he will need to give the go-ahead."
Hat Tip: Weasel Zippers. To read the entire story, please click here.
Today's Links:
Denmark Stands up to Iran And so do their newspapers, which is a lot more than we can say for the gutless MSM in America.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2008
How Mughnieyha Got Dead
Some days, it's just good to roll out of bed go to shul, daven, not check out any news until Shabbos is over and then BOOM, discover a nugget of gold like this:
Nothing seemed very remarkable about the short, bearded man who mingled with other guests on Tuesday evening at a reception in Damascus, the Syrian capital, to mark the 29th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian revolution.
Yet before the night was over he was dead in the twisted wreckage of his car and the inevitable assumption was that Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, had killed him with an ingeniously planted bomb.
The news spread rapidly that the dead man was Imad Mughniyeh, an elusive figure known as “the Fox” who had been one of the world’s most feared terrorist masterminds.
According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver’s seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge. Israel welcomed his death but the prime minister’s office denied responsibility. Hezbollah accused the “Zionist Israelis” of killing its “brother commander” but believed the explosive had been detonated in another car by satellite.
To read the complete story, please click here.
Seraphic Friend Shrink Wrapped analyzes one short section of this story and comes to the conclusion that someone is not quite telling the truth.
Soccer Dad, always a sober analyst, raises questions about the reliability of the sources for the head-rest story.
And here's an informative article from The Weekly Standard that ties in Mughnieyah with Al Qaeda.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
Mughniyeh's True Legacy
The great Caroline Glick provides some fascinating analysis into the recent assassination of terrorist Imad Mughniyeh. As I wrote earlier, this was no ordinary hit, the complexity of such an operation cannot be overstated. Running foreign agents in a totalitarian state like Syria is a massively difficult undertaking that demands financing, rock-solid intelligence, agents who speak the native language fluently, cover stories that bear the closest scrutiny, the ability to set up the hit right under Puppy Assad's brutal secret police, and of course a smooth exit after the assassination, when borders are sealed and the country is locked up tighter than a sardine can.
Mughniyeh was not killed because of past deeds, though certainly the Israelis had him marked for death many years ago—no, this terrorist was deleted in order to halt future operations.
It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyeh was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future.
On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men - two Lebanese and one Syrian - were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Documents seized included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots and "truck stopping points." The maps pointed to several routes to Vatican back entrances.
Libero's report explained that the "truck stopping points" aligned with information the French had received the week before from Beirut. There, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah had convened a conference of his senior terror leaders where he ordered them to activate Hizbullah cells throughout Europe to kidnap senior European leaders.
To read the complete story, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2008
Agenda: 2008 Democratic National Convention
As some of you may know Seraphic Secret has confidential sources deep inside the Democratic Party. Recently this secret document was leaked to us by our source: Deep Kvetch.
Yup, it's the official agenda for the 2008 DNC Convention. The agenda of the opposition is deeply revealing—especially the last item.
7:00 pm Opening flag burning.
7:15 pm Pledge of Allegiance to the U.N. in Spanish.
7:20 pm Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
7:25 pm Nonreligious prayer and worship with Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.
7:45 pm Ceremonial tree hugging.
7:55 pm Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
8:00 pm How I Invented the Internet — Al Gore.
8:15 pm Gay Wedding — Barney Frank presiding.
8:35 pm Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
8:40 pm Our Troops Are War Criminals — John Kerry and John Murtha.
9:00 pm Saddam Memorial Rally — Cindy Sheehan and Susan Sarandon.
11:00 pm Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
11:05 pm Collection for the Osama Bin Laden kidney transplant fund — Barbra Streisand.
11:15 pm Free the Freedom Fighters from Guantanamo Bay — Sean Penn.
11:30 pm Oval Office Affairs — William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton.
11:45 pm Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
11:50 pm How George Bush Brought Down the World Trade Center Towers — Howard Dean & Rosie O'Donnell.
12:15 am ' Truth in Broadcasting Award' — Presented to Dan Rather by Michael Moore.
12:25 am Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
12:30 am Satellite address by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
12:45 am Nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Nancy Pelosi.
12:50 am Speech and toast by Hugo Chavez to the departure of 'The Great Satan', George W. Bush.
12:55 am Hillary proposes a toast to our 89 million new Democratic Mexican voters.
1:00 am Ted Kennedy proposes a toast to the extinction of the Republican Party.
1:05 am Coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
1:30 am Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
1:35 am Bill Clinton asks Ted Kennedy to drive Hillary home.
Hat Tip: Soccer Dad.
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Today's Links:
Hamas Attack YMCA in Gaza. Huge outcry of protest from all the human rights groups in Israel and Europe and of course the U.N. is rushing to condemn this aggression against the rapidly diminishing population of Christians in Gaza. Actually, I'm just messing with your head. The so-called human rights groups are, of course, absolutely silent when Arabs attack other Arabs, especially when Christians or Jews are under attack.
Obama and Clinton Advisers on Secret Syrian Junket. Maybe while they're in Damascus they can drop in on Hamas and offer condolences for the untimely death of mass murderer Mughneyah.
Two Democrats Betray Democracy H/T LGF
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:34 PM | Comments (2)
Our Friends The Saudis
This from the country, actually a corrupt family corporation, that does not allow Jews to set foot on its holy Muslim soil.
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.
The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.
To read the complete story, please click here.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Jake Novak
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
Jane Austen on the Dangers of Appeasement
Seraphic Secret writes frequently about the dangers of appeasement. We believe that if you give ground to terrorists, you are simply encouraging their violence.
Seraphic Secret also believes that in Jane Austen's work can be found the wisdom to support, well, most everything Seraphic Secret holds dear.
Meet G.I. Jane:
“There is a stubbornness about me that can never bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”
—Pride and Prejudice
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:51 AM | Comments (4)
February 14, 2008
The Day After the Mughniyeh Hit
Bashir Assad is not a happy puppy.
First, the Israeli Air Force shuts down his state-of-the-art missile defense system, c/o Russia, and bombs his in-progress nuclear facility into nothingness.
The Syrian air force does not scramble. Pilots cower in underground bunkers. They are not going to get into dogfights with Israeli pilots.
Putin promises to rebuild the missile defense system. Sorry, no refunds.
Okay, so the IAF were able to drop in, uninvited. But at least Assad was able to keep a tight rein on Damascus, his capital, where he boasts giving aid and comfort to the world's most notorious terrorists. This gives Assad status in the Arab world. He's got bragging rights. He props up the world's most vocal Jew-killers and boasts about it 24/7. This places him on a pedestal far higher than Egyptian President Mubarak or those decadent Saudis.
But now, boom, someone, has blown it all sky high. The Mughniyeh hit was the result of an extremely complicated and sophisticated operation. The assassination reveals that Assad's security services are not as all-knowing as he pretends. The hit reveals that an enemy service set up safe houses in Syria for months, maybe years, conducted surveillance, obtained lots and lots of explosives, right under Assad's nose. And oh, let's not forget that the assassination team have exited Syria, and are being debriefed by their extremely proud and happy handlers. Mazal Tov.
Interpolation:
The hit was clean, almost surgical. No innocent bystanders were killed. So we know that this wasn't a case of Arab fratricide. This was not a Syrian job, a Lebanese hit, an Iranian blood bath. No this was an extremely professional job carried out by security services who only wanted to kill one man and minimize civilian loss of life. There was a moral core at the heart of this killing. And let's not forget the Mughniyeh connection with Fatah.
End Interpolation:
And this is the scary part for Assad and for Hizbullah—no doubt there are double agents within Hizbullah and the Syrian security services who cooperated in giving up intel about Mughniyeh.
This assassination is no ordinary killing.
Every terrorist in Damascus is looking over his shoulder wondering: who is the traitor?
Hizbullah thug-in-charge Nasrallah is already in the Israeli cross-hairs. He can't be feeling optimistic this morning. Thus, he's threatened war against Israel, but chances are Hizbullah will strike at softer targets in Europe and America where innocent citizens are easy prey.
I am particularly concerned about South America where the Iranian intelligence services have been busy building up their terror networks for the past few years.
If not today, then tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Assad has to be worried about his image as fierce dictator. The Israelis, and whoever erased Mughniyeh, are making him look really bad.
Finally, I have a question: when America invited Assad to Annapolis, did they conveniently forget that he was providing a safe haven to Mughniyeh, the man responsible for murdering so many Americans?
Today's Links:
Arabs Set Fire to Joseph's Tomb. Under agreements with the PA, Joseph's Tomb is supposed to be protected. Now the PA are claiming that Joseph was not Jewish, that he was a Muslim. Oh, we get it, now it's okay to set fire to the tomb.
Victor Davis Hanson looks at Barak Obama, then looks at the Robert Redford movie The Candidate, and so should you.
Obama and American Jews by Eric Trager.
Obama and Israel by Noah Pollak
Enabling Palestinian Terror. H/T Seraphic Friend, David Paulin
The Return of the Wacko Vet Media Narrative by David Paulin.
The Danish Cartoons Part II: What a Riot!
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:06 AM | Comments (5)
February 13, 2008
Obama's Legions of the Blissful
Leon Weseltier is a liberal. But he has a clear-eyed view of Barak Obama and the hard-left swing of the Democratic party. We disagree with Weseltier that Hillary Clinton would be a better President than John McCain. However, we do share the belief that Barak Obama is an empty suit, a slick bag of rhetorical tricks that add up to bumper-sticker, feel-good nothingness. Obama would be a threat to national security, a yoke around the State of Israel, and a profoundly immature Commander-in-Chief in a time of war against Islamofascism.
What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world. Different circumstances call for different talents, different sensibilities, different approaches to power. "Leadership" comes in many forms. A sterling individual may be historically inappropriate; and a person whom it is impossible to admire may accomplish significant things. The question of whether Barack Obama will make a fine commander-in-chief finally depends on your view of the direction of history in the coming years. I cannot escape the foreboding that we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation. I do not mean that there will be many wars, though I cannot imagine that the threat to American security from Al Qaeda and its many associates can be met without a massive and sustained military operation in western Pakistan, and I cannot imagine any Pakistani government ordering such an operation. It is not "the politics of fear" to remind Obama's legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)
To read the complete article, please click here.
Update: Howling Wolf reports on Obama's spineless Senate vote:
A major piece of anti-terror legislation was passed by the Senate with large bi-partisan support. One of the people voting against it was Barack Obama.
To read the complete article, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:27 AM | Comments (23)
Hizbullah Terror Chief Killed in Damascus
When a man died in a bomb explosion late last night in Damascus, Syrian police kept media and other onlookers well away from the scene of the blast in the affluent Kfar Soussa district.
Syrian media, all of which falls under the direct or partial control of the regime, still hasn’t mentioned the incident, but Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV station in Lebanon today confirmed that the dead man is Imad Mughniyeh, one of their top commanders and one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.
Among the crimes Mughniyeh masterminded:
* The 1983 suicide bombings in Beirut that killed over 300 US marines and French troops.
* The 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed.
* A wave of Western hostage-taking in Lebanon in the 1980s.
* The 1992 bombing of Israel’s embassy in Argentina in which 29 people were murdered.
* The 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center in which 95 people died, including Holocaust survivors. (In reporting Mughniyeh’s death this morning, the BBC refused to call the Buenos Aires bombing of elderly Jews “terrorism” and merely referring to it as “an act of violence.”)
The left-wing Israeli paper Ha’aretz, today called Mughniyeh The epitome of the “Axis of Evil”.
Mughniyeh had been in hiding for years and had undergone several rounds of plastic surgery to disguise his appearance. In recent years, he established links with Osama bin Laden despite the Sunni-Shia heritage of their respective terror groups.
Hezbollah has blamed Israel for assassinating Mughniyeh. Israel has not denied it.
Original article here at NRO.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Dr. Carol
Update I : Hamas know exactly who sent Mughniyeh to hell. Thus, they call on all Muslims to unite against the Zionist Octopus.
Update II: Howling Wolf comments on the Mughniyeh hit.
Today's Links:
Dhimmi Dutch Catholics. H/T Seraphic Friend, Jake Novak.
Howling Wolf Presents: Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh: The McCain Derangement Syndrome.
Seraphic Friend Treppenwitz believes that Olmert is going to open a ground offensive against Gaza very soon—to save his political neck. Seraphic Secret would not be surprised.
Judith Apter Klinghoffer Blogs: The Danes Under Siege, It's No Cartoon
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:25 AM | Comments (8)
February 12, 2008
Jihad in The Pentagon
You know, this has all the earmarks of a Hollywood film, except for one little detail: the bad guy is a Muslim.
Here's a follow-up on the story. Nice resolution. H/T Seraphic Friend, Aaron Schultz.
Today's Links:
The Path to the Final Solution. An excellent You Tube video. Don't miss it. H/T Seraphic Chaver, Kishke.
Iran Celebrates by Hanging America and Israel. But by all means, let's learn to live with a nuclear Iran. What could possibly go wrong?
The Bias of the N.Y. Times and Gaza. Seraphic Secret has frequently labeled NY Times Jerusalem correspondent Steven Erlanger a spokesman for Hamas. The Augean Stables reveals that Erlanger is that and more. He's a lazy writer, a mediocre thinker, and a deeply compromised journalist who makes nice to terrorists in order not to lose access to their Jew-hating propaganda.
Listen to the hollow man, Erlanger, attempting to defend himself. Intellectual collapse.
Che & Obama. Well, of course Obama didn't know about the Che and Cuban flag in his campaign office in Houston, Texas. But listen, don't you think that those who support Barak Obama says something about Obama? Last I counted, the Communist ideology so beloved by Che Guevera and his supporters is responsible for the murder of approximately 100 million human beings in the 20th century.
I've just noticed that Seraphic Friend Jeremayakova is on the same wavelength as we are, and expands elegantly on the Obama yadda-yadda.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:53 AM | Comments (11)
February 11, 2008
The Decline and Fall of the State of Israel
Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Mnister Tzipi Livni seem intent—if the reports on current negotiations to divide Jerusalem are true—on dismantling the State of Israel.
The endless and suicidal negotiations with Fatah have only emboldened this terrorist gang who openly boast in their media that their long range goal is the elimination of the Jewish State.
Further, Fatah and its Holocaust denying President Mahmoud Abbas, are incorrectly perceived and treated by Olmert, Livni and the Western powers as moderates, in contrast to Hamas who are, ahem, militants.
G-d forbid Hamas should be labeled terrorists, they might actually get angry and turn to, y'know, terrorism.
In truth, as Seraphic Secret has repeatedly emphasized, only tactics separate the two terrorist groups. Fatah favor slow, incremental steps: terrorist, diplomatic, and propaganda, leading to Israel's destruction. Hamas, certainly more up-front and confrontational, initiate terrorist attacks on every imaginable front. Both advocate for an Islamic state ruled by Sharia.
In the 2006 Palestinian elections, certified by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Hamas was the overwhelming winner, not just in Gaza, but in Judea and Samaria.
In response to the terrorist attacks on the Jewish residents of Gaza and elsewhere, Prime Minister Olmert ordered the expulsion of 9,000 Jews by Jews thus rendering another patch of land Judenrein.
This was an enormous victory for terrorism and it was recognized as such by jihadists everywhere.
It doesn't take a screenwriter's imagination to get into the minds of the terrorists: If Jews are willing to expel other Jews, in short, do the dirty work for the terrorists, well, what else can we get the Jews to do for us?
The fruits of the Gaza expulsions are clear.
Olmert and Livni are negotiating the division of Jerusalem with a terrorist entity, Fatah, that would be gobbled up by Hamas if not for the support of the Europeans, America, and yes the IDF in Judea and Samaria.
Hamas does not recognize the State of Israel, its covenant calls for the elimination of the Jewish State, and for jihad against the West.
Hamas launches missiles into Israel every single day. Yesterday, two brothers were horribly wounded, one child's leg was amputated. As in the Second Lebanon War, the Olmert government is paralyzed with no tactical nor strategic response to this declaration of war by Gaza.
In fact the State of Israel feeds this terrorist entity with the power and fuel to perpetuate their war machine. And the world demands that Israel continue supplying this terrorist state with power and fuel, as if the citizens of Gaza have absolutely no connection to the government they enthusiastically support and elected.
This disgraceful colonial mind-set absolves the Gazans of any responsibility for their own choices and actions.
Needless to say, this is a grave disservice to citizens of the State of Israel.
Israel's cautious military strikes announces to the citizens of Gaza that their terrorist regime is quasi-acceptable and has permission to act on their genocidal platform. As for the citizens who elected this notorious gang, well, somehow, they are immune from any and all personal liability.
The results for Israel is the end of deterrence.
Further, national security—the state's primary obligation—becomes something of a selective matter. Seraphic Secret is inclined to think that if Qassam rockets were raining on Tel-Aviv the military response would be rather robust.
For Gazans the message is clear: there are no consequences for their nihilistic political choices. No wonder they enthusiastically embrace Hamas and all the other terrorist gangs who pour into Gaza from Egypt c/o Iran and Syria. Thus, Gazan culture continues to devolve into brute, medieval Jew-hatred and Islamic death cults—which will only result in generations of steely-eyed jihadists.
Appeasement is not a foreign policy. It is suicide. No state can survive such leaky stewardship.
Let us be clear: The current Israeli government enables two terrorist entities, Fatah and Hamas.
Piece by piece, Israel is rendered Judenrein.
Piece by piece, Israel is made illegitimate in the eyes of the world.
Piece by piece, the jihadists move to eliminate the core of the Jewish experience by dividing Jerusalem, chewing away at the heart of Judaism. Does anyone really think that the Arabs will stop at East Jerusalem? They will demand another street, another neighborhood, and before you know it they will demand all of Jerusalem. All of Israel.
Make no mistake about it, the jihadists have a plan.
The chattering classes repeat the tired and intellectually bankrupt trope: “Let's have dialog with those who disagree with us.” Ignoring the simple fact that entering into civilized dialog with genocidal enemies legitimizes their final solutions.
The Jews are on the defensive.
Ask any soldier: offense wins, defense loses.
Every time.
Especially when defeatists and appeasers are leading the defense.
A divided Jerusalem will bring war to the heart of the Jewish State. Fatah and Hamas will battle for a short time, then inevitably merge into an even greater Jew-killing machine, and then every street and brick in Jerusalem will become a battleground.
If Jerusalem can be divided and handed over to an implacable enemy, then The Jewish State will inevitably fall.
FADE TO BLACK.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:23 AM | Comments (22)
February 10, 2008
Best of the Jewish Blogosphere # 153
Our friend Baila has posted Haveil Havalim #153.
I believe this is her first time hosting The Best of the Jewish Blogosphere, and she has done an admirable job.
We'd like to thank Baila for posting two Seraphic Secret stories: Our common sense political analysis pointing out that there is no such thing as Moderate Terrorists, and another chapter about left coast Jewish suicide: Hollywood Kool-Aid.
If you want to get a sense of what the Jewish blogosphere is thinking, this is the place to go.
Yasher koach, congratulations Baila.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:30 AM | Comments (2)
February 08, 2008
Hamas: We're Allowed to Lie
Seraphic Secret believes that it's vital to understand the tactics of the jihadists, Caliphite yearning terrorists who have vowed to eliminate the State of Israel.
Hamas, like Fatah, frequently lie to the Western press in order to score propaganda victories in their relentless march towards their genocidal goals.
The justification for their lies is religious and bound up in Islam, in the doctrine of “taqiyya.”
Read on, and the next time a Hamas, Fatah or any jihadist spokesman is quoted by the gullible Western press, chances are pretty good that what you hear is a tissue of lies.
Hamas leaders spoke to the Arabic language Ash-Sharq il-Awsat newspaper recently and explained that as Muslims, they are allowed to lie. In an interview printed on Thursday, senior Hamas terrorists explained, “A Muslim is permitted to say things that oppose his beliefs in order to prevent damages or to be saved from death.”
This approach, known in Arabic as “taqiyya,” was behind several Hamas leaders’ recent public expression of support for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, they explained. Senior Hamas terrorists in Samaria, who were recently released from jail, publicly expressed disapproval with the Hamas takeover of Gaza and said they supported the PA forces. The sources quoted in Ash-Sharq il-Awsat explained that the Samarian terrorists’ announcement was not a sign of dissent within Hamas ranks, but rather a permitted use of “taqiyya” to deceive Abbas and avoid prison sentences.
Original article here.
Soccer Dad provides some perfect examples of the lies that Hamas feeds to the Western media, lies that cover war crimes.
Hamas lies to cover war crimes—crimes defined by Article 28 of the Geneva Conventions—and Israel's military responses, defined by the same article, are perfectly acceptable.
Article 28 of the Geneva Conventions: The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.
Karen and I wish all our friends a beautiful and profound miracle in Shabbat.
Here's a nice story, a Lubavitch Hasid takes over as principal of a chaotic, failing South Bronx school, and against all expectations, turns the school around. Read about Shimon Waronker.
Here's a fine article by military historian Abraham Rabinovich contrasting the IDF of the Yom Kippur War, and the IDF of the Second Lebanon War: Endgame.
My Hollywood friend Dirty Harry lists Ten Reasons to be Hopeful for 2008. He's talking Presidential elections, folks.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:03 AM | Comments (11)
February 07, 2008
Hollywood Kool-Aid
“I've got a hot political tip for you.”
“I'm listening.”
“What would you say if I told you I have proof that a prominent Republican politician belongs to an organization that just honored a vicious racist.”
I'm sitting in a Beverly Hills restaurant with a Hollywood producer, a close friend who is a moderate Democrat but also a proud Jew and Zionist. Believe me, he's a rare species in Hollywood.
My friend leans forward and narrows his eyes.
“Robert, I'd say lynch the bastard.”
“Excellent.”
“Who is it?”
“Barak Obama.”
My friend visibly deflates.
“Hey, Obama belongs to a Church that honored Louis Farrakhan, an out and out Jew-hater. Is that okay?”
“That was a mean trap you set for me.”
I hold out my hands as if checking for rain.
“I repeat: Is that okay?”
“Of course not.”
“Tell me, how many of our Jewish friends here in Hollywood just voted for Obama?”
“Tons.”
“Why?”
My friend chuckles: “C'mon, you know.”
I do know.
“Race trumps gender, right?” I say.
“Every time.”
“They like the idea of voting for a black guy, well, half black, right, let's be accurate. If this was a Douglas Sirk movie it'd be a big plot point and Barak would be all tortured and yearning for Dorothy Malone and telling her that he's, y'know, sun-sensitive.”
“Yeah, the black thing definitely plays in Hollywood, and of course the anti-war thing. That's huge. Hollywood is anti-war.”
“True. And Obama did say that he'd get together with all the Muslim world leaders to hear their concerns, I'll bet that plays well in in the biz.”
My friend sips his Perrier.
“Oh yeah, they love that multi-cultural yadda-yadda.”
“You know what the concerns of the Muslims leaders of the world are? To destroy Israel, to kill Jews and, let me point out, to eliminate the Zionist Hollywood Studios. We're talking about genocidal regimes like Sudan, Chad, Syria, Iran, Gaza, need I continue?”
“I'm on your side. I voted for Hillary.”
“Can you imagine Obama head-on with the Iranians? They'd eat him alive. Forget the Iranians, he's not even tough enough to negotiate with the studio heads in this town. He'd fold like a cheap suit. He's not tough, he's not ruthless. He does not understand geo-politics nor the jihadist threat. Democrats project their personal desires on his smooth blankness. As for Israel, he'd abandon the Jewish State faster than David Duke, that's so obvious.”
“The thing is, Robert, Jews in Hollywood don't really think about Israel, don't really think about their Jewishness.”
“What do they think about?”
“The next job.”
“Ah.”
“It's all about agreeing with the idiot who can hand you your next gig. That's all. The pressure is from the extreme left. It's enormous and it takes tremendous inner resolve and a fair amount of knowledge to resist. Not many Jews in Hollywood are up to the challenge.”
“Do you realize that John McCain spent more time in captivity being tortured by the North Vietnamese than Barak Obama has been in the Senate?”
“Hey, Democrats want change.” My friend claws quote marks in the air.
“Change what, their diapers?”
The waitress, a sleek and gorgeous out-of-work actress, appears at our table.
“Something to drink, gentlemen?”
I say: “I'll have the Kool-Aid.”
Today's Links:
Pop Quiz. Who said the following and to whom?
Whoever Breaks the Border Will Have His Legs Broken.
1. Israel to Arabs.
2. America to Mexico.
3. Egypt to Gaza
4. Florida to Cuba.
If you answered #3 then you have an IQ above the double digits.
We wait for Peace Now and all the, ahem, human rights groups in Israel to protest, along with the U.N. to pass some really stiff resolutions against the totalitarian regime of Egypt.
Uh-huh.
Vote to Save Jerusalem
The Archbishop of Canterbury Advocates Sharia for Great Britain. Once religious institutions surrender to the jihadists, the next to fall is the secular culture. Seraphic Secret holds out no hope for the once mighty British people, now tragically a mob of appeasers, and we urge the Jews of the British Isles to exit as quickly as possible. Joshua Pundit comments on this suicidal embrace of dhimmitude.
We should not be surprised. The Archbishop of Canterbury has a history of anti-Israeli, morally blind thinking. The man's a fool.
And if you don't think Britain is in terminal trouble take a look at this poll.
Baby Girl and Sister Injured in Qassam Attacks. Once again, we anxiously wait for Peace Now and all the oh-so sensitive leftist, so-called human rights groups in Israel to raise their voices in protest against these war crimes.
What's that we hear?
Oh, right: Crickets chirping.
Iran: Chop Off Bush's Head. I'll bet Columbia University invites this blood-thirsty Ayatollah to their campus for some good old fashioned multi-cultural dialog. And while we're at it, let's allow these lunatics to go nuclear, what could possibly go wrong?
The “Moderate” Palestinian Authority Celebrates the Dimona Homicide Bombers as Holy Martyrs. And Olmert is negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas, this blood-soaked terrorist. Seraphic Secret wonders what message this sends to the Arab world? We also wonder what message it sends to Jewish victims—past and future.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:13 AM | Comments (36)
February 06, 2008
The Protocols of Hamas
It's important to understand the ideology of Hamas, the freely elected government of the Palestinian people.
Here is Article Twenty-Two of the Hamas Covenant.
For a long time, the enemies [Jews] have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.
You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.
"So often as they shall kindle a fire for war, Allah shall extinguish it; and they shall set their minds to act corruptly in the earth, but Allah loveth not the corrupt doers." (The Table - verse 64).
The imperialistic forces in the Capitalist West and Communist East, support the enemy with all their might, in money and in men. These forces take turns in doing that. The day Islam appears, the forces of infidelity would unite to challenge it, for the infidels are of one nation.
"O true believers, contract not an intimate friendship with any besides yourselves: they will not fail to corrupt you. They wish for that which may cause you to perish: their hatred hath already appeared from out of their mouths; but what their breasts conceal is yet more inveterate. We have already shown you signs of their ill will towards you, if ye understand." (The Family of Imran - verse 118).
It is not in vain that the verse is ended with Allah's words "if ye understand."
If article Twenty-Two, the non-Koranic pa