The Extra Friendly Fire

2007-06-27T03:52:00.000-07:00

Bantustan? Seriously?

Rabbi Lerner makes several points popular on the "peace now" part of the left; Israel must create a state for any leader that emerges in Judea and Samaria, not granting large swaths of land is racism and that Israel engineers the failure of PA leaders. This ignores some important realities; Arafat negotiated in bad faith, Abbas has both failed to demonstrate good faith and failed to reform the PA, The US and Israel preferred free elections over a Fatah police state, Unilateral withdraw was for Palestinians progress toward a state and now they effectively have the second one after Jordan, the trend since the Soviet Union breakup has been to "states" atomizing themselves. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland and Scotland may yet break away from England, Canada as nearly broken up many times , Iraq may become three states and so might Iran, so why would the PA be any different from the region much less the world?

The world and Arafar has told the "Palestinians" they are Palestinians and need a state of their own but is that correct? Even Fatah was originally an Egyptian irregular military unity and Arafat its Egyptian leader, Palestinians bought into Pan-Arabism even when it led to disaster for them, were willing to be subsumed by Iraq and Gaza is now a Iranian vassal which reflects Pan-Islam. One wonders is Israel has to recreate the setting for the 1948 war and then to fight it before asking the Palestinians to demonstrate some good faith.

The triumph of Hamas was a goal of Israeli policy--though now they have no clue about what to do.

[Tikkun]EDITOR'S NOTE: For many years, Tikkun has argued that a goal of Israeli policy has been to strengthen Hamas sufficiently so that it's power in Palestine could be used as irrefutable "proof" to the West that Palestinians couldn't be trusted to run a state of their own, and that therefore all it could be allowed would be the bantustan version of a state--little Palestinian enclaves cut off from each other by a surrounding Israeli Army and the Israeli settlers. It was for this reason that Ariel Sharon came up with the "unilateral withdrawal from Gaza" strategy as his alternative to what might have been growing pressure for Israel to accept the terms of the Geneva Accord negotiated by MK and former Israeli official negotiator with Palestinians Yossi Beilin. Sharon's alternative was "unilateral withdrawal," rejecting the notion of talking to the Palestinian Authority then under control of Fatah and the pro-non-violence President Abbas. As we pointed out at the time, if Israel had negotiated an end to its presence in Gaza with Abbas, they would have strengthened the credibility of this pro-peace faction of the Palestinian world. Instead, by leaving unilaterally without negotiating with Abbas, they gave great credence to Hamas, which could say that it was Hamas' armed resistance that had chased Israeli troops out of Gaza, and that all of the non-violent posturing of Abbas had won him nothing but being ignored and labeled "not a partner for peace" by Sharon and then by Ehud Olmert. Ariel Sharon was no fool: his strategy was to strengthen Hamas so that the pressure from the rest of the world to give Palestinians a state would dramatically abate, as it did. Now the strategy has paid off better than Sharon and Olmert had dreamed: with visions of Palestinians fighting each other in the streets, many people in the world are saying "see how these people never could run a state."

There is something in the culture of the Palestinians, or of the Arab world, that is too tolerant of violence, and too willing to excuse it, whether it be in the disgusting violence of Sunnis vs. Shias that took place in the Iraq/Iran war (though Iranians are not Arabs) and in the current civil war in Iraq, in Lebanon, and now the struggle in Palestine. Tikkun has always been critical of those distortions in the Jewish world that have allowed Jews to deny the realities of the horrible oppression visited on the Palestinian people by Israel and have consistently criticized those elements in Jewish culture that contribute to the denial or even active support for Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people and last summer against the Lebanese. And when Jews have been violent against Jews (e.g. n the killing of Yitzhak Rabin, we haven't blamed it only on the specific circumstances but also asked about what it is in Israeli culture, on in that case in the culture of the Orthodox Jews, which contributes to that kind of violence. We have consistently criticized the war ethics that have allowed Christians to fight Christians for centuries, not to mention all of the horrible genocides committed by people who claimed to be acting as Christians, and ask Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians to be similarly PUBLICLY critical of those elements in their own culture that have led to such distortions in their world.

We ask this not because we want to let Israel off the moral hook, but because if we want to build real peace and reconciliation, we are going to have to seek repentance not only from Israelis, but also from Palestinians--because both sides are too quick to resort to violence, rooted as both sides are in the Strategy of Domination, when what they really need is what we in the Network of Spiritual Progressives have defined as the Strategy of Generosity. And that new approach is the only way we are ever going to see anything but an endless blame game and endless violence.

But telling the truth requires a self-criticism. In an earlier version of the analysis above which was mailed to people on our email lists, I, Rabbi Michael Lerner, included in my editorial introduction a comparison with the way that Jews during the Holocaust had not turned upon each other under far worse conditions than the Palestinians face today. I was rightly criticized for that remark, and have removed it from this version above, for two reasons: a. because it seemed to suggest a moral superiority of Jews over others which I did not mean to imply and which I do not actually believe to be true, at least in any essentialist sense--Jews may under certain circumstances act in a more moral way than others, but as their behavior in the West Bank makes clear, they act in as immoral a way as anyone else under other circumstances; and b. Some individual Jews acted as collaborators with the Nazis, others acted with extremes of self-interest in trying to survive that involved betraying other Jews or acting with cruelty toward them, and in general Jews, like others, exhibited a wide range of different kinds of behavior from heroic and saintly to hurtfully or immorally, and the generalizations make little sense. What I was thinking when I wrote that, but didn't make clear, is that no official Jewish institution ever ordered Jews to attack fellow Jews. But that point itself was wrong for two reasons: c. Zionists did attack other Zionists in 1948 when revisionist Zionists sought to bring arms into Palestine for the purpose of carrying on their war of terror against Palestinians to drive Palestinians out of their homes, and David Ben Gurion ordered the nascent Israeli army to sink the ship that was carrying those weapons and d. There is no clear evidence that the actions of either Hamas or Fatah were in fact ordered by their higher leadership, and some evidence that at least some of the actions that took place were done without the intention of either the top leadership of Hamas or of Fatah. So, I apologize for having made that statement, which others have subsequently criticized, I think rightly, as racist or potentially racist.]

Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor, Tikkun

2007-06-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

Hamas Hated Democracy

Hamas like totalitarians before them had the votes but the votes were not enough. The world should remember that until Hamas took over Gaza it had political control over the entire PA. There is nothing more anti-democratic than leading a coup in a country you won the elections in. We should remember that Hamas was more threatened by the possibility of being re-elected and having to answer to an electorate more than anything else.

Rasim Obeidat makes a lucid but overly conspiratorial series of skeptical assertion that somehow the Gaza situation plays into Israeli hands. What would play into Israeli hands is a sober PA that wants to be defended and supported by Israel with right of return to Judea and Samaria for all Palestinians with Ramalah as its eternal capital. That would also play into Palestinian hands since they would have a war free state. Since that is not going to happen anytime soon, current events are a mixed blessing for Israel.

For now, Israel has an outright enemy in Hamastan with properties that can be counter-attacked. That makes either the return of Gaza territory to Israel or the more remote possibility of Egypt taking it over and murdering anyone in Gaza that isn’t happy to see them.

It is quite possible that Jordan may consider a West Bank takeover. Jordan despite being potentially unstable has a strong king who has two things the other Palestinians may never have. He has a Palestinian state and he has definable rights in Jerusalem plus he already has his own capital. The Jordanian King is in a far better position to win the peace than the PA. The world needs to consider the possibility that nationalism has failed with the PA. Hamas itself is little more than an Iranian vassal .

Unfortunately the Israelis, Americans, Jordanians, and PA seem unprepared for this implosion. Considering the current situation the separation of the PA is logical and probably good in the long term. Bangladesh and Pakistan are probably better off for being separate While the word supports Fatah, the world should it expect that it too will be consumed by and anti-democratic anti-nationalist movement. No genuine moderates have emerged in Fatah, that should be proof enough Fatah is simply waiting for the end. - Achdut

Fatehstine and Hamasstan; legitimate or not

Rasim Obeidat Translated and Edited By Saed Bannoura - IMEMC

Now after Hamas had managed to control the Gaza Strip using its military power over Fateh, we can describe the situation as the following; Fatehstine in the West Bank, and Hamasstan in the Gaza Strip. In spite that Hamas political bureau chief, Khalid Mashal, and Hamas’ Ismail Haniyya, said that there will be no state in Gaza alone and in spite their statements of the unity of all Palestinians, that fact which remains here is that Hamas is controlling the Gaza Strip, and Fateh, based in the West Bank, considered this as mutiny and is determined to gain control.

This is what Israel and the United States always wanted, and it corresponds with the American policy and vision of spreading chaos in the Arab World, in Iraq and in Palestine.

This policy is based on getting the people involved in war and continuous internal clashes regardless of the background of these clashes be it religious, political or whatever.

Israel and the United states always wanted to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, and now Hamas fell into this trap after it used military power to gain control over Gaza in spite the fact that this decision was caused initially by the unjust siege imposed on the Palestinian people, and was also caused by “betting on the American role”

But the United States, and some of its Arab allies, did not want the Mecca Unity deal to be implemented, and did not want the Palestinian government to implement its security plan which could have ended chaos and insecurity.

Today, the situation will be a continuation of discussions and conflicts regarding the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the Hamas government, conflicts regarding the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the Emergency Law.

Both Hamas and Fateh now believe that they are equipped by allies and friends regionally and internationally. And several Arab countries “referred to as moderate”, the United States and Europe expressed their support to the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, while Iran and Syria will stand by Hamas.

So, as it looks like now, more bloodshed and destruction will take place, we will see the “mini-state of Fateh-stine” becoming rich and enjoy support from all countries, and the United States will increase its support and will enrich corrupt figures and even factions. This will be carried out by direct support from Arab countries and West Europe.

This mini-state will encourage the military solution in order to regain power in the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian areas will witness more sessions of chaos, internal clashes and insecurity, but this time it will be more violent than before.

This all will be accompanied by speedy procedures by Israel against the Gaza Strip. And Israel already started voicing calls to support Abbas in the West Bank and isolate Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

I personally believe that Israel wants this situation to continue; Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, will act in order to keep the Gaza Strip totally isolated from the West Bank, and will act in order to weaken the connections between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Israel will also implement its settlement plans in the West Bank without any pressure from the international community and will start presenting ideas for a “solution” such as confederacy with Jordan in the West Bank and Egyptian Mandate in the Gaza Strip.

It is worth saying that the Palestinian struggle cannot be described as a struggle between Hamas and Fateh, it is a now a struggle over power, before talking about visions and higher interests of the Palestinian people, as those interests and sacrifices will be wasted by both Fateh and Hamas.

Although Hamas should not have used military power to control Gaza, but the response to this take over was hasty and cannot be considered as a way out of this current crisis, but will only cause further complications, and will lead to more chaos and insecurity.

The Palestinian arena will be busy talking about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the “Hamas-stan” government, the legitimacy or illegitimacy of Fateh-stan emergency government, and the Palestinian people will continue to pay the price.

This situation can only be resolved by forming a united national unity government, by reforming all security devices based on national standards and efficiency. All gangs and militias must be struck hard regardless what name or what color they carry.

Everyone who is found guilty of these crimes must be punished without any protection from his party. All figures who are known for their acts that escalate the situation should be removed, and all figures who want to impose foreign agendas should be removed too.

The responsibility here is not only Palestinian, it is also an Arab responsibility, all Arabs say that the Palestinian cause is a first priority, they must now call for comprehensive dialogue between all factions, under direct supervision of the Arab countries, they must all act in order to maintain the unity of the Palestinians and their cause, the Arabs should not act in order to increase the divisions among the Palestinians, taking into consideration that everything which happens in Palestinian will have its effects on the Arab region.

Therefore, everyone who has enough reason, and who wants unity among all factions, figures, and civil society institutions should act to regain the unity of the Palestinians, unity based on clear and solid foundations, based on the national unity document and the March 2005 agreement among the factions, and far away from abominable responses from this faction or that.

2007-06-22T03:55:00.001-07:00

Iran could be easy to defeat

Iran is the burning core of all our issues in the Middle East at the moment. Iran is the country that foments "revolution" by supporting terror , Iran is the country that makes all of our allies in the region nervous, Iran is the country that has territorial ambitions in the Gulf States, Iran's Pan-Islam is the successor to Nasser's Pan-Arabic state. It is also rightly seen as the successor to Communism as a threat that ought to be contained. Iran's revolution differs in that it had a Leninist Revolution that has pretty much skipped Stalinism and gone straight to Brezhnevian kleptocratic failure. Iran is a very brittle country that can't even produce enough oil to meet its quota at a time of record setting oil prices. Iran has a deeply unhappy populace, even many religious people are alienated by Tehran and that means containment will better with Iran than it deep with the Soviet Union. Isolating Iran economically will be crushing for them, Isolating them diplomatically will be embarrassing and reversing their territorial gains in Lebanon and Gaza will make them implode.

Iran is the only country attempting to make Iraq and Israel into regional conflicts. Take them out of the equation and the Middle becomes much more stable. This also negatively affects Al Qaeda because much of their support comes from the need of Sunni governments to have something to counter Hezbollah and Shiite terrorists with. Support for Al Qaeda will begin to dry up just as the world can more easily focus on them.

The following article offers a great analysis of how to deal with Iran.

Countering Iran's Revolutionary Challenge: Summary
Peter W. Rodman, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies

Iran is a revolutionary power, still in an exuberant phase of its revolution. Geopolitically it seeks to dominate the Gulf; ideologically it challenges the legitimacy of moderate governments in the region. Indeed, Iran aspires to be the leader of Islamist radicalism in the Muslim world as a whole. Iran's conventional military buildup, its pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of the UN Security Council, and its interventions in Lebanon and Iraq not only reflect its ambitions but also explain its current self-confidence.

The nature of the regime is at the core of the challenge it poses, but the starting point of a counter-strategy is containment: that is, George Kennan's classic vision of bringing countervailing pressures to bear against a revolutionary power's external expansion until the structural contradictions within the system begin to weaken it internally.

Iran is not mainly an American problem; it is a challenge in the first instance to our allies and friends in the Middle East. Thus, the first stage in a counter-strategy is to bolster Arab allies and friends as counter-weights to Iranian power. While military cooperation with some Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, is controversial at home, tightening American links with these allies is logically the core of such a strategy. A wider strategic consensus may be emerging that would join the United States, key Arab states, and Israel against the Iranian threat. This should be nurtured. Arab countries have other options, including their own nuclear development, or appeasement of Iran. Far preferable is that they retain confidence in us as a reliable friend and protector.

One element of this policy should be an updating of the Nixon and Carter Doctrines, to declare the American stake in shielding the security of the Gulf against nuclear blackmail. This would strengthen deterrence and possibly deny Iran much of the benefit of pursuing nuclear weapons by nullifying the blackmail potential it seeks to gain.

There are serious arguments for bilateral political engagement with Iran, but there would also be serious downsides in the present context. Our Arab friends (and Israel) would be shaken by what they would see as a major reversal, if not collapse, of long-standing U.S. policy. It would have not only procedural but substantive significance, representing final U.S. acceptance of the Iranian Revolution—a card we should not play without some significant benefit in return. We need to achieve a better geopolitical and psychological balance—some deflation of the Iranians' self-confidence and bolstering of our friends' confidence in us—before going down this road.

Restoring this balance needs to include:

some success in stabilizing Iraq

broader use of economic pressures (as opposed to the narrowly targeted sanctions resorted to thus far)

stepping up support of civil society in Iran, including improving the quality of U.S. official broadcasting into Iran

How we conduct ourselves in Iraq is crucial. Our friends in the Middle East view our policy in Iraq in a broader context, as a test of the credibility of the reassurances we are trying to give them over Iran. There is no way for the United States to be strong against Iran if we are weak in Iraq.

From: The Brookings Institution

2007-06-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

Thank You Tony Blair!

The British will understandably feel betrayed by a Blair government that “despaired” over Iraq planning and then chose to support the flawed US War effort but this is one of the things I admire about Tony Blair. He was certain that intervention in Iraq was needed well before George Bush won the Presidential election by a landslide in the Supreme Court. Many of the reasons for doing so hold up today even if they were not as marketable as WMD.

The failure in Iraq falls squarely on the US, particularly on the administration. We needless alienated our allies to rush into Iraq without a plan or adequate troop strength. Iraq and world would be much better off had we succeeded in Iraq and even if it wasn’t our most immediate battle it could have really helped the world but that is not what happened. Not everything was our fault; the abandonment by Western Europe was partly awful US foreign policy starting with suddenly dumping the Kyoto Protocol to dumping treaties with Russia all on a unilateral basis. Even if we could all agree those were bad or outdated treaties there was a direct military cost to the world’s only super power suddenly blowing its agreements off. Despite that, there was a strategic calculation on the part of Germany and France to abandon in the UN and on the field. A strategy that was never in Tony Blair's blood.

Worse still is the farming out of our Military to private groups and putting under trained Military in charge of prisons that effectively answer to them. It’s as Macabre as anything that will befall someone unfortunate enough to be stuck in Iran to face “Justice.”

Tony Blair stuck to his principles, took on the fight he was certain was correct and went the ally he had rather than one he should have had. Would we have done the same for Britain? I have to wonder -- I hope Blair makes a fortune lecturing in the US because we owe him something -- Achdut

From Huffington Post

Report: Blair Despaired at Iraq Planning

LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair committed British troops to Iraq even though he despaired at the failure of the United States to plan adequately for the aftermath of the invasion, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The Observer quoted Jeremy Greenstock, a former British envoy to Baghdad, as saying Blair "was tearing his hair over some of the deficiencies" in planning for the stabilization and reconstruction of the country.

"There were moments of throwing his hands in the air," added Greenstock, who was Britain's representative in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

The newspaper said the remarks were made in a documentary about Blair's decade in power to be shown next week on Britain's Channel 4 television. The documentary is presented by Andrew Rawnsley, who is also The Observer's chief political correspondent.

The newspaper said David Manning, the current British ambassador in Washington, told the Channel 4 documentary that Blair was "very exercised" about postwar planning as early as March 2002, a year before the invasion.

"All these issues needed to be thrashed out," Manning was quoted as saying. "It wasn't to say that they weren't thinking about them, but I didn't see the evidence at that stage that these things had been thoroughly rehearsed and thoroughly thought through."

Manning visited Washington in March 2002 at Blair's request and on his return sent Blair a memo warning that "there is a real risk that the (Bush) administration underestimates the difficulties" in Iraq.

Blair's office declined to comment on the documentary before it was broadcast.

In planning for the aftermath of the war, "we did all we could and were faced with a challenging situation," a Downing Street spokesman said on condition of anonymity because of government policy.

Blair is due to step down June 27. His decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is the dominant, and most divisive, event of his 10 years in office. More than 150 British troops have died in Iraq since the invasion

2007-06-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

Gaza demonstrated the failures of the "Bush" doctrine

One of the problems with the Bush doctrine is that while it is as easily summarized as the Monroe doctrine it also represents a vast undefined commitment. Are we really fighting terrorism if we don’t fight the terrorists in Gaza or Columbia?

Although they have been benefiting from US & European fragmentation, Iran has managed to expand its military influence into Lebanon after a reversal there, strengthen its influence on Syrian, is probably active in Afghanistan , could potentially create a sister state in Iraq and has a brand new beach head in Gaza.

The fact is that Iran has been growing and nobody from their side has died that they could possibly care about.

The west and the US in particular is going to have to learn some lessons from these reversals. During most of fighting it was terror on terror war and it seemed like a no lose situation. The West has been too chummy with Fatah which is less then a government, less than a military, less than a democracy, less than non-corrupt and less and so I’d rather an obvious enemy to the west than a phony ally.

The US and the rest of the West now needs to recognize that Iran has expanded its territory and opened a new hostile front. We also need to remember why Iran only fights proxy wars, they are brittle. Economic ruin and military reversals will break them. If you want a revolution than throw the bums out in Gaza and Lebanon and millions will roast the Ayatollahs on sticks in Tehran.

Multilateralism may not succeed but so far unilateralism has failed. We need a new policy that places most if not all our international relations in the context of the War on Terror and we need an idea of what battles we fight. Do we not care about Fatah, the PKK, ETA or the narco terrorists? Do we only care about religious terrorist? If so does that include abortion clinic bombing or Hindu violence?

We can’t fight it all ourselves, we need allies and if we have to cut some green house gasses to garner some good will then that is reason enough to do it. Hybrid, electric and hydrogen based cars also hurt what finances terror. If we can steer China & India away from oil then the west will have a great market for high tech goods and places like Iran which are already stagnating and unable to meet their production goals will suffer from low oil prices.

Our allies will buy oil from each other and even India will have to be leery of Iran’s ambitions because they don’t need Iran and China to have a good relationship. We ought to remind India that if Iran has nuclear weapons than Pakistan might be outflanked by India and Iran but India will be outflanked by Iran and China and that relationship has more currency both literally and figuratively.

One of the minor successes, in part owing to nuclear weapons is that Pakistan and India are both conveniently no longer aligned with Al Qaeda or Iran. We have not built on that advantage and Pakistan is looking increasingly brittle. Furthermore, we have had no dialogue with Bhutto or any democratic force in Pakistan and that could bode very negatively for us if there are democratic elections in Pakistan.

Every candidate running for President has said precious little about the future of this conflict, that’s dangerous because US foreign policy has been rudderless.

The problem with the Bush doctrine is that it is undefined; this is the one thing a good politician can fix quickly.

2007-06-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

A Terrible Hamastan Is Born Ready To Slouch Toward Jerusalem

Hamas is about to take over the entire Gaza Strip today, Fatah is about to suffer complete defeat. There will be consequences. Both groups will need to come to grips with the new situation, the unity government will at best be decorative. Both sides will be desperate to appeal for legitimacy but both will cooperate as a tag team against Israel in diplomatic circles and probably in Military circles. After all, if Fatah attacks Israel, Hamas lobbing missiles into Israel may well make for the fact they have been killing Fatah and embarrassing them on the world stage.

At a regional level, there will be causes for concern. Hamas is an Iranian organ and now the Iranians effectively share a border with Israel. That will raise the level of paranoia in both Egypt and the Gulf States.

Ariel Sharon had fielded the idea of Egypt taking over the Gaza strip and the Egyptians were temped but ultimately were not interested but Israel and Egypt had worked out the details this plan may become appealing again if Hamas proves to be destabilizing and destabilizing the region is their reason for existence.

The rise of a terrorist state in Gaze adn the war in Lebanon may destroy Barak's chances to be Prime Minister.

The most important security concern in the region is restraining Iran, Iraq is merely an important detail of that larger problem. One advantage the west has that is Iran is fairly brittle, push them out of Gaza, Lebanon and force sanctions on them and they will break.

What the world ought to do is stop refinancing it sproblems and get OPEC to force Iran out and replace its Oil supply while the west puts lots of pressure on India, China and even Russia to go along. However, there may not be much unity even between Europe and the US about Iranian oil. Just as the Europeans tried to make their deals with Iraq, they may do so with Iran.

Right now the Iranian regime is selling itself on dubious successes like Lebanon and real successes like Hamas in Gaza. The world must demonstrate to Iran that is successes are ephemeral.

Thinking Outside The Iraq Box

2007-06-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

Barry Rubin does an admirable job of dissecting Washington's priorities in the Middle East. This opens up a few questions the answers to which the world will have to wait for the answers to after the American Presidential Elections.

What are America's long terms needs from the Middle East? For example, if we manage to steer much of the world away from oil we could theoretically drain the swamp of money and simply abandon the Middle East leaving it unstable but relatively a local problem like West Africa.

We could continue to embrace the Middle East but by which model? We have a few examples to choose from: cold war style alliances, Organization of American States Model -- which is a post colonial one, or a commonwealth-EU-Free trade model that absorbs these countries into GATT and smaller trading blocks. The problem with the latter is that we have probably already maximized the benefits and have several brittle allies in the Middle East. We could increase that number but without knocking over most of the pins this last strategy can only realize the status quo.

The most positive thing happening in the Middle East has almost nothing to do with short term US policy, the more established western ally leaning countries are finding they don't like local issues to become regional issues. The middle East has swung 360 from the Pan-Arab attitudes of 1967. The region would rather not be burned by the Palestinian conflict or Iraq.

Long term US policy should focus on development for states that are more pro-western and it has with Jordan's free trade agreement. We also see the Gulf state reaching out by setting up western style educational institutions which are often partnered with US institutions like the Georgetown program in Qatar.

What the US needs is an approach to the Middle East that is can have deep bi-partisan agreement and hopefully support from Europe.

One advantage we do not make enough use of is that nearly all the US allies are wildly successful compared to their counterparts. Particularly Israel and Turkey and the more westernized the more successful. Jordan may well prove to be a strong role model.

Right now our whole Middle East policy is the Iraq war and that is a dangerous situation to be in. Had we made Vietnam our whole policy in Asia we might have had serious problems in Asia costing us the entire region.

excerpted from: I dentifying America's top Mideast priority by Barry Rubin
In general, one sees two major strategies proposed.

One of them, much promoted by a large element of the academic-intellectual-media class, the Left posing as liberals, is that this conflict is a mistake, a misunderstanding, which can be talked out of existence. The radicals must either have their own real interests explained to them or receive Western concessions in order to behave themselves.

This camp's watchwords are: appease, explain and engage. They see the problem not only as Islamophobia but also Islamismphobia. For them blame always lies with the United States, Israel or the West in general. The reasons for this stance include: ignorance, a reaction against the Bush administration's many failures and a frothing hatred of it, fear of facing facts which require risk and conflict; hatred of their own society; and short-range partisanship against the incumbents.

WHAT HAS happened in the last few months is that the administration has heeded the criticisms of its mainstream and, to a lesser extent, more extreme critics. In the latter case, it has reduced the policy of pressuring Syria and Iran through isolation. High-ranking US officials met with both.

More emphasis, however, is put on helping "good guys," those not siding with Iran and Syria, against those "bad guys." Thus, US policy wants to align with the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi and just about every other Arab regime. The democracy policy is downgraded or dead. And Fatah, despite its continued terrorism and radicalism, is seen mainly as a bulwark against radical Islamism. So now US aid is to be paid directly into a PLO bank account, along with arms and training for Fatah.

In addition, US policy wants to keep European countries happy by not going further than they want on Iran while showing them that it is energetically pursuing Israel-Palestinian negotiations.

The bottom line is that US policy has now become pretty much a historically mainstream one, a new Cold War with the names changed, a traditional alignment of more moderate against more radical Arabs and Muslims. The irony is that this, except for refusing to withdraw from Iraq, means it is close to the views of Bush's more mainstream domestic enemies.

The Secular Messianic

2007-06-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

From Zeek "Zionism and Gnosticism" By Dr. Yotam Hotam Translated by Saul Noam Zaritt

The world around us has changed. I don’t refer to the obvious changes that science can easily detect such as global warming, but rather to the ways that religion and religious thought play significant roles in our political and social landscape. They are present in phenomena like Al Quaida, in the political tensions based on religious differences in Europe, and even in the conservative tendencies swirling about in Washington D.C. Of course, the event that best represents this connection between politics and religion is 9/11, the day in which people of faith shattered the World Trade Center in one of the most profoundly disturbing acts of our time.

The shock-waves of this event permeated the world of thought, resulting in a “theological change” among researchers in the humanities and social science. Post 9/11, these researchers became interested in the connections between politics and theology, religion and political thought, faith and ideology. As researchers began to investigate the subtle ways in which religious terms underpin political, secular, and modern thought, the term “political-theology” – which was first introduced by the German philosopher of law Carl Schmitt in the early 1920s – returned to the fore of social science.

It seems that the changes of the last few of years have begun to threaten the secular fixation, or to be more precise, the fixation on the fantasy or pretension that the modern world had “freed itself” from the fetters of its religious past. Against this backdrop, today’s historians are reexamining past phenomena in which political-theology – or the connection between theology and politics – is apparent. One of the most fascinating examples of this phenomenon is Zionism. But what can be said about Zionism in political-theological terms? In order to delve more deeply into this categorization, Zionism must first be defined as a modern secular movement.

Zionism: Faith, Fantasy, or Fact?

Over the years, historians have traditionally seen Zionism as a secular national movement – though one with motivations rooted solely in fantasy and faith and wholly non-reflective of historical or sociological reality. Many of the Zionist claims, such as those of the recreation (i.e. “Renaissance”) of the “New Jew” in contrast to the “Diaspora Jew,” the “renewal” of the Jewish people and of the Hebrew language, and the call for the “return to Eretz Israel” – though central for various Zionist thinkers from the beginning of the twentieth century and for Zionist thought in general – were based on faith and fantasy rather than fact.

Indeed, the historian Jacob Talmon, one of the most prominent figures in his field in our time, understood Zionism as a secular movement that contained a redemptive fantasy, or, as he called it, a “secular messianic” movement – a modern political secular movement still holding its internal justification in theological terms. To understand this view, it is important to define Talmon’s understanding of the term “secularization.” For Talmon, “secularization” is the mundane translation of religious terms like “redemption” or “repentance.” In this way it is not G-d that redeems the Jewish people, but rather the Jewish people actively redeems itself. Likewise, it is not the return to a Kingdom of G-d that waits at the end of the national trajectory, but rather the return of the Jew to an original “Jewish-self” that had been lost in the Diaspora. Put differently, Talmon describes secularization as a transformation of the divine into an earthly medium, ultimately expressed in the national Jewish movement. “Secularization” consists of capturing characteristics that were once associated with the divine and grafting them onto earthly matters. Or better yet – to paraphrase the historian Joshua Arielli on Augustine’s Civitas Dei – it was through secularization that the earthly city inherited the City of G-d.

The concept of secularization as understood by historians such as Talmon and Arielli – and as echoed in the research of their students – follows from the German intellectual heritage, most particularly from the first third of the twentieth century. At the center of this conception of secularization is not observation of human activity, but rather the analysis of human consciousness. Questions of the percentage of the population attending church or the number of people voting for religious parties, which preoccupy contemporary sociologists such as Peter Bruce, are not central to this approach; in fact, they are basically insignificant factors in understanding the secularization process. Instead, this approach questions the consciousness, or “the human spirit,” and the changes that occurred (and occur) within it. It is an epistemological approach for understanding historical phenomena that places less emphasis on sociological, empirical, and quantitative studies. And as mentioned above, the conclusion of this approach is that the term “secularization” does not express the liberation from a religious consciousness, but rather the translation and transformation of this consciousness into the framework of modern life.

While the system of thought explaining “secularization” is compelling, it still carries a flaw. True, the character of the secularization process is clear (as a translation of the sacred into the mundane), but what is the source of this process? How did it happen that people, seemingly out of nowhere, decided to develop an approach to political and national problems which seems to be genuinely new, translating that which their ancestors had treated as divine into the earthly and mundane? This set of theoretical questions is also pivotal in understanding Western history in general: the conception that there exists a process of secularization in terms of translation of the divine to the earthly and mundane does not explain the source of such a process, or a reason for its occurrence.

Blame It on Gnosis

What then could be an answer to the question of the source of secularization in Europe? The historical assumption, which really is quite intuitive, is that the Western secular world proceeds from its Chr-stian past. In his book Meaning in History (1949), Karl Loewith, a German thinker of Jewish origin, claims that modernity is merely Chr-stianity which has undergone a process of secularization. Loewith, one of Heidegger’s students during the twenties, was forced to leave Nazi Germany because of his Jewish background, and was one of the first intellectuals to return to Germany after the war, ending what he considered to be twenty years of forced exile. Continued

2007-06-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

The Achdut Reboot!

Achdut News had fallen on some hard times recently; we had problems displaying our RSS feeds. As a free site, we started using proprietary geocities software to set up the Achdut news site but we had two problems with our RSS feeds that went beyond the limits of Geocities templates. Our polling suggested that we should also put more emphasis on regional Jewish news rather than National and International.

We had two problems with RSS, the original Headline Depot failed to generate headlines of our internal blogs and so we started using RSS-To-JavaScript and both tended overlap other items on the template. To add insult to injury, Headline Depot within the Geocities template failed to work properly with Firefox browsers.

To address all of these issues, we re-made the site from scratch using more professional software. We’ve expanded links for religious resources, regional Jewish publication and items in our pop section amongst others. Most regional Jewish publications are behind in internet technology and either can’t or don’t have the resources to embrace RSS feeds. I will begin forwarding regional news manually to the paper. This is a minor broadening of our scope; Achdut still feeds in timely articles from undervalued news services that are national and international in scope. Achdut has also added a Kosher Alert feed to page 3.

Since the site will be much easier to update, we will be expanding our outside links which will include podcasts.

This Achdut site has two basic goals: to be a thorough compendium of current Jewish News with more depth than the national media and to be “a great place to start” looking for anything that is Jewish related. To that end Achdut has a lot of Jewish religious, historical and cultural resources.

Achdut proudly has a new URL to go with these improvements: http://www.achdutnews.com/index.html

Hezbollah fallout

2006-09-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

I think at this point in time it is fair to say Israel has a qualified victory in Lebanon.

Despite some poltical fear of going back into Lebanon that caused Israel to make several mistakes, the public has seen the necessity of self defense and supported the war.

However, Israel was very late in penetrating the country with special forces and even more timid about sending troops where they were needed and attempted to recreate the NATO attacks on Serbia which couldn't possibly have worked.

Hezbollah is now selling Lebanon on the idea that is can mount a resistance to Israel and that it can attack Israel. The latter is true but the former is not true.

In fact, Hezbollah has (as I think time will tell) lost everything it gained from the Israeli pullout six years ago.

1. It can longer take credit for driving Israel out of Lebanon, it can only take credit for driving Israel into Lebanon.
2. It cannot claim to be able to resist Isreal because Israel can take any land it deems neceessary and worth its while.
3. It can claim to be able to attack Israel but only becomming a tool of Iran and Syria.

In other words, the failure of Hezbollah is deep if not totally thorough.

Thus Israel should continue its very slow pullout while Lebanese troops take over but stage handover to Lebanon or international forces and demand that Lebanon secure areas that Israel has not secured as proof of good will. While doing so, Israel can continue intelligence gathering and eliminating Hezbollah supplies as it finds them.

US Relgion & Foreign Policy

2006-08-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most interesting thing here is the care with which Russel distinguished between protestand strands of religion.

G-d's Country?
By Walter Russell Mead

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006

Summary: Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, but the recent surge in the number and the power of evangelicals is recasting the country's political scene -- with dramatic implications for foreign policy. This should not be cause for panic: evangelicals are passionately devoted to justice and improving the world, and eager to reach out across sectarian lines.

Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Further reading for this article can be found at www.foreignaffairs.org/mead_reading.

EVANGELICALS AND FOREIGN POLICY

Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, policy, identity, and culture. Religion shapes the nation's character, helps form Americans' ideas about the world, and influences the ways Americans respond to events beyond their borders. Religion explains both Americans' sense of themselves as a chosen people and their belief that they have a duty to spread their values throughout the world. Of course, not all Americans believe such things -- and those who do often bitterly disagree over exactly what they mean. But enough believe them that the ideas exercise profound influence over the country's behavior abroad and at home.

In one sense, religion is so important to life in the United States that it disappears into the mix. Partisans on all sides of important questions regularly appeal to religious principles to support their views, and the country is so religiously diverse that support for almost any conceivable foreign policy can be found somewhere.

Yet the balance of power among the different religious strands shifts over time; in the last generation, this balance has shifted significantly, and with dramatic consequences. The more conservative strains within American Protestantism have gained adherents, and the liberal Protestantism that dominated the country during the middle years of the twentieth century has weakened. This shift has already changed U.S. foreign policy in profound ways.

These changes have yet to be widely understood, however, in part because most students of foreign policy in the United States and abroad are relatively unfamiliar with conservative U.S. Protestantism. That the views of the evangelical Reverend Billy Graham lead to quite different approaches to foreign relations than, say, those popular at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University is not generally appreciated. But subtle theological and cultural differences can and do have important political consequences. Interpreting the impact of religious changes in the United States on U.S. foreign policy therefore requires a closer look into the big revival tent of American Protestantism.

Why focus exclusively on Protestantism? The answer is, in part, that Protestantism has shaped much of the country's identity and remains today the majority faith in the United States (although only just). Moreover, the changes in Catholicism (the second-largest faith and the largest single religious denomination in the country) present a more mixed picture with fewer foreign policy implications. And finally, the remaining religious groups in the United States are significantly less influential when it comes to the country's politics.

A QUESTION OF FUNDAMENTALS

To make sense of how contemporary changes in Protestantism are starting to affect U.S. foreign policy, it helps to understand the role that religion has historically played in the country's public life. The U.S. religious tradition, which grew out of the sixteenth-century Reformations of England and Scotland, has included many divergent ideologies and worldviews over time. Three strains, however, have been most influential: a strict tradition that can be called fundamentalist, a progressive and ethical tradition known as liberal Christianity, and a broader evangelical tradition. (Pentecostals have theological differences with non-Pentecostal evangelicals and fundamentalists, but Pentecostalism is an offshoot of evangelical theology, and thus the majority of American Pentecostals can be counted with evangelicals here.)

It would be wrong to read too much precision into these labels. Most American Christians mix and match theological and social ideas from these and other strands of Protestant and Christian thought with little concern for consistency. Yet describing the chief features of each strand and their implications for the United States' role in the world will nevertheless make it easier to appreciate the way changes in the religious balance are shaping the country's behavior.

Fundamentalists, liberal Christians, and evangelicals are all part of the historical mainstream of American Protestantism, and as such all were profoundly affected by the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth century. For much of the 1800s, most Protestants believed that science confirmed biblical teaching. When Darwinian biology and scholarly "higher criticism" began to cast increasing doubt on traditional views of the Bible's authorship and veracity, however, the American Protestant movement broke apart. Modernists argued that the best way to defend Christianity in an enlightened age was to incorporate the new scholarship into theology, and mainline Protestant denominations followed this logic. The fundamentalists believed that churches should remain loyal to the "fundamentals" of Protestant faith, such as the literal truth of the Bible.

The fundamentalists themselves were divided into two strands, originally distinguished as much by culture and temperament as by theology. The "separatists" argued that true believers should abandon churches that compromised with or tolerated modernism in any form. As U.S. society and culture became more secular and pluralistic, the separatists increasingly withdrew from both politics and culture. The other strand of the original fundamentalist movement sought continual engagement with the rest of the world. This strand was originally called neo-evangelical. Today, the separatists proudly retain the label of fundamentalist, while the neo-evangelicals have dropped the prefix and are now simply known as evangelicals.

The three contemporary streams of American Protestantism (fundamentalist, liberal, and evangelical) lead to very different ideas about what the country's role in the world should be. In this context, the most important differences have to do with the degree to which each promotes optimism about the possibilities for a stable, peaceful, and enlightened international order and the importance each places on the difference between believers and nonbelievers. In a nutshell, fundamentalists are deeply pessimistic about the prospects for world order and see an unbridgeable divide between believers and nonbelievers. Liberals are optimistic about the prospects for world order and see little difference between Christians and nonbelievers. And evangelicals stand somewhere in between these extremes.

Self-described fundamentalists are a diverse group, partly because there are many competing definitions of the term "fundamentalist" and, in keeping with the decentralized and sectarian character of American Protestantism, there is no generally accepted authoritative body to define what fundamentalists are or believe. As used here, the term "fundamentalist" involves three characteristics: a high view of biblical authority and inspiration; a strong determination to defend the historical Protestant faith against Roman Catholic and modernist, secular, and non-Christian influence; and the conviction that believers should separate themselves from the non-Christian world. Fundamentalists can be found throughout conservative Protestant Christianity, and some denominations more properly considered evangelical (such as the Southern Baptists and the Missouri Synod Lutherans) have vocal minorities that could legitimately be called fundamentalist. Fundamentalist denominations, such as the ultra-Calvinist Orthodox Presbyterian Church, tend to be smaller than liberal and evangelical ones. This is partly because fundamentalists prefer small, pure, and doctrinally rigorous organizations to larger, more diverse ones. It is also because many fundamentalist congregations prefer to remain independent of any denominational structure.

Many outsiders think of fundamentalism as an anti-intellectual and emotional movement. And it is true that most conservative American Protestants attach great importance to emotional and personal spiritual experience. But the difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals is not that fundamentalists are more emotional in their beliefs; it is that fundamentalists insist more fully on following their ideas to their logical conclusion. Fundamentalists are more interested than evangelicals in developing a consistent and all-embracing "Christian worldview" and then in systematically applying it to the world. It is one thing to reject (as many evangelicals do) Darwinian evolution because personal experience leads one to consider the Bible an infallible guide. It is something else entirely to develop (as some fundamentalists do) an alternative paradigm of "scientific creationism," write textbooks about it, and seek to force schools to teach it or withdraw one's children from those schools that will not. Fundamentalist-dominated institutions, such as the Independent Baptist movement and Bob Jones University, are not hotbeds of snake-handling revivalist Holy Rollers but host intense, if often unconventional, scholarship.

Devastated by a string of intellectual and political defeats in the 1920s and 1930s, fundamentalists retreated into an isolation and a pessimism that were foreign to the optimistic orientation of nineteenth-century American Protestantism. The effect of this retreat was to give fundamentalists a defensive and alienated outlook that bore a marked resemblance to the Puritan Calvinism of early New England. Like the Puritans, many fundamentalists hold the bleak view that there is an absolute gap between those few souls God has chosen to redeem and the many he has predestined to end up in hell. Calvinists once labored to establish theocratic commonwealths -- in Scotland by the Covenanters and the Kirk Party, in England during Oliver Cromwell's ascendancy, and in New England, all during the seventeenth century. But in the last three centuries, theocratic state building has become both less attractive to and less feasible for hard-line fundamentalists. It is not only that demographic changes have made it difficult to imagine circumstances in which fundamentalists would constitute a majority. The experience of past commonwealths also shows that successor generations usually lack the founders' fervor. Sadder and wiser from these experiences, contemporary American fundamentalists generally believe that human efforts to build a better world can have only very limited success. They agree with the nineteenth-century American preacher Dwight Moody, who, when urged to focus on political action, replied, "I look upon this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a lifeboat and said, 'Moody, save all you can.'"

If fundamentalists tend to be pessimistic about the prospects for social reform inside the United States, they are downright hostile to the idea of a world order based on secular morality and on global institutions such as the United Nations. More familiar than many Americans with the stories of persecuted Christians abroad, fundamentalists see nothing moral about cooperating with governments that oppress churches, forbid Christian proselytizing, or punish conversions to Christianity under Islamic law. To institutions such as the UN that treat these governments as legitimate, they apply the words of the prophet Isaiah: "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we are at agreement." It is no coincidence that the popular Left Behind novels, which depict the end of the world from a fundamentalist perspective, show the Antichrist rising to power as the secretary-general of the UN.

Fundamentalists, finally, are committed to an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world and the Last Judgment. As biblical literalists, they believe that the dark prophecies in both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, notably those of the book of Revelation, foretell the great and terrible events that will ring down the curtain on human history. Satan and his human allies will stage a final revolt against God and the elect; believers will undergo terrible persecution, but Christ will put down his enemies and reign over a new heaven and a new earth. This vision is not particularly hospitable to the idea of gradual progress toward a secular utopia driven by technological advances and the cooperation of intelligent people of all religious traditions.

LIBERAL THINKING

Liberal Christianity finds the core of Christianity in its ethical teachings rather than in its classic doctrines. As far back as the seventeenth century, this current of Christian thinking has worked to demythologize the religion: to separate the kernel of moral inspiration from the shell of legend that has, presumably, accreted around it. Liberal Christians are skeptical about the complex doctrines concerning the nature of Jesus and the Trinity that were developed in the early centuries of the church's history. They are reluctant to accept various biblical episodes -- such as the creation of the world in seven days, the Garden of Eden, and Noah's flood -- as literal narrative. And their skepticism often also extends to the physical resurrection of Jesus and the various miracles attributed to him. Rather than believing that Jesus was a supernatural being, liberal Christians see him as a sublime moral teacher whose example they seek to follow through a lifetime of service -- often directed primarily at the poor. The Unitarian Church, introduced to the United States in 1794 by the English scientist and theologian Joseph Priestly, is a denomination organized around these core ideas. Priestly was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and a significant theological influence on Thomas Jefferson, although both Franklin and Jefferson attended Episcopalian services when they went to church. As Darwinism and biblical criticism led others to question the literal accuracy of many biblical stories, liberalism spread widely through the mainline Protestant denominations -- including the Methodist, Presbyterian, American Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, and Lutheran churches -- to which the United States' social, intellectual, and economic elites have generally belonged.

Although more doctrinally conservative Christians often consider progressives to be outside the Christian mainstream, liberal Christians claim to represent the essence of Protestantism. The Reformation, in their view, was the first stage of reclaiming the valuable core of Christianity. The original reformers purged the church of the sale of indulgences and ideas such as purgatory, papal infallibility, and transubstantiation. In attacking such established Christian doctrines as the Trinity, original sin, and the existence of hell, liberal Christians today believe they are simply following the "Protestant principle."

Liberal Christianity has a much lower estimate of the difference between Christians and non-Christians than do the other major forms of American Protestantism. Liberal Christians believe that ethics are the same all over the world. Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and even nonreligious people can agree on what is right and what is wrong; every religion has a kernel of ethical truth. The idea of the church as a supernatural society whose members enjoy special grace plays very little role in liberal Christianity.

Because most liberal Christians (with the important exception of "Christian realists" such as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr) discard the doctrine of original sin, liberal Christianity leads to optimism both about the prospects for a peaceful world order and about international organizations such as the UN. Indeed, liberal Christians have often seen the fight to establish the kingdom of God as a call to support progressive political causes at home and abroad. They argue that the dark prophecies of Revelation point to the difficulty of establishing a just social order on earth -- but that this order will nonetheless come to pass if everyone works together to build it.

Liberal Protestantism dominated the worldview of the U.S. political class during World War II and the Cold War. Leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Foster Dulles were, like most American elites at the time, steeped in this tradition. The liberal Christian approach also opened the door to cooperation with Roman Catholics and Jews, who were then becoming much more influential in the United States. Some of the optimism with which many liberal Christians today approach the problems of world order and cooperation across ethnic and religious lines reflects their earlier success at forming a domestic consensus.

In recent years, however, liberal Christianity has been confronted with several challenges. First, liberal Protestantism tends to evanesce into secularism: members follow the "Protestant principle" right out the door of the church. As a result, liberal, mainline denominations are now shrinking -- quickly. Second, liberal Christians are often only tepidly engaged with "religious" issues and causes. Liberal Christians may be environmentalists involved with the Sierra Club or human rights activists involved with Amnesty International, but those activities take place in the secular world. Third, alienated from the Catholic hierarchy by their position on issues such as abortion and gay rights, and from Jews by their decreasing support for Israel, liberal Christians are losing their traditional role as the conveners of an interfaith community. Finally, the mainline denominations themselves are increasingly polarized over issues such as gay rights. Consumed by internal battles, they are less able to influence U.S. society as a whole.

EVANGELICALS AND THE MIDDLE PATH

Evangelicals, the third of the leading strands in American Protestantism, straddle the divide between fundamentalists and liberals. Their core beliefs share common roots with fundamentalism, but their ideas about the world have been heavily influenced by the optimism endemic to U.S. society. Although there is considerable theological diversity within this group, in general it is informed by the "soft Calvinism" of the sixteenth-century Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, the thinking of English evangelists such as John Wesley (who carried on the tradition of German Pietism), and, in the United States, the experience of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening and subsequent religious revivals.

The leading evangelical denomination in the United States is the Southern Baptist Convention, which, with more than 16.3 million members, is the largest Protestant denomination in the country. The next-largest evangelical denominations are the African American churches, including the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., and the National Baptist Convention of America (each of which reports having about 5 million members). The predominately African American Church of God in Christ, with 5.5 million members, is the largest Pentecostal denomination in the country, and the rapidly growing Assemblies of God, which has 2.7 million members, is the largest Pentecostal denomination that is not predominately black. The Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod, which has 2.5 million members, is the second-largest predominately white evangelical denomination. Like fundamentalists, white evangelicals are often found in independent congregations and small denominations. So-called parachurch organizations, such as the Campus Crusade for Christ, the Promise Keepers, and the Wycliffe Bible Translators, often replace or supplement traditional denominational structures among evangelicals.

Evangelicals resemble fundamentalists in several respects. Like fundamentalists, evangelicals attach a great deal of importance to the doctrinal tenets of Christianity, not just to its ethical teachings. For evangelicals and fundamentalists, liberals' emphasis on ethics translates into a belief that good works and the fulfillment of moral law are the road to God -- a betrayal of Christ's message, in their view. Because of original sin, they argue, humanity is utterly incapable of fulfilling any moral law whatever. The fundamental message of Christianity is that human efforts to please God by observing high ethical standards must fail; only Christ's crucifixion and resurrection can redeem man. Admitting one's sinful nature and accepting Christ's sacrifice are what both evangelicals and fundamentalists mean by being "born again." When liberal Christians put ethics at the heart of their theology, fundamentalists and evangelicals question whether these liberals know what Christianity really means.

Evangelicals also attach great importance to the difference between those who are "saved" and those who are not. Like fundamentalists, they believe that human beings who die without accepting Christ are doomed to everlasting separation from God. They also agree with fundamentalists that "natural" people -- those who have not been "saved" -- are unable to do any good works on their own.

Finally, most (although not all) evangelicals share the fundamentalist approach to the end of the world. Virtually all evangelicals believe that the biblical prophecies will be fulfilled, and a majority agree with fundamentalists on the position known as premillennialism: the belief that Christ's return will precede the establishment of the prophesied thousand-year reign of peace. Ultimately, all human efforts to build a peaceful world will fail.

Given these similarities, it is not surprising that many observers tend to confuse evangelicals and fundamentalists, thinking that the former are simply a watered down version of the latter. Yet there are important differences between the fundamentalist and the evangelical worldviews. Although the theological positions on these issues can be very technical and nuanced, evangelicals tend to act under the influence of a cheerier form of Calvinism. The strict position is that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was only intended for the small number of souls God intended to save; the others have no chance for salvation. Psychologically and doctrinally, American evangelicals generally have a less bleak outlook. They believe that the benefits of salvation are potentially available to everyone, and that God gives everyone just enough grace to be able to choose salvation if he wishes. Strict Calvinist doctrine divides humanity into two camps with little in common. In the predominant evangelical view, God loves each soul, is unutterably grieved when any are lost, and urgently seeks to save them all.

All Christians, whether fundamentalist, liberal, or evangelical, acknowledge at least formally the responsibility to show love and compassion to everyone, Christian or not. For evangelicals, this demand has extra urgency. Billions of perishing souls can still be saved for Christ, they believe. The example Christians set in their daily lives, the help they give the needy, and the effectiveness of their proclamation of the gospel -- these can bring lost souls to Christ and help fulfill the divine plan. Evangelicals constantly reinforce the message of Christian responsibility to the world. Partly as a result, evangelicals are often open to, and even eager for, social action and cooperation with nonbelievers in projects to improve human welfare, even though they continue to believe that those who reject Christ cannot be united with God after death.

Evangelicals can be hard to predict. Shocked by recent polls showing that a substantial majority of Americans reject the theory of evolution, intellectuals and journalists in the United States and abroad have braced themselves for an all-out assault on Darwinian science. But no such onslaught has been forthcoming. U.S. public opinion has long rejected Darwinism, yet even in states such as Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, which have large actively Christian populations, state universities go on teaching astronomy, genetics, geology, and paleontology with no concern for religious cosmology, and the United States continues to support the world's most successful scientific community. Most evangelicals find nothing odd about this seeming contradiction. Nor do they wish to change it -- unlike the fundamentalists. The pragmatism of U.S. culture combines with the somewhat anti-intellectual cast of evangelical religion to create a very broad public tolerance for what, to some, might seem an intolerable level of cognitive dissonance. In the seventeenth century, Puritan Harvard opposed Copernican cosmology, but today evangelical America is largely content to let discrepancies between biblical chronology and the fossil record stand unresolved. What evangelicals do not like is what some call "scientism": the attempt to teach evolution or any other subject in such a way as to rule out the possibility of the existence and activity of God.

Evangelicals are more optimistic than fundamentalists about the prospects for moral progress. The postmillennial minority among them (which holds that Christ will return after a thousand years of world peace, not before) believes that this process can continue until human society reaches a state of holiness: that the religious progress of individuals and societies can culminate in the establishment of a peaceable kingdom through a process of gradual improvement. This is a view of history very compatible with the optimism of liberal Christians, and evangelicals and liberal Christians have in fact joined in many common efforts at both domestic and international moral improvement throughout U.S. history. Although the premillennial majority is less optimistic about the ultimate success of such efforts, American evangelicals are often optimistic about the short-term prospects for human betterment.

In his 2005 book Imagine! A God-Blessed America: How It Could Happen and What It Would Look Like, the conservative evangelical Richard Land describes and justifies this evangelical optimism: "I believe that there could be yet another Great Awakening in our country, a nationwide revival. ... Scripture tells us that none of us can know with certainty the day or hour of the Lord's return. Thus, we have no right to abandon the world to its own misery. Nowhere in Scripture are we called to huddle pessimistically in Christian ghettoes, snatching converts out of the world."

THE BALANCE OF POWER

Recent decades have witnessed momentous changes in the balance of religious power in the United States. The membership of the liberal, historically dominant mainline Protestant churches mostly peaked in the 1960s. Since then, while the number of American Christians has grown, membership in the mainline denominations has sharply dropped. According to Christianity Today, between 1960 and 2003, membership in mainline denominations fell by more than 24 percent, from 29 million to 22 million. The drop in market share was even more dramatic. In 1960, more than 25 percent of all members of religious groups in the United States belonged to the seven leading mainline Protestant denominations; by 2003, this figure had dropped to 15 percent. The Pew Research Center reports that 59 percent of American Protestants identified themselves as mainline Protestants in 1988; by 20023, that percentage had fallen to 46 percent. In the same period, the percentage of Protestants who identified themselves as evangelical rose from 41 percent to 54 percent.

In 1965, there were 3.6 million Episcopalians in the United States -- 1.9 percent of the total population. By 2005, there were only 2.3 million Episcopalians -- 0.8 percent of the population. Membership in the United Methodist Church fell from 11 million in 1965 to 8.2 million in 2005. In the same period, that in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) fell from 3.2 million to 2.4 million, and the United Church of Christ saw its membership decline by almost 50 percent.

Meanwhile, despite some signs of slowing growth after 2001, the Southern Baptist Convention gained more than 7 million members to become the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Between 1960 and 2003, the Southern Baptists gained more members than the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ together lost. In 1960, there were almost 2 million more Methodists than Southern Baptists in the United States; by 2003, there were more Southern Baptists than Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and members of the United Church of Christ combined.

The impact of these trends on national politics has not been hard to find. Self-identified evangelicals provided roughly 40 percent of George W. Bush's total vote in 2004. Among white evangelicals, Bush received 68 percent of the national vote in 2000 and 78 percent in 2004. (The majority of African American evangelicals continue to vote Democratic. Among Hispanics, Bush ran much stronger among the growing Protestant minority than among Catholics; however, both Hispanic Protestants and Hispanic Catholics were more likely to support Bush if they were religiously observant.) Evangelicals have been playing a major role in congressional and Senate elections as well, and the number of self-identified evangelicals in Congress has increased from around 10 percent of the membership in both houses in 1970 to more than 25 percent in 2004.

Fundamentalists, despite some increase in their numbers and political visibility, remain less influential. This is partly because the pervasive optimism of the United States continues to limit the appeal of ultra-Calvinist theology. Moreover, religious politics in the United States remains a coalition sport -- one that a fundamentalist theology, which continues to view Catholicism as an evil cult, is ill equipped to play. To make matters more complicated, fundamentalists themselves are torn between two incompatible political positions: a sullen withdrawal from a damned world and an ambitious attempt to build a new Puritan commonwealth.

Finally, many evangelicals remain resistant to fundamentalist attitudes. "I believe the Word of God, I'm just not mad about it," explained the Reverend Frank Page, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, after his election in June 2006.

OUT IN THE WORLD

The growing influence of evangelicals has affected U.S. foreign policy in several ways; two issues in particular illustrate the resultant changes. On the question of humanitarian and human rights policies, evangelical leadership is altering priorities and methods while increasing overall support for both foreign aid and the defense of human rights. And on the question of Israel, rising evangelical power has deepened U.S. support for the Jewish state, even as the liberal Christian establishment has distanced itself from Jerusalem.

In these cases as in others, evangelical political power today is not leading the United States in a completely new direction. We have seen at least parts of this film before: evangelicals were the dominant force in U.S. culture during much of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. But the country's change in orientation in recent years has nonetheless been pronounced.

Evangelicals in the Anglo-American world have long supported humanitarian and human rights policies on a global basis. The British antislavery movement, for example, was led by an evangelical, William Wilberforce. Evangelicals were consistent supporters of nineteenth-century national liberation movements -- often Christian minorities seeking to break from Ottoman rule. And evangelicals led a number of reform campaigns, often with feminist overtones: against suttee (the immolation of widows) in India, against foot binding in China, in support of female education throughout the developing world, and against human sexual trafficking (the "white slave trade") everywhere. Evangelicals have also long been concerned with issues relating to Africa.

As evangelicals have recently returned to a position of power in U.S. politics, they have supported similar causes and given new energy and support to U.S. humanitarian efforts. Under President Bush, with the strong support of Michael Gerson (an evangelical who was Bush's senior policy adviser and speechwriter), U.S. aid to Africa has risen by 67 percent, including $15 billion in new spending for programs to combat HIV and aids. African politicians, such as Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, have stressed their own evangelical credentials to build support in Washington, much as China's Sun Yat-sen and Madame Chiang Kai-shek once did. Thanks to evangelical pressure, efforts to suppress human trafficking and the sexual enslavement of women and children have become a much higher priority in U.S. policy, and the country has led the fight to end Sudan's wars. Rick Warren, pastor of an evangelical megachurch in Southern California and the author of The Purpose Driven Life (the single best-selling volume in the history of U.S. publishing), has mobilized his 22,000 congregants to help combat aids worldwide (by hosting a conference on the subject and training volunteers) and to form relationships with churches in Rwanda.

Evangelicals have not, however, simply followed the human rights and humanitarian agendas crafted by liberal and secular leaders. They have made religious freedom -- including the freedom to proselytize and to convert -- a central focus of their efforts. Thanks largely to evangelical support (although some Catholics and Jews also played a role), Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, establishing an Office of International Religious Freedom in a somewhat skeptical State Department.

Despite these government initiatives, evangelicals, for cultural as well as theological reasons, are often suspicious of state-to-state aid and multilateral institutions. They prefer grass-roots and faith-based organizations. Generally speaking, evangelicals are quick to support efforts to address specific problems, but they are skeptical about grand designs and large-scale development efforts. Evangelicals will often react strongly to particular instances of human suffering or injustice, but they are more interested in problem solving than in institution building. (Liberal Christians often bewail this trait as evidence of the anti-intellectualism of evangelical culture.)

U.S. policy toward Israel is another area where the increased influence of evangelicals has been evident. This relationship has also had a long history. In fact, American Protestant Zionism is significantly older than the modern Jewish version; in the nineteenth century, evangelicals repeatedly petitioned U.S. officials to establish a refuge in the Holy Land for persecuted Jews from Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

U.S. evangelical theology takes a unique view of the role of the Jewish people in the modern world. On the one hand, evangelicals share the widespread Christian view that Christians represent the new and true children of Israel, inheritors of God's promises to the ancient Hebrews. Yet unlike many other Christians, evangelicals also believe that the Jewish people have a continuing role in God's plan. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, close study of biblical prophecies convinced evangelical scholars and believers that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the triumphant return of Christ. Moreover, while the tumultuous years before Jesus' return are expected to bring many Jews to Christ, many evangelicals believe that until that time, most Jews will continue to reject him. This belief significantly reduces potential tensions between evangelicals and Jews, since evangelicals do not, as Martin Luther did, expect that once exposed to the true faith, Jews will convert in large numbers. Luther's fury when his expectation was not met led to a more anti-Semitic approach on his part; that is unlikely to happen with contemporary evangelicals.

Evangelicals also find the continued existence of the Jewish people to be a strong argument both for the existence of God and for his power in history. The book of Genesis relates that God told Abraham, "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee. ... And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee all families of the earth be blessed." For evangelicals, the fact that the Jewish people have survived through the millennia and that they have returned to their ancient home is proof that God is real, that the Bible is inspired, and that the Christian religion is true. Many believe that the promise of Genesis still stands and that the God of Abraham will literally bless the United States if the United States blesses Israel. They see in the weakness, defeats, and poverty of the Arab world ample evidence that God curses those who curse Israel.

Criticism of Israel and of the United States for supporting it leaves evangelicals unmoved. If anything, it only strengthens their conviction that the world hates Israel because "fallen man" naturally hates God and his "chosen people." In standing by Israel, evangelicals feel that they are standing by God -- something they are ready to do against the whole world. Thus John Hagee -- senior pastor of an 18,000-member evangelical megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, and author of several New York Times bestsellers -- writes that if Iran moves to attack Israel, Americans must be prepared "to stop this evil enemy in its tracks." "God's policy toward the Jewish people," Hagee writes, "is found in Genesis 12:3," and he goes on to quote the passage about blessings and curses. "America is at the crossroads!" Hagee warns. "Will we believe and obey the Word of God concerning Israel, or will we continue to equivocate and sympathize with Israel's enemies?"

The return of the Jews to the Holy Land, their extraordinary victories over larger Arab armies, and even the rising tide of hatred that threatens Jews in Israel and abroad strengthen not only the evangelical commitment to Israel but also the position of evangelical religion in American life. The story of modern Jewry reads like a book in the Bible. The Holocaust is reminiscent of the genocidal efforts of Pharaoh in the book of Exodus and of Haman in the book of Esther; the subsequent establishment of a Jewish state reminds one of many similar victories and deliverances of the Jews in the Hebrew Scriptures. The extraordinary events of modern Jewish history are held up by evangelicals as proof that God exists and acts in history. Add to this the psychological consequences of nuclear weapons, and many evangelicals begin to feel that they are living in a world like the world of the Bible. That U.S. foreign policy now centers on defending the country against the threat of mass terrorism involving, potentially, weapons of apocalyptic horror wielded by anti-Christian fanatics waging a religious war motivated by hatred of Israel only reinforces the claims of evangelical religion.

Liberal Christians in the United States (like liberal secularists) have also traditionally supported Zionism, but from a different perspective. For liberal Christians, the Jews are a people like any other, and so liberal Christians have supported Zionism in the same way that they have supported the national movements of other oppressed groups. In recent decades, however, liberal Christians have increasingly come to sympathize with the Palestinian national movement on the same basis. In 2004, the Presbyterian Church passed a resolution calling for limited divestment from companies doing business with Israel (the resolution was essentially rescinded in 2006 after a bitter battle). One study found that 37 percent of the statements made by mainline Protestant churches on human rights abuses between 2000 and 2004 focused on Israel. No other country came in for such frequent criticism.

Conspiracy theorists and secular scholars and journalists in the United States and abroad have looked to a Jewish conspiracy or, more euphemistically, to a "Jewish lobby" to explain how U.S. support for Israel can grow while sympathy for Israel wanes among what was once the religious and intellectual establishment. A better answer lies in the dynamics of U.S. religion. Evangelicals have been gaining social and political power, while liberal Christians and secular intellectuals have been losing it. This should not be blamed on the Jews.

THE NEW GREAT AWAKENING

The current evangelical moment in the United States has not yet run its course. For secularists and liberals in the United States and abroad, this is a disquieting prospect. Measured optimism, however, would be a better response than horror and panic. Religion in the United States is too pluralistic for any single current to dominate. The growing presence and influence of non-Christian communities in the country -- of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and, above all, secularists -- will continue to limit the ability of any religious group to impose its values across the board.

Liberals, whether religious or not, may want to oppose the evangelical agenda in domestic politics. For the most part, however, these quarrels can cease at the water's edge. As the rising evangelical establishment gains experience in foreign policy, it is likely to prove a valuable -- if not always easy -- partner for the mostly secular or liberal Christian establishment. Some fears about the evangelical influence in foreign policy are simply overblown. After the attacks of September 11, for example, fears that evangelical Christians would demand a holy war against Islam were widespread. A few prominent religious leaders (generally fundamentalists, not evangelicals) made intemperate remarks; Jerry Falwell, for one, referred to the Prophet Muhammad as "a terrorist." But he was widely rebuked by his colleagues.

U.S. evangelicals generally seek to hold on to their strong personal faith and Protestant Christian identity while engaging with people across confessional lines. Evangelicals have worked with Catholics against abortion and with both religious and secular Jews to support Israel; they could now reach out to Muslims as well. After all, missionary hospitals and schools were the primary contact that most Middle Easterners had with the United States up until the end of World War II; evangelicals managed more than a century of close and generally cooperative relations with Muslims throughout the Arab world. Muslims and evangelicals are both concerned about global poverty and Africa. Both groups oppose the domination of public and international discourse by secular ideas. Both believe that religious figures and values should be treated with respect in the media; neither like the glorification of casual sex in popular entertainment. Both Islam and evangelicalism are democratic religions without a priesthood or hierarchy. Muslims and evangelicals will never agree about everything, and secular people may not like some of the agreements they reach. But fostering Muslim-evangelical dialogue may be one of the best ways to forestall the threat of civilizational warfare.

Nervous observers, moreover, should remember that evangelical theology does not automatically produce Jacksonian or populist foreign policy. A process of discussion and mutual accommodation can in many cases narrow the gap between evangelicals and others on a wide range of issues. Worrying that evangelical politics will help lock the United States into inflexible and extreme positions is a waste of time; working with thoughtful evangelical leaders to develop a theologically grounded approach to Palestinian rights, for example, will broaden the base for thoughtful -- though never anti-Israel -- U.S. policies.

Similarly, engaging evangelicals in broader foreign policy discussions can lead to surprising and (for some) heartening developments. A group of leading conservative evangelicals recently signed a statement on climate change that stated that the problem is real, that human activity is an important contributing cause, that the costs of inaction will be high and disproportionately affect the poor, and that Christians have a moral duty to help deal with it. Meanwhile, evangelicals who began by opposing Sudanese violence and slave raids against Christians in southern Sudan have gone on to broaden the coalition working to protect Muslims in Darfur.

Evangelicals are likely to focus more on U.S. exceptionalism than liberals would like, and they are likely to care more about the morality of U.S. foreign policy than most realists prefer. But evangelical power is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and those concerned about U.S. foreign policy would do well to reach out. As more evangelical leaders acquire firsthand experience in foreign policy, they are likely to provide something now sadly lacking in the world of U.S. foreign policy: a trusted group of experts, well versed in the nuances and dilemmas of the international situation, who are able to persuade large numbers of Americans to support the complex and counterintuitive policies that are sometimes necessary in this wicked and frustrating -- or, dare one say it, fallen -- world.

Hezbollah Launches From People's Apartments

2006-07-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

If you live in Southern Lebanon and find lots of people with video cameras milling about, ambulances discreetly parked with their drivers smoking cigarettes and looking for tea then get out fast! There's a rocket launcher near your buildng and you've got a part in a movie where you get to play a dead body!

Hezbollah has been winning the propaganda war by using the civilain population it controls as human shields.

You can find videos rebutting much of the propaganda here at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website: Video

The "Conservatives" Are No More

2006-06-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

The “Conservative” movement has grown, diversified and there is a wing that I don’t think represents any part of the ideals of American Democracy or any of the philosophy of people like William F. Buckley or Barry Goldwater although we can see the seeds of this break planted even in the title of “Man and G-d at Yale,” the Conservative movement is a shadow of the movement exemplified by the politics of Goldwater, championed the by the likes of Buckley, Kirkpatrick and Kemp.

The United States has an extremist right wing “fundamentalist” movement disguised as a democratic element in the American Conservative movement and it has in fact taken it over the both the Conservative movement and the Republican Party. The original conservatives, now called “fiscal” conservatives are welcome to vote correctly on republican issues but are not welcome to dissent on social issues.

The bottom line is that American Conservatism is now too many ways an anti-democratic movement aimed at making this country a defacto Xtian theocracy and they are determined to impose the Xtian religion disguised as “values” on everyone with only a bit of lip service to the idea Judea-Xtianity or promoting religion generally when that will gather naïve or foolish allies.

Just as Americans have rejected right wing dictatorships (The politics of folks like Huey long but also on the elections of Franklin Roosevelt when the rest of the world was turning fascist), racism and racist terrorism by promoting civil rights for all, communism and socialism and because Americans have been at the forefront of fighting totalitarianism we will reject both theocracy, and the religious fundamentalism that has become an odium in all the worlds religions. Fundamentalism is misnomer for something that is relatively new in the world. Fundamentalism requires an imagining of an ‘original’ practice of religion by breaking with traditional understandings and practices of religion in favor of intolerant, racist and absolutist readings of sacred texts. What they are is theocrats, people who do not trust in individual free choice but only trust the government to impose religion on people. They want to rob people of free choice.

Never in the world has there been a country as free, religiously free and as religious as ours is. Just as we have the largest volunteer army in the world, we have the largest volunteer religious people in the world. We have the largest variety of religions and sects within religions. We excel at public expressions of religion. These are things to be proud of. The theocrat doesn’t see the public expressions of faith and requires government mandated expressions of faith.

The theocratic shot heard around the world was smuggled by cassette and it was the voice of Ayatollah Khomeini demanding theocracy in Iran. The world has reacted with its own competing forms of fundamentalism but Iran is a religious failure. No where in the world has G-d been made to worse than he does in Iran. If there was ever a revolution for Burke to oppose, it would be this one.

Ultimately at the Conservatice core is the belief that the spiritual freedom of others robs them of their own expression but especially Diaspora Jews know the value of being able to go into the wilderness and worship G-d. Thus all patriotic Americans, especially American Jews whose history has faced these issues before in all parts of the world need oppose the theocrats, which are mostly centered in the Republican Party, calling themselves Conservatives and members of the religious right. They are neither conservative because don’t support traditional American values nor are they “right wing” since they oppose American republic and desire to replace it with a theocracy.

It’s true they don’t yet use the word theocracy but they will and we shouldn’t wait for the word to become sexy. America was founded on Freedom of religion and not the government spoon feeding our children or forcing the government to endorse religious expression at the institutional level.

Hamas Government takes credit for suicide bomb

2006-04-17T06:21:00.000-07:00

Hamas has attacked Israel, this is will be the first test of the new Olmert governmetn and naturally it comes before his government is really in place.

Israel has been restraining itslef since the Gaza pullout and Sharon tragically suffering a coma, now is the time for Israel to demonstrate to the new government of Hamas that Israel remind Hamas that it wasn't so long ago the movements leaders feared death from Israel more than anything else and it is time for Israel to renew those fears for Hamas.

From YNET
Hamas: Terror attack act of self defense

PA minister says terror attack in Tel Aviv's old central station was 'in context of legitimate resistance to violations of occupation'; PA Chairman Abbas condemns attack
Roee Nahmias

The terror attack in the old central station was the first since the new Palestinian Hamas government was sworn in.

Hamas, whose heads said they would not recognize Israel's existence, has at the same time kept a calm – at least on the surface – but today that calm ended.

Hamas spokesman Sami abu-Zohari said that the attack was an act of 'self defense:' "Our public is carrying out defensive fighting and it every tight to use all means to defend itself."

Minister for prisoners in the Palestinian government, Waspi Kabaha, said that the "the attack was carried out in the context of the legitimate
Palestinian resistance and as a response to the violations of the occupation and its crimes."

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, and told the media that the attack "caused damage to the higher interest of the Palestinian people." Abbas called on the international community to become involved to prevent what he said was the dangerous deterioration in the area.

The Islamic Jihad and Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades both took responsibility for the terror attack.

Only yesterday, Islamic Jihad head Ramadan Abdullah said that his organization is making "unceasing efforts" to insert suicide bombers from the West Bank to Israel.

"Israel's efforts against the resistance is limiting this effort, but it won't stop," said Abudllah in the site's organization.

"In the course of the period of calm, the movement mainly carried the burden of the continuance of the resistance and it was liable to continuous Zionist attack, in the form of assassinations of organization commanders and activists. Despite that, the movement can still carry on the armed conflict and the jihad against the Zionist occupier."

Only Sharon Coalition Left Standing

2006-03-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

If the exit polls are correct, it appears Ariel Sharon’s coalition of Labor and Center right Likud, now the Kadima Party, politicians is the only political force to survive low voter turn out. However, low voter turn out may rob Kadima and Labor of a mandate, if Olmert is smart he will start planning for a referendum on West Bank separation.

Olmert does have an advantage Ariel Sharon never had, a PA government that has no one’s sympathy. The effectiveness of Israeli foreign policy will be directly tied to the perception of public support within Israel. If Kadima is smart they will use their victory to figure out what their mandate really is and generate public support. The Palestinians have a new government and this government has already assumed it has a mandate to do whatever it wants. That government is likely to crumble or turn totalitarian. If Israel can steer clear of these mistakes it will remain in a position of relative political strength for the foreseeable future.

Kadima would be very shrewd if they convinced Peres to return to the Foreign Minister position but had him focus on improving Russian relations with India, Russia and China and working the backdoors of various countries in the Middle East.

The PLO vs. The PA

2006-03-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

One small good thing about Hamas winning the election (or any non PLO affiliated group) is that there is now a debate as to what legitimized the PA.

The PLO would like to say it is the source of authority while Hamas claims it is the ballot box.

Of course, the ballot box is the winner and this is important for a few reasons. The PLO remains a terrorist organization (As does Hamas) but the Palestinian people can always elect a legitimate goverment if it wants to. Also the PLO considers it the representative organization of "Palestinians" living in other countries and as such it is not necessarily greared to the best interests of people living in the PA.

It seems the PA is taking one step forward for every fifteen backward but at least somethings are happening.

Should The US Think About A North African NATO?

2006-03-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

The challenges facing the US are considerable. Almost anywhere in Africa there is room for Al Qaeda. It's time that the US seriously consider forming an alliance with Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and possibly France and Egypt centered on anti-terror activities throught Africa. This wouldn't necessarily be an overwhelming commitment on the part of the US but it would likely mean sea and air support for operation in the region and hot spots develop. It would also cement cooperation in intelligence gathering between all the aligned nations and that might prove to be invaluable.

US woos North Africa as Al-Qaeda regroups

Jane's Defense Weekly
By Ed Blanche JDW Special Correspondent
Beirut

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia on 11-13 February seeking to accelerate the creation of a counter-terrorism alliance in North Africa to combat what security analysts believe are efforts by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, to establish a new network across the region

The US has become particularly sensitive to efforts by Al-Qaeda to establish a major network linking groups and cells throughout the Maghreb states and in largely Muslim sub-Saharan Africa, an increasingly important source of energy supplies for the US. Rumsfeld is understood to have stressed to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika the need for his government to co-operate with Morocco and Tunisia against the jihadists.

The US is currently training counter-terrorism forces across the region under the Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative, which also embraces the largely Muslim Saharan states of Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania. Washington is also reported to be building a vast military surveillance base at the Sahara town of Tamanrasset in southern Algeria to monitor jihadist movements in the region.

US Navy Rear Admiral Hamlin Tallent, Director European Plans and Operations Center, US European Command (EUCOM), recently warned that "creeping advances" by the GSPC into Algeria's neighbours posed the greatest security threat to northwest Africa. European counter-terrorism agencies are increasingly alarmed at the spread of jihadist cells across the continent, from the Balkans to Scandinavia.

Failed States Should Be UN Focus

2006-02-27T11:21:00.000-08:00

According to Susan E. Rice, the Bush administration has recognized failed states as the leading threat to the US rather than aggressive states. That distinction certainly affects Iraq policy.

This is a very worthwhile distinction. That distinction certainly affects Iraq policy.

Rice lists many good suggestions, such as investing more financial aid into the region. I do think the point that the US should invest more of itself in regional conflict resolution is understated.

One avenue over looked is the possibility of coming up with a definition of ‘failed state’ the rest of the world will agree with. That offers the possibility of the UN taking a mediating role and a mechanism for regional support in dealing with a failed state. Had Iraq been declared a failed state by the UN, regional and European support might have been more forthcoming in a way that it couldn’t be when the decisions were much more unilateral on the part of the US.
accusing the Sudan of being a failed state before the UN, especially the UN Security Council.

Excerpted From The Brookings Institute:

The New National Security Strategy: Focus on Failed States
by Susan E. Rice

POLICY BRIEF #116

New Emphasis on Failed States

From its first page, the National Security Strategy focuses attention on the dangers posed by failed states: "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones." In his letter introducing the NSS, President Bush elaborates: "The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet, poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders."

President Bush is correct to focus on the problems posed by failed and failing states. The NSS also represents a new direction for this administration, which had not previously emphasized concerns about failed states in explications of the U.S. national interest. During his campaign, President Bush disparaged "nation-building." In this new NSS, the Bush administration strikes a note of continuity with President Clinton's last NSS (issued in December 1999), which identified failed states as among the threats to U.S. interests. President Bush has taken this concept a step further, stressing the direct threat such states pose to U.S. national security.

Failed states are countries in which the central government does not exert effective control over, nor is it able to deliver vital services to, significant parts of its own territory due to conflict, ineffective governance, or state collapse. Current examples include Afghanistan, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. Failing states—those in which the central government's hold on power and/or territory is tenuous—also pose a serious threat. They are often countries emerging from, or on the brink of, conflict such as Angola, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Burundi, and Cote D'Ivoire. Others, like Colombia, have relatively strong central governments but are cause for concern, due to their lack of control over parts of their territory. Still others, including Pakistan, Georgia, Albania, Yemen, Nigeria, and Indonesia, are weak, if not yet clearly failing states.

At present, the preponderance of state failures is in Africa. While the problem is not exclusively African, the prevalence of failing states there suggests the need for Bush administration policies to help stabilize African states as a strategic interest of the United States, and to allocate resources accordingly.

http://www.brookings.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb116.htm

Al Qaeda's Contempt For Islam

2006-02-23T07:23:00.000-08:00

The latest lesson in Iraq is that the contempt for Islam by Al Qaeda is complete. We know the leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan led debauched life styles and now we can see Al Qaeda attack important Sunni shrines. This is no different than destroying the Buddha statues in Afghanistan. These people hate anyone that is more powerful then they are and includes competing religions and therefore it includes the “Allah” they pretend to pray to. This is an enemy Iraqis and even the world can unite against. We have to offer the stark choice and we need regional players like Saudi Arabia, Egpyt and Jordan to start preferring the US presence over the alternatives. That’s a hard sell but I think the Middle East has no choice but to be receptive.

Veto Is A Bad Choice Even If Port Sale Is Safe

2006-02-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

President Bush’s threat to veto any legislation to block the sale of the port contract to a UAE company may ultimately the right intention. It appears there is a lot of oversight over all the functions at the ports and it is highly doubtful that this contract could be used to bring in illicit cargo.

However, there has been little oversight over homeland security and Bush’s use of a big stick against congress is the wrong tact. This is a good fight for congress to have with the president, whatever its outcome we’ll all have bought into Homeland security a little more than we have now.

The President’s will likely prevail but I think it will be at the cost of his ability to control the agenda and congress will rightly demand more oversight over Homeland security over this issue as well as the disastrous failure of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina.

Sometimes Democracy Is The Voice Of Evil

2006-02-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

It time we learned something we should have learned during the French Revolution or at least during the 1930s which is that voice of people can demand terrible things and create awful governments.

The Bush Administration is just starting to realize they will have to have a policy for democracies that elect bad leaders. We apparently had a clandestine policy against Chavez which was a mistake and we never anticipated a terrorist government in the PA which is not only a mistake but something we should have had a serious contingency plan for.

Established democracies are going to have to stop believing in some our own mythology that group think is always good think, sometimes its mob rule, sometimes it seeks any port in a storm. We must explain to the world that bad democracies like bad people make their own problems everyone else’s problems.

The PA will now be exporters of terror and ask the world to fund it at the same time. The US must quickly cut off international funds which is a course that world is starting to follow. The US must also begin de-legitimizing the PA.

One thing the White House can do is float a bill that recognizes the annexation of Jerusalem. This should have been done long ago, the bill was initiated by the President as it suited his own world view and then scuttled for the sake of diplomacy. Now is the time to start bringing it back.

To explain this to the world we are going to have to admit democracy isn’t perfect. Mexico was a one party basket case, the French Revolution invented terror, Hitler came to power by democratic means, even the US elected many clan affiliated officials at one time in its history and now the PA have brought terrorists to power. We should also be clear that we respect the PA’s right to make it pariah and we are not punishing the PA, rather they are punishing the world.

US to strike Iran by '07

2006-02-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

Ynet News is reporting that the US will launch Military strikes against Iran's nuclear weapons facilities and Israel will not be allowed to participate.

This actually solves a logistical problem for Israel because Iran is just out of jet range. The US faces no such limitation.

Iranian nuclear tipped missiles are expected to be able to strike Europe based on a Shahab III platform.

YNET

Concerns Mounting Over Fate of Iranian Jewry

2006-02-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

I don't think anyone will be suprised if Iran steps up the oppression of the Jews in its borders. A few years ago several Jews were arrested on trumpted up charges and Iran is a sponsor of terror that specifically targets Jewish civilians.

Media

From The Forward

Concerns Mounting Over Fate of Iranian Jewry
Leader Issues Rebuke As Tensions Grow Between Tehran, West
By MARC PERELMAN
February 17, 2006

With international tensions at a fever pitch over Iran's nuclear ambitions and the violent reaction in Tehran to the European cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad, concerns are rising about the fate of the Iranian Jewish community after its departing head took an unusual public swipe at the president of the Islamic Republic.

Haroun Yeshaya, longtime chairman of the Jewish Central Committee of Tehran, sent a letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding his repeated questioning of the Holocaust. The letter was sent several weeks ago, but first made public by the Iranian Jewish community last weekend.

"How is it possible to ignore all of the undeniable evidence existing for the exile and massacre of the Jews in Europe during World War II?" Yeshaya wrote. "Challenging one of the most obvious and saddening events of 20th-century humanity has created astonishment among the people of the world and spread fear and anxiety among the small Jewish community of Iran."

The regime has not officially responded to the letter. But the Forward has learned that by the time the letter had been written, Yeshaya already had been sidelined after falling out of favor with the Ahmadinejad government.

As a result, Yeshaya's outburst was being seen by some observers in America as both a parting shot and an expression of the community's angst over a possible backlash arising from the regime's increasingly antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric. Jewish leaders outside Iran were also expressing increasing worries over the fate of the 25,000-strong community.

Yeshaya's letter and the growing anxiety over Jews in Iran come as Tehran adopts an increasingly defiant pose on several fronts and engages in an escalating war of words with Jerusalem.

This past Tuesday, Tehran resumed its enrichment of uranium, suspended in 2003, to protest the decision of the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions. That same day, Israel's new military intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, told a Knesset committee that Iran is the "main threat" to Israel. He said Tehran was likely to have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons "by the end of the decade." Israeli officials have been dropping hints of possible military action to stop Tehran's nuclear program.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran last week of fanning violent protests against the cartoons of Muhammad that appeared in European newspapers, noting that several Western embassies had been attacked in Tehran. Iran denied the allegation and accused Israel of being behind the cartoons' publication.

In a fiery speech on February 11 marking the 27th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad repeated his frequent criticisms of Israel and restated his doubts about the Holocaust.

"For more than 60 years, the usurper Zionist regime has been able to blackmail all Western countries, murdering women and children, demolishing the houses of defenseless people and making them refugees, and justifying its crimes in the occupied lands," the Iranian president said. He added, "We did suggest that if you are honest, you will allow a group of impartial and fair researchers to come to Europe and talk to people, study the documents and inform the world about the result of their research on the myth of the Holocaust."

The Iranian Foreign Ministry recently announced plans to hold an international conference to "assess" the Holocaust. In addition, a leading Iranian daily newspaper, Hamshahri, announced a contest soliciting Holocaust cartoons as a response to the Danish cartoon contest last September that unleashed the caricature flap.

The Anti-Defamation League reported Tuesday that Holocaust denial has gained prominence in Iranian media in recent months. Iran's semiofficial Mehr News Agency has published interviews with some of the West's most notorious Holocaust deniers, the ADL said.

The World Jewish Congress, during its governing board meeting in Israel last week, called on Jewish communities throughout the world to pressure their governments to act against the Iranian nuclear program and to urge economic and political sanctions against Tehran. Israel Singer, chairman of the WJC's Policy Council, told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz that the WJC had decided to air the issue publicly despite fears in some circles that the Iranian regime might respond by harming the Jewish community there.

"The Jews in Iran have been living there for 2,700 years, from the days of Queen Esther," Singer told Ha'aretz. "They remained there despite the wars and Zionism, and are aware of their situation. We are working for them, not against them."

Most Jewish organizations, in speaking out on Iran's nuclear ambitions and Holocaust denial, have avoided raising public questions about the Jews in Iran to avert possible negative consequences for the local community.

"We're concerned about the escalating rhetoric, which could lead to actions, be it in Iran or elsewhere," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Hoenlein is a key player in coordinating American Jewish organizations' responses on Iranian Jewish affairs. "It is among the most sensitive issues, because we know declarations could lead to consequences."

No anti-Jewish incidents inside Iran have been reported, according to several people in contact with the local Jewish community.

Still, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has been bracing for an influx of Iranian refugees going through its Vienna office. The agency holds a contract with the State Department as the sole overseas processing entity for Iranians applying to the United States Refugee Program in Europe.

In recent months, HIAS officials have been touring Iranian Sephardic synagogues in the Los Angeles area, which is home to a large Iranian émigré community, urging worshippers to advise their families that the visa application process, which had been slowed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, is being streamlined. While the Vienna office has detected a substantial increase in the number of Iranian refugees from other minority faiths, such as Bahai, no such trend has been detected for Jews.

Judaism is one of the recognized minority religions in Iran. But the State Department's religious freedom reports have noted that the Jewish community in Iran is closely monitored by the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance and by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

Sources familiar with the leadership dynamics of Iran's Jewish community say that the Iranian government had advised Yeshaya a few months ago not to run for a new term as chairman. The move was seen by some observers as part of a larger purge launched by the Iranian president against critics in various sectors of society. Other observers offer a different theory, saying that the government wanted a less vocal Jewish leader, even though Yeshaya generally supported the Islamic regime.

Yeshaya resisted for months but eventually agreed not to run again for chairman of the Jewish Central Committee. His term is set to expire in two months, after the Persian New Year.

A former communist who opposed the shah, Yeshaya was one of the first Jews to support the Ayatollah Khomeini. He used his connections to protect the Jewish community in the face of the rabid anti-Israel rhetoric of the early days of the Islamist regime.

To curry favor with the regime, he has issued anti-Zionist statements repeatedly. His recent letter to Ahmadinejad, protesting the questioning of the Holocaust, allegedly included anti-Zionist rhetoric.

According to a 1999 report in New York Jewish Week, some Iranian and American Jewish leaders have privately accused Yeshaya of playing a role in the imprisonment of 10 Jews in Shiraz that year on charges of spying for Israel. The sources said Yeshaya acted against the Shiraz Jews because their Orthodox views clashed with his secular leanings. However, even Yeshaya's critics agree that he was instrumental in securing the release of the prisoners in 2003 after years of international pressure on the regime. And he has at times protested the antisemitic content of popular television serials and books published in Iran, as has Maurice Motamed, Iran's only Jewish parliamentarian.

But questions remain among some of the regime's strongest opponents in the Iranian exile community.

"I'm a little suspicious about the publication of the letter given the loyalty of the author to the regime," said Pooya Dayanim, president of the Los Angeles-based Iranian Jewish Public Affairs Committee. The committee is staunchly opposed to Tehran's Islamic government. "This may in the end be to the detriment of Iranian Jewry."

Yeshaya received a vote of support from Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian American Jewish Federation.

"From [Yeshaya's] letter it is obvious that the statements emanating out of Tehran and the continued anti-Semitic propaganda in the Iranian media have created an atmosphere of fear among the Jewish community in that country," Kermanian wrote in an e-mail to the Forward. "We have full confidence in [Yeshaya's] wisdom and experience and we will continue to monitor the situation closely."

Russia to consider selling helicopters & armored vehicles to PA

2006-02-17T06:02:00.000-08:00

Russia appears to be moving fast towards having diplomatic and now military relations with a terrorist led government. Hamas is a supporter of Chechen terror but it appears that Russia is willing to play with fire.

MEDIA

From: Ynet

Russia to consider selling helicopters to PA

Chief of the Russian General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky Russian government may sign arms deal with Hamas during scheduled visit by terror group’s leaders to Moscow in March; Palestinians express their willingness to purchase two M-17 helicopters, some 50 armored vehicles
Ynet

The Russian government may sign an arms deal with Hamas during a scheduled visit by the terror group’s leaders to Moscow, according to Chief of the Russian General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky.

The Hamas delegation, headed by Khaled Mashaal, is set to visit Russia sometime next month.

“The decision to sell arms to Hamas must be reached through the cooperation of both sides,” the general said.

“We will have to wait and see what the meetings in Russia will produce.”

Baluyevsky added that Russia is considering selling Hamas, among other things, of “two unarmed helicopters that would be used for transporting Palestinian leaders, in addition to armed vehicles to help preserve stability.”

The Palestinians have expressed their willingness to purchase two M-17 helicopters and some 50 armored vehicles. However, the Palestinians will not be able to receive the equipment without Israeli consent.

'We welcome the visit of a delegation of our brothers'

In a move that stirred Israeli ire, Russia extended to Hamas leaders on Thursday an official invitation to visit Moscow at the beginning of March.

On Wednesday Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the invitation to Hamas is a realistic way to foster future peacemaking after the Islamic terrorists won the Palestinian elections.

Jordan, which has moderated its stance towards Palestinian terror group Hamas since its election win, said on Wednesday it invited Hamas leaders to make their first visit since the kingdom expelled them in 1999.

The visit to the pro-U.S. country would be part of a regional tour by Hamas to garner financial and political support in the face of Western threats to cut Palestinian aid.

“We welcome the visit of a delegation of our brothers the leaders of Hamas in their capacity as Palestinians,” Prime Minister Marouf Bakheet told a parliamentary session.

Hamas has begun declaring a series of appointments ahead of taking the reigns of the Palestinian Authority, such as the nomination of Dr. Abdel Aziz Duaik to the position of Palestinian parliament chairman.

According to Palestinian law, the chairman of the parliament would replace the PA chairman in case the latter dies, falls ill, or resigns.

Jewish Prisoner Spends His Days In Solitary Over Chai Necklace

2006-02-16T06:47:00.000-08:00

Chicago Jewish News is reporting that Sam Horowitz was assaulted by a guard because Sam is Jewish. I googled Sam and only found a request for pen pals which is included below the CJN article.

The dispute between Sam and the guard appears to be a he said, she said kind of dispute but I don’t think anyone believes that guards are above beating a prisoner for poor reasons. The fact that he’s spent a year in solitary over a Chai necklace is disturbing.

It appears that Sam was responsible in getting permission to wear the necklace and that makes his beating and isolation more disturbing.

MEDIA

HATEFUL CRIME: The case of the Jewish prisoner beaten up for wearing a Chai necklace
By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood

By CJN

A young Jewish prisoner spends his days in solitary confinement at the Pontiac Correctional Center in downstate Illinois, restricted to a segregation unit for a year for allegedly striking a guard last year at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.

The inmate, his mother, a Jewish chaplain, and others familiar with the case say that, far from hitting a guard, he was beaten by five prison security officers in a blatantly anti- Semitic incident.

It's hardly uncommon for prisoners' accounts to differ from those of correctional officers whenever there's a fracas in a prison. What's different in this case is that everyone involved agrees that the incident that got Samuel Horowitz confined to segregation for a year started over a chai, a Jewish symbol, that he wore around his neck.

Because there is an ongoing investigation of the incident at the Illinois Department of Corrections, a spokesperson there could not give any information about the case. But according to Horowitz; his mother, Michele; representatives of the Aleph Institute, a Florida institution that provides services to Jewish inmates in the nation's prisons; and other sources close to the investigation, this is what happened.

The 21-year-old Horowitz, serving a 10- year sentence for armed robbery, had followed prison procedures by asking the chaplain at Stateville for permission to wear the chai around his neck. He received permission in writing in a letter from Chaplain George Adamson, which he kept with him in his cell.

Last Aug. 14, five guards came to Horowitz's cell and requested that he hand over the chai necklace, telling him that they believed it to be either a gang symbol or a Satanic symbol. Horowitz refused. He told the guards that he had permission from the prison chaplain to wear the chai and tried to give them the chaplain's letter along with his prison ID card, which identifies him as Jewish.

What happened next is the subject of dispute. The guards told investigators that Sam hit, or tried to hit, one of them. Sam said he didn't, and the only witness to the incident, his cellmate, Toniac Jackson, concurred. (Jackson later changed his story under questioning and told investigators he "guessed" Horowitz had thrown the punch.)

What's not in dispute is that the guards then "assaulted Samuel ... threw him against the wall, pepper- sprayed him, kicked and punched him. Then he was handcuffed, knocked to the ground and continued to be beaten," in the words of a report from the Aleph Institute, which investigated the incident.

Horowitz's front tooth was broken, his face badly bruised and, his mother says, his hearing damaged by blows to his ear.

Shortly after the incident Horowitz was transferred to Pontiac, where he was housed in a segregation cell. (Jackson, his cellmate at Stateville, was also transferred to Pontiac, then sent to a different facility, the Menard Correctional Center. Jackson had called Horowitz's family after the beating and notified them of what happened.)

Upon his transfer to Pontiac Horowitz was photographed, as is standard DOC procedure, and the photos posted on the department's Web site. Bruises on his face can be seen in the photos.

He also made two visits to the facility's doctor, where his face was X-rayed, and to the dentist, where he began procedures for rebuilding the tooth that had been broken off.

The Pontiac Review Board conducted a hearing on an incident report written by the guard who reported that Horowitz had struck him. Neither Horowitz nor the Stateville chaplain were permitted to attend. The board found Horowitz guilty of striking the guard and he was given a year in "segregation"-solitary confinement. In addition, time that he built up by good behavior was docked by a year. The "good behavior" time would have counted toward his release.

A number of observers agree that the guards' account of the incident contains numerous omissions. "Usually what happens is, if you're being taken out of your cell, you go to your door and put your hands to the hole in the door and they're cuffed," a source who is familiar with the case and with prison procedure said. "Then they will open the door and let (the guards) in. If a prisoner is resisting being handcuffed, then the guards don't just open the door and go in, but use a chemical spray to subdue the prisoner."

In this case, on the other hand, "they came to the door and opened the door and didn't tell him to cuff up. He wasn't resisting. They came right in. Even if their story were true, how would he have been able to punch them? Sam is not a huge guy, and there were multiple officers there."

Even if Sam had thrown the punch, she said, "the correctional officers are not thugs on the street. It's not acceptable to beat someone up. I believe their use of force was excessive even if Sam had hit them, which I don't think he did."

As for cellmate Jackson, she said, "he witnessed them beating Sam, then he was transferred and put into a much higher facility with more security, as a punishment. He modified his story later on, we assume from pressure from the correctional officers."

She said she believes anti-Semitism was "a motivating force. That's what set it off, the chai, their failure to respect it even when Sam showed them the note indicating that he had permission to wear it. When he showed them the name tag indicating he was Jewish, that's when it began."

Rabbi Binyomin Scheiman, director of the Jewish Prisoner Assistance Foundation, which provides services to Jewish prisoners in Illinois, knows Horowitz and visits him monthly but was not present when the alleged beating incident occurred. But he did speak with the Stateville warden about it. "He called me into his office. He is Hispanic and knows what discrimination is all about, and he said Horowitz was a victim of discrimination, of an anti-Semitic incident," Scheiman said. (Chicago Jewish News was not able to speak to the warden nor to any prison officials.)

"Definitely, the wearing of the chai had something to do with the incident," the rabbi said. "The chai was in the middle of it, that's what is disturbing."

Robert Burns, director of prisoner services at the Aleph Institute, said he spoke to the prison investigator and "this is a definite whitewash. He gave me the business, said nobody actually saw (the incident). Well, the cellie (cellmate) saw it. I mean, if the guards are going to beat an inmate, they don't make an announcement: come and watch. There were five of them, and he was handcuffed."

The Aleph Institute was founded under the direction of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, more than a quarter-century ago and provides various services to incarcerated Jews and their families in state and federal prisons all over the country.

"We come across this all the time," Burns said. "They can't hurt the Jew- boy any other way so they give him a bogus report. Was it because he was Jewish? Yes, of course."

He said the institute works with Jewish inmates all over the country and "this is not an aberration, a one- shot deal." When such an incident is investigated, the investigators "lean so far over to the officers' direction, they usually fall flat on their faces," he said.

Another Aleph employee, Debora (this is correct) Botbol, wrote a strongly worded letter to Joseph Burke, acting chief of the Investigations and Intelligence Unit at Stateville, stating that "although we have been informed that the incident is pending investigation ... we need to ask, why is it taking so long?" The letter was dated Jan. 30, 2006.

Botbol said in a telephone conversation that "I'm very sad, my heart is broken" over Horowitz's case. "I've been working here three years and I know what they do," she said, adding that the process was not working right from the beginning. "Inmates have the right to receive notification as to when they will have a disciplinary hearing, and (Horowitz) never received any. He was found guilty in a hearing where he was not even there, which violates due process. It sounds to me like he's not going to be found innocent. We're waiting for a decision so we can appeal."

But there is no time limit on such investigations. DeeDee Short, a Department of Corrections spokesperson, confirmed that there is an ongoing investigation of the beating incident but that department officials don't know when it will be completed.

Sam Horowitz has been, and is now, surrounded by hardened criminals (his former cellmate was convicted of murder) but by all accounts he is not one himself.

His mother, Michele, while not denying that her son is a troubled young man with a history of inappropriate and sometimes illegal behavior, ascribes most of his problems to undiagnosed and sometimes untreated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (Some experts speculate that a large number of prisoners have undiagnosed ADHD.)

What is certain is that he comes from a close-knit, middle-class Jewish family. His father, Neal, works for a large corporation and the family, which includes Sam and his two older sisters, Jenny and Alison, moved around frequently. Sam was born in Wilmington, Del. and spent some of his preschool years in London; the family later moved to Cleveland and Chicago.

Michele Horowitz describes him as an "active, mischievous" child even as a baby; in middle school, "he got a little more difficult and had a lot of time-outs," she says. "Looking back in retrospect, you can see it-all the children would be sitting on their pillows and he would be wandering around the room." Sam eventually was diagnosed with ADHD and took medication for a short time, but his mother "resisted putting some kind of a label on him," she says, and questioned the value of the medication.

In a scenario typical of ADHD children, his behavior deteriorated in middle school and he had a great deal of difficulty. Michele Horowitz, meanwhile, had become active in support groups and organizations for parents of ADHD children and discovered that a camp and boarding school for children with the disorder located in Florida, where Sam's grandparents also lived, might help. It did, and his behavior improved until the school was sold and Sam came home.

The family joined Conservative synagogues in each new city and while their two daughters celebrated bat mitzvahs, Sam was too distractible and hyperactive to complete Hebrew school. He was kicked out of a JCC day camp for being "too rambunctious." And at one of the synagogues the family belonged to, "some unfortunate things happened involving Sam that were very disappointing to us," his mother says. No congregation seemed attuned to Sam's problems or able to offer help.

As he entered his teenage years, those problems accelerated. Sam was immature, his mother says (another ADHD characteristic), and unduly influenced by his peers. He began hanging out with undesirable friends and self-medicating with drugs while refusing to take his prescription medications.

By the time the family moved to Chicago, when Sam was in high school, he was already spinning out of control, using drugs and alcohol and shoplifting, although he could easily have bought the items he stole. His first brush with the law involved a "joke" in which he and his friends, dressed in Halloween costumes, told a clerk at a pizza parlor that they were robbing him. Sam then told the clerk it was all a joke, and ordered a pizza. When he returned to pick it up, he was arrested.

In another incident, Sam was asked to leave another pizza parlor where he was hanging out with some friends who worked there. The owner had him arrested while he was in the parking lot; from jail, he called the owner and asked why he had called the police. He argued with the owner and picked up an additional charge of harassing a witness.

As the case was winding its way through the court system, Sam got back on medication and began seeing a psychologist, his mother says. Then, when she left for four days to visit her oldest daughter in California, "everything fell apart."

In the incident that landed Sam in prison for armed robbery, he and some friends left a party where they had been drinking and using drugs and went to another house where drug dealers lived. Fights broke out, the police were called, and everyone involved was arrested.

This time, Michele Horowitz says, the family decided to go the "tough love" route and use a public defender instead of hiring a private attorney for Sam, as they had done in the past. Because of that, she believes, and because Sam had prior arrests, he received a harsher sentence than some of the others involved -- 10 years.

Despite his troubled past, Michele Horowitz says that her son "is a bright person, very artistic. He took painting lessons, did wonderful paintings, is a good singer, enjoyed theater-a real bright, spirited kid." She believes that if he had been born five or 10 years later when more was known about ADHD he might not have had the troubles he had. His family- parents, sisters, grandparents and cousins-have stuck by him, she adds.

Adjusting to prison life was also difficult for Sam, his mother says. "He was in with older, more serious offenders and has been sent around a bit. He had a hard time," she says.

He has however, developed an interest in Judaism since he has been in prison. He requested that his mother send him books on Judaism and he was learning some of the prayers so he could join the rabbi in saying them during his monthly visits. He receives kosher meals and says a Shabbos blessing over the bagel and grape juice he is allowed on Fridays.

"He was out of (Judaism) through elementary school and the teen years but he is feeling closer to it now," Michele Horowitz says. "And he knows the people who are helping him are from the Jewish community."

Rabbi Scheiman, who visits Horowitz, like other Jewish inmates, every month, says of him, "He's not an angel, he's troubled, and this has been a very hard incarceration for him."

Although he knows that Horowitz "has his issues," Scheiman says that "with me he has been very peaceful. He doesn't use any profanity or anything when he speaks to me. Lately, in the last three months, he has been a little more serious, asking his parents to send him books on Judaism, and he has been more willing to read, study and learn. He has had a metamorphosis. He has been nothing but respectful to myself and to the Jewish religion. If he came into a shul he would know how to behave."

Scheiman notes that when Sam asked his parents to send him a Jewish symbol to wear, he was informed that inmates were not allowed to wear Jewish stars because the six-pointed star is a gang symbol in some areas. Ironically, he was allowed to wear a chai.

The rabbi says that he, too, is frustrated by the amount of time the investigation into the incident involving Horowitz is taking. "I know things move very slowly, but it almost seems like it's stalled somewhere," he says.

Michele Horowitz says she will "never ever give up on Sam, and he knows that. He's still going to be young when he gets out." She is heartened by the fact that he received his GED while he was in a medium-security facility and that his hyperactivity seems to be lessening as he grows older.

But she continues to worry about the anti-Semitism to which Sam has been subject in prison. The incident with the guards is not the first one, she says, although it is the most severe. In another Illinois facility he was also beaten by a guard who "said some anti-Semitic things to him. But we were able to get some help, get him transferred to a different place. This time it was just way beyond my comprehension," she says. "I flew in to see him immediately after it happened and it was horrible what they did to him."

She says, however, that she will never give up trying to improve her son's circumstances and get to the bottom of what happened. She has spoken to a lawyer but discovered that a federal rule prohibits her from filing suit against the prison or the DOC while there is an internal investigation going on. Aside from the Aleph Institute, she has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and other agencies for help with Sam's case. Speaking with her rabbi, who is sympathetic to her plight, helps, she says. She has also become "pen pals," through the Aleph Institute, with several Jewish prisoners in cities across the country, including one Israeli.

"I keep trying to figure out what to do next," she says. "I try to work with Sam-we all do-to give him hope."

Sam, meanwhile, continues his life in the segregation cell, where he is allowed no privileges and has no contact with others. "He can't take classes, he is not allowed to do anything," his mother says. "He couldn't have a fan in the summer. He doesn't even have a lot of things he needs for grooming, just the bare necessities."

He must buy such items as toothpaste, shampoo and washcloths from the prison commissary. But he is able to have a limited number of books and magazines, which family members send him. "There are so many rules that don't make any sense," Michele Horowitz says, noting that she is not allowed to send Sam stamped envelopes so he can write home. He can, however, purchase a limited supply of them.

The Horowitzes now live in Redondo Beach, Calif., where they moved shortly after Sam was incarcerated in 2002, but they fly to Illinois to visit as often as they allowed to. At Pontiac, Sam is allowed to have visits once a month for one to two hours. Sometimes Michele Horowitz or her husband go together to visit or, depending on business matters, one of them goes alone, alternating every month.

Michele Horowitz's last visit to her son was last week. "He was as well as can be expected," she reports. "He was very thin, but he's always been somewhat thin, and he seemed OK. He tries real hard to keep himself together, to keep everything around him as clean as possible. This time his sister came, and they don't often get a chance to see each other, and we got an extended visit-two hours. Sam was over the moon."

It seems that Sam Horowitz, incarcerated in Illinois for armed robbery,
could do with some support and backup.
His Mom thinks letters will be helpful. She wrote me..
'Yes, I believe penfriends would be helpful.
All he has is mail.'...

Date of Birth: 09-25-1983
Weight: 162 lbs.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown
Sex: Male
Height: 6 ft. 00 in.
Race: White
Custody Date:09/24/2002
Projected Parole Date: 07/22/2007
Discharge From Parole: 07/22/2010

Samuel Horowitz, R15778
P.O. Box 99
700 West Lincoln Street
Pontiac, Illinois 61764
USA

WSJ: NATO for Israel

2006-02-15T18:40:00.000-08:00

This article from the WSJ came as a suprise. It's a good thought because Israel is very important to the West and thus to NATO and NATO membership would make Western Europe a bit more resposnbible in its Middle Eastern policies. Better still, it would put Iran on notice that attacking Israel will put it on a collision course with the US and Europe and not drive us away.

WSJ

NATO for Israel
A better response to Iran's threats.

Sunday, February 12, 2006 12:01 a.m.

As diplomatic triumphs go, the referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency is very small beer. It came without a call to action, and even any U.N. debate was postponed to give Iran more time to embrace Russia's offer to let the mullahs enrich uranium under Moscow's auspices.

Even at that minor rebuke, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered a resumption of homegrown uranium enrichment and barred snap IAEA inspections. But if the Iranians are as smart as they are devious, they'll accept the Russian offer, let the Europeans pretend the crisis is over, and continue to build a nuclear weapon in secret. Last weekend Iran said it will again consider Moscow's offer, and all signs point to the fact that on present course Iran is going to get the bomb one way or another.

Which is all the more reason for the U.S. to promote a more serious diplomatic response suggested to us recently over lunch at the Journal by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar: Begin NATO accession talks with Israel.

Israel's NATO membership has been mooted before, but the suggestion is especially compelling as a response to the Iranian nuclear threat. Iran's apocalyptic President Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," and influential former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has said an Islamic bomb "would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world."

Those are unprecedented threats, which are all the more likely to be carried out if the mullahs think that the only retaliation would come from Israel itself. It may be that the mad mullahs aren't deterrable, since they claim to welcome mass martyrdom. But if Israel were part of NATO, the saner elements in Tehran would at least have to worry about the collective response of the West. Only last week President Bush promised that the U.S. would come to Israel's defense against Iran, but the NATO proposal has the additional virtue of forcing Europe to take a firmer stand against an Iranian bomb.

Many Europeans will object that NATO is a geographic defense pact, but it has already expanded its field of operation beyond Europe into Afghanistan. If NATO is going to continue to be relevant, it has to adapt to confront new threats to global stability, and a nuclear Iran certainly qualifies. It's fanciful for Europe to think it could stay aloof from an Iranian strike against Israel or the U.S., since the latter would surely retaliate and wider regional war would ensue. Iran is also developing ballistic missiles that will eventually have the capitals of Europe within range.

Even apart from the Iranian threat, a strong case can be made for Israeli membership. Israel is a liberal democracy, which is why nobody seriously worries about Israel's bomb. The Jewish state has also taken unprecedented steps for peace with its Palestinian neighbors over the past decade, relinquishing territory even as it became clear that there was little good faith on the other side. Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal and the subsequent victory of Hamas in Palestinian legislative elections are more than enough reason for the rest of the world to now reciprocate with a gesture of solidarity regarding Israel's defense.

Unless the civilized world unites to make it clear that Iran's current combination of rhetoric and nuclear armament is intolerable, Mr. Ahmadinejad and the mullahs will likely continue to believe they can have their nuclear apocalypse at a "reasonable" price. Inviting Israel to join NATO will send a far tougher message to Iran than mere referral to that tower of delay and rationalization known as the United Nations.

The US & Israel Must Send The Right Message

2006-02-15T04:21:00.001-08:00

The US and Israel must not make the return of Fatah the goal with dealing with Hamas. If the US and Israel manage to starve the Palestinians Authority of funds, this will likely end the current regime but there a three things we must be wary of.

We must not give Fatah our tacit stamp of approval, that regime was dishonest both in terms of managing the PA and in diplomacy. It is quite possible that many moderates could be drawn to center around a new political force such as Hanan Ashrawi’s “Third Way” party. The West must be careful not to discourage potential changes that may seem unlikely now.

Western countries while denying funds should also be seeking out potential moderates in Hamas through third parties such as Jordan and Egypt. When the current government falls, as many potential moderates and their need to be stripped away from Hamas but kept in national dialogue.

The west must be very careful not to tell the Palestinians they can choose only between corruption and terrorism; we must remind them that they can demand more of their politicians than that.

There will be peace between Israel and the Palestinians if the road map becomes a cane to prop up corrupt Palestinian regimes that earn nothing but discontent amongst their populace.

Putin Seeks Prestige Through Hamas

2006-02-14T07:55:00.000-08:00

Russia had been trying to regain its prestige on the world stage. Meeting with Hamas is seen by many as an easy step for Putin to look like a player on the world stage. The Soviet Union was among the first to recognize Israel and was an arms supplier. Similarly, this move by Putin may not really reflect natural alliances in the region.

Russia sees opportunity in Hamas win

From Jerusalem Newswire

By Ryan Jones

February 12th, 2006

Moscow appears to have seized on Hamas' electoral victory last month as a means of countering burgeoning American influence in the Middle East and the Bush Administration’s determination to spread democracy in the region.

The authoritarian Middle East was a prime ally of the Soviet Union during its long “cold war” with the United States-led West. That all changed with the fall of what former US President Ronald Reagan termed the “Evil Empire” and the turning of most Arab states (for lack of choice) to their new benefactors in Washington.

Russian influence in the Middle East waned even further with the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, leaving Syria the lone regional power still beholden to Moscow.

That is, until Hamas burst onto the political scene during January's Palestinian Legislative Council elections, providing a Russia far less dogmatic about shunning the killers of men, women and children than its Western counterparts with an opportunity to again exert its influence here.

It was in this context that Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking to reporters at the Kremlin on January 31, reacted to news of Hamas' win by declaring almost gleefully that it represented:

“A big blow to American efforts in the Middle East, a very serious blow.”

Putin sought immediate disparity with the policies of the West, opening his arms to Hamas:

“Our position on Hamas is different from that of the United States and Western Europe... [we have] never regarded Hamas as a terrorist organization. But this does not mean that we totally approve and support everything that Hamas has done.”

That position will translate into concrete action later this month when Hamas accepts Putin's invitation to send a delegation to Moscow for official government-to-government talks.

Israel, which has already witnessed one anti-Jewish terrorist network (Yasser Arafat's PLO) gain international legitimacy, has reacted to Putin's highly publicized move with muted fury.

In a fiery dispatch to the Kremlin, Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu reminded Putin that Russian law regards Hamas as a terror group, and warned that his actions would start a chain reaction leading to the legitimization of all anti-Western Islamic terrorism.

During a NATO summit in Sicily Saturday, Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz urged his Russian counterpart to reconsider the invitation before it is too late.

At the same time, a statement released by Netanyahu's Likud cast doubt on whether Russia or any nation would cold-shoulder Hamas after Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week agreed to continue funding the Palestinian Authority as if recognized terrorists were not now running the show.

Middle East Worries About Iran

2006-02-14T04:16:00.000-08:00

It appears that fear of Iran is starting to shift the political alignments of the Middle East created since the invasion of Iraq. The Gulf States are adjusting to American force in the region as the rise of a nuclear with expanding influence in the PA territories.

George Bush recently obliquely threatened to nuke Iran if it nuked the US, such an umbrella policy may now be attractive to the region rather than try and compete with Iran on ballistic and nuclear technology.

________________________________________
Eurasia Security Watch No. 119, February 13, 2006
American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC
http://www.afpc.org

Editor: Ilan Berman

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE GULF
The looming showdown between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear
ambitions is reverberating throughout the Persian Gulf. In recent weeks,
a number of regional states have broken ranks with Tehran and gone
public about their fears of an atomic Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia's
foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, has publicly warned that Iran's
nuclear efforts "threaten disaster" for the Gulf, while Jordanian foreign
minister Abdelelah al-Khatib has expressed misgivings over the growing
potential for a "new arms race in the region."

The shift, experts say, could be more than simply rhetorical. "For the
past couple of years, [the Gulf states] have been ambiguous, giving
conflicting signals," says Riad Kahwaji of Dubai's Institute for Near East
and Gulf Military Analysis. "Now we're seeing a unified stand. If they
are asked to vote on this in the U.N. they would not vote in favor of
Iran." (New York Times, February 1, 2006)

RETHINKING IRAQ'S WMD
In the public policy debate over the Iraq war, the question of whether
the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction has
long appeared settled in the negative. But all of that may be about to
change; in recent weeks, two officials - one Iraqi and one American -
have stepped forward to dispute the claim that the former Ba'athist
state did not possess WMD. The first is General Georges Sada, the former
deputy commander of the Iraqi air force, whose alleges in his new book
"Saddam's Secrets" that the Iraqi regime moved WMD to Syria on the eve of
Operation Iraqi Freedom. The second, former U.S. Air Force investigator
David Gaubatz, has told the New York Sun that the Central Intelligence
Agency's vaunted Iraq Survey Group failed to investigate at least four
underground bunkers suspected of containing chemical and biological
weapons. (New York Sun, January 26 and February 8, 2006)

A PROXY WAR IN YEMEN
A Shi'ite insurgency is resurfacing in Yemen. In recent days, Yemeni
troops have clashed with Shi'ite rebels in the northern province of
Saada, near that country's common border with Saudi Arabia, in what is the
third outbreak of sectarian violence since December 2005. But the
intermittent violence is far from a local affair; both the Shi'ite rebels and
the Yemeni government are being supported by foreign powers. The
rebellion, led by members of the Believing Youth movement, is believed to be
backed by Iran, while Sanaa's efforts to restore order are backed by
both Saudi Arabia and the United States. (worldtribune.com, February 8,
2006)

NEW ENERGY CLIENTS FOR RUSSIA
A plan is in the works to ship Russian natural gas to Israel and
Lebanon. The initiative, discussed during a meeting between Turkish Energy
Minister Hilmi Guler and Alexei Miller, CEO of Russian energy giant
Gazprom, will extend the existing Blue Stream pipeline from its Black Sea
terminus to Turkey's Ceyhan oil refinery on the shores of the
Mediterranean. From there, a pipeline will be constructed to Lebanon and Israel.
Details of the project - and its exact route - are still murky, but are
expected to be hammered out in coming months. (Associated Press,
February 3, 2006; Beirut Daily Star, February 3, 2006)

RISE OF THE HAMAS STATE
In the wake of its recent electoral victory in the Palestinian
Territories, the radical Hamas organization is wasting no time consolidating
its power. Though the group has yet to put forth the exact specifics of
its government and cabinet, distrust of the recently ousted rival Fatah
faction has led the Islamist group to begin establishing its own
security agencies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In doing so, Hamas is said
to be relying on funds that have already been pledged by Iran to
compensate for any deficit that may result from a cutoff of funding from the
West. The move is expected to marginalize the Palestinian Authority's
existing security forces, which were established with funding and input
from the U.S. and European nations. The consolidation effort does not
stop there, however. Hamas leaders have also floated plans for the
creation of a new Palestinian army designed to "unify the weapons of
Palestinian faction" and protect "[its] people from aggression." (London BBC,
January 26, 2006; Tel Aviv Ha'aretz, February 5, 2006;
worldtribune.com, February 9, 2006)

Copyright (c) 2006, American Foreign Policy Council

Iran Is Calling The West's Bluff

2006-02-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

Iran has decided to restart its uranium enrichment. Iran assumes that the world will be as impotent about Iranian nukes as it has been about N. Korean, Pakistani and Indian Nukes and the Iranians may have a point.

Russia's willingness to meet with Hamas suggests the unified front against Iran may quickly crumble. Russia is anxious for Iranian cooperation on oil and it is also looking to score its own diplomatic points. Russia is prepared to leave every moral over turned for the sake of finding or improving diplomatic relations.

The world should not overlook the fact that Hamas represents an expansion of Iranian power and that Russia is the third party that needs to be trusted when it comes to uranium if Tehran were suddenly to do an about face and desist uranium enrichment.

This begs the question that should worry NATO, why does Russia trust Iran? Is Putin making a Stalin-esque error? So anxious is Russia for prominence on the world stage it will make itself vulnerable to an enemy?

Perhaps the best course of action would be to try and engineer a Putin success in exchange for better leeway on the Middle East. Netanyahu has done an excellent job of tying Hamas to the Chechens, now would be the time for the administration to let Putin get credit for debt relief in Africa or something similar. Frankly, something that would look like a payoff for G8 membership would pay dividends to Putin and may help bring Russia back into the fold.

Unfortunately, this kind of horse trading may be beyond both Putin and Bush.

A Short Review Of Maccoby's Short Book On Paul

2006-02-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

Review

Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Xtianity by Hyam Maccoby

I found this book to be the eye opener that “Old Roar” promised it would be. The edition I found is published by Barnes and Noble. So you won’t find the current edition at Borders but they may carry earlier editions. While the book is about Paul and exploding the myths around him to see who he really was – what is most interesting is the look at the Jerusalem xtians and JC in the context of Temple.

Maccoby did an excellent job of navigating Sadducee, Pharisee, and Pauline positions as well as carefully examining where JC’s teachings fit in with each. Maccoby succeeds very well in demonstrating that Paul is the inventor of Xtianity as we know it today. He also goes into great detail in describing the Jerusalem sect, which is the inheritor of JC’s ministry through his brother James. I think xtians who have some interest in exploring Judaism or who attempt to combine their religion with a Jewish outlook may very well appreciate this aspect of the book. While common sense always told me that JC was a Rabbi teaching Torah, I really appreciate Maccoby’s ability to look at JC’s teaching with great care and demonstrate how they affirm Jewish values as well as looking at Jewish theological, political and (to a lesser degree) social trends of the day.

There are some limitations to Mythmaker. The book is something of a well researched primer to Maccoby and is only 211 pages long, not including references. Some of the counterpoint as well some detail is lost for the sake of brevity. Of course this is aimed at a wider than typical audience. There is little appreciation for the possibility the Paul couldn’t have really understood the anti-Semitism he was unleashing within Xtianity. I also think not nearly enough description was available to describe Gnostic anti-Semitism and it’s possible effect on Xtianity as Gnostic movements are absorbed or Gnostics are converted as Xtianity grows. This would have balanced Paul out a little bit.

I also think that any reader would have appreciated much greater detail on Pharisee thought since it relates so closely to JC’s teachings. Macoby does make all his major points well but this is such a rich pertinent vein that he could have been mined more. Especially for a book that intends a wide general circulation.

Mythmaker really demonstrated how hand in glove JC’s teachings were to Judaism, including his claims of being the Messiah. I think it’s a revealing look at a religion just before the frist century CE. Perhaps best of all this work represents a door for xtians back into the Torah and perhaps a means for Jews to look at the NT. Even Muslims might appreciate this kind of analysis of JC. Maccoby’s perspective offers a good basis for dialogue. That’s not to say that he doesn’t take a tough look at Paul but it is a well reasoned and often well justified look at Paul.

I’m told most of the issues I raise are addressed by Maccoby in other books, unfortunately they are all currently out of print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyam_Maccoby

Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Xtianity

Bet Israel in Izmir Turkey

2006-02-10T14:33:00.000-08:00

Here are some images of a Jewish Tombstone in Bergama and the Bet Israel Synogogue in Izmir, Turkey.

Do Religious People Believe in G-d?

2006-02-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

Introduction to the Grading of Adherents

Acceptance of G-d is more subtle than merely subscribing to a religious belief system. It’s possible and even common for a member at his core to accept the religious institution and yet not really accept G-d or at least not yet do so. Similarly, it’s also possible to not really know who G-d is and accept him but at some level but reject the religion one is immersed in. It’s also possible to accept G-d overtly, not really accept the religious institution in one’s core. These are often not conscious decisions but they can be. This is further complicated by maturity of the religious person. By examining the a persons statements and behaviors we a sense of what a person really believes and perhaps where they are in terms of belief also will help us look at the irreligious, atheists and the deists more carefully.

There is a conundrum where we don’t know who really accepts G-d because we cannot tell by the mere outerwear of their religion. Drawing such distinctions is important because people have to place their trust in each other and they need to know whom they are trusting on religious issues.

I need to apologize in advance that there is a monotheistic bias within this system. If I were a cleverer person I might figure out a way to make this system completely unbiased.
However this is rooted in the universal applicability of man’s capacity to be good (The Covenant of Noah) and among polytheistic philosophers and theologians “G-d” has been a short cut to referring to the pantheon. Even so, the bias remains -- perhaps others from other backgrounds will dig a similar tunnel and we’ll meet in the middle.

There are three benefits to the gradated system: firstly we get a means of examining those that attend services to see how far along they are on the road to G-d. This will make our participation more effectual as we are less likely to subscribe to our religion most of the time but actually agree or disagree within our religion based on our faith in the service of HaShem. This gives us a means of being critical on the basis faith.

Secondly, we can more easily see our analogues in other monotheistic religions and where they are on the road to G-d. We are much more likely to see fellow travelers if we can get a sense of what they really believe. Furthermore, we will also have more possibility of cooperation against the more petty members of our faiths.

Finally, we have the capacity to see those that may appear to culturally know little of G-d but who have accepted him in their souls if not their consciousness. Xtians might claim we can know those these people by their fruits. That such people exist is certainly a sign that the world is repairing itself. (Tikkun Olam) If person X accepts G-d in his soul but not in his practice how far away are his intellectual children from smashing their idols and/or discovering HaShem for themselves? Thus we need to be able to embrace these people, knowing HaShem wants them to exist and that they are as good and bad, as worthy in a place in the world to come as anyone else.

There are also a few disadvantages to a grading system as it exists thus far. There is no thought given to upward or downward mobility so we have a snapshot in time. The younger Malcom X is completely different from the older in my system and as of yet there is no indication in the grading system for such growth. I also have not developed the idea of people who seek positive change.

The Grading of Adherents

I propose a four tier grading system of people’s faith in G-d vs. their subscription of a religion.

A Group

A. For these rare souls, faith in G-d is informed by religion. It is not all that informs faith nor is it necessarily the well spring from which faith flows. Thus faith and the religion sit side by side. A person at this level can clearly see the advantages of other religions and see them as good things.

Religion is a tool and a series of sacred documents and he is not afraid to look at other tools and other documents. There is no problem seeing the innovation and perhaps divine inspiration in other religious texts but also in science, philosophy and literature. Often he is the best sort of leader and teacher. (There is no disbelief per se in one’s own sacred texts but this person is a careful reader and places various points of scripture in perspective.)

Such a person is capable of skepticism but often bypasses controversy with a greater lesson that adds perspective to seeming contradiction. He sees the practical good of his religion too but it is not all that he is harvesting.

B Group

B. This person sees the practical good of his religion and supports it. It is also the harvest for B people. So he is also skilled at applying the pragmatic wisdom within his religion into his life. This person is not a mere cheer leader for their religion but their religion and faith are somewhat divided. They know their faith grew out of their religion and that the religion as an institution has some real good in it and thus they are content.

This person cannot do more than compare other religions and feels safer not challenging himself. He will subscribe to his religion because it’s mostly good. He doesn’t distinguish well between faith and religion although they are mostly separate ideas. He is not against innovation in his religion but he is not a leader. He may be a good teacher. He is capable for growing C people into B people as a teacher. This person is capable of skepticism but not of resolving doubts. Life’s tragedies are big set backs of faith for this kind of person.

C Group

C. This is religion at lower ebb. This person may be the hardest working person, he sees everything in terms of the groups good but he is always a follower of convention. A cheerleader. He appeals to the mob and cannot sustain any bridge to others outside his religion and anyone he disagrees with within.

This person loves ritual for its own sake and cannot look at scripture deeply. There is a belief that others are wrong and he is right. The accident of his birth or the facts of his conversion are his most prized possessions. (Some conversions are more about joining a group than finding G-d, these kinds of conversions are usually members of C. Conversions can join any tier I have presented.) This is common ground for many, for some this is a waiting room as they mature into the B group and by thirty they are in the B group. Some never leave and many straddle both C & B. C people often work the hardest and accomplish the least. The real faith in these people is yet to be discovered by them even though it is there. They easily embrace contradictions because they cannot be worked out. Many religious leaders are often C people. They are commonly teachers too. A C person cannot really be skeptical and will be desperate to find a way to accept an idea he doesn’t like if it is presented as a tenant of faith. These people love the status quo. They only seek “change” to preserve a status quo. This often means the introduction of punishment for disagreement. They do believe in G-d but religion as identity is an impediment. Some of these C people will reject their faith for a competing identity. Nonetheless, the trapping of religion (or competing idea) is an important source of identity. It is these people who will tell you they are far too much the rational humanist to be a member of the faith. Sometimes that is a transition where the person is destroying the weak ideas he had himself subscribed to. Those people often return as a B.

D Group

D. This is religion gone awry. It actually empowers hatred and intolerance. These people find religious justifications to impose themselves on others and question the religion of anyone who tries to reason with them. D people only believe in their religion as they understand it and have no actual faith in G-d.

They cannot separate religion from faith at all and only see their place in their religion and thus their religion is their god. These people love to be mesmerized by ritual and seek experiences that physically feel transcendent. They will often invent them. This is partly due to their lack of faith that they seek some kind of physical actualization and justification for their lives.

These people often devalue the good work of their C leaders and sadly they are often leaders themselves. These people only think outside the box to better place themselves in their theological universe and thus nearly all cult leaders are D people. This person cannot separate interpretation from scripture, thus scripture only has one (imposed) meaning. They are therefore only artificial products of their religion and their religious teachings. They claim otherwise because they cannot distinguish their religion from anything else and they are afraid to do so because their total faithlessness will be exposed.

Thus, in order to move upward, they must first find faith. Because they are faithless, there is often an element of sour grapes and envy in their behavior and they can be willing to be destructive if they can find justification. (D people cannot straddle between two levels.) There is always the possibility these people simply cannot find it in themselves to believe in G-d at all. These people only see religion in terms of social status and when they discuss theology they are only talking about social status in the next world.