Thomas Hardy’s great poem on the turn of the year

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

31 December 1900

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

“How Can You Defend Israel?” Part II

An op-ed by David A. Harris
Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee
The Jerusalem Post, Januar 2, 2011

Since writing “How can you defend Israel?” last month, I’ve been deluged by comments. Some have been supportive, others harshly critical. The latter warrant closer examination.

The harsh criticism falls into two basic categories.

One is over the top.

It ranges from denying Israel’s very right to nationhood, to ascribing to Israel responsibility for every global malady, to peddling vague, or not so vague, anti-Semitic tropes.

There’s no point in dwelling at length on card-carrying members of these schools of thought. They’re living on another planet.

Israel is a fact. That fact has been confirmed by the UN, which, in 1947, recommended the creation of a Jewish state. The UN admitted Israel to membership in 1949. The combination of ancient and modern links between Israel and the Jewish people is almost unprecedented in history. And Israel has contributed its share, and then some, to advancing humankind.

If there are those on a legitimacy kick, let them examine the credentials of some others in the region, created by Western mapmakers eager to protect their own interests and ensure friendly leaders in power.

Or let them consider the basis for legitimacy of many countries worldwide created by invasion, occupation, and conquest. Israel’s case beats them by a mile.

And if there are people out there who don’t like all Jews, frankly, it’s their problem, not mine. Are there Jewish scoundrels? You bet. Are there Christian, Muslim, atheist, and agnostic scoundrels? No shortage. But are all members of any such community by definition scoundrels? Only if you’re an out-and-out bigot.

The other group of harsh critics assails Israeli policies, but generally tries to stop short of overt anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism. But many of these relentless critics, at the slightest opportunity, robotically repeat claims about Israel that are not factually correct.

There are a couple of methodological threads that run through their analysis.

The first is called confirmation bias. This is the habit of favoring information that confirms what you believe, whether it’s true or not, and ignoring the rest.

While Israel engages in a full-throttled debate on policies and strategies, rights and wrongs, do Israel’s fiercest critics do the same? Hardly.

Can the chorus of critics admit, for example, that the UN recommended the creation of two states – one Jewish, the other Arab – and that the Jews accepted the proposal, while the Arabs did not and launched a war?

Can they acknowledge that wars inevitably create refugee populations and lead to border adjustments in favor of the (attacked) victors?

Can they recognize that, when the West Bank and Gaza were in Arab hands until 1967, there was no move whatsoever toward Palestinian statehood?

Can they explain why Arafat launched a “second intifada” just as Israel and the U.S. were proposing a path-breaking two-state solution?

Or what the Hamas Charter says about the group’s goals?

Or what armed-to-the-teeth Hezbollah thinks of Israel’s right to exist?

Or how nuclear-weapons-aspiring Iran views Israel’s future?

Or why President Abbas rejected Prime Minister Olmert’s two-state plan, when the Palestinian chief negotiator himself admitted it would have given his side the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank?

Or why Palestinian leaders refuse to recognize the Western Wall or Rachel’s Tomb as Jewish sites, while demanding recognition of Muslim holy sites?

Or why Israel is expected to have an Arab minority, but a state of Palestine is not expected to have any Jewish minority?

Can they admit that, when Arab leaders are prepared to pursue peace with Israel rather than wage war, the results have been treaties, as the experiences of Egypt and Jordan show?

And can they own up to the fact that when it comes to liberal and democratic values in the region, no country comes remotely close to Israel, whatever its flaws, in protecting these rights?

Apropos, how many other countries in the Middle East – or beyond – would have tried and convicted an ex-president? This was the case, just last week, with Moshe Katsav, sending the message that no one is above the law – in a process, it should be noted, presided over by an Israeli Arab justice.

And if the harsh critics can’t acknowledge any of these points, what’s the explanation? Does their antipathy for Israel – and resultant confirmation bias – blind them to anything that might puncture their airtight thinking?

Then there is the other malady. It’s called reverse causality, or switching cause and effect.

Take the case of Gaza.

These critics focus only on Israel’s alleged actions against Gaza, as if they were the cause of the problem. In reality, they are the opposite – the effect.

When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it gave local residents their first chance in history – I repeat, in history – to govern themselves.

Neighboring Israel had only one concern – security. It wanted to ensure that whatever emerged in Gaza would not endanger Israelis. In fact, the more prosperous, stable, and peaceful Gaza became, the better for everyone. Tragically, Israel’s worst fears were realized. Rather than focus on Gaza’s construction, its leaders – Hamas since 2007 – preferred to contemplate Israel’s destruction. Missiles and mortars came raining down on southern Israel. Israel’s critics, though, were silent. Only when Israel could no longer tolerate the terror did the critics awaken – to focus on Israel’s reaction, not Gaza’s provocative action.

Yet, what would any other nation have done in Israel’s position?

Just imagine terrorists in power in British Columbia – and Washington State’s cities and towns being the regular targets of deadly projectiles. How long would it take for the U.S. to go in and try to put a stop to the terror attacks, and what kind of force would be used?

Or consider the security barrier.

It didn’t exist for nearly 40 years. Then it was built by Israel in response to a wave of deadly attacks originating in the West Bank, with well over 1000 Israeli fatalities (more than 40,000 Americans in proportional terms). Even so, Israel made clear that such barriers cannot only be erected, but also moved and ultimately dismantled.

Yet the outcry of Israel’s critics began not when Israelis were being killed in pizzerias, at Passover Seders, and on buses, but only when the barrier went up.

Another case of reverse causality – ignoring the cause entirely and focusing only on the effect, as if it were a stand-alone issue disconnected from anything else.

So, again, in answer to the question of my erstwhile British colleague, “How can you defend Israel?” I respond: Proudly.

In doing so, I am defending a liberal, democratic, and peace-seeking nation in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood, where liberalism, democracy, and peace are in woefully short supply.

Reprinted with kind permission of The Jerusalem Post.

“How can you defend Israel?”

An op-ed by David A. Harris
Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee
The Jerusalem Post, December 27, 2010

I was sitting in a lecture hall at a British university. Bored by the speaker, I began glancing around the hall. I noticed someone who looked quite familiar from an earlier academic incarnation. When the session ended, I introduced myself and wondered if, after years that could be counted in decades, he remembered me.

He said he did, at which point I commented that the years had been good to him. His response: “But you’ve changed a lot.”

“How so?” I asked with a degree of trepidation, knowing that, self-deception aside, being 60 isn’t quite the same as 30.

Looking me straight in the eye, he proclaimed, as others standing nearby listened in, “I read the things you write about Israel. I hate them. How can you defend that country? What happened to the good liberal boy I knew 30 years ago?”

I replied: “That good liberal boy hasn’t changed his view. Israel is a liberal cause, and I am proud to speak up for it.”

Yes, I’m proud to speak up for Israel. A recent trip once again reminded me why.

Sometimes, it’s the seemingly small things, the things that many may not even notice, or just take for granted, or perhaps deliberately ignore, lest it spoil their airtight thinking.

It’s the driving lesson in Jerusalem, with the student behind the wheel a devout Muslim woman, and the teacher an Israeli with a skullcap. To judge from media reports about endless inter-communal conflict, such a scene should be impossible. Yet, it was so mundane that no one, it seemed, other than me gave it a passing glance. It goes without saying that the same woman would not have had the luxury of driving lessons, much less with an Orthodox Jewish teacher, had she been living in Saudi Arabia.

It’s the two gay men walking hand-in-hand along the Tel Aviv beachfront. No one looked at them, and no one questioned their right to display their affection. Try repeating the same scene in some neighboring countries.

It’s the Friday crowd at a mosque in Jaffa. Muslims are free to enter as they please, to pray, to affirm their faith. The scene is repeated throughout Israel. Meanwhile, Christians in Iraq are targeted for death; Copts in Egypt face daily marginalization; Saudi Arabia bans any public display of Christianity; and Jews have been largely driven out of the Arab Middle East.

It’s the central bus station in Tel Aviv. There’s a free health clinic set up for the thousands of Africans who have entered Israel, some legally, others illegally. They are from Sudan, Eritrea, and elsewhere. They are Christians, Muslims, and animists. Clearly, they know something that Israel’s detractors, who rant and rave about alleged “racism,” don’t. They know that, if they’re lucky, they can make a new start in Israel. That’s why they bypass Arab countries along the way, fearing imprisonment or persecution. And while tiny Israel wonders how many such refugees it can absorb, Israeli medical professionals volunteer their time in the clinic.

It’s Save a Child’s Heart, another Israeli institution that doesn’t make it into the international media all that much, although it deserves a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Here, children in need of advanced cardiac care come, often below the radar. They arrive from Iraq, the West Bank, Gaza, and other Arab places. They receive world-class treatment. It’s free, offered by doctors and nurses who wish to assert their commitment to coexistence. Yet, these very same individuals know that, in many cases, their work will go unacknowledged. The families are fearful of admitting they sought help in Israel, even as, thanks to Israelis, their children have been given a new lease on life.

It’s the vibrancy of the Israeli debate on just about everything, including, centrally, the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. The story goes that U.S. President Harry Truman met Israeli President Chaim Weizmann shortly after Israel’s establishment in 1948. They got into a discussion about who had the tougher job. Truman said: “With respect, I’m president of 140 million people.” Weizmann retorted: “True, but I’m president of one million presidents.”

Whether it’s the political parties, the Knesset, the media, civil society, or the street, Israelis are assertive, self-critical, and reflective of a wide range of viewpoints.

It’s the Israelis who are now planning the restoration of the Carmel Forest, after a deadly fire killed 44 people and destroyed 8,000 acres of exquisite nature. Israelis took an arid and barren land and, despite the unimaginably harsh conditions, lovingly planted one tree after another, so that Israel can justifiably claim today that it’s one of the few countries with more wooded land than it had a century ago.

It’s the Israelis who, with quiet resolve and courage, are determined to defend their small sliver of land against every conceivable threat – the growing Hamas arsenal in Gaza; the dangerous build-up of missiles by Hezbollah in Lebanon; nuclear-aspiring Iran’s calls for a world without Israel; Syria’s hospitality to Hamas leaders and transshipment of weapons to Hezbollah; and enemies that shamelessly use civilians as human shields. Or the global campaign to challenge Israel’s very legitimacy and right to self-defense; the bizarre anti-Zionist coalition between the radical left and Islamic extremists; the automatic numerical majority at the UN ready to endorse, at a moment’s notice, even the most far-fetched accusations against Israel; and those in the punditocracy unable – or unwilling – to grasp the immense strategic challenges facing Israel.

Yes, it’s those Israelis who, after burying 21 young people murdered by terrorists at a Tel Aviv discotheque, don the uniform of the Israeli armed forces to defend their country, and proclaim, in the next breath, that, “They won’t stop us from dancing, either.”

That’s the country I’m proud to stand up for. No, I’d never say Israel is perfect. It has its flaws and foibles. It’s made its share of mistakes. But, then again, so has every democratic, liberal and peace-seeking country I know, though few of them have faced existential challenges every day since their birth.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, it’s said. Israel is a good country. And seeing it up close, rather than through the filter of the BBC or the Guardian, never fails to remind me why.

Reprinted with kind permission of The Jerusalem Post.

The Meaning of Hiram in Freemasonry and Judaism

Forever Faithful and Forthright, We Pledge Ourselves to Guard The Light. (The Magic Flute, Mozart)

All men are equal; it is not their birth, but virtue itself that makes the difference. (Voltaire)

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right. (Winston Churchill)

HIRAM

Hiram Abiff & the ever-dying gods

by Rabbi Dr. Raymond Apple, Emeritus Rabbi of the Great Synagoge, Sydney. Past Grand Chaplain of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales.

This paper was delivered at the Discovery Lodge of Research, Sydney, on January 27, 2010.

***

In the third degree ritual the central feature is the death and upraising of Hiram Abiff. It brings solemnity and drama into the occasion, though our version lacks the theatricality of some other rites which use costumes and elaborate dialogue. All versions believe it is a true story that happened at the time when Solomon constructed the Temple in Jerusalem, but those who look for Biblical backing are bound to be disappointed.

In an article I wrote for the “NSW Freemason” in 1978 I examined the view of W. Bro. Rev. Morris Rosenbaum concerning the Biblical account as found – with intriguing differences – in the First Books of Kings and the Second Book of Chronicles. The relevant chapters are I Kings 5, where Solomon asks his friend Hiram king of Tyre for building materials; and II Chronicles 2, where he asks him also for an expert artisan. Both passages feature a – non-royal – Hiram, who in one account appears to be an architect-craftsman and in the other an artisan skilled in working with brass. Both are called Hiram in tribute to the king: it is possible that Hiram was a generic name for a king of Tyre, like the title Pharaoh for a king of Egypt.

Rosenbaum thought there were two separate Hirams. The Hiram of the Book of Kings is the son of “a widow of the tribe of Naphtali”: the one in Chronicles is the son of “a woman of the daughters of Dan”. If there are two Hirams the mother of one is from Naphtali and the mother of the second from Dan; if there is only one, which I will argue in a moment, his father is from Naphtali and his mother from Dan. The connection with Tyre is more than geographic co-incidence, since there was a Tyrian school of craftsmanship and Solomon wanted to use Tyrian expertise.

Next problem: if Hiram (or at least one of them) is the son of a widow, his father is dead. II Chronicles mentions Hiram aviv, “Hiram his father”. Maybe Hiram the father started the work and Hiram the son completed it. This is the view of the 19th century commentator Malbim, who quotes I Kings 7:40 and II Chron. 4:11, though Malbim may have been influenced by the Masonic legend that Hiram was murdered; when I Kings 7:13 says that Solomon “sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre” it may mean that an escort was sent to bring the younger Hiram to Jerusalem to finish his father’s work.

This in outline is Rosenbaum’s theory, but I believe he has read too much into the scriptural account. The Books of Chronicles are not always objective history and it is possible that we have not two Hirams but two versions of the one narrative with slight differences between them.

If then there was only one Hiram, how are we to handle the reference to “Hiram his father”, with its implication that father and son were both involved in the work? The answer is that av, a father, does not necessarily mean a parent. It can also be an originator or master. Hence the title “Hiram Abif(f)” tells us of Hiram’s professional status as a master craftsman, not about his parentage. Even so, there is no objective evidence that one Hiram dropped out and another replaced him. It is more likely that there was only one Hiram and the Bible does not record his eventual fate.

For that we have to go to legend. In a moment we will examine the Masonic version, but first we need to know whether Jewish Midrash knows of a murder during the building works and whether the victim could have been Hiram. There are Midrashim (e.g. Pesikta Rabbati, Friedmann ed., 1880, p. 25a) which hold that some of the builders met an unusual death, but Freemasonry compresses the tragedy into the death of one builder, the foreman, and though the midrashic material speaks of the dead men entering the afterlife, Freemasonry thinks the foreman was restored to earthly existence, though it is silent as to his subsequent life.

The Midrash asserts that whilst the Temple was being built none of the workmen died or even became ill, enabling the project to proceed apace – presumably illustrating the principle that God protects those who are engaged on a sacred mission (Talmud Pesachim 8a). However, once the project was completed, they all died, for God wished to prevent heathens using the Temple builders to erect idolatrous shrines, illustrating the rule that one must ascend in sanctity and not descend (Talmud B’rachot 28a). The builders were assured of a rich heavenly reward, and as for Hiram the master craftsman himself, he went straight to Paradise and never tasted real death (Louis Ginzberg, “Legends of the Jews”, vol. 4, page 155 and notes).

There is a midrashic idea that nine people did not die in the usual way but entered Paradise alive. These included Enoch and Elijah… and Hiram king of Tyre (Derech Eretz Zuta 1:9; Yalkut, Gen. 42 and Ezek. 36:7).

The commentators debate whether Hiram really deserves a place in the list, but in any case the reference must be to Hiram the craftsman and not Hiram the king. The formulators of Masonic ritual possibly knew enough Hebrew to access rabbinic works, but they totally changed the Midrash to make Hiram die a very earthly death at the hands of the other workmen and then rise from the dead. They must have been influenced by Christian tradition about the death of Jesus, though they were careful not to turn the story into an antisemitic canard. However, we should not read too much theology into the Masonic story, which probably has contemporary political motives.

If the story as we have it has been deliberately crafted (I dislike the stronger term “fabricated”) with a basis in the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish Midrash, we must still investigate whether there are additional sources from other cultures. But first we have to add one more attempt, over and above those of countless historians, to posit a theory of Masonic beginnings.

There are three main historical theories about Masonry. One begins at the time of Creation with God as Great Architect, Grand Geometrician and Master Builder, Adam as the first Grand Master, and Masonry as a thread running through ancient history. The second does not make claims about Biblical times but posits a fellowship of builders working on the great edifices of the Middle Ages. The third sees Enlightenment man creating cultural-scientific societies to study ideas and ethics and giving them a pre-history, a well-known habit developed in the interests of credibility.

The third theory is bound up with 17th and 18th century events. The Stuarts ruled England from 1643-1688, except for 1649-1660 after Charles I had been executed by Parliament under Oliver Cromwell. The last Stuart, James II, had to abdicate in 1688. After the Hanoverian George I assumed the monarchy in 1714, the Stuarts mounted invasions in 1715 and 1745 via Scotland but failed to win back the throne. They lived in exile in France with support from some quarters in England. They were called “Jacobites”, from the Latin (and prior to that the Hebrew) for “James”. Some Jacobites were Masons, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, the grandson of James II; some French and Italian lodges were entirely comprised of Jacobites, who may have adopted or invented Hiram Abiff to represent the executed Charles I and to express their belief in the restoration of the Stuarts.

Plans for the return of the Stuarts were made in secret vaults which may have been Masonic lodges. HA’s refusal to divulge a secret bolstered the pledges of confidentiality which these Brothers made to each other. This theory implies that Jacobite influences were involved in the development of Masonic ritual, which was the combination of the ideas and efforts of a number of men, notably Anderson, Desaguliers and Preston, though they might have been kept in the dark about the hidden agenda of Jacobite lodges.

Hiram’s name was not new to the authors of the third degree since he is referred as the master artisan in the Regius Poem of c 1390. The first time we find the Hiram legend in a degree ritual is in the 1730 pamphlet, Freemasonry Dissected, by Samuel Prichard, though there was a rival attempt to give Freemasonry a death/resurrection story in the narrative of Noah and his sons (Graham MS, 1726; cf. Harry Carr, “Hebraic Aspects of the Ritual”, Ars Quatuor Coronatum, vol. 97, 1984, page 77).

Hiram Abiff conveyed the message better because the Noah story lacked betrayal, violence, martyrdom and revenge, even though there was a theory that his sons put his body together again after he died. Hence HA supplanted Noah and settled into the newly created third degree.

The idea of Hiram as Charles I might derive from Elias Ashmole (1617-92), the antiquarian, lawyer and alchemist who is the first (or second) known Speculative Freemason, initiated in 1646. Ashmole (like other early Speculatives, Robert Moray, Inigo Jones and Nicholas Stone) was a Royalist and a supporter of Charles II, and his lodge may have practised Masonic ritual with a Royalist meaning. However, we do not know enough about the ways of early Speculative lodges and can only conjecture.

C.S. Madhavan of the Grand Lodge of India notes that a drastic change entered Freemasonry between the first and second editions of Anderson’s Constitutions. In the first edition in 1723 we read only that “The king of Tyre sent (Solomon) his namesake Hiram Abif, ‘prince of architects’”. The second edition in 1738 speaks of the sudden death of Hiram Abiff who was interred “in the Lodge near the Temple”. The new wording shows that the displacement of Noah by HA had taken place between 1723 and 1738.

The change must have had something to do with Prichard, whose work was published in 1730, but we need more than circumstantial evidence. English Masons would presumably have welcomed the general idea of a good man who died and rose again and would have been on familiar territory in linking royal history with poetic symbolism in view of the well-loved legends of King Arthur, the symbol of chivalry and idealism, about whom Tennyson later wrote, “He passes to be King among the dead/And after healing of his grievous wound/He comes again” (Idylls of the King, 1859).

The Hiram Abiff story was not concocted out of thin air. On the other hand no-one has found any proof that there really was a Hiram Abiff who was murdered on the Temple site and then brought back to life by his supporters. Nor has anyone proved that there was an Israelite custom to pray at “high twelve”, to bury a person in proximity to the Temple, or to place an acacia sprig on a grave. There is also no proof that the real Hiram (unless he was the king of Tyre) was on close terms with King Solomon.

HA is a cultural typology developed at and reflecting the mores of a later time. Its lineage appears to have travelled through two disparate lines:
• the well known concept of gods and messiahs that die and overcome their death (examples are Osiris, Isis, Horus and Tammuz), an idea that appealed to members of secret or other societies who saw true believers martyred but the cause survive;
• widespread accounts of disasters that occurred during the building of churches, palaces and other major edifices.

The first idea has a modern equivalent in Nietzsche’s Death of God theory, plus the religious insistence that God will make a comeback. In Jewish thinking the Death of God is inconceivable, since it is an article of faith that God was not born and cannot die (“I am the first and I am the last”: Isa. 44:6), though in a metaphorical sense it could possibly tolerate the Nietzschean notion that human beings had “killed” Him. Christianity might be thought of as receptive to a Hiram Abiff narrative as consonant with the history of Jesus. However, it is difficult to reconcile a pro-Christian interpretation with the Andersonian dechristianisation of Masonic ritual, though there is admittedly a more Christian element in the Royal Arch.

Whatever the case, it is likely that this is one more example of how Masonry utilised well-known strands of folklore to construct its narratives and rituals, often starting with sketchy Biblical material but adding so much from other sources that it almost completely changed the original story. Other examples are the stories about King Solomon and the dedication of his temple, which, though crucial to the craft, should not be taken literally but understood as an amalgam of folk ideas and literary imagination.

All Masonic writers attach symbolic significance to the HA story, regardless of its origins and political significance. A popular interpretation links it to the three stages of life; as the first degree symbolises birth, when one begins to glimpse light, the second stands for manhood, when one toils toward wisdom and experience, and the third represents old age, when human powers gradually wane but one yearns for a life after death.

Perhaps Anderson and Desaguliers, unaware of or unconvinced by Jacobite political theories, decided to incorporate HA into the third degree because the death/resurrection theme appealed to them as Christians. In 1775 William Hutchinson wrote in his Spirit of Masonry, “The Master Mason represents a man under the Christian doctrine, saved from the grave of iniquity, and raised to the faith of salvation”. The dechristianisation of the craft must inevitably have been difficult for some Masons.

However, with or without christological issues the narrative illustrates and justifies the doctrine that goodness must and will prevail over doubt and difficulty, and is evidence of the common phenomenon whereby a custom or story loses its original significance, undergoes reinterpretation and rationalisation, and gains a new message and mission.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Raymond Apple, “Who was Hiram Abiff?”, The NSW Freemason, Dec., 1978
Harry Carr, “Hebraic Aspects of the Ritual”, Ars Quatuor Coronatum, vol. 97, 1984
W.W. Covey-Crump, The Hiramic Tradition, 1934
Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, various eds., vol. 4
R.F. Gould, History of Freemasonry, 5 vols., 1905
W.B. Hextall, “The Hiramic Legend and the Ashmolean Theory”, Transactions of the Leicester Lodge of Research, 1903-04
Bernard E. Jones, Freemason’s Guide and Compendium, 1950
Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto, 1978
C.S. Madhavan, “The Hiramic Legend” (http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com)
Alexander Piatigorsky, Who’s Afraid of Freemasons?, 1997
Morris Rosenbaum, “Hiram Abif: The Traditional History Illustrated by the Volume of the Sacred Law”, Transactions of the Leicester Lodge of Research, 1903-04
Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, 1974

 Copyright © 2010 Rabbi Dr. Raymond Apple & HIRAM7 REVIEW

The Beginning of the End for NATO?

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the cuts to defense budgets in Britain and other European countries endangered the strength of NATO, which requires members to spend 2 percent of national income on defense.

“As nations deal with their economic problems, we must guard against the hollowing out of alliance military capability by spending reductions that cut too far into muscle,” Gates said. British Foreign Secretary William Hague rejected the concerns, saying Britain will remain a reliable U.S. ally. Britain’s planned cuts – which could shave off more than six hundred thousand public-sector jobs by 2015 – would make it the most aggressive deficit-reducer among major economies.

On STRATFOR, analyst Marko Papic says perceptions of the “threat environment” that unifies NATO have undermined in the post-Cold War era, marking the beginning of the end for the alliance.

Read full story.

Independence Day: July 4, 1776

         Live free or Die! The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonies‘ separation from the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Constitution provides the legal and governmental framework for the United States of America, with its assertion “all Men are created equal”.

The political philosophy of the Declaration with its ideals of individual liberty had been expressed by English philosopher John Locke. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is the nation’s most cherished symbol of liberty.

Here, in unforgettable words, Thomas Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people.

---

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

---

The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence:

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts: John Hancock

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple

Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire: Matthew Thornton

D-Day – June 6, 1944: The Meaning of the Supreme Sacrifice of Heroes and Guardians of Freedom

 

Let Our Hearts Be Stout – Roosevelt D-Day Prayer

My Fellow Americans,

Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest – until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home – fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them – help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too – strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment – let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace – a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.

U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt – June 6, 1944

Climategate Scandal

An independent academic panel found that the climate researchers at University of East Anglia targeted in the “climategate” scandal did not commit deliberate scientific malpractice, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Read full story.

Report records shocking rise of violent anti-Semitism in western Europe in 2009

A new survey by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism in Tel Aviv has revealed a strong surge in violent anti-Semitism in 2009, which in western Europe has now reached the highest level in decades.

The number of recorded violent incidents against Jews, or Jewish sites, totaled 1,129 last year, compared to 559 in 2008 – a rise of 102 percent. In addition, there were “many more hundreds of threats, insults, graffiti signs and slogans and demonstrations featuring virulently anti-Semitic content… sometimes resulting in violence,” according to the report.

“The year … was the worst since monitoring of anti-Semitic manifestations began two decades ago, in terms of both major anti-Semitic violence and the hostile atmosphere generated worldwide by the mass demonstrations and verbal and visual expressions against Israel and the Jews,” the study states.

Dina Porat, the director of the Stephen Roth Institute, told journalists at a press conference that anti-Semitism was directly linked to anti-Zionism. “Political goals are imbued with anti-Jewish sentiment and equations of Jews to Nazis,” she said. Her study was published on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Yom HaShoah.

In Britain, 374 manifestations of violence against Jews were recorded in 2009, compared to 112 in 2008. France – which has the largest Jewish community in Europe – reported 195 violent attacks against Jews, compared to 50 in 2008. Canada saw 130 incidents in 2009, compared to 13 in 2008, and the United States 116 compared to 98. The study records 566 incidents of vandalism targeting Jewish property worldwide in 2009, constituting 49 percent of all incidents. Germany, Russia and Ukraine were not as badly affected by the rise, and may even have seen a decrease in incidents for 2009, the report found.

Forty-one incidents were armed assaults against Jews because of their religion. Thirty-four arson attacks were recorded. Threats of violence against Jews and Jewish institutions accounted for 29 percent of all incidents.

The report attributes the surge in anti-Semitic acts in large parts to the 2009 Gaza war. However, Professor Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University in Jerusalem was quoted as saying by ‘Voice of America’ that “All kinds of new pretexts can serve to ignite anti-Semitism, particularly through anti-Israel feeling, through anti-Zionism; and above all it is Israel that has become the obsession of the anti-Semites.”

Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, which co-sponsored the report, criticized some Jewish communities for “remaining silent” on anti-Semitism, but praised French and British Jewish leaders for speaking out forcefully against anti-Semitism. Kantor also said that the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe was a “new phenomenon financed and organized by pro-Islamic, pro-terrorist organizations and states.”

Porat said: “We had the feeling, which was corroborated by the facts, that the radical left – sometimes together with Jews and former Israelis, this is very disturbing – worked together with the radical Muslim leadership, using anti-Semitism and the Holocaust as political tools, to make Israel as a Jewish state a political target.”

Read full story.

Dear Baroness Catherine Ashton

An op-ed by David A. Harris
Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee
The Jerusalem Post, March 28, 2010

Dear Baroness Ashton,

Since December 2009, you have served as the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union – in other words, the EU’s foreign policy czar.

A few days ago, your op-ed, “Lessons from a Gaza Trip,” was published in the International Herald Tribune.

You waxed poetic about a project for deaf children and a school for girls you visited in Gaza. You wrote: “For the sake of the little deaf boy who stood and held my hand and for the girls who want to be able to do something with that good education, we have to move from process to peace.”

Astonishingly, though, you ignored some rather obvious facts.

Not once did the word “Hamas” appear in your article. How is it possible to write about Gaza today and fail to mention its governing authority? It’s not a small oversight, either. Hamas is the crux of the problem.

How could you overlook the Hamas Charter, which defines the worldview of those in charge?

The full text should be required reading for anyone, like yourself, involved in Middle East diplomacy.

Here’s a taste of what the Charter says about Jews:

“The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'”

And here’s how the Charter views neighboring Israel:

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

Here’s how the Charter refers to so-called infidels:

“The day Islam appears, the forces of infidelity would unite to challenge it, for the infidels are of one nation. O true believers, contract not an intimate friendship with any besides yourselves: they will not fail to corrupt you. They wish for that which may cause you to perish: their hatred hath already appeared from out of their mouths; but what their breasts conceal is yet more inveterate.”

Being from Britain, Baroness, you may want to know how the Second World War really started. The Charter has the answer:

“They (the Jews) were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state.”

And while you may become teary-eyed recalling the school for girls you visited, the Charter’s view of women has little to do with aspiring to a high political office like yours:

“Woman in the home of the fighting family, whether she is a mother or a sister, plays the most important role in looking after the family, rearing the children and imbuing them with moral values and thoughts derived from Islam. She has to teach them to perform the religious duties in preparation for the role of fighting awaiting them. That is why it is necessary to pay great attention to schools and the curriculum followed in educating Muslim girls, so that they would grow up to be good mothers, aware of their role in the battle of liberation.”

The next time you visit Gaza, and before you share with the world what you think you’ve seen, please inquire about the Hamas Charter, the refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist, the role of women, the central place of Shari’a in society, and the reasons why the EU designated Hamas a terrorist organization.

Moreover, you might urge your local hosts to show you not only societies for deaf children and schools for girls, but also weapons factories and arms caches – especially those located in mosques, schools and hospitals. Perhaps you might also take a detour to their favorite missile-launching sites for attacking Israeli towns and villages. And maybe your hosts will explain their ties with Iran, including the smuggling of cash and arms, as well as the training of Hamas fighters who go in and out through hidden tunnels.

Further, you might seek a visit with Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier whom you oddly describe as “captured,” when he was, in fact, kidnapped in a cross-border raid from Gaza. And with the EU’s laudable commitment to international humanitarian law, press your hosts on why no one has been permitted to visit him since his abduction in 2006.

I would also recommend that, before your next visit to Gaza, you stop in Ramallah. Ask Palestinian Authority leaders to share their memories of the bloody civil war that Hamas triggered in Gaza, in 2007, leading to the PA’s expulsion. If they’re being honest, PA leaders will hardly subscribe to your sanitized view of Hamas-ruled Gaza today.

And a stop in Cairo could be beneficial. Egypt is no less concerned than Israel about what’s going on next door. That’s why it’s building a wall along the Gaza border. Hamas, after all, proudly proclaims itself part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood, a longtime threat to Egypt’s stability.

Frankly, when reading “Lessons from a Gaza Trip,” I couldn’t help thinking of those impressionable Western travelers who visited the Soviet Union and returned with gushing accounts of the Moscow metro, circus and ballet, the well-behaved schoolchildren, and the workers’ paradise.

Dear Baroness Ashton, please wake up.

Yes, the search for peace in the region is unquestionably a sacred duty. But it can only be attained by those truly committed to coexistence and mutual respect.

Hamas – that stunningly missing word in your op-ed – is not a peace seeker, but a peace saboteur. With the terrorist group controlling Gaza, the sooner you grasp this essential point, the better off we will all be.

Useful idiots

An op-ed by David A. Harris
Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee
The Jerusalem Post, January 19, 2010

In 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler became the German chancellor, the Oxford Union famously adopted a resolution which said “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” The measure was passed by a vote of 275 to 153.

Winston Churchill reacted by saying that “one could almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of Germany, Italy, and France when they read the message sent out by Oxford University in the name of Young England.”

Shortly afterward, his son, Randolph, tried to have the resolution stricken from the books, but the motion was resoundingly defeated by the Oxford Union.

In other words, otherwise bright students at a distinguished British university are capable of foolish things. At least in this case, it must be said, “Young England” rose to the occasion six years later, when the Second World War began, and revealed its true colors of patriotism, courage and grit.

Recently, another British student union was presented with a controversial proposal. The London School of Economics (LSE) debated whether to seek the twinning of this world-renowned institution with the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG).

After a spirited discussion, the motion was carried by a vote of 161 to 133. The university administration distanced itself from the decision.

As an alumnus of LSE, I am ashamed of the student action. Sure, LSE has a reputation for feisty politics, but this is taking it a bit far.

IUG was established in 1978 by none other than Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Yassin, it will be recalled, was the founder of Hamas. In 2007, a New York Times reporter described IUG as “one of the prime means for Hamas to convert Palestinians to its Islamist cause.” Indeed, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, IUG “has emerged as a training ground for the political and spiritual leadership of Hamas. Many Hamas leaders who are also academics have taught at the university….”

Yassin was hardly cast in the mold of a Western liberal educator. Among his many public utterances, he declared that “reconciliation with the Jews is a crime” and that “Israel must disappear from the map.” He claimed that Israel is, in fact, Muslim land and is to be reserved for those of the faith “until Judgment Day.”

And Yassin didn’t just limit himself to rhetorical flourishes, either. He pursued “armed struggle” against Israel, targeting civilians and blessing suicide bombers.

Moreover, in 2007, during the civil war in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah forces, the latter entered the university and found rocket-propelled grenade launchers, rockets, assault rifles and ammunition, all of which was subsequently shown on Palestinian television.

Two years later, Israel struck two IUG buildings which, according to military spokesmen, were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons, including Kassam rockets.” Those rockets were used to attack indiscriminately Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza border, with the aim of killing and terrorizing residents.

When I first heard the news that the LSE Student Union voted to twin with IUG, I was speechless.

How could students at a world-class university that celebrates the open and respectful exchange of ideas find common cause with the academic standard-bearer of Hamas, a Sharia-based, obscurantist, violent group?

How could they claim solidarity with an institution that is actively involved in a long-term campaign to destroy a neighboring nation – and a democratic one at that?

How could they, living in a world of pluralism, gender equality and sexual freedom, join themselves at the hip to such a regressive, repressive social environment as IUG?

How could they, students of a university which was one of the stepping stones in British society for Jews to gain equality, identify with a school that preaches hatred of Jews and celebrates their murder?

The answer, I fear, is the bizarre alliance that has emerged in the UK between the keffiyeh-worshiping far left and Islamic extremists.

When neo-fascists come along spouting reactionary slogans about women and gays, the far left unhesitatingly denounces them. But when misogyny and homophobia emanate from the lips of Islamists, they’re likely to get a deferential pass from the suddenly culturally-sensitive.

Ken Livingstone, former London mayor, and George Galloway, Member of Parliament, are two prime examples of what the communists referred to as “useful idiots” – those who, in their ultimate naiveté, would help the extremists ascend to power, only to be the first in line for destruction once the goal was attained. In the case of Livingstone and Galloway, they’ve rarely met a Middle Eastern radical with whom they couldn’t agree. And, of course, they have their counterparts at LSE and on other university campuses, in trade unions and in the media.

The LSE Student Union vote was a sad day for the British academy. It betrays all the values that have made Britain a beacon of liberty and enlightenment.

One can only hope that this decision will follow the path of the 1933 Oxford Union resolution – and make its way to the dustbin of history as rapidly as possible.

6 Major Powers Move Closer to Considering More Iran Sanctions

Did You Know?

“The (Revolutionary Guard) corps’s two best-known subsidiaries are the secretive Quds Force, which has carried out operations in other countries, including the training and arming of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon; and the Basij militia. The Basiji includes millions of volunteer vigilantes used to crack down on election protests and dissidents,” according to The New York Times. 

Top Stories

The New York Times: “Six major powers agreed Saturday that the Iranian response to proposals to altering its nuclear development program had been inadequate and that it warranted consideration of further measures by the United Nations Security Council.  China, however, which sent a low-level diplomat to the meeting, maintained its position that it opposed new sanctions now.” 
 
The Associated Press (AP): “Iran’s interior minister is vowing to take revenge on Israel over the slaying last week of a physics professor in a mysterious bomb attack.  Iranian officials have blamed an exiled opposition group, accusing it of acting on behalf of Israel and the U.S. Washington denied involvement. Israel did not comment.” 

Reuters: “Iran has exchanged messages with major powers on its nuclear energy program and sees signs of progress, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Monday, despite Western attempts to impose more sanctions.”

Opinion
 
Los Angeles Times (LAT) Editorial Board: “This week’s indictment of three Glendale men for allegedly smuggling vacuum pumps and other industrial equipment to Iran via the United Arab Emirates is the latest reminder of how easily and frequently U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran have been violated. The charges were reported as the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany prepared to meet in New York today to discuss tougher economic measures for pressing Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program.”

UK Military Cuts

The British armed forces could be forced to contract by up to 20 percent by 2016 because of rising costs, according to the military think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI):

“Between 1988 and 2008, the core real defence budget fell by 9%. Yet this same period saw a fall in the number of ground formations by 28%, a reduction in available aircraft by 33%, and a reduction in major vessels by 47%. This growth in the unit cost of front-line capabilities – averaging 1.7% per annum – resulted from continuing efforts to improve the qualitative effectiveness of the armed forces. It also reflected the growing costs of attracting high-quality candidates into a military career at a time of rising earnings in the wider economy.”

Read full story.

American Jewish Committee 2010 Annual Meeting

When was the last time you…

…received a briefing from the Obama Administration?

             …dined at an Ambassador’s home?

…sang Hatikvah with an Israeli soldier?

                         …heard directly from a head of state?

You will have the opportunity to do all this and more at AJC’s Annual Meeting April 28-30, 2010 in Washington D.C. We encourage you to register now.

You will hear from the Foreign Minister of Spain, Miguel Ángel Moratinos Cuyaubé, one of the world’s most important leaders in stopping Iran’s nuclear program, as Spain will hold the EU presidency.

You will enjoy intimate access to top policymakers. There will be more exclusive private dinners that were so popular last year. The French Ambassador to the United States will host a small group at his home, among many more to come.

You will engage with the cutting-edge issues that matter most. Expert panelists will debate topics like “The Obama Administration and Israel“,  “Have Human Rights Gone Wrong?” and “Can Europe Be Multicultural?“.

These sessions will fill up fast, so please act quickly.

We hope to see you April 28-30, 2010.

AJC 2010 Annual Meeting
Global Jewish Advocacy

Washington, D.C. on April 28 – April 30, 2010

Grand Hyatt Hotel
1000 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 582-1234

Register now!

Earl Shugerman’s Corner: The English speaking community of Haifa

Earl Shugerman brings every week a serie of stories about Anglo-Saxon immigrants to Israel. This project is aimed to promote a more realistic view of life in Israel.

The Anglo-List – Bringing us together

by Suzanne Suckerman

I came to Israel from Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1989 just after I got married. My husband always wanted to live in Haifa.  We were the only Anglo-Saxon couple our age and so socially it took a long time to fit in.  It was mainly through my husband’s business that we began to meet the English speaking community and slowly acquire a social network.  Immigration from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia was at its peak and the Jewish Agency and other Aliyah organizations were concentrating on that.  Support in Haifa, at that time, was scant and we were left to our own devices.  Over the years we plodded along, slowly making our way. Our two children were born here and attend school here and it has been through them that we have learned a great deal.  The education system, religious, parenting, military service to name but a few are all so different in South Africa.

Haifa was recently chosen to absorb the new, large wave of English speaking immigrants coming to Israel.  Over the past 2 years over 1000 English speakers have made Haifa their home and similar numbers will be arriving in the next few years.  In the course of a conversation with an ex-colleague, I identified a need for a central source of practical information on life in Israel, specifically for the English speaking immigrant community.  After some research I understood that a website was the way to go. 

Haifa also attracts foreign students, businessmen, members of the Bahai faith as well as a contingency of foreign workers from the Philippines. In order to meet their specific needs and give support to these groups, I proceeded to set up a new information website called Anglo-list.com.  This website is unique, and fulfils an important commercial and social function. We understand the English speaker’s needs, and this site has been designed, and will continue to evolve, to meet those needs. This Aliyah, business, consumer, entertainment and information website gives practical information, advice and tips and covers such issues as the medical and education systems, security issues, social services, entertainment as well as being a directory for government and official offices and Aliyah information. 

From a community point of view, we have set up social networks and our membership is growing daily. We plan to hold social events and develop a support group. Readers are contributing their personal Aliyah stories, some humorous and some serious. The community relates strongly to this, they are inspired and comforted from other peoples experiences.

We also now have the strength to request that provision be made for the English speaker from companies and organizations

Potential immigrants are using the site to make crucial decisions about their future. The large Bahai community in and the Philippinos, also have access to the site and we are working on incorporating information for them as well.

On a professional level we have a list of service providers. A condition for advertising on this site is being able to provide service in English. Various organizations are advertising on the site and have contributed information and articles on their specific service – special education, small business development and student bodies to name but a few.

Learning Hebrew, as a spoken language, can be a long and difficult process, we have also addressed this issue and provide a phonetic dictionary of useful terms, phrases and slang.

The Mayor of Haifa, Mr. Yona Yahav, has endorsed the site and we work in close cooperation with Aliyah organizations.

It is our plan to enlarge the site and incorporate the entire country – and our vision to turn this site into the premier English site for English speakers in Israel will become a reality.

www.anglo-list.com – Bringing us Together

Did You Ask A Good Question Today?

Judaism is a religion of questions.

by Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

Isidore Isaac Rabi, winner of a Nobel Prize for physics, was once asked why he became a scientist. He replied: “My mother made me a scientist without ever knowing it. Every other child would come back from school and be asked, ‘What did you learn today?’ But my mother used to say, ‘Izzy, did you ask a good question today?’ That made the difference. Asking good questions made me into a scientist.”

Judaism is a religion of questions. The greatest prophets asked questions of God. The Book of Job, the most searching of all explorations of human suffering, is a book of questions asked by man, to which God replies with a string of questions of His own.

The earliest sermons usually began with a question asked of the rabbi by a member of the congregation. Most famously, the Passover Seder begins with four questions asked by the youngest child.

So I can identify with Rabi’s childhood memories. When I left university and went to Israel to study in a rabbinical seminary, I was stunned by the sheer intensity with which the students grappled with texts. Once in a while the teacher’s face would light up at a comment from the class. “Du fregst a gutte kashe,” he would say (you raise a good objection). This was his highest form of praise.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski tells of how, when he was young, his instructor would relish challenges to his arguments. In his broken English he would say: “You right! You a hundred prozent right! Now I show you where you wrong.”

Religious faith has suffered hugely in the modern world by being cast as naive, blind, unquestioning.

The scientist asks, the believer just believes. Critical inquiry, so the stereotype runs, is what makes the difference between the pursuit of knowledge and the certainties of faith. One who believes in the fundamentals of a creed is derided as a fundamentalist. The word fundamentalist itself comes to mean a simplistic approach to complex issues. Religious belief is often seen as the suspension of critical intelligence.

As Wilson Mizner once put it: “I respect faith. But doubt is what gets you an education.” To me, this is a caricature of faith, not faith itself.

Questions testify to faith – the universe is not impervious to our understanding, life is not chance.

What is the asking of a question if not itself a profound expression of faith in the intelligibility of the universe and the meaningfulness of human life? To ask is to believe that somewhere there is an answer. The fact that throughout history people have devoted their lives to extending the frontiers of knowledge is a moving demonstration of the restlessness of the human spirit and its constant desire to transcend, to climb. Far from faith excluding questions, questions testify to faith – that the world is not random, the universe is not impervious to our understanding, life is not chance.

That, I suspect, is why Judaism encourages questions. On the phrase: “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” Rashi, the 11th-century biblical commentator, says: “This means, with the power to understand and to discern.”

Critical intelligence is the gift God gave humanity. To use it in the cause of human dignity and insight is one of the great ways of serving God. When faith suppresses questions, it dies. When it accepts superficial answers, it withers.

Faith is not opposed to doubt. What it is opposed to is the shallow certainty that what we understand is all there is.

Reprinted with kindly permission of Aish HaTorah International.

Défense et Illustration de Jacques Chirac

Une tribune de David Berger

Le renvoi de Jacques Chirac devant la justice pour “détournements de biens publics” et “abus de confiance” dans le cadre de l’affaire des chargés de mission de la Ville de Paris est non seulement superflu, mais aussi et surtout moralement douteux, eu égard au fait que les délits reprochés remontent à plus de vingt ans et que tous les partis politiques ont eu recours à ces pratiques.

La justice devrait faire le procès de la classe politique entière au lieu de s’acharner sur un homme qui a servi la France de manière exemplaire pendant plus de quarante ans.

C’est une constante bien française, la nation décapite le Père, celui qui incarne le mieux ce qu’elle est, en érigeant l’échafaud en place publique; observez la chose, elle est invariablement la même: la tête du monarque, bon, débonnaire, doit être donnée aux chacals qui n’en feront qu’une bouchée : Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Comme le disait le Général De Gaulle: “Les Français sont des veaux”. Jacques Chirac s’en sortira, c’est une question d’honneur pour la France. Souvenons-nous des années Mitterrand, des suicides, des scandales personnels et des dépenses royales, corruption et république bananière à tire–larigot… Oui, il ira devant les juges, il passera quelques nuits blanches, mais il se relèvera, tête haute.

L’ancien président de la République et maire de Paris Jacques Chirac s’exprimait il y a près de deux ans sur tous les chefs d’accusation calomnieuse lancés à son encontre. Sa tribune parue dans le quotidien Le Monde peut être lue ici.

NDLR: Les textes et essais publiés sur HIRAM7 REVIEW n’engagent que leurs auteurs et ne reflètent pas nécessairement l’opinion de la rédaction.

Alan Posener’s Column: The Open Society and its Trends

by Alan Posener
Die Welt / Welt am Sonntag  / HIRAM7 REVIEW

Something’s going on in Europe, and I don’t like it.

There’s the future German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle’s refusal to even listen to the question of a BBC correspondent, unless it’s put to him in German:

There’s the BBC giving the British National Party’s Nick Griffin a nationwide TV platform for his racist and anti-Semitic views.

And there’s people not only defending German Central Banker Thilo Sarrazin’s right to make racist comments, but denying that they are racist and demanding a muzzle for people who dare to say they are racist.

You only have to look at the comments on Youtube and elsewhere to realize what it is that is going on here: the political and chattering classes have abandoned the rules governing their chatter; nationalism, racism and intolerance in general are being allowed back into polite society after spending the past 40 years out in the cold.

Political correctness – that great civilizer – is dead. Multiculturalism is under siege. And the ban on anti-Semitism – which the Catholic Church has already lifted by welcoming back the anti-Semitic Pius Brotherhood into its ranks – will soon be as worthless as the paper on which Sir Karl Popper’s great book on the Open Society was written.

I mention Karl Popper, because in the age of Totalitarianism he confronted a vexing question of democracy head-on: was the open society bound by its own philosophical, legal and political parameters to tolerate the propaganda of its enemies?

Popper said no: there was no reason to tolerate intolerance; no reason to grant freedom to the enemies of freedom; there should be no openness towards the enemies of openness. People who want one man, one vote one time should not – as they were in Gaza – be allowed to contest elections. Democracy is more important than freedom; more important than truth; more important than justice – or any one of the multitude of ideas, concepts, slogans and ideals in whose name one could (and people have tried to) suspend democracy.

It’s always the enemies of tolerance who chafe at this seeming intolerance of democracy. One shouldn’t let oneself be fooled. People say, “If you stop people from saying what Sarrazin said, you are denying 80 percent of the population a voice.”

Well, if 80 percent of the population are racist, which I don’t believe for a moment, but I’m saying if, then fuck them and there’s all the more reason to keep a tight lid on what is said by public figures, isn’t there?

Popper didn’t call his book “The Majority Rules”, he called it “The Open Society”. Even 99 percent of the population don’t have the right to dismantle the open society and replace it with a society in which privileges are awarded or denied according to race, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation or social background.

That’s what Europe has been about this past half-century. Let’s keep it that way.

British Army Hero Tells UN Human Rights Council: ‘Israeli Defense Forces Most Moral Army in History of Warfare’

Today’s emergency United Nations Human Rights Council debate in Geneva on the Goldstone Report predictably saw a line-up of the world’s worst abusers condemn democratic Israel for human rights violations.

In a heated lynch mob atmosphere, Kuwait slammed Israel for “intentional killing, intentional destruction of civilian objects, intentional scorched-earth policy”, saying Israel “embodied the Agatha Christie novel, ‘Escaped with Murder’. Pakistan said the “horrors of Israeli occupation continue to haunt the international community’s conscience.” The Arab League said, “We must condemn Israel and force Israel to accept international legitimacy.” Ahmadinejad’s Iran said “the atrocities committed against Palestinians during the aggressions on Gaza should be taken seriously” and followed up by the international community “to put an end to absolute impunity and defiance of the law.”

What the world’s assembled representatives did not expect, however, was the speech that followed (see video and text below), organized by UN Watch. The speaker is a man who repeatedly put his life on the line to defend the democratic world from the murderous Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. The moment he began his first sentence, the room simply fell silent. Judge Goldstone, author of the biased report that prompted today’s one-sided condemnation, had refused to hear Colonel Kemp’s testimony during his “fact-finding” hearings.

But UN Watch made sure today that this hero’s voice would be heard – at the United Nations, and around the world.

***

UN Human Rights Council, 12th Special Session
Debate on Goldstone Report – Geneva, October 16, 2009

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Did More to Safeguard Civilians Than Any Army in History of Warfare

Colonel Richard Kemp served in the British Army from 1977 – 2006.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Alan Poseners Kolumne: Weg mit dem Gesundheitsfonds!

Der britisch-deutsche Journalist Alan Posener kommentiert wöchentlich das Zeitgeschehen in Politik, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und Kultur für HIRAM7 REVIEW.

Von Alan Posener
Die Welt / Welt am Sonntag  / HIRAM7 REVIEW

Vorneweg, ceterum censeo:

www.welt.de/videos/debatte/article4835598/Sarrazins-Rassismus-bleibt-Bullshit.html

Aber darum soll es hier nicht gehen, sondern um einen Telefonanruf.

Eine junge Frau ruft bei ihrer Frauenärztin an. Sie braucht einen Termin. Die Sprechstundenhilfe, nach einigem Hin und Her, im leicht genervten Ton: „Also, ich kann Ihnen frühestens am 2. Dezember einen Termin anbieten.“ Also in SECHS WOCHEN. Die junge Frau sagt zu, die Sprechstundenhilfe klickt ein bisschen in ihrem Computer herum, und plötzlich ertönt Warteschleifenmusik. Die junge Frau wartet. Dann ist eine völlig umgewandelte Sprechstundenhilfe dran: „Aber Frau P., Sie haben ja gar nicht gesagt, dass Sie Privatpatientin sind! Da hätten wir einen Termin für Sie, am 21.“ „November?“ „Wo denken Sie hin? Oktober!“ Also in EINER WOCHE.

Man hört immer, besonders von SPD-Seite, es gehe darum, „eine Zweiklassenmedizin in Deutschland zu verhindern“. Hallo? Wir haben längst eine Zweiklassenmedizin.

Und es geht nicht nur darum, dass eine Kassenpatientin sechs Wochen, eine Privatpatientin eine Woche auf einen Termin warten muss, obwohl das schlimm genug ist und in manchen Fällen den Unterschied zwischen einer gerade noch rechtzeitig erkannten und einer zu spät erkannten Krankheit bedeuten kann. Die praktizierte Medizin ist auch verschieden für Ober- und Untermenschen.

Ein Beispiel: Meine Frau ist als Beamtin privat versichert; ich bin als Angestellter freiwillig in der gesetzlichen (ich weiß… selber schuld… lange Geschichte.). Zufällig hatten wir in der letzten Zeit kurz hintereinander die gleichen Beschwerden entwickelt (das Phänomen nennt man bei langjährigen Ehepaaren oder Hundehaltern Anähnelung), und darum empfahl mir meine Frau auch ihren Orthopäden, der tatsächlich auch exakt die gleiche Diagnose stellte. Freilich war die Therapie völlig verschieden, was die verschriebenen Medikamente, Schmerz- und Hilfsmittel betrifft. Und zwar schlicht und einfach derart, dass ich weniger oder nichts bekam.

Vielleicht gibt es Ärzte, die keinen Unterschied zwischen Kassen- und Privatpatienten machen; aber man darf annehmen, dass das die Ausnahmen sind. Die Dummen.

Noch einmal: wir haben längst eine Zweiklassenmedizin. Man kann sagen: das ist nun einmal so; alles, was über die Basisversorgung hinausgeht, muss eben privat versichert sein, und das können dann eben nur die Besserverdienenden – und dann ist jeder Besserverdienende, der wie ich in der gesetzlichen Versicherung bleibt, eben dumm.

Man kann leugnen, dass das so ist, wie die meisten Parteien, die Ärzteorganisationen und Versicherungen, die behaupten, es gehe ihnen darum, für jeden Patienten eine optimale Versorgung sicherzustellen. Wer ihnen glaubt, ist selber schuld.

Man kann wie in Großbritannien das System verstaatlichen, so dass es alle gleich schlecht haben – mit  Ausnahme der ganz Reichen, die sich in Abu Dhabi behandeln lassen, wohin auch die guten Ärzte auswandern.

Oder man kann eine private Gesundheitsfürsorge für alle einführen, mit kostendeckenden Beiträgen einerseits und Versicherungszwang andererseits – und die wirklich Bedürftigen, sagen wir Arbeitslose und Rentner, durch Zuschüsse staatlicherseits instand setzen, ihre Beiträge zu zahlen. Ich befürworte den letzten Vorschlag.

Und deshalb: Weg mit dem Gesundheitsfonds und der Einteilung von Menschen in Patienten erster und zweiter Klasse. Telefongespräche wie das eingangs geschilderte sollten so schnell wie möglich der Vergangenheit angehören. 

Die in HIRAM7 REVIEW veröffentlichten Essays und Kommentare geben nicht grundsätzlich den Standpunkt der Redaktion wieder.

USA, UK and France Tell Iran to Open Nuke Site

The New York Times reports that U.S. President Obama and the leaders of UK and France will accuse Iran of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years, according to senior administration officials. 

The revelation, which the three leaders will make before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, appears bound to add urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambitions to build a nuclear weapons capacity. Mr. Obama, along with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, will demand that Iran allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran. 

U.S. officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the project.

On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a ‘pilot plant’ under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed. In a statement from its headquarters in Vienna yesterday, the atomic agency confirmed that it had been told by Iran that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country.

Read full story.

Alan Poseners Kolumne: SteinbergRecherche – dumm, borniert, undifferenziert, antisemitisch

Der britisch-deutsche Journalist Alan Posener kommentiert wöchentlich das Zeitgeschehen in Politik, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und Kultur für HIRAM7 REVIEW.

Von Alan Posener
Die Welt / Welt am Sonntag  / HIRAM7 REVIEW

Tilman Tarach, dessen Buch über Israel ich jedem wärmstens empfehlen kann hat mich darauf hingewiesen, dass „Steinbergrecherche“ mich als herausragendes Beispiel für die Spezies „Kriegsjude“ anführt:

Zunächst einmal muss man festhalten, dass Herr Steinberg zu jenen Leuten gehört, die man – wie etwa Gudi „die Ziege“ Eussner – unter „Who the fuck is…?“ ablegen muss.

Doch just for the record: Ich bin nicht Jude, schon gar nicht ein „bekennender“ Jude. Wäre Herr Steinberg nicht der strohdoofe Antisemit, der er offenbar ist, wüsste er das auch. Und dass Juden nichts „bekennen“, im Gegensatz zu Christen – einschließlich jener christlichen Häretiker, die man „Muslime” nennt: das müsste sich eigentlich herumgesprochen haben. Aber über Juden schreiben mit Vorliebe Leute, die von Juden und vom Judentum gar keine Ahnung haben: siehe auf der anderen Seite des Neurosenspektrums Clemens „der antideutsche Antisemitenschnüffler“ Heni.

Obwohl ich mich also wegen meiner englisch-schottischen Mutter nicht zum auserwählten Volk zählen darf (wohl hätte zu Zeiten von Kraft durch Freude wegen meines jüdischen Vaters einen Freifahrtschein nach Auschwitz bekommen können, und auch deshalb hätte ich bei Einwanderung in Israel ein Anrecht auf die israelische Staatsbürgerschaft) und mich als getaufter Anglikaner fröhlich zu meinem Atheismus bekenne, habe ich beschlossen, die Bezeichnung „Kriegsjude“ als Auszeichnung zu betrachten. Ich wünschte nur, ich hätte mehr getan, um sie zu verdienen.

And now for something completely different: Mein Buch über Papst Benedikt ist erschienen: Kauft massenhaft!

Die in HIRAM7 REVIEW veröffentlichten Essays und Kommentare geben nicht grundsätzlich den Standpunkt der Redaktion wieder.

Alan Posener’s Column: In response to David Gelernter’s criticism of Old Europe

In his contribution to the symposion on Why are Jews Liberals hosted this month by Commentary Magazine, American neoconservative author David Gelernter charged that Old Europe has nothing to offer to mankind in terms of culture and spirituality. Now British-German columnist Alan Posener fires back in the following op-ed.

David Gelernter’s Piece of Bullshit on Old Europe

An op-ed by Alan Posener
Die Welt / Welt am Sonntag  / HIRAM7 REVIEW

David Gelernter’s contribution to the Commentary Magazine‘s Symposion on Why (American) Jews are Liberals was one of the most amazing pieces of bullshit I have ever read. And my job as a journalist forces me to read a lot of bullshit.

In his criticism of Europe – a kind of mirror-image of the typical French intellectual’s criticism of the USA and just as fact-free – Gelernter makes a number of astounding observations.

Gelernter writes: “The peoples of Western Europe have mostly lacked the religious intensity and genius of the Jews.” I realize that you don’t need to know anything about culture in order to become a computer scientist, but maybe Mr. Gelernter should take time out from studying bits and bytes (and raving) in order to visit a Gothic cathedral or to listen to one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s religious works – the Christmas Oratorio is quite accessible. So much for religious genius. And as for religious intensity, maybe Mr. Gelernter should study the history of the European religious wars, which led us to conclude that keeping religion out of government was a key to peace – a lesson enshrined in the US Constitution.

Gelernter writes: “America has a habit of despising intellectuals” (this is meant as a compliment), “while Europe worships and obeys them”. One would be hard put to find a single example of Europeans “worshipping and obeying” an intellectual. However, there are many instances of hatred for the intellectual – Nazi Germany, where “intellectual” was virtually synonymous with “Jewish”, and the Communist bloc, where “intellectual” was virtually synonymous with “petit-bourgeois class enemy” being two of the more recent examples.

Gelernter writes: “European sex seems to have developed the moral significance of an ATM transaction on a street corner.” I’ve no idea where Gelernter gets his data on European sex. I would like to point out, though, that, like the ATM machine, casual sex is an American import, via Hollywood movies and rock’n’roll. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Woodstock is a village in the State of New York. As it happens, I’m a great fan of Hollywood, rock’n’roll and ATM machines, unlike the cultural conservatives who tell us that these inventions of the decadent Americans are sapping Europe’s moral fibre in order to deliver us into the hands of American capitalism (i.e. Jewry). But I must say I find it rich that Gelernter should simply turn the argument around. Nice joke. But bullshit.

Gelernter says that Europe has “a love affair with death”. A strange comment from someone who lives in a country where infant mortality rates are higher and life expectancy is lower than in Western Europe. (Of course, the bullshitter then turns around and says wimpy Europeans are afraid of death, which is why they want to cut and run in Afghanistan.) As proof for his assertion, Gelernter cites low birth-rates and high immigration levels. To start with the second aspect: until very recently, European conservatives criticized the USA for being a “mongrel culture” due to ist high levels of immigration. Again, Gelernter seems to have imbibed these European ideas and now switches into “Yah, boo, same to you”-mode. Cute, but bullshit. People come to Europe, as they do to America, because it is a damn good place to live. The idea that Europe’s “nations will be gone within a few generations” (Gelernter) can only occur to someone who doesn’t actually bother to do a reality check before sounding off. All studies show that immigrants to Europe are fast adopting European mores. Their birth-rate is declining, too. There is no reason to believe that a Muslim French woman should be less patriotic than a Jewish American.

David Gelernter writes: “Mulling German history in particular, one wonders whether the Germans were ever more than half-Christianized, whether paganism hasn’t always appealed to the lofty German Geist.” As we’ve seen, Gelernter doesn’t really “mull” history at all, or if he does, he only mulls his own preconceptions of history, not bothering with actual facts. The idea that the nation that brought forth Martin Luther – no name but one exemplar of the “lofty German Geist” – was only “half-Christianized” is absurd. But it does serve to obfuscate one fact that none of the contributors to the symposion reflect: the millions of Germans who voted for Hitler and served him till the last, the hundreds of thousands who worked on the “Final Solution” were not “half-Christianized” pagans. They were – often devout – Catholics and Protestants. This is an uncomfortable truth, a truth that the current Pope (a former Hitler Youth member) tries to deny, but a truth nevertheless.

It is for this reason that Jews in Europe and America would do well not to rely too heavily on Christian goodwill. Just because many Christians are more afraid of the Muslims at the moment does not mean that they are natural allies of the Jews. Antijudaism is enscribed into Christian teaching. I imagine that Gelernter, who apparently knows nothing about the history of Europe, hasn’t actually got round to reading the “New” Testament or the teachings of the Church Fathers, or the Acts of the Spanish Inquisition, or the Anti-Semitic rantings of Martin Luther. (But maybe he remembers Father Coughlin?)

I’m no friend of reactionary liberalism. But throwing yourself into the arms of reactionary conservativism isn’t the answer. Thinking for yourself is.

Lockerbie Aftermaths

Scotland’s parliament has been recalled for an emergency session today amid mounting international outrage over last week’s release of terrorist Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, convicted for the Lockerbie plane bombing.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will address the meeting to defend his decision to free al-Megrahi on “compassionate” grounds. Al-Megrahi was serving a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people, and received a hero’s welcome on return to his home country Libya.

Read full story.

Lockerbie bomber may be freed

Several news reports say Britain will release from a Scottish prison Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan secret service agent convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people. Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill denied the reports that a decision has already been made, but said he is taking into consideration whether al-Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, should be freed on compassionate grounds.

The reports that al-Megrahi would be released aroused ardent debate between family members of the Lockerbie victims. Al-Megrahi is serving a life sentence for the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. Most of the victims were U.S. citizens.

Reuters considers the implications of al-Megrahi’s release for Libya.

The Times of London looks at divisions between U.S. and British relatives of Lockerbie victims over the news that al-Megrahi may be freed, noting that many British family members have long doubted his guilt and are supporting his release.

The BBC has an audio slideshow of the Lockerbie bombing.

The Guardian profiles al-Megrahi.

Earl Shugerman’s Corner: Holiday in Jordan

 Earl Shugerman will bring every week a serie of stories about Anglo-Saxon immigrants to Israel. This project is aimed to promote a more realistic view of life in Israel. 

Originally from the UK, Harvey Miller emigrated to Israel in 2008. Here he recounts a recent holiday to Jordan.

Jordan

by Harvey Miller

Only six months ago, I took a heavily measured and calculated step. I determined upon a life changing course – I made Aliyah.

The concept is deeply rooted in Jewish History. For two thousand years, communities living in the Diaspora yearned for a return to their ancestral homeland. This crystallized in 1948 with the Birth of the State of Israel. Following the insidious horrors of the Holocaust, the requirement for a refuge was underscored. In the sixty years since the declaration of Independence, the scattered tribes have been regathered from the four corners of the earth.

Since arriving in Israel, the travel bug has all but consumed me. As a PhD Student in Biblical Studies, the region of the Levant is particularly fascinating. Last week, I journeyed to Israel’s neighbour – Jordan. In the past, the two countries have experienced a fractious relationship. It was only in 1994 that a rapprochement was reached. Subsequently, Jordan opened its borders to Israeli tourists. They have been flocking to the Hashemite Kingdom ever since.

The Arava Crossing is in one respect Israel’s last bastion of bureaucracy. As I discovered, a temporary travel document is normally vital to crossing into Jordan. Unfortunately, I was not savvy on this point. I was under the impression that my British passport would suffice for the short sojourn. I was sorely mistaken. Despite the faux pas, the desk clerks approved my entry. I was told adamantly that future excursions Chutz La aretz (outside Israel) would only bare fruit with the aforementioned pass.

Having negotiated this minefield, I was received by the Jordanians. A photo of the incumbent monarch Abdullah greeted me. The king is highly popular amongst his subjects. There is a resonating warmth about him, which has been imbued amongst Jordanians. Other photos I encountered later displayed him in a more familial role: Embracing his son, or sharing a jovial moment with Queen Noia.

The first literal port of call was Aqaba. It is situated in close proximity to three countries – Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt. Each can be observed from the Red Sea coast. Aqaba is host to several exclusive hotels such as the Intercontinental and Kapinski. However, vis-à-vis Israel, their rates are extremely reasonable. A network of interconnecting streets betray a more traditional city plan. Shop traders push their wares. A series of men’s wear stores advocate contrasting styles and prices. Bargain is the watchword on these streets.

Beyond the environs of the city centre lies some remarkable landscapes. They are quite distinctive from the Holy Land. Sandstorms and the vagaries of time have moulded rock formations. The colours are vibrant: One cannot help but hum the tune to David Leans seminal masterpiece “ Laurence of Arabia “.

Eventually, one can discern the port itself. Large storage containers from the world over are stacked together. The overall effect is akin either to a Rubik’s cube or a multicoloured Lego structure. In some ways it is reminiscent of Haifa.

The South Beach lies at Aqabas extremities. It is here that some of the finest coral reefs in the region can be observed. This is nirvana for scuba divers.

No journey to Jordan is complete without visiting Petra. Two thousand years ago, the Nabateans were faced with the logistical nightmare of building a capital. Rather than quarrying and relocating material, they decided to construct a major metropolis straight at the source. The result is an engineering marvel, even by modern standards.

The fact was not lost on George Lucas when he decided to film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade here.

The Red rose city, half as old as time, is fairly expansive. An entry ticket, valid for three days, can be purchased. After some six hours, I perhaps traversed half of the site. Even then I failed to do justice to its majestic splendour. The coup de grace is the House of Treasures and the photo below demonstrates its unrivalled beauty:

Before returning to Israel, I spent a night in the desert under a canopy of stars. Wadi Rum is pivotal to the legend of Laurence of Arabia. During the First World War, El Laurence led his combined Arabic forces through this area. His eye caught a mountain. Realising that seven constituent forms were palpable, he donned it the “ Seven Pillars of Wisdom “. A well also bearing his epithet, is situated nearby.

On reflection, a holiday in Jordan is a worthy investment. The people are warm and amenable. Food and general trinkets are reasonably priced. I would have no reservations in recommending Jordan to the discerning traveller.

Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History

Provocative…Dangerous Games should be read by anyone concerned with making the public dialogue as open and honest as possible. (The Washington Post – Jonathan Yardley)

Oxford University professor Margaret MacMillan issues a call to arms for academic historians to take back history from those who would abuse it. This book, first published last year in Canada, is newly available in the U.S. and Europe from Random House.

She admonishes governments and leaders using history to undermine the past, going so far as to question the significance of apologizing for historical wrongs. Using example after example, MacMillan demonstrates the violence that skewed history can create and mourns a trend of poorly researched historical biographies pouring from the press to fill a demand for new heroes.

To order this book, click here.