Syria Just wanted a Little Nukkie

Bumper Sticker of the Week: Asad Thought he could Get a Little Nukkie

You Too, Mr. Smerconish? -- Jack Engelhard

Someone just sent me that piece you wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled  "Anti-Semitic Label Curbs Talk about Israel."

Your thesis, taken from Mearsheimer and Walt and their denunciation of the ("powerful") Jewish Lobby is that such labeling "stifles conversation" about Israel.

I was so disappointed and angry at you that here's what I did: I sat down and wrote this response. I imagine you'll be getting it from other Jews as well.

What you won't be getting is a fatwa, as did Salman Rushdie when he was critical upon some aspects of Islam. Rushdie had to go into hiding.

Hirsi Ali is also in hiding. Even here in the U.S. she travels with bodyguards. She managed to escape Amsterdam after her film "Submission" offended Islam. Her partner in the project, Theo Van Gogh, was not so lucky. He got killed. That's what I call "labeling."  That really "curbs conversation," wouldn't you say, Mr. Smerconish?

Interesting that, while your regular column appears in the Philadelphia Daily News, this essay of yours got published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is editorial cartoonist Tony Auth's place of business and has been so for many years. Auth sometimes featured Israelis as Nazis and there was never (thank goodness) a threat on his life. In fact, Auth won a Pulitzer for all that.

We "powerful Jews" wrote letters to the editor and some of us got REALLY violent - we boycotted the paper.

You may recall what happened when a certain European newspaper published those  cartoons offensive to Mohammed. Thousands went on a rampage.

Stifles conversation? Yes, those two professors, Mearshiemer and Walt, have been dis-invited from some speaking engagements, but their book is being published, along with such fanfare that it will surely rise to the top of the best-seller lists. That is not the case with a book written by scholars Robert O. Collins and J. Millard Burr, titled "Alms for Jihad."  Cambridge University Press literally stopped the presses and halted publication when a certain billionaire accused the writers of "defamation."

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is likewise all tangled up in lawsuits for her appraisals of jihad.

You will recall those Muslim riots, Mr. Smerconish, when the (false) rumor spread about the Koran being flushed down the toilet at Gitmo.

Yet there were no Jewish riots when the movie 'Meet The Fockers" presented a scene in which a dog names "Moses" was flushed down the toilet.

You seem to feel, Mr. Smerconish, that there is not enough debate about Israel, and yet no nation is debated as often as Israel within the United Nations and along the campuses, where Middle East studies usually feature such professors as Edward Said. This late academic, by the way, was often cited as anti-Semitic, and yet he never lacked for speaking engagements and, as far as I know, walked about free and safe.

Professor Said was once caught throwing stones at Israelis. When asked why, he explained that he did what everybody does.

Are some of us touchy when Israel is singled out for criticism? Well, maybe this time around we choose to defend ourselves, We failed to do so for some 2,000 years. Yes, Mearshiemer and Walt are nothing new under the sun, and neither are you, Mr. Smerconish. This is very old business. We have grown somewhat tired of being your patsy.

Some of us have learned that words can be as harmful as sticks and stones.

We certainly did not speak up (loudly enough) when six million of our brothers and sisters went up in smoke throughout Europe.

We vowed - Never Again.  So this time around we're speaking up.

Yes, the Holocaust taught us to answer charge for charge. I don't think you will ever understand this, Mr. Smerconish.  Guess you had to be there.

Jack Engelhard is the author of the international bestselling novel "Indecent Proposal" that was translated into more than 22 languages and later turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. His latest novel, "The Bathsheba Deadline," has been running as a serial on Amazon.com and will be coming out shortly in print form.

Neo-Nazi Professor Resigns in Disgrace!

 

Breaking News Sept 5,07:   The Chicago Tribune reports that Neo-Nazi lecturer Norman Finkelstein has today resigned from DePaul University in disgrace.

 

Earlier in the day the media were reporting that 120 students rallied at DePaul to support Finkelstein.  In the following photo you can see what the media call 120 students:

 

 

 

 

(Finkie with Previous Date, Noam Chomsky)

"No Cats."

Divided Loyalties

Jews living in foreign countries are often subject to (or at least think they are subject to) suspicions of dual loyalty. Yet, brandishing a charge of "dual loyalty" as a weapon actually makes no sense. Everyone has multiple loyalties - to God, family, country, coreligionists, baseball team, AA group... whatever. But if an anti-Semite speaks of "dual loyalty" in reference to Jews, then what he really means to say is that Jews have a "single loyalty" - to the Jewish people or state and not to the country of their residence in the Diaspora.

Well, I am going to finally reveal the truth. Pay attention, anti-Semites.

It's true: we Jews do have a "dual loyalty." There. I've said it.

But the irony is that the "dual loyalty" I have in mind only intensifies once Jews actually live in a Jewish state.

On the one hand, we are loyal to and often feel an obligation towards the Jewish people. On the other hand, Jews feel a loyalty to and often an obligation towards all mankind, especially those who are suffering.

That's our Jewish dual loyalty.

It was manifest throughout history - from the time of the Romans, when Jewish ideology and example contributed to slave revolts in the Empire, through the Jewish organizations taking the lead in efforts to raise awareness of the ongoing Darfurian massacres. Were not Jews overrepresented in the civil rights movement for Blacks in the United States? Were not Jews overrepresented among anti-Apartheid activists in South Africa? Were not Jews overrepresented among those idealists seeking to give the working man
The "dual loyalty" I have in mind only intensifies once Jews actually live in a Jewish state.
collective power in American industry?

A dedication to helping mankind does not guarantee that the path chosen to do so will be right or even moral. That is how Jews came to be overrepresented among early eastern European and Russian communists (but also, perhaps, why their less altruistic "comrades" later got rid of them).

And now that we have an independent state, Israeli medical professionals, scientists, emergency crews, firefighters, agriculturalists, and more are sent by that state to all corners of the world to offer aid and assistance. That is how Israeli doctors ended up providing medical help after the giant tsunami in southeast Asia, how Israeli search-and-rescue crews ended up in Turkey after that nation suffered a devastating earthquake, how Vietnamese "Boat People" ended up finding a safe haven in Israel, how even America received assistance from Israeli experts and universities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, how more than 140 countries have received Israeli humanitarian aid since 1948.

And yes, that is even how Israeli medical and humanitarian aid to the Arabs in the Palestinian Authority exceeds that offered by all the Arab nations, both when Egypt and Jordan controlled the territory in question and now. That is also how Iran was even given the possibility of foolishly and condescendingly rejecting Israeli aid proffered when the Bam earthquake killed tens of thousands.

Most recently, Israel sent a delegation to Peru after that country suffered an earthquake that killed upwards of 500 people. Israel also sent a delegation of firefighters to help Greece combat more than 200 fires that have wracked that nation.

So, yes, we have a dual loyalty. Nations and peoples around the world have benefited from it, we and others have sometimes suffered because of its more unrestrained manifestations - but there it is.

In contrast, living among us Israeli-Jews-with-dual-loyalty, is a non-Jewish population with no such "issues." They are a single-loyalty bunch, if we are to judge by the statements and actions of some prominent or not-so-prominent Arab (particularly Muslim) Israelis in recent weeks. They are singularly loyal to those Muslims or Arabs who are enemies of the country in which they live. Period.

An Israeli Arab MK is busy "building bridges" between Hamas and Fatah, two Palestinian Authority terrorist groups vying for seniority in bloodthirstiness. Police busted up a Hamas fundraiser in Jerusalem, attended by Israeli Arab Islamic leaders. An Israeli Arab terrorist group in the Galilee boasted of its murderousness. A former Israeli Arab MK who fled charges of espionage for Hizbullah has turned up again, flaunting his treason. Or is that his "single loyalty"?

Yuli Tamir Goes A-Snipping

Can the procedure be performed from the neck up?

Hold on to your -- er -- hats!

Before pouncing upon me for posting a tasteless spoof, let me forewarn you that this is NOT a spoof.  It is for real, and any nausea you feel should be directed against the actual cause, not your humble messenger.

Nevertheless you can check it all out for yourself.  It is there in black and white. Never mind that the Israeli mainstream media have hidden the story for the past 11 years, trying to protect the rep of the Labor Party's daffiest leader.

Israel's Minister of Education, Yael "Yuli" Tamir, has campaigned publicly for the common form of female mutilation in the Third World known as "Clitoridectomy."  It means what you think it means.  "Yuli," back in 1996 when she launched her campaign, was a Professor at Tel Aviv University and had just joined Labor.  Previously she had been Shulamit Aloni's sidekick in the "RATZ" party.  She was in the news the past few weeks for proposing that Arab students in Israel learn from textbooks that portray Israel's very existence and creation as a "Naqba" or catastrophe.

The "Boston Review" is a left-leaning political and literary quarterly in Boston, the sort "anarchists" read.  In its summer 1996 issue it ran Tamir's own article entitled, "Hands Off Clitoridectomy."   Its theme was that all those Westerners expressing revulsion at the practice of slicing up female genitalia in certain parts of the world are themselves evil insensitive chauvistic philistine racists.  Westerners should stop criticizing and allow the Third World to carry on with its enlightened multicultural clitorectomies. 

She rants thus in the article:

'In discussions about multiculturalism, clitoridectomy is now the trump card, taking over the role once played by cannibalism, slavery, lynchings, or the Indian tradition of Sati: "Is this the kind of tradition you would like to protect?" liberals ask embarrassed multiculturalists, who immediately qualify their cultural pluralism. Clitoridectomy defines the boundary between us and them, between cultures we can tolerate and those we must condemn....

'Furthermore, it seems clear that Western conceptions of female beauty encourage women to undergo a wide range of painful, medically unnecessary, and potentially damaging processes -- extreme diets, depilation, face lifts, fat pumping, silicone implants. Of course, adult women do these things to their own bodies, and, it is said, their decisions are freely made. But would our gut reaction to female circumcision be very different if it were performed on consenting adults? It is not unlikely that girls at the age of 13 or 14, who are considered in traditional societies as adults mature enough to wed and bear children, would "consent" to the mutilation of their bodies if they were convinced that marriage and children were contingent on so doing. Many women who followed the tradition of Sati seemed to do it as a matter of choice....

'But our own culture fosters false beliefs of a similar kind. According to Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, some 75 percent of women aged 18-35 believe that they are fat, whereas only 25 percent are medically overweight.¹ Still more heartbreaking is the fact that the majority of the 30,000 women who responded to a Glamour questionnaire preferred losing 10-15 pounds to success in work or in love. So the fostering of such beliefs cannot differentiate their culture from our own and explain our hostility to it....A fulfilling sex life is certainly one good, but there are others. ...

'My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy, but to expose the roots of the deep hostility to it -- to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnation of clitoridectomy. Referring to clitoridectomy, and emphasizing the distance of the practice from our own conventions, allows us to condemn them for what they do to their women, support the struggle of their women against their primitive, inhuman culture, and remain silent on the status of women in our society.'

We have a suggestion for the Olmert government.  Remove the worst embarrassment in the cabinet by performing a small procedure of SNIP-SNIP!