Hammer Time

Tom DeLay gives a great speech before the Israeli Knesset.

What Happened That Day

On the 17th of Tammuz:
• Moses smashed the Ten Commandments in response to the Golden Calf
• The daily offering in the First Temple stopped during the siege of Jerusalem when the priests could no longer obtain animals
• Nebuchadnezzar (Babylonians) breached the walls of Jerusalem in 586CE
• Titus (Romans) breached the walls of Jerusalem in 70CE
• Apostomos the Wicked, a Roman official, burnt a Torah scroll and placed an idol in the Temple
Find out more: Link and Link Link.

On the 9th of Av:
• The spies returned from the Land Of Israel and convinced the Jews not to go
• Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the First Temple in 586CE. Over 100,000 Jews killed; millions more were exiled
• Titus destroyed the Second Temple in 70CE. Over 2,500,000 Jews die. Over 1,000,000 Jews exiled and 100,000 Jews sold as slaves
• The issue of the decree forbidding the generation of Israelites who left Egypt to enter the Land of Israel
• The Bar Kochba Revolt fails as Betar falls to the Romans in 135 BCE. Over 100,000 Jews killed
• Roman emperor Hadrian establishes a heathen temple on the site of the Temple
• Pope Urban II declares First Crusade. 10,000 Jews killed in first month of Crusade
• The mass suicide of the Jews of York during the anti-Jewish riots in the year 1190. Jewish expulsion from England
• The expulsion of Jews from Spain
• The outbreak of World War I
• The deportation of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka starts

Japanese Honeybees Versus Hornets

Found on Crypto-Gram for 11/15/2002.

Giant hornets regularly attack beehives. Typically, an attack begins when a single hornet captures a lone bee nearby the hive. After several of these perimeter skirmishes, one hornet leaves a marking pheromone at the hive's entrance. This pheromone attracts the other hornets, who arrive en masse and attack the beehive. The bees' stingers can't penetrate the hornets' armor, so it's a one-sided slaughter; something like 30,000 bees can be killed in a few hours by 30-40 hornets.

Japanese honeybees, however, have evolved an interesting defensive strategy. When a hornet marks the hive's entrance, the bees guarding the entrance return to the hive and wait for the attacking hornets. This has the effect of luring the first attacking hornets into the hive, rather than allowing them to start their attack outside. Simultaneously, over 1000 worker bees in the hive leave the combs and mass just inside the hive's entrance. When a hornet tries to
enter the hive, the workers surround it, forming a ball of bodies, and cook it to death with their body heat. The bees also release a pheromone that draws ever more bees from the hive's interior to come to the entrance and defend the nest.

This strategy must be perfect in order to be successful. If the bees fail in killing the first hornet attackers, then the hornet pheromone gets stronger, and more hornets arrive to reinforce their attack. By sheer numbers, the hornets can overpower the bees.

Source: Bernd Heinrich, "The Thermal Warriors: Strategies of Insect Survival," Harvard University Press, 1996.

The Times They Are a Changin...

Charles Krauthammer summarizes how much the world has changed.

Consider what has happened in the Near East since Sept. 11, 2001:

(1) In Afghanistan, the Taliban have been overthrown and a decent government has been installed.

(2) In Iraq, the Saddam Hussein regime has been overthrown, the dynasty has been destroyed and the possibility for a civilized form of governance exists for the first time in 30 years.

(3) In Iran, with dictatorships toppled to the east (Afghanistan) and the west (Iraq), popular resistance to the dictatorship of the mullahs has intensified.

(4) In Pakistan, once the sponsor and chief supporter of the Taliban, the government radically reversed course and became a leading American ally in the war on terror.

(5) In Saudi Arabia, where the presence of U.S. troops near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina deeply inflamed relations with many Muslims, the American military is leaving -- not in retreat or with apology but because it is no longer needed to protect Saudi Arabia from Hussein.

(6) Yemen, totally unhelpful to the United States after the attack on the USS Cole, has started cooperating in the war on terror.

(7) In the small, stable Gulf states, new alliances with the United States have been established.

(8) Kuwait's future is secure, the threat from Saddam Hussein having been eliminated.

(9) Jordan is secure, no longer having Iraq's tank armies and radical nationalist influence at its back.

(10) Syria has gone quiet, closing terrorist offices in Damascus and playing down its traditional anti-Americanism.

(11) Lebanon's southern frontier is quiet for the first time in years, as Hezbollah, reading the new strategic situation, has stopped cross-border attacks into Israel.

(12) Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have been restarted, a truce has been declared and a fledgling Palestinian leadership has been established that might actually be prepared to make a real peace with Israel.

That's every country from the Khyber Pass to the Mediterranean Sea. Everywhere you look, the forces of moderation have been strengthened. This is a huge strategic advance not just for the region but for the world, because this region in its decades-long stagnation has incubated the world's most virulent anti-American, anti-Western, anti-democratic and anti-modernist fanaticism.

This is not to say that the Near East has been forever transformed. It is only to say that because of American resolution and action, there is a historic possibility for such a transformation.

They Call Him Mr. DeLay

Great quotes from Tom Delay, the wonderful Republican House Majority Leader.

As he travels next week through Israel, Jordan and Iraq, he will take with him a message of grave doubt that the Middle East is ready for a Palestinian state, as called for in the current peace plan, known as the road map, backed by the administration and Europe.

"I'm sure there are some in the administration who are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a Palestinian state could ever happen," he said in an interview today, as he prepared to leave for a weeklong official tour.

"I can't imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists, a sovereign state of terrorists," he said. "You'd have to change almost an entire generation's culture."

...

"So far, I can't be critical, but I do have grave concerns," he said. "I have watched peace process after peace process after peace process, which is what happens when the process drives everything, not the peace. When they talk about a road map, I question whether this is a road map based on the president's speech, or a road map based on some State Department concept of another peace process."

...

Mr. DeLay, however, said politics had nothing to do with his position, predicting that Jews would never leave the Democratic Party in large numbers. Instead, he said, his passion for Israel is driven by his support for its democratic values and by his faith.

Return to Nineveh

A rabbi with the 101st Airborne in Iraq writes about the city of Nineveh, today Mosul, after passing the cities of Ur, Babylon, and the sites of the Talmudic academies of Sura and Pumpaditya.

I am writing to you from Nineveh, the city of the prophet Jonah. Its present name is Mosul. I have had the privilege of seeing its ancient walls, of touching its stones, of going to the grave Islamic tradition says is the prophet Jonah's.

There is a mosque at the site; but hundreds of years ago, the Iraqis we work with tell me, it was a synagogue. They tell me the reason the site is so sacred is because of the sacredness in which the Jews held it. Presently, there are no signs of this ancient synagogue.

He also writes about discovering synagogues and schools filled with trash. A very interesting read.

Berkeley No More

Sol Stern writes in the City Journal about his shift from a Berkeley leftist to an ardent supporter of Israel.

Three decades ago, I was a Berkeley New Leftist with a political and personal problem. I had been born in Israel, and, though I didn’t consider myself a Zionist, I certainly didn’t want to see the Jewish state disappear. Yet my comrades on the Left were starting on a long march whose ultimate objective was to demonize Israel and turn it into a pariah among the nations.

...

Giving peace a chance—a second and third chance, even—was what most of my wife’s friends at Hebrew University’s theater department wanted to do. All had served in the armed forces, and some had even served in elite combat units (my wife had spent two years in the air force). They were on average more than ten years younger than I, and it bemused me somewhat to watch them gravitate toward New Left enthusiasms that I had just left behind in Berkeley. Hanging out at Taamon, a nondescript cafe; in downtown Jerusalem, we rubbed elbows with young Moroccan Jews, who were protesting Israel’s alleged mistreatment of the Jews from Muslim lands and who called themselves the Black Panthers.

As Israel prepared for its 25th anniversary in May 1973, a fierce controversy erupted over the government’s plan to stage a military parade in Jerusalem as part of the festivities. Many of our friends opposed the parade, and a few wound up arrested during a protest. The controversy seemed to portend a deeper generational divide: one of the arrested Hebrew University students was Orli Yadin, whose father, Yigal, was the country’s most famous archaeologist and former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Orli argued that the parade was unnecessarily provocative to the Arabs, and it wasted money that could help Israel’s poor. Orli’s father and other establishment elders believed that showing off Israel’s new weaponry would make the Arabs think twice about starting another war.

Back then, I supported the protesters’ arguments. But time proved both sides wrong: calling off the parade would not have affected Arab attitudes one iota, but holding the parade did nothing to avert another war. The Jews argued among themselves, while the Arabs tended to other matters.

He makes an excellent point here about the lack of symmetry in the taking of territory.

After the initial Syrian successes of the battle’s first two days, the Israelis had mauled their enemy so badly that the plain leading to Damascus was wide open. The Israeli army could have reached the gates of the city in a day. But the Kremlin threatened to intervene to save Hafez al-Assad’s regime. The United States then conveyed to Israel that it must not move its forces past the pre– October 6 cease-fire lines, from which Syria had launched its attack. Once again, the rigged Middle East rules were in full effect: the Arab states could break cease-fires without fear of international censure; Israel could defend itself and repel the Arab attacks, but if it made the war so costly to the aggressors as to deter the next one it would meet with widespread global condemnation.

I didn’t write about these questions at the time, but I couldn’t help but speculate. Suppose the Syrians had actually occupied a piece of northern Israel? Does anyone believe that Syria’s government would then have offered to exchange "land for peace"? And what kind of treatment could the Jews living in "Syria-occupied Galilee" have expected from the occupiers—from the same army units that executed most of the Israeli soldiers they captured during the war?

He continues here by noting the absurb asymmetry of first-strike politics.

In the evening, Sharon invited Olmert and me into his trailer for a snack. Some of his top officers were there, as well as another journalist. The conversation was off the record, and in any event my Hebrew was inadequate. Still, I caught the general drift—Sharon was venting about the absurd situation Israel now found itself in. Because Israel had to absorb the Egyptians’ first blow to appease international opinion, scores of its best young men had to die in the lightly fortified strong points on the east bank of the canal.

In all, Israel lost 2,400 men in the delayed effort to repulse the Egyptians and Syrians and throw them back to the cease-fire lines. Now, with the Egyptian Third Army surrounded and Sharon’s forces sitting astride the Ismailia-Cairo highway, the U.S. and the Soviets imposed yet another cease-fire and ensured that a defeated Egypt would not have to sue for peace. Several weeks later, negotiations initiated by U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger at Kilometer 101, not far from Sharon’s encampment, produced a disengagement-of-forces agreement giving Egypt control of the canal again.

Terrible lessons learned...

I remained haunted by the lesson I had learned in 1973 on the Golan Heights and at the Suez Canal about Israel’s vulnerability. Israel had zero margin of error—literally, it could not survive the loss of one war. The Arab regimes had nothing to lose except the lives of thousands of their own soldiers, which they were cavalier about anyway, and some treasure, which they could always replace with the help of one of the big powers or the Saudis. Thus, they were free to try and try again to destroy the Jewish state.

Nevertheless, I still found myself suppressing such dark thoughts, because they led to politically incorrect conclusions. Right-thinking people had to assume a certain degree of rationality on all sides. They had to assume that if you offered someone a better deal, he would take it, and that with enough goodwill all differences could be overcome—after all, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were now pursuing detente; Richard Nixon had even gone to China. Weren’t the Arabs rational human beings?

This orthodoxy held that anything called a “peace process” was always better than war. And it wasn’t just in Europe and the United States that the mindset prevailed, but in Israel too. Despite all of the failed peace overtures of the past, wasn’t it worth trying yet one more time? To think otherwise, to believe that there might be something inherently violent and unreasonable in Arab Muslim political culture was—well, racist.

Unfortunately, that appears to be the reality precisely. Yet Israeli opinion still clinges to its hopes.

It’s amazing how quickly public opinion in Israel had shifted on these issues. After the Yom Kippur War, Israel’s official position was that it would never relinquish the militarily strategic outpost at Sharm al-Sheikh, which controlled access to the Red Sea. Moshe Dayan expressed this national consensus: “Better Sharm al-Sheikh without peace, than peace without Sharm al-Sheikh.” But it took only one visit to Jerusalem by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for all of Israel to swoon and forget Sharm al-Sheikh. Thus, in 1978, the allegedly “right-wing,” allegedly “rejectionist” government of Menachem Begin evacuated every square meter of the Sinai Peninsula in return for a cold peace with Egypt. It was Ariel Sharon, Begin’s defense minister at the time, who ordered the forcible removal of all Jewish settlers from the Sinai. In the 1980s and 1990s, two separate Israeli governments offered a similar “land for peace” deal to Syria. Given what I had seen on the Golan Heights in 1973, I found this gesture astonishingly optimistic—and I secretly sighed with relief when Hafez al-Assad rejected the offer.

Then, under the 1993 Oslo agreements, the Israeli government allowed the terrorist organizations to return to the West Bank and Gaza to begin creating the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state. Before there was even a peace treaty or ironclad security arrangements, Israel handed over tens of thousands of weapons to Yasser Arafat’s militias, supposedly for “peacekeeping.” All the while, the Palestine National Covenant stated explicitly that the goal of the liberation struggle was not a state next to Israel but rather the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state from the Mediterranean coast to the Jordan River.

No nation in the world has taken so many mortal risks for a putative peace with its most implacable enemies. Even after the first Oslo agreement blew up in Israel’s face in the form of exploding commuter buses and pizza parlors, Ehud Barak’s government went back to Camp David and offered the Palestinians yet another agreement—same terms, no problem. Once again, the Palestinian leadership rejected the best deal they are ever likely to get short of Israel’s elimination (a far better deal, incidentally, than Jordan and Egypt offered the Palestinians when those Arab regimes controlled the West Bank and Gaza). Instead, Yasser Arafat went home to launch yet another savage war of extermination against Israel’s civilian population, with the guns that Israel had given him.

Why did so many well-meaning Israelis and Americans believe in the early 1990s that a reasonable settlement between Israel and the Palestinians was within grasp? One answer is that the Soviet empire had just collapsed, and the cold war was over. In Israel, as in other places, hope arose for a peace dividend. For Israel, the dividend included the fact that its traditional enemies, big countries like Syria and Iraq, could no longer count on Soviet military aid, so they were less of a threat. Israel could now take more chances trying to solve the problem of the West Bank and Gaza. The Clinton administration encouraged this optimism by promoting the idea that military force was becoming an anachronism in settling disputes.

Doesn't this sound remarkably like today? That we have a unique opportunity with the Battle for Iraq being largely won by the US? That this is the time to make the sacrifices (at least on Israel's side) for peace?

Among those who saw through the illusions of the time were the neoconservatives, of whom I had been so wary in the seventies. From the beginning, they viewed Oslo as a trap that would lead not to peace, but to the slaughter of innocents. And they made their case in the face of almost overwhelming support for Oslo within the Jewish community and the Washington political establishment (including most Republicans). I vividly recall a dinner I had at an East Side restaurant with neoconservative dignitaries Norman Podhoretz and his wife, Midge Decter, shortly after the historic handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn. My wife and I remained cautiously optimistic that this handshake, and all it symbolized, would lead to something good for Israel. In any case, we felt, no real harm could come from giving Oslo a chance. But Podhoretz and Decter were in despair, convinced that Oslo would lead inexorably to another major war with the Arabs, and on terms far more disadvantageous to Israel.

Things didn’t turn out exactly as the neoconservatives predicted—with, first, the creation of a Palestinian state, which would then become a springboard for another assault on Israel by the Arab states—but they correctly assessed the pathological nature of the Palestinian liberation movement. Like the premature anti-fascists of the 1930s, who understood the radical evil faced by the democracies of those days, the neoconservatives have had the bad taste to show us what we wanted to avoid admitting—that this conflict is not about disputed territories. It is about Israel’s right to survive as a democratic Jewish state. And after September 11, it’s clear that it is also about whether the Islamo-fascist movement that is at war with our civilization will succeed in making the Middle East safe for obscurantism and tyranny.

The late Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban once famously noted that the Palestinians “have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” It was a clever line—except that it implies that the problem with Palestinian leadership is absentmindedness. In fact, Palestinian leaders have carefully thought out everything about the current suicide-bombing campaign, with the far from unreasonable expectation that it would bring tangible benefits to the Palestinian cause. After all, that cause was never as popular in the chancelleries of Europe and the campuses of America as it became after the first round of suicide bombings.

...

All of Israel’s concessions and offers of “land for peace” have not only failed to appease its enemies; they have actually intensified hatred for the Jewish state and for Jews period.

In the end, he is still hopeful for the future of Israel. Hmm...

A Legion of Bin Ladens

Al-Qa'ida trained over 100,000 terrorists at Afghanistan bases, says US intelligence

The hearings were told that the al-Qa'ida recruits came from more than 70 countries and were trained in skills from bomb-making and weapons use to foreign languages. Many are believed to have escaped capture and are lying low around the world.

Ethics in Sports

Amazing story in the LATimes on the ethics in the sport of professional cycling.

Tour de France's unwritten rules of the road:

• If the leader crashes but can get up, the peloton waits. It is bad form to win because of another rider's misfortune.

• If the leader needs a bathroom break (and they do), the peloton waits. It is bad form to attack while the leader has his pants down.

• If the leader needs to slow down at the food station, the peloton slows down. It is bad form to attack while the leader has his mouth full.

• If a stage of the Tour de France ends on Bastille Day in France, try to let a Frenchman win.

• If a stage ends in or near the hometown or home country of a particular rider who is able to win the stage, let him win.

• If a rider is coming back from injury or suspension and has worked hard to get in shape, let him win a stage. Everybody appreciates a pat on the back for a job well done.

• If a stage wanders near the hometown of a rider, let the rider wander off, eat lunch with his wife, have champagne in the town square and wander back to the peloton. The food, the champagne, the wife, presumably will have slowed said rider down, anyway.

Shakedown, California-style

In The Shakedown State in the WSJ, Walter Olson gives one more reason why California is going down the tubes.

Shakedown suits are nothing new in the Golden State, but Damian Trevor and two colleagues effectively mechanized the process. They combed through state regulatory records for businesses that had been issued some kind of reprimand, often over trivial paperwork omissions or missed deadlines. They sent letters in the name of Consumer Enforcement Watch, a newly organized group whose mailing address was the same as theirs, offering not to sue the businesses if they came across with checks in the thousands of dollars. The firm's "red letter," named after the color of the paper on which it was printed, put matters bluntly: "Either pay even more money to fight in court or settle out of court and get on with business." Many did pay.

In part because of press sympathy for mom-and-pop immigrant defendants, a furor began to build. And while trial-lawyer spokesmen took a "few bad apples" line, business groups saw Mr. Trevor's treasure hunt as merely the latest logical extension of section 17200, a law so bizarrely pro-plaintiff as to be a major disincentive for many companies to do business in the state. Indeed, the chairman and CEO of mortgage giant Countrywide pointedly cited 17200 in a recent letter to Gov. Gray Davis explaining the company's decision to halt expansion in California.

How pro-plaintiff is section 17200? As in the case of Nike v. Kasky, recently looked at (but then passed over) by the Supreme Court, it lets lawyers run to court without any injured client at all to sue against business practices that are either "unfair" -- a peerlessly amorphous term -- or "illegal," a category that takes in countless technical violations that actual regulators and prosecutors have already settled or view as too trivial to pursue. Lawyers can file valid 17200 suits that piggyback on a business's claimed violation of entirely unrelated laws, even if those unrelated laws make clear that private parties can't sue to enforce their provisions. If the law were a prop in Alice in Wonderland, it would carry a little tag saying, "Abuse Me."

So what is the leftist Democratically-controlled California legislature doing about it?

On July 8 the respective Judiciary chairs stunned business observers by pulling from a hat and passing substitute bills devised by the state's trial lawyer group, which styles itself Consumer Attorneys of California. Section 122, sponsored by Sen. Martha Escutia (D., Whittier), with its companion Assembly bill, would impose essentially superficial curbs on abuse. Most significant, judges would for the first time review fees (as opposed to settlements in general) but would be instructed to approve any and all fees if "consistent with applicable law." Lawyers would have to send a copy of each lawsuit to the state bar, and would have to include new boilerplate in their demand letters advising defendants of their right to consult their own attorney and so forth.

After that begins a trial-lawyer wish list, starting with liberal rules for "joinder" of defendants, along with explicit authority for lawyers to sue multiple businesses without knowing which ones have actually committed a violation. Most ominous of all, the bill would overturn a March decision in which the state supreme court barred lawyers from demanding the "disgorgement" under 17200 of any and all revenue a business had earned while an infraction was in progress, as opposed to restitution for customers affected by a practice, which they are still free to seek. The difference between the two is dramatic: If you're a pizzeria owner and get sued for unfairly claiming that your pie is the best in town, restitution might consist of giving away consolatory baskets of garlic bread, but disgorgement could mean paying out all the revenue you've taken in while the slogan was printed on your boxes. It's a remedy so drastic that courts seldom impose it; its real function is usually to give lawyers the leverage to terrify defendants into settlement. To top it all, the Escutia bill would allow lawyers to steer settlement funds not paid to actual consumers to organizations that "promote justice," code for the consumer and pro-litigation groups with which the lawyers are allied.

Sickening...

More on Hebron

See my history of Hebron.

David Wilder writes in the LATimes of why he stays in Hebron.

Why am I living in a place where more than 40 of my Jewish neighbors and friends have been killed or wounded since I moved here in 1981?

The answer is that Hebron is the first Jewish city in the land of Israel, home of our patriarchs and matriarchs — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. King David ruled from Hebron for more than seven years before moving the capital to Jerusalem.

Jews have lived in Hebron almost continuously for thousands of years. Our community offices are in a neighborhood founded in 1540 by Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. Jewish presence in Hebron came to an abrupt end only in August 1929, when Arab riots led to the murder of 67 Jews and the wounding of 70. All survivors were exiled from the city by the ruling British.

In other words, when Israel returned to Hebron in 1967, Jews did not occupy a foreign city; rather, they came back home.

Hebron is home to Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs, the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The building atop the original caves was constructed by Herod, king of Judea 2,000 years ago, 600 years before the advent of Islam. Despite this, the structure was off-limits to Jews and Christians for 700 years, from 1267 to 1967. The stated reason: The site houses a mosque and only Muslims can worship in a mosque.

The Arab deputy mayor of Hebron, Kamal Dweck, in a 1999 interview stated that if the entire city were returned to Arab rule, this site would again be off-limits to Jews, for the same reason. The Tomb of the Patriarchs would face a fate identical to that of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. It would be Judenrein, or without Jewish presence. Why should a Jew in 2003 be barred from worshiping at one of the holiest places in the world?

...

Eviction from Hebron, the first Jewish city in Israel, would be tantamount to the removal of Americans from Boston or Philadelphia upon terrorist demands. Except, of course, that American history is less than 250 years old; Jewish history in Hebron is more than 3,700 years old. Hebron, home of Abraham, is not just the place where Judaism got its start. It is the source of monotheism in the world.

A German Analogy

Shlomo Avineri makes an interesting analogy between Palestinian Arab "refugees" and Germans similarly displaced in the aftermath of WWII.

The senior German minister ... said: "...may I ask my German colleagues in the audience to raise their hand if they, or their families, were refugees from Eastern Europe?"

There was a moment of silence - the issue is embarrassing in Germany, fraught with political and moral landmines. Slowly, hands were raised: by my count, more than half the Germans present (government officials, journalists, businessmen) raised a hand: they, or their families, had been Vertriebene, expelled from their ancestral homes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia after World War II.

It is estimated that up to 10 million were expelled; with their descendants today they make up almost double that number - almost one in four Germans.

Amid the hush the German senior minister continued: He himself was born in Eastern Europe and his family was expelled in the wake of the anti-German atmosphere after 1945. "But," he added, "neither I nor any of my colleagues claim the right to go back.

"It is precisely because of that that I can now visit my ancestral hometown and talk to the people who live in the house in which I was born - because they do not feel threatened, because they know I don't want to displace them or take their house."

The minister went on to explain that peace in Europe is today embedded in this realization. Had Eastern European countries thought that millions of ethnic Germans would like to return, "the Iron Curtain would have never come down."

It was a highly emotional response, one that Arab representatives chose later on to ignore. But it was just one more expression of the context in which the issue of the 1948 Palestinian refugees has to be addressed.

AS THE German senior minister reminded the audience, there are numerous parallels in recent history to the Palestinian refugee problem. Anyone who now argues that the 1948 Palestinian refugees have a claim, in principle, to return to Israel, has to confront the question: Why not the millions of German post-1945 expellees from Eastern Europe? The German minister supplied the answer.

Moreover: Had a German government insisted in talks about reunification in 1990 that all German expellees from Poland and Czechoslovakia have, in principle, a right to return to these countries, it would have been clear that what West Germany had in mind was not reunification, but undoing the consequences of Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945.

This is exactly the meaning of the Palestinian demand for the right of return. The Palestinians' insistence on it at Camp David and Taba in 2000 made clear to most Israelis that what they have in mind is not undoing the consequences of 1967 - but undoing the consequences of their defeat in 1948.

At that time, it should be recalled, Palestinian Arabs and four Arab members of the UN went to war - not only against Israel, but against international legitimacy and the UN plan for a two-state solution. There is no other example of member countries going to war against UN decisions; this is what the Arab countries - and the Palestinians - did. Obviously they prefer to forget it.

Clearly there is a serious humanitarian issue involved. That the Palestinians' plight has been compounded by Arab use of the refugees as political pawns for half a century is a measure of the cynicism and immorality of Arab politics.

Nonetheless, the humanitarian issue remains - and the German senior minister referred to it explicitly, both with regard to the Palestinians and to the German expellees.

But for him the political consequences were clear: A return of refugees - in the German as well as the Palestinian case - is a call for instability, if not war.

Truman Was Saving His Own Skin

Sidney Zion explains the real meaning behind the revelations of President Harry S Truman's anti-Jewish comments.

The early returns indicate that Truman gets a grudging pass [over his anti-Jewish comments], since his deed of recognizing Israel overcomes, if not obliterates, his private words.

The underlying assumption is that by his decision to recognize the Jewish state, Truman was responsible for saving and even creating Israel. Against that, who cares what he thought? It's to his credit that he pushed away his prejudices, no matter how primitive.

The trouble with this analysis is that it ignores the fact that Truman imposed a harsh arms embargo on the Jews of Palestine, before, during and after his so-called brave recognition of Israel.

Truman styled it as an embargo on all arms to the Middle East, as if it were evenhanded, but he knew that the Brits were heavily arming the Palestinian Arabs, who went to war with the Jews the day after the United Nations voted to partition the Holy Land into Jewish and Arab states.

By his arms embargo, Truman left the Jews to their fate, which the Brits were sure would finish them off. With America laying off, the odds were overwhelming that 2,000 years of yearning would end with the final Jewish Kaddish.

The Palestinian Jews turned to the Soviets, who armed them through their Czechoslovakian clients. But all the while, the Truman administration not only deprived the Jews of guns, it attempted to double-cross them in the UN.

Months before Israel declared its statehood, the U.S. pushed for a trusteeship, abandoning the partition plan.

The end we know. Israel made it, against all odds - and against Truman. What we forget is the means by which a discarded, wiped-out people finally got a tiny piece of its ancient homeland.

And, irony of ironies, Truman ended up with the credit.
...
What really clinched the deal [that Truman's motivations for recognizing Israel were purely political] was that [advisor Clark] Clifford told Truman that he'd lose the 1948 election unless he recognized Israel. And that he'd better do it immediately, because New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, the Republican who would be his opponent, would demand it and take the Jewish vote. Moreover, the Russians were going to recognize Israel, too.

Islamic Jihad Money Quote

JPost carries this "great" quote from Islamic Jihad.

Islamic Jihad is candid about its mission to destroy the Jewish state: In 1990, one of the organization's leaders, Sheikh Assad Tamimi, expressed the group's principle thus: "The Jews have to return to the countries from which they came. We shall not accede to a Jewish state on our land, even if it is only one village."

It is not hard to imagine why Israelis on the right look askance at hudnas and talks of peace while the Palestinian Arabs continue to incite hatred of Jews (not just Israelis) and state that a Palestinian state is just a staging ground for wiping out Israel.

Martin Peretz

Washington Post

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/technology/circuits/17shre.html?ex=1059467721&ei=1&en=f1c045facf2413ff

Democrat: Beige Davis Should Be Fired

Daniel Weintraub in his California Insider column reveals that Democrat and former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery has called for the removal (via recall) of Gray Davis in a scathing commentary.

Democrat and former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery unloads a blistering condemnation of Gray Davis on the Merc’s op-ed page Sunday. Davis, McEnery says, is worthy of the same description Churchill once famously applied to an opponent: “A modest man with much to be modest about.” But the humor ends quickly:

Some say Davis is not guilty of sufficient misdeeds. Well, I stand instead with those who believe that endangering the economic health of each and every one of us is indeed a capital offense. Once thought so clever for his foray into the Republican primary -- burying the popular Los Angeles mayor, Richard Riordan, in an avalanche of lies and money -- Davis now sees the meaning of "blow back.''

I also might suggest that selling the highest office in the state to create one of the largest and most mischievous political funds this side of Richard Nixon is a punishable act, in and of itself. Lying on the budget deficit is something that the press takes with a wink and a nod -- a convenient, dangerous case of selective morality.

Andrew Jackson Quote

Via BOTW.

"One man with courage makes a majority." -- Andrew Jackson

When Israel Contains the Majority of the Jews...

Shmuel Neumann ponders on the implications of having the majority of the world's Jews in Israel in his article The Danger Of Aliyah.

Hashem protects idiots, sometimes from themselves.

Despite our prayers in which three times a day we beseech Hashem to return the Jews to the Holy Land from the four corners of the Earth, and despite the billions of dollars that have been spent to solicit aliyah, we are lucky that it hasn`t happened (yet).

If more than half the world`s Jewish population were to move to Israel, we would be required to establish a Sanhedrin, the 71-member Supreme Court that has the power to issue final judgment, capital offenses included. Those who oppose any of its judgments could be put to death.

Do we really want to put ourselves in the position where those petty issues we love to debate are finally decided upon?

The members of the Sanhedrin could, for example, define the prayers as Sephardic, while prohibiting rice or beans on Passover. They might determine that turkeys are not kosher as there is no mesorah for them. Turkeys were only discovered two hundred years ago in North America.

They could decide that we really cannot work the land on the Shmitta year but that we are required to tend to our garden, as it is a sin to let holy land go
fallow in non-Shmitta years. Similarly, they would determine that nature reserves are prohibited, as every square inch of biblical Israel must be lovingly planted with trees, plants, flowers, or vegetation.

They would really upset our routine and wardrobe. They would issue definitive guidelines for dress. We would have to throw out certain garments, since clothing that imitates non-Jewish styles is prohibited. Certain head coverings would be forbidden. Who knows, they might prohibit the knit yarmulke or
the black hat!

A recalcitrant man who refused to give his wife a get would be beaten until he screamed that he wants to issue it after all. Of course, they would have to first decide that the woman was justified in suing for divorce.

Children over bar and bat mitzvah-age could get married without parental consent Certain alternative lifestyles would be punishable by death.

The prison system would be eliminated, as slavery would be reinstituted as an alternative to jail for certain offenses and flogging for other offenses.

They would have to decide whether the secular Israeli government has the legal status of kingship. If so, you could be put to death for cheating on your Israeli taxes or even for jaywalking on Israeli streets.

Worse, they might determine that the secular government of Israel may not interfere in rebuilding the Holy Temple. In fact, they might require the government to remove the mosque from the Temple mount and prevent anyone from trespassing on the Holy Site. That would be extremely unpopular in the
international press.

Even worse, they might decide that each Jew has an obligation to bring a Pascal sacrifice and that the secular government may not prevent any Jew from fulfilling this biblical commandment.

More unpopular still, they might decide that the Palestinians have the legal status of Amelek and that any non-Jew who resides in Israel violates the Noahide law against stealing. In both cases the Sanhedrin would be put in the position of having to issue warrants of execution. That would be a public-relations nightmare.

As long as we do not have to get final determination of these petty issues, each of us can pontificate and always be right. We can pigheadedly argue any position and solicit votes by appealing to like-minded fools.

In other words, Israel could continue to function.

And self-absorbed American Jewish organizations could continue to flourish.

Shmuel Neumann is actively involved in creating communities for English-speaking olim and in an emigration program for Palestinians. He currently
resides in the Shomron.

Criteria for Any Solution

Untying The Gordian Knot contains a good starting summary of the criteria for any "agreement".

Criteria for Any Solution
The challenge is to find an approach that is both militarily, demographically and culturally sound, given the Arab world’s unremitting hostility toward Israel that will not disappear under any circumstances. I believe that any serious approach must meet the following criteria:
I. Geographic Security. Israel’s eastern border must have minimum-security depth along with topographical height needed to mount an effective defense against external attack. Similarly, Israel’s borders must surround any Palestinian polity, i.e., there can be no contiguity between a Palestinian entity and any other Arab state.
II. Demographic Security. Within Israel’s final borders the number of Palestinian residents (including current Israeli Arab citizens) cannot be at or reach a level where it presents a challenge to Israel’s identity as a Jewish State, now or in the future. Furthermore, geographic security considerations should try to minimize, to the extent possible, the impact on the current residents (both Palestinian and Israeli) on either side of newly created borders.
III. Access to Holy Places. Israeli Jews (and other Jews) must have assured rights and correlative access to Jewish holy places including the Western Wall and Temple Mount, Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs. Similar rights should be accorded Muslims and Christians regarding their respective
holy places.
IV. Palestinian Polity. Any geographically contiguous Palestinian polity must be neutral, democratic, and demilitarized.

More Background on Transfer

The Case For Population Exchange by Lewis Lipkin.

The almost universal Israel Arab and Palestinian antagonism to Israel and Jews has been evident and is documented in many sources. Boris Shusteff ("The Morality of Transfer", http://www.freeman.org/m_online/feb02/shusteff1.htm, 01/22/02 ) describes some typical poll results:

"The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem conducted this poll among Palestinian Arabs during the week of December 19-24, 2001. They found that `69% of Palestinians would not view as an act of terrorism the future use of chemical and biological weapons against Israel by Palestinians, but when committed by Israel 93% of Palestinians would define it as terror.'"

...

Joseph Farah ("Shattering the Myths of the Middle East", Whistleblower, June, 2002, p. 10) points out that:

"Arabs already control 99.9 percent of the Middle East Lands whereas Israel represents one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of the land mass. But even that little speck is too much for the Arab potentates and powers. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough."

...

This editorial is from the New Statesman (http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/199905100001.htm), which is usually left of center:

"............. The West must therefore do one of two things: police the region indefinitely, or preside over a series of partitions and population exchanges. And if humanitarian intervention is to become the norm, as Tony Blair suggests, the West is likely to face similar choices in parts of Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and south Asia. Yet the western liberal mind will not be comfortable with either alternative."

...

We consider here the benefit to Israel. An Israel that completed the population exchange would gain several advantages:

Having the Arabs as foreign nationals allows Israel to fight, if necessary, future wars in the way she does well. Guerrilla warfare is much more difficult to fight.

Hostile Arabs would reside in nations other than Israel and thus are easily identifiable.

The numerous UN refugee camps on the West Bank and Gaza that are little more than military bases for PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah forces would be eliminated. This would allow the IDF to concentrate on Israel's borders.

The Settlement issue would evaporate. The Left would have to find some other justification for its anti-orthodox bias.

Jewish holy sites such as Hebron would be accessible. And the destruction of Jewish Holy sites by the Arabs would be at an end.

Israel could again resume its role as the leading industrial nation of the Middle East.

Background on Transfer

Boris Shusteff of the The Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons each address the history of transfer (here, here, and here).

Israel's existence has unequivocally proven one thing: the Jews and the Arabs cannot live together on land that both claim is theirs. If the Arabs were not under the constant ill influence of their leaders,perhaps this coexistence might be possible. But since it is impossible to remove this influence, there is no other solution except transfer.

Already in 1937 Arab enmity towards the Jews was apparent to the authors of the Peel Commission Report, which stated in its 22nd chapter that, "the existence of Jews in the Arab State and Arabs in the Jewish State would clearly constitute 'the most serious hindrance to the smooth and successful operation of Partition' ". Therefore the authors of the Report were advocating transfer, stating, "If Partition is to be effective in promoting a final settlement it must mean more than drawing a frontier and establishing two States. Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land, and as far as possible, an exchange of population."

...

In the decade prior to the Second World War there were many proposals and ideas pertaining to this population exchange. Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine proposed the idea "that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be divided up amongst the neighboring Arab countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to Palestine".

Amin was one of a very few Arab leaders who was ready to place the famous Arab hospitality above his enmity toward the Jews. He wrote in1939, "We the Arabs are prepared to accept upon ourselves this great sacrifice for the sake of your welfare and the gathering in of your exiles and because of the generations of suffering which you underwent in Spain, Russia and other places".
...
Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first President of the United States wrote in 1943 in a book The Problems of Lasting Peace, "Consideration should be given even to the heroic remedy of transfer of populations... the hardship of moving is great, but it is less than the constant suffering of minorities and the constant recurrence of war".

Hoover was advocating the transfer of the Palestinian Arabs to Iraq with its fertile soil and severe under-population (a transfer that a later American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, also supported). He said of this transfer, "If the lands were organized and homes provided, this particular movement could be made the model migration of history. It would be a solution by engineering instead of by conflict"(1).

Championing his transfer plan, he wrote, "I realize that the plan offers a challenge both to the statesmanship of the Great Powers as well as to the good-will of all parties concerned. However, I submit it and it does offer a method of settlement with both honor and wisdom" (1).

Hoover did not built his proposal on sand. By this time the world community had already achieved tremendous success in the compulsory exchange of population between Greece and Turkey following the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. The transfer in that case was proposed by Nobel Peace prize-winner Dr. Fridtjof Nansen who was the League of Nations' first High Commissioner for refugees. That transfer was sanctioned by the League of Nations and carried out under the guidance of a mixed commission. Altogether nearly two million people were transferred: 1,300,000 Greeks and some 400,000 Turks, and the transfer was completed within eighteen months.

The Peel Report that recommended the transfer of the Arabs, described in 1937 the world's reaction to Nansen's transfer operation: "Dr. Nansen was sharply criticized at the time for the inhumanity of his proposal, and the operation manifestly imposed the gravest hardships on multitudes of people. But the courage of the Greek and Turkish statesmen concerned has been justified by the result. Before the operation the Greek and Turkish minorities had been a constant irritant. Now the ulcer had been clean cut out, and Greco-Turkish relations, we understand are friendlier than they have ever been before"(1).

Several days after the publication of the Peel Report, Abraham Bonne, who was Director of the Economic Archives for the Near East in Jerusalem, wrote that the Peel Commission came to the conclusion regarding Palestine that "the racial antagonism between Jews and Arabs could only be settled by very radical means, i.e. by the exchange of population".
...
Four Nobel Peace Prize winners have proposed population transfer -- Sir Norman Angell, Christian Lange, Philip Noel-Baker (in the specific case of Palestine), and Dr. Fridtjof Nansen as the proponent of the Greco-Turkish exchange. This speaks volumes about the morality of transfer. And especially in our case. As Hoover wrote in 1954 when he reached the age of 80, replying to a congratulatory letter, which referred to his transfer plan, "We were on the only sane track!".

Dr. Simons also points out that transfer was also supported by FDR and Reinhold Niebuhr.

Just Liked the Title of this Article

Right Thoughts has this article title: Iran Confirms Position On "Roadmap Of Places To Get Ass Kicked"

US Entanglement In Foreign Affairs

David's Rule of Foreign Policy:
The difference between Democrats and Republicans (generalized, of course):

Republicans only want to involve the US in foreign conflicts when the US has a vested interest

For example, Iraq, Iran, Panama

Democrats only want to involve the US when we have no vested interest

For example, Liberia, Kosovo, Haiti

Contemplating a New Peace Plan

Professor Paul Eidelberg of the Yamin Israel Party has a new plan for dealing with the Arab-Israeli situation.

Israel’s internal demographic problem can be solved by vigorously addressing the more urgent Palestinian problem. An honest and honorable government will:

(1) Abrogate the Oslo Agreement and, in one swift and sweeping attack, eliminate the entire Palestinian Authority and its terrorist network. (Every delay increases the likelihood that the PA will acquire deadlier weapons.) The only justification Israel need offer the world is the U.S. response to 9/11. There is no moral difference whatever between the U.S. destruction of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan—6,000 miles from Washington—and Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure next door to Jerusalem.

(2) Declare Jewish sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (including unequivocal jurisdiction over the Temple Mount) while broadcasting evidence from Biblical and American sources confirming Israel’s God-given as well as superior legal right to these areas. (The Arabs in these areas will of course retain the civil rights they enjoyed under Israeli law.)

(3) Relocate certain cabinet ministries into Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. (This will convince Arabs that the Jews intend to remain in these areas permanently.)

(4) Sell small plots of land in these areas at very low prices to Jews in Israel and abroad with the proviso that they settle on the land, say for a period of six years. This would diminish the dangerous population density of Israel’s large cities and, at the same time, encourage Jewish immigration to Israel. (Enfranchising Israelis living abroad would encourage tens of thousands of these Jews to return to their homeland.)

(5) Develop model cities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza by attracting foreign capital investment on terms favorable to the investors. Based on past experience, and given Israel’s Gross Domestic Product of $106 billion, another 200,000 Jews can be settled in Judea and Samaria within a few years. Their presence will prompt more and more Arabs to leave, as they have done in the past and as tens of thousands are doing even now.

(Had such policies been implemented shortly after the Six-Day War, the idea of a Palestinian state would have died before it was born.)

He also addresses the Arab demographic issue.

Inasmuch as no Government of Israel is going expel the country’s million and more Arabs despite their hostility to the Jewish state—and no Arab state will accept them—what should be done to save the Jewish state from its burgeoning, hostile Arab population?

The only solution is to make the State of Israel increasingly Jewish and proud on the one hand, and classically democratic on the other! This will result in a steady emigration of Arabs and, at the same time, erode the nationalist ambitions of their party leaders. How can this be done?

Most commentators will say: "Increase the Jewish content of public education." Of course, but no less important, indeed, more urgently necessary, is radical reform of Israel’s political and judicial institutions.

(1) Democratize Israel’s parliamentary electoral system to increase the impact of Jewish convictions on those who make the laws and policies of the State. The only way to do this is to make legislators individually accountable to the voters in multi-district elections—the practice of 74 democracies. The existing system makes the entire country a single electoral district in which parties compete on the basis of proportional representation. This makes every vote count in apportioning Knesset seats. As a consequence, virtually every Jewish party seeks the support of Arab voters, which can only be purchased by compromising Jewish national interests.

(2) Replace the inept, divisive, and irresponsible system of multi-party cabinet government with a Presidential system comparable to that of the United States.

(3) Democratize the method of appointing the Supreme Court, which has become a self-perpetuating oligarchy whose decisions diminish the Jewish character of the state. Presidential nomination of judges (initially recommended by a professional counsel) and confirmation by the legislature would make the Court more representative of Israeli society, the bulk of whose population more or less identifies with the Jewish heritage, which the Court frequently scorns. (Alternatively, it may be wise to replace the Supreme Court with a "Constitutional Court" whose jurisdiction would extend only to laws that directly affect the organization of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of government.)

(4) Enforce Basic Law: The Knesset, which prohibits any party that negates the Jewish character of the State.

(5) Enforce the 1952 Citizenship Law, which empowers the Minister of Interior to nullify the citizenship of any Israel national that commits "an act of disloyalty to the State." (The law should be amended to clarify the term "act" to protect freedom of speech and press.)

(6) Rescind large-family allowances, with the understanding that the Jewish Agency will assume the function of providing such allowances to Jewish families, while Arab philanthropic agencies may do the same for Arab families.

(7) Put an end to the notorious tax evasion of Arab citizens and their countless violations of building and zoning laws.

(8) Terminate subsidies to, or expel, Arab university students who call for Israel’s destruction, and require Arab schools to include Jewish studies in their curriculum.

(9) Rescind the “grandfather clause”of the Law of Return, which, as previously indicated, has enabled hundreds of thousands of gentiles to enter Israel.

(10) As proposed earlier, enfranchise Israelis living abroad. This will increase the power of the Jewish vote.

(11) Phase out U.S. military aid to Israel (now less than 2% of the country’s GDP), as well as American participation in Israel-Arab affairs. Both undermine Israel’s material interests as well as Jewish national pride. (Yamin Israel has a program for this purpose.)

(12) As Kemal Ataturk did in Turkey, terminate Arabic as an official language of the State and its (required) use in all official documents. This will negate the anti-Zionist idea that Israel is a bi-national state or that it should be a "state of its citizens."

The Tutsi Genocide

An astounding article on the Hutu massacre of the Tutsis in Rwanda, covering the genocide, the racial hatred and incitement, the dehumanization of the Tutsis by the Hutus, the planned depravity, and the Hutu indifference to the genocide. It is estimated today that at least 1.1 million people were killed in the 13 weeks starting April 7, 1994 in Rwanda. These were primarily Tutsis along with a few "uncooperative" Hutus. The French and the Belgians abandoned them and withdrew their troops. Kofi Anan, today's UN Secretary General, was warned that the Hutus were planning genocide, did nothing about it, and tried to cover up the evidence that he knew about it. The fax sent to him even stated evidence that one Hutu militia group of 40 men could kill 1000 Tutsis in 20 minutes.

A fascinating sidenote is that the Tutsis strongly identify with the Jews and Israel, knowing what happened in the Holocaust. They are waiting for their own Schindler's List and their own Spielberg. One Tutsi said (in a rough translation from the French), "I have a dream; it is of going to Israel, because it is the only country where people knew the same history as me and, like me also, they are surrounded by enemies."

California Is the Place You Oughta Be...

The Press-Telegram hits the nail on the head on the current demagoguery over the California state budget crisis.

By presenting the public with only two choices, higher taxes or dramatic cuts in vital services, state politicians and special interest groups are taking a page from an age-old political storybook, absolving themselves of blame and scaring the public into believing it's up to them to solve the state's budget problems. Take your pick, people: Either pay more or prepare for a crime wave. Pay more or deal with a generation of uneducated kids. Pay more or get ready to toss frail seniors into the gutter. Are you really that cold-hearted?

What an infuriating, self- serving ruse.

Here's what is really going on in Sacramento:

1. Rampant overspending.

The state has been unwilling to play by the most basic financial rules you can't spend more than you earn without running into severe problems. During the dot-com boom politicians gave systematic favors to the special-interest groups that finance their campaigns, like the prison guards union, jacking up their budgets, salaries and pensions way beyond anything necessary for inflation or population increases. The numbers tell the real story: State spending has increased 40 percent in the last four years alone, as revenues increased 25 percent (spending for inflation and population alone would have increased the budget 21 percent).

Through some tricky accounting the state has managed to borrow its way through the last few years the equivalent of a binge spender opening one new credit card after another but it won't work anymore. Wall Street has said that the state's most recent credit card, an $11 billion line that expires in August, is its last.

2. Waste, fraud and incompetence.
...
3. Featherbedding and payback.
...

Bye, Bye Floppy

Via Rentzsch---Too cool!

128MB solid state storage, width and length of your thumb, thickness of a credit card, USB interface. Cross-platform, no drivers required

What's a Hudna?

Honest Reporting covers the differences between a Western truce and an Islamic Hudna.

Hudna has a distinct meaning to Islamic fundamentalists, well-versed in their history: The prophet Mohammad struck a legendary, ten-year hudna with the Quraysh tribe that controlled Mecca in the seventh century. Over the following two years, Mohammad rearmed and took advantage of a minor Quraysh infraction to break the hudna and launch the full conquest of Mecca, the holiest city in Islam.

When Yassir Arafat infamously invoked Mohammad's hudna in 1994 to describe his own Oslo commitments 'on the road to Jerusalem," the implication was clear. As Mideast expert Daniel Pipes explained, Arafat was asserting to his Islamic brethren that he will, 'when his circumstances change for the better, take advantage of some technicality to tear up existing accords and launch a military assault on Israel." Indeed, this is precisely what occurred in Sept. 2000 when Arafat & Co. launched a terror assault upon Israeli citizens.

The Problem of Gay Marriage

Jeff Jacoby clearly but tactfully addresses the issue of gay marriage.

The truest answer to the question "How will same-sex marriage hurt conventional marriage?" -- like the answer to "How will welfare erode the work ethic or family life of the urban poor?" -- is, in essence: Wait a generation and see. Social behavior changes when society's expectations and values change. Teach children by example -- as welfare did -- that money can be had without work, and many of them grow up unwilling to work. Teach children by example that traditional marriage is nothing special, and many of them will grow up unwilling to marry -- or hopeless confused about what marriage is for.

My foreboding is that a generation after same-sex marriage is legalized, families will be even less stable than they are today, the divorce rate will be even higher, and children will be even less safe.

What's So Different?!

Yaffa Ganz quietly summarizes where we're at with the Road Map.

The currently favored remedy in our eternal march towards 'Peace' is the Road Map, the latest in a long line of plans to divide, weaken, dismember or otherwise incapacitate the Jewish State.

Since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, we have seen a constant parade of proposals and activities — partition plans, borders drawn and redrawn, military clashes, full fledged wars, cease fires, armistice lines, resolutions, unending conferences and now the 'hudna' (we'll see how long that lasts...). All were contrived to reach the ultimate Middle East Peace. There was the pre-state Peel Commission; the U.N. partition plans; Resolutions 181, 194 and 242; the Rogers Plan; the Geneva and Madrid conferences and the touted Oslo accords. Shaaram El Sheik, Wye, Camp David, Taaba have all hosted peace and problem solving assemblies. Kissinger, Reagen, Shultz, Baker, Ross, Clinton, Tenet, Zinni, the Saudis, and now President Bush have all contributed their combined wisdom, alas, to no avail.

The one thing in common with each and every one of these plans, suggestions, partitions and agreements is that each and every one necessitated additional Israeli withdrawals, restrictions and capitulation, compensated, of course, by inviolable international guarantees and promises of future support. The Arabs accepted or signed a good many of these agreements and then promptly proceeded to violate, break, trample upon and make a mockery of every single one.

As in the present hudna, Arab agreements with the enemy are a temporary, tactical ploy. Talk of a 'two-state solution' is a step towards a Judenrein Middle East.Their war against the Jews is not a political situation capable of compromise and solution; it is a war of victory or death, an honorable and historical Arab way of life.

When Jewish settlement to Palestine began to increase 200 years before the establishment of the Jewish State, when Palestine was a far-flung province of the Ottoman Empire and the Arab population of Palestine (which then included Transjordan) was very small and scattered, the Arabs still attacked, waged war, terrorized, slaughtered, stole and did their utmost to destroy any sign of new Jewish settlement. Yet this settlement is what transformed a poverty stricken, forlorn, empty area into a land of flowing milk and honey.

The Importance of Marriage

Jeff Jacoby makes a well thought out case for the sanctity of marriage.

...human societies since time immemorial have restricted marriage to opposite-sex unions. That restriction is part of a system of social taboos whose purpose is to protect families from the caustic power of unrestrained sexuality. Together with the ancient taboos against adultery and incest, and the Western taboo against polygamy, the heterosexuality of marriage helps shield women and children from exploitation, cements the union between fathers and mothers, and bolsters the ethos of monogamy on which the dignity of marriage depends.

Weakening those traditional norms boosts sexual freedom, but as sexual freedom rises, the stability of families and marriage declines. The slippery slope is real, as America's experience since the sexual revolution has made all too clear. Is that a reason to condemn anything and everything that expands sexual options? No. (How many Americans want to return to the era before reliable birth control?) But we should recognize that those options aren't free. We pay a price when we weaken common standards, especially those that pertain to marriage and sex. And the price of same-sex marriage -- as even some "queer" theorists openly predict -- may be the ruin of traditional family life.

Which Party Is "Of The Rich"?

Mona Charen squashes the myth that Democrats are the party of the little guy.

Among the things everybody knows is that Democrats, being the party of the little people, raise money in small contributions, whereas Republicans, being the party of fat cats, raise funds in huge basketfuls from wealthy corporate types. At least, that's the way the world is usually portrayed by the "Today Show," The New York Times and the Democratic Party.

So it's of more than passing interest to see the results of a study conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The study, which tracked 1.6 million contributions to House and Senate races, the two political parties and political action committees during the 2002 election season, found that Republicans raised far more from small donors than did the Democrats. As Ronald Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times reports, "Democrats raised as much or more than Republicans in 2002 only among the largest donors. Democrats attracted 92 percent of the money from the 23 donors who contributed at least $1 million. ... By contrast, Republicans dominated among smaller and mid-sized donors. The GOP garnered 64 percent of the total contributions from those who gave less than $200 and 61 percent from those who donated between $200 and $999."

Specially Crafted Apartments for the Religious

Apartments With Religious Refinements covers an innovative new apartment building in NYC with special accommodations for Orthodox Jews.

Among the special provisions are Sabbath elevators that automatically stop on every floor so that residents do not have to press buttons, and ovens that remain lit during the Sabbath and on holidays, eliminating the need to turn them on. Rooftops will accommodate sukkahs, the straw huts where
meals are eaten during the seven-day fall harvest festival of Sukkot.

Kitchens will be outfitted with double sinks so meat and dairy dishes may be kept apart. Dishwashers will have stainless steel interiors, so they may be made kosher simply by running the hot-water cycle twice.

"Living rooms are designed to accommodate dining tables for at least 12 people at Sabbath dinners," Mr. Benjamin said. Master bedrooms are unusually spacious, too, to allow for the extra bed required by the prohibition against physical contact between husbands and wives during certain times of the month.

Stromboli

An interesting back and forth on the political life of Strom Thurmond and the changes in it over the course of time.

Magical Thinking on the Left Coast

Dynamist has a great post with the following:
1. California is possessed by magical thinking--assuming you can just wish for things and get them, with no costs and no tradeoffs.
2. A great analysis of a condo association protesting the redevelopment of a set of nearby apartment buildings to create additional condos.

They have all sorts of concerns about "the scale and character of the existing stable neighborhood," which would in fact be slightly altered by the new construction. (In reality, the neighborhood's character is largely maintained by the single-family zoning that begins one block to the south.)

Here's the magical thinking paragraph: "The project will continue the decline in affordable housing on the Westisde. Replacing 10 highly desirable rental buildings in the range of $1000-$1700 per month, by condos offered for $500,000-$550,000, will adversely impact a renter profile of students, artists, young workers and seniors, who are being driven out of the Westside by high housing costs." [Weird commas in the original--vp.]

These concerned neighbors are not offering to sell their tiny bungalows for less than a half million dollars--or, for that matter, to rent them out for "affordable housing." Instead, they want to block an increase in the number of multifamily units, which offer relatively more space and luxury for the money. In the magical twist, they imagine that limiting supply while demand is skyrocketing is the way to create affordable housing.

Why We Will Still Have Good-Ol' Oil Decades From Now

USS Clueless has an excellent analysis of why biomass will never replace petroleum as a major fuel source.

One of the biggest advantages of coal and oil is that they are high-energy, but also extremely concentrated. A relatively small capital investment in a single area can harvest a great deal of useful end-product. A big open-pit coal mine can justify hundreds of millions of dollars spent on big shovels and huge dump trucks, because the shovel can dig more than a ton of coal on each bite, and each dump truck can carry several tons of coal out of the mine. The coal can be carried by rail point-to-point from the mine to a big power plant to be burned, or to a nearby harbor where it will be loaded on barges or ocean-going bulk carriers. All of this can be done big because huge amounts of coal come from one place, and go to a small number of destinations. Since petroleum is liquid, it is even easier to transport via pipelines or ships.

Coal would be a lot less valuable if it was found as a layer one centimeter thick spread over an area the size of the states of Iowa and Nebraska; the collection process would defeat the purpose. How difficult would it be to gather it all? How much equipment would be needed? Would it make sense economically to buy it all, given that each piece of equipment could only collect a relatively small amount of coal? Unfortunately, it wouldn't.

But that's exactly what the situation is when you're talking about any kind of biomass as a source of fuel; it grows on the ground, and though you may get a lot of it, it's spread over an immense area and you can't do anything until you pick it all up first and collect it.

Also, sugars and alcohols are already partly oxygenated, which means they don't yield as much energy in combustion per unit mass. Effectively, they're already partially burned. For example, methanol is methane which is one quarter burned. Each molecule of methanol weighs almost twice as much as a molecule of methane, but contains much less energy. In general the oxygen in biomass increases the weight and decreases the energy yield compared to hydrocarbons in oil or the almost-pure carbon of coal.

It takes two tons of dried biomass to yield as much energy as one ton of anthracite, but biomass isn't dry to begin with. There are huge amounts of water mixed into it, which isn't combustible but is exceedingly heavy and interferes with or outright prevents combustion. Drying the biomass takes a lot of energy in its own right, and even then all you're doing is reducing the quantity of water. Of course, you can dry it by leaving it out in the sun, which works fine as long as it doesn't rain. Or you can collect it while still full of water and bring it to some sort of drying facility, but that means you're expending a lot of energy hauling water around. But even if you leave it to dry in the sun, you'll still be hauling a lot of water (just not as much).

In one hour, one of the huge dumptrucks in an open pit coal mine hauls far more than its own weight in coal, and all of that coal can be burnt. But that's because it only has to haul that coal maybe a mile or two, from inside the pit up to some sort of big conveyer belt or a rail facility. And that dumptruck keeps doing that, 24 hours per day over the entire year (stopping only for maintenance and repair). It only stops when the coal runs out, but the coal deposits are immense. (The majority of the world's coal is in North America.)

The equipment which would be used to collect and haul biomass would only be used for a couple of months per year, and would haul the biomass a much greater distance, with the biomass itself yielding far less energy per ton transported. The energy used for collection and transport becomes a significant percentage of the energy being harvested, and the capital investment isn't efficient because most of the equipment sits idle most of the year.

This analysis is based on the overall characteristics of biomass versus coal and oil, and please notice that I didn't even talk about how the biomass would be used. Details about how the energy present in biomass might be utilized don't change this big picture. A new catalyst for releasing hydrogen from cellulose doesn't change the fact that the cellulose can only be used with that catalyst after it's been picked up off of fields or collected from forests where logging has been going on and hauled to where the energy is required.

That reported metal catalyst is a breakthrough in conversion process. "Biodiesel" is a different kind of conversion process for biomass. So is ethanol as a fuel. But none of them alter the fundamental characteristics of the source material, which is not really acceptable for purposes of producing energy at the scale we need at a price we're willing to pay. (In fact, ethanol is a total loser: it costs more energy to produce it than it yields when burned as a fuel.) As a practical matter, some of these technologies end up being more useful as a way of helping specific factories and processing facilities turn what is now seen as waste into a useful product, and for that reason they're quite valuable, but only in specific places where the economic conditions are right. They make sense because the source material is already concentrated and because you used to have to pay to have it hauled away. But they don't scale up.

Add It to the Birthday Present List

Blogs of War carries this article from the New Scotsman on military "X-ray" vision.

Soldiers Get X-Ray Vision

BRITISH troops have been carrying out secret tests on a revolutionary new device that allows them to ‘see’ through walls, scientists have revealed.

The tiny radar device works like the futuristic X-ray specs recently seen in the James Bond film The World is Not Enough.

Soldiers, including members of the Black Watch and Scots Guards, have been helping to test the machine.

The machine allows soldiers not only to see through walls but also underground to find hidden passages.

It transmits low-frequency radar pulses that can pass through the walls and detect objects and movements.

The machine’s antenna sensors can pick up enough information to create sharp views on a screen of what is happening inside a room.

The equipment can see through walls up to nearly a foot thick and the device is being engineered to have a 75ft range.

Scientists are currently working on a model small enough to allow soldiers to wear and use in battle. news.scotsman.com

ILY USA

10 Great Things: What to love about the United States By Dinesh D’Souza

America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy

America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country, including the countries of Europe

Work and trade are respectable in America, which is not true elsewhere

America has achieved greater social equality than any other society

People live longer, fuller lives in America

In America the destiny of the young is not given to them but created by them

America has gone further than any other society in establishing equality of rights

America has found a solution to the problem of religious and ethnic conflict that continues to divide and terrorize much of the world

America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of any great power in world history

America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation on earth

Like Santayana

JWR

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, 'What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.'

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Summary of a JPost article by Daily Alert of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

After a war in 1974, Cyprus was divided in two, with the north under Turkish control and the south in Greek hands. For a few years after the war the violence continued with terror attacks across the cease-fire line.

However, the violence subsided significantly after the Turkish authorities made a dividing wall, passing along the entire length of Cyprus, including barbed wire, a wide buffer zone in some places, and even concrete barriers.

This fence is not loved by anyone, but the evidence is indisputable - the daily friction between the populations largely disappeared, and the division has brought a significant degree of stability and even relative prosperity. Since the war and the construction of this barrier, a new generation of Cypriots has grown up. For them, the conflict and terror attacks are ancient history.

Suddenly, at the end of April, the Turkish leadership opened the barriers to allow for the free movement of both populations, and tens of thousands of Cypriots from both sides went to check out the other side.

Despite some reports of bitterness, for the most part this experiment appears to be moving in a positive direction, toward reconciliation and hope - though such a barrier will not solve all the problems of Israelis and Palestinians, nor substitute in the long term for renewed efforts to reach a negotiated peace agreement.

I agree that good fences make good neighbors in a hostile situation with a few caveats. In establishing the fence, territory left outside may become more dangerous. The territory left out may also be de facto assigned to the portion to be traded away. It may also limit the ability of the army for hot pursuit, especially when they want to roll a lot of tanks into the territories.

Why Diplomatic Vehicles Are Now Stopped at Checkpoints

Ha'aretz reveals why you should not be too surprised the next time that there is an "incident" over diplomatic vehicles being delayed or detained at Israeli checkpoints.

"Dichter also revealed that terrorists had used cars of foreign diplomats to smuggle explosives into Israel from Gaza. He said the explosives had been hidden while the cars were being repaired in Gaza repair shops, taking advantage of the fact that diplomatic vehicles are not searched at checkpoints. "

Muslims Pushing the Christians Out in Israel

"The Anti-Millennium: The Islamization of Nazareth" by Raphael Israeli