Thank you, Senator Clinton

Senator Clinton thinks that she knows how to spend our money better than we do.

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you.

We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

Wow

Yated Ne'eman 9/24/04, p9-11

The Nuremberg Trial By Yaakov Astor

May 22, 1945, about three weeks after Germany's surrender. Henry Blitt, an American major, who is also Jewish, makes an unplanned stop at a farmhouse just off the road on his way to Bertchesgarden, Hitler's favorite retreat now in Allied hands. He meets the farmhouse's occupant, a short, whitehaired, bearded man.

"What do you think of the Nazis?" Blitt asks.

"I'm an artist," comes the reply, "and have never bothered about politics."

"But you look like Julius Streicher!" Blitt says jokingly in broken German, trying to make conversation.

There's a silence. Then...

"You recognized me?" the man blurts out incredulously, startling Blitt.(1)

After a moment's pause, Blitt composes himself and arrests the man who, both inside and outside Germany, was considered Nazidom's number one Jew-baiter.

A BAND OF THUGS

Indeed, since the 1920s, Streicher, Nazi ideologue and originator of some of the most vicious slurs against Jews, had been editor of Der Sturmer. Containing everything from grotesque caricatures of Jews as long-nosed vampires extracting blood from German youths for ritual slaughter to calling for the outright expulsion and then extermination of Jews,(2) Streicher printed as many as two million copies a year of his paper during its peak in 1938.

Streicher was one of 24 major Nazi war criminals brought to the historic Germany city of Nuremberg(3) to stand trial for crimes against humanity. Although some legal scholars today question the validity of the trial,(4) even Hans Frank, the "Jew Butcher of Krakow,"(5) and one of those hanged for his part in Nazi atrocities had to admit: "Here [in the prison at Nuremberg] are the would-be rulers of Germany - each in a cell like this, with four walls and a toilet, awaiting trial as ordinary criminals. Is that not a proof of God's amusement with men's sacrilegious quest for power? ...This trial has been willed by God."(6)

Little did he or his captors realize how true it was, for an incredible string of "coincidences" tie the events in Nuremberg 1946 to events in Persia some 2,500 years beforehand.

HAMAN'S TEN SONS

Megillas Esther, as is well-known, tells the story of how the Jew-hater, Haman, a high official in the Persian empire, persuaded King Ahashverosh to issue a decree to annihilate all Jews. Esther became the wife of Ahashverosh, and was able to turn the tables on Haman and his diabolical plan. As a consequence, Haman and his sons were hanged on a gallows.

In the ninth chapter of Esther, the names of Haman's ten sons are mentioned explicitly:

Also Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai, and Vajezatha the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews they killed.... (9:7-10)

Oddly, the verses go on to say that Esther made another request [besides] the hang[ing of] these ten sons:

Then Esther said, "If it pleases the king, let it be granted to the Jews who are in Shushan to do again tomorrow according to today's decree, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged on the gallows." So the king commanded this to be done; the decree was issued in Shushan, and they hanged Haman's ten sons. (9:13-14)

In the Midrash, Chazal comment that Esther was asking God, the King of Kings (according to tradition, every time "King Ahashverosh" is mentioned the reference is to him, whereas when the word "the King" [hamelech] appears on its own, it refers to God) to repeat the incident in the future.

About 2,500 years later the Nazis(7) tried to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth. After the war, the surviving Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg for this and other war crimes. These trials began on November 20, 1945. On October 1, 1946, twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging for their part in the atrocities committed against the Jews and others. One of those convicted was Martin Bormann, who was sentenced in absentia. A second was Hermann Goring, who committed suicide in his cell just hours before the executions.(8) The remaining ten Nazis were hanged to death on October 16, 1946.

Although the sentence handed down by a military tribunal should have resulted in death by firing squad (or by electric chair as practiced in the US) the court specifically prescribed hanging, exactly as in Esther's original request:

"...let Haman's ten sons be hanged."

HOSHANAH RABBAH 5707

There are a couple of other chilling details to consider. These hangings took place on October 16, 1946. On the Jewish calendar, October 16 1946, corresponded to 21 Tishri, 5707. This date was the seventh day of Sukkos, specifically Hoshana Rabba, which according to Jewish tradition is the day the judgment of the non-Jewish nations is finalized.(9)

Even more improbable, however, is a strange tradition in the text itself. We know that every variation of the surface text, whether it be the size of the letters themselves or a variant spelling of a word, has specific meaning. In some cases, that meaning remains a mystery. In Esther 9:7-9, in the list of the ten sons of Haman there is an ancient tradition to change the size of four letters - the first three are: the tav in the first name, the shin in the seventh name, and the zayin in the tenth name. These letters all have to be written by the scribe smaller than the other letters. In Hebrew, tav has a numerical value of 400, shin a numerical value of 300, and zayin a numerical value of 7. The tav, shin, and zayin, totaled from top to bottom, equal the number 707.

In addition, there is a fourth letter, a vav, which is also part of the tenth name, and which tradition dictates must be written larger than all the letters around it. Vav, numerically, equals six.

Putting this all together, the different size letters point to a specific year in Jewish history. The large Vav represents the millennium, while the small letters the century. This yields the year 5707, or the exact year that the ten Nazi war criminals were hanged!

Although the striking parallels may have been lost on most observers at the time it did not pass that of Nazidom's most virulent anti-Semite: Julius Streicher. Just a couple of days before his execution Streicher chatted, as he often did, with court-appointed, psychologist, Gustav Gilbert, a Jew. Gilbert must know about his people's celebration of Purim, the Nazi said. Imagine the irony of that event,(10) he bellowed: Haman, the cruel minister of the Persian monarch, and his ten sons, marched to the same gallows when he had intended to hang the Jews.(11)

The idea flittered around Streicher's perverse mind and stuck in gut till the very end. A couple of days later, as the noose was put around his neck, mere seconds before he was hanged, he shouted, "Purim Fest 1946!"(12)

THE AFTERMATH

The truly extraordinary messages inextricably woven into the fabric of the Nuremberg, the war's final chapter, bring a measure of comfort and closure to the generations that follow. The Nuremberg Trial did not and could not restore the lives of six million Jews, nor the millions of others who fell victim to Nazi insanity. However it restored, no matter how small in comparison, a relative measure of justice to the world. And, as Chazal teach, "The death of the wicked benefits themselves and the world" (Sanhedrin 71b).

Beyond the death of the wicked individuals, the Nuremberg Trial exposed Naziism for what it was. Judges and journalists - and hence millions of others - viewed images of concentration camp victims for the first time. Words like "Final Solution," "Auschwitz," "Gas Chamber" and the like were first heard and became part of the public consciousness. The utopic vision of Olam Habah might not have followed in its wake, but the world after the Nuremberg trial was at least somewhat more cognizant of its potential for evil; it had at least one extra anti-body to immunize itself against the next Hitler.

THE GREAT TUG-OF-WAR

This is not an improvement to be taken lightly. Our Neviim [prophets] foresaw a time when good and evil would partake in a tug-of war to end all tugs-of-war. The majority of the human race who would otherwise be neither aligned completely with the good nor the evil - will be pulled to one side or the other. This tug-of-war is called Milchemes Gog Umagog, the "War of Gog and Magog." Not coincidently, the haftorah describing Milchemes Gog Umagog (Yechezkal 38) is read on Shabbos Chol Hamoed Succos, the Shabbos of the same week the Nuremberg criminals were hanged in 1946.

Milchemes Gog Umagog is the Armageddon-type war that takes place before Mashiach accomplishes his mission. Rabbi Moshe Eisemann (commentary to Yechezkal, Chapter 38; Artscroll) explains that while Magog is a group of people (descended from Noah's son, Yefes), Gog is an individual. Moreover, Gog is an individual from the archenemy of the Jews, Amalek (the Vilna Gaon considered the Germans bearers of the seed of Amalek). In the paradigm of Milchemes Gog Umagog Gog, a rabid, anti-Semitic individual, will incite Magog, descendants of Yefes, to seek the annihilation of the Jews.

On a deeper level, Yefes is the forerunner of Greece, the foundation of much of Western civilization.(13) The word, "Yefes," comes from the word meaning "beauty," and thus represents humanity's secular sense, including everything from art and philosophy to science and mathematics. Beauty, however, is morally neutral. It can inspire to good or intoxicate toward destruction. Yefes, consequently, can place his gifts at Amalek's feet as readily as he can subordinate them in the service of holiness.

Therefore, Rabbi Eisemann explains, "throughout history, we find Yefes fluctuating between the poles of true spirituality and the grossest sensuality. The same Yefes who allowed himself to be turned to holiness by his brother Shem was able, centuries later, to allow a Haman to control his empire [Persia is descended from Yefes], and attempt to wipe out Shem's descendants [Israel]. When Gog will seek supporters in his final war against holiness and Godliness he will turn to the pliable Yefes."

THE NAUSEATING REFRAIN

One of the most disturbing recurring themes at the Nuremberg trials was the nauseating refrain by Nazi leader after Nazi leader that were only taking orders. Others were to blame for the atrocities, they claimed. Even the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess (who was apprehended after the trial began), saw himself as a bare functionary, albeit a person whose function happened to be the mass liquidation of an entire people.(14)

Milchames Gog Umagog represents a tug-of-war that has replayed itself throughout history, and will once more in the grand finale of the final battlefield between good and evil. The forces of light will hold one end of the rope while the forces of darkness will hold the other. When good people prevail the forces of Yefes become vehicles for light. When good people slacken the dark side takes over.

As the Rambam writes, nobody really knows how the prophecies about the "End of Days" will really pan out until they actually happen. Nevertheless, Rabbi Eisemann offers a possible insight into the nature of the War of Gog and Magog. "In the final struggle," he writes, "Yefes - representative of all the worldly culture of which the human race is capable - will be ranged with Edom [Amalek]. Man will have shown himself incapable of using these gifts in the service of holiness."(15)

THE SHADE OF THE SHECHINAH

This message is especially poignant coming as it does during Succos. At the time when we sit in our flimsy, temporary structures we would do well to remember that a flimsy structure positioned beneath the shade of the Shechinah is more sturdy and durable than a mansion protected by all the wealth and weaponry of Western Civilization. Even Western Civilization, with its democratic values and technological wizardry, is but a rope pulled back and forth between those with moral fortitude and those bent on evil. If good people fail to pull their end of the rope with sufficient vigor, then even a small band of criminals, misfits and terrorists can gain control.

The Nuremberg trial showed that the world still had backbone; that it could pull itself back from the precipice and judge fellow evildoers for what they were. Still, that is no guarantee for the future. As we sit in the sukkah we have to realize that we have no one to rely on except our Protector in Heaven, and only in His shade and under His wings are we secure and whole.

1 Of the original defendants put on trial at Nuremberg, Streicher had by far and away the lowest IQ (106), and indeed was the only one with an IQ not in the above-average range. The vast majority of those on trial had IQ's of 124 or higher.

2 He had once declared in 1935 to a closed meeting of a Nazi student organization: "All our struggles are in vain if the battle against the Jews is not fought to the finish. It is not enough to get the Jews out of Germany. No, they must be destroyed throughout the entire world so that humanity will be free of them." Cited in "Fighting Iron with Irony: A Contemporary Purim Story" by Rabbi Avi Shafran; Am Echad Resources; February 8, 2002.

3 Nuremberg, Germany, was chosen primarily for two reasons: 1) It had been the symbolic center of Nazism, serving as the for immense, dramatic Nazi Party rallies; and 2) although pulverized by Allied bombing, Nuremberg still had a jail and a courthouse, the historic "Palace of Justice," which was big enough to accommodate the landmark trial.

4 The validity of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) is still debated. Criticisms begin with the claim that the court was imposing "ex post facto law," i.e. defining acts as criminal after they had been committed. Another claim was that it was selective in its justice, only trying the losers. Stalin was a murderer on par with Hitler, but neither he nor any Soviets were tried (indeed, the war was all but started when Stalin signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939). The Americans and British bombed cities with large civilian populations, and sunk merchant vessels while failing to rescue passengers. Yet none of these acts were ever raised in any international tribunal. Furthermore, many of the individual verdicts were questionable: e.g. Fritz Saukel, head of the slave labor system, was put to death, but Albert Speer, his superior was not.

Nevertheless, as Joseph Persico, in his outstanding, "Nuremberg: Infamy On Trial," eloquently notes, the trial's questionable legal underpinnings and conclusions do not diminish the sense of justice it carried out: "Nuremberg may have been flawed law," he writes, "but it was satisfying justice." Nuremberg: Infamy On Trial, by Joseph Persico; Penguin Putnam Inc.; New York, New York; 1994; pg. 440

5 Frank, as well as other leadings Nazis (e.g. Heydrich and perhaps even Hitler), hid his Jewish ancestry. Psychologists explain the extreme antiSemitism of Nazis and the like who have some type of Jewish ancestry as zealous "overcompensation" to prove themselves to their non-Jewish peers.

Ironically, Frank himself had been commissioned by Hitler to research Hitler 's possible Jewish roots. He not only found documentation that Hitler's maternal father may have been Jewish but identified in Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, some startling insights. For example, Hitler had written that children of the third generation from a mixed blood marriage (e.g. Jew and German) will "lack certainty" in decision-making and "arrive at half measures." Hitler, if nothing else, was unbendingly certain in his decisions.

No one could persuade him otherwise. Aware he may himself have been the third generation child of a mixed marriage, he overcompensated, acting more decisive, more certain and more anti-Semitic than anyone else. Another example: Hitler at one point tried to include in the Nuremberg Laws the peculiar clause that any Aryan female under the age of 45 was forbidden from working as a servant in a Jewish home. His grandmother was 42 when she gave birth to the illegitimate child, his father, while working as a maid in a Jewish home. (His grandmother, by the way, was given child support payments for 14 years by the Jewish family she had worked for. The question is were the child payments a way to cover-up the scandal, or a concession to blackmail by the real father, Johann Hiedler [from when the name "Hitler" derives], whom his grandmother eventually married.)

6 "Nuremberg Diary;" by G.M. Gilbert; Da Capo Press, New York 1947; ppg. 20, 47.

7 In Esther 3:1, we are told that Haman is an Agagite. Agag was the king of Amalek (I Sam. 15:8). Therefore, Haman and his sons were Amalekites. The Vilna Gaon held the tradition that the German nation was descended from Amalek.

8 The Book of Esther recounts how Haman's ten sons were hanged in Shushan. An eleventh child, a daughter, committed suicide earlier, according to an account in the Talmud. At Nuremberg, while eleven men were condemned to execution by hanging, only ten were actually hanged. The eleventh, the foppish, effeminate Goring, died in his cell only hours before the execution committing suicide with a cyanide capsule he had managed to hide from his captors

9 Zohar, Vayikra 31b.

10 Rabbi Shafran (loc. cit.) points out that another happy irony in Streicher's life involved the fate of his considerable estate. As reported in Stars and Stripes in late 1945, his considerable possessions were converted to cash and used to create an agricultural training school for Jews intending to settle in Palestine. Just as Haman's riches, as recorded in the Book of Esther, were bestowed upon his nemesis Mordechai.

11 "Nuremberg: Infamy On Trial," by Joseph Persico; Penguin Putnam Inc.; New York, New York; 1994; pg. 413

12 Sometimes it takes an anti-Semite to see and say things others cannot bring themselves to see or say. Balaam pronounced some of the greatest blessings of the Jews even as he tried his hardest to curse them. When one who is so sunk in evil finds himself compelled at the end of his life to acknowledge the symmetry of Divine Justice it serves as the greatest testimony that events are part of a greater tapestry being woven by the Master Weaver.

13 Albert Speer, a confidant of Hitler, wrote that, "Hitler believed that the culture of the Greeks had reached the peak of perfection in every field. Their view of life, he said, as expressed in their architecture, had been 'fresh and healthy.' One day a photograph of a swimmer stirred him to enthusiastic reflections: 'What splendid bodies you can see today. It is only in our century that young people have once again approached Hellenistic ideals....' By the theory, fostered by the scientists of his period, that the Dorian tribe which migrated into Greece from the north had been of Germanic origin and that, therefore, its culture had not belonged to the Mediterranean world." Inside The Third Reich, by Albert Speer; 1970; pps. 96-97.

14 "...[A]fter getting the clear direct order [from Himmler]," he said, "and even an explanation with it ["...the Jews were the opposite pole from the German people, and sooner or later there would have to be a showdown.... If Germany was to survive then World Jewry must be exterminated..."] - there was nothing left but to carry it out." Nuremberg Diary, by G.M. Gilbert; 1947; ppg. 268-9.

15 Rabbi Moshe Eisenmann, commentary to Yechezkal 38:2; Mesorah Publications, Ltd.

The 'W' Boom

James J. Cramer on W's economy

Imagine the difficulty John Kerry faces in explaining what's wrong with the economy. He wants to talk about President Bush's reckless deficit spending, but how reckless can that spending be if the market's willing to lend the government money at a measly 4%, lower than when President Clinton turned deficits to surplus? He wants to portray the economy as weak and getting weaker, but how weak is an economy that finds Federal Express, Yellow Roadway and United Parcel all on the 52-week-high list?

These companies ship to meet demand, not to build inventories. Sen. Kerry would love to talk about lagging employment and jobless growth, but go tell that to Bill Zollars, Yellow Roadway's CEO, who has ratcheted up earnings forecasts three times during the alleged "soft patch" and would be making even more money if he could just find more truck drivers to hire.

Sen. Kerry would love to talk about how consumers and businesses are suffering through $45-a-barrel oil, but prices at the pump stopped going up months ago, and for other than a handful of poorly run, unhedged airlines, high oil's had remarkably little impact on any part of the economy, except the oil industry itself which is both hiring and booming. You don't debit the growth of Exxon and Chevron payrolls; their jobs pay greenbacks the same as any other. Meanwhile, we've got the veritably endless boom in housing, a two-year boom in steel, plus a brand new cyclical turn in aerospace. Boeing's stock doesn't lie; it's become a permanent fixture on the daily new-high list.

The irony isn't that Sen. Kerry can't make more hay out of this array of strength, it's that President Bush doesn't take more credit for what's going right. Hamstrung by less-than-stellar monthly hiring figures and stubborn weakness in tech and auto sectors -- among the most visible growth engines just a few years ago -- Mr. Bush seems oddly defensive about the robustness of so many other, formerly dormant sectors of the economy. He should be donning a hard hat to help produce scarce hot-rolled steel. He should be grabbing a nailgun to help Toll Brothers, Lennar, and Pulte meet the extraordinary housing demand. That's if he can brave the lines at Home Depot and Lowe's, and if they aren't sold out of Black & Decker's hot-selling power tools.

Sure, we've got some weaknesses Sen. Kerry could exploit. He could go to a Coke bottler somewhere and talk about soft drink weakness, but President Bush could counter by going to a Pepsi plant which is causing the weakness. He could swing by a Bud plant, to lament the King's recent selling weakness; but Mr. Bush could quaff some Miller Genuine Draft where sales have exploded with a new owner and a better ad campaign. Oh, and Sen. Kerry might want to don a white jacket to assemble some PCs for ailing Gateway and Hewlett-Packard, but that just might force Mr. Bush back to Texas to make a couple of market-share-stealing Dells.

The simple truth about this economy is that while nothing's ever perfect, we've got a bit of a barn-burner on our hands. Now someone ought to inform President Bush about the strength -- someone might as well take credit for the boom.

Mr. Cramer co-hosts CNBC's "Kudlow & Cramer."

Not So Greenpeace

Environmental regulations are notoriously difficult to keep up with, what with all the paperwork and communication required. Just ask Greenpeace.

The radical environmental group and habitual filer of lawsuits is learning how the other side feels after prosecutors in Alaska filed criminal charges against it for violating state environmental laws. It seems a Greenpeace boat, the Arctic Sunrise, entered Alaskan water without the required oil spill prevention plan and proof of financial responsibility should a spill occur. The vessel, which can carry 128,000 gallons of fuel and lubricants (Exxon Valdez, anyone?), was sailing near Ketchikan to protest logging activities.

The state charges that when the environmental group was notified of the violations on July 14, the ship's agent agreed to remain anchored until the situation was fixed. Instead, the Arctic Sunrise left port that very morning and went joyriding in "environmentally sensitive areas during peak salmon runs, without care or consideration for the catastrophic impacts that would occur from failure to have the necessary resources to initiate a response." The case goes to trial in October.

As for Greenpeace, it sounds, well, positively corporate in its explanations. The organization pleaded not guilty at its arraignment. But it has also blamed its decision to go sailing on a communications mishap and noted that a "clerical error" was behind its lack of proper documentation. According to the Washington Legal Foundation, a lawyer for Greenpeace was also quoted as saying that environmental regulations are "getting to be more complicated in this day and age." You don't say.

The Magnitude of War

The Lambs of Israel by Prof. Paul Eidelberg

"Thou shall not murder" would not be one of the Ten Commandments if human nature was simply benevolent. Indeed, the Sixth Commandment suggests that murder is a common tendency of mankind. If so, we should expect war to be the norm of international relations. This was the conclusion of Pitrim Sorokin, chairman of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University in 1941, one of the profoundest students of Western civilization.

In one of his monumental studies, Sorokin investigated all the known wars of Greece and Rome, as well as those of the Western Europe from the year 500 before the common era to 1925. This involved examination of some 967 important wars from the standpoint of duration, size of armies and casualties. Considering the casualty rate per million of the corresponding population, the war magnitude was as follows:

Greece: 29 for the 5th century BCE; 42 for the 4th century BCE; 26 for the 3rd century BCE; and 3 for the 2nd century BCE.

Rome: 12 for the 4th century BCE; 63 for the 3rd century BCE; 33 for the 1st century BCE; 5 for the 1st century CE; and 14 for the 3rd. (If we take the whole Roman Empire during the Pax Romana, then the respective indicators are much lower.)

Europe: 2.5 casualties for the 12th century; 4 for the 13th century; 7.5 for the 14th century; 9.5 for the 15th century; 15 for the 16th century; 45 for the 17th century; 40 for the 18th century; and 17 for the 19th century.

When we turn to the 20th century, the indicator for the first quarter alone stands at 52, thanks primarily to World War I. If we then add the casualty figures of World War II, it will be obvious that the 20th century, the century of triumphant secularism, was the bloodiest in human history. Today, however, it is not secularism but a religious creed, Islam, that has removed all moral restraints on the conduct of war. Muslims use their own children as human bombs. But I am getting ahead of our story.

Despite the inhumanity of World War I - which witnessed the bombing of cities and the use poison gas - humanists and pacifists, enthralled by the League of Nations, were predicting "the end of war." Less than a generation later, and despite the ascendancy of Adolph Hitler, they intoned the disarming slogan "Peace Now." World War II followed, crueler and bloodier than ever. More Germans were incinerated in Dresden than the number of Japanese who were reduced to radioactive dust in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Summing up, during the last 2,500 years, there have been some 1,000 wars in the Western world alone; which means that "peace" is little more than a preparation for war. To all but fools, therefore, it will be obvious that war is indeed the norm of international relations.

Now, we are in the 21st century, stamped by 9/11. The destruction of the World Trade Center by Muslim terrorists symbolizes not a war between nations, but rather a clash of civilizations. Hence, this century promises to be bloodier than the previous one. Indeed, we face the mother of all bellicose creeds, Islam. Among its 1.2 billion believers, countless are those who, contrary to the Sixth Commandment, deem murder martyrdom.

Yet, we still hear the pernicious slogan "Peace Now", most vociferously in the embattled State of Israel. And if this self-destructive slogan was not enough, behold: while Jews are being reduced to human debris by suicide bombers in the name of Allah, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon still blathers about "peaceful coexistence" between Jews and Arabs.

Instead of waging all-out war against the enemy, Sharon builds a security fence. To compound his timidity, instead of disregarding a Supreme Court whose president, Aharon Barak, has the audacity to rule that the convenience of Arabs trumps the security of Jews, Sharon caves in and reroutes the fence as if Justice Barak was Israel's Commander-in-Chief. Finally, instead of having Jews like Yossi Beilin indicted for collaborating with the enemy, Sharon adopts Beilin's "peace" plan - which means he, too, aids and abets Israel's enemies.

And so, Israel, confronted by Arab Nazis - the cruelest enemy known to mankind - is led by a warrior morphed into a super-lamb, leading other lambs to the slaughter.

The jihadists' dream is a return to empire

Zev Chafets -- The jihadists' dream is a return to empire

...America's enemy is not "terrorism." It is international Islamist imperialism. Chechnya, Israel, Indian Kashmir, the Balkans, parts of Spain - these are all lands claimed by Islam for reasons of history or theology. The Philippines, Nigeria, Thailand and a dozen other far-flung places are new fronts in the same expansionist war.

It is simpleminded to imagine the jihadists intend to conquer America or, in this generation, any other Western power. Their goal is to establish (they would say reestablish) a sphere of dominance - financed by oil, armed with nuclear weapons, governed under the laws of Islam - that includes as much of Ottoman Europe as possible, most of Africa and a good part of Asia. America has to be fought because it stands against this goal - a goal that unites Shiites and Sunnis, Wahhabis and Baathists, Nasserites and fundamentalists.

Americans often wonder how the Muslim masses can be so indifferent to the savage murder of Russian schoolchildren or the beheading of Nepalese workers; how they can cheer for church-burners in Pakistan, bus bombers in Israel or suicide pilots in Manhattan.

The answer lies in human nature. The Muslim world knows that it is engaged in what it regards as a just war - and in war you kill your enemies, including the civilians. The slaughtered schoolchildren of Beslan are merely collateral damage on the Chechnyan front in the Great Islamic War of Restoration.

This is a war in which the U.S. can prevail. The Islamic imperialists are no more formidable than their Soviet and Nazi predecessors. But it can't be won until it is defined. That means honestly telling the American people who and what is at war with them.

Even the French

Nonie Darwish on France and the Islamists

Even after 9/11, many in the West and the UN are still finding excuses for terrorism. Even the Arab's best friends, the French, thought they will get special treatment from terrorists by selling out the U.S. and supporting Saddam Hussein. But in the eyes of the terrorists the French were always just temporary friends until the right time came to strike, one enemy at a time.

Hamas: Left-Wing Encouraged Us to Attack

The wages of accommodation, capitulation, and pre-emptive surrender
How many lives have left-wing statements cost Israel? A new book about the Oslo War quotes Hamas leaders saying that Israel's left-wing encourages them to continue their terrorist attacks.

How many lives have left-wing statements cost Israel? In a damning condemnation of the Israeli left, a new book about the battles known as the Oslo War quotes Hamas leaders saying that the behavior of Israel's left-wing encourages them to continue their terrorist attacks.

The book, "The Seventh War," by journalists Avi Yisacharov of Voice of Israel Radio and Amos Harel of Haaretz, is based on comprehensive
investigations and interviews with Hamas terrorist leaders in Gaza and Israeli prisons.

Yisacharov told Channel 1 Television yesterday that Hamas leaders had told him clearly: "It was the Israeli left and your peace camp that ultimately encouraged us to continue with our suicide attacks."

Yisacharov said he was told as follows:
"We tried, through our attacks, to create fragmentation and dissention within Israeli society, and the left-wing's reaction was proof that this was indeed the right approach. When we heard about the 'Pilots' Letter' [written and publicized last year by 27 Israel Air Force pilots who refused to take part in bombing missions against terrorist leaders in Arab towns], and the elite soldiers who refused to serve [in Judea, Samaria and Gaza], it strengthened those in our camp who promoted the idea of suicide bombers...

"The disengagement from Gaza is proof of our victory. The fact is that Sharon is willing to withdraw unconditionally, and is essentially raising a white flag and retreating. Only by force can we teach the other side what to do."

Avoiding the T-word

DANIEL PIPES shows the lengths that the liberal media will go to to avoid calling a spade a spade...

The media... generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on Sept. 3. Journalists have been deep into their thesauruses, finding at least 20 euphemisms for terrorists:

Assailants -- America's National Public Radio.

Attackers -- the Economist.

Bombers -- The Guardian.

Captors -- the Associated Press.

Commandos -- Agence France-Presse refers to the terrorists both as "membres du commando" and "commando."

Criminals -- London's the Times.

Extremists -- United Press International.

Fighters -- The Washington Post.

Group -- the Australian.

Guerrillas -- in a New York Post editorial.

Gunmen -- Reuters.

Hostage-takers -- the Los Angeles Times.

Insurgents -- in a New York Times headline.

Kidnappers -- London's The Observer.

Militants -- the Chicago Tribune.

Perpetrators -- The New York Times.

Radicals -- the BBC.

Rebels -- in a Sydney Morning Herald headline.

Separatists -- The Daily Telegraph.

And my favorite:

Activists -- the Pakistan Times.

With Neighbors Like These...

70,000 Take Part in Um el-Fahm Rally
Sep 12, 2004
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=68799

An Israel Islamic Association annual rally under the banner
Â?al-Aqsa in DangerÂ? attracted 70,000 Israeli Arabs in Um el-Fahm on Friday
Israel Radio reported. Among the public officials in attendance was the PA
appointed Jerusalem mufti together with Arab MKs. The event was hosted by
the northern branch of the association whose leader Sheik Raid Salah is on
trial on charges of funneling funds to terrorist organizations.

Israelis pay highest taxes of any developed country

Israelis pay highest taxes of any developed country
Productivity is one of the lowest in the OECD
Yossi Greenstein
September 1, 2004
http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=10892

After a three year long recession, the Israeli economy is one of
the least productive of the worldÂ?s advanced first world economies, with a
per capita GDP equaling just over half (55%) registered by the US, and 69%
of the OECD (organization of economically advanced industrial states)
average.

The only OECD members with a lower per capita GDP than Israel are the Czech
Republic, Greece, Portugal and the Republic of Korea.

Israelis may be inefficient producers, but they pay the highest taxes of any
developed country. The per capita tax burden is nearly $1,000 higher than in
any other OECD member, equaling 38.5% of the GDP, compared to the 32.8% OECD
average.

The Treasury blames the Central Bank for the low productivity, saying that
its unrealistic monetary policies between 2001-2003 contributed to
increasing both the length and severity of the recession, and hindering the
recovery.

The Problem at Shir Shalom

Ron Grossman writes on JWR

Ann and Ronald Kleiman live at the other end of the spectrum [from the Orthodox in America]. He is Jewish, she is not, and their home is in a largely non-Jewish subdivision, north of Chicago. They attend Temple Shir Shalom, a Reform congregation in Arlington Heights, Ill., where 40 percent of the members have mixed marriages.

Ronald Kleiman was raised in a Conservative synagogue but drifted away as an adult. Services left him cold, he recalled. After the couple was married (it is a second marriage for both), Ronald Kleiman felt a religious tug and found a spiritual home at Shir Shalom. He said he thinks this is because the congregation puts feeling above form in its services. Guitars hang on the walls of the cantor's office.

"He reminds us of Pete Seeger," Ronald Kleiman said.

Ann Kleiman, who was raised Christian, serves on Shir Shalom's sisterhood.

"I was asked to join by a woman who isn't Jewish either," she said.

In outline form, the Kleimans' story typifies that of many contemporary Jewish families. According to the National Jewish Population Survey, these days when American Jews get married, 47 percent of the time it is to non-Jews. Kotler-Berkowitz, who directed the study, thinks that statistic is one reason why Reform Judaism has emerged as the largest of three main groups.

How The Arabs Vote In The U.N.

How The Arabs Vote In The U.N.
Source: Yated Ne'eman, September 10, 2004

Janet Lehr, a pro-Israel activist, published on July 31, 2004 a list of the voting records of various Arabic/Islamic States which are recorded in both the US State Department and United Nations records:
* Kuwait votes against the United States 67% of the time.
* Qatar votes against the United States 67% of the time.
* Morocco votes against the United States 70% of the time.
* United Arab Emirates votes against the United States 70% of the time.
* Jordan votes against the United States 71% of the time.
* Tunisia votes against the United States 71% of the time.
* Saudi Arabia votes against the United States 73% of the time.
* Yemen votes against the United States 74% of the time.
* Algeria votes against the United States 74% of the time.
* Oman votes against the United States 74% of the time.
* Sudan votes against the United States 75% of the time.
* Pakistan votes against the United States 75% of the time.
* Libya votes against the United States 76% of the time.
* Egypt votes against the United States 79% of the time.
* Lebanon votes against the United States 80% of the time.
* India votes against the United States 81% of the time.
* Syria votes against the United States 84% of the time.
* Mauritania votes against the United States 87% of the time.
US Foreign Aid to those that hate Americans:
Egypt, for example, after voting 79% of the time against the United States, still receives $2 billion annually in US Foreign Aid.
Jordan votes 71% against the United States and receives $192,814,000
annually in US Foreign Aid.
Pakistan votes 75% against the United States and receives $6,721,000
annually in US Foreign Aid.
India votes 81% against the United States and receives $143,699,000
annually.
Perhaps it is time to get out of the UN and give the tax savings back to the American workers who are having to skimp and sacrifice to pay the taxes.

Dwelling on Minor Allegations of Wrongdoing in the Far-off Past Seems Unlikely to Bring Down an Incumbent President

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today - September 7, 2004

Suppose you're an employer and you hear that one of your employees, who's been working for you for about four years, once had a drinking problem and in fact pleaded guilty nearly 30 years ago to a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence. You actually heard about all this when you initially hired him, and it did give you second thoughts, but in the end you decided to give him a chance. In the four years he's been working for you, you've seen no sign that he's fallen off the wagon. Is there any cause here to fire him? Even if the revelation about his past were new, wouldn't it have to be pretty severe to constitute grounds for termination?

Now say someone comes to you looking for a job. Right off the bat, you notice something strange about his resume: It goes on for page after page about a job he held for four months, more than 35 years ago, but makes only the barest mention of anything he's done since. You have him in for an interview, and he can't give you a straight answer to any question about what he plans to do in the job if you hire him. Instead (to borrow a description from Joe Conason), he sounds like a bar-stool bore, with a bad habit of repeating the same lame boasts about that long-ago four-month stint again and again.

Still, you decide to check out his references. (John Edwards: "If you have any question about what John Kerry is made of, just spend three minutes with the men who served with him.") Some sing his praises quite extravagantly, but a greater number describe him harshly as a man of dubious character, and some accuse him of lying on his resume. He acknowledges a few embellishments but refuses to provide you with documents that would shed light on the other accusations.

Would you hire this man? And would you fire an employee of four years' standing in order to create an opening for him?

Beslan is Russia's 9/11

Beslan is Russia's 9/11: it will change the world
William Rees-Mogg
September 06, 2004

IN THE past three years, the world has been adjusting to the consequences of 9/11. That one event has dominated American politics and policy. It has divided the Nato alliance, with France and Germany taking one line and the United States and Britain another. In both America and Britain it has been the central issue of political debate. It has been a major influence on the increasingly unstable world market for oil. It has been the crucial event in the growth of Islamic terrorism. On the day of 9/11, I was asked to write a short piece for The Times, reacting to the event. I thought that the nearest to a comparable date was December 7, 1941, the day of Pearl Harbor, 60 years before. The American people responded to that with an absolute determination to destroy the power which had attacked them. They have done so again. President Roosevelt called it Â?a date which will live in infamyÂ?. The consequences included the dropping of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima; in many ways they persist in influencing the present.

Many other people saw 9/11 in the same way. Clearly we were right. Like Pearl Harbor or the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, 9/11 was one of the days which changed the world. Now we have to ask whether the hostage-taking of the schoolchildren of Beslan on September 1, 2004, the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, was another of these historic tragedies. In Russia, at least, that is how it has already been understood.

Beslan is for the Russians another terrible event which changes everything. It changes many of the major factors of world relations, the future of Russia itself, including the future of the Putin presidency, the war against terrorism, including both Russian and Western relations with Islam, the response to the growing threat of nuclear proliferation, the basic relationship between Russia, Europe and the US, the probable outcome of the American election and possibly even of the next British election, the future of the world oil market, the future of the Middle East, and particularly of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia, even the economic development of the emerging superpower, China.

Beslan is what strategists call Â?a low-probability, high-impact eventÂ?. Potentially it changes everything.

One must not underestimate the sheer impact of the horror of the event itself. It is something people find very hard to contemplate. The people who planned this massacre are every bit as evil as the people who planned Pearl Harbor or 9/11, or as the SS men who ran Auschwitz. There is a blank horror about what they did to young children which fortunately has few parallels in the history of evil. It is important to hold onto that because the worldÂ?s sense of horror will influence everything that will follow. A certain degree of wickedness is never forgotten or forgiven, whatever its motive or political justification.

One can however start by asking some practical questions, issues which are of unavoidable and therefore of legitimate concern to the whole world of business and government. How, for instance, might Beslan affect Russian or Arab oil supplies, on which the world economy depends? That is not a cynical question. The oil inflation of the 1970s destroyed two or three American presidents, a German chancellor, a French president, a couple of prime ministers in Britain, and even contributed to the defeat of the Gang of Four in China and fatally undermined the Brezhnev regime in the Soviet Union. It damaged the world economy and grossly impoverished the Third World. Such far-reaching events require analysis.

In the past decade, oil prices were surprisingly low; that led to underinvestment in the development of new supplies, while the rapid growth of the Chinese economy increased global demand beyond all market projections. At the same time, the growing Russian oil supplies were stolen by the oligarchs or kleptocrats of the Yeltsin era; the present Russian Government Â? quite reasonably Â? wants to recover RussiaÂ?s oil from the men who sold it to themselves, at knockdown prices, in the 1990s.

The world oil market now largely centres on four countries, all of which lie on the faultline of Islamic terrorism: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, comes out of the Saudi oil industry. His family culture is that of an Islamic oil man. The US President, George Bush, has himself had experience in the oil industry and was Governor of Texas, the leading oil state. Both men know that terrorismÂ?s strongest weapon is the potential ability to disrupt global oil supplies. The oil element in the war on terrorism is not a cynical American ploy; oil is the economic base of the war, and that is well understood by both sides.

The men who planned Beslan want to destabilise Russia, and particularly to undermine President Putin, whom they see as their most formidable Russian enemy. That is true whether the terror was planned by Chechen nationalists or by Islamic radicals, or by some mixture of the two. The Beslan siege has indeed had some initial effect in destabilising Russia and weakening Mr Putin. Yet I expect that he will survive this crisis, for the same reason that Beslan may be helping to re-elect Mr Bush. Democracies do not like war, but when they are engaged in a war, they tend to back the strongest leaders, such as Lloyd George in 1916, Churchill and Roosevelt in 1940, De Gaulle in 1958, or Ariel Sharon repeatedly in Israel.

The Western nations have an overriding interest in the economic and political stability of Russia Â? though after 175 years of blood, the Chechen problem will be at least as difficult to solve as those of Ireland or Cyprus. Beslan has reinforced the American understanding that it is at war, and is indeed under direct threat. Mr Bush is their war leader, even if American voters might prefer John KerryÂ?s domestic policies. Mr Putin is an authority figure; he is the toughest Russian leader since the end of the Soviet Union. That may be what the Russians need; it is almost certainly what they prefer.

After oil, there is the issue of nuclear proliferation. Whoever is elected president Â? and it will probably now be Mr Bush Â? Iran will have nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles inside the next term of office, perhaps by the end of 2005. No one knows how to prevent that. The basic choices of policy are to do nothing, to apply political pressure, to impose economic sanctions or to use military force. It is certain that Mr Bush would go higher up this scale of response than Mr Kerry. It is not obvious how high Mr Bush would be willing to go, though the Cheney-Rumsfeld team might be willing to go the whole way. Mr Putin has more reason to accept a strong line with Iran than he had before. Iran is involved in most of the terrorist plots in the Middle East, and plays a big part in keeping Iraq destabilised. Russia has been committed by Beslan to the war against terrorism, and Iran is on the side of the enemy.

What about China? There was an interesting clue in the coverage of Beslan on CCTV-9, ChinaÂ?s world television news service. The hostage-takers were called Â?separatist rebelsÂ?. China does not support Â?separatist rebelsÂ? in China or anywhere else.

Islamic terrorism seems to be a loose network; I doubt if there can be any central strategic controller. There is a strategic idea of uniting radical Islam against the non-Islamic world. Yet such a strategy also makes the rest of the world more united against the terrorists.

Strategically, Beslan pushes Russia, which is a major power and a nuclear one, towards working with the US against terrorism and in the Middle East. China and India have similar motives and a similar fear of terrorism. Europe remains as doubtful as ever, but becomes less important. Objectively, as the Marxists used to say, the Chechen separatists have strengthened Mr Bush; they have pushed Russia towards supporting his policy and they have helped him to win re-election.

We miss you, Mr. Reagan

From The prisoners' conscience by Natan Sharansky (Jerusalem Post, June 6, 2004)

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth -- a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil. Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

Those same critics used to love calling Reagan a simpleton who saw the world through a primitive ideological prism and who would convey his ideas through jokes and anecdotes. In our first meeting, he told me that Soviet premier Brezhnev and Kosygin, his second-in-command, were discussing whether they should allow freedom of emigration. "Look, America's really pressuring us," Brezhnev said, "maybe we should just open up the gates. The problem is, we might be the only two people who wouldn't leave." To which Kosygin replied, "Speak for yourself."

Copyright 1995-2004 The Jerusalem Post

Work here, Live There

Work here, Live There by Judy Maltz
Published by Globes on November 19, 2002

They usually meet twice a week: once on El Al flight 001 from Tel Aviv to New York on Sunday night, and again on the same return flight to Israel on Thursday.

Some of them have been doing this routine for 5-10 years; other began a short time ago. All of them, however, belong to the special species of frequent flyer people who live here and work there. They spend their weekends in Israel with their families, but they spend their mid-week working hours alone, in another country. How many people live this double life isn't clear; estimates range from the hundreds to the thousands. One thing however is sure: because of the gloomy state of the Israeli labor market, their number is growing.

Almost all of them are immigrants from Western countries, whether recent or from many years ago. It's their second passport that enables them to work legally outside of Israel. Their numbers include doctors, lawyers, accountants, brokers, and diamond traders. They are also noticeable on flights to London and Paris, not just New York. Many of those flying to New York go on to connecting flights to Chicago and Los Angeles. If you think Los Angeles is far away, one person is reported to manage a business in Australia, returning to his family in Israel only on holidays.

Most of these commuters are fathers, aged 40+, who have already enjoyed a successful overseas career. They immigrated to Israel for ideological reasons, but are unwilling to accept lower salaries, living standards, and status, and are therefore continuing their professional lives there. In the past two years, they have been joined by a large group of new immigrants, who came to Israel to enjoy the high-tech boom. When the boom turned to bust, they were among the first to get fired. The vast majority are religiously observant, living in towns like Beit Shemesh and Hashmona'im, which have become home in recent years to large numbers of native English-speaking observant Israelis, perhaps because the airport is close by.

Saul Zimmerman, a lawyer specializing in US tax law, has already spent five years on the trans-Atlantic line, since immigrating to Israel with his wife and five children, and settling in Beit Shemesh. He used to spend two weeks in the US, followed by two weeks in Israel. Lately he's been taking it easier, spending three weeks in Israel for every two weeks in the US.

Zimmerman knows "dozens more like himself" in Beit Shemesh, including a neighboring engineer, who spends one week in Israel with his family for every two months he works in the US. Another neighbor works in Russia for a US company, spending weekends in Israel with his family. Zimmerman is also friendly with a dentist from Beit Shemesh who immigrated to Israel and tried to open a clinic here, but without success. The dentist continues to work in his US clinic.

Zimmerman has been a partner in a Newark, New Jersey law firm for over 20 years. He came to Israel at the rather advanced age of 44, after putting together a customer portfolio in the US. "It was clear to me when I immigrated to Israel that I wouldn't be able to earn a living on the salaries being offered here," he says. "I of course made a few phone calls to make sure, but I quickly realized that if I work here, we'd have to drastically lower our standard of living."

That doesn't mean that Zimmerman has chosen an easier path. "All these flights are obviously an awful headache," he admits. "Even ordinary flying is no great pleasure. If you add to that the complaints of your wife, who has to handle everything alone, it's no pleasure at all."

Zimmerman can point to at least one advantage of frequent flying. "My wife and children always prepare me a shopping list of things you can't get here, or which are very expensive. I also use the time there to record TV programs that my wife likes." Zimmerman was the only one willing to be interviewed publicly on the subject. The others are understandably reluctant to be exposed; some even would not agree to talk anonymously. It seems that the chance to continue enjoying a high income, a "US salary", is not the only attractive feature of their work arrangement. At least until now, those making a living overseas were not required to report to the Israeli tax authorities. The good times, however, are scheduled to end with the implementation of the income tax reform. Up until now, anyone spending over 180 days a year outside Israel was not considered an Israeli resident for tax purposes, and was therefore exempt from tax reporting in Israel. Under the reform, what determines whether people are Israeli residents for tax purposes is not how long they spend in Israel, but whether their life is centered in Israel. "Clearly, if someone has a home in Israel, and their family is here, then their life is centered in Israel, even if they make a living working in the US," states former Income Tax Commissioner Doron Levy.

As an expert on tax law, Zimmerman is well aware of the problem. "I think the reform means that people like me will have to pay 3-4 times the amount of tax we do now. I think the result will be that some will try to cheat the authorities, while others will simply leave Israel," he says.

It is worth noting that quite a few of the so-called "new immigrants" working overseas never changed their status, and still enter Israel on tourist visas, although their families already have Israeli identity cards.

Mickey (a pseudonym), a dentist specializing in gums, immigrated to Israel two months ago with his wife and five children, settling in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem. He has already traveled back six times since. He flies to New York on Sunday night, starts his work week on Monday morning, works until Thursday afternoon, and goes straight from his clinic to catch his return flight to Israel.

For the tim ebeing, he's not complaining. "Everyone has to sleep. What difference does it make if I sleep in my bed at home or on a flight?" he asks. "This whole arrangement is harder on my wife, who has to handle everything alone. The only hard thing for me is day flights from New York to Israel. That's when I really feel the jetlag."

Globes: Why don't you start a clinic here in Israel?

"Mickey": "I was worried about the economy in Israel, and I think I can earn more in the US. In order to set up a clinic here, I'd have to start from scratch, and I've got five kids to feed. Maybe, sometime in the future, I'll set up a clinic here, but first I'd have to pass all the tests to get a license to work in Israel, and that's a real mess."

But the flights also cost a lot money, don't they?

"By my figuring, it costs me $30,000 a year, but if I had stayed in the US, I'd have had to go on paying tuition to private high schools for my kids, which would cost me $60,000 a year."

"Mickey" says that the fact that his family is not around enables him to work longer hours at the clinic with a clear conscience. He adds, "Now, when I'm in the US, I work 12-13 hours a day. Thank God, I have good friends, who invite me to a hot evening dinner at their home."

Ron Allswang, director of Tehilla, a voluntary organization that promotes immigration among the religiously observant, is well aware of the problems these families face as a result of the long separations. "There's no doubt that it creates a lot of family tension, especially because the wife usually has to do everything by herself. Most of these people believe they can't get along on an Israeli salary. I try to explain to them that it's not really true, because in Israel, they don't need private schools for their kids, for example. They also don't need to buy 4-5 suits a year, because people don"t wear suits here, but it's hard for them to believe that."

Allswang estimates that 10% of the new immigrants from Western countries still make a living from work in their native countries. "We're talking mostly about people earning six-figure salaries in the US, while in Israel, they'd have to settle for NIS 10,000 a month. People can work two or three weeks in the US, and earn as much as they would in 4-5 months in Israel. Out of this group, I know an accountant whose work is very seasonal, so he didn't even bother to take the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Israel admission exams. Other professionals, like lawyers, have expertise and specialties that are very hard to transfer to Israel."

How do the immigration authorities in Israel view this phenomenon? "We welcome creative solutions like this, which enable people to immigrate to Israel, and continue making a good living, says Jewish Agency immigration department director Leah Golan. "As distances become more manageable, the phenomenon grows. The economic situation is one factor, but not the only one. These people are usually middle-aged, with professional achievements they want to preserve, but they don't want to postpone their immigration because of this."

Golan says the Jewish Agency is aware that, in many families, the chief breadwinner will maintain tourist status. "As far as we're concerned, they don't have to change their status. If a family wants to immigrate to Israel, and one of the parents asks that that his or her status not be changed, we allow it, because what's important for us is the intention of settling in Israel."

Golan adds that with the arrangement of residence in Israel and work in the US, "We manage to bring many good people to Israel, quite well-off families."

Jacob (a pseudonym), a diamond trader living in Hashmona'im, explains why he and most of his friends, including doctors and lawyers, have been flying 2-3 times a month to New York for eight years. "I'd have to work three time as much here, for the same money," he says. "On the one hand, I'm away from home a lot, and when I'm in New York, I work at a crazy pace. On the other hand, though, when I'm here, I'm only with my family, and I actually wind up spending more time with them."

If there were an alternative, however, "Jacob" admits he'd grab it. "If I could find work that would pay me enough to feed my four kids, I wouldn't hesitate to take it. The way it looks now, though, I'll have to wait a long time for it to come along."

Nat Gordon, founder of Marksman International Personnel, which specializes in the placement of native English speakers, has noticed more and more new immigrants working overseas in recent years. "They came during the boom, got fired, and after looking fruitlessly for work for 6-9 months, they started working on overseas projects, or returned to their previous place of employment abroad, while leaving their families here. You could say it's part of the globalization process."

Marksman is now trying to promote a program for placing new English-speaking immigrants from Argentina as high-tech salespersons in Britain. "Some of them have a lot of experience in sales, and London is, of course, much closer than New York," he explains.

How, if at all, will the recession in Israel affect the transcontinental commuters? "I feel it in only one way," Zimmerman answers. "Before the recession, El Al operated many more flights to New York. As a frequent flyer, I could get an upgrade to business class on almost every flight, because there were always empty seats. Today, there are fewer flights, and most flights are full, so I don't get an upgrade. As insufferable as the flights were then, now they're even worse."

Extremist Muslim Group In London

Extremist Muslim Group In London
18:00 Sep 05, '04 / 19 Elul 5764


An extremist Islamic movement Al-Muhajiroun in Great Britain has announced its third annual commemoration of the 9/11 attacks, with a convention in London titled, "The Choice is in Your Hands: Either You're with the Muslims or with the Infidels."

Al-Muhajiroun leader Omar Bakri told London's Arabic-language A-Sharq Al-Awsat that the convention would feature Al-Qaeda "surprises," with the screening of a never-before-shown video. "We want the world to remember this operation," Bakri said, "that lifted the head of the [Muslim] nation." He called 9/11 "a cry of Jihad against unbelief and oppression," and said that the aim of remembering it is to "revive the commandment of Jihad among the youth of the [Muslim] nation."

MEMRI also reported that Bakri said that a lecture will be delivered on the Islamic religious roots of "slaughtering the infidels," and that there will be films by Al-Qaeda and other terror groups. In a most timely manner, a film will also be screened on the most recent operations by Chechnyan Moslem terrorists - though it will not include the school massacre of last week.

The organization planned a similar anniversary event a year ago, called "The Magnificent 19 [Suicide Attackers]," but was forced to downgrade it at the last minute, and sufficed with a smaller "Introduction to the Magnificent 19 Conference." In 2002, it held an event called, "A Towering Day in History."

Al-Muhajiroun claimed, as of last year, no fewer than 30 offices across Britain, with branches in France, Pakistan, Algeria and throughout the Middle East. British media report that al-Muhajiroun was linked to attempts to recruit British Muslims to fight in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and to British suicide bombers who struck a pub in Israel last year.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=68455

War against America

The Region: War against America by Barry Rubin, The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 30, 2004

Something remarkable has happened, even by the Middle East's usual standards. For the first time in history states in the region are conducting a systematic, covert war against the United States.

The question is, what can America do about it? Not much.

The war is being conducted in Iraq, mainly by Iran, but also by Syria. In both cases, evidence indicates that: Groups are being encouraged to attack and kill Americans in Iraq.

Recruitment of terrorists is being freely allowed, as is their training, financing, arming, and transport to the Iraqi border, where they are permitted to cross over to wage war on the US.

In Iran, citizens are being used in a war against the US in order to destabilize and try to take over Iraq.

To some extent, Teheran exercises influence over the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr, who has repeatedly set off fighting with the coalition forces. While the exact extent of Iranian involvement can be debated, the fact that it exists on a large scale is clear.

Let there be no mistake: This is a major development and sets a dangerous precedent for the future.

While there have been many reports about Syrian and Iranian involvement in the Iraq fighting, virtually no one has noted the implications. If Damascus and Teheran can get away with waging a direct war against America Â? not just a sporadic sponsorship of isolated terrorist attacks, as has happened in the past Â? how much credibility and deterrence will the US have against radical regimes?

Moreover, this is taking place at a time when US power and regional presence is at a peak.

Would there be violence in Iraq without this subversive intervention? Certainly. But it would be at a much lower level, meaning fewer American soldiers and civilians would be dying in Iraq, there would be more domestic support for continuing the commitment there, and the new Iraqi government would have a much better chance of reestablishing stability.

A variety of other charges can be brought against the two radical regimes.

Syria is suspected of hiding high-ranking Saddamist officials and weapons and of concealing mass-destruction materiel.

Iran had suspicious ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida after it was driven out of Afghanistan. At a minimum, it gave safe passage to anti-American terrorists and is probably allowing them to operate from its soil. In addition, it is busily developing nuclear weapons and will soon have them, as well as the missiles to deliver them to distant targets.

Why, then, can the US do so little about the problem?

First, it is overextended in Iraq, spending vast amounts of money and using pretty much all the available military forces.

Second, support for its presence in Iraq is already falling rapidly. There would be no domestic backing or international support for engaging in a wider war.

Third, after having been so criticized for going into Iraq in the first place, the administration would not have much credibility in charging that Iran and Syria are engaged in aggressive activities.

Finally, both Syria and Iran would be tougher adversaries than Iraq; the result would be horrendous, bloody, inconclusive, and endless wars if the US decided to fight them.

The US Congress recently passed a law to penalize Syria for its behavior, and there have long been sanctions against Iran. The former, however, is fairly meaningless, while the latter have inflicted costs on Teheran, but nowhere near enough to make it change policy.

In both cases, too, Europe is ready, even eager, to violate the US sanctions and tighten relations with these terrorist-sponsoring states.

Given US inability to do much about the problem, even President George W. Bush Â? who coined the phrase "axis of evil" and calls for subverting dictators by supporting democracy Â? has been careful not to play up the issue.

Imagine if it had been revealed five or 10 years ago that Iran was urging, ordering, organizing, and paying hundreds or even thousands of people to kill Americans on a daily basis. Now this situation is being taken for granted.

It is thus unlikely that the US, regardless of who is elected president in November, would take strong and direct action if Iran announced it possessed nuclear weapons. These are uncomfortable realities, and they must be faced.

No matter what anyone argues, this passivity is not going to change. Having gone into Iraq and found that step so controversial and relatively unsuccessful, the US is not going to undertake other offensive actions, whether or not they seem justifiable to some observers.

Arguably, any gain in the "fear factor" brought about by the US overthrow of Saddam is being eroded. Those who argue, in the words of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini two decades ago, that the US cannot do a "damn thing" are having that feeling reinforced today.

The Iraq war's outcome has undermined the credibility of US power no matter how long American forces remain in Iraq. Indeed, one could argue that the longer they remain, the worse the problem will become.

Al-Sadr Linked to Mass Killings

Al-Sadr Linked to Mass Killings, By Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, September 1, 2004

A U.S. military intelligence report says that followers of radical Shi'ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr imprisoned, killed and mutilated Iraqis who opposed his insurrection.

American intelligence officers are now investigating in the town of Najaf, the site of Sheik al-Sadr's bloody standoff with coalition forces. A U.S. military officer told The Washington Times that the command recently acquired photos of 15 to 20 mutilated bodies that appear to be Iraqis lying in a courtyard.

A written U.S. intelligence report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, puts the body count much higher, based on an Iraqi informant, some of whose information was confirmed by local police.

The report said that after last week's truce, Iraqi forces moved into buildings held by the radical cleric's Mahdi's Army militia and found the bodies.

"Inside the court building, Iraqi police found approximately 200 mutilated bodies taken by the Moqtada militia for speaking out against Moqtada al Sadr," said the intelligence report sent to the Pentagon and stamped "secret."

"Some of the prisoners had eyes and ears drilled out and others had their limbs and heads cut off. Some males had genitals cut off and shoved in their mouths. There was evidence of rape to men, women and children," according to the report.

The senior officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the number of bodies found is much less than 200. The source said that while it appears certain that the bodies exist, the circumstances of when and where the people were killed, and by whom, remained unknown yesterday.

"We don't have a complete picture of where they came from," the officer said. "We're trying to uncover what really happened before we are able to release information."

The source said that the U.S. command in Baghdad only learned of the deaths Sunday, and later acquired the photographs of mutilated bodies.

"There appears to be a large group of bodies that were uncovered," the officer said.

He said that a military-intelligence unit was in Najaf investigating the deaths, alongside Iraqi police.

Sheik al-Sadr has led several deadly uprisings in southern Iraq, unleashing his rifle-toting, ragtag army on coalition forces and innocent civilians. U.S. Army and Marine units have responded by attacking and killing scores of the fighters.

Sheik al-Sadr holed up in Najaf's main mosque for days before Iraq's leading Shi'ite, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, returned from Britain and helped negotiate a cease-fire on Thursday.

The sheik's aides say that he now may choose to enter politics. But if his Mahdi's Army is tied to the massacre of innocent Iraqis, he could face a criminal investigation.

"The commander of the Sadr movement, leader Muqtada Sadr, announced today in Najaf the end of all fighting in the whole of Iraq and the integration of his movement in the political process," Sheik Naim al-Qaabi said last week.

U.S. military sources have told The Times that Iranian money helped Sheik al-Sadr rise from an obscure cleric during Saddam's rule to an influential rebel who paid a large army, provided social services and opened a rabble-rousing newspaper.

Earlier this year, the coalition shut down the newspaper after it called for the killing of al-Sadr opponents. The U.S.-led allies also began arresting some of his top aides. Looking boxed in, Sheik al-Sadr openly called for a rebellion that touched off a series of urban battles against American soldiers.

The U.S. intelligence report obtained by The Times states that most of Sheik al-Sadr's recruits were criminals that Saddam released from prison weeks before the March 2003 invasion.

The report states, "They slaughtered the innocent people. Most of the al-Mahdi were criminals jailed during the former regime and released by Saddam before his capture."

The New York Times' Quagmire

George Bush at the 2004 GOP convention

In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to allied forces, a journalist wrote in the New York Times, "Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. [European] capitals are frightened. In every [military] headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed." End quote. Maybe that same person's still around, writing editorials. Fortunately, we had a resolute president named Truman, who with the American people persevered, knowing that a new democracy at the center of Europe would lead to stability and peace. And because that generation of Americans held firm in the cause of liberty, we live in a better and safer world today.

Group Village Idiots

WSJ, Best of the Web, 9/1/2004

Street protest is central to the mythology of the liberal-left in America, which romanticizes (rightly) the civil-rights marches of the early 1960s and (less rightly) the antiwar demonstrations of the late '60s and early '70s. In contrast, there's nothing like this on the right, except for the antiabortion movement and the occasional ad hoc protest, like the one in Florida against the Clinton administration's abduction and deportation of Elian Gonzalez.

The liberal media generally present these protests as if they're wholesome, all-American expressions of opinion, glossing over the reality that the protesters are a motley collection of extreme partisans, antieverything nihilists and single-issue fanatics. This allows liberal elites to imagine that their loathing of the president is a populist posture.

Need to fight anti-Semitism WITHIN Israel?

Mass Immigration's Unexpected Victim
by Eugene Girin
Sep 01, '04

The democratic nations of Western Europe and North America are not the only countries whose ethno-cultural character and stability are threatened by mass immigration. Unmonitored immigration is also wreaking havoc in Israel. Jew-hatred in the Jewish State - a seemingly impossible paradox - was made possible by mass immigration.

In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of people left the dying Evil Empire for Israel and are continuing to leave the post-Soviet republics. This aliyah (return to Zion) was the biggest yet in the history of Israel. However, because of the misguided policies of the Israeli government and institutions such as the Jewish Agency, an ever-growing number of the Soviet immigrants are not even Jewish.

The idiotic "grandfather clause" of the Israeli Law of Return allows persons who only have one Jewish grandparent, and are thus only one-quarter Jewish, to receive asylum and citizenship in Israel. In addition, the relative ease with which fake birth certificates and passports can be obtained on the post-Soviet black market allows ever growing numbers of people who have nothing in common with Jews or Judaism to come to Israel. As a result, out of the nearly one million Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel, about 300,000 are not Jewish.

These Russians and Ukrainians flock to Israel to escape the lawlessness and poverty of their homelands. This of course, contradicts the whole purpose of the Law of Return and the immigration policy of the Jewish State - to allow Jews to come to their historic and cultural homeland. Israel was not established to be a haven for the world's wretched masses. Israel is not meant to be a multicultural conglomeration, but a nation-state, a sovereign government representing a particular national people.

The behavior of many of the non-Jewish immigrants to Israel is chillingly similar to the disrespectful and disorderly behavior of illegal Mexican immigrants to the United States and Muslim immigrants to Western Europe. Russian thugs in Israel have perpetrated dozens of anti-Jewish incidents. These incidents were all documented by the Israeli Information Center for the Victims of Anti-Semitism run by Zalman Gilichenski, a rabbi from the former USSR, and other Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Jews are the only Israeli community that pays any attention to Russian anti-Semitism in Israel and are the only people that try to fight it.

In the years 2000-2003, at least 500 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded (with many more unrecorded) in which Russians were arrested for spraying anti-Jewish graffiti, desecrating synagogues and attacking Jews. Synagogues were defaced in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox town in central Israel, cemeteries were vandalized in another religious town, Ramat Beit Shemesh, and Jews were attacked all over the country (Netivot, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, northern Israel), some by openly neo-Nazi bandits. At a soccer match in Haifa in which Israel played the Russian Federation, drunk Russian youths shouted down the Israeli national anthem and yelled anti-Semitic slogans - an incident almost identical to the infamous anti-American debauchery of Mexican fans at a soccer game in Los Angeles a few years ago, except that it was "Hatikva" that was booed down instead of the "Star Spangled Banner".

These shocking developments culminated in the establishment of a neo-Nazi Russian-language website in Israel in the summer of 2003. The website was created by Russian immigrants - activists of the "White Israeli Union". They define their enemies as Jews, Arabs and foreign workers from other countries, including Thailand and the Philippines. The neo-Nazi activists call themselves "Ilya from Haifa" and "Andrei from Arad" and are pictured giving the Nazi salute. Ironically, one of them was drafted into the Israeli army and is giving the salute in an Israeli uniform. Fortunately, the website was shut down and the activists were arrested, according to Tommy Lapid, the atheist liberal in charge of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. However, no trial took place and the investigation was wrapped up suspiciously fast.

Ariel Sharon and the rest of the Israeli leadership, along with an overwhelming majority of Israelis, do not see mass non-Jewish immigration as a problem. Recently, Sharon stated that he plans to bring one million Jews from the Russian Federation to Israel. The only question is where will Arik get so many Russian Jews, since the Jewish population of Russia is below 500,000. It is obvious that Sharon does not want to consider the tremendous threat that is being posed to the already fragile stability and ethnic character of the Jewish State. Sharon is hoping to use the non-Jewish immigrants as cheap and docile manpower in the Israeli army and hopes to offset the alarming rise of the Arab population by substituting one hateful and growing minority with another. Quite a plan, Arik!

Just like the Mexican invasion of the American Southwest and the Muslim takeover of French and Belgian cities, the mass influx of hostile aliens into Israel will have ever more detrimental effects. Prime Minister Sharon would be well advised to read Jean Raspail and Michelle Malkin before he opens Israel's doors to a mass Russian invasion.

Lest You Think It's Only Israel, Iraq, and Manhattan

A Timeline for Terror in Russia

(CNN) -- Armed attackers on Wednesday seized a school in a town in southern Russia in the latest in a series of terrorist attacks in Russia that have killed hundreds of people. Here is a timeline of the most significant recent strikes:

August 31, 2004 - A female suicide bomber kills nine people and herself, and wounds 51 others when she detonates a bomb outside a subway station in northeastern Moscow.

August 24, 2004 - Two Russian passenger planes are blown up almost simultaneously, killing 89. Federal Security Service focusing on whether acts of terrorism brought down the jets after traces of explosives found in wreckage of planes.

June 22, 2004 - Rebels seize an interior ministry building in Ingushetia, near Chechnya, killing at least 92 people, including the acting head of the Ingush Interior.

February 6, 2004 - A rush-hour blast kills at least 30 people and injures 70 on a metro train in Moscow.

December 9, 2003 - A suicide bomber in central Moscow kills at least five people.

December 5, 2003 - An explosion on a commuter train in the Stavropol region north of Chechnya kills at least 36 people and injures more than 150.

September 3, 2003 - Six people are killed in an explosion on board a commuter train near the Northern Caucasus spa town of Pyatigorsk, but police say it is not the work of Chechen rebels.

August 1, 2003 - A suicide bomber kills at least 50 people at a military hospital in the town of Mozdok in North Ossetia bordering Chechnya.

July 5, 2003 - Two women suicide bombers kill 15 other people when they blow themselves apart at an open-air rock festival at Moscow's Tushino airfield. 60 are injured.

June 5, 2003 - A woman bomber ambushes a bus carrying Russian air force pilots near Chechnya, blowing it up and killing herself and 18 other people.

May 14, 2003 - At least 16 people are killed in a suicide bomb attack during a religious festival in the town of Iliskhan-Yurt, east of Grozny. 145 are wounded.


May 12, 2003 - Two suicide bombers drive a truck full of explosives into a government administration and security complex in Znamenskoye, in northern Chechnya. Fifty-nine people are killed, and scores hurt.

December 27, 2002 - Chechen suicide bombers ram vehicles into the local government headquarters in Grozny, bringing down the roof and floors of the four-story building. Chechen officials say about 80 people killed.

October 23, 2002 - About 50 Chechen rebels seize a Moscow theater and take about 800 hostages. After a three-day siege Russian forces storm the building using gas, killing most of the rebels and 115 hostages.

August 8, 2000 - A bomb in a busy Moscow underpass kills eight people.

July 2-3, 2000 - Chechen guerrillas launch five suicide bomb attacks on bases of Russian forces within 24 hours. In the deadliest, at least 54 people are killed at a police base near Grozny.

June 7, 2000 - In the first attack of its kind in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, two Russian special police are killed in a suicide car-bombing near the regional capital Grozny.

September 1999 - Bombs destroy apartment blocks in Moscow, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk, killing 200. The government blames Chechen rebels, who in turn accuse Russia's secret services. Then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin responds by sending troops into Chechnya for the first time since 1997.

August 31, 1999 - A bomb explodes in an underground shopping center near the Kremlin, injuring 20 people.

January 1996 - 350 Chechen militants seized a hospital in Kizlyar, eastern Chechnya, and took more than 3,000 people hostage. In military operation to free them, 65 civilians and soldiers were killed.

June 1995 - Chechen rebels seize hundreds of hostages in a hospital in southern Russian town of Budennovsk. More than 100 die as Russian commandos launch botched raid. Rebels allowed to leave for Chechnya after five days in return for freeing captives.