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Why Hillary Lost

I think Don Surber has hit the nail on the head.

Charming

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that the state of Israel is a "stinking corpse" that is destined to disappear, the French news agency AFP reported.

"Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken," the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as having said.

"Today the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation."

Ahmadinejad further stated that Israel "has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese" - referring to the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006.

I'm sorry, but when he talks about stinking corpses and annihilation, all I can think of is this:

                            Is this what he has in mind? 

Drawing Class

New pics up in my art diary.

Israel at 60

A video from the American Jewish Committee, with original footage of the 1947 UN partition vote:

From Front Page Magazine, a comparison of earlier Israel to the Israel of today:

Growing up in the Israel of the 1960’s meant experiencing a bonding intimacy of idealism grounded in the soil of this newly liberated Jewish homeland. The Holocaust was put behind us, and was perhaps even a taboo for discussion. But the lessons of the Holocaust remained fresh and real to young Israelis.

Self-reliance and sacrifice were the demands of the day. Israel in the early 1960’s was an idealistic society and nobody needed to be lectured on Zionism. Israelis resented anyone’s fulminations on idealistic Zionism, since it was practiced rather than discussed.

In today’s Israel, the leftist post-Zionists no longer see Zionism beyond a topic for discussion. Does it indicate the death of Zionism and an end to the idealism that made several generations of pioneers toil the soil and shed their blood to make the dream of a Jewish State a living reality? Not really!

The State of Israel is a reality cemented in established institutions, rooted in a strong and flourishing civil society that enjoys a free press, the rule of law, and a democratic government. Like all modern states, Israel is no longer a “developing country,” but part of the developed world with an average per capita income of $30,000. Its GNP is larger than that of all its Arab neighbors combined and it exports to other western countries some of the most sophisticated computer technology, optics, electronics, military hardware and software, and the best medical devices that high–tech can produce. While the lives of many of those living in the greater Tel Aviv and Haifa areas may resemble those of western Europeans and Americans, the pioneering spirit can still be found in the communities of Judea, Samaria, Golan, the Negev and Galilee and even in a few Jerusalem neighborhoods.

The intimacy of a small-beleaguered nation of the 1960’s has, in 2008, given way to great material expectations. The streets of Tel Aviv are a testament to such material changes. In the 1960’s, only two out of ten Israelis owned a motor vehicle. Today, it is about 9 out of 10. Israelis own the latest and the best gadgets, and the fashion leaders in New York, LA, Paris, or London can be assured that what’s “hip” in Soho is “cool” in Tel Aviv too.

Veteran Israelis who put their lives on the line in successive wars have sought more comfortable lives for their children. They have reasoned that if their sons and daughters must still depend on arms to preserve their country from attack, at least let them enjoy the luxuries of life. Israelis travel abroad more than virtually any other people per capita. Israelis can be found trekking the far corners of the earth in what has become a rite-of-passage following completion of their compulsory military service.

Link

Six decades of Israeli history as seen in photographs from private albums.

The European Jewish Press discusses commemoration plans:

Israel was founded on May 14, 1948, when its first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared statehood as Britain's UN mandate over historic Palestine was expiring.

Holidays in Israel, however, are marked according to the Hebrew calender, so the celebrations are to begin on May 7, the eve of what in Israel is known as Independence Day.

As part of dozens of additional projects, children have begun collecting 1.5 million marbles, symbolizing the 1.5 Jewish children who died in the Nazi Holocaust. Artists plan to use these marbles to construct a memorial to them.

A highlight of the celebrations is a three-day international conference hosted by President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem.

Many of the world's leaders  are to attend the festivities, including US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former Soviet president Michael Gorbachev and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Like Bush, some of the other dozen presidents on the list have been to Israel before, but this will be a first visit for Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar, among others.

Other presidents to attend the conference include Victor Yushchenko of Ukraine, resident Lech Kaczynski of Poland, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Michael Saakashvili of Georgia, Stjepan Mesic of Croatia, Bamir Topi of Albania, Blaise Campoare of Burkina Faso, Danilo Türk of Slovenia and Valdis Zatlers of Latvia.

As a Nobel Prize winner, Peres invited other Nobel Prize laureates, at least seven of whom will be coming to Israel to share their views of the future.

Prominent figures from the private sector who will attend include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

The agenda for the conference covers a myriad of topics, including the future of the world economy, the content and meaning of a Jewish state, the extent to which Jewish tradition is relevant in tomorrow's world, whether a green Israel is possible, the tipping point of the geopolitical arena, Israel's ability to continue to be a leading contender in the world of science and cultivating future leaders of Israel and the Jewish people.

Link

Columnist David Brumer asks why Israel is cast as the obstacle to peace in the region when it has "said yes to virtually every partition plan put forth in modern times while the Palestinians have said no" :

For more than 3,000 years, Jews have been spiritually as well as corporeally bonded to the land of Israel. In 1921, Winston Churchill proclaimed, "It is manifestly right that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should have a national center and a national home. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated?" For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the recreation of a sovereign Jewish state "is the most significant event of the 20th century." He described Israel's re-establishment as "the 20th century's miracle" and noted that "defending its existence is an international duty."

So why, 60 years later, or 3,060 years, if you will, is Israel living under such a barrage of existential threats? Why does Israel still have to prove itself worthy of being included in the family of nations? Why indeed is Israel singled out as the one nation on Earth whose very existence is questioned? Cynthia Ozick bristles at the "the scandal of calling into question a living nation's existence ... The Big Lie that demonizes Israel and contaminates the viler estuaries of what is nowadays dubbed 'the international community' ... ."

Yet among "progressive" intellectuals, especially in Europe, it is axiomatic that Israel is not merely "not doing enough to for peace in the Middle East," but is responsible for Islamist "outrage" against the West; that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains at the core of the Arab world's grievances, and, if only this conflict could be solved, peace would ensue. Leaving aside the illogical nature of this proposition (al-Qaida and other radical Islamists have as much a gripe against Christian nations whom they see as usurping their place in history), it is hard to find a country that has striven more for peaceful co-existence with its neighbors than Israel. No nation has taken more demonstrable risks for peace. Israel proved its intention to live in harmony with its neighbors when it enacted peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Israel has shown its willingness to make painful sacrifices in the name of peace, withdrawing from all of Gaza in 2005 while evacuating more than 8,000 Israeli citizens from their homes.

Israel has said yes to virtually every partition plan put forth in modern times while the Palestinians have said no, starting with the Peel Commission in 1937, which would have given the Palestinians nearly 80 percent of the land between the "River and the Sea." In 1947, the Palestinians again rejected statehood on 45 percent of the land, while Israel agreed to the remaining 55 percent divided into three cantons (60 percent of which is desert). Finally, in 2000 Israel offered the Palestinians more than 96 percent of contiguous West Bank land and all of Gaza in the hopes that the century-old conflict could end. The Palestinian response to that offer was the Second Intifada, more aptly understood by Israelis as a Terror War unleashed against the Jewish State.

Yet Israel continues to be viewed as the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

Link

Why we should support Israel:

The last living witness to the birth of Israel, at 93, recalls what it was like:

Arieh Handler participated in Israel's birth on two separate occasions. The lesser event, in his view, was on May 14, 1948, when he was among some 200 persons invited to the Tel Aviv hall where David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the state. Handler, 93 this month, is believed to be the only one of those present still alive.

"...The Arabs were quite strong and the British didn't like us," said Handler. "We didn't know whether we could oppose the British empire."

Some delegates favored accepting the American proposal for very different reasons; they believed that if the partition proposal were scrapped the Jewish state could expand beyond the territory allocated to it in the UN resolution.

The debate was stormy, Handler remembers, and lasted close to six hours. "It seemed at times that people might come to blows."

In the end, it was Ben-Gurion who decided the issue with a passionate speech. Despite the fact that neighboring Arab states had 40 times the population of the Yishuv, he said, and despite the abundance of weapons in the hands of the Arabs and the assistance they were receiving from the British, no Jewish settlement had yet been captured or abandoned. (This would change shortly.) The most difficult test still lay ahead, with the incursion of the Arab armies, he said, but the Yishuv would prevail if it summoned up the powers inherent in it.

When the issue was put to a vote, Ben-Gurion won a clear victory. "We have decided," said the concluding resolution, "relying on the authority of the Zionist movement and the support of the entire Jewish people, that upon the termination of the mandatory regime there shall be an end to foreign rule in Palestine and the governing body of the Jewish state shall come into being."

Says Handler: "This event was more important than the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence. We felt at the time very clearly that the meeting was decisive."

Long article - read the whole thing.

From the Jewish Chronicle (London), some Haiku:

Haiku Mania

By Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

To mark Israel’s upcoming 60th anniversary, we challenged JC readers to write a haiku —the traditional Japanese verse form — to sum up what the country means to you.

This obviously struck a chord, with over 100 readers taking on the tricky three-line, 17-syllable structure of the haiku to express views about Israel, from the poetic to the political.

A variety of themes emerged, with many entrants extolling Israel for providing oppressed Jews with a homeland, this example by Ruth Landsman being fairly typical:

Israel means to me
A safe haven for all Jews,
A place to call home

A sizeable number of readers chose to lament the enduring conflict with the Palestinians. Witness this entry from Hannah Hutchinson:

Jew and Muslim, sons
Each of Abraham — long-term
Sibling rivalry

Some opted for the humorous approach (which we said might win extra points), and found a rich source of amusement in the restrictions of the haiku form itself. This from Barry Hyman:

Eretz at sixty?
How can you do it justice
In just five syllab…?

Food, naturally enough, figured large, particularly falafel, as this example by 10-year-old Jasmine Sadlik demonstrates:

Feeding the people
Falafel in pitta bread
Ever so tasty!

Falafel was one attraction that inspired Adam Mizler to express his enthusiasm for Israel. There was another:

Beautiful women,
And the best fresh falafels…
Man, I love Israel!

Some, like Rose Abrahamson, simply strived to conjure up a memorable image:

The train was chugging
Through sweet-scented orange groves
To Jerusalem

A few more:

She-ma Yis-ra-el,
A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu,
A-do-nai E-chad

Moshe Rabbennu

(sent in by
Jonathan Samuel)

Children of Israel;
Wandered for thousands of years.
Where were the adults?

Adam Grossman

Sixty years have passed
It’s about time we had peace
In the Middle East

Joseph Adams

Shalom Aleichem
Two brothers in God’s own house
Salaam Aleikum

David Ury

Sixty years ago
Israel became our homeland
But we’re still fighting

Laura Gold

Tattoos on bodies
Dent on cars. Cellphone clubbers
In non-kosher bars

Monty Goldin

I'm not reprinting them, but also included were some anti-Israel haikus.  The author of the article deplores them and so do I.

Some of you might be familiar with the fact that Israel has a long history.  There's an Ancient Book called, "The Bible" that tells the story. Jews read it in its original Hebrew, one section at a time, in temple throughout the year.

American Thinker has some of the background:

The nation of Israel is about to commemorate its 60th birthday. That's the official, politically correct, line. But to be truly accurate, a cake celebrating the milestone should have more candles than 60 -- thousands more.

While it is most certainly true that David Ben-Gurion stood in Tel Aviv in front of a portrait of Zionist Patriarch Theodor Herzl and proclaimed Israel's independence from Britain on May 14, 1948, (immediately after which the armies of five Arab nations attacked the Jewish state), this year's celebration would more accurately be "Israel 3,200" or perhaps even "Israel 3,400."

In other words, the popularly promoted notion that Israel was "founded", "created", or "established" just in 1948 to give the Jews a piece of land by the Western powers out of guilt over the Holocaust is not accurate. Israel's detractors use this claim to try to delegitimize the Middle East's only true democracy.

After all, Israel has really been in existence since at least 1200 BCE and some experts place the establishment of Israel as the home of the Jewish people as early as 1406 BCE.

It is dutifully recorded in Scripture (Book of Joshua, ArtScroll Edition) that after the Children of Israel had gathered on the eastern bank of the Jordan River, as instructed to do so by G-d, that "When the bearers of the Ark [of the Covenant] arrived at the Jordan and the feet of the Kohanim, the bearers of the Ark, were immersed in the edge of the water - and the Jordan was overflowing its banks all the days of the harvest season - the waters descending from upstream stood still and they rose up in one column ... and was cut off; and the people crossed opposite Jericho. ... [A]ll Israel crossing on dry land until the entire nation finished crossing the Jordan." Joshua 3:14-17

Next, G-d commanded Joshua to select 12 men - one from each Israelite tribe -- to each gather one stone from amidst the river bed, bring it into the land of Israel and erect a memorial "and these stones shall remain a remembrance for the children of Israel forever." Joshua 4:7.

Scripture chronicles the date of this miracle: "The people ascended from the Jordan on the tenth of the first month, and encamped at Gilgal at the eastern end of Jericho." Joshua 4:19.

Nisan is the first month of the Jewish calendar, and this year the 10^th of Nisan coincides with April 15 in the Gregorian calendar. [Note: Though Nisan is the first month, the Jewish New Year is marked in a different month.]

The Children of Israel -- better known today as the Jewish People -- has inhabited the land of Israel continuously ever since, despite a string of wars, conquests and expulsions.

Read the rest.

The Original Source.

Yahoo-Bris

Yahoo-Bris is the title of an article which turned out to be about a different subject than I was anticipating.

The Number One Song the Day I was Born

Oh. My. God.

Lisbon Antiqua by Nelson Riddle.

I must be freaking ancient.

And you?

Yikes

This is enough to turn one off to human beings entirely - both male and female.

Maybe it's time to build an ark, just in case the screed referenced above is The Last Straw. 

Or maybe instead, build a starship, and seek out new life and new civilizations.

Boldly going, or perhaps more likely, sneaking quietly away from such angst...leaving no forwarding address.

Horror: Placing Ideology Before Your Child

This is terribly wrong. 

There's Something About Hillary

Scrappy, ambitious, tough as nails, Hillary Clinton is earning a grudging respect from some on the right.  She is being criticized by the same people who criticize the right, and the way she's going about fighting them is not going unnoticed:

'Strange new respect' is the term coined by Tom Bethell, an unhappy conservative, to describe the press adulation given those who drift leftward, those who grow "mature," "wise," and "thoughtful" as they cause apoplexy in right-wingers, and leave their old allies behind. But no new respect has been quite so peculiar as that given by some on the right to Hillary Clinton--since 1992 their ultimate nightmare--whose possible triumph in this year's election has been the source of their most intense fear. Lately, however, a strange thing has happened: A tactical hope to see her campaign flourish--to keep the brawl going and knock dents in Obama--has changed to, at least in some cases, a grudging respect for the lady herself. Actually, they may not have changed quite so much as she has (who knows, perhaps merely changed in her image and tactics), but the Hillary of May 2008 is radically different from the Hillary of two months ago, much less the one of last year, or of eight years back. And this one (at least till the nomination is settled) has some traits the right wing can love. ...It is a truism that liberals think people are formed by exterior forces around them and are helpless before them, while conservatives think individuals make their own destiny. Liberals love victims and want them to stay helpless, so they can help them, with government programs; while conservatives love those who refuse to be victims, and get up off the canvas and fight. Hillary may still be a nanny-state type in some of her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny. If the fittest survive, she intends to be one of them. This takes her part of the way towards a private conversion. She is acting like one of our own. If this weren't enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. ...And what caused this display of intense irritation? She's running a right-wing campaign. She's running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan--"The Bear in the Forest"--ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she's doing it with much the same symbols. ...And better--or worse--she is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush. Against an opponent who shops for arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances, she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now, she'll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or at her posh mansion on Embassy Row. In the right-wing conspiracy, this adaptation has not gone unobserved. "Hillary has shown a Nixonian resilience and she's morphing into Scoop Jackson," runs one post on National Review's blog, The Corner: She's entering the culture war as a general. All of this has made her a far more formidable general election candidate. She's fighting the left and she's capturing the center. She's denounced MoveOn.org. She's become the Lieberman of the Democratic Party. The left hates her and treats her like Lieberman. . . . Obama is distancing himself from Wright and Hillary is getting in touch with O'Reilly. The culture war has come to the Democratic Party.

Read the whole thing.

It's all calculated, of course.  Given Obama's appeal to the far left, Hillary's only chance was to run to his right.  But what does she really think?  What are her real views? That's the real problem with someone who will say anything to be elected, who will sway in whatever direction the prevailing winds seem to blow.  We just don't know.

Holocaust Remembrance

An hour long video that brought me to tears. The story of children who miraculously survived after watching their families be murdered before their eyes. Their memories have such incredible power, even now.

Holocaust survivors in this Russian-language documentary detail their experience of resistance, betrayal, rescue, and the desire for revenge.  Directed by Pavel Chukhraj (Academy Award Nominee for his film, The Thief).

link

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)

I wanted to post this yesterday, but never had a chance. 

According to the YouTube site:

The song "Ani Ma'amin"(sung here by the miami boys choir) was chosen for backround music because this is the song death camp prisoners would often sing when walking into the gas chambers to die. The lyrics, from Hebrew translated to English are:

"Ani ma'amin b'emunah shleimah beviat haMashiach, v'af al pi sheyitmameiha, im kol zeh achakeh lo b'chol yom sheyavo."

"I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and though he may tarry, nevertheless I await his coming every day."

I am reminded of one of the quotes in the back of our shul's High Holiday prayer book:

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when not feeling it
I believe in God even when He is silent.

- Inscription found on the wall of a cellar in Cologne, where Jews hid from the nazis.

****************

And also, from the Last Testament of Yossel Rakover, during the last hours of the Warsaw Ghetto on April 28, 1943:

I die peacefully, but not complacently; persecuted, but not enslaved; embittered, but not cynical; a believer, but not a supplicant; a lover of God, but no blind amen-sayer of His.

I have followed Him even when He repulsed me.  I have followed His commandments even when He castigated me for it; I have loved Him and I love Him even when He has hurled me to the earth, tortured me to death, made me an object of shame and ridicule.

And these are my last words to You, my wrathful God; nothing will avail You in the least.  You have done everything to make me lose my faith in You, but I die exactly as I have lived, crying:

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."

"Into Your hands, O Lord, I consign my soul."