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We are leaving tomorrow. I'll be gone 10 days and then, a couple of days after I get back, my daughter will be coming in for a 2-week visit. So, this blog may be a bit sparse of new material for a bit. I'll be taking my computer with me and will hopefully have online access, but I may not have the opportunity to post anything other than a picture or two.
And Happy Bunnies & Eggs to those who celebrate bunnies, eggs and Easter.
US taxes support violence and hatred of Israel:
The declared "military wing" of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party took credit for two of seven rockets fired into Israel on Tuesday, vowed to break a Gaza ceasefire and told WND that US financial aid pledged for Fatah security forces will be used to "attack the Zionists."
"Even if the American money and weapons reach only members of Fatah who are not involved in the resistance, it will find its way to the Palestinian resistance and be utilized for attacks against the Zionists," said Abu Ahmed, the northern Gaza commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group.
Abu Ahmed was referring to $59 million the Bush administration announced Tuesday it will send to strengthen Fatah security forces.
"This money is an attempt to generate civil war between Hamas and Fatah and to buy off Fatah. But we will never leave the political line of Yasser Arafat, who would not give up even one inch of Palestine," charged Abu Ahmed.
...The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the declared military branch of Fatah, is responsible for scores of shootings and rocket firings, and together with the Islamic Jihad terror group has taken responsibility for every suicide bombing in Israel the last two years, including an attack in Tel Aviv last April that killed eight Israelis and American teenager Daniel Wultz.
On Tuesday, seven rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip aimed at nearby Jewish communities.
Abu Ahmed told WND his group fired two of the projectiles while the other five were launched by Islamic Jihad. He said the two rockets fired today were "dedicated to Yasser Arafat."
An opinion piece from the Washington Times:
Palestinian Handouts - Linda Chavez
One year ago, the U.S. and the EU decided to cut off aid to the PA after Palestinians elected Hamas, a U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist organization, to lead their government. Now, it turns out, Western sources, including the U.S. government, have actually put more money into the West Bank and Gaza since Hamas took over than in previous years. The Palestinians will never have a better life if they continue their destructive, self-defeating hatred of the Jewish state and its people. Palestinians have developed a culture built on hate. Until they learn to devote their energies into helping themselves rather than tearing down each other and their neighbors, we should not spend one more dime on aid.
And, as terrorist rockets rain down on Israel, help that it has offered to Palestinians has been refused by the PA:
PA terrorists fired seven Kassam rockets towards Israel on Wednesday morning. No one was hurt in the volleys, though damage was caused by one rocket.
A volley of four rockets landed north of Gaza, apparently aimed at Ashkelon, while another Kassam fell in the area of Sderot, causing some damage. One rocket ended up in the ocean, while another fell short and landed in Gaza.
At the same time, Israel offered to advance humanitarian aid towards the Palestinian Authority, following the sewage facility collapse in northern Gaza on Tuesday. Six people were killed, and some are still missing as a result of the flooding that destroyed 70% of the homes in a Bedouin village. The PA refused to accept Israel's help, except for allowing one of the wounded to be evacuated to an Israeli hospital.
From the Jewish Virtual Library (Part 1: Budapest):
In the early 18th Century, more Jews lived in Prague than anywhere else in world. In 1708, Jews accounted for one-quarter of Prague’s population. Unfortunately, the golden age ended with the ascension of Empress Maria Theresa who expelled the Jews from Prague from 1745-1748.
The Jews returned to Prague and conditions improved during the reign of Emperor Josef II (1780-90). Joseph II issued the Edict of Toleration in October 1781, which affirmed the notion of religious tolerance. He allowed Jews to participate in all forms of trade, commerce, agriculture and the arts. Jews were encouraged to build factories and school systems. Jews were even allowed to attend institutions of higher learning. In the chedar (study rooms), a western-style education was encouraged, Jews were not only taught Hebrew and Yiddish, but also basic accounting. The government also required Jews to switch their business records from Hebrew and Yiddish to German to facilitate better government monitoring. In fact, the Jews appreciated Joseph II so much that they named the Jewish town, Josefov, after him, and this name still exists today.
During the 19th Century, Jews gradually became emancipated. Temporary civil equality was granted to Jews under the law in 1849. The ghetto was abolished in 1852 and Josefov became a district of Prague. In the 1800's, Jews became caught up in the culture wars between the Czech-speaking middle class and the German-speaking members of the Austro-Hungarian empire. From the 1830's to the 1870's, Jews began to adopt the German language and assimilated German cultural patterns. Following the 1870's, however, the growth of Czech nationalism increased the level of antagonism felt by the Jews. By the last quarter of the 19th Century, a network of Jewish institutions dedicated to Czech-Jewish acculturation emerged; however, not all Jews supported them, some remained faithful to German language and culture, while others favored Zionism.
In 1899, Zionism began to become popular in Prague among the young professionals and students. They formed their own Zionist organization, Bar Kochba, which published Selbstwehr, Self-defense, a Zionist biweekly publication in Prague from 1907-1938. Conflict between the Zionists and the Czech Jewish nationalists existed; Jewish nationalists (Zionists) did not want to be involved in the national conflict over the usage of German and Czech language, while the Czech-Jewish assimilationists were involved because they resented the German denigration of Czech culture and also wanted to have a rapprochement between Jews and Slavs in Czech lands.
German was spoken widely among many members of the Prague Jewish community and continued to be taught despite the tensions with the Czech-Jewish nationalists. During the first decades of the 20th Century, German-speaking Jews in Prague produced a large body of internationally acclaimed literature. The most famous of these writers were Franz Kafka, Max Brod and Franz Werfel. This is the last generation of writers and intellectuals before World War II.
On March 14, 1939, Slovakia declared independence from Prague and signed the Treaty of Protection with Nazi Germany. The next day, Germany occupied Czech lands. At the outbreak of World War II, 55,000 Jews lived in Prague, almost 20 percent of the city’s population. At least two-thirds of the Jewish population of Prague perished in the Holocaust.
In the Czech republic, about 26,000 members of the Czech Jewish community escaped and emigrated to various countries and regions, including Palestine, the U.S., South America and Western Europe. Not all Czech Jews were so fortunate, 92,000 Jews remained in occupied Czech lands. Seventy-four thousand of the Czech Jews were imprisoned in Terezin and 80 percent of those were deported to Auschwitz, Maidanek, Treblinka and Sobibor. Other Czech Jews were sent directly to death camps.
Following the war, about 13,000 Czech Jews remained. By 1950, half of them emigrated to Israel.
In May 1945, as Germany was being defeated, the Soviet Army entered Prague. A provisional government was installed, but the Soviet presence enabled the Communist party to gain influence. In February, 1948 the provisional government was ousted, and the Communist Party took power. From 1948 to 1949, the Soviet block supported the newly created State of Israel and therefore allowed Jews in the Czech Republic to immigrate to Israel. However, following 1949 emigration was virtually impossible and Jewish life was stifled by the Communist regime.
Communist rule was unpopular and ruthless and a movement demanding socialism with a human face gradually emerged in the 1960's. In 1968, a Slovak Communist, Alexander Dubcek, became the party leader and, in a movement called Prague Spring, began to introduce sweeping reforms to make the government more democratic. The Soviet Union disapproved of these changes and, together with the troops of other Soviet-bloc countries, invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The subsequent period of so-called normalization wiped out all democratic trends and intensified the stagnation in all spheres of life.
As change began to sweep through Eastern Europe in the late 1980's, Czechs more openly protested and called for reform. Demonstrations resulted in the resignation of the Communist party leadership in November 1989. Alexander Dubcek, the Prague Spring reformer, was elected chairman of parliament and dissident playwright Václav Havel, the acknowledged opposition leader, was named president. In June 1990, the country held its first free election since 1946. On January 1, 1993, the country split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Prague, the historical capital of the region since the Ancient Kingdom, was adopted as the capital of the Czech Republic.
The Jewish Community Today
Today, about 1,700 people are associated with the Jewish community in Prague, however, a revival of Jewish life is occurring. Many Jews found it easier to be quiet and hide their identity during the Communist era and so many people learned of being Jewish only after 1989. The average age in Prague’s Jewish community has dropped from 70 (the average age in the 1980's) to about 55 because of increased involvement of younger Jews.
The center of Jewish life is the historic Jewish Town Hall, which houses Jewish cultural, social and religious events. A Jewish kindergarten, sponsored by the Lauder Foundation, recently opened in Prague. A new Jewish old age home also opened recently. There is also a monthly journal, Rosh Chodesh, and a radio program "Shalom Aleichem."
While Prague has many beautiful historic synagogues, there is sparse synagogue attendance and many synagogues are only open on high holidays. "Beit Praha" is a Conservative congregation and conducts Kabbalat Shabbat services every Friday evening. The Reform community has several congregations as a result of different splits, the largest of which is Beit Simcha, which is even older than Beit Praha. The only Rabbi in the Czech republic resides in Prague, other services are lead by community members.
One of the major problems facing the Jewish community is the rise of skinheads and many of the Jewish leaders are worried about the lack of action against the rise of xenophobia and violence perpetrated by them. They believe the skinheads are misusing their rights to free speech and the government should not protect them during their marches.
On the other hand, the Jewish community is pleased with President Havel, who they see as pro-Jewish and were relieved when the extremist, right-wing parties were unable to gain a seat in the Parliament in the last elections.
The Brits can no longer take care of themselves and are at the mercy of whoever wants to abduct their military personnel:
IT'S been a tough month for the British Navy. On March 7, it learned that Tony Blair's Labor government was going ahead with drastic cuts in its budget and number of ships. By this time next year, the once-vaunted Royal Navy will be about the size of the Belgian Navy, while its officers face a five-year moratorium on all promotions.
If that wasn't demoralizing enough, last Friday the Iranian Navy seized a patrol boat containing 15 British sailors and Marines, claiming they'd crossed into Iranian waters. They're now hostages and may well go on trial as spies.
The latest report is that the Britons were ready to fight off their abductors. Certainly their escorting ship, HMS Cornwall, could have blown the Iranian naval vessel out of the water. However, at the last minute the British Ministry of Defense ordered the Cornwall not to fire, and her captain and crew were forced to watch their shipmates led away into captivity.
There was a question whether the Blair government would end up leaving Britain with a navy too small to protect its shores. Now it seems to want a navy that can't even protect its own sailors.
The mullahs in Tehran clearly see the new pacifist trend in Britain not as a hopeful sign of future accord, but as supine surrender. Just as clearly, they have singled out Britain as the latest weak link in the Coalition fighting in Iraq and in the War on Terror.
If the Iranians can force Britain to join the other European powers on the sidelines in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan (where most NATO nations devote their time to finding excuses for not risking their soldiers' lives in combat), they will have virtually completed America's isolation from the rest of the world community. In effect, America's only reliable ally in Iraq and the War on Terror will be Australia - and a change of government there could well mean the loss of that ally, as well.
This will be a tragedy - but not for America. The United States has grown used to doing the fighting and dying the other industrialized democracies refuse to do in order to defend themselves and their interests.
Go ahead. Make our day.
Europe insists on making the same mistakes, over and over:
Seventy years ago, another generation of British politicians believed that disarming themselves would help ease world tensions after World War One. Farsighted and progressive planners cut the Royal Navy by nearly two-thirds and ceased the fortification of vital naval bases like Singapore so as not to alarm other powers. In the name of international peace, Britain signed treaties formally limiting the size of its fleet, and as late as 1935 reached an accord with Adolf Hitler allowing him to build the submarine fleet that the Versailles Treaty had denied him.
Six years later, Hitler's U-boats were turned loose to harry British shipping and the Japanese stormed into Singapore, forcing the greatest mass surrender in British history.
Today, British politicians seem determined to make the same mistake.
What a sad state of affairs to see the Brits reduced to this. Again. Seems as though it's time for us to consider lend-leasing them some backbone.
If the hostages are finally released unharmed, it will have a lot more to do with the presence of two American carrier groups off the Iranian coast than anything Blair is doing - and the British will have learned that what they really lost when they gave up their fleet and abandoned the fight in Iraq is their own self-respect.
Melanie Phillips criticizes her government's lack of reaction:
Some commentators have languidly observed that in another age this would have been regarded as an act of war. What on earth are they talking about? It is an act of war. There can hardly be a more blatant act of aggression than the kidnapping of another country’s military personnel.
What clearly does belong to another age is this country’s ability to understand the proper way to respond to an act of war. When his Marines were seized by the Iranians, the commander of HMS Cornwall, Commodore Nick Lambert, did nothing to stop them and later said it was probably all a misunderstanding. If Nelson had been such a diplomat in such circumstances, Trafalgar would surely have been lost.
Our Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said the Government had been ‘disturbed’ by the incident. The Prime Minister took three days to say that the seizure was ‘unjustified and wrong’ and mouthed platitudes about the welfare of the detainees. Yesterday he talked severely of ‘moving to a new phase’.
My goodness, the Iranian regime must be shivering in its shoes. With what contempt they must regard us — a country that stands impotently by while its people are kidnapped and then does no more than bleat that it is ‘disturbed’.
What on earth has happened to this country of ours, for so many centuries a byword for defending itself against attack, not least against piracy or acts of war on the high seas?
News from the Arab league summit:
As leaders began gathering in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for today's summit of the Arab League, Prince Saud al-Faisal told The Daily Telegraph that the Middle East risks perpetual conflict if the peace plan fails.
Under this Saudi-drafted proposal, every Arab country would formally recognise Israel in return for a withdrawal from all the land captured in the war of 1967.
This would entail a Palestinian state embracing the entire West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Every Arab country will almost certainly endorse this blueprint when the Riyadh summit concludes tomorrow. Prince Saud said Israel should accept or reject this final offer.
"What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done," he said. "So now it is up to the other side because if you want peace, it is not enough for one side only to want it. Both sides must want it equally."
Speaking inside his whitewashed palace, surrounded by luxuriant lawns and manicured flower beds resembling a green oasis in the drabness of Riyadh, Prince Saud delivered an unequivocal warning to Israel.
"If Israel refuses, that means it doesn't want peace and it places everything back into the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers but in the hands of the lords of war," he said.
Prince Saud dismissed any further diplomatic overtures towards Israel. "It has never been proven that reaching out to Israel achieves anything," he said.
"Other Arab countries have recognised Israel and what has that achieved?
"The largest Arab country, Egypt, recognised Israel and what was the result? Not one iota of change happened in the attitude of Israel towards peace."
What drivel. It would serve the Sauds right if one day soon Iran decides to eat them for breakfast.
I am not a diplomat. I have very little patience. My first instinct would be to tell the Sauds to go have relations with a camel.
It's not up to me, of course. And I am not in the line of fire. So it's easy for me to say.
All I know is that my anger is deep and it is genuine, and so is my heartfelt desire for Jerusalem to be in the hands of those who will care for her the way she deserves.
The Palestinians can't even take care of their sewage.
Update:
An accurate analysis which I suspect will not be widely reported:
The Saudi Initiative - Dennis Ross
The Arab League is poised to reaffirm the Saudi initiative that offers the Israelis peace, but only after Israel has taken all the steps the Arabs want. Conflicts are rarely solved by one side making all the concessions before it sees what it gets in return. Today, with Hamas continuing to embody rejection, the Arab world must show that if Israel meets its terms (or something close to them), it will receive peace and security not as a slogan but as a reality.
At this point, a plan that lays out the final contours of an agreement is unachievable. No one is prepared to embrace the necessary compromises. Were Arab states prepared to embrace such compromises, they would provide Mr Abbas with political cover and Mr Olmert a political argument. Mr Abbas could declare that he has not conceded Palestinian rights but was following the Arab world's lead in trying to settle the conflict. Mr Olmert could argue that since the Arab world has crossed historic thresholds, Israel must respond. The Arab League is only conceding Israel's existence - useful, but hardly a breakthrough. (Financial Times-UK)The writer is counsellor at the Washington Institute for Near East policy. He is former US envoy to the Middle East and author of The Missing Peace
The Saudis are two-faced wimps and make very poor allies - not that we have a whole lot of choice in that area. Bush has done his best but has only a very weak partner with which to work:
Why Did Saudi King Abdullah Cancel Dinner with Bush? - Jim Hoagland (Washington Post)
- President Bush had scheduled a mid-April White House gala for Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, signifying the president's high regard for an Arab monarch who is also a Bush family friend. Now the White House is pondering Abdullah's sudden and sparsely explained cancellation of the dinner.
- Administration sources report that the cancellation followed Saudi decisions to seek common ground with Iran and the radicals of Hizbullah and Hamas instead of confronting them as part of Rice's proposed "realignment" of the Middle East into moderates and extremists.
- Abdullah's reluctance to be seen socializing at the White House this spring reflects a scampering back by the Saudis to their traditional caution in trying to balance regional forces, and their displeasure with negative U.S. reaction to their decision to return to co-opting or placating foes.
- Don't count on Abdullah to put new force behind his long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative at the Arab summit this week in Riyadh. Rice had hoped the summit would provide a boost in her current proximity talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials, but she appears to have struck a dry well.
- A few months ago, Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, was championing the confrontational "realignment" approach in Saudi family councils: Iran's power would be broken, the Syrians would have to give up hegemonic designs on Lebanon, etc. Now the Saudi prince visits Tehran and Moscow regularly.
I normally try to do at least a bit of research before we travel to an area. Usually it takes the form of putting together a list of the places I would like us to visit. (The formal division of labor: Husband takes charge of restaurants, I take charge of everything else.) This time around, the research is taking me into some different areas. Hungary and the Czech Republic had thriving Jewish communities prior to WW2. I wanted to research a bit about what happened to them and what the communities had been like before their destruction.
From the book, "Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe" by Ruth Ellen Gruber, Hungarian history as seen from a Jewish perspective:
Hungary
Jews lived [in Hungary] in ancient Roman times, well before the arrival of the conquering Magyar tribes who came from the east in the ninth century, but more modern Jewish history began here with the immigration of Jews from Bohemia, Moravia, and Germany in the 11th century...The following centuries were marked by pendulum swings from persecution to prosperity, from expulsions to acceptance. A relatively long period of stability for Hungary's Jews began when Muslim Turkish forces defeated Hapsburg armies in the early 16th century and incorporated most of Hungary into the Ottoman Empire, which had long been a refuge for Jews expeled and persecuted in Western Christian countries. Anti-Jewish terror and and mass expulsions of Jews from cities accompanied the recapture of Hungary by the Hapsburgs in the late 17th century.
Many Jews fled, many others arrived and things improved:
The Edicts of Tolerance issued in the 1780s by the Emperor Joseph II eased many restrictions on where Jews could live and granted them other civil rights. By 1850, Hungary's Jewish population reached 340,000. Jews played vital roles in Hungarian industry, agriculture, business, and finance, even before achieving full, formal emancipation in 1867. They were active, too, in culture, the arts, and the professions. Before WW1, 42 percent of Hungarian journalists and 49 percent of Hungarian doctors were Jewish...From mid-century until WW1, the Hapsburg rulers raised 346 Jewish (or formerly Jewish) families to the nobility.
Anti-semitism began to rise again, and many Hungarian Jews changed their names to make them more Hungarian sounding. Many Jews intermarried and converted to Christianity.
At the outset of WW2, Budapest allied itself with the Axis powers and was rewarded with parts of Slovakia, Transylvania, Yugoslavia, and sub-Carpathian Ruthnia that had belonged to Hungary before WW1. More than 800,000 Jews lived in this "Great Hungary" in 1941. Hungary's ruler, Adm. Miklos Horthy, initially staved off the deportation of Hungary's Jews. But after the Germans occupied the country in March 1944, the full-scale annihilation of Hungarian Jewry began. Between April and June, aided by what one nazi chief called the "zealouys and full participation" of Hungarian police, the Germans rounded up more than 430,000 Jews in provincial towns and villages and deproted them to Auschwitz. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of other Hungarian Jews died in forced labor battalions, on ghetto streets, or in mass executions...In all, out of more than 800,000 Jews in Great Hungary before the war, at least 550,000 perished, and most Jewish communities in the provinces were wiped out.
...Estimates of the number of Jews in Hungary today range from 54,000 to 130,000 - or even thousands more, depending on the definition of "Jew." All but a few thousand live in Budapest, and the vast majority are secular or unaffiliated with Jewish institutions. Still, as in other postcommunist countries, Hungary has seen a dramatic revival of Jewish communal activities and individual assertion of Jewish identity since the fall of communism. Budapest today boasts a full infrastructure for Jewish life: synagogues, schools, a Jewish community center, kosher shops, and cultural programs and institutions including a Jewish university incorporating a teacher-training college and rabbinical seminary.
Next: Prague.
Finally was able to photograph an elusive birdie this morning. The few birds I saw were all hanging out high up in the trees - the one in these pictures was about 25-30 feet over my head. He was making an incredible amount of noise. Same bird, two views:
...to make a public statement. I can't say that I blame her.
God in heaven, no more horrible cancer stories.
Two thoughts: 1. Poor man, I hope he makes it. 2. Gee whiz, he's the same age as me.
Andy has linked to a blog post by Michael Yon, a reporter/blogger in Iraq. It's long, detailed, rough, graphic (pictures of dead people) and it meanders all over, frankly, but it also bravely puts the unvarnished things that Yon has witnessed out there for all to evaluate. No filter. No slant. Just the facts. Yon went to Iraq out of a feeling of duty; he is not there to pander to anyone, and he faces great danger for the sole reason of providing the public with a description of what he sees.
We lost the victory in Vietnam. We are in danger of losing the victory in Iraq. We lost the victory in Somalia. Osama and Al Qaida have forecast that we have a history of running away from victory.
We need to know what is happening. The truth, not the spin. We need to see it from the views that our troops see it. This is a real war. The consequences of losing are great. The consequences of losing at the point of victory will cause problems for our grandchildren.
I agree with him 100%. We simply must make the right decisions now. We hold the future in our hands. Either we fix the Middle East, or it will haunt our children and their children and their children's children, and they will look back at us and wonder why we squandered the opportunity to make it right.
The foremost points that emerge from Yon's writing - to me, at least - are that the military desperately needs our support, that our fighting forces are lean and mean and well-trained, and that we are not getting the true picture of Iraq from the MSM. Yon writes:
Since the start of this war, there’s been a lot of killing going on: killing of our soldiers and allies; killing of Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police; but, especially, a lot more killing of bad guys. The particulars of the killings are seldom publicized, but killing the enemy is in fact one of the primary purposes we have soldiers in Iraq.
That is war. That's what it is all about. Kill enough of them, and they eventually give up and we win and we get to have things done our way. Lose, and we are humiliated, the Great United States of America will no longer be effective as the umbrella under which the free world can find shelter, and the enemies of freedom and the West become even stronger. Next time, 9/11 might look like child's play.
The thing is, we are winning. But ask yourself: Is this country feeling/acting like it is winning?
Belatedly, I began to read an article I'd bookmarked from December's Moment magazine last night. The relationship between the Persians and the Jews has a long and fascinating history, and the story has been well told in this piece. I am very glad that it is online so that I can share it:
Abdol Hossein Sardari didn’t look like a hero. But when Paris fell to Hitler in June 1940, the 30-year-old Muslim—a dapper man with a receding hairline—took it upon himself to save Jews trapped inside Nazi-occupied France. Sardari, a junior official at the Iranian Embassy, had been left behind to look after the building when the Iranian ambassador and his staff abandoned Paris to establish residence in Vichy, the new home of France’s pro-Nazi government. Once the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sardari, without authorization from his government, made liberal use of the embassy’s supply of blank Iranian passports to assign new, non-Jewish identities to those in need, creating his own version of Schindler’s list.
Ibrahim Morady, who died this past June in Los Angeles at the age of 95, was one of the hundreds of Jews Sardari helped spare from deportation. “My father moved to Paris from Persia when he was six,” recounts his son Fred. Once Morady, a well-to-do rug merchant, had his new identity, he and two colleagues arranged to purchase false papers for about 100 other Jews of Iranian descent. Sardari served as their go-between, passing a bribe to a German official. In return, these Jews were given documents asserting that they were members of “some strange tribe in Iran—Djouguti, or something like that,” Fred Morady explains. “I asked my father: ‘What does this name mean?’ And he said: ‘They just made it up.’”
Sardari was not the only Iranian to protect Jews during World War II. The Iranian government itself kept its 3,000-year-old Jewish community out of Nazi reach. But his heroism is representative of Iran’s civilized and empathetic attitude toward its Jews.
This attitude stands in marked contrast to the vitriolic Islamic Republic of Iran led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that we hear and read about today. The world was stunned when Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Tehran, felled an Iranian political giant—Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—in the 2005 presidential election. Ahmadinejad, a radically conservative veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, an arm of the country’s Islamic establishment, quickly became a confrontational presence. Standing aside a banner that read “The World Without Zionism,” he whipped up a crowd of 4,000 students at an October 2005 conference in Tehran. “Our dear Imam ordered that the occupying regime in Al Quds be wiped off the face of the earth,” Ahmadinejad declared, referring to the late Ayatollah Khomeini and using the Arabic name for Jerusalem. “Anyone who would recognize this state has put his signature under the defeat of the Islamic world.”
The president also garnered world headlines when he publicly pronounced the Holocaust a “myth.” He has since slightly toned down his rhetoric, questioning why, if the Holocaust happened, the Palestinians should suffer for it. “Under the pretext of protecting some of the survivors of the war, the land of Palestine was occupied through war, aggression and the displacement of millions of its inhabitants,” he told the United Nations General Assembly this September, ignoring the historic presence of Jews in Palestine.When it comes to the Jews, Abdol Hossein Sardari and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represent the two faces of Iran. This Muslim, but not Arab, country that protected its Jews from the Holocaust now questions whether that genocide ever occurred. Once one of Israel’s closest Muslim allies, Iran now seeks to wipe the “Zionist entity” off the map. Tens of thousands of its Jews have left, yet Iran still retains the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country.
These contradictions have been embedded in the country’s history since ancient times. “In a sense, the story of the Jews of Iran is literally the Bible itself,” says Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. “The Bible says God asked Cyrus the Great [the founder of the Persian Empire] to build the Second Temple and Cyrus did. And Esther, a Jew married to the king of Persia, exposed the anti-Semitic, genocidal plot of Haman [his chief minister], and it was aborted. These two tendencies—the Hamanic anti-Semitic tendency and the tendency to welcome and accept the Jews and the rights that they have—have come all the way to the 21st century.”
Shah Reza Pahlavi, a friend:
For the first time in 1,400 years, an Iranian ruler reached out to his country’s Jews, bowing to the Torah to show his respect during a visit to the Jewish community of Isfahan, banning mass conversions and discouraging the idea that non-Muslims were unclean.
The shah worked closely with the Germans during WW2, but when his son Mohammed took over and became shah in 1941, he helped funnel Jews out of nazi occupied Europe:
While respectful of Iran’s Jews, Reza Shah was fascinated by Nazi Germany. With German encouragement—and to emphasize that Persians are Aryan, not Arab—he changed the country’s name to Iran—from the old Persian “Arynam” or “of the Aryans.”
Iran, sitting of vast pools of oil, became of great strategic importance during World War II. Hitler coveted the oil, sparking fears of an Iranian-German alliance. As a result, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran in 1941, forcing the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Though the younger Pahlavi was seen as a playboy more interested in fast cars than in governing, he had a bold vision for his nation.
A man of grandiose self-image, the new Shah viewed himself as heir to Cyrus the Great and as such was a friend of the Jews. Under his rule, the community “enjoyed almost total cultural and religious autonomy, experienced unprecedented economic progress and had more or less the same political rights as their Muslim compatriots,” says David Menashri, a Tel Aviv University expert on Iran.
Iran's oil helped save the lives of some Jews:
To protect them from the Nazis, Iran assured the Germans that its Jews were fully assimilated Iranians called kalimis—a term derived from the accolade for Moses in Koran. The Nazis, still more interested in Iran’s oil, acquiesced, and also turned a blind eye to the fact that the Shah was providing an escape route for thousands of European Jewish refugees.
I don't have to worry about the Big C anymore:
| You'll die from a Heart Attack during Sex. | ||||
| You're a lover not a fighter but sadly, in the act of making love your heart will stop. But what a way to go. | ||||
| ||||
| 'How will you die?' at QuizGalaxy.com |
I read of the passing of Cathy Seipp and the recurrence of Elizabeth Edward's cancer with great sadness. I'd read Seipp's blog from time to time. She was a great writer and a beloved member of the blogosphere and there has been a tremendous outpouring of grief at her passing.
In a matter of moments, Elizabeth Edwards discovered that a killer has spread to her bones. I sincerely hope she is one of the fortunate few who survive stage 4 cancer and go on to live for many years.
Lately I've been feeling very much like a regular person instead of a cancer survivor, but I feel a bit brought up short and unnerved by this news - particularly Edward's recurrence.
What happens when political animosity goes too far? The government wastes precious time and resources dealing with a manufactured and ridiculous argument such as the one that is now going on over the completely legal firing of 8 US attorneys. This fiasco is following the exact same lines as each and every fiasco that has occurred during the Bush presidency. Both sides are at fault.
The most egregious fault lies with the Democrats who will stop at nothing to pull the rug out from beneath Bush and his administration. Good of the country? Bah. They have themselves talked into a good game, but it's all BS. THEY WANT POWER. Plain and simple. Anything and everything else is secondary to that raw pursuit.
As for Bush & Co., they are mishandling PR every step of the way, as usual. I have undergone a change as I have seen things progress. I once thought, "To hell with diplomacy, just plow on through," but I now see what can happen when you don't take the time to stroke the hands of a childish opposition. Bush should have learned by now. I'll admit it's possible (probable, actually) that it's too late, and that now no matter what he chooses to do, the Democrats will pounce all over it. Feral lefty politicos smell blood and a chance to regain the presidency in 2008. (Yes, I know that Republicans can be just as feral, but they are on the right side now and are pursuing the right goals for the right reasons.)
Like dollar signs ringing up in the eyes of Scrooge McDuck, the prize is all Democrats are able to see. Added to this is their hatred of Bush for having taken it all away from them in 2000.
Democrats ramble all over the board on Iraq because to admit that US troops need to remain there until the stability of a Western-friendly government is assured goes against their "anything Bush says or does, we have to do the opposite" terrible toddler rules. To remove the troops means we've lost. Some on the left are completely content with that and are so anti-West they believe that we deserve to lose. Shrewder Democratic minds are able to perceive the folly in this. But they can't seem to gather themselves together to craft a coherent policy other than, "We hate Bush/Cheney/Rove." It's the same old story, rehashed over and over and over again. The Democratic platform consists of one big idea: Anti-Bush. The never-answered question: What are you going to do once Bush is gone?
How much more respect a swing voter like me would have had for the Democratic Party if they had maturely decided to work with Bush instead of against him. Then, as things went wrong in Iraq, we would naturally have wanted to turn to others to lead. But who can turn to a party of tantrum-throwing, power-mad, values-deprived empty vessels such as they appear to be?
From this morning's WSJ opinion page, a piece noting the decay of Executive Privilege and how crucial it is for Bush to regain control:
On Tuesday, White House Counsel Fred Fielding offered Congress a chance to question several top Presidential aides about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys--so long as the questioning was done privately, without a transcript, and the aides weren't under oath. Having thus been handed an olive branch, a House Judiciary Subcommittee promptly approved subpoenas yesterday for Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and other top current or former Presidential aides to testify before Congress, publicly and under oath.
The Beltway is now abuzz with talk of a "Constitutional crisis." We'd put it another way: What's at stake here is whether George W. Bush is going to let Congress roll up his Presidency two years early. Democrats are trying to use the manufactured outrage over the entirely legal sacking of Presidential appointees to insert themselves into private White House deliberations. Mr. Bush needs to draw a line somewhere, and fast, or Democrats will keep driving until the White House staff is all but working for Democratic Senate campaign chief Chuck Schumer.
These columns have long supported the principle of "executive privilege," though we realize it is not a blanket prerogative: Both the Burger Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon and the Rehnquist Court in Clinton v. Jones upheld the principle that a President cannot use the claims of his office to protect himself from criminal or civil legal claims.
But there's little doubt that this or any other President has the right--we'd say the obligation--to protect the confidentiality of internal White House discussions, especially over Presidential appointments. If Congress can solicit any email concerning advice to the President, or haul any White House official before Congress, then executive branch deliberations will soon be an oxymoron.
It concludes:
Whether Attorney General Albert Gonzales or Deputy Paul McNulty now lose their jobs is a decision Mr. Bush will have to make. But no one should be under any illusions that their political sacrifice at the current moment would appease Democrats. Their real target is Karl Rove, and ultimately the crippling of the Bush Presidency. Whatever benefit Mr. Bush would gain by giving GOP Members a ritual sacrifice would be offset by the costs of putting even more Administration blood in the water.
Schoolyard political shenanigans and the playing out of revenge fantasies while the country is at war. A fine mess.
UPDATE:
Charles Krauthammer blames Gonzalez and says he should be fired. He makes a good case.
...turns into Salvador Dali in front of you very eyes on video.
Actually, it's an 8 year photo project and it's very well done and quite interesting to watch. I've seen others like this, but this one tops them all.
What I listened to while on the cross trainer:
1. Down and Out - Eric Clapton
2. Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan
4. The Syncopated Clock - Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops
5. Ki Va Moed - Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
7. Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet
8. You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby - Bobby Darin
I made the chicken recipe I blogged about yesterday. The results were mixed. We all liked it, but in the words of eldest son, "Not enough to make it worth the fuss."
I think it has potential, though. Smoked paprika is a very interesting seasoning, and I liked the combination with the honey and lemon juice. I am going to try it again but will make a few changes next time. First, I will use chicken parts instead of making a whole roasted chicken. I think each piece cooks more evenly that way plus a greater surface area would be covered in the sauce. Second, I would add a bit more salt to the sauce for flavor. I used less than the recipe called for, since I figured you could always add more, but you can't subtract it once it's been added. Third, I would place the sauce both on top of and beneath the skin. We take the skin off the chicken prior to eating it, so we missed some of the flavor as a result.
A long time cyber friend has decided to take the plunge into the blog pool and I am very glad he did. He writes like a poet - I sometimes have to sit and think about some of his more obscure metaphors before figuring out what he means. I really enjoy this aspect of Andy's writing.
I've learned a lot from Andy in the areas of politics, the military, business and most importantly, good manners, politeness, and maintaining cool in the face of internet flames. He's a gentleman and a good writer and he has a lot of intelligent things to say on a wide variety of subjects. I highly recommend that you take a look.
Gee, a post of mine seems to have been submitted for the weekly Watcher of Weasels vote. I wonder who I should thank?
If by some chance you are an American who is craving the real version of the "real thing," the only way you can have it is by purchasing Coca Cola that has been prepared in a way that complies with the laws of Passover. No grains = no corn syrup. Only Coke that been prepared for Passover consumption is made the old-fashioned way in this country, using sugar:
American Coca-Cola connoisseurs are celebrating the start of the most important season in their calendar. They say the perfect can of Coke is only available for a few weeks a year - and if you want the authentic taste of the Real Thing, you need to buy the Jewish Thing. Passover begins on April 2. For eight days, observant Jews keep kosher for Passover by not consuming any product containing grains, apart from matzo, the cracker eaten in place of bread. This poses a problem in the US, where cheap high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been used instead of sugar to sweeten American Coke since the drink's relaunch in 1985. Corn is a grain, so Coke isn't kosher.
The company responded by manufacturing a limited quantity of Kosher Coke, sweetened with sugar, in cans and bottles with "OU-P" or "Kosher L'Pesach" printed in Hebrew on a yellow cap. Kosher Coke is only available during March and April in areas with high Jewish populations, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston.
Kosher Coke has been hard to find in recent years because non-Jewish aficionados are bulk-buying the product while stocks last. They say sugared Coke doesn't have the cloying aftertaste associated with HFCS, and could be less harmful to your health, as recent research has shown a link between increased HFCS consumption and the growing incidence of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
In Britain, the article reports, sugar is still being used. Read more.
I wouldn't drink either real sugar Coke or corn syrup coke myself. As I've mentioned, I am a diehard Diet Coke fan. I did like to drink regular Coke way back in my youth, before the dinosaurs roamed the earth. I remember drinking it out of the small glass bottles that required a bottle opener. It always seemed to taste better in glass bottles than it did in a can.
Speaking of Baby Boomer memories, I recently received this in email. It's a terrific site to stimulate remembrances of things past - - when airports had no security, Life magazine, Joe Namath wearing panty hose, red plaque disclosing tablets...
Very cool video from CNN. As far as the controversy goes, I say more power to the Hualapai Indian Tribe. I hope it's a successful endeavor and makes them lots of money. I hope that hotels and restaurants are built and that millions come to see and enjoy the canyon. More than anything, I really hope that the skywalk is safe.
The deck is anchored deep into a limestone cliff. As people walk across it, the glass layers creak and the deck wobbles almost imperceptibly.
To one side, the Colorado river appears as a slim, pea-green ribbon. To the other is a triangular dip in the canyon's ridge, known as "Eagle Point" because it looks like a bird with outstretched wings.
When the wind blows, only the most daring visitors resist grabbing the steel rail to steady their knees.
According to the video, the engineers claim that the skywalk could support the weight of seventy 747 airplanes.
I'd love to see it in person.
...someone made a website for that express purpose.
In turn, I would like to apologize for ruining your day by pointing it out to you.
I am also very sorry for the existence of people who hate America and who have no clue what things such as lack of freedom, fascism, slavery, persecution, dictatorships, and evil really look like.
I am sorry that they believe everything they read on mouth-foaming fringe lunatic leftist websites.
I am sorry they hate Capitalism and the corporations whch form the backbone of our economy and help to support the economies of the rest of the world.
I am sorry they don't realize that freedom isn't free and that success and profits are not evil.
I am sorry that they live in fantasyland, and want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony and luv as they simultaneously spew hatred for their country, their president and their fellow Americans.
I am sorry for their hypocrisy - that they tout themselves as being tolerant even as they disparage conservatives, Christians, and southern Americans.
I am sorry that they spread fallacious information to the rest of the world and thus increase anti-Americanism.
I am sorry that they have no respect for the US soldiers who fight for their freedom.
A short while ago, I posted a query asking if anyone could help me find out information about attending a seder in Budapest. A few days passed, and I thought, oh well, guess I'm not going to hear anything...
Then suddenly, a reply. TM from Jewlicious directed me to Bruno, the author of the Judapest blog. Within hours, I had all the information I needed. Even better, Bruno has posted all the contacts re: Seder 2007 in Budapest for anyone else who may be searching for them - in English, as well as all kinds of terrific links and facts about visiting Jewish places of interest.
Thanks very much, TM and Bruno!
Not all it's cracked up to be, apparently. They couldn't keep US officials from meeting with members of the new Palestinian unity government and thus breaking an international diplomatic boycott based upon the unity government's refusal to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel.
No, I am not referring to Europe, but to a chicken recipe that sounds fabulous. I printed out the recipe and am going to make it tonight, if time and circumstances permit. Will report back on the results.
San Francisco lefty loonies, March 18, 2007, by ZombieTime. It's the usual combination of hysterically funny and hair-raisingly horrifying.
At the moment it's loading very slowly. I suspect the site is experiencing a ton of activity.
The posts which draw a crowd always seems to surprise me. Hulk Hogan and the Orthodox Jews was a huge one, but it's possible that the 300 Workout post may surpass it. From my stats I can tell from where people are coming to visit this blog, to a great extent. I know if people are coming from Google, from another website/blog that linked here, or from aggregators like Bloglines, for example.
The Hulk Hogan post deluge of visitors seemed to be coming from an email list orginating in Canada. It was a mystery to me as to who spread the word and why. I would have loved to have seen the discussion that prompted hundreds upon hundreds of visitors to come by. But darn it, the passersby did not leave comments, thus revealing no clues.
The crowds of folks coming to see the 300 Workout post are entering via google search, interestingly. So they are a disparate group, only linked by a desire to know how the actors pumped themselves up for the role.
Having a blog, even a small one like this, is a fascinating peak into the behind-the-scenes workings of the internet. Like any other blogger, I do love to receive comments, but even without them the feedback I receive from statcounters and sitemeters keeps me going. I am aware of the fact that there's an audience of readers who come by daily or several times a week, week in and week out. Thanks for your interest and for taking the time to stop by.
The music teachers at the temple where I teach are truly wonderful. As the year has progressed, they have taught many songs to my students, and I have learned bits and pieces along with them. One, "Al Shlosha Devarim" was stuck in my head this morning. Curious as to what it meant, I looked it up, and was pleased to have immediately recognized it from previous readings. My self-taught Jewish studies, an ongoing project that will not have an ending, roam all over the place. Fitting the jigsaw pieces together gives me great pleasure.
Al sh'losha d'varim
Ha'olam omed:
Al hatorah,
V'al ha'avoda,
V'al gemilut chasadim.
Translation:
By three things the world is sustained: by the Torah, by worship and by loving deeds. - Shimon HaTzadik (not to be confused with Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel's version - truth, justice and peace)
Searches like this one sometimes turn up the most interesting things. I came across this handmade vase:
A description from the site:
These Hebrew words are an exerpt from a beloved song. It translates to “The whole world stands on three things [on Torah, on deeds, and on acts of loving kindness].” The English translation is inscribed on the bottom of the piece. This piece is intended to be a visual reminder of these three things.
Other short passages can be custom ordered in this same technique, in either the white crackle or the turquoise luster glaze. Please contact me to discuss making your favorite quote into a treasured piece of art. You may also want to consider Hebrew names and dates to remember lifecycle events.
You can find a wonderful collection of this artist's Judaica here, as well as a description of how she makes it.
He doesn't think much of Mahatma Ghandi. I don't either, for much the same reason:
“The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” [Ghandi] said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”
I try to keep things G-rated and am therefore self-censoring my response. For the curious, it would have involved a sacred cow, a scatological reference, and a suggestion for Mr. Ghandi to consider in his afterlife.
The latest edition of Haveil Havalim is up at its originator's blog - SoccerDad.
Want to find new blogs to read? Interested in what's going on in Israel? Interested in Jewish culture? Then by all means, check out this week's carnival of blog posts on Jewish and Israeli issues where many lessons are being taught.
I just came across the following information about changes in CPR. When a person suffers a sudden cardiac arrest, apparently it has been determined that they are better off receiving only chest compressions without assisted breathing. Breathing assistance is still to be used when one can make a determination that the victim is oxygen-deprived, such as on someone who is drowning, had a drug overdose, is choking or on children, however.
Next time you have to do CPR on some adult who suddenly collapses, you may keep doing chest compression, but don't bother to do the mouth-to-mouth ventilation. A new Japanese study published on March 17, 2007 in The Lancet revealed that the so-called rescue breathing may do more harm than good, potentially increasing the risk of brain damage in the survivors.
CPR, short for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is used on people who experience cardiac arrest or whose heart suddenly stops beating. This is an emergency measure used to keep the patient alive while waiting for medical processionals to arrive.
"CPR consists of chest compressions and rescue breaths (i.e. artificial blood circulation and lung ventilation) as a circle and is intended to maintain a flow of oxygenated blood to the brain and the heart, thereby extending the brief window of opportunity for a successful resuscitation without permanent brain damage," according to wikipedia.
The standard or recommended CPR includes 30 chest compressions and two mouth-to- mouth breaths. Chest compression requires pressing the patient's chest down at least one and a half inches within less than one second before releasing.
Often times, bystanders would not want to do CPR on strangers because they are reluctant to do rescue breaths. Even if they do, they may skip rescue resuscitation because of fears that they could get a contagious disease from the victim.
But the new study indicates that people don't have to feel guilty if they do not provide mouth-to-mouth resuscitation because if they do, they might even hurt the patient.
In the study, Ken Nagao MD of Surugadai Nihon University Hospital in Tokyo, Japan and colleagues went through data from 4,068 adults who had an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
In more than 70 percent of cases, patients were not helped by bystanders when they suddenly collapsed. 18 percent of these patients received from bystanders traditional or standard CPR including both chest compression and rescue breathing.
The researchers found that those who did not receive any CPR from bystanders were less likely to survive. Even if they did, they were more likely to suffer brain damage compared to those who received the traditional CPR.
In contrast, 11 percent of victims received CPR with chest compression, but no mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. These people were 2.2 times less likely to suffer brain damage compared to those who got the guideline CPR consisting of 30 chest compressions and two rescue breaths.
Studies show that the chance of survival is greatest in stricken patients whose heart is in a condition that allows paramedics to shock it back into a normal rhythm with a defibrillator.
Among these patients, the researchers found the percentage surviving with a favorable neurological outcome to be 19.4 percent if bystanders administered chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth ventilations. In contrast, the favorable neurological survival rate in those who received traditional or recommended CPR was only 11.2 percent.
Experts explain that time is critical when it comes to the rescuing of a patient who suffers cardiac arrest. Mouth-to-mouth ventilation is not only unnecessary in those who suffer cardiac arrest, but also wastes time and disrupts chest compression, which should be continuous to increase the odds of survival.
Rescue breathing is added to CPR in some cases in which people collapse not because of cardiac arrest, but because of something else that causes a situation in which there is no oxygen in the blood. Breathing can introduce oxygen into the patient, which along with chest compression may keep the patient alive without much brain damage which would otherwise result from lack of oxygen in the blood.
In most cases, people suddenly collapse because of cardiac arrest. These patients have enough oxygen in the blood. So the mouth-to-mouth is not necessary. Chest compression can force the blood to circulate and prevent brain damage.
"The report confirms that what we have learned in animal experiments applies to humans as well," says Gordon A. Ewy, MD, director of the Sarver Heart Center at The University of Arizona in Tucson where chest-compression-only resuscitation was developed.
"Bystander-initiated continuous chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth breathing are the preferable approach for witnessed unexpected collapse, which is usually due to cardiac arrest."
In an editorial titled "Cardiac Arrest – Guideline Chan
