Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Nakata family mourns during Schwartz sentencing (Erika Schultz/Seattle Times)

I’d hoped I’d never have to write this. Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz struck and killed a Seattle pedestrian who was crossing a street in a crosswalk:

The morning of Nov. 14, 2006, Schwartz struck Tatsuo Nakata, who was crossing Southwest Admiral Way in a crosswalk at 47th Avenue Southwest. Nakata, 29, who was an aide to then-City Councilman David Della, later died at Harborview Medical Center.

There were no skid marks to show Schwartz tried to brake, Senior Assistant City Attorney Kevin Kilpatrick said. “He wasn’t paying attention.”

Schwartz, the director of the West Seattle Torah Learning Center, was on his cellphone at the time, according to court testimony.

It was the second time Schwartz had struck someone with his car. The first time was in May 2005, when he struck Ilsa Govan, who was riding her bike along Interlaken Drive East. Schwartz’s car crossed the lane and collided with her, she testified at the sentencing.

…Schwartz was cited for driving on the wrong side of the road, but the charge was later removed from his record. “I feel lucky to be here. I wish Mr. Schwartz would make the decision never to drive again.”

The deferred sentence means that if Schwartz, 37, has no infractions of the law after two years the charge will be dropped from his record.

Schwartz was talking on a cellphone when the accident occurred. He had eight moving violations over a several year period. He’d struck and seriously injured a bicyclist. I trusted the criminal justice system to do right by his victim despite the fact that Schwartz was a rabbi who’d done good in his Jewish community. There is nothing in Jewish tradition that holds rabbis above the law. In fact, rabbis have been tried and convicted for serious criminal offenses. So I was hoping that Schwartz would be fairly punished for his infraction. He wasn’t. He got away with murder.

A Seattle municipal judge sentenced Schwartz to a two-year suspended sentence. His license will be suspended for only two years. And if he has no further infractions in the next two years even his vehicular killing will be expunged from his record. The judge said no useful purpose would be served by sentencing him to jail time. The implication was that the service Schwartz performs in his community would more than outweigh any purpose there might be in serving time.

But I’ve got news for the judge. Our community isn’t so desperate and our leaders not so irreplaceable that we wouldn’t miss one who had a debt to pay to society. And Schwartz has a big debt to pay.

Look, I am Jewish. I respect rabbis. This man could’ve been a lamed vavnik (saint) for all I know. But he got away with murder. And it’s a shande. Doesn’t the life of a young city council aide with his entire life before him count for anything? And what is the Japanese community to think of their Jewish neighbors when a man who is supposed to represent the highest ethical values of our religion walks? What does that say to the non-Jewish world about Jews and Judaism? Is all we do looking out for our own? And what about Tatsuo Nakata and his family? What do we say to them? “Sorry for your loss but we’ve got bigger fish to fry?”

As a Jew, this makes me sick:

Some 100 letters supporting Schwartz were sent to the judge, and supporters spoke about his care and support. He told the court that as a result of publicity about the case, he’s also received anti-Semitic mail.

One of Schwartz’s congregants, Carmen Crincoli, said that on Yom Kippur last September it was agonizing to watch Schwartz’s prayers go on and on, evidence, he believed, of the rabbi’s inner turmoil. He begged the judge not to incarcerate Schwartz.

…When speaking to the court, Schwartz at times was tearful and said that a DVD of Nakata’s life — sent to him by Nakata’s family — rests beside his bed.

“It haunts my night,” he said. “Those thoughts were with me on Yom Kippur.”

What does Schwartz expect–a medal? What does he expect people to think of us when justice metes out a slap on the wrist merely because you serve the Jewish community?

The judge’s leniency was astonishing. And his legal logic entirely lacking:

“Regardless or not if he’s a good person,” Holifield said, “he’s a lousy driver.”

“Lousy driver?” Try lethal driver. Yet this judge allows Schwartz to get back behind the wheel of a potential murder weapon in two years time. What was George Hollifield thinking when he devised this sentence? Don’t you think the least he could’ve done was ensured that no Seattleite would ever be run down again by this man? Would someone in Seattle start a campaign to recall this judge? Or at least get someone elected in his place the next time he comes up for election. This guy shouldn’t be on the bench if he can’t mete out a fair punishment.

And please, Seattle city attorney, appeal this ruling. It cries out for it.

One final note of humility here: Ephraim Schwartz did something that any one of us drivers could’ve done on a bad day.  Anyone who drives day to day in a big city understands just how easy it would be to hit a pedestrian.  A moment’s lapsed attention or distraction and there but for the grace of God go I.  So I don’t want to come across as someone incapable of making the same human error this rabbi made.  But the difference is that I would be humiliated to have my entire religious community mount an intense campaign on my behalf seeking to eliminate any serious punishment for my crime.  That’s what makes Rabbi Schwartz’s behavior and that of his Orthodox community so reprehensible.

tags rabbi-ephraim-schwartz, seattle-rabbi-kills-pedestrian, tatsuo-nakata

Just when you think the Israeli-Palestinian rhetoric has reached rock bottom one side or the other surprises you with the utter and much lower depravity to which they can sink. The award today goes to deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai (a Labor minister by the way, proving that even the supposedly liberal politicians can behave like utterly depraved beasts) who warned Palestinians of the fate they have in store if they continue raining down rockets on Ashkelon:

Israeli air strikes on the coastal territory…have killed at least 32 Palestinians, including five children, in the past two days.

Israel said it was responding to rocket fire by Gaza militants, which killed one Israeli in the southern border town of Sderot on Wednesday, and it threatened to launch a larger-scale offensive unless the barrage stopped.

“The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Vilnai told Army Radio.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said of Vilnai’s comments: “We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people.”

Can someone tell me what purpose any of this serves? All of it. Not just the genocidal rhetoric, which is bad enough, but the just plain bad policy which does nothing to resolve the problem. If Hamas has imported Katyushas that can reach Ashkelon is the way to defend Israel killing children and other civilians? And even if Israel has killed the rocket launching personnel themselves what will this stop when there are scores waiting in line to take their place once they are “martyred?”

This Reuters story contains another instructive discussion of the role that the word Holocaust (Shoah in Hebrew) plays in Israeli discourse:

“Holocaust” is a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War Two. Many Israelis are loathe to countenance using the word to describe other contemporary events.

Clearly Vilnai’s usage is a rhetorical, political and moral transgression. Another irony for Jews and Israelis to consider in Vilnai’s repulsive abuse of the term is whether the term “Never Again” was only meant to refer to Jews. Palestinians aren’t included apparently. Abe Foxman, defender of the Holocaust and arbiter of anti-Semitism: will you be chewing Vilnai out as you have Ted Turner and Mel Gibson, among others?

Hasan Bateson has done some interesting media research into the ways in which this story has been reported in the UK and either misreported or not reported in the U.S.:

I didn’t find any mention [of the story] on CNN or The Los Angeles Times.

The New York Times buried the reference in an article on their ‘world news’ page titled ‘Violence Dips, but Israel and Hamas Sharpen Words’. First referring to Vilnai’s statement as follows ‘… they are bringing onto themselves a worse catastrophe’, they at least had the honesty to go on to say ‘Mr. Vilnai used the Hebrew word “shoah,” meaning catastrophe or Holocaust, and rarely used for anything other than the Nazi extermination of the Jews.’

The Washington Post headline read ‘Israel warns of disaster in Gaza’. Compare that to the UK papers consistent headline preference for the term ‘holocaust’, which appears to reflect more accurately the significance to Israelis (and to Jews outside Israel) of the word ’shoah’. Well down in the story, WP mentions the Holocaust significance of the word but claims it equally or even more commonly means merely ‘disaster’ in Israel (inaccurately, if we believe the other references I discovered).

So based on this superficial survey of UK and US sources, we can generalise that the US and a few UK sources are either ignoring or attempting to minimise this appalling call for genocide by an Israeli government minister, and the governments of both nations are silent.

NOTE: The right-wing pro-Israel crowd has pounced on this story as further evidence of the media’s perfidy toward Israel since, so they allege, the word shoah, while it refers to the Holocaust, can also refer to a more generic catastrophe. While I concede this to be true, I also note that shoah is MUCH MORE COMMONLY used to denote the Holocaust than any generic connotation. In this way, it is somewhat like the term Holocaust in English, which can mean The Holocaust or simply “holocaust” in the sense of a phrase like “nuclear holocaust.”

Regardless of any of this, it is important to note that there are many other Hebrew words that denote “catastrophe” or “disaster.” The fact that Vilnai chose this specific one is no accident. One might argue that his choice was unconscious and not deliberate. But I believe the fact that he chose shoah as opposed to ason, katastropha, hitmotetut, or hafeycha, meant that he was pointing to an enormous calamity that Israel plans for the Gazans if and when it invades.

In an e-mail, Israeli journalist Shraga Elam suggests that no matter what the intent of the term shoah, the IDF plans something “very sinister” for the Gazans; an operation that could cause many Palestinian casualties. Elam believes the army plans something along the lines of what it did in Lebanon with a massive bombardment of both military and civilian infrastructure, such that hundreds of thousands of Gazans would again flee across the Egyptian border as they did a few weeks ago. Except that this time they would be war refugees instead of temporary tourists. By emptying much of Gaza’s civilian population, Israel could then enter and eliminate opposition and militant hideouts. It could also prevent refugees from returning if it wished in order to end the ability of militants to hide among civilians as they can now.

This may be an overly alarmist projection. But who is to say? Could any of us have predicted the enormity of the Israeli devastation wrought against Lebanon in 2006?  And who would be willing to split hairs in terms of arguing whether such destruction was genocide, “merely” a war crime, or a just plain nasty military invasion which cracked a few eggs in order to make an omelette?

tags israeli-minister-promises-gazans-holocaust, katyusha-rockets-fall-on-ashkelon

Tony Karon has really outdone himself in today’s post arguing that Barack Obama’s candidacy marks the fulfillment of the highest ideas of ethical Judaism. While Tony is an anti-Zionist and I am not, I thought he nailed almost every major point in the debate about what it means to be a true “pro-Israel” candidate: how Hillary has betrayed progressive values by slavishly adhering to a Likud-like line regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; how Obama has consistently attempted to do the right thing regarding the conflict, while still adhering to a pragmatic position that allows him to attract the support of less progressive Jews.

The thing I especially liked about Tony’s approach was that it was similarly discursive to mine in writing these kinds of posts. He begins by talking about a discussion of Caribbean music, which leads him to an e mail from a South African friend about Obama, and then to the subject at hand: Obama’s relations with Israel and American Jews.

Here are some of the highlights:

Rootless Cosmopolitan is not in the habit of endorsing political candidates, but Barack Obama — Barack Hussein Obama — is an exception. Rootless Cosmopolitan loves Barack Hussein Obama.

…My good friend Michael Weeder — Father Michael Weeder, an Anglican priest and longtime revolutionary in my native Cape Town — sent me an email at about the same time in which he noted the following:

“Obama is the child both of Africa, who was robbed of her own, and of those whose aspirations were embodied in the Mayflower. A child of our continent in the White House … this is not just a North American election, no… we should all have that bloodied vote. I see how Americans are stepping up to the plate of human justice and solidarity.

Out of the whore of Babylon comes something new as the sloping Beast pauses, en route to Jerusalem. Perhaps a new day is possible.”

The reason people around the world are excited about the possibility of an Obama presidency is that they see in him a person who appears to live by that credo “neither inferior, nor superior, to anyone.” And that’s in marked contrast to the arrogance with which every U.S. president of the past quarter century has addressed the world.

…Barack Obama is the perfect candidate in this election for those who believe that our Jewish values compel us to be part of a universal movement for justice that joins us together with all who share that goal, across all tribal boundaries. And he’s the perfect candidate to lead America in an age when it will have to learn to treat the rest of the world as something more than its vassals and courtiers…

Another element of his post that he nailed right on the money was his characterization of Haaretz’s Shmuel Rosner:

When Obama gently but firmly suggested to Ohio Jewish voters that there was a difference between being a friend to Israel and embracing the toxic Likud view of how to approach its neighbors, some Zionist commentators went apoplectic — Haaretz’s manic U.S.-based nationalist watchdog Shmuel Rosner howled that Obama was interfering in Israeli internal affairs! But then Rosner represents the Zionist alte-kakker perspective to a tee, with grading of American political candidates solely on the basis of their level of hostility to Israel’s foes and willingness to give it carte blanche to destroy the Palestinians and itself. Why Haaretz publishes this crank, I have no idea, but it should be embarrassed to run this sort of tribalist drivel which most American Jews find acutely embarrassing.

Though Tony Karon really “gets” Obama’s candidacy for liberal Jews like me and articulates this beautifully, I think he mars his essay by using the term “Zionist” as a disparaging collective epithet:

…Precisely the prospect of an American president committed to justice and dialogue that freaks out the Zionists. They cite his willingness to talk to Iran as Exhibit A in the case against him. That’s because the Zionists want an American president who will bomb Iran, having worked themselves into a lather of with their own dark fantasies about Iran as Nazi Germany. And if Obama is prepared to talk to Iran, he may be prepared to talk to Hamas, too. For the Zionists, that’s another reason to plotz at the prospect of an Obama presidency, even though talking to Hamas is exactly what Israel and the U.S. need.

The greatest fear, quite explicitly, cited by the Zionists is that Obama may pursue an even-handed policy on the Middle East. Imagine that…

Tony wouldn’t allow his writers at Time to get away with such rhetorical overkill. And it’s a good thing too. Tony should know that collapsing all American Jewish supporters of Israel under the pejorative “Zionist” does a real disservice to the political debate on this subject. There are Zionists who observe the views he correctly excoriates and those (like me) who don’t. Where he could use a scalpel he uses a flame-thrower.

I’m also uncomfortable with the pejorative term “tribalism” used to describe Zionism:

…tribal nationalism has no place in my idea of Judaism, and it’s not something I want any part of…

It’s far too reductionist and dismissive a term to conjure any real understanding of just what Zionism is and means to the majority of Jews.

This passage too contained too many slogans and not enough specificity:

I have little doubt that he’ll [Obama] easily carry a majority of young Jewish voters, about 70% of whom, like Obama, opposed the Iraq war at the time that Hillary voted for it. And what this reveals, in fact, is that Zionist hegemony among American Jews is fading.

I too join Tony in wishing for the break-up of the homogeneous consensus among American Jewish groups regarding Israel. But if he thinks young American Jews are turning anti-Zionist (which is what this statement seems to imply) he’s woefully mistaken. Young Jews care very much about Israel. If you explained to them what Zionism was the majority would consider themselves such. But it would not be their father’s Zionism. It would be a tolerant, open-hearted Zionism that embraced the possibility for Israeli-Palestinian understanding; that sought an end to the Occupation; that rejected religious extremism on either side.

There is also one error in the essay regarding a 2007 survey of American Jewish attitudes toward Israel. Karon claims:

A 2007 study commissioned for American Jewish organizations found that less than half of American Jews under 35 would consider Israel’s disappearance a “personal tragedy,” and more than half were uncomfortable with the very idea of a Jewish state.

Actually, U.S. News and World Report’s article on the survey clarifies:

…54 percent of the under-35 group are “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state”…

In other words, the majority of young Jews are comfortable (not uncomfortable) with the idea of a Jewish state. That doesn’t negate the fact that a very significant number of young Jews are gradually coming to reject the notion of a Jewish state. And this number will continue growing unless Israel achieves a normal role in the region. This fact is an important development which all Jews interested in Israel’s future should examine.

tags obama-good-for-jews, pro-israel-presidential-candidate, rootless-cosmopolitan, tony-karon

Breaking the Silence, the Israeli anti-Occupation group composed of IDF veterans, is sponsoring a photo exhibition in Philadelphia and Boston. It consists of photographs shot by active duty IDF troops during their service in Hebron. The shots run the gamut from the most banal to the most deeply disturbing. They all document what it is like to defend a tiny Jewish settler minority from the massively larger native Palestinian population. There is boredom, insults, play, fellowship, hate and fear inscribed in every image.

I’ve published my first article in the Jewish Forward, Warring Views, about the exhibition. I must thank Vanity Fair writer, David Margolick, who arranged a shiduch with Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s arts and culture editor, who asked me to write this piece. I should also thank Alana for her interest in my work. Thanks to Breaking the Silence co-founder, Mikhael Manekin for his interview.

The article is quite short. I plan to publish an expanded version here in the coming days.

Breaking the Silence Exhibit:
Israeli Soldiers Talk About the Occupied Territories

March 1 – March 16
Beren Hall (second floor) at Harvard Hillel
52 Mt. Auburn Street
Exhibit open hours:
Mon – Thurs: 2 pm – 8 pm
Fri: 10 am – 4 pm
Sat: Closed
Sun: 12 pm – 8 pm

Opening Night Reception on Saturday, March 1 at 7 pm

tags breaking-the-silence-photo-exhibit, hebron, israeli-occupation, jewish-forward, jewish-settlers, warring-views

Tennessee Republican Party press release

Tennessee Republicans have outdone David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Charles Jacobs in writing the most disgusting, lurid and smear-filled press release I’ve read so far in this campaign attacking Barack Obama. Since they’ve slightly cleaned it up since first publishing it, I’m providing the Google cache of the original version. The release, headlined Anti-Semites for Obama, lumps in this group Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi, a Chicago non-profit group, University of Illinois Prof. Bill Ayers, and Rob Malley. Here are some of the choicer nuggets of wisdom (and note the use of the candidate’s middle name below):

The Tennessee Republican Party today joins a growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East, if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.

…Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan on Sunday likened Obama to a new messiah…

Of course he did nothing of the sort, though he did call him “the hope of the world.” In this passage the release reminds readers of Obama’s so-called Muslim roots:

Obama, (pictured dressed in Muslim attire in a 2006 visit to Africa)…

Obama has pledged to hold a Muslim Summit to determine Middle East policy with the very leaders that have as their goal to remove Israel from the map, referenced Jews to be “dogs” and “pigs,” among other vile references.

Precisely which Arab leaders have called Jews dogs and pigs? Of course, Obama has not pledged to hold a Muslim Summit to “determine Middle East policy.” He’s suggested holding a summit to listen to the Arab world and attempt to improve the standing of the U.S. within the Arab world. Only in the world of the wingnut is talking with someone viewed as surrendering to them.

Now, this one is really complicated and bizarre so you have to follow all the obscure references:

Over the weekend, news reports surfaced casting more disturbing evidence of Obama’s anti-Israel leanings.

The board of a nonprofit organization on which Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a “catastrophe.”

The co-founder of that organization, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, who also has held a fundraiser for Obama, is a harsh critic of Israel and has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror. Khalidi reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.

The Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant in 2001 to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi’s wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002. Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund’s website. Tax records show he was paid $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2001.

Also serving on the Wood’s Fund board alongside Obama was current University of Illinois-Chicago professor William C. Ayers, who was a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.

First, Rashid Khalidi has NEVER “made statements supportive of Palestinian terror.” You’ll note absolutely no proof is presented for this charge which probably has been lifted directly from a Campus Watch or Frontpagemagazine publication. Second, I wonder whether there is any proof that the PLO was “labeled by the State Department as a terrorist group.” I’m fairly certain that such federal terror designations began well after the PLO renounced terrorism. Third, the press release produces no proof that the Arab-American Action Network is a “controversial Arab group” (except in the minds of the author of the release and Pipes, Horowitz and Jacobs) nor that it “mourned the establishment of Israel as ‘a catastrophe.’” Fourth, the release calls Bill Ayers a “confessed domestic terrorist” but never provides any proof of any act of terror he ever engaged in. Instead it notes that the Weathermen, of which he was a member, “sought to overthrow the government” and bombed the U.S. Capitol, which is a far cry from proving that Ayers himself committed any act of terror.

The piece de la resistance is this knife-slashing of Rob Malley, a former Clinton Mideast advisor. Note the quotation from Horowitz’s hatchet-job Discoverthenetworks:

“You don’t even have to go outside Obama’s campaign to find advisers who are anti-Israel,” said Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party. “Robert Malley, a principal foreign policy adviser to Obama, has advocated negotiations with the Iranian-funded radical terrorist group Hamas and urged that Hamas – which sends suicide bombers to kill innocent women and children - receive international assistance.”

According to DiscoverTheNetworks.org, an online guide to the political Left, Malley “consistently condemns Israel, exonerates Palestinians, urges U.S. disengagement from Israel, and recommends that America reach out to negotiate with its traditional Arab enemies.”

“Nothing in Barack Obama’s history or his choice of advisers suggests he will be a friend to Israel,” said Hobbs. “On the contrary, supporters of Israel should view a possible Obama administration with extreme caution, as America’s ally is being put in the cross-hairs by the anti-Jewish left.”

Malley certainly does NOT “urge U.S. disengagement from Israel” and five of Clinton’s top advisors who are supporting both presidential candidates wrote a letter defending and supporting Malley from these vicious smears. Not to mention that Malley isn’t a formal or even informal advisor to the Obama campaign. But why let facts get in your way when ignorance is such bliss?

I just hope that John McCain’s campaign goes in this direction. It will be oh so much easier to beat him than if he took the high road. But in truth, given the Supreme Court’s green light to 528 groups to raise and spend even more tens of millions than they did in the last campaign, it will be such groups spreading such vileness. And the beauty of this for a candidate like McCain is that he can do what Bush did during the Swift Boat episode–sit back, look pretty, and smile like the cat that ate the canary.

Would it be expecting too much to ask McCain to denounce this filth? Thanks to reader American Goy for a heads up on this and for pointing me to Digby’s coverage.

tags bill-ayers, defendingthenetworks, rashid-khalidid, rob-malley, tennessee-republicans-claim-obama-anti-israel

Talking Points Memo and many liberal blogs have correctly noted with outrage Tim Russert's challenge to Barack Obama which seemed to imply that the latter shares every political view espoused by his pastor, who is controversial in some right-wing circles. Here's the transcript: RUSSERT: The title of one of your books, "Audacity of Hope," you acknowledge you got from a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church. He said that Louis Farrakhan "epitomizes greatness." ...What do you do to assure Jewish-Americans that, whether it's Farrakhan's support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness? Badgering the witness, ...

Let's talk about what it means to be "pro-Israel." Barack Obama correctly noted that in American Jewish circles being pro-Israel is often synonymous with being pro-Likud. For example, you've got to advocate moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. You've got to label Hamas a bunch of murderous thugs with whom no government should negotiate. You've got to view the chance of Iran getting nukes as "Munich, 1938," to use a Netanyahu coinage. Israel doesn't make mistakes--and even if it did it's merely a departure from an otherwise sterling moral reputation. The only problem? Most Israelis don't agree with above statements (with the exception, perhaps of the one about Iran). I want to deal with ...

Shmuel Rosner reports with displeasure an important statement Barack Obama made in his meeting with Ohio Jewish leaders yesterday about what it means to be a pro-Israel presidential candidate. What it does NOT mean is that your views have to coincide with those of Likud. It's been a good few months since I've read anything this good from Obama about the Israeli-Arab conflict. Admittedly, it's not a dissertation and it's not comprehensive. But given where it is at this point in a heated, nasty campaign season I'll take it (the Obama quotation is via Shmuel Rosner): I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud ...

If you're a news junkie like me you'll often find aspects of articles you'll disagree with. Reporters who clearly have an axe to grind or who distort an idea or historical event. But rarely have I seen such a flat-out wrong historical fact as in this one from a Reuters story about a judgment in U.S. federal court against Iran involving the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina: U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said Iran was responsible for the truck bombing at the Israeli Embassy in Argentina. The blast killed 29 people, including David Ben-Rafael, who was born in the United States before emigrating to Israel. Hezbollah accepted responsibility for the bombing, and the United States ...

Omigod, he IS Muslim! Did any of you ever have the misfortune to be punished in high school by being sent to detention? I did once. I don't even remember what I did. You remember the kind of kids who frequented detention? The cut ups, the clowns, the bored, the anti-social. It seems that right about now in the presidential campaign all those types are coming into their own. They've graduated from high school detention to managing dirty tricks for presidential campaigns. We know all of this because of Matt Drudge who, I'm guessing, spent a lot of time in detention himself. Through ...