Why do people hate the Jews?

An opinion piece at Portland State University's student newspaper The Vanguard offers some explanations.

Currently, Jerusalem is deep inside the West Bank, and may be the single biggest impediment to a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. After the Diaspora, or scattering, Jews left their ancient seat of government and went all across Europe. Then the Holocaust came, the Great Burning, and Jews started to leave the Europe that hated them for centuries because of their exclusive religion. Nobody can really convert to Judaism — you are born Jewish, or you are not.

The Jews did not like to integrate with other peoples. When the Greeks met the Egyptians, they said, “Oh, your Ammon is our Zeus. We worship the same gods. Let’s feast together and exchange presents.” When the Greeks met the Jews, the Jews told them, “No, our God is not your God. Our God belongs to us alone. Take your God and shove it.”

People didn’t like Jews because of this; they feared whatever secrets their exclusive god might be hiding. Scholars think this attributed to the hereditary prejudice against Jews, and in response, Zionism attracted the scattered Jews back to the land their ancient kingdom once rested upon. Israel was formed.

Instead of keeping the barriers put in place by the United Nations after the Six-Day War, in 1967, Israel proceeded to grab as much land as possible over the last century. ...

Go to the link to read the rest of the column in the Vanguard.

UPDATE: The Vanguard has removed the article, with an apology. Please go to the link for further statements.

More at this post:
Retraction, Apology from Vanguard

UPDATE: Please read Caelan MacTavish's response at the link. I will post comments on this shortly.

More Uppity Middle Eastern Women

Iraqi women take up arms as security contractors. It's worth the 15 seconds it takes to register for this Washington Times article ... go read what these women are doing, and why they're doing it. (One is a conservative Muslim, an action movie fan, and calls herself "Xena". Heh.)

Hat tip: Hyscience.

Antipodes ...

... is a fancy Greek word meaning "dig here"
Hat tip: Judith.

Saddam on Trial

Iraq's deposed fuehrer went on trial today. Saddam Hussein pleaded "innocent" to the first charges brought against him, stemming from the 1982 killings of more than 150 people.
MSNBC:

A judge on Wednesday adjourned the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants until Nov. 28, after Saddam pleaded innocent to murder and other charges, questioned the court’s authority and scuffled with guards.

The main reason for the adjournment was because some 30 to 40 witnesses had been too scared to show up, the presiding judge said.

“They were too scared to be public witnesses,” Rizgar Mohammed Amin told Reuters. “We’re going to work on this issue for the next sessions.” ...

The first session lasted just three hours, during which presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin read the defendants their rights and the charges against them — which also include torture, forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment in a case involving the massacre of nearly 150 Shiites in 1982. ...

Mohammed at Iraq the Model:

“Does he deserve a fair trial?” this was the question that kept surfacing every five minutes…he wasn’t the least fair to his people and he literally reduced justice to verbal orders from his mouth to be carried out by his dogs.
Why do we have to listen to his anticipated rudeness and arrogant stupid defenses? We already knew he was going to try to twist things and claim that the trial lacks legitimacy or that it’s more a court of politics rather than a court of law, blah, blah, blah…

“Why do we have to listen to this bull****?” said one of my friends.
“I prefer the trial goes like this:
Q:Are you Saddam Hussein?
A:Yes.
Then take this bullet in the head.”

Everyone could find a reason to immediately execute a criminal who never let his victims say a word to defend themselves “let’s execute him and get over this” sentiments like this were said while we watched the proceedings which were rather boring and sluggish for the first half of the session.
At the beginning we were displeased by the presentation of the prosecution which was more like a piece of poetry in the wrong time and place and this is what encouraged the defense to give us a worn out speech about objectivity and how the court must not go into sideways; the thing which both the prosecution and the defense were doing.

Anyhow, the prosecutor began reading the facts and figures about what happened in Dijail. The defendants went silent but Saddam objected on some details and then prosecutor said “Do you want me to show the film where you said and did that?” Saddam stopped talking and the prosecutor asked the court to allow showing the film, we don’t know if it was played there as transmission was paused for a while.

As the prosecution went deeper into details and facts, the way we viewed the trial began to change an d those among us who were demanding a bullet in Saddam’s head now seemed pleased with the proceedings “I don’t think I want to see that bullet now, I want to see justice take place as it should be”.
We were watching an example of justice in the new Iraq, a place where no one should be denied his rights, not even Saddam.

Tammy Bruce points out an unsettling episode.

Go read the full posts at the links.

Google Does the Right Thing

Physics Org:

Mainland media control over Chinese-language content took a blow Wednesday with state press claiming rage after Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant Google removed referrals to Taiwan as a province.

Chinese media reports said "Google.com, world's largest Internet search engine, deleted the words 'Taiwan, a province of the People's Republic of China' on a map of Taiwan linked to its maps search engine maps.google.com. This has drawn rage from Chinese officials and the people." ...

Please take a moment to send a message to Google.

Headline of the Day

First, the text of the article:

TRIPOLI, Libya [AP] - Several hundred Libyans demonstrated Tuesday in the Libyan capital to protest President Bush's call for the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for allegedly infecting 400 children with the AIDS virus.

The United States and European Union have been pressuring Libya to free the six, who were sentenced to death in May 2004 on charges they infected Libyan children with HIV-contaminated blood in an experiment to find a cure for AIDS.

The defendants have appealed the verdicts, and international observers say the charges were contrived and extracted by torture. ...

And now, the headline:
Libyans Demonstrate Against Bush's Stance

Well, that tells you everything you need to know, right?

Chinese Dissident Protests Yahoo/PRC Collusion

David Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy:

A few weeks ago, I criticized Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco for cooperating with evil, because each of those companies assists the Chinese suppression of dissent, in order to be able to make money from the lucrative and growing Chinese market. Some apologists for the companies replied that, even though the companies were assisting repression and making it more efficient and pervasive, the companies were somehow encouraging the long-run development of freedom in China.

Today, the Financial Times reports on a letter which a leading Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, has sent to Yahoo. Having spent time in prison for speaking the truth about China's ruling Communist Party, Liu "says Yahoo has enough market clout not to need to toady to authorities." He explains the corporate-communist deal: coporations make profits at the expense of human rights; the communists are given Internet control, and new means to squelch dissent. Thus:

“The collusion of these two kinds of ugliness means that there is no way for western investment to promote freedom of speech in China, and that in fact it greatly increases the ability of the Communist party to blockade and control the internet,” he writes.
“You are helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech,” he writes.

Simply put, there appears to be no way to be an ethical Internet company in China today, just as there was no way to be an ethical supplier of spy equipment to the USSR or Nazi Germany.

Read the rest at the link.

Bobby Schindler Speaks Out

Deseret Morning News

Bobby Schindler says his memory is seared with images of his sister, Terri Schiavo, after courts approved removal of her feeding tube in a high-profile right-to-die/right-to-life battle he says wasn't always fairly portrayed in the media.

... "She was beautiful, she was alive, she was a human being and had a family willing to . . . show her compassion as every human being deserves. But the courts decided she would be better off dead."

About six months have passed since Schiavo died. And Schindler is on an international speaking tour of sorts, criticizing the right-to-die movement and, through the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, pushing for changes in federal and state laws to protect the lives of the elderly and people with disabilities.

He addressed about 150 people at Westminster College Wednesday night and spoke with the Deseret Morning News beforehand. Student leaders had invited him after learning he had spoken to another university, free of charge. His Salt Lake speech also included no honorarium, he said....

Read the rest at the link. (Hat tip: Blogs for Terri.

A couple of points I want to touch on here. The Terri Schiavo case never was about the right to die. It was about the right to live - without which the right to die is meaningless. A lot of liberals were just sure this was a case of some crazed right-wingers trying to keep a woman alive against her wishes. But the nature of Terri's wishes was - in my view, and in the view of many reasonable people - very much open to question. And to compensate for the weakness of the evidence for Terri's supposed wish to die, the kill-Terri side hedged their bets by inviting us to make assumptions about what Terri would want, or what we would want if we were in her place.

There's a lot more I want to say about this, but Shabbat is coming, so I'm going to stop for now.

Guerriero: Time for Gay Conservatives to Come Out

From Patrick Guerriero of Log Cabin Republicans:

News Release
For Immediate Release
October 14, 2005

Contact: Christopher Barron
Log Cabin Republicans
(202) 347-5306 or
(202) 297-9807 (cell)

It’s Time for Gay Conservatives to Come Out

Op Ed by Patrick Guerriero, President

This critical moment in the history of the LGBT movement's fight for equality demands that a new generation of Americans come out of the closet—gay conservatives. Now is the time for closeted gay conservatives to find the courage and personal strength to stand up and be counted. Now is the time we can really make a difference. If every gay conservative came out of the closet today, the journey to full equality would be over in years instead of decades. It would soon become ineffective to use gay and lesbian families as wedge issues in campaigns. The cynical efforts to amend our federal and state constitutions would eventually stop. The hypocrisy of anti-gay political tactics being used by way too many Republicans and some Democrats would be finally exposed.

One of the biggest un-kept secrets in Washington, DC is that closeted gay Republicans are everywhere—the White House, Republican Party organizations, the halls of Congress, the most influential law offices, and the most powerful lobbying firms in our nation's capitol. Some of those who remain closeted have chosen to be either passive bystanders or, in some cases, active critics of our movement while comfortably partaking in the fringe benefits of our community work—all the while sipping the finest martinis in our trendiest gay bars.

Coming out is an intensely personal journey. As someone who struggled long and hard with how and when to come out of the closet, I unequivocally oppose outing. I am unaware of a single forced outing that led to passage of a single piece of pro-LGBT legislation. Coming out on one’s own terms, with free will, and with personal courage is a positive catalyst for change. Forced outings don’t advance our movement because they’re motivated by vengeance.

Over the years, many closeted gay Republicans have discreetly and impressively helped advance equality. In spite of attacks from too many on the partisan gay left, some gay conservatives work behind the scenes to pass equality legislation, increase funding for HIV/AIDS, offer vital counsel to LGBT groups, and help defend us against anti-gay legislation. These gay conservatives have quietly come out to their bosses and colleagues—changing some into gay allies and challenging others to soften their positions over time. These individuals have been quiet heroes, not asking for or wanting public credit.

Other gay Republicans, however, simply have failed to stand-up—more concerned about keeping their title, their paycheck, their chance for promotion, or their chance to attend another White House cocktail party.

During this moment in the culture war, we face a fight that will determine how LGBT Americans are treated for decades to come. Those who choose to be missing in action are running from the most critical fight of our generation. During these historic times, the closet is not only a place which suffocates personal dignity, it is also a place which suffocates the powerful force of personal integrity that can change the hearts and minds of even the most conservative Americans and most conservative politicians. Coming out doesn’t have to mean putting a sticker on your car, flying a rainbow flag from your front porch, or marching in a parade. Coming out means different things to different people. It may be as simple as putting a picture of your partner on your desk at work, sharing your personal story with your boss, or speaking up when someone says something anti-gay. For others, it may be as difficult as offering a letter of resignation instead of implementing or assisting with an anti-gay campaign strategy.

For many conservatives, coming out will come with real and profound sacrifice. Thankfully, we can find role models in and inspiration from a new generation of Log Cabin members who are coming out in some of America's most conservative places, joining new Log Cabin chapters in places such as Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, and the Carolinas. They are coming out to family members who sometimes turn them away from the Thanksgiving dinner table if they insist on bringing their partners, in towns where they’re the only openly gay person, in traditional churches where they’ve heard intolerance from the pulpit, in high schools without gay/straight student alliances, and in workplaces where there are no protections that prevent them for being fired for simply being gay. They are the real heroes of today's LGBT movement and they need and deserve to be given a helping hand in the days ahead.

That helping hand needs to come from gay conservatives. We hold the key to changing the hearts and minds of fellow Republicans, conservative Democrats, and people of faith. In the not too distant future, the history books will record who had the courage to come out of the closet and lead us to victory when it mattered most. Only with the help of gay conservatives can our movement achieve victory over the radical right. Only with the help of gay conservatives can we prevent the radical right from hijacking the Republican Party. Only with the help of gay conservatives can we defeat the voices of fear and intolerance that are feverishly working to deny any and all civil recognition for gay families. The history books will note not only those who had the courage to stand up, but sadly also, those who remain silent. The time is now.


###

Log Cabin Republicans is the nation's largest organization of Republicans who support fairness, freedom, and equality for gay and lesbian Americans. Log Cabin has state and local chapters nationwide, a full-time Washington office, and a federal political action committee. www.logcabin.org

On a more upbeat note ...

If you need a good laugh, click here.

Bad News from Ritzy

Go check out these appalling facts and figures from Ritzy Mabrouk.

AJWS: Help End Darfur Genocide

From the American Jewish World Service:

As we approach the holiest time in the Jewish calendar, American Jewish World Service is launching an unprecedented campaign to end the horrific genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

I need your help: please sign our Call to Action
today.

AJWS has brought together Jewish leaders from across the spectrum to urge President Bush to lead the world community in putting an end to the atrocities that have claimed more than 400,000 lives and left millions homeless. You may have seen our full page ad in The New York Times on Tuesday, which officially kicked off the campaign.

After the Holocaust, the world vowed "Never Again." That pledge was repeated after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Yet genocide continues in Darfur, Sudan.

I'm asking you to sign this Call to Action to President Bush today and to spread the word to your friends and colleagues. You will be adding your name to an extraordinary list of signers from the American Jewish community.

Sign the Petition
American Jewish World Service