Israel Attacks Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Reactor

... with words.

In a statement issued after the Islamic Republic celebrated the launch of its reactor in Bushehr, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy said: "It is totally unacceptable that a country that so blatantly violates resolutions of the (United Nations) Security Council, decisions of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its commitments under the NPT (non-proliferation treaty) should enjoy the fruits of using nuclear energy."

Whoa. "Totally unacceptable." Why, that's just one step short of a strongly-worded letter from the United Nations.

It wouldn't surprise me if Debka has gotten this one right: 'debkafile reveals that both the Kremlin and the State Department have joined in concealing the secret deal whereby Russia votes for UN Security Council sanctions against Iran in return for US silent acquiescent to Moscow's activation of the Bushehr reactor.'

Why Tisha b'Av Matters

Well we can go back - there are some very good examples of the Romans putting down Jewish insurrections from the first century BC all the way into the second century AD that were very successful. ...In every one of the cases the Romans were able to divide and conquer. In other words, they found a larger percentage of the population would be willing to want to educate their children, speak Latin, have aqueducts, be subject to habeas corpus law, and enjoy Roman prosperity -- a larger percentage than that of so called nationalist leaders who wanted to kill the Romans and revert back to their pre-provincial status. So it worked. - Victor Davis Hanson, quoted at Right Wing News

The Jewish fast of Tisha b'Av commemorates the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and again by the Romans in the year 70 CE. It is the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, marked by the reading of the Book of Lamentations and special hymns.

The destruction of the Second Temple - with its enormous loss of life, and accompanied by the expulsion of the Jews from the land of Israel and an exile lasting more than 18 centuries - created a fundamental crisis for Jewish theodicy. (The newly published Koren Mesorat haRav Kinot provides a complete guide to the liturgy and commentary by the great twentieth-century teacher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik.)

One theme that has been consistently stressed by rabbis through the ages is the role of 'sinat chinam', a Hebrew phrase roughly translated "baseless hatred", in pricipitating the tragedies of Tisha b'Av. They mean, specifically, hatred among the Jewish people; in other words, to a certain extent we brought in on ourselves.

I'm no historian, but I found myself reading up on the Jewish revolt against Rome. It is - to say the very least - sobering reading.

The siege of Jerusalem, the capital city, had begun early in the war, but had turned into a stalemate. Unable to breach the city's defenses, the Roman armies established a permanent camp just outside the city, digging a trench around the circumference of its walls and building a wall as high as the city walls themselves around Jerusalem. Anyone caught in the trench attempting to flee the city would be captured, crucified, and placed in lines on top of the dirt wall facing into Jerusalem. The two Zealot leaders, John of Gischala and Simon Bar Giora, only ceased hostilities and joined forces to defend the city when the Romans began to construct ramparts for the siege. Those attempting to escape the city were crucified, with as many as five hundred crucifixions occurring in a day.

Titus Flavius, Vespasian's son, led the final assault and siege of Jerusalem. During the infighting inside the city walls, a stockpiled supply of dry food was intentionally burned by Sicarii to induce the defenders to fight against the siege instead of negotiating peace; as a result many city dwellers and soldiers died of starvation during the siege. Zealots under Eleazar ben Simon held the Temple, Sicarii led by Simon Bar Giora held the upper city. Titus eventually wiped out the last remnants of Jewish resistance.

By the summer of 70, the Romans had breached the walls of Jerusalem, ransacking and burning nearly the entire city. The Romans began by attacking the weakest spot: the third wall. It was built shortly before the siege so it did not have as much time invested in its protection. They succeeded towards the end of May and shortly afterwards broke through the more important second wall. The Second Temple (the rennovated Herod's Temple) was destroyed on Tisha B'Av (29 or 30 July 70). Tacitus, a historian of the time, notes that those who were besieged in Jerusalem amounted to no fewer than six hundred thousand, that men and women alike and every age engaged in armed resistance, everyone who could pick up a weapon did, both sexes showed equal determination, preferring death to a life that involved expulsion from their country. ...

Here's the Jewish Virtual Library:

In the decades after Caligula's death, Jews found their religion subject to periodic gross indignities, Roman soldiers exposing themselves in the Temple on one occasion, and burning a Torah scroll on another.

Ultimately, the combination of financial exploitation, Rome’s unbridled contempt for Judaism, and the unabashed favoritism that the Romans extended to gentiles living in Israel brought about the revolt.

In the year 66, Florus, the last Roman procurator, stole vast quantities of silver from the Temple. The outraged Jewish masses rioted and wiped out the small Roman garrison stationed in Jerusalem. Cestius Gallus, the Roman ruler in neighboring Syria, sent in a larger force of soldiers. But the Jewish insurgents routed them as well.

This was a heartening victory that had a terrible consequence: Many Jews suddenly became convinced that they could defeat Rome, and the Zealots' ranks grew geometrically. Never again, however, did the Jews achieve so decisive a victory.

When the Romans returned, they had 60,000 heavily armed and highly professional troops. They launched their first attack against the Jewish state's most radicalized area, the Galilee in the north. The Romans vanquished the Galilee, and an estimated 100,000 Jews were killed or sold into slavery.

Throughout the Roman conquest of this territory, the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem did almost nothing to help their beleaguered brothers. They apparently had concluded—too late, unfortunately—that the revolt could not be won, and wanted to hold down Jewish deaths as much as possible.

The highly embittered refugees who succeeded in escaping the Galilean massacres fled to the last major Jewish stronghold—Jerusalem. There, they killed anyone in the Jewish leadership who was not as radical as they. Thus, all the more moderate Jewish leaders who headed the Jewish government at the revolt's beginning in 66 were dead by 68—and not one died at the hands of a Roman. All were killed by fellow Jews.

The scene was now set for the revolt's final catastrophe. Outside Jerusalem, Roman troops prepared to besiege the city; inside the city, the Jews were engaged in a suicidal civil war. In later generations, the rabbis hyperbolically declared that the revolt's failure, and the Temple's destruction, was due not to Roman military superiority but to causeless hatred (sinat khinam) among the Jews (Yoma 9b). While the Romans would have won the war in any case, the Jewish civil war both hastened their victory and immensely increased the casualties. One horrendous example: In expectation of a Roman siege, Jerusalem's Jews had stockpiled a supply of dry food that could have fed the city for many years. But one of the warring Zealot factions burned the entire supply, apparently hoping that destroying this "security blanket" would compel everyone to participate in the revolt. The starvation resulting from this mad act caused suffering as great as any the Romans inflicted. ...

For the Jews of modern-day Israel, the significance of Tisha b'Av is complex. Israel is a modern state founded on secular institutions and Jewish identity; in short, it is inherently paradoxical. FailedMessiah links to Noam Talmor at Yediot Acharonot with a defense of Israel's Tisha b'Av enforcement on secular grounds.

Talmor also turns a critical eye on Israeli education:

Upon its inception, Zionism sought to establish the image of a strong and proud Jew. To this end, the Bible was glorified as it encapsulated a period in which the nation of Israel enjoyed independence in its own land. Such glorification served to justify the settlement of the land in light of the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land described in the Bible. However, one of the side effects of such glorification was a disconnect by Jewish historical sources from the period following the canonization of the Biblical text.


Even today, no Jewish text written after the Bible and before Bialik is taught in the state school system (except for medieval poetry in the literature study track). Indeed, there is a sort of hole in the history of the Jewish people between exile and Herzl. Therefore, many secular Israelis do not have a sequential perception of Jewish history. For many, there is biblical history and Zionism, nothing in between. ...

The piece links to a related article summarizing the results of an opinion poll on the subject of Tisha b'Av. The poll finds that

A majority of the Jewish public declared that they intend to fast or, at the very least, to avoid going out with friends on Tisha B'Av, the day marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples, according to a Ynet-Gesher poll conducted ahead of the holy day.

Returning to the related topic of 'sinat chinam', the poll also examines the attitudes of Israelis toward Arabs, haredim (or "ultra-Orthodox" Jews), "Tel Avivians" (representing the supposedly decadent, secular side of Israeli society), and religious-Zionist settlers.

In response to the question "Which among the following groups in your opinion is the most hated in Israeli society?" 54% chose Arabs, 37% chose haredim, 8% chose religious, and 1% chose Tel Avivians. An analysis of the data reveals that the haredim themselves believe that they are the most hated, whereas religious, traditionalists, and seculars responded that Arabs are more hated.


The poll also asked the respondents to indicate honestly which of the four groups is the least liked by them personally. Arabs topped the list with 52% and haredim were in second place with 32%. Some 11% responded they least like settlers, and 5% said they least like Tel Avivians. A breakdown of the results shows that haredim, religious, and traditionalists mainly dislike Arabs, whereas seculars mainly dislike haredim.

Perhaps most strikingly, the poll showed the religious/secular rift in nearly a dead-heat with the Arab/Israeli conflict in terms of its perceived danger to Israeli society.

The Jewish nation-state has faced external threats in all of its historical incarnations. The threats to Israel from within are ultimately the threats that can destroy Israel: a divided society; an element who believe that "G-d is on Israel's side" and that therefore Israel cannot lose; and another element who just do not care.

But Jews are, above all else, masters of taking the long view. Here is the IDF Chief of the General Staff visiting the Chief of Defense Staff of Italy.


Funny, I didn't hear anybody speaking Latin.


*

Better Women through Chemistry!

Bioethics Forum:

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.” ...

Via Blag Hag, via Boobquake.

I'm going to contain myself and spare you the rant. I'll just quote Jen at Blag Hag: 'It's bad enough that these studies are harming children with no real idea of what effects it'll have on them when they're adults. But it's also a shame that these studies give science a bad name - the image of a manipulative, powerful overlord found too often in SciFi novels. We must remember that science itself is neither good nor evil; the blame lies with people who abuse it.'

Hillel Neuer Blasts UN "Human Rights" Council

Via United Nations Watch.

HILLEL NEUER'S ADDRESS:

Mr. President,

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.

So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights—Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard—they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh’s troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the dictators who run this Council couldn’t care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders’ dream? With terrible lies and moral inversion, it is being turned into a nightmare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Go to the video to hear Luis Alfonso de Alba's response.

Times Square Bomb Suspect Faisal Shahzad Arrested at JFK

Debka:

Faisal Shahzad, 30, a US citizen from Pakistan, was arrested at New York's JFK airport Monday night trying to board a flight to Dubai and will appear before a federal court Tuesday, May 4. He was identified as the buyer of the Nissan Pathfinder used to rig the failed car bomb. US Attorney General Eric Holder said that more than one person is sought in connection with the attempted terrorist plot.

Shahzad's information is vital for uncovering the extent of the conspiracy and its potential for more terrorist attacks in New York or other American cities. ...

The Pakistani Taliban claimed credit for the attempt.

CNN:

Shahzad was on board Emirates Airlines Flight 202 to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the jetway had been pulled back when the plane was called to return to the gate, a law enforcement source said. Shahzad was booked through to Islamabad, Pakistan, via Dubai, a senior airline official confirmed.

"They just caught him at the last second," a law enforcement source said.

More details at the link.

Arutz Sheva: 'Fox News says the record of an overseas phone call helped lead to Shahzad's arrest.'

Journalism and the Devil's Advocate

How far should one go to understand the other side?

Let's begin where I left off in this morning's post, with a critique of an editorial by David Ignatius in the Wall Street Journal titled "The Dangers of Embedded Journalism." Ignatius stops just short of invoking the phrses "Stockholm syndrome", but I think that's a pretty accurate description of his concern.

I refrained from attacking Ignatius too harshly because I wanted to address a legitimate concern he raised, which I think should be in the mind of any reasonable person. The question is: When a reporter is embedded with the United States Armed Forces - or any organization - is there not a danger that the reporting will become skewed in favor of the host organization? My friend Michael Totten did not think it unreasonable for his readers to ask whether he's only allowed to see "what the Army wants you to see." Michael's eloquent response is at the link.

If embedded journalists were Americans' only source of information about wars - or for that matter, if any other single source has such a monopoly - I would worry. But that's demonstrably not the case. Nor is it the case that today's media establishment is exactly a cheerleading squad of pro-American patriotism.

I argued that

[it is better] to take one's chances with an environment where sympathies are openly declared, and may be factored into the equation by the reader or viewer. The availability of multiple viewpoints allows for critical thinking on the part of the audience. ...

Do people tend to gravitate to similarly-minded communities - like "the Huffington Post and Daily Kos and MichelleMalkin.com and the Drudge Report", to use Ignatius' examples? Yes, absolutely, and that's an inherent limitation of the new journalism. But the environment that fosters crowd-pleasing, ideologically intense outlets like these also gives rise to a whole spectrum of intelligent opinion and analysis between and outside of these extremes.

And that is the essence of the argument in favor of citizen-generated, crowdsourced journalism such as blogging.

Up to now I have been addressing Ignatius' legitimate concern (as I see it) and figuratively "playing devil's advocate". Now I want to turn my attention to some of the more troubling aspects of this editorial.

As it turns out, crowdsourcing has come to my aid, because many of the commenters have complaints similar to mine. So I see that I am not alone, that some other people have expressed similar ideas (perhaps more concisely and articulately than I could), and that some have added points that I would not have thought of.

csanders1 wrote:
I guess it was a real tradegy that these unbiased reporters were not able to interview Hitler and Tojo in order to make sure that the American people understood their side of the conflict. I watch Fox. If you watch it you will see that even though the bias is to the conservative side, they have liberal persons on in equal numbers. If you really want bias, watch NBC, CBS and ABC. I do not see snyone reporting on the massive intrusions that the government is making on citizen rights and privacy but rail that someone might have to prove that they are a citizen before they vote or receive government benefits.

Cliff Sanders, Greensboro, GA
5/2/2010 2:02:52 PM

Cliff is presumably responding to this odious paragraph in Ignatius' piece:

The path back to unembedded journalism won't be easy, especially for war correspondents. It's one thing to want to interview both Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and quite another to actually get to talk to them. But we should operate under the assumption that we won't always be at war, and try to restore the normal order.

So, whose side is David Ignatius on? His idea of balance and neutrality is to put Mohammed Omar and General McChrystal on the same level.

Roytex wrote:
It's possible for excellent journalism to be unbiased. I'm conservative. I used to read the NYT editoril page because it produced in me a pleasant sense of indignation. But I read the rest of the paper because the reporting and writing were outstanding, and unbiased even to my keen ideological eye. The paper later allowed it's editorial point of view to contaminate its news reporting and lost me. It was as if Walter Conkrite, or maybe even Mrs. Clinton, were editing the whole thing. Maybe that's changing now that the Times is under economic pressure. That tends to change minds a bit.

24681 wrote:
Journalism is always going to be biased, especially if the journalists are being shot at. I recall quite a bit of bias among NY reporters during the 9/11 attacks. (We didn’t hear anymore about “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”).

But I’d rather the journalists be embedded and be biased on the side of America, than running around non-embedded and being biased on side of the enemy – which is exactly what they did during the Vietnam War.
5/2/2010 7:58:51 AM

breth wrote:
Well, you had me at Fox coming from the right and MSNBC coming from the left.

But then you lost me at CNN and The Washington Post coming from the middle.

Let's be real. Is David Ignatius in the center? Yes.

Is the Post in the center? Uh, no.
5/2/2010 12:29:19 AM

Some points brought up in the readers' comments: (1) Ignatius' column is carefully worded to avoid drawing attention to the fact that the mainstream media are not evenly split between liberal and conservative, but rather are a liberal sea with a conservative island (Fox News); (2) bias in news reporting is not necessarily objectionable in itself, but when the bias is extreme and/or is not acknowledged, it is a problem; (3) there is a difference between presenting opposing views on a topic which is subject to reasonable debate, and giving a platform to dictators, terrorists, and fascists.

Not everyone thinks journalists should talk to to just anyone, anyplace, anytime. Via Norm Geras, here's the tale of Eleanor Mills, who won't be the ayatollahs' stooge:

“Thanks so much for coming on,” [journalist Lauren Booth] said cheerfully. My face must have registered some shock. “Don’t worry: only presenters have to wear a headscarf,” she grinned, and she walked off down the corridor. I noticed that everyone around me looked Middle Eastern and the walls were bedecked with pictures of Iran. D’oh! The penny dropped. Press TV: the controversial television channel backed by the Iranian regime.

My heart started to race and I grabbed my phone. Thank God for mobile internet. Seconds later I’d found Press TV on Wikipedia; it was not reassuring. The station was set up three years ago to give the Islamic republic a way of getting its message across to the outside world. It is designed to look neutral to attract western journalists and politicians. But its message is always the same: it chooses those who are critical of the West for propaganda reasons. As well as Booth — who has been outspoken in her attacks on Tony Blair and Israel — its presenters include that old apologist for tyranny George “Saddam Hussein’s mate” Galloway and Yvonne Ridley, the Express journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban and converted to Islam.

The more I read, the more uncomfortable I felt. Visions of the violent death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman shot dead by Iranian government security forces as she took part in the protests last year over the rigged election, swam into my mind. I remembered the seas of green flags, the awe-inspiring bravery of all those thousands of ordinary Iranians who ventured onto the streets declaring the election void, protesting that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, had swindled his way to victory, despite the risk of murderous reprisals. Most of all I recalled the terrible accounts of the brutality with which the regime punished protesters; how so many of them had disappeared, their frantic families knowing nothing of their fate, and had been taken to secret prisons where they had been raped and tortured. ...

Eleanor Mills knew what she had to do, and she did it. Please read the whole article at the link.

Shuttle to fly Robonaut-2, Air Force to launch X-37B.

Robots in space! My commentary here.

Six Years

Geeez, has it been almost six years since I first started Dreams Into Lightning?

I feel like I should do something to celebrate.

Like, post or something.

Barry Rubin (not Levin) Won't Be Al-Jazeera's Clown

Good on Barry Rubin.

Subject: AL JAZEERA ENGLISH RIZ KHAN INTERVIEW REQUEST

Good morning, Professor Levin [sic].

Would you be interested in appearing on The Riz Khan Show this coming Tuesday to debate the topic "Is the Is there [sic] a partner for peace in Israel?" and more generally, the topics of the upcoming Israeli elections [there are no upcoming elections. BR], the Obama Nuclear Summit and US-Israeli relations. Uri Davis, Israeli professor who is a on the Fatah Revolutionary Council, will be the other guest.

The Riz Khan show is an interactive half-hour interview program that airs live at 12:30pm NY time / 17:30 London time from studios in Washington, DC. It is the flagship show for evening prime time in South Asia and the Middle East….

Go to the link for Rubin's response.

Anat Kam, Uri Blau: Israel's Fourth Estate and Fifth Column

Arutz Sheva reports on the indictment of Anat Kam, the Israeli journalist who stands accused of stealing classified documents during her tour as a soldier in the IDF and passing the secret material on to a reporter for the left-leaning Ha'Aretz.

Journalist Anat Kam, 23, is accused of stealing over 2,000 IDF classified documents, many hundreds of which are termed “secret” and “top secret.” The alleged crimes occurred when she served as a soldier clerking in the IDF military - specifically, in the office of the Commander of the Central District - between 2005-2007.

She allegedly handed over many of the “top secret” and “secret” documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau. Blau, who was abroad when the investigation started, has refused thus far to return to Israel for investigation. It is suspected that many of the classified papers are still in his possession – despite an offer made to him that the returned documents would not be used to prosecute him or his source, Anat Kam.

Kam, who was secretly arrested during the investigation, has been indicted in the Tel Aviv District Court. She stands accused of collecting secret information, giving it to unauthorized individuals, and attempting to harm state security. ...

Debka has more.

In September 2009, the Shin Bet and Haaretz signed an agreement whereby Uri Blau promised to hand over all the documents in his possession, in return for which the Shin Bet agreed not to use them to initiate a criminal investigation against him or track his sources.

Two months later, in December 2009, Anat Kam was identified as the source of the leak and placed under house arrest. On January 14, she was indicted on charges of grave espionage.
It turned out later that the reporter Blau handed over only 50 secret documents. The rest he is suspected of keeping back.

In 2009, he left Israel and moved to London, apparently to avoid arrest and questioning about the missing documents.
In interviews with foreign journalists, Haaretz chief editor Dov Alfon said this week the newspaper will take care of all Blau's needs for as long as necessary. This Israeli daily is therefore protecting its reporter despite the breach of his agreement with the Shin Bet and is treating his case as the fundamental issue of a journalist's right to immunity and the immunity of his sources.

The Shin Bet chief warned that Blau has chosen a hazardous course by exposing himself to hostile agents as an intelligence target.

I'm thinking, if the Mossad don't get him first .....

UPDATE (2010-04-10): Arutz Sheva - Anat Kam studied under far-leftist professor Shlomo Sand.

In the interests of fairness, here is what Ha'Aretz has to say for itself:

1. Does Haaretz's insistence on protecting its reporter and his sources in the Anat Kam affair endanger state security?

Of course not. All the reports Uri Blau published in Haaretz based on his documents were submitted to the military censor and approved by her before publication, as required by law. In fact, in one case Haaretz's editors decided not to publish one of Blau's stories after it had gone to press, after senior defense officials changed their minds and requested that it not be released.

The state's security depends not only on upholding the censor's regulations, which Haaretz has done and continues to do, but also on upholding Israel's democratic values, including a free press. The agreement signed between Blau and the Shin Bet security service proves that the Shin Bet understands this as well.
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2. Does Blau possess classified documents and why doesn't he give them to the Shin Bet?

Blau left on vacation abroad with no classified documents in his possession. But like any investigative journalist, he has documents on which he bases his articles. These include, for example, the documents that led him to expose that Itay Ashkenazi, the chief of staff's son, was employed in companies that do business with the Israel Defense Forces - or documents he used for the report on Knesset Constitution Committee chairman David Rotem's involvement in the purchase of lands in Beit El with false papers. This is also the case with documents detailing money transfers to Ehud Barak Ltd., the company controlled by the defense minister's daughters.

Haaretz, therefore, believes that it cannot pass on all the documents Blau has to the defense establishment because its senior officials may use them to trace his sources. ....

Read the rest at the link.

At NYT, not all anti-Semitisms are created equal.

Noah Pollak at Commentary has an illustrative case of what it takes to get a story on anti-Semitism into the pages of the New York Times.

Here’s a pop quiz that I’m sure nobody will have a hard time passing: Which of the following two stories made it into the New York Times?

1. One of the top leaders of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar, a man who has been written about on hundreds of occasions in the Times, responded to the dedication of a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem by delivering a viciously anti-Semitic rant in which he promised the annihilation of Israel and said that the Jews “killed and murdered your prophets” and “have always dealt in loan-sharking” and are “destined to be destroyed.”

2. A Vatican preacher compared condemnation of the Church over its sex-abuse scandal to the persecution of Jews, remarks from which Church officials immediately distanced themselves.

No prizes for guessing which one got front-page coverage, and which got none at all. Why?

The reason, I think, is because the Times is a left-wing paper and adheres to one of the central tenets of enlightened progressivism: people who can be identified as Third World, or who are not members of the Judeo-Christian/European world, must not be held to the same standards to which white, First World people are held. This double-standard — it is the racism of the enlightened — pervades the treatment of different cultures and religions in the strongholds of Western liberalism, that is, in the media, academia, and the “human rights” community.

Please go read the rest of the article at the link. I'm quoting it here because it makes a point that, sadly, can't be stressed often enough. Organized liberalism often ignores its legitimate ideals and instead pursues a blind veneration of anything 'exotic' and unsullied by the corrupting taint of Western culture.

I could tell you about the Passover Seder I attended where the host invited everyone to name a country or place that needed improvement in human rights; she started the ball rolling by declaring, "America!" I could tell you about that, but why? You've probably heard something similar yourself.

Of course America isn't perfect, and of course there is room for our nation to become more just, more humane, more wise. But isn't it patriotism of the worst kind - or more correctly, nationalism - to care only about improving one's own country?

I can't resist bringing in this 1945 essay on nationalism from George Orwell. Here are a few passages that jumped out at me:

In England, if one simply considers the number of people involved, it is probable that the dominant form of nationalism is old-fashioned British jingoism. It is certain that this is still widespread, and much more so than most observers would have believed a dozen years ago. However, in this essay I am concerned chiefly with the reactions of the intelligentsia, among whom jingoism and even patriotism of the old kind are almost dead, though they now seem to be reviving among a minority. Among the intelligentsia, it hardly needs saying that the dominant form of nationalism is Communism -- using this word in a very loose sense, to include not merely Communist Party members, but "fellow travellers" and russophiles generally. A Communist, for my purpose here, is one who looks upon the USSR as his Fatherland and feels it his duty t justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs. Obviously such people abound in England today, and their direct and indirect influence is very great. But many other forms of nationalism also flourish, and it is by noticing the points of resemblance between different and even seemingly opposed currents of thought that one can best get the matter into perspective. ...

The old-style contemptuous attitude towards "natives" has been much weakened in England, and various pseudo-scientific theories emphasizing the superiority of the white race have been abandoned. Among the intelligentsia, colour feeling only occurs in the transposed form, that is, as a belief in the innate superiority of the coloured races. This is now increasingly common among English intellectuals, probably resulting more often from masochism and sexual frustration than from contact with the Oriental and Negro nationalist movements. Even among those who do not feel strongly on the colour question, snobbery and imitation have a powerful influence. Almost any English intellectual would be scandalized by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it. Nationalistic attachment to the coloured races is usually mixed up with the belief that their sex lives are superior, and there is a large underground mythology about the sexual prowess of Negroes. ...

Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, "enlightened" opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

There is little evidence about this at present, because the Nazi persecutions have made it necessary for any thinking person to side with the Jews against their oppressors. Anyone educated enough to have heard the word "antisemitism" claims as a matter of course to be free of it, and anti-Jewish remarks are carefully eliminated from all classes of literature. Actually antisemitism appears to be widespread, even among intellectuals, and the general conspiracy of silence probably helps exacerbate it. People of Left opinions are not immune to it ...

In our day, of course, this carries over to opinions about the State of Israel and its foreign policies. (But then, I'm an American Zionist - the most "violent and malignant" kind, according to GO - so I would say that!)

Trident Test Fire: Fact or Fiction?

Did the US test-fire a nuclear-capable Trident from Saudi waters? Depends who you listen to; Debka says 'A US defense spokesman denied the Trident's launch, Wednesday, April 1, but Saudi security sources stand by the report' but Stratfor (subscription service) says the report is false. However, whether or not the launch actually occurred, the message seems to be that the US is extending the umbrella of nuclear deterrence to the Persian Gulf.