Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Iraqi dam ‘at risk of collapse’, BBC, October 30, 2007

The largest dam in Iraq is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul, a city of 1.7m people, the US has warned.

In May, the US told Iraqi authorities to make Mosul Dam a national priority, as a catastrophic failure would result in a “significant loss of life”.

However, a $27m (£13m) US-funded reconstruction project to help shore up the dam has made little or no progress.

Munson: All those rightly outraged by American and Israeli policies in the Middle East should condemn this antisemitic rhetoric just as emphatically as the neoconservatives do. The fact that neoconservatives and right-wing Israeli extremists exploit this kind of language does not mean it can be ignored.

MEMRI, October 31, 2007

TV Channel Affiliated with Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Beri in Show on Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Jews Use Drug Trafficking to Control World, Subjugate Other Nations

The following are excerpts from a Lebanese TV report on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The report aired on NBN TV on October 22, 2007.

Maria Maalouf: “On land and in the heavens – the use that American and Israeli Zionism makes of the weapon of drugs in order to thwart intifadas and revolutions cannot be justified by the American claims about the intensification of the struggle on land, as long as the Jews purport to have their own private god in the heavens, who commanded them to annihilate the nations and peoples of the world, using drugs and causing anxiety, and numbing the mental, psychological, and physical capabilities of non-Jews, as written in the Talmud or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”Isn’t it true that these Jewish plots to corrupt the peoples were described by American ‘plot-disrupters,’ such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford, and even by some Jews, like Alfred Lilienthal, and even Karl Marx, who, more than 150 years ago, exposed in his book On the Jewish Question that there was an instinct within the Jewish individual that drives him to take control of the world, by means of illegal money – which is known today as ‘money laundering?’” […]

Lisa Miller: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com

“Perfected Jews” may have been Coulter’s version of saying “completed Jews,” which in some conservative evangelical circles means Jewish converts to Christianity. The phrase came into the mainstream in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was popularized by groups like Jews for Jesus who claimed they could retain their Jewish identity and practice while at the same time believing in the divinity of Jesus (a claim that most mainstream Jewish theologians find ludicrous). For them, “completed” made better sense than “converted,” because in their view they weren’t abandoning their Jewishness. Today these same people use terms like “fulfilled Jews” or “believing Jews.” “By believing that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel, we’ve been completed in our Jewish identity by embracing the hope of our people,” says David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus. The term “completed Jews” has filtered into the evangelical world. In 2001, the Christian addiction-treatment group Teen Challenge came under fire when an executive there said in a Senate hearing that some Jewish clients became “completed”–or Christian.

When you take a deep breath, you see that from a Christian perspective, the term “completed Jew” makes a certain kind of sense. For Christians, Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Pentateuch. He is the risen Lord and the way to salvation. For a Christian, the Torah is just half of the story. For a Jew, the Torah is the whole story; the phrase offends some Jews because it implies that without Jesus, they are incomplete or imperfect.

Here, then, is the question that underlies Coulter’s mouthing-off: why should I, a Jew, be offended because Coulter or any other Christian believes that her religion is superior to mine? The difference between Jews and Christians is 2,000 years old and rests on this fundamental: Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Jews believe the Messiah is yet to come. Each group believes at some basic level that theirs is the right, best path, or they would choose a different one. In a nation that protects the religious freedom of all with all its might, at a time in history when Jews in America may proclaim their own religious truth without fearing for their lives, why not imagine a polite way to talk about our differences instead of pasting them over or throwing rhetorical bombs? The problem with Ann Coulter is not, in this particular case, that she thinks her way is more perfect than mine but that she incites and revels in hate talk for profit. Nobody’s perfect, least of all Coulter–and I’m not worried about what she thinks about me.

Acting out of frustration in Gaza - Haaretz, October 30, 2007

One can appreciate the frustration behind the defense establishment’s proposal to sporadically cut the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip: Powerful Israel stands by helplessly while Qassam rockets continue falling on Sderot and the Negev. And these are attacks that in the not-so-distant future may become increasingly more accurate and effective.

The operations carried out by Israel Defense Forces units in Gaza - in which a paratrooper was killed and a Golani Brigade soldier was seriously injured yesterday - are becoming more complicated, according to briefings, because they are increasingly encountering better organized and trained foes.

It is easier for Israel to attack a reactor in Syria than hit nearby Beit Hanun, because it is difficult, if not outright impossible, to avoid civilian casualties there. Cutting off the supply of electricity, fuel and baby food is also a blatant blow against civilians - and only against them. One cannot claim that there will not be a serious humanitarian effect on the Gaza residents when, from the onset, they are subject to a permanent humanitarian crisis.

Attacking infrastructure is always problematic, and many believe that it never achieves anything, even if carried out in response to action targeting Israeli civilians. The inherent assumption in applying more severe sanctions against Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip is that it is easier to bring down Hamas than to defeat it in battle or talk with it, and that every blow against Hamas contributes to the strengthening of Mahmoud Abbas. This is the new idee fixe guiding Israel’s policy in the territories, at least until the Annapolis summit. This approach may collapse, just like the ones that preceded it.

The Gaza Strip is not independent, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The babies of Gaza depend on the government of Israel more than the Hamas government, and the decision to punish them for the Qassam rockets does not contribute to the safety of the residents of Sderot.

Burston, It’s Judeo-Fascism Month in Israel - Haaretz, October 30, 2007

You may have noticed that conservative students and their mentors have just concluded “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” on American college campuses. The goal, according to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was to “draw attention to a leading issue of our time, radical Islam and terrorism.”

I mention this only because, for those readers living in Israel, the event would have been easy to miss. Not only because it was taking place thousands of miles away, but because of a concurrent local campaign which is still going on. Inexorable, inescapable, it has reached every home in the nation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Judeo-Fascism Awareness Month.

The campaign can be seen to be more effective by far than its American counterpart. Perhaps this is because it cannot be ignored. Perhaps it is because it is led by the Judeo-Fascists themselves.

They are a compelling group. You can’t take your eyes off them. There is Larissa Trimbobler, who plays the beloved if dubious Sarah to Yigal Amir’s Shabbatai Zvi. Then there are the apostles. There is singer-screedwriter Ariel Zilber, who appears either to be permanently self-medicated, or in need of being. There is Avigdor Eskin, the prince of pulsa denura. There is Yigal Amir’s mother Geula, the molder of young minds, everyone’s favorite day care provider. And then there are the disciples, the rank-and-defile, the hilltop hopheads, the gunslinger grunge and grange society of the wild West Bank, the Kahane worshippers, the Muslim-baiters.

Under Hamas, Gaza is besieged - Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2007

GAZA CITY — The streets are quiet now and the electricity works most of the time. Crime is down and even weapons smuggling is at least being regulated. But four months after Hamas seized control of Gaza, the already precarious economy has been sent into a tailspin as the militant Islamic group reigns over a pariah state.

Although Hamas’ claims that its June takeover has brought peace and order to Gaza bear some credence, its four-day military rout of the Fatah faction has ushered in an abysmal new chapter for the 1.5 million people crowded into this impoverished coastal sliver.

Now more than ever, Gaza is besieged: from the outside by economic sanctions and from the inside by a continuing battle of wills between Hamas and Fatah loyalists.

“Nothing is moving. It’s never happened before,” said Omar Shaban, an economic analyst here. “The backbone of the economy is being destroyed.”

Meanwhile, the government in Gaza, led by deposed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, continues to hang on through a combination of guile, force and repeated calls for steadfastness from a beleaguered population.

Fatah activists are rounded up and beaten. Members of the security forces are paid with handfuls of cash. New taxes levied to boost revenue have doubled the price of cigarettes and other items.

In response to the Hamas victory, Israel sealed Gaza’s borders in an attempt to strangle an organization that still calls for the Jewish state’s destruction. The international community has largely gone along with the closure. Only Israeli commercial goods and limited humanitarian shipments are allowed in. On Sunday, Israel reduced fuel shipments into Gaza. Nothing is allowed out, leaving merchants on the brink of bankruptcy with their goods accumulating storage fees at border terminals.

In theory, the economic cordon is designed to turn the population of Gaza against the Hamas government. Polls have suggested that support for Haniyeh’s government may be slipping among Gaza residents as their suffering deepens, but Hamas officials seem serenely untroubled at the prospect.