Muslim converts?
Osama bin Laden appeared for the first time in three years in a video Friday released ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, telling Americans they should convert to Islam if they want the war in Iraq to endVSGermans concerned about Muslim converts By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 7, 1:49 PM ETBERLIN - Fritz and Daniel — two of the three militant Islamic suspects arrested in a purported plot to bomb American targets are as German as their names. The pair allegedly are among the small number of Western converts who have been used by terrorism masters because their ability to blend in is matched by their willingness to become violent, Muslim and non-Muslim experts say.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
protect Israel from rockets
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Why doesn't Israel do more to protect its citizens?
The IDF, who confirmed theattack, said that the rockets were fired from Beit Hanun.These attacks wounded 60 soldiers - could have killed many but wewere lucky. I don't get it. There is no nation on the face of theearth that wouldn't consider this an all out act of war.Some sugestions:alternative response to these shellings should be:1. Create and drop leaflets with the names of 500-1000 of the top Hamasofficials/terrorists and demand that they deliver their bodies, dead oralive to the Israeli border within 24 hours.2. If this isn't done within 24 hours, turn off electricity for all ofGaza3. If this isn't done within 48 hourse, cut off all water4. If this isn't done in 72 hours, start shelling one kilometer perday into the Gaza Strip. The longer they wait, the less their country willremain intact.How many deads Israel's will it take? Hamas is lobbying missiles everyday.But maybe we should let Israel's pros handle this-Ehud Barak, the current Defense Minister and a former Prime Minister isalso aformer Chief of Staff of the IDF and is the most decorated officer inthe IDFbarring none. He is not Peretz. The current Chief of Staff is highlyregarded.The Head of Shin Bet is a highly respected professional.
Posted by Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg at 7:29 AM
Why doesn't Israel do more to protect its citizens?
The IDF, who confirmed theattack, said that the rockets were fired from Beit Hanun.These attacks wounded 60 soldiers - could have killed many but wewere lucky. I don't get it. There is no nation on the face of theearth that wouldn't consider this an all out act of war.Some sugestions:alternative response to these shellings should be:1. Create and drop leaflets with the names of 500-1000 of the top Hamasofficials/terrorists and demand that they deliver their bodies, dead oralive to the Israeli border within 24 hours.2. If this isn't done within 24 hours, turn off electricity for all ofGaza3. If this isn't done within 48 hourse, cut off all water4. If this isn't done in 72 hours, start shelling one kilometer perday into the Gaza Strip. The longer they wait, the less their country willremain intact.How many deads Israel's will it take? Hamas is lobbying missiles everyday.But maybe we should let Israel's pros handle this-Ehud Barak, the current Defense Minister and a former Prime Minister isalso aformer Chief of Staff of the IDF and is the most decorated officer inthe IDFbarring none. He is not Peretz. The current Chief of Staff is highlyregarded.The Head of Shin Bet is a highly respected professional.
Posted by Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg at 7:29 AM
Let Osama bin Laden be first
Let Osama bin Laden be first
"Osama bin Laden urged sympathizers to join the "caravan" of martyrs as he praised one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers in a new video that emerged Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "I nominate him for the first one.
"Osama bin Laden urged sympathizers to join the "caravan" of martyrs as he praised one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers in a new video that emerged Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "I nominate him for the first one.
Mearsheimer and Walt
Mearsheimer and Walt
Tim Rutten, LA Times: "Anyone familiar with the tortured history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have a hard time recognizing the history Mearsheimer and Walt rehearse. Every hoary old Israeli atrocity tale is trotted out, and the long story of Palestinian terrorism is rendered entirely as a reaction to Israeli oppression. The failure of every peace negotiation is attributed to Israeli deviousness under the shield of the American Israel lobby. There is nothing here of Palestinian corruption, division and duplicity or even of this unhappy people's inability to provide a reliable secular partner with whom peace can be negotiated. At times, the authors simply contradict themselves, asserting -- rather remarkably -- at one point that the United States has nothing to fear from a nuclear-armed Iran and, at another, that the dangerous prospect of a nuke-equipped Tehran is the Israel lobby's fault. Similarly, they write, Al Qaeda would hammer its swords into ploughshares and Osama bin Laden would lay down with the lamb if only the United States would come out from under Israel's thrall and create by coercion a Palestinian state. Baloney. If -- as was long ago proposed -- the Jewish state had been established in Uganda, the Twin Towers still would be rubble."David Remnick, The New Yorker: "Where many accounts identify Osama bin Laden's primary grievances with American support of "infidel" authoritarian regimes in Islamic lands, Mearsheimer and Walt align his primary concerns with theirs: America's unwillingness to push Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. (It doesn't matter that Israel and the Palestinians were in peace negotiations in 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center, or that during the Camp David negotiations in 2000 bin Laden's pilots were training in Florida.) Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business. It's a narrative that recounts every lurid report of Israeli cruelty as indisputable fact but leaves out the rise of Fatah and Palestinian terrorism before 1967; the Munich Olympics; Black September; myriad cases of suicide bombings; and other spectaculars." Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun Times: "The two go to lengths to try to rebut any suggestion of anti-Semitism in their criticism of the American Israeli Political Action Committee and other pro-Israel groups. But you can't read The Israel Lobby without realizing that whenever two interpretations exist for some action by Israel or its supporters, Mearsheimer and Walt automatically default to the darker view."William Grimes , The New York Times: "The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way. They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on." Mark LeVine, Asia Times: "Mearsheimer and Walt seem to know little about the Middle East, Israel's role in US foreign policy, and what are core US goals and strategic interests in the region. They argue that this is a case of the "tail wagging the dog" - a small client state and its allies in the US leading the US government to engage in policies that are manifestly against its interests because of undue political power. But this is nonsense. In fact, it is the other way around." Richard Cohen, The Washington Post: "In the end, Mearsheimer and Walt disappoint. They had an observation worth making and a position worth debating. But their argument is so dry, so one-sided -- an Israel lobby that leads America around by the nose -- they suggest that not only do they not know Israel, they don't know America, either."
Tim Rutten, LA Times: "Anyone familiar with the tortured history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have a hard time recognizing the history Mearsheimer and Walt rehearse. Every hoary old Israeli atrocity tale is trotted out, and the long story of Palestinian terrorism is rendered entirely as a reaction to Israeli oppression. The failure of every peace negotiation is attributed to Israeli deviousness under the shield of the American Israel lobby. There is nothing here of Palestinian corruption, division and duplicity or even of this unhappy people's inability to provide a reliable secular partner with whom peace can be negotiated. At times, the authors simply contradict themselves, asserting -- rather remarkably -- at one point that the United States has nothing to fear from a nuclear-armed Iran and, at another, that the dangerous prospect of a nuke-equipped Tehran is the Israel lobby's fault. Similarly, they write, Al Qaeda would hammer its swords into ploughshares and Osama bin Laden would lay down with the lamb if only the United States would come out from under Israel's thrall and create by coercion a Palestinian state. Baloney. If -- as was long ago proposed -- the Jewish state had been established in Uganda, the Twin Towers still would be rubble."David Remnick, The New Yorker: "Where many accounts identify Osama bin Laden's primary grievances with American support of "infidel" authoritarian regimes in Islamic lands, Mearsheimer and Walt align his primary concerns with theirs: America's unwillingness to push Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. (It doesn't matter that Israel and the Palestinians were in peace negotiations in 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center, or that during the Camp David negotiations in 2000 bin Laden's pilots were training in Florida.) Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business. It's a narrative that recounts every lurid report of Israeli cruelty as indisputable fact but leaves out the rise of Fatah and Palestinian terrorism before 1967; the Munich Olympics; Black September; myriad cases of suicide bombings; and other spectaculars." Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun Times: "The two go to lengths to try to rebut any suggestion of anti-Semitism in their criticism of the American Israeli Political Action Committee and other pro-Israel groups. But you can't read The Israel Lobby without realizing that whenever two interpretations exist for some action by Israel or its supporters, Mearsheimer and Walt automatically default to the darker view."William Grimes , The New York Times: "The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way. They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on." Mark LeVine, Asia Times: "Mearsheimer and Walt seem to know little about the Middle East, Israel's role in US foreign policy, and what are core US goals and strategic interests in the region. They argue that this is a case of the "tail wagging the dog" - a small client state and its allies in the US leading the US government to engage in policies that are manifestly against its interests because of undue political power. But this is nonsense. In fact, it is the other way around." Richard Cohen, The Washington Post: "In the end, Mearsheimer and Walt disappoint. They had an observation worth making and a position worth debating. But their argument is so dry, so one-sided -- an Israel lobby that leads America around by the nose -- they suggest that not only do they not know Israel, they don't know America, either."
Mearsheimer and Walt
My outline of Gelb's critique of Mearsheimer and Walt book
Leslie Gelb published a great review of the troubling book by Mearsheimer and Walt in the NYT book review section Sunday. Here is MY OUTLINE of his arguments using his words. Dual Loyalties By LESLIE H. GELBPublished: September 23, 2007Jennifer DanielTHE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. 484 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26. 1. John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard, can’t, because the Middle East is vital and because they’re arguing that the Jewish lobby pushes policy in directions that “jeopardize U.S. national security.” 2. This commentary could not be more serious, and I believe that the authors are mostly wrong, as well as dangerously misleading. Former President Jimmy Carter made similar points, if rather hotly and self-righteously, in his recent book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” Mearsheimer and Walt, together with Carter and their phalanx of backers at universities and research institutes, have to be answered, not by calling them anti-Semites, but on the merits.3. no one familiar with their extensive scholarship or their lives ever accused them of harboring anti-Semitic sentiments ... until the appearance of their article last year. …“They asked for trouble” — by the way they make their arguments, by their puzzlingly shoddy scholarship, by what they emphasize and de-emphasize, by what they leave out and by writing on this sensitive topic without doing extensive interviews with the lobbyists and the lobbied.Specifics:1. Publishing these one-liners as some kind of evidence is not the stuff of good scholarship.2. Mearsheimer and Walt move on to one story after another, premised on the lobby’s domination of United States policy toward the Middle East. But they rarely back that premise up. 3. There isn’t much discussion about the $2 billion yearly aid package for Egypt. The United States regards this $5 billion as insurance against an Egyptian-Israeli war, and it’s cheap at double the price.4. But instinctively and without being lobbied, American presidents don’t want to gang up on Israel, since virtually every other state does so. While most countries hammer Israel for crackdowns on the Palestinians, they hardly ever criticize Palestinian terrorists or other Arab terrorists and say little about the misdeeds of Arab and Muslim dictators. 5. As for the American government, the record clearly shows that when Israel crosses certain important lines, as when it expanded Jewish settlements into Palestinian areas like the West Bank and Gaza, Washington usually expresses its displeasure in public and, even more so, in private. Mearsheimer and Walt just don’t mention that.6.. More troublingly, they don’t seriously review the facts of the two most critical issues to Israel and the lobby — arms sales to Arab states and the question of a Palestinian state — matters on which the American position has consistently run counter to the so-called all-powerful Jewish lobby.7. But at a deeper level, one ignored by Mearsheimer and Walt, these problems would not disappear or seriously lessen if Washington abandoned Israel. The main source of anti-Americanism and anti-American terrorism is America’s deep ties with highly unpopular regimes in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not to mention the war in Iraq. 8. Similarly, Mearsheimer and Walt mostly dodge the question of how to fix this problem. They don’t want to abandon Israel, they say, but they do want the United States to distance itself from Israeli policies. Does that mean talking to the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists? These groups are relentlessly committed to violence and to the total destruction of Israel. What is there to talk about? 9. As for pressing Israel to turn over the territories and accept Palestinian statehood now, there is the slight problem of which Palestinians to bargain with — the Hamas leaders, who genuinely have broad support, or the far less popular and far more corrupt Fatah party. Besides, what concessions do Mearsheimer and Walt want Israel to make beyond what it has made? In the closing days of the Clinton administration, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met almost all Palestinian demands for a negotiated solution and was effectively turned down.10.. historically, the prime effect of the relationship has been to provide Arab leaders and discontented Arabs with an excuse for not putting their own houses in order. I doubt Mearsheimer and Walt believe that if Washington stiff-armed Israel, this would induce Arab leaders to address their real problems or produce peace in the Middle East. 11. Then there is the issue of nuclear weapons and taming the proliferation genie. Yes, Israel’s nuclear ability adds to the hurdles Washington faces. But Mearsheimer and Walt should know that the driving force behind Saddam Hussein’s quest for these arms had much less to do with Israel’s nuclear weapons than with the threats he saw from Iran and the United States. The same is true for Iran today. Like Hussein, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows that only the United States can topple him and the regime of the mullahs he represents, and he wants the bomb principally for deterrence.12. America’s central strategic problem in the region — the main reason to worry about future terrorists, nuclear proliferation and energy supplies — is that we need our corrupt, inept and unpopular Arab allies because the likely alternative to them is far worse. There is no reliable and strong Arab moderate force in the Middle East at present. Washington’s long-term goal must be to help build one. Yet Mearsheimer and Walt offer us no counsel on how to do this.13. As it happens, America’s commitment to Israel rests far more on moral and historical grounds than on strict strategic ones. Israel does not harm American security interests to anywhere near the degree that Mearsheimer and Walt claim it does. And the major reality is that despite whatever difficulties the Israeli-American relationship might cause, the United States is helping to protect one of the few nations in the world that share American values and interests, a true democracy. This is the greatest strategic bond between the two countries. (And not to be overlooked is the fact that when push has come to shove, Israel has always defended itself.)14. The inevitable last question is this: Why have two such serious students of United States foreign policy written so weak a book and added fuel, inadvertently, to the fires of anti-Semitism? The answer lies in their treatment of the Iraq war. Their vitriol about the Iraq war — about being so right while others were so wrong — is so overwhelming that they minimize two key facts. First, America’s foreign policy community, including many Democrats as well as Republicans, supported the war for the very same reasons that Wolfowitz and the lobby did — namely, the fact that Hussein seemed to pose a present or future threat to American national interests. Second, the real play-callers behind the war were President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. They hardly have a history of being in the pockets of the Jewish lobby (more like the oil lobby’s), and they aren’t remotely neoconservatives. The more we know, the clearer it is that the White House went to war primarily to erase the “blunder” of the elder Bush in not finishing off Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.Now, Mearsheimer and Walt fear that Israel and the lobby will shove the United States into a new war with Iran: “They are the central forces today behind all the talk ... about using military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unfortunately, such rhetoric makes it harder, not easier, to stop Iran from going nuclear.” …Meanwhile, plenty of foreign policy experts and politicians now call for “getting Iran.” And by the way, so do the two most powerful men in America, who neither need nor heed lobbying — George Bush and Dick Cheney.Leslie H. Gelb, a former columnist for The Times and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, is finishing a book on international power in the 21st century.
Leslie Gelb published a great review of the troubling book by Mearsheimer and Walt in the NYT book review section Sunday. Here is MY OUTLINE of his arguments using his words. Dual Loyalties By LESLIE H. GELBPublished: September 23, 2007Jennifer DanielTHE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. 484 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26. 1. John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard, can’t, because the Middle East is vital and because they’re arguing that the Jewish lobby pushes policy in directions that “jeopardize U.S. national security.” 2. This commentary could not be more serious, and I believe that the authors are mostly wrong, as well as dangerously misleading. Former President Jimmy Carter made similar points, if rather hotly and self-righteously, in his recent book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” Mearsheimer and Walt, together with Carter and their phalanx of backers at universities and research institutes, have to be answered, not by calling them anti-Semites, but on the merits.3. no one familiar with their extensive scholarship or their lives ever accused them of harboring anti-Semitic sentiments ... until the appearance of their article last year. …“They asked for trouble” — by the way they make their arguments, by their puzzlingly shoddy scholarship, by what they emphasize and de-emphasize, by what they leave out and by writing on this sensitive topic without doing extensive interviews with the lobbyists and the lobbied.Specifics:1. Publishing these one-liners as some kind of evidence is not the stuff of good scholarship.2. Mearsheimer and Walt move on to one story after another, premised on the lobby’s domination of United States policy toward the Middle East. But they rarely back that premise up. 3. There isn’t much discussion about the $2 billion yearly aid package for Egypt. The United States regards this $5 billion as insurance against an Egyptian-Israeli war, and it’s cheap at double the price.4. But instinctively and without being lobbied, American presidents don’t want to gang up on Israel, since virtually every other state does so. While most countries hammer Israel for crackdowns on the Palestinians, they hardly ever criticize Palestinian terrorists or other Arab terrorists and say little about the misdeeds of Arab and Muslim dictators. 5. As for the American government, the record clearly shows that when Israel crosses certain important lines, as when it expanded Jewish settlements into Palestinian areas like the West Bank and Gaza, Washington usually expresses its displeasure in public and, even more so, in private. Mearsheimer and Walt just don’t mention that.6.. More troublingly, they don’t seriously review the facts of the two most critical issues to Israel and the lobby — arms sales to Arab states and the question of a Palestinian state — matters on which the American position has consistently run counter to the so-called all-powerful Jewish lobby.7. But at a deeper level, one ignored by Mearsheimer and Walt, these problems would not disappear or seriously lessen if Washington abandoned Israel. The main source of anti-Americanism and anti-American terrorism is America’s deep ties with highly unpopular regimes in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not to mention the war in Iraq. 8. Similarly, Mearsheimer and Walt mostly dodge the question of how to fix this problem. They don’t want to abandon Israel, they say, but they do want the United States to distance itself from Israeli policies. Does that mean talking to the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists? These groups are relentlessly committed to violence and to the total destruction of Israel. What is there to talk about? 9. As for pressing Israel to turn over the territories and accept Palestinian statehood now, there is the slight problem of which Palestinians to bargain with — the Hamas leaders, who genuinely have broad support, or the far less popular and far more corrupt Fatah party. Besides, what concessions do Mearsheimer and Walt want Israel to make beyond what it has made? In the closing days of the Clinton administration, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met almost all Palestinian demands for a negotiated solution and was effectively turned down.10.. historically, the prime effect of the relationship has been to provide Arab leaders and discontented Arabs with an excuse for not putting their own houses in order. I doubt Mearsheimer and Walt believe that if Washington stiff-armed Israel, this would induce Arab leaders to address their real problems or produce peace in the Middle East. 11. Then there is the issue of nuclear weapons and taming the proliferation genie. Yes, Israel’s nuclear ability adds to the hurdles Washington faces. But Mearsheimer and Walt should know that the driving force behind Saddam Hussein’s quest for these arms had much less to do with Israel’s nuclear weapons than with the threats he saw from Iran and the United States. The same is true for Iran today. Like Hussein, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows that only the United States can topple him and the regime of the mullahs he represents, and he wants the bomb principally for deterrence.12. America’s central strategic problem in the region — the main reason to worry about future terrorists, nuclear proliferation and energy supplies — is that we need our corrupt, inept and unpopular Arab allies because the likely alternative to them is far worse. There is no reliable and strong Arab moderate force in the Middle East at present. Washington’s long-term goal must be to help build one. Yet Mearsheimer and Walt offer us no counsel on how to do this.13. As it happens, America’s commitment to Israel rests far more on moral and historical grounds than on strict strategic ones. Israel does not harm American security interests to anywhere near the degree that Mearsheimer and Walt claim it does. And the major reality is that despite whatever difficulties the Israeli-American relationship might cause, the United States is helping to protect one of the few nations in the world that share American values and interests, a true democracy. This is the greatest strategic bond between the two countries. (And not to be overlooked is the fact that when push has come to shove, Israel has always defended itself.)14. The inevitable last question is this: Why have two such serious students of United States foreign policy written so weak a book and added fuel, inadvertently, to the fires of anti-Semitism? The answer lies in their treatment of the Iraq war. Their vitriol about the Iraq war — about being so right while others were so wrong — is so overwhelming that they minimize two key facts. First, America’s foreign policy community, including many Democrats as well as Republicans, supported the war for the very same reasons that Wolfowitz and the lobby did — namely, the fact that Hussein seemed to pose a present or future threat to American national interests. Second, the real play-callers behind the war were President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. They hardly have a history of being in the pockets of the Jewish lobby (more like the oil lobby’s), and they aren’t remotely neoconservatives. The more we know, the clearer it is that the White House went to war primarily to erase the “blunder” of the elder Bush in not finishing off Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.Now, Mearsheimer and Walt fear that Israel and the lobby will shove the United States into a new war with Iran: “They are the central forces today behind all the talk ... about using military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unfortunately, such rhetoric makes it harder, not easier, to stop Iran from going nuclear.” …Meanwhile, plenty of foreign policy experts and politicians now call for “getting Iran.” And by the way, so do the two most powerful men in America, who neither need nor heed lobbying — George Bush and Dick Cheney.Leslie H. Gelb, a former columnist for The Times and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, is finishing a book on international power in the 21st century.
Iran and its President
Cruelty and Mercy 1.Iran
And so we learn:One who becomes compassionate instead of cruel, will ultimately become cruel instead of compassionate, as it is written (I Samuel 22:19): “And Nov, the city of priests, he smote with the edge of a sword.” Is Nov any worse than the descendants of Amalek?!Midrash Rabba, Ecclesiastes 7:16.1. Time to be cruel, not merciful-Iran and bomb-and Sukkot Haftorot The Haftorot during the Festival of Sukkot speak of end times-a huge final battle of Gog and Magog, and final a celebration in Jerusalem at the end when all nations will celebrate Sukkot and recognizes Adonai as God (the final verse of Alenu prayer comes from this Zachariah Haftarah.) Sometimes the events of the world feel like those days.From The Chicago Tribune editorial Saturday:Case closed? You wishFresh from his performance as a human pinata at Columbia University, the Iranian president took the opportunity this week to remind the nations of the world just how much contempt he and his country held for the UN Security Council. In sum, a lot.After two sets of sanctions, and many more deadlines for Iran to suspend its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad dared the nations of the world to stop Iran's nuclear program. He scoffed at the power of the UN Security Council and declared that "the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed." That brought the quick response from the U.S: You wish."The Iranian president is badly mistaken if he thinks the international community is going to forget about the fact that his country is continuing -- against the will of the UN Security Council -- its nuclear research programs," said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.And from Germany: "Let's not fool ourselves," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. "If Iran were to acquire the nuclear bomb, the consequences would be disastrous."One of the sharpest warnings came from France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Allowing Iran to build a bomb, he said, would be an "unacceptable risk to the stability in the region and in the world." In his first major foreign policy speech a few weeks ago, he startled some of his countrymen by asserting that Iran could be attacked militarily if it did not abide by Security Council resolutions to suspend its uranium enrichment program.Whatever Iran does, or doesn't, divulge about its years of deceit is beside the point. Tehran is still running its outlaw nuclear program. It is building and installing centrifuges, enriching uranium and following a path that could lead to the bomb. It is defying the Security Council.Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
And so we learn:One who becomes compassionate instead of cruel, will ultimately become cruel instead of compassionate, as it is written (I Samuel 22:19): “And Nov, the city of priests, he smote with the edge of a sword.” Is Nov any worse than the descendants of Amalek?!Midrash Rabba, Ecclesiastes 7:16.1. Time to be cruel, not merciful-Iran and bomb-and Sukkot Haftorot The Haftorot during the Festival of Sukkot speak of end times-a huge final battle of Gog and Magog, and final a celebration in Jerusalem at the end when all nations will celebrate Sukkot and recognizes Adonai as God (the final verse of Alenu prayer comes from this Zachariah Haftarah.) Sometimes the events of the world feel like those days.From The Chicago Tribune editorial Saturday:Case closed? You wishFresh from his performance as a human pinata at Columbia University, the Iranian president took the opportunity this week to remind the nations of the world just how much contempt he and his country held for the UN Security Council. In sum, a lot.After two sets of sanctions, and many more deadlines for Iran to suspend its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad dared the nations of the world to stop Iran's nuclear program. He scoffed at the power of the UN Security Council and declared that "the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed." That brought the quick response from the U.S: You wish."The Iranian president is badly mistaken if he thinks the international community is going to forget about the fact that his country is continuing -- against the will of the UN Security Council -- its nuclear research programs," said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.And from Germany: "Let's not fool ourselves," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. "If Iran were to acquire the nuclear bomb, the consequences would be disastrous."One of the sharpest warnings came from France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Allowing Iran to build a bomb, he said, would be an "unacceptable risk to the stability in the region and in the world." In his first major foreign policy speech a few weeks ago, he startled some of his countrymen by asserting that Iran could be attacked militarily if it did not abide by Security Council resolutions to suspend its uranium enrichment program.Whatever Iran does, or doesn't, divulge about its years of deceit is beside the point. Tehran is still running its outlaw nuclear program. It is building and installing centrifuges, enriching uranium and following a path that could lead to the bomb. It is defying the Security Council.Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
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