Sunday, October 31, 2010

Time for US Jews to Grow up

1. A bit long but a must read: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/45768
TIME TO KICK THE ONE-PARTY HABIT

By: Uri Kaufman

Date: Wednesday, October 27 2010
For Jewish-Americans, the December date that lives in
infamy is December 17. For on that day in 1862, Major-General Ulysses
S. Grant issued General Order 11.

The order, which covered Grant's military district in portions of
Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky, declared that "Jews, as a class
violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury
Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the
[Military District] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this
order."

Those who dared to return would be "arrested and held in confinement
until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners."

The order was countermanded by Abraham Lincoln before anyone was
expelled. But it became an issue when Grant ran for president in 1868.
How to justify the wholesale expulsion of an entire people? Grant
asserted that he was furious over illegal smuggling of Southern cotton
to the North and that "the order was issued and sent without any
reflection and without thinking of the Jews as a set or race to
themselves, but simply as persons who had ... violated an order."

This rather curious defense was apparently enough for America's tiny
Jewish community. In 1868, a majority of them cast their ballot for
the Republican candidate for president - General Ulysses S. Grant.

Time has softened the hard choices facing Jewish Americans. It would
be somewhat more difficult today for a candidate to win nomination
after advocating a mass expulsion. But the Jewish practice of voting
for candidates who work against Jewish interests lives on.

A politician could play out his career in a thousand arenas where
working against his supporters is suicide and only one where it isn't.
But that one applies when he works against Jewish Americans. In the
19th and early 20th centuries this phenomenon worked to the benefit of
Republicans like Grant. Since that time it has worked to the benefit
of Democrats.

One of the first to benefit from this trend was Franklin Roosevelt. He
and Harry Truman never drew less than 75 percent of the Jewish vote
and sometimes gained as much as 90 percent of it.

How did Franklin Roosevelt repay the Jewish community? By obstructing
the issuance of visas to Jewish refugees seeking to flee Europe. In
June 1940, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long ordered
American consuls "to put every obstacle in the way [to] postpone and
postpone and postpone the granting of visas" in order to "delay and
effectively stop" all such immigration.

Roosevelt knew, however, how to grant entry to refugees when he wanted
to. In August 1940 he exploited a loophole in America's immigration
law for British children, declaring them "visitors" who intended to
return home.

The story of Roosevelt and the Jews grew even darker during the war. I
am prepared to concede that any reasonable cost-benefit analysis
argued against bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz. The Germans would
have repaired them quickly and hundreds of hard-to-train flight crews
would have been lost - flight crews that were needed to win the war.
What I cannot concede, indeed what I cannot understand, is why
Roosevelt didn't simply announce to the world what was going on in
Auschwitz. Eli Wiesel once said something that I recall hearing from
many others when I was growing up: Roosevelt knew what was going on
the camps, but the Jews didn't. Why didn't he go on the BBC or Voice
of America - which everyone in Europe listened to - and warn them not
to get on the trains? For that matter, why didn't he warn the Germans
that those involved in the killing would be brought to justice after
the war?

A simple announcement like that would have cost the allies nothing and
would have saved countless lives. Why didn't he do it? This is one of
those questions that have no answer.

Article continues here: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/45768


2. UCLA: Where 'Queer Studies' and Middle East Studies Meet -
Poofs for Palestine
by Eric Golub
American Thinker
October 31, 2010
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/ucla_where_queer_studies_and_m.html
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/10341
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The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Near
Eastern Studies (CNES) is a delightful contradiction of incompatible
notions. On one hand, the professors take hard-left stances on
sexuality and gender issues, claiming to staunchly support the rights
of gays and women. Yet they also worship at the altar of radical
Middle East studies professors who act as apologists for Sharia law
and other policies completely at odds with Western "liberalism."
The UCLA Queer Studies Conference 2010, which took place on October
8-9 and counted CNES among its sponsors, was a case in point. The
panel discussion I attended, along with all of fifteen people, was
titled "Trans-lating the Middle East." Let me "trans-late" and save
others the time of attending future UCLA conferences on the subject.
Gays in the Middle East are persecuted. It really is that simple. But
that didn't stop participants from engaging in the usual anti-Western,
jargon-laden rhetoric.
Gil Hochberg, Vice Chair of Comparative Literature and LGBT Studies at
UCLA, was the moderator. She decried the "heterosexualization of our
culture" and the "heterosexist portrayal of politics." Homosexuality,
she claimed, is an "erotic disorder exclusively as [sic] a white
pathology like white racism ... fault, guilt, refusal of fault, and
paranoia."
There is an "innate imperialism of gay rights movement, a white
western women's movement," she continued. Gay Muslims are "acting out
of economic necessity."
She asked, "Why has the West been so successful in imposing
homosexuality on the Arab world?" and answered, "People are seduced by
gayness and Americanism. Natives are informants of the white gay
international, not true Arabs."
University of Southern California (USC) sociology professor Evren
Savci spoke about "Bigudi: An Alternative Beginning." Her remarks were
so scintillating that CNES director Susan Slyomovics briefly fell
asleep. When Slyomovics snapped to it, she stated that she was having
trouble hearing the professor. She wasn't the only one.
Savci's "research" consisted of "five weeks working as a gay bar
person and four weeks pretending to be a bar client" and led her to
conclude that "queer includes the butch feminine."
University of Austin Texas anthropology professor Sofian Merabet spoke
"On the (Im)possibility of Queer Translatabilities and the Formation
of Gender Identities in Post-Civil-War Beirut, Lebanon" -- whatever
that means.
Merabet expounded at length about his "one subject, a 73-year-old man,
a most eccentric fellow. He was stocky and had a hunch-backed
physique. He had posters of martyrs of Hamas and Hezbollah. He was a
devout Roman Catholic -- not a Christian supremacist, but a social
elitist."
Merabet is not a statistician, so perhaps he did not know that
observing one person -- whatever his religious proclivities -- does
not constitute an adequate research sample size.
He described his subject as "a staunch Meditarraneanist," who
"yearn[ed] for the Ottoman Empire to be restored."
Merabet then added, "We also climbed the stairs where the host
sunbathed naked and hoped to relieve himself from a skin condition. He
overtly showed his disappointment. We refused his ride home."
I closed my eyes in case there were visual aids.
Gay people are "living their lives on ambiguous margins," Merabet stated.
Well, yes -- Islamists are trying to murder them.
There was "a hint of Norman Bates in the air," he added.
One wonders if Merebet was talking about himself on this one. His
remarks were a tad psychotic.
Continuing on in this vein, he noted that there was "a toilet seat
filled with dollar bills he had purchased from New York City," and
then opined, "In France, I feel Oriental."
Given that this was a conference sponsored by the LGBT community, some
love for that community had to be forthcoming. What happened with
gays?
"Muslims woke them up by asking them to leave their lazy lives behind
unless they want to burn in hell," Merabet stated.
He ended by declaring homosexuals to be on the "ephemeral daily
fringes of social behavior."
Next up was Oren Segal, a graduate student in the University of
Michigan's Near Eastern Studies Department. His topic was "Returning
to the Father's Land: Yotam Reuveny's Queer Nationalism."
Homosexuals are "sexual outlaws," he declared. We should "segregate
all the queers, create an all-male society, a new independent state
near Sodom."
More bizarre commentary followed:
"There are three types in the world ... men, women, homosexuals, and lesbians."
"If gay men will act like real men, straight men lose interest to
persecute and subjugate them."
"Heterosexuals cannot stop hating homosexuals. They can only hide it.
It is in their blood."
"The pride parade is a freak show to heterosexuals. Stop parading; go
back to Sodom."
Segal then launched into a tirade involving homosexuality and Judaism:
"Homosexuality, like Judaism, is a race."
"Gays, like Jews with Zionism, need their own separate space. Gays
need their own homeland."
"Stop hiding from false morals. Why are some homosexuals gayer than
others and obsessed with sex?"
"Jews were compelled to be homosexuals to increase both types.
Homosexuality is another case of Jewish deviance."
"Like gays ... be a Jew in your home and a man outside it."
"A Jew is a person who is considered by others to be a Jew. A
homosexual is a person who[m] others consider to be one. It only
exists as others define it."
Actually, a Jew is a person born to a Jewish mother.
Segal continued,
"Jews and homosexuals are too passive to found their own state."
"The Sodomite movement is similar to the Zionist movement."
Professor Slyomovics -- no fan of Israel -- laughed heartily at this remark.
"If Jews have a state where they are normalized, gays should have the same."
"Jews will always be outsiders in front of their fellow citizens, no
matter how hard they assimilate. A real solution to the Jewish problem
... Homosexuals can first be put in ghettos and then put in
concentration camps ... then they will never be safe without a
territory and an army."
Segal then offered his fantasy:
"A new society formed out of the 2012 gay holocaust in the same way
Israel was formed out of the Holocaust."
Despite five minutes for questions, there were none. ince most of
these professors spent the time talking to each other anyway, they
simply continued.
When asked by another professor, "How do you define political?,"
Merabet replied, "The political share my agenda, the apolitical
disagree with my agenda."
His honesty was refreshing.
Hochberg asked Segal about the future land of Gayistan: "Is this new
nation sarcastic? Will there be Jews, Arabs, and Palestinian gays?"
Segal responded that it is "serious and parody. The founder is
Israeli, Jewish, Arab -- and Palestinian gays all over are invited.
Men only -- no lesbians."
Professor Slyomovics laughed again, since excluding women is a
hysterically funny topic.
Segal concluded that "[t]he Gay Holocaust started in America. After
the great war, Israel and Palestine don't exist anymore. A new state
emerges. The state of Sodom emerges."
Slyomovics laughed loudly, barely containing herself. I could not tell
if she was celebrating the eradication of Israel or is just
pro-Sodom(y).
To top off the absurdity of it all, the conference ended with a music
performance by a woman named Vaginal Davis.
I'll leave that one to the imagination.
Eric Golub is the publisher of the Tygrrrr Express blog. He wrote this
article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.


3. Well, now even the leftist YNET is reporting that many of those
incidents of Jewish settlers vandalizing olive trees of Arabs in the
West Bank are actually Arabs themselves and Jewish leftists staging
the vandalism to smear the settlers:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3976976,00.html

See also http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140351 and
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3965059,00.html


4. Middle East Racism:
http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2010/10/shmuel-trigano-open-racism-of-future.html


Friday, October 01, 2010

Ruth Wisse on the Harvard Jihad

1. J-Street unmasked
by Isi Leibler
October 1, 2010
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=2450

See also http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139837

2. At Harvard, Groupthink About Islam
A liberal editor stands accused of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Article

By RUTH R. WISSE
Last Saturday, at a university-sponsored event to celebrate the 50th
anniversary of Harvard's Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, a
group of former students launched a research fund in honor of Martin
Peretz, a former teacher in the program and the longtime editor in
chief of the New Republic. After the event adjourned, the afternoon
turned ugly as police had to protect Mr. Peretz while he walked across
campus surrounded by a mob of screaming students.
Mr. Peretz admits that he wasn't blameless in the controversy. On
Sept. 4, blogging at the New Republic's web site, he lamented that
Muslims don't respond more vigorously to acts of terrorism against
their own people:
"Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those
Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [of the proposed Cordoba House mosque]
there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random
bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I
need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the
privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense
that they will abuse."
For that final sentence, Mr. Peretz apologized and sought atonement.
Nonetheless, his column set off a firestorm. The Harvard Crimson
reported over 500 protests against the honorary research fund by
alumni, students and staff.
Harvard accepted the money to create the fund. Yet a member of the
Social Studies Standing Committee extolled the protest, while also
declaring that everyone on the committee "was—without
exception—appalled by Peretz's comments."
Why not, then, organize an open forum where Mr. Peretz might engage
with his critics? That, presumably, was out of the question: better to
ensure that students know which side "everyone—without exception" is
on.
To date, no defense of Mr. Peretz has emerged from within the academy
he served so well as a teacher and benefactor.
The first at Harvard to exploit the Peretz case was Stephen Walt of
the Kennedy School of Government, who co-authored a book, "The Israel
Lobby," which argues that a conspiracy skews American policy in the
Middle East in favor of Israel. Mr. Walt's blog on the web site of
Foreign Policy magazine offers readers a series of Mr. Peretz's
statements "displaying hatred and contempt for Muslims, Arabs, and
other minorities."
But to wish that Muslims would condemn the violence in their midst is
not bigotry but liberality, treating others as you would have them
treat you.
One student I spoke with offered a quainter interpretation than did so
many professors. Hadn't Mr. Peretz said something true, though far too
sloppily?
What about Muslim disregard for Muslim life taken by terrorism? Have
Mr. Peretz's critics tried to show that Muslims really do value the
life of their co-religionists? Why were protests trying to shout the
problem down? In this student's view, the pressure for political
conformism had combined with a suppressed anxiety about Islam into a
toxic mix of hostility against one man.
The student had sought me out to ask whether, as the Martin Peretz
Professor of Yiddish Literature, I might offer an opinion on the
flare-up. Of course, donors do not dictate those who hold the chairs
they endow; indeed, the Belfer family may regret that Mr. Walt
occupies theirs. And I doubt that Mr. Peretz and I have ever voted
alike. But whatever qualities of his still excite his former students,
I can be sure that they do not include any habit of wrapping himself
in the opinion of "everyone—without exception."
Like him, I too regret that Muslim political culture in the U.S. and
internationally is not more confident, positive and life-affirming.
Where are the campus protests against Hamas torture and murder of
fellow Palestinians, against Muslim suicide bombers in civilian
centers of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? A necessary step toward a
more peaceful world is, indeed, greater respect of Muslims for Muslim
life. Universities ought to be encouraging, not inhibiting, that
development.
Ms. Wisse, a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at
Harvard, is the author of "Jews and Power" (Schocken, 2007).


3. http://frontpagemag.com/2010/09/30/the-left%e2%80%99s-peretz-problem/

The Left's Peretz Problem
Posted By Jacob Laksin On September 30, 2010 @ 12:30 am In FrontPage |
44 Comments

It doesn't take much to provoke the modern furies of political
correctness, but longtime New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz
touched off a still-raging storm earlier this month when he published
a blog post [1]lamenting the general failure of Muslims to protest the
sectarian murder of their coreligionists in the Islamic world. In the
passage that most incensed his critics, Peretz concluded that
…frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among
those Muslims led by the [Ground Zero mosque champion] Imam Rauf there
is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random
bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I
need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the
privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense
that they will abuse.
Judging by the howls of indignation and excoriation generated by that
post, one might think that Peretz had called for the immediate
extermination of all Muslims. Left-wing blogs condemned Peretz as a
"racist" and a bigot. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called
[2] the post "debased." The backlash was even more hostile at Harvard
University, where Peretz had taught for over 40 years and where he was
honored this weekend for an undergraduate research fund established in
his name earlier this year. What was supposed to be a celebratory
occasion instead became a public inquisition, as student protestors,
bearing signs with quotes from Peretz – evidence, by their standards,
of the consummate evil of his views – heckled the honoree and
harangued him as he tried to exit the campus. In that harassment they
were openly encouraged by some Harvard faculty and implicitly by the
university's administration, which all but sanctioned the protests
when it called Peretz's comments about Muslims "distressing to many
members of our community, and understandably so."
It is not to excuse the more inflammatory name-calling of Peretz's
critics to note that some of his comments were indeed offensive. In a
follow-up to his initial post, a rightly "embarrassed" Peretz
apologized [3] for his crass and carelessly worded suggestion that
Muslims should be denied First Amendment rights. And yet it remains
the case that Peretz's broader point, however artlessly made, was a
sound one.
The controversy surrounding the mosque and Islamic cultural center to
be built two blocks from Ground Zero is a case in point. That project
has been defended on First Amendment grounds by everyone from Imam
Rauf to President Obama, who insist that Muslims have a First
Amendment right to built where they please. But in truth none of the
mosque project's opponents – who polls show include the majority of
New Yorkers, hardly a right-wing powerbase – have questioned the right
to build a mosque at Ground Zero – only the wisdom and decency of
doing so at that sensitive and, for many New Yorkers, uniquely sacred
location. No reasonable person would deny that Muslims should have the
same access to the First Amendment as all Americans, but the
promiscuity with which proponents of the mosque project have tried to
make a constitutional issue out of what is really a debate about
propriety certainly validates Peretz's concern about First Amendment
abuse.
The hypocrisy of Peretz's critics is also striking. The same
protestors who professed outrage at Peretz's comments about the First
Amendment tried to have him barred from speaking at this weekend's
celebration. How genuine are their concerns about the unrestricted
exercise of the First Amendment if they are so eager to deny it to
those, like Peretz, with whom they disagree?
All the more rank is that hypocrisy when one considers that Peretz's
other controversial comment – "Frankly, Muslim life is cheap,
especially for Muslims" – is not actually that controversial, and has
been made so only through deliberate misconstruction. Thus, the
Economist absurdly interpreted the statement to mean that Peretz was
downgrading the significance of Muslim life generally and charged,
equally absurdly, that America's military involvement in the Middle
East "creates pressure to believe this sort of thing." But as would be
obvious to any fair-minded reader, Peretz was simply making the
irrefutable observation that Muslims are disproportionately
responsible for the deaths of their fellow believers.
Evidence for the claim abounds. In a 2007 article, for instance,
Daniel Pipes estimated [4] that of the approximately 11 million
Muslims that have been violently killed since 1948, over 90 percent
were killed by fellow Muslims. Muslims may cry foul about Israeli and
American "occupation," but the cold fact is that they are their own
worst enemy. From Sudan, to Pakistan, to Afghanistan, to Iran, to
Iraq, to Gaza, no one kills more Muslims than other Muslims. What the
Economist considers a "prejudice" on Peretz's part is in fact a
reality – a reality no less true for being so tragic.

4. Two Cheers for Lieberman:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962227,00.html


5. Leftists are to Blame:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962502,00.html


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