Bookworm Room

The familiar (way too familiar) trope on the Left is that the Bush doctrine is making everyone in the world hate us.  That desire to be loved, and the fear of being hated, is a feelings based mentality, of course, that has nothing to do with justice, morality, right, honor, etc.  My own view, as [...]

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A few stories caught my eye regarding the Middle East: The Palestinians say that they won’t negotiate with Israel until Israel agrees in advance to their demands.  (That’s an interesting negotiating tactic and definitely one to try during my next Court-ordered settlement conference.) Egypt has discovered a smuggling tunnel into Gaza, a squiblet that tells [...]

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With the resurgent charge that there is a pro-Israel lobby destroying U.S. interests around the world, I’d like you to read this essay, from George Friedman, of Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence organization. I’m publishing it with permission of Stratfor, which included this message in the email I receive regularly with Stratfor articles: This report may [...]

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I’ve always loved Leon Uris’ epic Exodus, a novel that is ostensibly about the founding of the State of Israel, but that also manages to blend in the pogroms in Russia, the Holocaust, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, all of which are necessary preconditions to understanding Zionism; anti-Semitism; and Arab hatred for the [...]

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Last week, in what I now think was a foolish burst of optimism (in my defense, it was a lovely, sunny day), I noted that the Arabs were resurrecting the Saudi peace plan. It’s a lousy plan for the Israelis, which is why, despite the New York Times‘ urging, they’ve been rejecting it. I naively [...]

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Sometimes, you open a web page, and find the most interesting things.  Today, I found slightly heartening (the first two stories) and definitely heart warming (the last story) three of the stories at YNet news, as of 8:13 PST (some of the others were less than thrilling).  Briefly: Arabs are talking peace with Israel.  That’s [...]

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A trope on the Left is that, if Israel will just give the Palestinians back their land, glorious peace will instantly descend upon the entire Middle East, whether in the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. All of those nations are convulsing, runs this trope, not because they are backwards dictatorships, [...]

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My host during the Thanksgiving break introduced me to a newspaper called Muslim World Today. It’s editor-in-chief is Tashbih Sayyed, who is also the president of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, which sponsors the paper. The CDT is a grassroots organization which has as its unabashed goal the dethroning of radicalized Islam as part [...]

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Clear an hour on your timetable. Then, watch Glenn Beck’s Exposed : The Extremist Agenda, about the footage CNN, MSNBC and the Times/Discovery Channel aren’t showing you. The Nuremburg rallies look like high school talent shows compared to these things: Hat tip: Little Green Footballs del.icio.us | digg it

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If there’s anyone left who still thinks the numbers in the Lancet study are valid, he should read Steven Moore’s op-ed explaining why the study’s methodology is invalid by any standard: After doing survey research in Iraq for nearly two years, I was surprised to read that a study by a group from Johns Hopkins [...]

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Although European venom seems to be leaking away as Europe’s Muslim immigrants turn against the Europeans themselves, Europe still holds remarkably jaundiced views of Israel. In a poll about a year ago (which I’m too lazy to dig up), Europeans opined that Israel was the greatest threat to world peace and stability. In the Arab [...]

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My Mom was quite the packrat.  In addition to the Life magazine that I quoted from in the two previous posts (here and here), which was published at the end of the War, my Mom also saved the June 16, 1967 edition of Life magazine, which was written within days of the War’s abrupt beginning [...]

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I’m still going through my 1967 Life magazine special edition about the 1967 war, and would like to highlight two more articles within the magazine, one about the refugee situation, one about Russia’s involvement in events. First, here, in its entirety, is Life’s, June 23, 1967 editorial, which is both clear-headed and prescient about the [...]

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His language is a bit more colorful than mine, but Ron Down Under complete nails the fact that the UN buffer is illusory (something already being demonstrated by the fact that no UN member states want to put their troops there), as well as the dangerous dilemma facing the Arab governments surrounding Israel.  They’ve enjoyed [...]

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I mentioned before that I watched The Long Way Home, a documentary about the Jewish experience in the years between the liberation of the camps and the founding of the State of Israel. One of the things that movie reminded me about was the similarities between the tactics Jewish militants used to displace the British [...]

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At the UN today, the “Arab Group” made its ad hoc contribution to the Draft International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. To the existing preamble paragraph, they proposed including this language to describe what they perceive as an existing problem: “Concerned that situations of armed conflict, foreign occupation and the occurrence of [...]

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Israel has, for years, had missiles rain down upon her, and suicide bombers work from within. Since her inception, every Arab nation has called for her destruction and the death of her citizens. In the last year, her Arab neighbors have given her the gift of more than 2,000 missiles being fired randomly at her [...]

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[NGA, as opposed to the familiar NGO, is not a typo. I'll explain in a minute.] I had lunch with DQ today and, at his request, gave him a run-down of Israel’s history, starting with Herzl and modern Zionism. I took him through the Eastern European pogroms; the declining Ottoman Empire; the ascendent British Empire [...]

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While the MSM, the Europeans and the UN have been calling for an instant cease fire, because they all crave the untenable , violence-ridden status quo, things are a bit different in the Arab world. Unlike the others I named, who are caught in the PLO/Israel trope, which sees Israel as a demonic, imperialist bully, [...]

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I don’t know if this was just an isolated sortie, or if the ground war has finally begun: Two Israeli soldiers and a Hezbollah militant have been killed in fierce fighting in southern Lebanon. Clashes erupted after Israeli tanks and infantry crossed the border in search of Hezbollah weapons and facilities. Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora [...]

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I’m really enjoying the periodic forays I’ve been making into Leftie land regarding the current Israeli/Hezbollah war (you can see my previous posts here and here), so I thought I’d keep going. No survey would be complete without checking in with Howard Dean. I know it’s already old news (two days old already), but you’ve [...]

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On it’s face, Richard Cohen’s most recent op-ed for the WaPo looks like a self-hating anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli screed. It’s not really, although it’s inartfully written (very), and some of the conclusions he draws aren’t necessarily correct. I thought, therefore, that I’d give the article a polite fisking to try to tease out the truth behind [...]

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Well, it's official and it's dreadful: The bodies of two U.S. soldiers reported captured last week have been recovered, and an Iraqi defense ministry official said Tuesday the men were "killed in a barbaric way." The U.S. military said the remains were believed to be those of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. [...]

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Those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome like to claim that the increase in Muslim vs. everyone attacks are all George Bush's fault, because he had the temerity to strike back.  Certainly, we're more aware of Muslim vs. the world attacks, because 9/11 got our antennae up.  It's useful, though, to remember that the real crescendo [...]

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It seems to me that most of the violent death in the world today would be capped if we could do away with the more violent adherents of the Religion of Pieces.  Today, 9 died in Tel Aviv, with more almost 70 injured, thanks to yet another Muslim who went hunting for those seventy virgins [...]

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