July 23, 2014 Taking It to the Streets in Italy Michael Ledeen in “PJ Media” has this comparative observation on Diaspora Jewish communities defending themselves: “The Italians faced an active neo-fascist movement after the war, and quickly figured out they could not rely on the state for decent security. Jewish leaders knew they would have to do it by themselves. Led by the chief rabbi […] Blog
July 23, 2014 Europe’s Three-Rings Circus of Israel and Jew Hatred: Latest Roundup UK: In a post that appeared on his Twitter feed, Liberal Democratic MP David Ward wrote, “The big question is – if I lived in #Gaza would I fire a rocket? – probably yes”, followed by another tweet shortly thereafter, that reads “Ich bin ein #palestinian – the West must make up its mind – […] Blog
July 23, 2014 LDB Urges Supreme Court to Protect Rights of Persons Born in Jerusalem Earlier today, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB), a national civil rights organization, presented the U.S. Supreme Court with an amicus curiae brief in support of Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, the petitioner in the so-called Jerusalem passport case, Zivotofsky v. Secretary of State. Blog
July 22, 2014 Best Buddies: Obama and Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan President Obama’s critics picture him as a screw-up in venues as far removed as Putin’s Greater Russia (including increasing chunks of Ukraine), Assad’s always-open Syrian charnel house, imploding Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ninjadom, civic meltdown in Libya and continuing civil war in Sudan and Christian kidnappings in Nigeria, the late Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela-wide prison swamp, or […] Blog
July 22, 2014 Alternatives to Paralysis in a New Age of Pogroms Georgetown University Law Professor David E. Bernstein notes in the “Washington Post” that in France last week, “A group of anti-Israel demonstrators tried to storm a synagogue, but Jews had their own undercover agents at the protests so they could raise the alarm if any of the protestors started to engage in violence. They did […] Blog
July 22, 2014 New Flash: International Community Adopts Rube Goldberg Device Simon Wiesenthal Center Dean Rabbi Marvin Hier in a recent op ed in the “Jerusalem Post” compared the international community’s response to Hamas’ terror campaign to the clueless leaders of the legendary Jewish community of Chelm, built in a mountaintop, who—when their people began to fall off the mountain—responded by building a hospital at the […] Blog
July 21, 2014 Hamas Discovers That There Really Was A Holocaust According to guidelines that Hamas’ high command has issued as marching orders to its global robotic chorus: “Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians.” Other propaganda guidelines to convince the gullible: “Anyone […] Blog
July 21, 2014 The Limits of Empathy: “Eyeless in Gaza” From Ernest R. May’s “Lessons of the Past” (1973) to Yuen Foong Khong’s “Analogies at War” (1992) to Jeffrey Record’s “Making War, Thinking History” (2006), historians have argued about the use—and abuse—of historical analogies by decision makers. It is now conventional wisdom that Lyndon Johnson’s advisers were misled into going to war in Vietnam by […] Anti-Zionism Blog
July 20, 2014 Interesting Takes on the Shoot Down While a Russian government news agency—presumably to distract attention from Putin’s bloody fingerprints in Ukraine—joins the pummeling of Israel for its “slaughter” in Gaza, an anti-Semitic blogger, Wayne Madsen, claims that it is Tel Aviv that shot down the Malaysian plane to deflect attention, also from Gaza: “Ukrainian government, Russia, and Donetsk People’s Republic all […] Blog
July 20, 2014 Thinking About the Thinkable in the Mideast Ninety-year old Henry Kissinger is in the hospital for heart surgery. Herman Kahn—author of “Thinking About the Unthinkable” and an influence on Kissinger (along with Count Metternich and Bismarck)—is long dead. The contours of the unthinkable in the Mideast—Israel vs. Iranian nukes—are already clear. The question now is the thinkable in the short and intermediate […] Blog