Boker tov, Boulder!

Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world

bodazey.com: Not only was Esther a Jewish queen, but, as the wife of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I) she also continues to be revered as a Persian queen and, thus, an icon of national Iranian history....

According to one Persian legend, the resting place [of Esther and Mordechai] and its surrounding land served as a refuge for Iranians during the Arab conquest of Persia in 621 C.E. As the story goes, when the Arabs began to conquer the city of Hegmataneh, the people of Iran came to the gravesite so that the spirit of Esther and Mordechai would protect them.

Elder of Ziyon:

In a fascinating New York Observer article written by Ahmadinejad's interpreter while he was in New York comes this tidbit, during a speech by the Iranian president to an enthusiastic room of Iranian-Americans - who gave him a standing ovation:

“Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world. You can do it elsewhere,” he said, as if speaking directly to the mysterious 2,000, “but not in Iran. It’s impossible—it’s not doable.”

I'm telling Lenny.

In a bit of a bind (at Columbia)

Questioning the Anti-War Coalition

via Solomonia:

.... It seemed like an easy enough task. Most Columbia students, like most Americans, oppose the war. Because the war is so baseless and infuriating, it should not have been hard to provide good reasons to convince other people to join the cause. But at this meeting, which was called to talk about ways to organize opposition to the war in Iraq, there was only one idea that people wanted to discuss: protesting Israel.

This sad fact leaves us and most other liberals on campus in a bit of a bind. We support Israel. Israel is a liberal democracy in a part of the world that is decidedly illiberal and pointedly undemocratic. The groups attacking Israel are usually armed religious fundamentalists. Just like our opposition to the war in Iraq, our support of Israel flows naturally from our progressive values. And what CAWC told us is, "To work with us on Iraq, you have to work with us against Israel."

Indict the New York Times

Smooth sends us to FrontPage. Salman Rushdie will be giving lectures in Baghdad before the Times is indicted, but it's somewhat satisfying to see the idea in print.

Here's the law:

Title 18, Section 793 of the United States Code, provides that “(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of . . . any document . . . or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates . . . the same to any person not entitled to receive it . . . (f) . . . [s]hall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.”

Read it all: Indict the New York Times by Henry Mark Holzer, Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn Law School.

Melanie Phillips: HOW?

September 11, 2006: Five years on

.... How can we act against the continuum of Islamic extremism which is providing the sea in which the jihad swims, when we are not even prepared to acknowledge that such a continuum exists, and demonise those who try to warn against it?

How can we defend the free world when we are doing our damnedest to sacrifice Israel, the front-line nation in that defence, as a scapegoat instead of coming to its own defence?

How can a war to defend a civilisation be fought apologetically, with two hands tied behind our backs and with the hostile camera lenses of CNN and the BBC trained against our own troops and primed to inflate every casualty into an atrocity, against an enemy that by contrast is prepared both to slaughter and to die in vast and bloody numbers for its beliefs?

How can we defend our own beliefs if we can no longer even agree what they are?

FWANCE: Teacher guilty of crime of opinion

senzor 2005

Teacher in Hiding After Attack on Islam Stirs Threats

PARIS, Sept. 29 — A French high school philosophy teacher and author who carried out a scathing attack against the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in a newspaper commentary says he has gone into hiding under police protection after receiving a series of death threats, including one disseminated on an online radical Islamist forum.

The teacher, Robert Redeker, 52, wrote in the center-right daily Le Figaro 10 days ago that Muhammad was “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass-murderer of Jews and a polygamist,” and called the Koran “a book of incredible violence”....

Immediately afterward, Mr. Redeker, who teaches in a public high school near Toulouse and is the author of several books on philosophy, began to receive death threats by telephone, e-mail and through the online Islamist Web site known as Al Hesbah, a password-protected forum with ties to Al Qaeda. The forum published photos of him and what it said was his home address, directions to his home and his cellphone number, according to the SITE Institute, which tracks violent Islamist groups.

“I can’t work, I can’t come and go and am obliged to hide,” Mr. Redeker told Europe 1 radio in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location on Friday. “So in some way, the Islamists have succeeded in punishing me on the territory of the republic as if I were guilty of a crime of opinion.”

Israel braces at borders for Yom Kippur

orlyyahalom: This was the scene of a bitter and bloody battle between Israel and Syria during the Yom Kippur War ....

DEBKAfile reports: Israeli Golan forces on Syrian border in state of preparedness for Yom Kippur War anniversary

They are braced for a possible decision by Syrian president Bashar Asad to make good on his recent belligerent statements. Asad has said that Syria is losing patience over the delays in recovering the Golan and certain elements are preparing a campaign of terror in the territory. Israeli officers and the security officers of local communities were cautioned ahead of Yom Kippur to stand ready for terrorist incursions from Syria, attacks on army posts and roads, roadside devices and kidnap attempts.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence and military sources say Israel is acting on the premise that the Syrian army may seek to mark the anniversary of the Yom Kippur war with a repeat of its initial success 33 years ago in driving as far as the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee before being thrown back

The Israeli-Lebanese border is also on high alert in case Hizballah decides to use its restored presence and free hand in southern Lebanon for a spectacular operation.

The Washington Post is the latest publication to confirm DEBKAfile reports that the presence of 5,000 United Nations troops and Lebanese army units in S. Lebanon has done nothing to hinder Hizballah’s return to its former fortified village sanctuaries within sight of the Israeli border, or its access to replenished arms dumps. Neither set foot in Hizballah strongholds.

Roger Simon interviews Uncle Joe

This interview on Pajamas Media is well worth your time, both to hear Sen. Lieberman at length and to see and hear what Roger Simon looks and sounds like.

Way to go, PJM!

See also A new definition of 'Chutzpah' by Armed Liberal
(P.S. 'Chutzpah' is Hebrew, is it not?)

If you go on to read the comments, notice #10: LoafingOaf writes that "anti-semitism is rampant on the Left right now." So far (65 additional comments and counting) not a single solitary soul has even responded to that, much less argued against it. Wow.

Shalom, Shabbat Shalom

"We can always find a way to come even closer."

.... The first Rebbe of Chabad, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi gave this analogy; Hashem gave us the Torah, and in the Torah there are six hundred and thirteen mitzvoth (commandments). Each mitzvah is a strand that connects us with Hashem. We start off with a rope which is comprised of six hundred and thirteen strands. When we transgress a mitzvah we break a strand.

The first part of Teshuva is repairing the broken strand. We do this with a firm commitment not to transgress this commandment, and only Hashem knows if this commitment is real. The strand is now repaired.

A question still remains. But is the connection strong? Is this merely a functional relationship or is this a close loving relationship?

This brings us back to my childhood memory of the Rebbe. Why was his prayer so intense? He surely didn’t have transgressions to repent for. His rope was whole, his connections was strong. He cared about every single Jew and sought to make life better for them. Yet he prayed with all his heart and soul.

From this I understood that it is not enough to repair but we must now build the relationship stronger and stronger. Each strand in our rope is a conduit for the divine flow we can make those strands stronger, build them thicker.

It is not enough to survive - be connected - we must also live - develop a strong intense relationship with Hashem.

T’shuva means to come closer and we can always find a way to come even closer.

May you be inscribed in the book of life a year of peace, happiness, health, success and closeness to Hashem.

-- Rabbi Yitzchok Hurwitz
Chabad of Temecula Valley (CA)

When Salman Rushdie gives a lecture in Baghdad

Tommy Friedman weighs in on Islam and the Pope. For those who don't subscribe to Times Select, Peking Duck has posted the column in full.

... Whenever people asked me how I'd know if we'd won in Iraq, I said: when Salman Rushdie could give a lecture in Baghdad. I'm all for a respectful dialogue between Islam and the West, but first there needs to be a respectful, free dialogue between Muslims and Muslims. What matters is not what Muslims tell us they stand for. What matters is what they tell themselves, in their own languages, and how they treat their own.

See also Thousands attend HAMAS rally in Gaza

Hamas lawmaker (sic):

"We vow to God never to recognize Israel, even if we all die."

Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters attend a rally in support of the government and rejecting the recognition of Israel in Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza strip September 29, 2006. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

The MSM was all over this rally in a Gaza refugee camp. Canada.com called it a "show of strength."

Yet when "tens of thousands" rallied in New York City in solidarity with Israel, the Drive By Media was Conspicuously Absent, even though you would think it was a much more convenient location.

One might conclude from this that the mainstream media is full of Jew-hating bigots... but Jabotinsky put it so much more elegantly in 1911 (decades before Israel became a state):

“We are hated not because we are blamed for everything, but we are blamed for everything because we are not loved.”

I will certainly rejoice when Salman Rushdie can give a lecture in Baghdad, but in the meantime "how they treat their own" is not my primary concern. I don't understand why it would be Thomas Friedman's, either ... unless, of course, he's hoping to be loved.

I can't really blame him if he is.

Benaya's prayer

OneFamilyFund

One of the soldiers who was killed this summer was Benaya Rein. He was killed just after Shabbat, mere hours before the ceasefire was declared, when Hezbollah terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at the tank he was commanding.

Benaya was buried in the cemetery of his home community, Karnei Shomron, and immediately afterwards, his sister was rushed to the hospital to give birth, where she gave birth to a baby boy.

The following week, when the family got up from Shiva, they went first to the cemetery to visit Benaya’s grave, and then to the Brit Milah of their new grandson – named Benaya, after his heroic uncle.

When the family went through Benaya’s belongings, they found a piece of paper with a hand-written prayer written that had been with Benaya since grade school, and that he’d carried with him into war.

The text of the prayer is below, in Hebrew and English. We ask of you to please include it as a special prayer in your Yom Kippur services, in memory of Benaya and his heroism, and in tribute to his family and those of the other victims of terrorism and war, as they continue his legacy.

May it be Your will Dear G-d, our L-rd and L-rd of our fathers, that you nullify war and blood-letting from the world and that a large and wonderful peace should continue in the world; that nation should no longer lift up sword against nation, nor should they any longer learn war, but that all residents of the Earth should recognize and know the truth for its truthfulness – that we did not come to this world for argument or fighting – G-d forbid – and not for hatred or deceit, spite or blood-letting G-d forbid, but that we have come to the world in order to recognize and know You and Your blessings.

Capt. Benaya Rein was buried in Karnei Shomron. He is survived by his parents Hagit and Shimon, and seven siblings: Harel, Nuria, Morasha, Elyashiv, Bat-El, Elishama, and Dov.

May the G-d of Israel comfort them among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.