Measure for Measure: Bin Laden Gets His Last 15 Minutes

The American Administration should release the Bin Laden photo(s).  Not because the photos will prove he was killed.  Photos on the internet prove nothing -- just ask Elvis.  Not because of "spiking a football."  But because those who celebrated Bin Laden's evasion of G-d's Justice and American determination should be reminded, in the thousand words that a picture provides, that there is no evading G-d's justice and that Bin Laden and his fellow shark food aspirants were writing America's epitaph way too prematurely.  Bin Laden thought America was weak, soft, lazy, and certainly never could pursue a determined manhunt for a decade.  Those who reveled with him in that belief, those who spiked their own footballs at America after every terrorist outrage, deserve to see photographic imagery revealing the stark reminder of reality:  There is no evading justice.  Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini all died young.  Justice caught up with each.

America does not relent.  Even the most incompetent and weak-kneed American Presidential Administration since that of Jimmy Carter -- and possibly the weakest and most incompetent in all American history (with apologies to Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan) -- saw this one through.  They had no choice.  The American People would not let Obama relent.  We would not let him close Gitmo.  We would not let him put terrorist leaders on civilian trial in Lower Manhattan.  We accepted enhanced interrogation and rendition, refusing to let Holder lay a hand on any of those who protected our country during the Bush-Cheney years. Much as we forced Obama finally to go down to Louisiana and to clean up the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, after the President and his inexperienced and unqualified staff  fumbled and bumbled by refusing repeated offers of boom and of assistance from oil-cleaning vessels, so we forced him to clean up after Al Qaeda -- like it or not.

As the final judgment took place, G-d saw Osama finished exactly as he merited, measure for measure.  He had murdered 3,000 Americans who perfunctorily had left for work on the morning of 9-11 as they respectively had done every other morning -- a quick cup of coffee, a brief glimpse of a newspaper, perhaps forgetting to say "good-bye" or to hug or kiss a loved one on the hurried way out the door.  None saw what lay in store that day, and thousands who survived them live a decade later with the pain that they never said "good-bye."  Garth Brooks captured that feeling -- the feeling of never having said "good-bye" to a loved one before he died -- years before 9-11 in his incredible song "If Tomorrow Never Comes."  I personally have lived 44 years with that pain, having been too young and immature to exchange "good-byes" with my Father as he lay in a hospital bed dying of leukemia.  That pain has wracked me nearly half a century, and it never will end -- never having gotten to say "good-bye."  But at least I have been able to visit my father's burial site, and I have said "good-bye" there.

For the families who lost 3,000 souls on 9-11 at Osama's inducement, there were few chances to say"good-bye."  The survivors forever will live with that amplified pain, even as the victims never saw it coming.  And, for so many of those victims, their final remains never were found by the subsequent crews.  Many who died at the Twin Towers never will be found.  They are part and parcel of Ground Zero.  Their survivors cannot go to their gravesites.  There is no coming to terms or ultimate closure.

And so it was fitting, in the ultimate measure for measure, that Bin Laden died a decade later in a sudden hail of frenzy, never having seen it coming.  It was a day that had begun like all others with the three wives and the 23 kids.  And then, from nowhere, with no advance warning, it all came to thud of a halt.  A hail of fire, a blown-off piece of skull, and tomorrow never came.  Only A flash of fire and a last image: that of Uncle Sam's SEALs discharging their weapons at his head.  And, even as those who survived him never got to say "good-bye," they and their fellow mourners have nowhere to go to pay their respects.  His body is gone, remains disappeared.  There is no gravesite, no marker.  As Moses the Zionist cheerfully sang in Exodus 15:3-5,10:   "G-d is a master of war. . . .  Pharaoh's chariots and warriors He threw in the sea, and the most select of his officers sank in the sea.  Deep waters covered them; they descended in the depths like stone.  . .  [T]he sea enshrouded them; they sank like lead in water."

And so Osama, too, promptly sank in the ocean like lead, subsumed by the mighty waters and the deepest of depths.  There is nowhere to go to say "good-bye, Bin Laden."  By now, part of him still may lie on the ocean floor, part in some whale, part in some shark.  Perhaps, by now, a bit even in some local aquarium's population.

Gone at once.  Never saw it coming.  Nowhere to be found.  Measure for measure.

That, too, is G-d's justice, as realized by the armed forces of a nation determined not to relent, not to let its weak and inadequate national leadership back off.  And that is the testimonial power of that photo -- for every terrorist and terrorist-wanna-be who ever spiked a football towards America.  There is no evading justice, and this United States of America will not relent.

Seattle Takes Down Those Despicable Anti-Israel Bus Ads: In Fairness, Credit Goes to Pamela Geller and David Horowitz

For the record, it should be noted that Seattle made the bus-ads decision today only after Pamela Geller’s “American Freedom Defense Initiative” bought 25 bus ads (twice as many as the anti-Israel ones) with an equally confrontational message showing bloody victims from Hamas terror bus-bombings with the header: “Hamas Terror: Your Tax Dollars at Work,” and then David Horowitz entered to buy yet another several-thousand-dollars-worth of confrontational bus ads titled: “Palestinian War Crimes: Your Tax Dollars at Work.”

Today, Pam Geller’s advertising representative first got a phone call that the Kings Metro system had decided to refuse her ads, then received a letter from Sharon Shinbo, in Seattle Metro’s Sales and Customer Services department, advising her that the Geller ads were being denied under rules pertaining to running ads that are “so objectionable under contemporary community standards as to be reasonably foreseeable that it will result in harm to, disruption of, or interference with the transportation system” and that are “so insulting, degrading or offensive as to be reasonably foreseeable that it will incite or produce imminent lawless action in the form of retaliation, vandalism or other breach of public safety, peace and order.” Therefore: “The content of the advertisements and the unprecedented response that the County has received to another recently proposed ad of a similar nature show that the American Freedom Defense Initiative ads do not meet the standards set forth in these sections, including among other things, that they pose an unacceptable risk of harm, disruption and interference with the transportation system and other breaches of the public safety, peace and order.”

It is my humble opinion that the efforts of the Jewish community of Seattle were virtually nugatory in obtaining the satisfactory result that all the ads are being rejected. Nonetheless, Seattle residents may anticipate that the community leaders will race to the mails to rustle up a last surge of tax-deductible donations from the locals before the tax-year ends next week.

Truth is an important weapon. It is important for us to know and to acknowledge that the real turning point came when Geller and Horowitz each used their respective organizations to buy a large number of equally confrontational ads. Those ad-buys guaranteed that the real goal would be obtained: not that Geller’s and Horowitz’s ads would run, but instead that no ads on the subject would run.

Geller and Horowitz deserve the thanks that few will give them, while the local Jewish groups will take the credit next week.

That’s how these liberals work. Free Speech for everyone. Free Speech for everyone. Bash Israel on the city buses. We can’t stop the ads even if we disapprove of the views because we protect all people’s right to speech.

Until the target is not Israel or Dead White Protestant Males. Then they suddenly find the Supreme Court language from Chaplinsky (1942) and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). They know that Jews will not vandalize the twelve buses with anti-Israel ads. And they know what they are going to face if there are 30 buses with anti-Palestinian ads depicting . . . blown-up buses.

Supporting the Jewish Boycott of the Federation of O.C.

Sign the Petition at: http://www.ha-emet.com/petition.html


From the Desk of Rabbi Dov Fischer


I have just signed this petition, and I encourage you to sign it, too: http://www.ha-emet.com/petition.html
And please do not hesitate to circulate this far and wide.


I attach (below my signature block) my recent commentary on the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), along with those written by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and by Prof. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of UC Santa Cruz. You may also wish to visit any of these websites:


http://www.redcounty.com/content/wolf-sheeps-clothing-ucirvine-olive-tree-initiative

www.ha-emet.com


http://octaskforce.wordpress.com/


http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/


www.jewtudes.com


You may think to yourself: “I cannot believe that the Jewish Federation of Orange County really would support something so toxic with Jewish money, and that the UCI Hillel Organization would endorse something so toxic. There must be a mistake.” Please understand: I have been involved in Jewish community organizations for nearly forty years. I have seen the American Jewish Congress fight public menorah lightings, going to court to stop Chabad and others from lighting menorahs in public. I have lived through the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith giving a significant national award to Hugh Hefner for his “courage” in embodying the First Amendment and Free Press by publishing women’s naked photos. More recently, I have watched the George Soros-funded “J Street” work against the security of the State of Israel, arguing in so many words that, hey, we also are Jews, and we and George Soros only want what’s best. I have lived through it all and have seen it all. Well, not “all” – because only G-d knows what tomorrow may bring.


I am joined in my views on this matter by a wide range of Orthodox rabbis throughout the United States, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. If Jewish parents want their sons or daughters to travel to “Palestine” and Jordan on Rosh Hashanah to attend lectures by trained, professional Palestinian Arab propagandists devoted to destroying Israel as a Jewish state, let them do it on their own dime. It does not matter that the same “Olive Tree” (“OTI”) program also brings them to Israel to hear a wide range of Israeli views on the Israel/”Palestine” question. Rather, OTI simply is not a proper cause for the expenditure of Jewish Federation funds -- whether directly from one Federation account or through a “Rose Project” of Federation that assists Jewish students financially with tzedakah funds to help them pay for their airfare and tuition to attend such OTI programs – during this Great Recession when, everyday, rabbis like me are approached for assistance by Jews in need right here in Irvine and throughout Orange County. This is worse than odious and abhorrent. In a word, it is . . .


. . .Foolish.


In arriving at this moment, Orange County Jewry now joins other Jewish communities throughout America in formally beginning to ask: Who exactly are the people who run these “Jewish” community organizations that take our money supposedly to support “our” agenda? What exactly are their private agendas? Do these individuals share our core views? Our core values? Yes, we like their emailed newsletters, and we know they do some real good with some of our funds, for Jewish families, for Jewish singles – but what else are they doing with the rest of our tzedakah, besides the stuff we expect them to be doing? Who are they? Who elected them? What do they privately stand for? And when do we have a say?


This Petition begins a new chapter in Orange County Jewish history. It marks Jews in Orange County standing up and saying, “We want accountability for how our tzedakah is spent.” And if a kid wants to spend Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine,” learning why Israel should cease to exist, let him pay for it – not public tzedakah funds.


Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County





From the Desk of Rabbi Dov Fischer


Having read the letter of December 8, 2010 by Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig, director of the UCI Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), responding to valid concerns raised by Prof. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, I now feel it is time for Jews in Orange County to withhold any further support for the Jewish Federation of Orange County until the Federation disassociates and withdraws from continuing to support the OTI, directly or indirectly, with Jewish charitable funds. I likewise will now urge all individuals of similar mind to mine to withhold support from the Jewish Federation of Orange County on those same terms. The notion that the Jewish Federation is taking Jewish charitable dollars and spending Jewish tzedakah funds to assist UCI Jewish students to participate in OTI is so profoundly disturbing that I cannot see how any Jewish philanthropist would want to know that her hard-won earnings during this Great Recession are being spent in this manner.


Jewish funds should not be expended on paying for Jewish students to travel throughout “Palestinian” towns and villages to hear lectures by trained anti-Israel propagandists from “Palestine,” as part of an OTI mission to expose Jewish students to a “balanced” understanding of narratives: (i) on the one hand, Israel’s unequivocal right to live, (ii) balanced on the other hand with the right of Palestinian Arabs to aspire towards absorbing and nullifying the only Jewish state in the world – the death of Israel. In the words of Dr. Wehrenfennig : “The Olive Tree Initiative is an experiential learning initiative that shows both, and even multiple sides and narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” My Young Israel synagogue does not bring Christian missionaries to our congregation so that our congregants can better receive a “balanced view” of theological narratives. Our “experiential learning initiative” is attained by educating our members by presenting information, including information believed by others – “and even multiple sides and narratives” – for their benefit. We educate expansively, beyond insularity. Yet, we do not need Christian missionaries to educate us. We do not bring Christian missionaries to teach their version of Torah, their version of Isaiah 7:14 or 53, to our teens and college students. We teach. Likewise, we do not need – and we certainly should not contribute towards such endeavor with Jewish tzedakah funds – Palestinians dedicated to the death of Israel to educate our Jewish college students for balance. There are ample Jewish educational programs, from a wide range of perspectives, that can educate ably, presenting multiple perspectives.


It is unconscionable that a Jewish Federation would expend even supplementary Jewish charitable funds to fly and transport Jewish UCI students on programs that compromise the Shabbat – and all the more so, incredibly so, that desecrate Rosh Hashanah. What Jewish philanthropist is so bereft of meaningful Jewish charitable choices for his philanthropic generosity that he must have his tzedakah employed for sending Jewish students to a program that spends part of Rosh Hashanah in a Jewish setting and part of Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine”? Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig, director of the UCI Olive Tree Initiative, means well when he writes: “Again, if the Jewish students wanted to they could opt out of the Jordan trip or parts of it because of religious reasons,” but he does not realize how damning the statement is. I do not want my college Jewish son or daughter being flown or otherwise transported to “Palestine” and Jordan, along with Israel, during Rosh Hashanah, with some concession of “opting out” from the group dynamic “because of religious reasons.” I want my Jewish son or daughter, if spending time in Israel during the High Holy Day season, devoting that time to experiencing the Days of Awe with everyone else in the group, thus creating a reinforcing socializing and educating experience. The college years pass by so rapidly, and these moments must be cherished for the opportunities they offer us to educate and welcome Jewish students to the meaning of Jewish life.


Please do not misunderstand. Someday my son or daughter will find himself in situations that amply integrate him with the rest of the world. She will meet and encounter Palestinians. She will be on business travel as Shabbat draws near and may need to individuate herself from the mainstream to observe Shabbat. So it will be for them, as it has been for me. In ten years as an attorney with two of America’s most prominent law firms, I socialized and integrated with people of all backgrounds in my firms, and I arranged with judges and opposing counsel to calendar court days so that I would not be compelled to compromise Shabbat or Jewish holy festivals. Despite never having attended an OTI Rosh Hashanah program, I was thoroughly capable of socially integrating my lifestyle and religious beliefs with others, including Arab Moslem friends. But during my formative college years, my time in Israel was spent attending Jewish programs that did not divide Rosh Hashanah with Bethlehem, “Palestine” or trips to Jordan. Perhaps some parents (or college students) differ from me, and they respectively want their children (or for themselves) to attend programs that “balance” Israel’s right to live with a normative Palestinian perspective that Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish State, and perhaps they want to be on a program that gives them the option of spending half their Rosh Hashanah in Bethlehem under the aegis of anti-Israel Palestinian propagandists trained in reaching American youths, like Rachel Corrie, and sensitizing them to the “Palestinian narrative.” They have that right – but not to have it funded, directly or indirectly, with Jewish Federation charitable dollars.


Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig, director of the UCI Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), has written his letter, in explicit pertinent part, to defend the practice of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, its Rose Project, and other of its funding channels to participate in allocating Jewish charitable funds towards OTI. That is Dr. Wehrenfennig’s right and institutional responsibility. I, too, am entitled to my right and responsibility to act in accordance with my free conscience. As a rabbi, a religious leader and teacher in the Jewish community of Irvine in Orange County, I also have a right and a responsibility. At this moment in time, in the face of this very unfortunate situation, my responsibility is to announce publicly that I believe it proper for Jews to withhold any further contributions from the Jewish Federation of Orange County until the Federation publicly and explicitly assures the Jewish community that it no longer will participate materially in supporting Jewish student participation at Olive Tree Institute programs that bring UCI Jewish students in part to “Palestine,” where those Jewish students are exposed to trained and skilled Palestinian Arab propagandists educating them with the “Palestinian narrative” that would mark the death of Israel as a Jewish state. I urge others to follow my lead, and I will encourage others whom I know to spread this call far and wide.


I am grateful to Prof. Rossman-Benjamin for her leadership in bringing to the surface truths that needed to be exposed.


Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



From the Simon Wiesenthal Center:


From: Rabbi Aron Hier
Director
Campus Outreach
Simon Wiesenthal Center


Shalom Elcott
President and CEO
Jewish Federation of Orange County

shalom@jfoc.org

Dear Mr. Elcott,

I have become aware of an event on November 22, 2010, in which the Olive Tree Initiative will be providing a platform for anti-Israel activist and International Solidarity Movement cofounder George Rishmawi. Further, the Olive Tree Initiative that will be hosting him is funded in part by Jewish philanthropy, through your organization as well as Hillel at UC Irvine.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center urges the Jewish Federation to disassociate itself from an event that invites the leader of a group whose own website states the following:
“Apartheid is not going to be defeated by words alone; occupation, oppression and domination are going to be dismantled the same way they were erected — through people’s action. The Israeli army and apartheid in Palestine can be defeated by strategic, disciplined unarmed resistance, utilizing the effective resources Palestinians can mobilize — including international participation.”
We further urge the Jewish Federation to investigate the Olive Tree Initiative, which has selected a speaker who advocates overthrowing the Jewish State. What kind of group would funnel impressionable Jewish students into this “wolf in sheep’s clothing” program that aids and abets the enemies of Israel in their pernicious mission?

I look forward to hearing from you about this serious matter.


Rabbi Aron Hier
Director
Campus Outreach

cc: Rabbi Marvin Hier
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Rabbi Meyer May




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Prof. Tammi Benjamin
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 5:30 AM
To: oti@uci.edu




Dear Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig,


You did not write to me directly, though you did blind-copy me on your recent widely-circulated letter (forwarded below), in which you mentioned my name 18 times and attacked a letter I had sent to the heads of the Orange County Jewish Federation and Hillel. My letter urged these Jewish communal organizations to withdraw their funding and promotion of the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) because at least 15 of the OTI's speakers are affiliated with organizations that have ties to terrorist groups that have murdered Jews, advocate the elimination of the Jewish state, and support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel. I also pointed out to the OC Federation and Hillel that it is wrong for Jewish communal resources to be used for a trip that engages Jewish students in activities that desecrate Jewish holy days, such as the OTI trip in 2010, during which students spent the two days of Rosh Hashanah and the following Sabbath (and other Sabbaths) engaged in non-Jewish activity in Jordan and the disputed territories.


You fiercely criticized my letter, stating that I "made up facts" and that my analysis was "incomplete and misleading," "completely inaccurate," and filled with "wrong information and missing facts," "a pattern of misinformation," "erroneous statements," and "distortion." I would like to reply to your charges, which I believe are wholly baseless, extremely disingenuous, and highly offense to the Jewish community in general, and to me personally as a UC faculty member, and as a Jew.


As I understand them, your primary charges against me are the following:


· I based my analysis of the OTI 2010 trip on a preliminary version of the itinerary and not on the final version.
· The speakers, whom I researched and linked directly to their own or their affiliated organization's on-line statements and actions seeking to destroy or harm the Jewish state, never communicated these virulently anti-Israel ideas to the students on the OTI trip. But even if they had, these were only 15 of the over 70 speakers with whom students met.
· I neglected to acknowledge the pro-Israel speakers with whom students met, and whom you claim provided balance to the program.
· I neglected to acknowledge the many Jewish activities in which the students on the 2010 OTI trip participated, as well as to mention that Jewish students had the option to not join the group if an activity conflicted with their religious observance.


I would like to respond to each of your points in turn:


1) You attempt to discredit my serious concerns about many of the OTI speakers by claiming that my analysis was "completely inaccurate" and "misleading" because it was based on an earlier version of the 2010 itinerary, implying that this earlier version was radically different from the final one. But this is simply not so. In fact, of the 15 speakers and organizations whose efforts to harm Israel I documented in my letter, all but two appeared in the final version of the itinerary. Furthermore, of the few speakers who did not appear in the earlier draft but were added to the final version, at least one would certainly have been included in my letter because of his expression of profound anti-Jewish animus: Xavier Abu Eid, the communication advisor for the PLO Negotiation Support Unit, with whom students met in Ramallah on Saturday afternoon September 4th, was one of a number of Christian Palestinian leaders who in 2009 signed Kairos Palestine, a document which applies anti-Semitic supersessionist theology to deny the historic and religious right of the Jews to their homeland, supports BDS efforts, and advocates the elimination of the Jewish state.


However, even if the two versions of the itinerary were substantially different, as you had falsely implied, it still does not deny the accuracy of my analysis. For the on-line version I accessed represents a document of intent, i.e., it indicates the speakers and activities that program organizers like yourself intended to offer students on the 2010 OTI trip, whether or not these were part of the actual itinerary. Therefore, it is arguably an even better indicator of the mission and goals of the OTI's organizers, which clearly included offering as legitimate perspectives (according to your "philosophy of 360-degree education") the views of numerous individuals who have supported efforts to harm the Jewish state and have advocated its elimination, views which our own U.S. State Department defines as anti-Semitic.


So I hope you can see that whether I base my analysis on the earlier version of the itinerary or on the final one, my conclusion will remain the same, namely, that it is unconscionable for Jewish communal funds to be used to support a program that includes anti-Semitic speakers and organizations.




2) The fact that the preliminary itinerary for the 2010 OTI trip represents a document of intent also speaks to your second point, that although they may have previously expressed their virulent opposition to the Jewish State, none of the speakers communicated such sentiments to the students on the OTI trip. Even if you are correct about the content of the speakers' communication with students -- though you bring not one shred of evidence to support your claim -- it does not change the fact that these speakers were chosen by OTI organizers like yourself before you knew what they would say to students! Indeed, some of the most virulently anti-Israel speakers, such as Mazin Qumsiyeh and George N. Rishmawi, were selected to speak to students on the very first OTI trip to Israel in 2008. Surely you could not have known beforehand what these individuals would say to students, and yet you chose them to be part of the OTI trip.


Moreoever if, as I suspect, you did your due diligence before asking these individuals to speak to students, you undoubtedly accessed the very same information about them as I did. I can only surmise, therefore, that not only did you know about the anti-Semitic views of these speakers when you chose them, but you had every reason to believe that they would communicate their views to OTI students.


As for your contention that only 15 of the 70 speakers had known anti-Semitic views, it is hard to fathom why you would think this statistic is at all comforting to the Jewish community. According to my calculations, 15 speakers in 70 means that over 20% of the people who addressed the students on the recent OTI trip had themselves expressed anti-Semitic views or behaviors, or were speaking on behalf of anti-Semitic organizations.


Please understand that after the Nazis slaughtered one-third of my people during the lifetime of my parents and grandparents, I and my co-religionists are understandably skittish about individuals or organizations that engage in, or call for, harming the Jewish State or the Jewish people. For many of us, having even one anti-semitic speaker, in a program that presents such a view as a legitimate perspective, is one too many! Twenty percent is an obscenity!


I hope you are beginning to understand why for many in the Jewish community, asking us to contribute Jewish communal funds in order to expose Jewish and non-Jewish students to such speakers is extremely offensive.




3) Although I did notice the pro-Israel speakers with whom the OTI students met, the presence of such speakers on the itinerary did nothing to improve my opinion of the program, and in fact made me even more concerned about it. That is because I believe these pro-Israel speakers are being unwittingly used to provide a fig leaf of "balance" for the OTI and to give the false impression that pro-Israel and anti-Israel speakers are not only equally represented numerically, but that these two perspectives are somehow objectively equal -- simply two different but equally legitimate narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, this is the kind of thinking that underlies your philosophy of "360-degree education." However, I find such thinking to be both logically and morally flawed.


Do you honestly believe that the argument in favor of BDS is equal and opposite to the argument against it, or that advocating for the elimination of the Jewish state and against the elimination of the Jewish state are equally legitimate positions?? For me as a Jew, and, I would wager, for every other Jew who identifies himself or herself with the mainstream Jewish community, advocating for BDS or the elimination of the Jewish State, perspectives which, as I have noted above, our own U.S. State Department defines as anti-Semitic, are wholly illegitimate. However, by pairing them as you have with legitimate arguments made in defense of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people, you have given respectability and legitimacy to illegitimate, anti-Semitic perspectives. In my opinion, it is despicable that you have used Jewish communal funds for this morally reprehensible purpose.




4) In case you do not know, Jewish religious observance is more than just eating a meal, saying some prayers, or hearing a lecture on an occasional Sabbath or festival evening. It is a commitment to living a Jewish life according to G-d's will, and it involves full observance of all of the designated holy days. So while I appreciate the educational value of sharing certain Jewish traditions with all of the students on the OTI trip, Jews and non-Jews alike, this in no way "cancels out" or mitigates those aspects of Jewish faith and tradition that were egregiously violated by bringing Jewish students to Ramallah for their first Sabbath in the country, or by taking them to Jordan for two of the holiest days of the Jewish year. And even though I appreciate the fact that Jewish students were given the option of not joining the group in order to observe their religious practice, what about those Jewish students who had no family or friends in Israel with whom to observe the holy days, or who did not feel comfortable separating themselves from the group, or who did not want to miss out on an important part of the OTI trip?


Undoubtedly there are Jewishly-identified students who are not fully observant and do not mind violating the Sabbath or other holy days. Nevertheless, as the director of a program that targets Jewish students and accepts money from Jewish communal organizations representing Jews who care deeply about Jewish faith and tradition, it was the height of religious insensitivity for you to create and/or approve an itinerary that planned for Jewish students who did not opt out of the program on the Jewish holy days, to violate the basic tenets of their faith.


I hope you can appreciate that not one of the hundreds of observant Jews who will read this letter believes that Jewish communal funds should be used to support a program that knowingly violates Jewish faith and tradition in the way that the OTI has.




I would like to make a few final remarks about your letter.


You assert that the OTI has "become an important hub for bridge-building, dialogue and cooperation between individual students and student groups," although you have produced no evidence of this being the case.
In fact, the campus climate for Jewish students at UCI has not improved since the establishment of the OTI, and in some ways it has significantly deteriorated.


For instance, in February 2010 members of the Muslim Student Union disgracefully disrupted a talk by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. And just this past May, the MSU hosted a week-long event entitled Israel Apartheid Week: A Call to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel, that featured anti-Semitic imagery and virulently anti-Israel rhetoric from 7 speakers well-known for their animus of Israel, including Imam Abdul Malik Ali, who compared the Jews to Nazis, expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and called for the destruction of the "apartheid state of Israel."


Indeed, the campus climate had become so oppressive for Jewish students at UCI last spring that over 100 Jewish UCI students,
including the heads of all of the Jewish student groups and even some students who participated on OTI trips to Israel, signed the following statement in June 2010:
“We are Jewish students at the University of California and we are outraged and deeply offended by the behavior of some student groups on campus who sponsor speakers, films and exhibits that use hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric and imagery and openly support terrorism against Israel and the Jewish people. As Jewish students, we are also deeply disturbed by student initiated boycott and divestment campaigns which falsely accuse the Jewish state of crimes against humanity. Please understand that these speakers, exhibits, events and campaigns are as offensive and hurtful to Jewish students as a “Compton cookout” or noose are to African-American students. We demand that the UC administrators recognize and address the concerns of Jewish students in the same way as they respond to those of all other minority groups.”
At about the same time, over 60 UCI faculty members published an open letter in the campus newspaper stating that they were deeply disturbed about activities on their campus that fomented hatred against Jews and Israelis, and that many faculty and students felt intimidated, and even unsafe at UCI.


So not only has the OTI program not ameliorated the campus climate for Jewish students at UCI, it is my belief that some of the OTI speakers who have met with students have even contributed to the anti-Semitic BDS campaigns at our university, which in turn has led to an increase in anti-Semitic harassment on UC campuses, including at UCI. Consider the following three examples:


· Prof. Mazim Qumsiyeh co-founded both the Boycott Israeli Goods campaign and Al-Awda, an organization which opposes Israel's right to exist, has links to Hamas and Hezbollah, and is a leader in the BDS movement. Al-Awda works closely with Muslim and pro-Palestinian student groups, including the MSU at UCI, to promote anti-Israel divestment campaigns and co-sponsor anti-Semitic events on California campuses. (For more information about Al-Awda's insidious influence on UC campuses, including at UCI, see an article I co-authored entitled "Are Jewish Students Safe on California Campuses?")


· George N. Rishmawi co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and is the current director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement (PCR), which is under the auspices of the ISM. The ISM has links to terrorist organizations, openly advocates the destruction of the Jewish State, and sends activists and unsuspecting volunteers -- students like Rachel Corrie -- into life-threatening situations in order to protect known terrorists. The ISM has endorsed and promoted BDS campaigns globally, including at the University of California.


· Sam Bahour is one of the original endorsers of the recent California Divestment from Israel Initiative, which calls on the State of California to force two enormous public employee pension funds to divest from Israel. Signatures to qualify this initiative for the California state ballot are being collected on campuses across the state, including at UCI.




I would like to end this letter on a personal note. I am deeply offended that in your email, which you distributed quite widely, you wrongfully attacked my academic integrity and dismissed my legitimate concerns about the OTI's value to the Jewish community. I believe your behavior in this regard is yet one further indication of the unworthiness of the program you direct for Jewish communal funds.




Sincerely,


Tammi Rossman-Benjamin




CC:


UCI Chancellor Drake
UC President Yudof
Shalom Elcott, President and CEO of the Orange County Jewish Federation
Jay S. Feldman, Director of Leadership Development & Rose Project Manager at OC Jewish Federation
Jordan Fruchtman, Executive Director UC Irvine Hillel
Organizations that have expressed concern about anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism on UC campuses:
Americans for a Safe Israel
American Freedom Alliance
American Jewish Committee
Anti-Defamation League
CAMERA
Chabad Student Centers on UC Campuses
Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
David Project
Hasbara Fellows
Hillels on UC campuses
International Hillel
Israel on Campus Coalition
Israel Peace Initiative
Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula, Marina and Sonoma Counties
Jewish Community Relations Council
Jewish Federation of the East Bay
Jewish National Fund
Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA)
National Council of Young Israel
Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism
Orthodox Union
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Stand With Us
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
USD/Hagshama World Zionist Organization
Zionist Organization of America

Open Letter to a Jewish Student re the Olive Tree Initiative

Dear Friend,


You have written several people to explain the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) to them. I have read your words, and I share some thoughts.


1. You are active in something you cannot control. You will not always be at UCI. Not everyone thinks like you. With each ensuing year, the OTI becomes something that less-devoted Jews will choose to do also. Some will do it because they hear it is “awesome.” Cool foods, cool music, and you get to meet people who even know terrorists. (But don’t worry – Gomez will be there, so it’s safe.) Some will hear that it is fabulous on a resumé if you want to apply to a major law school or MBA program. Little by little, the founding generation and its successor passes, and what is left is an institutional protoplasm that takes on a life of its own, which you no longer can control. Not every trip to Jenin will be met with responses by Jews who understand why Israel had to smash through those alleys and kill terrorists, in the aftermath of an interminable series of suicide bombings emanating specifically from Jenin-trained suicide terrorists. They will see the propaganda movie that is shown to UCI Olive Tree Initiative students in Jenin, with the Arab body parts, and they will wonder why Israel had to be so cruel. They will hear about Jenin as a “Palestinian Refugee Camp” and will not even have the presence of mind to ask how the people in Jenin can call themselves “refugees” if they now supposedly are repatriated and live in the land from which they supposedly fled, “Palestine.” They will hear the George Rishmawis telling them at OTI programs about how Israelis literally shoot live ammunition randomly at Arabs. They will see the Israeli military checkpoints at the Security Fence, and it will lack context. It would be like someone who died in the 1990s coming back to life and seeing the TSA security lines at the airport. If people do not like the long oines and invasive body searches with context, imagine the impact of seeing it without context. Maybe there will be one or two Jews on the trip who know a bit, although definitely not what you know. But you will not be there. Who will be there to ask the Arab Palestine propagandist – who bemoans the “Israeli occupation” and says “all we ever wanted was our land” – the obvious question: “You had the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip before June 1967, so what were you trying to accomplish when you founded the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964? What were you trying to liberate when the anti-Israel Arab terrorist movement formally began in 1964?” Instead, the least-ignorant-Jew on the trip – a far cry from the most knowledgeable Jew – will become the Zionist voice: “Well, East Jerusalem. I guess Israel should let that be the capital of Arab Palestine, but Israel also should be allowed to have some of Jerusalem. And Israel should not have cut so deeply into the Arab West Bank – “Palestine” – with that fence just to protect a few settlers who probably don’t belong there. OK, guys, that’s my compromise, what’s yours?” Yes, there will be OTI visits with the Israel side, too, for “balance.” But, unlike the monolithic Palestine side that does not accept a permanent Jewish-sovereign polity anywhere in the Middle East, the Israel side will be diverse. There will even be the retired Israeli general who looks back on the 1967 liberation of Jerusalem – “haKotel b’yadeinu!” – and will apologize to the UCI students on the OTI adventure for his having been caught in the same "mindless euphoria” back then that caused Israelis to lose sight of the big picture. But he will assure his UCI OTI audience that he has atoned over the years and has been active in several “peace” campaigns in recent years, even writing the Israeli Prime Minister that Israel has it all wrong – and, after all, he knows because he served under the Prime Minister’s brother.


2. You continually are under the misapprehension that Daniel Wehrenfennig is something more than a grad student who just got a Ph.D. a year ago. Despite what has been conveyed to you, which you have conveyed to me, he is not a world-famous nor even a significant peace maker. He has some publications. I have publications, too. I published a law review study that was cited by at least nine different prominent federal judges in handing down significant multi-million-dollar federal decisions. That does not make me a Supreme Court justice. This fellow is not Richard Holbrooke. He is not Henry Kissinger. He is a fellow with some publications on ideas for citizen involvement in peacemaking, from Northern Ireland to “Occupied Palestine.” It is like a lovely slim blonde woman or a great-looking hunk of a guy coming to Hollywood and expecting to be hired immediately for a starring role in the first movie for which she or he auditions. In time, she or he is waiting tables. At a seedy bar. You see, the problem is that I come at it from the perspective of someone who not only loves all of Israel, including the communities of Yehuda and Shomron, including the Neve Aliza community I helped establish in 1985 in Karnei Shomron, but also from the perspective of a rabbi. I am a rabbi who cares about Jews. This is not a good program for Jews, and it does not bring Jewish students an inch closer to Judaism, to Torah, to Shabbat, to mitzvot. An OTI Friday night at Aish HaTorah with a group that is 80 percent non-Jewish doesn’t cut it, particularly when the program spends Shabbat Day in “Arab Palestine.” A program that appallingly but predictably spends most of Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine” and Jordan doesn’t cut it – even if they tell the Jews that “Hey, if you want to leave the group for two days for your holiday, that’s OK.” I expect that from a law firm where I work. I expect that at a public school in Iowa. That does not cut it as a program for Jewish students to be spending two weeks in Israel.


3. Note that this issue never really energized me until the salaried Hillel director and the Hillel student president each opted to launch mass-distributed character-assassination letters against a member of my shul. Those letters were sent to me and thousands of other Jews on Shabbat. What Jewish organization publicly desecrates Shabbat so blithely? And they really calumniated her. Can you imagine? Based on the dozens upon dozens upon dozens of signatures to the letter defaming this woman, every single UCI Jewish student leader, every UCI Jewish student group president and vice-president, every last Jewish group on campus, and dozens other present and former UCI Jewish students all supposedly were so infuriated by her that they supposedly all signed onto a hate-filled letter within a day? In a lifetime, you will meet many Jewish leaders and even rabbis whom you will think have sold out a bit, slowed down a bit, lost whatever idealism or gleam in their eyes they may ever have had. You will hear them patronize you and talk to you about “life experience.” Well, let me tell you: I have been there, done that. I also am an activist. I still respect your fire without seeing you as “some stupid dopey kid who needs to grow up.” If I thought you were unworthy, I never would be devoting this kind of time and effort to write you as extensively as I am writing you here. I cherish and value student activists for Israel. But just as I do not superimpose on you a prejudice that you are too young for a serious discussion, don’t you superimpose on me a prejudice that I am too old. And, as a Jewish activist myself, I will tell you that in forty years of activism, going back to my first campaign – to convince NBC to renew “Star Trek” for another season – I never have gotten that many signatures onto a petition or a letter, that 100% a response, in less than a day. So there was something rotten immediately. I am telling you that the two letters that were mass-distributed that Shabbat bordered on legally actionable slander. More, the three separate letters were coordinated – a campaign coordinated among the Federation professional, the Hillel professional, and the Hillel student leader. And those letters not only were nasty, not only may have been legally actionable, but also included – in at least one case – significant forgery of names who did not sign onto it and even opposed it. Those letters attempted to a destroy a good woman over a possible scrivener’s error, but instead they opened huge new cans of worms, revealing far more than any of us had expected. That is what it took to wake up many people in this community that something here is not right. If they can defame and destroy this woman today, and we remain silent, what will stop them from defaming someone else next time? So those of us who never stopped being activists – just got detoured a few extra exits by the need to rear children, put them through high school and college, and earn income to pay bills for the kinds of personal needs (electric, gas, water) that are not funded by the Federation’s Rose Project – woke up. We found each other. We started doing some research. And we could not believe what we learned.


4. We found, as much to our shock as to our chagrin, that there is a cover-up in play. Suddenly UCI Hillel conveys that it never has supported or advocated or encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. First of all, that is a lie. It is not merely a fabrication, a falsification, or a mendacity. This is not Foggy Bottom nor “Cat on a Hit Tin Roof.” Here, we talk plainly. I am a congregational rabbi in Irvine, a member of the national executive committee of one national rabbinic body, a leader in another national rabbinic body, a former Chief Articles Editor of a prominent law review and former clerk to a nationally prominent federal appeals court judge, and I am saying it plainly: It is an outright lie by UCI Hillel. By contrast, the truth is that UCI Hillel actively advocated for and encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. I know what Tzvi Raviv told me, and I know what Bruce Manning told me. And I am a bit surprised that you seem unaware that Hillel encouraged the formation of OTI. So, as always happens in politics when the truth gets uncomfortable and difficult to answer, people give up on answering the truth and start creating “straw men” instead, knocking them down gleefully. So we now are being told by certain Hillel spokespeople that the activists are accusing Hillel of paying money towards OTI. Not true. That Hillel is accused of supporting OTI with money. Not true. Rather, Hillel stands accused of having been among those encouraging the formation and establishment of OTI, and it stands accused of having used its resources to encourage UCI Jewish students to go on OTI programs. And it is time for UCI Hillel to stop covering up and instead to admit the truth of its role in the formative year of Olive Tree Initiative. That – along with an apology to the Jewish community and to the Jewish students it misguided. Similarly, we now are being told that the activists accuse Federation of funding OTI. Not True. Of financially supporting OTI. Not true. Rather, Federation stands accused of taking Jewish charitable funds during this Great Recession, a time when Jewish Family Services of Orange County was forced to abandon its independence and to merge into Federation because there no longer was enough Jewish charitable money available to it, and giving those Jewish funds towards the airfare and tuition of Jewish students attending the Olive Tree Initiative program. Again, that Federation money made it possible for those UCI Jewish students to travel with OTI to “Palestine” to hear those terrible anti-Israel speeches in “Palestine,” to see that hateful movie in Jenin, to hear George Rishmawi threaten that, if the demands of the “Palestinian peacemakers” are not met this year, then the “peace activists” of “Palestine” may well have no alternative but to turn to violence next year.


5. More “straw men” ensued. We were told that, in our ignorance, we are calling OTI anti-Semitic. Not true. That we are calling Daniel Wehrenfennig anti-Semitic. Not true. That we oppose Wehrenfennig because he is a German. Not true. That we regard OTI as anti-Israel. Not true. That we regard Wehrenfennig as anti-Israel. Not true. Rather, what is true is that we regard the OTI as a terribly unfortunate and misguided initiative, clutched at by Dean Michael Drake and Vice President Gomez as a publicity bonanza to show their donors that, you see, we are doing something about the Muslim Student Union and its annual “Hate Israel Week” and its incessant disruptions of Jewish speakers ranging from Prof. Daniel Pipes to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. To paraphrase in common parlance, once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “Look, Jews, we have the Olive Tree Initiative. So stop bothering us. And stop telling Merage that, all because he is a Jew, he should stop giving us tens of millions of dollars. OK?” Likewise, originally, the Federation and Hillel proudly also bragged about their OTI involvement. It was once upon a time. Now, in the face of the revelations about what actually happens at OTI programs, they have reverted. Now they deny, and once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “We never said that. We don’t support it. We don’t fund it.” It is like Bill Clinton denying that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky. “I did not have sex with that woman.” Then they tell him she preserved a dress with his DNA on it. “Oh. Well, in that case . . . .” So now we are told that it is not Federation money; rather, it is Rose Project money. But the Federation is the Rose Project, and the Rose Project is the Federation. Let us hypothesize that Rose came and said to Federation “We want to donate money to start an Institute for Historical Review, to do research disproving that the Holocaust ever happened. We will fund research to prove the Holocaust is a hoax.” Would that project be accepted as an utterly independent “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Denying the Holocaust”? Let us hypothesize, with greater warmth, that Rose came and said “We have met and tested Jewish kids in Orange County who go to TVT, and we are beyond-shocked at how little they know after twelve years at TVT, so we want to start a million-dollar-fund to start a Modern Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine for grades 1-12.” Do you think – for a nano-second – that there would be a “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Establishing an Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine?” D’ya think so? The reality is that the Rose Project’s funding of those airfares and tuitions for the Olive Tree Initiative students is part-and-parcel of a project that the Jewish Federation of Orange County proudly has accepted under its wings, and Federation boastfully has bragged about that financial subventing of OTI whenever it has suited Federation’s public relations purposes.


6. More straw men: We are being told that activists have written that [student name withheld] is anti-Israel because he/ she supported OTI. Not true. Rather, we regret that the student or students, who care about Israel, have failed to see the longer-term consequences of their promoting OTI now. It is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. In the end, then, Jews are the losers – primarily Jewish students. Think about it: If this Olive Tree Initiative, which you tell us is so good for the Jews, really were so sound and worthwhile, why would UCI Hillel and the Jewish Federation of Orange County now, before your very eyes, be denying their demonstrable direct involvement in OTI? Alas, this misguided initiative now has spread to two other far-flung UC campuses where there are even fewer Jewish students like you who would know what to say in Jenin. This is not what may have been intended by those within the Jewish community who helped create it, but this is what has been created, a program that neither will bring peace to the region nor harm it, but will be used manipulatively by third-parties who were not on the original radar, including but not limited to: (i) the UCI Administration, manipulating this OTI program to excuse themselves for their abysmal record on protecting Jewish students walking along Ring Road during the worst moments of “Hate Israel Week” and failing to assure that the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel could speak with dignity to a UCI audience; and (ii) future Jewish students looking for something awesome for their resumes, while also enjoying an awesome Mideast experience in the hot spots like Jenin, in the company of people who count terrorists among their acquaintances, and maybe parlaying it to a great law or business graduate school – devoting their Mideast experience to “doing OTI” rather than, say, doing Birthright-Israel. And is it not ironic? The Olive Tree Initiative already was in full bloom, supposedly having peeled away layers of animosity and distrust that underlay prior Muslim Student Union (MSU) actions endangering UCI as a campus safe for Jews to hear Jewish speakers, when – nevertheless and despite OTI – the MSU still broke up Ambassador Oren’s appearance at UCI.


7. A final “straw,” perhaps better characterized as “the last straw.” One of the students would tell us that “We students are the new leaders of the American Jewish community. We are the future. We know best what is best for UCI. Your role in the community is to give us the funds. And otherwise – just butt out.” And so, a word to a friend. Irvine is our community, too. We, too, are its leaders. In the Irvine and greater Orange County Jewish community, there are nationally prominent experts on Israel and the Middle East, published authors, trained and experienced teachers, leaders capable of offering Israel advocacy training and teaching, Jewish leaders who actually fly across the country to teach and train others. There are Ph.D.s and scholars, scholarly researchers and exciting speakers. We are not called upon. Our offered services repeatedly are rejected. So be it. A $5,000 honorarium from an East Coast Jewish audience pays more than would the pro bono (free of charge) presentation that the same expert among us offers locally as a loving service to the community. But let us be clear: This issue transcends the students on campus. Perhaps you may have seen Breaking Away, an Academy Award®-winning flick. Its subplot is instructive. We the Jewish community live here in Irvine today, and we will be living here tomorrow, long after several of today’s UCI college and grad students have moved on. We have a long-term stake in the community, and we therefore have a stake in the neighborhood campus that brings occasional Jew-haters (including Jewish Jew-haters) out of their respective rat holes and into our midst. We are asked – even guilted – to contribute money to UCI Hillel, apprised that it is our obligation to do so because we have a stake. I personally have made such a donation to UCI Hillel. Some of us even have devoted hundreds of hours of our own personal time to students at UCI, even at the expense of personal family time, vacation time, and at the expense of money. We have seen students come into Irvine, then move on, much as I moved on in my life 35 years ago from the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, and subsequently from the Westwood campus of UCLA Law School. Thus, it is important to recognize that, in the course of a lifetime, many of our respective lives are intersecting concentric circles, elliptical encounters. The world does not revolve around me, and it does not revolve around this or that student. One day it is about mobilizing the Irvine and Orange County Jewish community to help the former salaried Hillel Director actualize his hopes and agenda, and then he is gone, forgotten, but we still are here. Jewish organizational professionals come and go. We have seen the revolving doors at the Irvine Bureau of Jewish Education, the American Jewish Committee, the Tarbut v’ Torah school, and yes at UCI Hillel. Through each of the transitions, we donate money and time, patience and passion and participation. One day it is the new Hillel Program Director arriving all excited with big plans, and another day it is someone else with a different program agenda. But we the Orange County Jewish community remain here, committed and devoted to this place and to our friends and families and dreams, realizing that our tzedakah dollars are being allocated in ways that we find objectionable. While phantom students’ names are signed to documents without the signatories’ knowledge, assent, authorization – and in some cases over their explicit objections – it is we, the community, that receive the defamatory letters, breaking the peaceful moment as the Shabbat ends. We do not heatedly return the letters with overheated, over-exercised verbiage, telling the senders: “The students on campus are the leaders of tomorrow, so solicit the Big Gifts and Major Donations from them. It is they, the students at UCI, who alone are impacted at UCI, so let them tend to themselves, and how dare you approach with a fundraiser’s solicitations those of us who are not on campus?”


But there is a time for everything under the heavens: A time to be still, and a time to speak. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Among us as Jews there always is a time to love and a time for peace. But this also is a time to speak and time to refrain from embracing. There will be absolutely no support for the Federation of Orange County from this quarter, nor from those who share my concerns, until the Federation and Hillel publicly withdraw from their associations with the Olive Tree Initiative. Not one penny. My desk is loaded with ample Jewish charitable alternatives to support, and tzedakah never stops in my home. But tzedakah must be just. And there is never a shortage of worthy Jewish causes to support that never would spend a penny of Jewish tzedakah money to fly a local Jewish student to “Palestine” for a film viewing in Jenin depicting the Israeli people as barbaric and cruel murderers. No, not a charity for me.


-- Rabbi Dov Fischer

Universal Health Care Issues -- and a Congress in Default

Some basic health care principles:

1. If there is a public government health-care option, assuring universal coverage, it will be cheaper than private insurance. Private companies exist to make profits so the owners can pay their food bills and rent. A government agency can exist on a permanent-losing-money basis because, no matter how much money the agency loses, the Government always picks up the tab either by taxing more or printing more money. Compare the Post Office and Fed Ex.

2. Because the Government plan will be cheaper than the private plans, private plans will be driven out of business. Private citizens will opt for the cheaper plan. Companies, knowing that a cheap public plan is available, will stop insuring their employees.

3. In short order, private insurers will be driven out of business. At that point, with a monopoly, Government insurance will become the health equivalent of the Post Office. Lines will get increasingly longer. Service will get increasingly shoddy. The best doctors will try avoiding patients on Government coverage, offering services on private bases.

4. As the demands for health care increase, resources will be strained, and the Government will need to cut back. Sit in a Post Office with six teller windows, and note that four are closed. Think back to the 4-cent stamp and contemplate the 44-cent stamp, even as the Post Office continues to lose a fortune. The reason that Britain and Canada have long lines and long delays in treatment is that the Governments lose control of costs and soon respond by cutting back in ways that make sense only to bureaucrats in Washington.

5. Now when you need an immunization, you go for immunization. Once the Government assumes full control of American health care, Government guidelines inevitably will be drawn to prioritize whether you may get an immunization before someone else. Expect guidelines that define "epidemic" to limit access to certain immunizations until a certain epidemiological number is reached. Thus, in the case of a Hepatitis A outbreak, gamma globulin immunization may be expected to be restricted until a minimum number of residents in a community have been stricken.

6. Universal care will take away from doctors an aspect of the motive to provide excellence. Private doctors vie for paying patients with reasonable health plans. By contrast, many gatekeepers on several of the HMOs take what they can get, compromise on fine points of quality care, live off capitation fees that pay them based on the number of heads they treat each day, and consequently drop all pretenses of bedside manner.

7. Under Government care, it will become profoundly difficult to see specialists, as money will be conserved by forcing patients initially to see lesser specialized "Gatekeepers" who will lose money by referring out, so will insist on personally treating symptoms that best would be treated by specialists. Instead of one visit to a dermatologist for a proper acne treatment regimen, then, a patient will need to first go through the time waste, inefficiency, and delay of being treated by a general Gatekeeper less experienced with specialized treatment.

8. Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, only 5 million actually need a fix in the current system. More than 10 million others are illegal aliens. Others can afford health care but opt, for their own reasons, to spend the insurance premiums instead on other items like cars, vacations, clothes, etc. For them it is a matter of choice, not desperation.

9. Any effort aimed at truly cutting health care costs would include, among its range of proposals, a proposal to reform Medical Malpractice Tort Litigation. Such litigation is often important, aimed at catching up with doctors who have malpracticed. However, such cases are few and far between. The vast majority are crap-shoot cases, in which an attorney takes case on contingency -- meaning that the client has nothing to lose in attorneys' fees -- and sometimes wins and sometimes loses. Often, malpractice insurers force weak cases to settle, even as their medical-doctor clients beg for a full defense at trial. These cases cost a fortune in litigation costs, even when plaintiffs lose, and doctors who are sued get penalized with huge increases in their malpractice premiums. Therefore, to avoid litigation at all costs -- literally, at all costs -- doctors tie up their patients and increase health costs exponentially by ordering ranges of unnecessary lab tests. The lab tests are costly, but they help the doctor establish for the disappointed patient that he was thorough. Moreover, costs are compounded by the tens of millions that doctors need to spend each year on malpractice premiums, costs that they shift to the consumer. There must be tort reform, and the failure to seek tort reform in the midst of a 1,017-page bill demonstrates that the Government is not seeking to save money.

10. It is a fallacy that increased funding for "prevention" will save money. Prevention is important, and it is necessary medicine. Doctors do it and should do it, but the reality to face is that prevention costs more money than it saves. Although prevention saves a rare patient from a costly illness and treatment regimen - a wonderful result that justifies prevention medicine -- the reality is that the cost entailed in applying the same prevention efforts for the many hundreds others who never would have contracted that disease anyway more-than-offsets savings. Yes, prevention still is important. It is costly but a worthwhile societal cost. However, no one should claim falsely that prevention saves money.

11. It is a falsehood that a doctor would rather evade prevention -- a low-income process for the doctor -- so that he ultimately can have the opportunity to make big money by amputating a diabetic's foot or removing a child's tonsils. We have doctors, and we know that such allegations simply are demagoguery. A doctor does not receive $30,000 for amputating a foot, but less than $750. Nor do doctors, sworn to uphold the values of Hippocrates, practice such vicious medicine.

12. There are two bona fide problems with the current health-care system. First, portability: a person who leaves a job loses his coverage. This quirky phenomenon forces people to work at jobs they hate because they risk losing their health coverage. Moreover, those who do lose their jobs, as has been so prevalent during this downturn, lose their coverage. If, G-d forbid, they contract a disease during the interregnum of non-coverage, then they cannot later get insurance privately as individuals because they are barred for "pre-existing conditions." Congress needs to resolve the portability and "pre-existing conditions" issues. On the one hand, insurers would be hurt financially by being forced to insure people with "pre-existing conditions." On the other hand, large corporations with many dozens of workers, typically provide health coverage for all employees without regard to pre-existing conditions. That is because their employee health pool is sufficiently large to offset anomalies. Congress should be able to craft a system or fix that pools enough private individuals in a way that somehow addresses these two issues.

13. At least two states have attempted Obama-style universal health care: Tennessee and Massachusetts. Both programs began with great promise -- they would provide universal care, keep costs down, and prove societal boons. Instead, both have emerged as unmitigated disasters, with costs skyrocketing and the states forced into heavier debt as a result. In both states, as the programs have fizzled, predictions of cost savings have fizzled, and care has been rationed.

14. Obama may not intentionally be planning to pull the plug on Granny, but his plan ultimately will do just that. As funds disappear, public health care skyrockets in cost, resources become more scarce, demand builds, there will be efforts to find cost savings. People needing surgeries that are adjudged non-essential -- say, a person with a painful knee who wishes a meniscus operation -- will be compelled to wait longer than conceivable, offered pain killers during the extended interregnum. And octogenarians needing hip replacements will be evaluated not as people but as expenses: "Is it a worthwhile expense to replace the hip of someone with a life expectancy of X years?" That is British and Canadian, but that is not the way that America values its citizens.

15. The most disheartening aspect of the public debate on universal health care is the revelation, most artfully stated by Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, that he parcels out to others the responsibility to read the legislation on which he will vote. It is disheartening that legislators would vote on a 1,017-page bill without reading the bill and understanding every provision. They did this with a stimulus bill that they passed on a short fuse, told falsely that they needed to pass it immediately because shovel-ready projects were awaiting cash infusions to begin. So they voted to spend $780 billion -- and only ten percent of the funds have been spent, lo these six months later. Similarly, the Democrats in Congress rushed through a terribly complex and ill-advised "Cap and Trade" bill that really is a "Home Heating Tax Raise for the Middle Class." State utility companies will be compelled to reduce emissions at such staggering rates that they necessarily will need to spend fortunes on infrastructure modifications -- all of which will be passed along to the end consumers. This project, an insane initiative at a time when the country cannot afford the luxury of turning the economy upside-down on a theory of Global Warming, will force enormous increases in our electric and gas bills . . . and in bills for all other commodities that use electric or gas: food, clothes, everything. It emerges as remarkable that the Democrats of the House voted for such a massive bill, so massive an infrastructure overhaul, without reading its provisions either. They were elected to do a job, and they have proceeded with malfeasance and recklessness, voting to approve the most extraordinary expansions of the American debt burden in our history -- without even reading the bills they approve.

The Judicial Panel That Ordered 40,000 California Prisoners Released Was Lop-sided and Will Be Overruled

A federal judicial panel recently ordered California to release some 40,000 prisoners over the next two years, if prison medical conditions do not improve markedly. In all the reportage on the remarkable ruling, the media missed one telling point:

All three jurists on that particular panel regularly judge from the more extreme side of the liberal bench. Two of them, District Judges Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson, are Jimmy Carter appointees with long and distinguished extreme liberal records on the bench. The third, federal appellate judge Stepehen Reinhardt, is among the most extreme liberal judges on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thus, news was made when, by the luck of the draw, a judicial panel was composed of three judges way-out-left.

No media attention was paid to the probability that such an extremely one-sided panel would be declared "tilt" on appeal.

The odds are overwhelming that a more balanced federal appellate panel will overturn the extreme ruling which, if impelemented, would convert California life overnight into scenes from a horror movie. If not overruled en banc, one would expect that the panel would be overruled by an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, unless the Supreme Court denies certiorari. But this one seems too important to be left unaddressed on appeal.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S GREAT PYRAMID SCHEME: The Two-State Solution as Final Solution

The Obama Administration has endeavored to move American Mideast policy away from a traditional understanding of Israel's security concerns and historic rights, towards a view that renders undue currency towards Mideast political theories that have not served America well, aimed more at appeasing terrorism than at assuring justice.

My extensive commentary on the subject may be found at: http://rabbidov.com/twostate.htm

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"J" Street, Growing up on the Street, and Street Survival: Why Israel Cannot Abide the Morons Who Call Themselves "Friend"

Today’s “J Street” was yesterday’s Peace Now and Breira. Always rushing to “make peace,” to trust Arafat to keep his word, to encourage and push Israel to sign Oslo Accords.

I like to think of myself as an intellectual, too. I do not cede that ground to the “J Street” crowd. But I also grew up a bit on the streets. I know both sides – the people who attended Columbia University with me, the law school types, the scholars. And I know street fighters.

Israel has a real problem -- because she is not bordered by Mexico and Canada. She is bordered by Hezbollah and Hamas. Every time Israel has conceded land, the result has been the opposite of what the J Streeters predicted. She gave up Southern Lebanon unilaterally on the theory that the cession of land would bring peace in the north. “After all, what would Arabs have to complain about up north?” Yeah. So Hezbollah moved in and eventually put Haifa within range of its shelling.

Then Israel ceded Gaza. “Who needs Gaza anyway – with all its Arab overpopulation and all the trouble? It’s not worth it – let them choke on their own suffering! They will be so busy running an economy and a government that they will not have time to bother Israel.” Yeah. So Hamas took over and turned Gaza into an arcade, with terrorists raining down missiles and rockets on Sderot. When the air raid sounds in Sderot, a person has 15 seconds lead time to get to safety underground before the shell strikes. So people cannot shower.

Israel is not dealing with post-war Germany or Japan, with France or England. She is dealing with a theology that is sworn to subjugate all Jews and to destroy a Jewish country. There is no way to get them honestly to live with us except to persuade them that the cost of fighting us is too dear. That is how Israel took Jordan and Egypt out of the confrontation – beating them in war after war, until those governments gave up on destroying Israel.

On Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Israel, and the Futility of Knowing Who Are Friends

I did not vote for Obama, instead choosing to vote as the exit polls told us that most Jews in Orthodox circles did. Still, I view Obama's election with fascination and a touch of wonder.

Clearly, Hashem has a plan that we do not yet see or understand regarding Obama. By the natural course of events, Obama should never have been elected or, frankly, even nominated. Historians will not understand it. Nevertheless, he now is the President-elect, and we will recite the same blessing in Shul for his welfare and that of his Government as we have recited for his predecessors.

As Geraldine Ferraro said -- and she got canned for telling the truth -- rather than being victim for not looking like all those guys on the dollar bills (whose skin presumably was green?), Obama actually was the beneficiary of being quasi-African-American. Any other guy who would have sought the Presidency with his skimpy public record, youthful inexperience, and circle of corrupt acquaintances and associations, never would have gotten past Iowa and New Hampshire.

A State Senator who voted "present" 130 times, or whatever? A guy with no known record of accomplishment but with a coterie of personal associations ranging from Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres to Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and Father Phleger?

Gimme a break.

A law school professor, former president of the Harvard Law Review, who never published an article in a legal journal? Who among us in the legal field -- among those who practice, among those who focus in the halls of scholarship -- ever has heard of such a thing?

He has lived what-some-might-see as a charmed life. Hashem has a plan. This all is too aberrant to be natural life. There is a plan. G-d apparently has a plan in which Obama factors particularly.

So many of us -- half the country -- voted against Obama (not really for McCain, who was not the right choice of the moment) because we do not know what Obama stands for, do not trust him an iota, believe that he stands mostly for himself, has no record of meaningful achievement, shifted 180 degrees on Jerusalem in hours, surrounds himself with the same Clinton crowd that forced Oslo down Israel's throat and that made Arafat the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House.

All that said -- and one can go on -- I have to put my faith in Hashem and know that He has an ultimate plan, and His plan will go forth. Hubert Humphrey was a great friend of Israel, but it was Nixon-the-anti-Semite who acted rapidly and forcefully as Hashem's tool to assist Israel meaningfully during the 1973 War. Gerald Ford had a record of friendship for Israel through decades in the House, and he had Kissinger in Foggy Bottom, but they surprisingly combined to subject Israel to a searing "reassessment" of the traditional American friendship.

So many of us voted for Jimmy Carter the first time he ran. Many thought that Evangelicals --given the pro-Israel leadership models of Reverend Jerry Falwell, Reverend John Hagee, etc. -- are among Israel's biggest backers, inspired by the mandate of Genesis 12:3. Go figure -- it turned out that Carter was not evangelical on that verse, while his sister was missionizing to Jews and his brother was in bed with Kaddafi.

When Reagan came, so many of us expected George Shultz of Bechtel Corporation, which makes so much money from Arabs, to be a disastrous Secretary of State for Israel -- and, yet, Shultz probably was the best friend Israel ever had in the State Department. We thought the First Bush would follow Reagan's pro-Israel policies, and yet his Secretary of State seems to have been the worst anti-Semite in State since Cordell Hull and WWII. We figured the Second Bush would be as bad as the First, particularly after James Baker played so active a role in the legal fight over ballot-chads, and instead Bush II proved a great friend of Israel when Sharon invaded Jenin.

Thus, when Bush II was reelected, we thought we now have a proven friend in the White House and, with Sharon in Jerusalem, we now have some good strong leadership; in place. Instead, Bush turned his Mideast Policy on its head and made a point of his second term to press Sharon for a "Palestinian State" -- i.e., not really a "state" but a country called by that phony name -- and the Great Sharon unexpectedly went along with it, starting with Gush Katif and then the Gaza.

What stopped the momentum of Bush and Sharon, after the Gaza retreat, to move the retreat-pressure kadimah (forward, eastward to Judea and Samaria)? Only the combination of Sharon being felled by a stroke, then another, and Olmert thereafter being felled by a Hezbollah War and then a debilitating financial scandal and another, and Bush being felled by an incomprehensible economic collapse that started unfolding with mortgage problems just as Condoleezza was flying to the Middle East to start the pressure against Israel for new retreat.

Only that extraordinary confluence of incredible events stopped the Gush-Katification of Yehudah-Shomron.

So, I am long past predicting who among the princes of flesh-and-blood is good for Israel and who bad. I vote based on commonsense natural analyses, but I know I can be wrong because good politicians can fool you, and so can bad ones. I know that all we can do is vote based on what we reasonably expect. But, in the end, it is all in Hashem's hands. Politicians often surprise.

For the many of us who voted against Obama during this recent round, a man who entered the national stage as Tisha B'Av was ending in 2004, we could vote only based on what we thought is best. In the end, what do we know? We don't know. We absolutely do not know.

Our parents' generation bullet-voted for FDR, whom they regarded as the best American friend that Jews ever had in the White House. Turns out he and his State Department were not our best friends. Rather, they hated us and in some real measure were accessories to the mass murder of six million of us.

Democrats-Republicans. We don't know. Nixon rushed weapons to Israel in an full-blast urgent airlift. Bill Clinton gave us Oslo and Arafat.

Shalom Chaver.

On the Ethic and Morality of Eating and Experimenting on Animals

On pure business ethics, I once published this commentary: http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/item/the_price_of_freedom_20010202/ I have published others like it, too. Thus, on Torah ethics, we are commanded to be honest, to be decent, to be square with our measures and scales.

We also are encouraged to do acts of kindness, the good deeds that are called “chesed,” acts like visiting the sick, housing the wayfarer, helping the bride to marry, attending to the needs of the deceased. The Torah even builds in forms of charity – leaving the corner of my field untilled, leaving behind the sheaves I drop when I gather in the field – so that the poor can gather. I am supposed to lend to the needy without interest. I am not supposed to stand on my brother’s blood.

But I am not obligated, nor am I expected, to be self-sacrificing as a raison d’être or philosophy of life. When we are called for judgment, not only will we be asked whether we conducted our financial affairs honestly and whether we made time to study Torah – but we also will be challenged as to whether we sufficiently enjoyed G-d’s world and whether we participated sufficiently in all there is to enjoy. Sure, we are not supposed to enjoy pork or meat-and-milk together. But G-d gave us fruit to enjoy and vegetables – and meat. To go through life without wine is sinful, and the Nazirite who takes upon himself such abstinence needs to bring a sin-offering for the sin of having failed to enjoy that which G-d permitted us in His world.

G-d permitted us to eat animals. After the Noah Flood, He determined that this was a concession to human needs. He established parameters – kosher slaughter, for example – but He permitted us to eat animals, to have complete dominion over them. They exist for our benefit, for our comfort – to be friends and pets, but also to carry loads as beasts of burden, to provide transportation, to be our clothing. We may not wear leather footwear on Yom Kippur, which implies that leather is appropriate for footwear throughout the year.

He created some animals very much like humans. For secularists, they see in that parallel an argument for evolution, that we evolved from monkeys. That is the ideology that allows Hitler to justify mass murders – “extermination” – of “races” that do not meet his Aryan definition of “fully evolved” . . . and it justifies Mengele experimenting on humans as though they were rabbits or laboratory mice. But for believing Jews, G-d created certain animals with systems like our human systems – digestive systems, circulatory systems, excretory systems – so that, through them, we could indeed experiment and learn more about the functioning of the human body, ultimately to improve and even save lives.

We are bidden not to torture animals. When plowing the field with oxen, we may not muzzle them; it is torturous for them to be denied the chance to nibble on what they plow. We must feed our pets before we sit to eat. One of the seven cardinal “Noahide laws” that applies even to non-Jews is the ban on eating the limb of a living animal. But that’s where it stops. If shechitah is humane slaughter, it remains slaughter for the purpose of killing animals to provide a pleasure and enjoyment for humans. Contrary to one slogan, animals are not people, too. They are animals. And a Torah Jewish life is not about asceticism but about enjoyment. One can enjoy life while doing acts of kindness for others, and one can do acts of kindness without missing out on life. The two are not exclusive, and Judaism advocates a golden mean.

A Way to Moderate That Chicago Church of Hate

It occurs to me, with Barack Obama now quitting the Chicago Church of Hate -- Trinity United -- after the latest controversy, that the Church's hate agenda can be modified. All we have to do is to encourage each of the church's members to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. That brings a public spotlight on why such a person would belong to a Church of hate. In turn, that spotlight forces a person who wants to be thought of as a decent human being to quit the church. If we can encourage several hundred of those church members to seek high office, in time enough of them will be embarrassed into resigning, as Obama finally has done. And that will gently moderate the tone of hate.

We're Right and The Whole World Is Wrong

We're Right, the Whole World's Wrong
From The Forward (April 19, 2002)

"The whole world is demanding that Israel withdraw. I don't think the whole world, including the friends of the Israeli people and government, can be wrong."
— Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General, speaking in Madrid, Spain

At this moment in time, many Jews who love and support Israel hear the soft voice within, asking the question to which Kofi Annan recently alluded in Madrid: Can we alone be right, while the whole world around is wrong?

The evidence that we are standing on the other side of the "whole world" is manifest. The Arab League is united in condemnation, and Egyptian students march for an end to their country's diplomatic relations with Israel that were engraved at Camp David. The United Nations Security Council roundly condemns Israel several times in mere weeks, and its human rights commission again takes up the Durban chant against Zionism that was silenced by September 11. The European Union is rife with talk of boycotting the Jewish state. Synagogue attacks in France give vent to the feeling expressed with gentility by the French diplomat who termed Israel "that sh—-y little state." All three major political parties in Germany vie to lead their nation in condemning Israel. England accuses Israel of using British-made tanks illegally. Mobs attack Jews from Ukraine to Belgium to the Netherlands. The pope condemns Israel for its military presence outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, while armed Arab terrorists repose inside, holding monks and nuns as icons for terror.

We Jews are bemused. Are we the only ones who see the unrelenting suicide bombings of women and children at pizza stores, of teenagers at a discotheque, of families at a Seder celebration?

After 19 months of slaughter at open-air fruit markets and bus stations and bat mitzvah parties, deadly shootings of motorists, stabbings of school children in caves, has no one seen this but us?
Do we alone notice that the attacks target Jewish and Arab civilians alike throughout pre-June 1967 Israel, from Haifa to Hadera, West Jerusalem to Beersheba?

The whole world demands Israel take risks for peace with Yasser Arafat — again. Are we the only ones who perceive that, after he was conferred a Nobel peace prize and given authority to create a new polity and a new atmosphere for coexistence, he desecrated the next eight years by wielding television to inculcate grotesque images of murder, radio to disseminate a culture of hate, schools and summer camps to train young people to murder the Jews they were being taught to hate? Can no one but us decipher the receipts he signed, authorizing funds to purchase weapons of terror?

The whole world endorses President Bush's call for war against terrorists and those who harbor them. The United States invades Afghanistan to uproot the infrastructure of terror and hunkers down there for seven months, preparing to extend the incursion into Pakistan.
Aerial bombs strafe cities. Thousands of civilian non-combatants are believed dead. The Taliban government crumbles, but the incursion continues. We must find Osama bin Laden. We must find Mullah Omar. We must reach Daniel Pearl's killers. And we yet shall begin the mother of all incursions into Iraq.

We Jews see this. We also see the same "whole world" roundly condemn Israel for its incursion into a jungle of terror. Israel will not drop incendiary payloads from the air on civilians, so Israeli reservists, husbands and fathers, die in house-to-house fighting in Jenin, where the terrorists booby-trap buildings, station snipers and outfit children as human bombs.
Israel asks that Arafat turn over the assassins of an Israeli cabinet minister and the mastermind of the Karine-A affair that tried to smuggle 50 tons of explosives to his minions. But the whole world wants Israel instead to pull back while the bombers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade and the Tanzim play for time. Doesn't the whole world see what we see? Can we alone be right?

Well, yes. If we Jews are anything, we are a people of history. From our first patriarch to Israel's precision-targeted destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which laid the foundation for a successful Operation Desert Storm and the rescue of Kuwait, our history provides the strength to know that we can be right and the whole world wrong.

We have confronted the question many times. The whole world was polytheistic, and we alone preached belief in one God. We preached a Day of Rest, and the whole ancient world mocked us as lazy people. We were right, and the whole world was wrong. They said we crucified a Jew — as if the Romans would have allowed any of its subjects to do such a thing, as if Jews ever had such a punishment in our code — and we insisted such a thing was beyond impossible. We were right, and the whole world was wrong. In the Middle Ages, the whole world said that we use children's blood to make matzo; we denied it. They said that we poisoned the wells of Europe, and we denied it. We were right, and the whole world was wrong. The Crusades. The blood libels and Talmud burnings in England and France, leading those nations to expel Jews for centuries. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. The ghettoes and the Mortara case in Italy. Dreyfus in France. Beilis in Russia and a century's persecution of Soviet Jewry. The Holocaust. Kurt Waldheim in Austria. Each time, Europe stood by silently — or actively participated in murdering us — and we alone were right, and the whole world was wrong.

Today, once again, we alone are right and the whole world is wrong. The Arabs, the Russians, the Africans, the Vatican proffer their aggregated insights into and accumulated knowledge of the ethics of massacre. And the Europeans. Although we appreciate a half-century of West European democracy more than we appreciated the prior millennia of European brutality, we recognize who they are, what they have done — and what's what.

We know, if they don't, that they need Arab oil more than they need Jewish philosophy and creativity. We remember that the food they eat is grown from soil fertilized by 2,000 years of Jewish blood they have sprinkled onto it. Atavistic Jew-hatred lingers in the air into which the ashes rose from the crematoria.

Finally, the best of Europe truly are wracked by the burdened conscience of what they, their parents and their bubbes and zeides did, or failed to do, in the 1940s. So, instead of confronting a shameful past that belies their self-vaunted Romantic civilization, they seek now to assuage their consciences with the mendacity that Israel 2002 is no different from Europe 1942.

Yes, once again, we are right and the whole world is wrong. It doesn't change a thing, but after 25 centuries it's nice to know.

Rabbi Dov Fischer, an attorney, is a board member of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Council's Jewish Community Relations Committee and national vice president of the Zionist Organization of America. He is the author of "General Sharon's War Against Time Magazine."

Drill for Oil: Caribou Won't Mind; But OPEC Will

On Caribous and Freedom
From National Review Online (June 21, 2002)

An important opinion poll published this past week corroborates the revealing lyrics of the most important country music song of the past year. The implications are scary and underscore that we have nothing to fear but the knowledge of nothing itself. This national “knowledge of nothing” threatens our vital homeland security interests, our energy independence, and the future of freedom.

I fell in love with country music in 1993, during a trip from Los Angeles to Louisville. By Nevada, I was hooked on Garth Brooks. By Cheyenne, I was buying my first pair of cowboy boots. By Kentucky, I was fixated on George Jones. Through the years of my country music epiphany, Alan Jackson consistently has produced extraordinary works, mixing gorgeous melodies with down-home lyrics that speak to the soul of Middle America and reflect her character. Perhaps better than any other balladeer, he captured the essence of September 11 in his blockbuster “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?” In that song, he repeats a chorus that says more than he may realize:

I’m just a singer of simple songs.I’m not a real political man.I watch CNN, but I’m not sure I can tell youThe difference in Iraq and Iran.

The lyrics in Jackson’s chorus are striking. If there were something embarrassing in Middle America about not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran, Jackson and his record company presumably would have omitted his confession -- or affirmation -- of ignorance.

There is particular irony in the lyricist’s choice of countries. Although Iran and Iraq are spelled almost identically, and therefore may have seemed confusingly alike to Americans forty years ago, they have emerged as two of the most evil Moslem countries. Along with Saudi Arabia's government, which raises its children to hate America viscerally and which supplied 15 of the 19 suicide bombers of September 11, Iran and Iraq despise America. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sponsored the Iranian “students” who held 52 Americans hostage for fourteen months, and Saddam Hussein has challenged our national security for a decade. Both Saddam and the deceased Khomeini symbolize Islamist hate of America. Therefore, despite the similarity in spelling Iraq and Iran, it would seem that Americans by now would know their Ayatollah from their Saddam.

Yet this past week, the Pew Research Center reported new polling results finding that only 21% of Americans follow international news closely, while fully 65% respond that they lack the background to follow overseas news. Despite September 11, Afghanistan, Arab Moslem suicide terrorists, and Kashmir, it seems that most Americans, like Alan Jackson, are not sure they can tell the difference between Iraq and Iran.

The social critic H.L. Mencken wrote that democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. However, Alan Jackson’s soul-searing song provides impressionistic confirmation that the American people do not even know what we want outside our borders and possibly lack the critical background to participate in the great debate over foreign policy. That ignorance of what lurks outside -- the knowledge of nothing -- imperils our nation. Such ignorance allowed the Democratic leadership this spring to deter legislation that would have opened a minuscule part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) region to oil drilling. Now, that same national knowledge of nothing passively abides a new suggestion in Washington to establish a “temporary” Arafat terror country in the Middle East.

We Americans consume a quantity of fuel for our home comforts, our travel, and our industry. Whether the oil is drilled in Alaska or Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Russia, it will be demanded and therefore drilled, causing what pollution it will cause. In ANWAR, oil exploration may -- or may not -- disrupt the Porcupine caribou, an elk-like animal, but such drilling would be intensely scrutinized and legislatively regulated. By contrast, drilling for the same quantity of demanded oil in any other oil-producing country would proceed with ecological abandon. For example, Saudi Arabia may ban Christian oil drillers from setting foot in Mecca or celebrating Christmas, but they will not enforce EPA standards.

As our nation compromises aspects of our financial and political independence, by standing on line for overpriced Saudi oil, in deference to the caribou, too many among us know preciously nothing about why we risk aspects of our security and financial independence. Ask your neighbor whether “caribou” is animal, vegetable, or mineral. Yet, by passively delimiting exploratory access to our expansive domestic oil sources without concomitantly reducing our energy demand to accommodate Tom Daschle’s concern for the caribou, we partly finance the economy of a country like Saudi Arabia that breeds in its children a deadly hatred against our civilization of freedom.

Ironically, Porcupine caribou herds have increased three-to-seven-fold since oil drilling first was authorized in the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska. Proposed new drilling would take place only on 2,000 acres of land - an area less than 0.01 percent of ANWAR’s 19.6 million acres. The new oil production could replace thirty years of American imports from Saudi Arabia . And that is why, with Congressional by-elections set for this fall, the Bush Administration should be educating the public to understand what the Senate blocked this spring.

At the same time, maybe Washington itself needs to learn more -- about oil, about terror and freedom. It is terribly disturbing that a Republican conservative Administration, with such ostensibly sensible instincts against terror after September 11, now contemplates a proposal for creating a “temporary” terrorist country in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. If we give Arafat a country, after two years of choreographed suicide bombings starring the children he has educated with his schools, textbooks, summer camps, and communications media, we deliver to him and to all Islamists the message that suicide bombings work. That they get our attention, and they get results.

With a country of his own, Arafat would train thousands more children to murder Americans, to aspire for the glory of death while butchering a Christian or Jewish infidel. With a “temporary country,” Arafat would get a military. He could import the kinds of fifty-ton boat shipments of explosives that have been barred until now. With hundreds and thousands of pounds of C-4 plastics explosives, for example, Arafat would have enough to blow up American targets, too.

In a world of Islamist terrorist regimes like Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Libya, is the State Department concerned that we don’t have enough of them already? Do we need to create a new base for harboring and training Al Qaeda murderers? And for a President Bush who essentially warned the world to read his lips -- that, if you are not with America in fighting against terror, then you are with the terrorists -- well, haven't we learned that Americans want their President George Bushes to stand by their most solemnly uttered pledges?

For those of us Americans who merely are hummers of simple songs -- but who darn well “know the difference in Iraq and Iran” -- it ultimately devolves on us to overcome the nation’s greatest threat to homeland security: a national ignorance of foreign affairs and the blissful knowledge of nothing.