IS IT REAL?
THE LEFT DENIES IT IS. WHOM WILL YOU BELIEVE?
The following may be one of the more important reads that impacts your future and fortunes. Actually, your lives. You see, you need to ask if it's real?
ASK THE CHARRED REMAINS OF 9-11 VICTIMS IF IT'S REAL
ASK THE CRIPPLED VICTIMS OF THE USS COLE IF IT'S REAL
ASK THE GI SURVIVORS OF BEIRUT IF IT'S REAL
ASK THE GI ON YOUR NEXT DELTA VACATION FLIGHT IF IT'S REAL
ASK THE SISTER OF THE ISRAELI SOLDIER WHO GAVE HIS LIFE WHEN HE GAVE WATER TO THIRSTY MUSLIM AFRICANS DYING TO GET INTO ISRAEL IF IT'S REAL
ASK THE SURVIVOR GI'S OF FORT HOOD IF IT WAS "WORKPLACE VIOLENCE?" AS OBAMA HAD CALLED IT
ASK THE REMAINS OF AMBASSADOR CHRISTOPHER STEVENS IF IT WAS A VIDEO?
ASK M. NASRALLAH IF IT'S REAL
ASK THE VICTIMS OF AUSCHWITZ IF IT WAS REAL
Don't be afraid. Just ax. A little axing won't hurt you.
The first part deals with the history of Muslims in Obama's speech to the Islamic World: That Islam had a profound influence in the life of the American nation's founding and Islam's contribution to the betterment of mankind is legend. It sure is! Just not the way Obama had described the history, leaving out mere incidentals: for example, what the nation's Founding Fathers and former presidents had said and written. You may want to ax why Obama sees the world so differently from former historians and presidents much closer in time to the American Founding; or why he sees Islam differently from historians clearly familiar with history and those who died fighting it? Obama forgot to recite the part of American history when Muslim slave traders sold Obama's ancestors to ancestors of white slave owners, the first of whom after raping the women, allowed the second to check their teeth the same way they checked the teeth of the horses that were being traded on the same market.
ARAB SLAVE TRADERS IN ACTION
Ax that one again? The second article is a rabbi's "radical" Rosh Hashannah sermon that is better understood in another context as a sermon to the nation - even to the world.
It has been renamed THE SERMON OF THE CENTURY!
For the rabbi explains much more than most people can see. It's a long read, but trust me on it, well worth your time. Of course, in the context of reality as opposed to reality denial, it is hardly radical. Unless one would think history and reality and our pending demise if things continue as they have is radical enough for you.
Send these thoughts to your friends and relatives. You will find the time, for what you'll read next may be the most important read of your life. If you already know and understand the foregoing, you'll need to pick up a phone and read it to a friend who is not aware that his house is on fire.
Was.....
This is not a Glenn Beck alarmist sermon and don't for a moment think it is. Actually it's far worse than anything Beck had ever conjured up. It's about a bitter pill that's not stuck in our throats. We had already swallowed it and are enthusiastically digesting it as the poison takes effect.
What is it about? It is about how America and the West, as a whole, is being led to slaughter - a slaughter that you are helping along by refusing to awaken. A slaughter that would make WWII's in comparison look like a picnic. I can't awaken you or the nation. It is beyond my resources. What about yours?
- AGB
The American founding fathers and early scholars – since the 18th century – were aware of deeply-rooted Islamic violence, terrorism, intolerance and hatred toward other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims. — Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger,
Early American Awareness of Islamic Terrorism
Early American leaders and thinkers were endowed with deep appreciation and unique knowledge of global history, international relations, ancient cultures, ideologies and religions. They spoke and wrote candidly about global threats, including the Islamic threat.
In 1830, New York University Prof. George Bush, the great-granduncle of G.H.W. Bush, considered one of the most profound American scholars of the mid-19th century, published The Life of Mohammed. He was not concerned about political correctness, was low on delusion and top heavy on realism. His 1830 reference to the Islamic threat was consistent with the 2012 state of intra-Muslim atrocities, hate-education, tyranny, anti-US stormy Arab winter, intolerance of criticism, global Islamic terrorism in general and suicide bombing in particular.
According to Prof. Bush, ”[Mohammed] promised robes of silks, marble palaces, groves and fountains and beautiful virgins to those who fought for the faith…offering his enemies the alternative; the Koran or the sword…. It was inflamed by zeal for a religion which assured the soldier of victory now and paradise hereafter. The permanence of this religion is now apparently secured by education…in regions where freedom of thought is unknown(p. 155-6)….
“O prophet of God, I will beat out the teeth, pull out the eyes, rip open the bellies and cut off the legs of all who shall dare to oppose thee (pp. 36-37)…. [Muhammed] was cruel on principle. He did deliberately what other men do from impulse…. The ambition which tramples on the right of men to think or to live is the greatest of human crimes…. The sword is the key of heaven and hell. A drop of blood shed in the cause of God is of more avail than two months of fast and prayers. Whosoever falls in the battle his sins are forgiven… and the loss of his limbs shall be replaced by the wing of angels (103-4)…. Hatred of Christians and Jews is rooted in their hearts from childhood (p. 137)….
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church (1703-1791) preferred clarity over ambiguity when describing Islam: “Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it… have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws…. Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind”.
Thomas Jefferson studied the Koran, to become more knowledgeable about a chief enemy – the Moslem Barbary pirates, who plundered American ships, enslaving Americans, demanding protection money and ransom for their release. During 1784-1789, while Jefferson (the 3rd US President) was ambassador to France and John Adams (the 2ndUS President) was ambassador to England, they met with the Barbary Ambassador to London, in an attempt to stop the anti-US piracy. Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman told them: “[Piracy] was founded on the laws of the Prophet, as it was written in the Koran; that all nations which had not acknowledged [Islam's] authority were sinners; that it was [the Moslem's] right and duty to make war upon them and enslave them as prisoners, and thatevery Muslim slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
FOR MORE on this story:
Second photo: US MARINES IN TRIPOLI, LIBYA 1805
From the Halls of Montezuma!
Funny how Obama failed to mention this Muslim contribution to America's well-being and history!
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2009/04/islam-pirates-and-american-history.html
John Quincy Adams, sixth US President (1825-1829), wrote after his presidency and before his election to Congress in 1830: “The precept of the Koran is perpetual war against all who deny that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. [Mohamet] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…. Between [Christianity and Islam], thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant….” (Blunt, 29:274).
In 1916, Teddy Roosevelt observed: “Wherever the Mohammedans have had a complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared” (ditto, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism …).”
In 2012, US policy-makers should benefit from the experience of early US leaders and thinkers – whose observations have been vindicated by the recent turmoil in Arab lands- avoiding the lethal trap of political correctness in their assessment of the Islamic threat.
Shabbat Shalom and have a pleasant weekend,
Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative” www.TheEttingerReport.com
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REUTERS reporter and MSNBC & CNN pundit can spray paint the next in pink!
WIPE OUT THE IDEA AND REPLACE IT WITH IDEOLOGY!
Editor’s note: The sermon below, delivered by Rabbi Schlomo Lewis of Atlanta on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, 2010, has been referred to as the “Sermon of the Century.”
“Ehr Kumt” (Yiddish for “He’s Coming”)
I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much. We want to be guilt-schlepped – but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.
I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.
We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people.
We did not apologize for Dresden , nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.
Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca . It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.
Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing.
In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence.
We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.
Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London , from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.
To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.
A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.
After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me.
“Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania .”
“Yes,” I replied. “It was quite a powerful experience.” “Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?”
“Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child.”
He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. “I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued “When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drash on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’ ”
We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right — his warning prophetic. We got out but most did not.”
We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island . No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.
Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably – I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.
Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must
place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.
Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.
I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion. Knowing he had little time left he shared the following – “Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I’d like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I’ve had it. I’m done. Finished. I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become.”
This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. – Yet his twilight observation was – “The worst is yet to come.” And he wanted out.
I share my father’s angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.
“Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You’re sounding like Glenn Beck. It’s not that bad. It’s not that real.”
But I am here to tell you – “It is.” Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris , fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target – pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.
Ask them, ask all of them – ask the American GI’s we sit next to on planes who are here for a brief respite while we fly off on our Delta vacation package. Ask them if it’s bad. Ask them if it’s real.
Did anyone imagine in the 1920’s what Europe would look like in the 1940’s. Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Feuhrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athen , Paris , Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?
The sages teach – “Aizehu chacham – haroeh et hanolad – Who is a wise person – he who sees into the future.” We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.
We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience.
Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None.
After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None.
After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None.
And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.
The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee ? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz ? Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero?
Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don’t buy the argument – “When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia . And New York is greater than Mecca . Democracy and freedom must prevail.
Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No — but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.
If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.
Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start of finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.
William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote – “After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say – “I want to see the manager.”
Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel . It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank . It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street . It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity.
Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.
In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank . Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psycho pat hic, loathsome evil.
As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel ’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel ’s galling plight ultimately will be ours.Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.
Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Islamofascist MONA ELTHAHAWI, former Reuters reporter, current MSNBC and CNN spokesperson arrested in NYC subway for spray painting pro-Israel poster and attacking a person defending it. In the CODE PINK/Islamofascist world, Eltahawi is CIVILIZED, and Israel is not civilized. In her world dead US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was not civilized and the jihadists who murdered him were civilized.
While screaming about the right to free speech and American freedom, here she's seen censoring the free speech of others...and taking away the freedom of other Americans. The poster below expressing free speech was not civilized and she was judge, jury and executioner. She is the kind REUTERS, MSNBC and CNN hires as representative of American opinion and reporting. Who will prevail in this war, Eltahawi, Ahmedinijad, al Q'aeda, or you?
There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.
There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.
There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.
There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
John Milton warned, “Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible.”
A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone – “Rabbi. How’re y’ doing?”
I looked up, sort of smiled and replied – “I’ve had better days.”
“What’s the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” he inquired.
“Thank you for the offer but I’m just bummed out today and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading.
“Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid.” I explained to my visitor – “The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to partici pat e in the Spanish gay pride parade because the mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military.”
The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel . The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel . The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel .
Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade.
Looking for logic?
Looking for reason?
Looking for sanity?
Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we “useful idiots” pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the West Bank and beyond.
It is exhausting and dispiriting. We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered specie.
Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.”We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom . It is a frightening and maddening place to be.
How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us?
How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?
Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure, is at risk.
The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading.
Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.
I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground– either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland . He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.
I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.
Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.
That is the enemy (show enlarged copy of magazine cover.)
If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway . Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio . On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR.”
“The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.
We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.
Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.
A rabbi was once asked by his students….
“Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber.”
During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.
Democracies don’t always win.
Tyrannies don’t always lose.
My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. “EHR KUMT.”
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Are we "Whitewashing Islamists"? Michael Rubin exposes the extremists who claim moderation and the Westerners who believe them.
In "America on Defense," Victor Davis Hanson explains how U.S. military cuts will make the world will become more disorderly, and America will be unable to straighten it out.
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What Orwell Can Tell Us About the Liberal Appeasement of Islam
I am not speaking of Islam here, but of Communism. The current wave of censorship and denial toward Islam is not a new development. It is rather a very old one. Islamophobia, like Red-Baiting, is a political term that serves the function of cutting off any discussion of the subject. It precludes any listing of the facts or debates on the issue, by declaring it to be off-limits. To raise the issue is to expose yourself as a bad person whose ideas are unacceptable for public distribution.
When George Orwell was struggling to find a publisher for Animal Farm, he was repeatedly turned down on the grounds that the book would offend the Soviet Union. One publisher wrote to Orwell that he had been dissuaded from publishing the book by an important official in the Ministry of Information (an agency that would become the Ministry of Truth in his novel, 1984) who had told him that publishing such a book would be ill-advised at this time. That official was, incidentally, a Soviet spy.
The publisher went on to say that the book might be acceptable if it applied generally to dictators, but not specifically to the USSR. Finally the publisher added, "It would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are."
Change around a few names and this is exactly the rejection letters that courageous books critical of Islam have received. It's fine to make general criticisms of religious fanaticism, so long as those criticisms are universally applied, and do not offend those touchy people who religious fanaticism occasionally expresses itself in dangerous ways.
In a generally deleted preface to Animal Farm, Orwell wrote, "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact."
READ the rest HERE:
What Orwell Can Tell Us About the Liberal Appeasement of Islam
Was.....
This is not a Glenn Beck alarmist sermon and don't for a moment think it is. Actually it's far worse than anything Beck had ever conjured up. It's about a bitter pill that's not stuck in our throats. We had already swallowed it and are enthusiastically digesting it as the poison takes effect.
What is it about? It is about how America and the West, as a whole, is being led to slaughter - a slaughter that you are helping along by refusing to awaken. A slaughter that would make WWII's in comparison look like a picnic. I can't awaken you or the nation. It is beyond my resources. What about yours?
- AGB
The American founding fathers and early scholars – since the 18th century – were aware of deeply-rooted Islamic violence, terrorism, intolerance and hatred toward other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims. — Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger,
Early American Awareness of Islamic Terrorism
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought”
“Israel Hayom”, September 28, 2012, http://bit.ly/S5HmoP
The American founding fathers and early scholars – since the 18th century – were aware of deeply-rooted Islamic violence, terrorism, intolerance and hatred toward other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims.“Israel Hayom”, September 28, 2012, http://bit.ly/S5HmoP
Early American leaders and thinkers were endowed with deep appreciation and unique knowledge of global history, international relations, ancient cultures, ideologies and religions. They spoke and wrote candidly about global threats, including the Islamic threat.
In 1830, New York University Prof. George Bush, the great-granduncle of G.H.W. Bush, considered one of the most profound American scholars of the mid-19th century, published The Life of Mohammed. He was not concerned about political correctness, was low on delusion and top heavy on realism. His 1830 reference to the Islamic threat was consistent with the 2012 state of intra-Muslim atrocities, hate-education, tyranny, anti-US stormy Arab winter, intolerance of criticism, global Islamic terrorism in general and suicide bombing in particular.
According to Prof. Bush, ”[Mohammed] promised robes of silks, marble palaces, groves and fountains and beautiful virgins to those who fought for the faith…offering his enemies the alternative; the Koran or the sword…. It was inflamed by zeal for a religion which assured the soldier of victory now and paradise hereafter. The permanence of this religion is now apparently secured by education…in regions where freedom of thought is unknown(p. 155-6)….
“O prophet of God, I will beat out the teeth, pull out the eyes, rip open the bellies and cut off the legs of all who shall dare to oppose thee (pp. 36-37)…. [Muhammed] was cruel on principle. He did deliberately what other men do from impulse…. The ambition which tramples on the right of men to think or to live is the greatest of human crimes…. The sword is the key of heaven and hell. A drop of blood shed in the cause of God is of more avail than two months of fast and prayers. Whosoever falls in the battle his sins are forgiven… and the loss of his limbs shall be replaced by the wing of angels (103-4)…. Hatred of Christians and Jews is rooted in their hearts from childhood (p. 137)….
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church (1703-1791) preferred clarity over ambiguity when describing Islam: “Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it… have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws…. Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind”.
Thomas Jefferson studied the Koran, to become more knowledgeable about a chief enemy – the Moslem Barbary pirates, who plundered American ships, enslaving Americans, demanding protection money and ransom for their release. During 1784-1789, while Jefferson (the 3rd US President) was ambassador to France and John Adams (the 2ndUS President) was ambassador to England, they met with the Barbary Ambassador to London, in an attempt to stop the anti-US piracy. Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman told them: “[Piracy] was founded on the laws of the Prophet, as it was written in the Koran; that all nations which had not acknowledged [Islam's] authority were sinners; that it was [the Moslem's] right and duty to make war upon them and enslave them as prisoners, and thatevery Muslim slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
FOR MORE on this story:
Second photo: US MARINES IN TRIPOLI, LIBYA 1805
From the Halls of Montezuma!
Funny how Obama failed to mention this Muslim contribution to America's well-being and history!
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2009/04/islam-pirates-and-american-history.html
John Quincy Adams, sixth US President (1825-1829), wrote after his presidency and before his election to Congress in 1830: “The precept of the Koran is perpetual war against all who deny that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. [Mohamet] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…. Between [Christianity and Islam], thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant….” (Blunt, 29:274).
In 1916, Teddy Roosevelt observed: “Wherever the Mohammedans have had a complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared” (ditto, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism …).”
In 2012, US policy-makers should benefit from the experience of early US leaders and thinkers – whose observations have been vindicated by the recent turmoil in Arab lands- avoiding the lethal trap of political correctness in their assessment of the Islamic threat.
Shabbat Shalom and have a pleasant weekend,
Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative” www.TheEttingerReport.com
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REUTERS reporter and MSNBC & CNN pundit can spray paint the next in pink!
WIPE OUT THE IDEA AND REPLACE IT WITH IDEOLOGY!
A Brave Rabbi Speaks Out
Editor’s note: The sermon below, delivered by Rabbi Schlomo Lewis of Atlanta on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, 2010, has been referred to as the “Sermon of the Century.”
“Ehr Kumt” (Yiddish for “He’s Coming”)
I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.
We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people.
We did not apologize for Dresden , nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.
Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca . It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.
Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing.
In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence.
We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.
Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London , from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.
To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.
A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.
After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me.
“Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania .”
“Yes,” I replied. “It was quite a powerful experience.” “Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?”
“Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child.”
He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. “I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued “When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drash on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’ ”
We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right — his warning prophetic. We got out but most did not.”
We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island . No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.
Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably – I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.
Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must
place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.
Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.
I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion. Knowing he had little time left he shared the following – “Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I’d like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I’ve had it. I’m done. Finished. I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become.”
This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. – Yet his twilight observation was – “The worst is yet to come.” And he wanted out.
I share my father’s angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.
“Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You’re sounding like Glenn Beck. It’s not that bad. It’s not that real.”
But I am here to tell you – “It is.” Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris , fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target – pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.
Ask them, ask all of them – ask the American GI’s we sit next to on planes who are here for a brief respite while we fly off on our Delta vacation package. Ask them if it’s bad. Ask them if it’s real.
Did anyone imagine in the 1920’s what Europe would look like in the 1940’s. Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Feuhrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athen , Paris , Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?
The sages teach – “Aizehu chacham – haroeh et hanolad – Who is a wise person – he who sees into the future.” We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.
We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience.
Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None.
After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None.
After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None.
And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.
The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee ? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz ? Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero?
Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don’t buy the argument – “When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia . And New York is greater than Mecca . Democracy and freedom must prevail.
Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No — but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.
If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.
Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start of finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.
William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote – “After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say – “I want to see the manager.”
Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel . It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank . It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street . It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity.
Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.
In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank . Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psycho pat hic, loathsome evil.
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PAGE 2As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel ’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel ’s galling plight ultimately will be ours.Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.
Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Islamofascist MONA ELTHAHAWI, former Reuters reporter, current MSNBC and CNN spokesperson arrested in NYC subway for spray painting pro-Israel poster and attacking a person defending it. In the CODE PINK/Islamofascist world, Eltahawi is CIVILIZED, and Israel is not civilized. In her world dead US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was not civilized and the jihadists who murdered him were civilized.
While screaming about the right to free speech and American freedom, here she's seen censoring the free speech of others...and taking away the freedom of other Americans. The poster below expressing free speech was not civilized and she was judge, jury and executioner. She is the kind REUTERS, MSNBC and CNN hires as representative of American opinion and reporting. Who will prevail in this war, Eltahawi, Ahmedinijad, al Q'aeda, or you?
There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.
There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.
There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.
There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
John Milton warned, “Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible.”
A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone – “Rabbi. How’re y’ doing?”
I looked up, sort of smiled and replied – “I’ve had better days.”
“What’s the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” he inquired.
“Thank you for the offer but I’m just bummed out today and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading.
“Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid.” I explained to my visitor – “The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to partici pat e in the Spanish gay pride parade because the mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military.”
The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel . The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel . The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel .
Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade.
Looking for logic?
Looking for reason?
Looking for sanity?
Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we “useful idiots” pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the West Bank and beyond.
It is exhausting and dispiriting. We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered specie.
Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.”We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom . It is a frightening and maddening place to be.
How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us?
How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?
Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure, is at risk.
The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading.
Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.
I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground– either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland . He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.
I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.
Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.
That is the enemy (show enlarged copy of magazine cover.)
If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway . Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio . On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR.”
“The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.
We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.
Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.
A rabbi was once asked by his students….
“Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber.”
During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.
Democracies don’t always win.
Tyrannies don’t always lose.
My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. “EHR KUMT.”
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Are we "Whitewashing Islamists"? Michael Rubin exposes the extremists who claim moderation and the Westerners who believe them.
In "America on Defense," Victor Davis Hanson explains how U.S. military cuts will make the world will become more disorderly, and America will be unable to straighten it out.
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Daniel Greenfield article: What Orwell Can Tell Us About the Liberal Appeasement of Islam
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What Orwell Can Tell Us About the Liberal Appeasement of Islam
Posted: 30 Sep 2012 03:29 PM PDT
Suppose there were a worldwide movement which openly proclaimed its goal of taking over in your country and every country with the purpose of imposing its system on every human beings on earth. Also suppose that this movement had carried out murders and terrorist attacks in your own country, that members of this group promoted violence while gaining political influence. Suppose also that is was highly unfashionable and politically incorrect to speak out against them.
When George Orwell was struggling to find a publisher for Animal Farm, he was repeatedly turned down on the grounds that the book would offend the Soviet Union. One publisher wrote to Orwell that he had been dissuaded from publishing the book by an important official in the Ministry of Information (an agency that would become the Ministry of Truth in his novel, 1984) who had told him that publishing such a book would be ill-advised at this time. That official was, incidentally, a Soviet spy.
The publisher went on to say that the book might be acceptable if it applied generally to dictators, but not specifically to the USSR. Finally the publisher added, "It would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are."
Change around a few names and this is exactly the rejection letters that courageous books critical of Islam have received. It's fine to make general criticisms of religious fanaticism, so long as those criticisms are universally applied, and do not offend those touchy people who religious fanaticism occasionally expresses itself in dangerous ways.
In a generally deleted preface to Animal Farm, Orwell wrote, "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact."
READ the rest HERE:
What Orwell Can Tell Us About the Liberal Appeasement of Islam
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