Miriam Shaviv

They are just rolling in today.

According to Barack Obama last week, "the Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries".

Now just imagine had George Bush said that......

"Anne Frank's spirit lives on in chestnut tree" -- headline, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb 3

Another funny. The staff of JTA wonder what Lost - the last season of which will be on British screens next week - would have looked like had it been an El Al plane that crashed:

-- In the first place, the plane would have never crashed because the pilots would have been able to perform evasive maneuvers. But if it had…
-- Jack would not have been the only doctor.
-- John Locke would have been named Yeshayahu Leibowitz.
-- Sayid would have never made it on to the plane.
-- Instead of his makeshift radio, some of the Israeli passengers would have set up a high-speed Internet link.
-- Some Lubavicther would have shown up before long to open up a Chabad house.
-- There would be more than just one recklessly driven, German-made vehicle on the road.
-- The existence of a nuclear weapon on the island would never have been acknowledged.
-- Gratuitous shots of Kate in her underwear would be replaced by quick peeks of haredi women sans sheitels.
-- The island would suddenly have attracted the attention of the entire world, with the U.N. accusing the passengers of illegally occupying territory and using disproportionate force to fend off attacks by the Others.
-- UPDATE: A friendly rabbi adds: " The back fuselage was what stayed intact, so all the people davening in the back would have made it. Breakaway minyan, anyone?

Via John Podhoretz:

The Herzliya Conference—a high-level powwow—is taking place right now in Israel. Shimon Peres, once Israel’s prime minister and now its president, gave a speech in Hebrew that was simultaneously translated into English. A friend at the conference reports that, according to the simultaneous translator, Peres referred to the day when Moses came down from Sinai and "found the people building a golden veal."

As fellow JC blogger Geoffrey Paul has noted, there is a row in the Times this morning between two rabbis over faith school education.

Rabbi Aaron Goldstein, of Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue, is attacking Reform's Rabbi Jonathan Romain, who a couple of days ago expressed his dismay that a new Hindu school was going to open. Rabbi Romain had said:

“I am greatly saddened by this because the Hindu community has been very well integrated into wider society,” he told The Times.
“It is a very regressive step. It will separate children from the rest
of society and take Hindu children away from ordinary schools so
children from other faiths won’t know them so well.”

Rabbi Goldstein accuses Rabbi Romain of double standards: why should Hindu children be denied the faith education offered to children from so many other faiths?

But there is a deeper issue here, one which goes to the very rationale for having faith schools.

Rabbi Romain wants Hindu children (and children of every religion) in mainstream schools so they can get to know children of other faiths and so that these children, in turn, will get "to know" them. He sees schools, in other words, as instruments of socialisation.

But what  exactly are these children getting to know? Unfortunately, mostly only children with a very basic knowledge of their own religion. Yes, they may celebrate some festivals, go to synagogue or Temple on the odd occasion (perhaps) - and that is very important - but what (to move the discussion over to the Jewish sphere) do they know of Jewish history or thought? What grounding do they have in Jewish texts, what real knowledge of the Siddur? Do they understand and have they considered the differences between the Jewish streams, or Israeli history and society?

In order to represent yourself in any meaningful way to others, you need to know yourself and your own culture/religion first. And that is where faith schools come in. Good faith schools should provide a grounding in religion which is usually impossible to pick up at home, even in very observant homes (few parents, after all, have the time to teach their children the Bible, line by line, as a school would - to pick one example). 

By seeking to deny children such education, Rabbi Romain is ensuring a generation with nothing more than a surface knowledge of their own religion; some may make it up by themselves as teens or later in life but these are, I am afraid, too few. So I'm not really sure why he thinks it culturally significant to have an ignorant, nominal Jew meet an ignorant, nominal Hindu.

I actually almost feel sorry for the global warming true believers. In the past couple of months they have seen the science behind their theory severely undermined; the motivations and professionalism of their scientists cast into serious doubt; and the Copenhagen summit ended in failure. Now, to top it all off, their cause has been very publicly endorsed by the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden himself!

"Speaking
about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury — the
phenomenon is an actual fact," [bin Laden's] tape says according to al-Jazeera. "All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis"...

In the latest recording, he calls out developed world economies for
continuing to produce global warming pollution even after signing on to
the Kyoto protocol. America stayed outside Kyoto, which Osama noted.

"George
Bush junior, preceded by [the US] congress, dismissed the agreement to
placate giant corporations. And they are themselves standing behind
speculation, monopoly and soaring living costs."

"They are also
behind 'globalisation and its tragic implications'. And whenever the
perpetrators are found guilty, the heads of state rush to rescue them
using public money."

Talk about a nail in the coffin.

But all gloating aside, bin Laden's green turn makes perfect sense. The global warming movement has always been about politics; about finding more sticks with which to beat up and tame the developed world, capitalism, "giant corporations", globalisation etc - all targets the left hates. Bin Laden's pitch-perfect message shows he understands this, perfectly. And since he shares many of the same political targets (not - I emphasise - that I am saying global warming activists are equivalent in any way to terrorists), why is anyone surprised when he jumps on the bandwagon?

Anthony Julius's new book on antisemitism contains a couple of paragraphs about his most famous client, Princess Diana:

"She was under-educated in the approved style of her class and gender… she had a strong desire to please, to leave her interlocutor happy, but often without understanding what that person was about.

"She was interested in Jews, but had no idea about them – she was happy to take Jews to be hostile to everything to which she herself was hostile. She once said to me that she should never have married into a German family."

Melanie McDonagh comments in the Telegraph:

He's right about the Princess being poorly educated – she didn't get a single O-level at her expensive school; her brother Charles got to Oxford from his (Eton).

But that remark about her wanting to say what her interlocutor wanted to hear, followed by the bombshell that she should never have married into a German family – what does that tell us? That she felt that Mr Julius, being Jewish, was anti-German, even if the Teutonic taint was, by the Prince of Wales's time, a few generations removed?

It doesn't seem to cross Mr Julius's mind that this remark was unworthy of either of them. He might have mildly pointed out that, although Jewish, he was not prejudiced against the German nation. He might have said that the Windsors were hardly German now, or even that it is unreasonable to equate being German with being Nazi, for that was the implication.

Of course, he might have felt it wasn't his job to do so, but one of the points of his book is that anti-Semitism – that is, racism – should be challenged, whether discreet or explicit.

First of all, Julius's text makes it quite clear that he does, in fact, dissociate himself from Diana's remark - he says Diana had "no idea" about Jews and that she just assumed Jews were hostile to the things to which she was hostile - ie, her assumption was wrong.

But what I really find silly here is the self-righteous implication that Good Jews are not "prejudiced against the German nation". We must all be sensible and reasonable and make it clear that we don't hold anything against the Germans, otherwise we are horrible racists.

Dear Ms McDonagh: the Germans killed six million Jews within living memory. I'm not sure how many Jews really are prejudiced against the German nation; I don't think most are (I seem to recall a survey, recently, which showed that Israelis in particular have surprisingly positive feelings towards Germans today). But if there are Jews out there who hate "the Germans", can you really blame them? Don't you think it is a normal and natural emotional reaction to the genocide of a people?

In the face of such a national (and often personal) trauma, the polite conventions of political correctness are simply irrelevant. 

Some rare good news for IDF soldiers:

Israel's foot soldiers are getting new odour-free socks that can be worn for two weeks straight without smelling or stinking up the feet...

"It may sound ridiculous... but this is a very important issue that causes many problems during training," the newspaper quoted Brigadier General Nissim Peretz, the commander of the Israeli military's logistics division, as saying.

The socks, which will be distributed to all new infantry recruits beginning in March, also prevent athlete's foot -- "a nuisance with which every soldier is very familiar," the paper said.

The fabric includes metal components to keep bad odours and fungal infections at bay, it said.

I can imagine there is an enormous market for this amongst teenage boys as well....