Milton Friedman on Capitalism and the Jews

Obama bows to saudi king and palin, with no jews present at rally on Oct 30 sports Israel pin

Obama bows to saudi king and palin, with no jews present at rally on Oct 30 sports Israel pin

The header was taken from signs that were hanged at the entrance to big markets and offices in Turk

The header was taken from signs that were hanged at the entrance to big markets and offices in Turk
and Jordan recently

Monday, June 28, 2010

2010 election-who is pro Israel?

Richard Baehr
J-Street has endorsed 58 candidates for senate or house so far, 57 of them Democrats
https://donate.jstreetpac.org/candidate/allcandidates

2 of the 3 Senate endorsements are for open seats. One is for Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who faces a serious challenge this year.
1. I think as a rule, we should never give money to any candidate endorsed by J-Street.
In the open seat races, there is no incumbency rule (e.g vote for the candidate who voted for foreign aid, )
so the two open seats are easy: we should support Republican Pat Toomey over Joe Sestak, in Pennsylvania. Sestak had a poor record on Israel votes in Congress. Toomey had a very good record on Israel votes when he was in Congress.
We should support Republican Roy Blunt in Missouri over Robin Carnahan. Blunt had a good voting record on Israel in Congress. Carnahan has no record, but obviously said something sweet to J-Street's ears.

2. We should not give big amounts to candidates who have little or no competition in their races. (e.g dick durbin, daniel inouye). Better to give to more candidates, and give bigger gifts in close races.

3. Of the 55 members of the House on the J-street list, these are the 17 who realclearpolitics.com rates as vulnerable this cycle (in alpahabetical order, as is the J-street list)
Russ Carnahan, Gerry Connolly, Bill Foster, Debbie Halvorson, Jim Himes, Rush Holt, Steve Kagen, Mary Jo Kilroy, Ron Kind, Dan Maffei, Betsy Markey, Chris Murphy, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Carol Shea Porter, and John Yarmuth.

If we will be backing Joel Pollak (Schakowsky is not yet on the vulnerable list), then some of these 17 are worth opposing as well. Among those who standout for being very critical of Israel is Carol Shea Porter, a hard left member from New Hampshire.

There are other competitive Senate races, a few of which are open seats:
Florida: Marco Rubio has the best position paper on Israel of any member running. Much better than Crist or Meeks
Two incumbents who are facing challenges , and have good voting records on Israel: Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, and Richard Burr, Republican from North Carolina. Both are ahead by small margins.

In Kentucky, Rand Paul is not as much of a loon as his dad, and has authored a decent position paper on Israel . But I think he is still suspect. Jack Conway is his opponent.
Two other open Senate seats offer easy choices: In Ohio, Rob Portman had a perfect voting record on Israel in Congress. He is running against Lee Fisher who was never in Congress and has no record. This is a very close race. In Indiana, Dan Coats is expected to beat Brad Ellsworth easily. both had good voting records on Israel in Congress, but we should go with the winner to establish a link.

To date, we have given a bit over $12,000 to Democratss this cycle, and a bit over $10,000 to Republicans. I do not think in the end, that we have to exactly balance the amounts. Sad to say, but one party has become better than the other in the last few years on israel.

Two Democratic members of Congress stand out for having the courage to push back against Obama's pressure on Israel- Shelley Berkley of Nevada, , to whom we have already given this cycle and Eliot Engel of New York, who deserves support. . Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland , has also been good.

Obama has led to Turkey and then Malaysia turning on Israel

Flirting with zealotry in Malaysia

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks at an anti-Israel rally in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur this month.
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks at an anti-Israel rally in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur this month. (Saeed Khan/afp/getty Images)
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By Jackson Diehl
Monday, June 28, 2010

Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of Malaysia's political opposition, has become known over the past decade as one of the foremost advocates of liberal democracy in Muslim countries. His many friends in Washington include prominent members of the neoconservative movement -- such as Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and U.S. ambassador to Indonesia -- as well as such Democratic grandees as Al Gore.

Lately, Anwar has been getting attention for something else: strident rhetoric about Israel and alleged "Zionist influence" in Malaysia. He recently joined a demonstration outside the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur where an Israeli flag was burned. He's made dark insinuations about the "Jewish-controlled" Washington public relations firm Apco Worldwide, which is working for Malaysia's quasi-authoritarian government.

Therein lies a story of the Obama era -- about a beleaguered democrat fighting for political and personal survival with little help from Washington; about the growing global climate of hostility toward Israel; and about the increasing willingness of U.S. friends in places such as Turkey and Malaysia to exploit it.

deaf dumb blind with iran

Jennifer Rubin
The administration, the Congress, and American Jewish groups continue the dance — pretending but not believing (unless Jewish leaders are entirely out to lunch) that Obama has a plan and the will to prevent the “unacceptable” (a nuclear-armed Iran). The Israelis meanwhile are left to consider: just how long do they dare wait before acting on their own to eliminate (or at least set back) the threat of nuclear attack on the Jewish state.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Obama is really scary

Praeger on why jews are liberal

Explaining Jews, part V: Why are Jews liberal? (By Dennis Prager) Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The most frequently asked question I receive from non-Jews about Jews is, why are Jews so liberal?

The question is entirely legitimate since Jews (outside of Israel) are indeed overwhelmingly liberal and disproportionately left of liberal as well. For example, other than blacks, no American group votes so lopsidedly for the Democratic Party. And the question is further sharpened given that traditional Jewish values are not leftist. That is why the more religiously involved the Jew, the less likely he is to be on the Left. The old saw, "There are two types of Jews -- those who believe Judaism is social justice and those who know Hebrew," contains more than a kernel of truth.

In no order of importance, here are six reasons:

1. Judaism is indeed preoccupied with social justice (as well as with holiness and personal morality), and many Jews believe that the only way to achieve a just society is through leftist policies.

2. More than any other major religion, Judaism has always been preoccupied with this world. The (secular) Encyclopedia Judaica begins its entry on "Afterlife" by noting that "Judaism has always affirmed belief in an afterlife." But the preoccupation of Judaism has been making this world a better place. That is why the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) is largely silent about the afterlife; and it is preoccupied with rejecting ancient Egyptian values. That value system was centered on the afterlife -- its bible was the Book of the Dead, and its greatest monuments, the pyramids, were tombs.

3. Most Jews are frightened by anything that connotes right wing -- such as the words "right-wing" and "conservative." Especially since the Holocaust, they think that threats to their security emanate from the Right only. (It is pointless to argue that Nazism stood for National Socialism and therefore was really a leftist ideology. Whether that is theoretically accurate doesn't matter; nearly everyone regards the Nazis as far Right, and, therefore, Jews fear the Right.) The fact that the Jews' best friends today are conservatives and the fact that the Left is the home of most of the Jews' enemies outside of the Muslim world have made little impact on Jews' psyches.

4. Liberal Jews fear most religion. They identify religion -- especially fundamentalist religion and especially Christianity -- with anti-Semitism. Jews are taught from birth about the horrors of the Holocaust, and of nearly 2,000 years of European, meaning Christian, anti-Semitism. They therefore tend to fear Christianity and believe that secularism guarantees their physical security. That is what animates the ACLU and its disproportionately Jewish membership, under the guise of concern with the Constitution and "separation of church and state" (words that do not appear in the Constitution), to fight all public expressions of Christianity in America.

5. Despite their secularism, Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world. The problem is that their religion is rarely Judaism; rather it is every "ism" of the Left. These include liberalism, socialism, feminism, Marxism and environmentalism. Jews involved in these movements believe in them with the same ideological fervor and same suspension of critical reason with which many religious people believe in their religion. It is therefore usually as hard to shake a liberal Jew's belief in the Left and in the Democratic Party as it is to shake an evangelical Christian's belief in Christianity. The big difference, however, is that the Christian believer acknowledges his Christianity is a belief, whereas the believer in liberalism views his belief as entirely the product of rational inquiry.

The Jews' religious fervor emanates from the origins of the Jewish people as a religious people elected by God to help guide humanity to a better future. Of course, the original intent was to bring humanity to ethical monotheism, God-based universal moral standards, not to secular liberalism or to feminism or to socialism. Leftist Jews have simply secularized their religious calling.

6. Liberal Jews fear nationalism. The birth of nationalism in Europe planted the secular seeds of the Holocaust (religious seeds had been planted by some early and medieval Church teachings and reinforced by Martin Luther). European nationalists welcomed all national identities except the Jews'. That is a major reason so many Jews identify primarily as "world citizens"; they have contempt for nationalism and believe that strong national identities, even in America, will exclude them.

Just as liberal Jews fear a resurgent Christianity despite the fact that contemporary Christians are the Jews' best friends, leftist Jews fear American nationalism despite the fact that Americans who believe in American exceptionalism are far more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel than leftist Americans. But most leftist Jews so abhor nationalism, they don't even like the Jews' nationalism (Zionism).

If you believe that leftist ideas and policies are good for America and for the world, then you are particularly pleased to know how deeply Jews -- with their moral passion, intellectual energies and abilities, and financial clout -- are involved with the Left. If, on the other hand, you believe that the Left is morally confused and largely a destructive force in America and the world, then the Jews' disproportionate involvement on the Left is nothing less than a tragedy -- for the world and especially for the Jews.

Rabbis can be fools or fooled too

When Bad Rabbis Happen to a Good People

By Stella Paul
Are you ready for Rabbis Gone Wild -- Boston Edition? In the latest installment of this tragicomedy, the progressive Jewish leadership of Massachusetts decides to break the arrogance barrier and set new records for dangerous egomania.

First, let's meet our cast: seventy distinguished rabbis in Greater Boston, including the Past President of Hebrew College. Boy, you could fell an ox with the collective weight of these worthies' credentials.

And now, the bloodcurdling story: On June 10, these seventy men and women publicly condemned and virtually excommunicated one of the finest American Jewish leaders and human rights activist alive today.

Why? Because Dr. Charles Jacobs has the chutzpah to present documented facts about the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Boston's increasingly infamous, radical-linked, Saudi-funded mega-mosque.

In a broadside entitled "An Open Letter to the Jewish Community," published in the Jewish Advocate, seventy rabbis signed their name to a letter demanding that "Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters."

The rabbis then referenced the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: "Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear."

Way to go, rabbis! Stirring imagery! Biblical metaphor! Huge spiritual uplift! No, wait, that was my lunch.

To get the full flavor of the rabbis' epic stupidity, let's meet the victim of their "Jewish fatwa," Dr. Charles Jacobs. In the late '80s, Jacobs co-founded Boston's branch of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, to expose and combat media bias against Israel. A few years later, he founded, along with Christian and Muslim Africans, the American Anti-Slavery Group. Charles Jacobs was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for his work helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan.

In 2002, he founded The David Project, a powerhouse organization that trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus. He currently heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he founded in 2008 to protect American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims. In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America's top 50 Jewish leaders.

So let me ask you, O Great Progressive Rabbis, this is the man you want to casually destroy? While you were risking nothing more than the stampede to the canapés at some interfaith blabberfest, Charles Jacobs was flying to Sudan to redeem slaves with money he raised and bring them to freedom.

While you were chasing the latest must-have fad in "social justice" and ignoring the rising storm of campus anti-Semitism, Charles Jacobs was doing the grunt work of establishing an organization on the ground to help besieged Jewish students tell the truth about Israel.

While you were playing patty-cake with Jew-hating imams, Charles Jacobs was investigating the facts about their disgusting affiliations and helping moderate Muslims stand up to the radical takeover of their institutions.

O Most Compassionate Ones, do we really have so many people like Charles Jacobs that you can afford to toss him in the trash?

Now let's look at the people you do like, those spicy characters you're staking your reputations on. They're all linked to Boston's mega-mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, which is run by the Muslim American Society, or as federal prosecutors like to call it, "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood."

The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) cavalcade includes its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, currently rotting in jail on a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks; the loathsome Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, wart-faced "spiritual" leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who's banned from the U.S. but served as ISB Trustee; Osama Kandil, ISB Trust President, director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government; and Trustee Jamal Badawi, unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial who tells Boston Muslims they must live only under Sharia Law.

How do I know these facts? Because Charles Jacobs has worked doggedly to expose them, for which I'm immensely grateful. Now, Wise and Wonderful Rabbis, why aren't you grateful, too? Why aren't you saying, "Thank you, Dr. Charles Jacobs, for being our modern-day Paul Revere, the Boston hero who alerted us of invasion from a hostile power. Have an honorary degree on us!"

Instead, you flew into a rage at Jacobs' latest shocker: a video of Beantown's jihadi rock star, Imam Abdullah Farooq, instructing followers to "grab onto the gun and the sword. Don't be afraid to step out into this world and do your job." More chilling than Farooq's words is their context: urging Muslims to support two violent locals, "the Grey Lady of al-Qaeda," Aaafia Siddiqui, who's convicted of shooting FBI agents in Pakistan; and Tarek Mehana, the excitable Sudbury youngster arrested for plotting to murder shoppers in New England malls.

Does this Imam Farooq sound like the kind of fellow you want training your police force? Not unless you want police so "sensitive" they polish their badges while the next Tarek Mehana decides to give New England shoppers a side of bullets with their fries.

And that's why Jacobs' video criticized Governor Deval Patrick for publicly embracing Imam Farooq and accepting a $50,000 check of dubious origins from him to train police in "Muslim cultural sensitivities."

And for this act of supreme civic responsibility, you defame and slander Charles Jacobs? For this, you accuse him of a "destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community" and expose him and his family to potential dangers from vengeful Islamists? For this, you sear the Scarlet B of Bigot on his forehead and cast him into the cold?

Dear Loving and Highly Spiritually Evolved Progressive Rabbis, you're always yammering about dialoguing with "the other," right? So here's an "other" you might try dialoguing with: any Jew who has an ounce of sanity.

You know, all those nice people in your much-vaunted "community" who aren't willing to have their throats slit just because you insist it's the tolerant, hate-free thing to do.

Quick question, O Learned Ones: What are you going to do when jihad-crazed maniacs like Tarek Mehana come after your family with machine guns in the mall? Swat them with your diplomas? Teach them the finer points of Rashi? "Dialogue" on which of your limbs to chop off?

As for all you lovely lady rabbis on the list -- enjoy sermonizing in your burqa! And just hope your daughters don't have to endure the female bris ceremony.

Now, rabbis, I say this only out of the deepest concern for your mental health: Ask a doctor in your congregation to check if your Galloping Smug-itis has reached Stage 4 yet.

Because I'd like to think there's still hope for you. But you're making it really tough.

And by the way, nowhere in your job description can I find "will work to self-righteously deliver congregants into the hands of genocidal maniacs who conspire to shoot people in shopping malls."

You want me to pay dues for that? Two thousand dollars a year for you to hand me over to the Jew-hating nuts? I want my money back!

And please spare me your teary speeches about the Holocaust and your bus trips to the Holocaust Museum.

To you, Never Again apparently means Never Again Will We Bother to Flick An Eyelash In the Annoyingly Icky Direction of Genocidal Threats.

And finally, here's something you may never understand: One Charles Jacobs is worth more than seventy of you. Why? Because he fights for the truth.