J Street's Unpalatable Potage

University of Chicago student Jeremy Rozansky reviews J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami's book A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation in the October issue of Commentary. Since the review is available online only as an abstract, I quote from my paper copy of the magazine.

To make this case [that the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza are "morally wrong"], which ignores the question of Israel's moral responsibility to protect its own children and its own existence, Ben-Ami offers textual evidence of stunning vapidity. "Charity [tzedakah], good works [gmilut Chasidim] and repairing the world [tikkun olam] are foundamental elements of Jewish identity, " he asserts, which is true in part, but they are less important than, say, the degree to which Jewish identity is dedicated to the defense and protection of Jews in a world hostile to them. He throws out glib parables like a self-satisfied uncle at a seder--e.g., Hillel said that the Torah can be summarized as "that which is hateful to you, do not unto another," and we would not like to be Gazans, ergo, who should end the blockade.

This is not only false logic but also a false account of the Jewish moral and ethical code. A true Jewish ethics straddles Hillel's plaintive questions: "If I am only for myself, what am I?" and "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" It holds aspirations for righteousness and peace and is moved by a universalist compassion, but it understands the need for--indeed, the divine calling to--a particularist nationalism. The conversion of an immensely complex moral, ethical, legal, and religious tradition into easy-to-read bumper stickers is an understandable impulse from a veteran political operator, but one would think that even the most cynical hack would have the modesty not to liquefy three millennia of argumentation into a left-liberal cholent.

Recently, someone I know who loves partaking of that type of bean stew proclaimed that, if Israel is to survive and hold any meaning for our youth (who--this is me here, not him--are force-fed the universalist mush at home and at school) Jews must--must!--embrace J Street, the New Israel Fund, Israel's "new" historians, and the Palestinians' nakba narrative. To which I would retort that if Israel's future depends on the pseudo-Zionists and post-Zionists on the Left, Israel had better pack it in right now, because it has no future. That there are young Jeremys around like the one who wrote this piece--the anti-Jeremy Ben-Ami, so to speak--gives me hope that, barring the foreseen (an Iranian nuke or some other calamity unleashed on it by its enemies), Israel will be around for a long, long time.

"Sha Shtill" in Thornhill

If there's one thing Candidate Farber and the Tory incumbent can agree on it's that "antisemitism" at York U. (where Jewish students have been known to seek cover from a rampaging mob) is definitely on the downswing:

They may have agreed on little else Tuesday night, but Thornhill’s two top contenders in the provincial election share one thing in common: both agree anti-Semitism at York University is on the decline. 

Progressive Conservative Peter Shurman and Liberal Bernie Farber, two high-profile hopefuls in a neck-and-neck race for Thornhill, squared off over many issues at the recent all-candidates meeting but they came to terms when it came to Jews on campus.

Both agreed there have been problems at York; both agreed it’s getting better. Both candidates are Jewish. 

“We have made some progress. Is it all fixed? No. Will it ever be fixed? No. That’s a city of 50,000 people,” Mr. Shurman said. 

“It’s not perfect; it’s nowhere near perfect. But it’s also not as bad as many inflate it to be,” added Mr. Farber. 

The comments followed a question from the audience concerning “the abysmal record of the [York] administration to ensure the safety of our Jewish students”. 

The question for Mr. Farber — “given the current Liberal disinterest in addressing the matter, why should any Jew in good conscience vote for you?” — was greeted with cheers and applause from the audience of about 400 at Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation. 

“Some people are just so uninformed on these things,” Mr. Farber responded. “Yes there are issues at York University but there are many parents here who’ve sent their kids to York and you know that some of that sometimes gets a little bit exaggerated,” he said, and was greeted with boos and calls of “shame!” from the audience. 

“You know guys, you can yell and scream me down but you know my record you know what I stood for for 25 years and more than anybody in this room I have stood at the forefront of anti-Semitism.”

He warned the crowd to be cautious in their reactions. 

“People are quick to boo and hiss and holler and I just ask you this one thing: think before you do that. 

“The best way to deal with these issues is to put them on a balance. Understand that there are Jews and people of colour and all kinds of people suffering all kinds of discrimination. It’s not just about us, it’s about everybody.”  

These remarks were greeted with polite applause...

That's much too polite. They should have been met with jeers and rotten eggs. That's because it most definitely is "just about us." It is "just about us" when they're chasing Jews kids in a campus mini-pogrom. It is "just about us" when the same campus that harbours--engenders--that zesty Zionhass reaffirms its ties to a West Bank university where Palestinian rejectionism is on the syllabus. And it is "just about us" when the Ayatollah's poison seeps into our body politic and manifests itself as a Zion-loathing rally at Queen's Park during which classic blood libels are spewed.

Ironically, the man who has spent the last 25 years on the lookout for non-existent Nazis urges everyone to adopt the same policy of "sha shtill" (Yiddish for "put up and shut up") that was such a disaster when the Official Jews of the pre-Holocaust era urged it upon their followers. The one bright spot here is that Thornhill Jewry--the ones who turned out to hear this debate, at least--don't seem receptive to Farber's weaselly palaver.

Update: Ideally, every Thornhill voter who has yet to cast a ballot should watch this--Ezra Levant rips their Liberal candidate a new one at around the 4:27 point--and ask themselves whether they want to be represented by someone who has arguably done the most (and who has certainly done his utmost) to destroy free speech in Canada (hat tip: BCF).

CTV's Blatant Anti-Tory Bias

Instead of saying "Tim Hudak defends free speech," CTV asserts that "Hudak defends 'homophobic' ads." The better to make him sound like a bigot, no?

At least they put scare quotes around homophobic.

Obama's (Liberal) Disdain

Brett Stephens writes:

What is it that Mr. Obama doesn't like about the United States—a country that sent him hurtling like an American Idol contestant from the obscurity of an Illinois Senate seat to the presidency in a mere four years?

I suspect it's the same thing that so many run-of-the-mill liberals dislike: Americans typically believe that happiness is an individual pursuit; we bridle at other people setting limits on what's "enough"; we enjoy wealth and want to keep as much of it as we can; we don't like trading in our own freedom for someone else's idea of virtue, much less a fabricated concept of the collective good.

And that's why I'm not a liberal, run-of-the-mill or otherwise.

It's Abdullmutallab's World. We Just Live In It

Today in Detroit, "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab goes on trial. One of  many young men inspired to wage violent jihad by the teachings of recently splodiated Anwar al-Awlaki (live by the bomb, die by the drone), Umar didn't succeed in detonating his drawers and bringing down a large American passenger jet. In a very real way, though, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams:

'Muttalab's been lawyered and roped.
His plot did not go as he'd hoped.
Heeding Awlaki's rants
He packed heat in his pants,
And now all are frisked, scoped and groped.

Eco-Freak McGuinty's "Stupid Meters"

One of a plethora of boneheaded McSpendy eco-measures: make it more expensive for householders to use energy at "peak" times (times during the day when they would use electricity to do household chores). Sure, the measure has has an impact on people's behavior, forcing pensioners to wash and dry their gotchies late into the light. But guess what?  It hasn't saved squat. Not that the Spendyholics would ever get rid of it. Why would they, when they love enacting pointless but bullying legislation almost as much as they love wasting your moolah?

Welcome to the "New" Libya

Same as the old Libya.

Kathy Shaidle's "Greatest Generation" Toxic Trifecta

From Zinn to Friedan to Carter

It's the Marxism, Stupid

In a, well, eye-opening post, Eye on a Crazy Planet explains what's behind the nutty education/indoctrination of our young'uns:

The nest from which the policies that give rise to the TDSB’s ill-conceived educational approaches is the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Teachers who form policies and curriculum not only for the TDSB, but in school boards all over Canada are trained there under an educational philosophy called Critical Pedagogy, which is based on the works of the late Brazilian Marxist, Paulo Friere.

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Friere’s seminal work, is required reading in teachers colleges and its essential message is to divide the world into a Manichean equation of oppressor or oppressed, in which the oppressor can do no right and the oppressed can do  no wrong.

Unfortunately for Canadians, as well as any society derived from European origins, is that we fall into oppressor category and proponents of Critical Pedagogy are tacitly teaching our children that we are inherently unfair racists who need radical reinvention. Or more to the point, generations of young Canadians are being influenced to commit civilizational suicide.

An example of a subtle way these ideas are being communicated to our children is the way that Middle Schools approach the issue of the domestic internment of Japanese-Canadians during World War 2.

Clearly the singling out of Japanese Canadians was based on racism and deserves condemnation.

But Grade 7 students are taught about this without context, before they are taught about the causes of World War 2, about Pearl Harbour, or about the practices in the rest of the world at the time. There was no country in the world then that did not practice similarly racist policies. What Canada did to its Japanese citizens pales in comparison to Japanese treatment of non-Japanese in countries they invaded like China and The Philippines, where massive murders, rapes and extermination occurred, or in Korea, where the Hirohito’s Army abducted tens of thousands of women to be used as brothel slaves.

This upside-down approach to teaching promoted by OISE and practiced at the TDSB has even insinuated itself into Math classes at the grade 5 level, where teachers are instructed to take the following approach:

The class will represent the number of people in the entire world and the teacher will distribute the world's wealth between the students... Students will attempt to negotiate with other countries to donate their wealth/candies. At the end students will debrief their feelings and emotions of fairness with the data from the wealth chart.

“Feelings and emotions of fairness” have nothing to do with basic mathematics. But it has a lot to do with the type of social conditioning with which OISE seeks to surreptitiously condition Canada’s youth...

Yes, but harping on "feelings and emotions of fairness" have everything to do with divesting a society of freedom. One look at our "human rights" apparatus, which is every bit as nutty and Marx-driven as OISE, is proof of that.

"The Only Thing We Have to Fear (Is Islamophobia Itself)"

Robert Spencer and David Horowitz unpack the bogus fear, an ingenious Muslim Brotherhood P.R. manoeuvre, here.

When It Came to Sexy Time, al-Awlaki Decided That Heaven Couldn't Wait

Lest you think Anwar al-Awlaki is getting his first taste of nooky now that he's cavorting with the babes in the afterlife bordello, think again. It seems Anwar didn't wait for his eternal rewards, indulging fully while in his mortal guise:

Perhaps investigators didn’t think an imam who had been charged twice for indulging in prostitution in San Diego, and who had been sentenced to community service and forced to take AIDS awareness courses as a result, could be a committed jihadist.

The FBI had tracked al-Awlaki in the Washington area, where he entertained prostitutes, and they considered arresting him again, but decided against it. By that point, al-Awlaki must have been aware the police were keeping an eye on him.

Not that that prevented the Pentagon from viewing him as a "moderate" imam and, in the weeks following 9/11, "inviting him for lunch as part of an outreach program to American Muslims." How he must have laughed at the infidels, knowing full well that

he was the "spiritual adviser" to three of the Sept. 11 hijackers with whom he had many "closed-door meetings."

"Shahid" al-Awlaki holds a "closed-door meeting" with his own personal virgins