Saturday, August 29, 2009

from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals The Stories Behind the News













from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News


Link to Sultan Knish








Friday Afternoon Roundup - All The Burials that are Fit to Bury


Posted: 28 Aug 2009 03:38 PM PDT





I usually don't do Friday morning posts,
today was one of those exceptions occasioned by the death of Ted Kennedy.
As a result this roundup will be shorter than usual.

But I'm not
the only one remembering Mary Jo Kopechne today. The Atlantic has a short
piece titled,
The
View From Chappaquiddick
;


Next to the bridge, the flag was at half-staff outside the
shack run by the Trustees of Reservations: I mentioned the oddness of
the half-staff flag to one of the wizened volunteers at the bridge, and
he said, "It's for Mary Jo, I guess." That seemed about
right.

What also seems about right is Marc Ambinder's analysis of
Kennedy's path to redemption, which he calls a specifically Jewish kind
of redemption, redemption through deeds. This is not to say that Kennedy
was right about everything, not by a long shot, but that he spent the 40
years after the incident on Chappaquiddick trying to save his soul, and
did so quite effectively.

The two paragraphs are of course
a contradiction in terms. And I'll also thank Ambinder not to credit Ted
Kennedy with some kind of Jewish redemption, as if taking an easy paycheck
in a job he couldn't be shoved out of, was somehow redeeming.

It's
also interesting that so many respond to after-death criticisms by warning
that only G-d can judge, to then somehow place themselves in a godlike
position by proclaiming that Ted Kennedy did save his soul. A statement
that only a higher power can make, not an Atlantic blogger. It's the same
cynical game that was on the one hand used to proclaim Bob Novak, as a
child of light, and on the other to condemn any critics by warning that
only God can judge him. Of you course you can't have it both
ways.

The Atlantic piece carries the same uncomfortable ambiguity,
that the widely
circulated
Huffington Post piece
that suggested that Mary Jo would be okay with
dying in a car for two hours, to enable Ted Kennedy's legacy.


We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or
what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most
successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always,
could fill a Metrodome.

Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right
to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a
Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo
Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have
thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully)
heralded.

Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it.

It's easy enough to shred the reasoning here to pieces,
but it's more interesting to note that like the Atlantic piece this
defines the discomfort zone among liberals with who Ted Kennedy was as a
person, vs his legacy as a liberal legislator. That same kind of
discomfort was present with Bill Clinton, that only truly emerged at the
end of his term after the impeachment issue had gone away, and during the
2008 primaries, and with John Edwards, after he was no longer in the
running and the story of his adulterous relationship had blown
up.

That same kind of discomfort may yet emerge with Obama, when it
no longer conflicts with a liberal legislative agenda. We'll
see.

Additional ponderings on the topic come from author Joyce
Carol Oates who relentlessly praises Ted Kennedy's greatness,
only
to finally ask the unanswerable question
,


Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against
the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest
Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?

Yes,
what is one to think indeed.

At Vanity Fair, Henry Rollins is
predictably
blunt enough
asking, Where's Mary Jo Kopechne's Eulogy?


I am very well known, a United States senator. My family is
incredibly powerful. There are allegations that I had been drinking
heavily hours up to the time I got into the vehicle with the passenger.
I deny this for the rest of my life. That at no point did I make an
attempt to call for rescue would probably be considered by many people
to be outrageous and horrible, perhaps a crime that would carry a prison
sentence. Can you imagine what the parents of the deceased would be
going through when they found out that their 28-year-old daughter died
alone in total darkness? I serve no time. Not inconvenienced by the
burdensome obstacle of incarceration, I seek to maintain my elected
position. I am successful and remain a senator for the next four
decades. Would any deed I performed in that time, besides going to
prison for the negligent homicide I committed all those years ago, be
enough to wipe the slate clean?

Clearly people like Oates
and many other columnists and pundits, after some hemming and hawing,
think that the answer is yes.

Julia Gorin has her own take on it
with,
God Takes Ted
Kennedy, Reluctantly



As news reports profiling his life and career gush on, most
of them mention the Chappaquiddick incident and then quickly move on to
all the good that he did, in a manner suggesting that such an event
might have derailed someone else, but it didn’t derail this crusader.
Indeed, to be derailed by such a thing would have required
character...

ndeed, it’s very much the Bill Clinton approach:
after raping an unknown number of women (at least two that we know of,
and probably Hillary, according to Ed Klein’s book), he became an
advocate for the poor, the fat, the AIDS-infected, and the weather. Such
things always help a person to not look back. Conspicuously, Clinton
never set up any rape crisis centers or other violence-against-women
outfits — or anything at all related to his crimes. Just as Ted Kennedy
never joined Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

Go read the
entire post. It's worth reading.

Finally to close it off, the video
which reveals that Ted Kennedy collected Chappaquiddick jokes.





Who knows, maybe O.J. Simpson
collected O.J. Simpson jokes.

To switch gears to another recently
deceased fellow, at the Tablet, James Kirchik follows up
on
Novak's hostile relationship
with Israel and Jews.


In 1997, Novak wrote a series of columns attempting to
resuscitate the reputation of Louis Farrakhan, encouraging Republicans
to give a hearing to the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam Leader, who, he
wrote, was “knocking on the GOP’s door.” The brainchild of this effort
was Novak’s friend Jude Wanniski, the Reaganite supply-side guru who
later became a crank, penning screeds denying Saddam’s gassing of the
Kurds and promoting political cultist Lyndon Larouche. Novak believed
that a Republican alliance with Farrakhan could have “vast future
implications,” fruitful ones. For a man now lauded as one of the most
perspicacious political commentators of his era, this was a curious, if
not dangerous, assessment.

But Novak’s real provocation of
American Jewry waited until after the September 11 attacks, which he
blamed on America’s support for Israel. Two days after the attacks, he
wrote that “the hatred toward the United States today by the terrorists
is an extension of [their] hatred of Israel” and that “the United States
and Israel are brought ever closer in a way that cannot improve
long-term U.S. policy objectives.” Was this neo-isolationism, befitting
of the paleoconservative right to which Novak had a close ideological
kinship? If so, he took it a step further when, the following month, he
referred to senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud Abu Hanoud as a “freedom
fighter” on CNN.

Further there's a piece in a far right
magazine that I won't directly link to, that covers some of Novak's other
history


On Oct. 20, 1997 Novak shocked many with a column in The
Washington Post describing “grave and disturbing questions” raised by
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a distinguished British journalist, who was
suggesting mysterious German immigrant Andreas Strassmeir—who had been
operating in “patriot” and “white separatist” circles in the United
States—may have been an undercover informant moving alongside Tim
McVeigh in the days preceding the Oklahoma bombing.

Novak
emphasized Evans-Pritchard was “no conspiracy-theory lunatic” but
instead “was known in Washington for accuracy, industry and courage” and
that he had “offered leads to discovering a pattern of lies and
deception after Oklahoma City that, if verified, would approach Vietnam
and Watergate in undermining American citizens’ confidence in their
government.”

This would suggest that Novak's Trutherism
did not begin
with
his post 9/11 column
suggesting the
attacks had been an inside job
, but dates back to the OKC bombing.


Meanwhile via
Gateway
Pundit, beloved hatemonger
Desmond Tutu is picking up an old theme
about the Holocaust and Israel


The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that
it can never get security through fences, walls and guns," Archbishop
Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz
Thursday.

Actually that is precisely the opposite lesson
of the Holocaust. Which is that those who can't defend themselves will
always be victimized.

Tutu has a long history of ugly and
anti-semitic statements. After Jeremiah Wright's speech, he
claimed
that was a universal
sentiment. Of course more defining than that, was
Tutu's rant at a Jewish luncheon on seeing gefilte fish, about how his
mother used to work for Jews.

Lemon Lime Moon
has
her own take on Tutu here


Meanwhile on the
lighter side of socialism
, in Cuba there is a grave shortage of toilet
paper forcing Cubans to buy copies of propaganda Communist newspapers to
use as toilet paper


Cuban officials quoted earlier this month in the official
Radio Rebelde predicted ``an important importation of toilet paper'' by
the end of the year ``to supply this demand that today is presenting
problems.''

The Productos Sanitarios Proa factory in Matanzas
province also produces toilet paper, branded ``hygienic and
ecological.'' Many Cuban factories have suffered from shortages of
imported raw materials and government-forced closings to save on
electricity.

But the government-imposed closings of factories and
offices to save on electricity may ironically also be helping to resolve
the toilet paper shortage, according to the Havana retiree.

Many
copies of Granma and other newspapers sent to distribution points for
later delivery to factories and offices are not being picked up when the
intended recipients are closed, the retiree said, and are being sold to
anyone else.

Lots of retirees, he added, are hitting pre-dawn
lines at those distribution points to buy 10-15 copies of both daily and
older versions of the newspapers for bathroom use, wrapping garbage and
other household uses.

The retirees pay 20 Cuban cents per copy --
about .007 U.S. cents -- and re-sell it to neighbors for up to 20 Cuban
pesos, or about 71 U.S. cents.

The price of 20 Cuban cents per
copy is the same for the day's edition and old copies, the retiree said,
``because they all have the same use.''

Indeed, they all
do have the same use. I wonder how long it'll be before Obama supporters
are wiping themselves with their Fairey "Hope and Change"
posters.

At Pajamas Media, a simple test to determine
if
you are an Islamophobe


At Israpundit, Ted Belman writes that the Saudi Plan
is really the US plan
. It's a post worth reading, but this has also
been the approach all along, as Arabist diplomats and oil industry execs
in the thrall of the Saudi lobby have repeatedly sold the idea that the
solution to any problem in the Middle East is... through
Israel.

The easiest way to appease the Arabs, it's held, is to feed
them some Israel. It's not an original idea. Everyone from Gandhi to the
British colonial authorities have pushed it.

Also at IsraPundit,
Yoram Ettinger's piece,
"Terror
State"


The idea that a Palestinian state can lead to enduring peace
in the Middle East has become a diplomatic obsession for American policy
makers. Bringing such a state into being has become the equivalent of
finding the Holy Grail. In fact, however, a Palestinian state would not
only fail to bring peace and stability to the region, but would make it
an even more dangerous place than it already is. And ironically, given
its adamant backing for a government that would have been led by Yasser
Arafat and now would be headed by Abu Mazen, U.S. support for the
creation of “Palestine,” which would immediately ally itself with and
become a client of rivals and enemies of America such as Iran, would
harm American, Israeli, and even Arab interests.

The history of
the PLO’s Abu Mazen - who is hailed by the US administration as a
peaceful leader - tells us something important about the likely
character of a Palestinian state. As a graduate of Moscow University
(Ph.D. thesis: Holocaust Denial) and a beneficiary of KGB training, he
managed the logistics of the Munich Massacre of eleven Israeli athletes
in 1972. He was the architect of PLO ties with ruthless communist
regimes until 1989 and, since 1993, a series of PLO accords with Hamas.
In 1950, 1966 and 1970, he was forced to flee Egypt, Syria and Jordan,
respectively, for subversive activities.

During the 1970s and
1980s he participated in PLO attempts to topple the Christian regime in
Beirut, which resulted in the 1976 Syrian invasion of Lebanon and a
series of civil wars, causing close to 200,000 deaths and hundreds of
thousands of refugees. As Yasser Arafat’s confidante and first deputy
for over fifty years until Arafat’s death, Abu Mazen is one of the
engineers of contemporary Palestinian hate education, which has become a
production line for terrorists. In 1990, he collaborated with Saddam
Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, despite the Gulf country’s unique
hospitality to 400,000 PLO-affiliated Palestinians.

This history
is not that of a peace maker, and the PLO’s track record of inter-Arab
treachery, non-compliance, corruption, repression and terrorism does not
give evidence of peaceful Palestinian state of the future. Since its
makeover from a terrorist organization to a semi-independent entity in
1993, the Palestinian Authority, which has been led by PLO graduates of
terrorist bases in Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and Tunisia, has
become an incubator for terrorist tactics, which have been exported to
Iraq, Afghanistan, England, Spain and other
countries
.

The entire thing is worth reading, but it's
essentially a sketch of the wages of terrorism. The reality is even
worse.

Meanwhile at Lgstarr, Obama is to have

emergency powers over
the internet... just the thing if you've got
popular protests being organized via the internet... and it's not like
politicians have a history of declaring emergencies when there is no
emergency.

Nah.

Meanwhile
Van
Jones is showing even more
of his ugly side, at WND via Islamic Danger to Americans


JERUSALEM – One day after the 9/11 attacks, President Obama's
"green jobs czar" led a vigil that expressed solidarity with Arab and
Muslim Americans as well as what it called the victims of "U.S.
imperialism" around the world.

I actually remember signs like that
in New York City. I tore enough of them down myself. But the radicals of
the past are now the rulers of the present.

At Israel Against
Terror, a Barry Rubin article,
Let's
Pretend We're Making Arab-Israeli, Israel-Palestinian Peace.



Actually achieving Middle East peace is of no importance.
The only thing that is important is saying that progress is being made
and that peace will come soon.

I don’t mean that as a statement
of cynicism but as an accurate analysis of what goes on in international
affairs at present. What’s achieved by pretending there is progress and
there will be success? Some very real and—in their way—important
things:

--World leaders are saying that they are doing a great
job, doing the right things, remaining active and achieving
success.

--By saying peace is near, the issue is defused. Why
fight if you are about to make a deal?

--Israel (and anyone else
from the region who joins in—see below) shows that it is cooperating so
others should be patient and not put on pressure.

--Since the
West is taking care of business, Arab states supposedly will feel
comfortable working with it on other issues, like Iran for
example.

Love of the Land has David Wilder's horrifying retelling of the Hebron Massacre


Eighty years ago today, Arabs massacred 67 Jews in Hebron
and wounded 70 more. Incited by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin
el-Husseini, and shouting "Kill the Jews!", the perpetrators raped,
mutilated, tortured, beheaded, or dismembered men, women, children, and
even babies in a two-day spree of violence. The victims were guilty of
no crime. Jews had lived there for hundreds of years in peace with their
neighbors. But Arab instigators preached hateful sermons and spread
malicious rumors that boiled over into bloodshed.

Ben-tzion
Gershon, a doctor and pharmacist who treated Jews and Arabs in Hebron,
defied his wife's warnings and opened the door to an Arab woman who
feigned that she was about to give birth. The woman moved aside, and a
murderous mob stormed in and gang-raped his wife. When Dr. Gershon
begged them to stop, they answered: "If you don't want to see it, you
don't have to" – and gouged his eyes out before killing him, according
to the testimony of one of Gershon's daughter.

As British High
Commissioner Sir John Chancellor put it: "I do not think that history
records many worse horrors in the last few hundred
years...."

Three days after the massacre the ruling British
expelled the surviving victims from Hebron, leaving the city without a
Jewish presence for the first time since 1260.

It wasn't until
1967, following the Six-Day War, that Jews returned to Hebron. They did
not occupy a foreign city; rather they came back home, to the first
Jewish city in the land of Israel. They returned to worship at the Caves
of Machpela, the second-holiest site in the world to Jews, after Temple
Mount in Jerusalem. This site had been declared off limits to Jews and
Christians for 700 years. Today it is open to all who desire to visit
this hallowed burial ground for the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. Hebron is not just the source of Judaism. It is the source of
monotheism for all peoples of the world.

The only reason that the
Caves of Machpela are still accessible to Jews is because there is a
permanent Jewish presence in the city. The disappearance of the Jewish
community of Hebron would be tantamount to abandoning the founders of
our people. Would any American dream of abandoning Philadelphia, Boston,
or Mount Vernon to the Taliban or Al Qaeda, "in the name of peace"?
Today, I proudly live in Hebron, along with hundreds of other Jews.
Despite media reports, our goal is not to expel the Arabs living here.
Anyone of any race or religion should be able to live in
Hebron.

However, we demand that our Arab neighbors accept the
fact that the Jews have an eternal, legitimate right to live in the
first Jewish city in the land of Israel. This is our goal: to live
normal lives, just as anyone else, anywhere in Israel. Our goal is to
ensure that our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be
able to live in Hebron. Our goal is to make sure that all Jews will have
access to the caves, that Jews will never again be told that this holy
site is off limits. Eviction from Hebron, the first Jewish city in
Israel, would be tantamount to acquiescence that can only be defined as
a reward for terrorism, continuing in the footsteps of
el-Husseini.

Unfortunately there is a longtime ongoing
campaign by the left, in and out of Israel, to demonize Hevron's Jewish
residents.

At the Counter Jihad meanwhile, the
revelation
that NATO is going Dhimmi


NATO's new secretary general reiterated respect for Islam on
the first day of his visit to the alliance's only predominantly Muslim
member.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen is in Turkey for two days to
discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan and improve relations ith the
Muslim world.

"Please see my presence here tonight as a clear
manifestation of my respect for Islam as one of the world's greatest
religions," Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday at an iftar - the evening meal
that breaks the fast during the holy month of Ramadan - with Turkey's
leaders.

"I have he deepest respect for people's religious
feelings," he said.

Fogh Rasmussen became secretary general Aug.
1, after Turkey withdrew its objections to his candidacy. Turkey
initially opposed his appointment because, as Denmark's prime minister,
he infuriated many Muslims following the publication in 2005 o cartoons
depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Somehow Denmark just can't
seem to be forced to apologize enough for having free
speech.

Finally to close off the weekend roundup,
only
4 percent of Israelis
think Obama is pro-Israel... down from 6
percent.

Israelis have never been fooled by Obama. Obama's visit
to the Western Wall was greeted with protests of "Jerusalem is not for
Sale", back when Obama was a candidate.





Israelis for Obama was a scam,
as
I reported back in the day, with two orgs
, one that could not write in
Hebrew, and another run by an African-American cult with ties to Michelle
Obama and the rabidly anti-semitic Leonard Jeffries.

And finally
to dispose of the fiction that Rahm Emanuel has any status with Israelis,
here's a video from Israel, "Rahm Emanuel, the Musical." It's not subtle
but Israeli political satire or comedy for that matter, does not lean to
the subtle. Next time someone tries to claim that Rahm Emanuel means
anything to Israelis, show them this video.












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