Fear. It keeps the economy humming. Gives the impression of scarcity. Inflates prices at a time when deflation is an issue. The war button is the classical economics pump-primer. Better to have all this hardware sitting around rusting in hangars and bunkers or to deploy the same cash in government bureaucracy where a few drops, the democratic version of trickle-down economics will reach the thirty, parched lips of those who need it most? ….
—f you doubt that sexual behavior and religion are related, we need to go no further than San Francisco, perhaps the next best thing to Gomorrah we’ve got going. Recently, the city council passed a resolution banning circumcision, calling it Male Genital Mutilation (MGM). Their target was observant Jews who practice circumcision. Proponents of the ban created a comic-book series with a character named Foreskinman. Look at the anti-Semitic tropes: the virile, blond, blue-eyed hero with the uber-WASP name of Miles Hastwick, and his nemesis, Monster Mohel. Both characters could have been lifted straight from the pages of the Nazi tracts of the 1920s and 1930s.
…
Muslims get a pass. Foreskinmann doesn’t dare challenge the Imams who also circumcise Muslim boys but then we don’t live in a culture built on Muslim morality. (Having said that, I doubt we ever will see Foreskinman staying the hand of Insidious Imam as he gets ready to remove the foreskin of baby Abdullah.) This shows us that the problem is not really about circumcision at all because all agree that there is no medical necessity for circumcision in the first place. Instead religious freedom is derided, specifically the religious freedom of people who believe in the God Who calls all men to account.
Think of it, circumcision has been part of Jewish practice since at least the time of Moses (ca 1500 BC). Well over one hundred generations of Hebrew men have been marked by this ritual with no untoward effects. What’s the big deal? Nobody raises a word about aboriginal tribes in New Guinea who practice scarification or African cultures which put bones in their nose. Our own Lord and Savior was circumcised as were all of his disciples. Maybe that is the point.—Read More:http://www.monomakhos.com/the-lavendar-mafia-and-christian-witness/
Lost of posture and gesture here. On the Arab side as well with Morsi playing political brinkmanship with tanks in the Sinai to try to show a credible face in spite of the evidence the U.S is cutting a better deal with him than Mubarak, and to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the American taxpayer:
(see link at end)…Robert Dreyfuss:Worse, as Israel knows, an attack would solidify the power of hawks in Iran’s government.
Not to mention that Iran has no bomb, it isn’t likely to get one for a few years (even if that’s Iran’s intention), and it has no means of delivering a weapon – meaning that the dire threat that Israel says might require a unilateral strike doesn’t exist.
Still, that hasn’t dissuaded Netanyahu and Barak from scaremongering about Iran, nor did it prevent a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, from declaring that Iran should “be very fearful of the next 12 weeks,” i.e., between now and the November Presidential election in the United States….
—Created by Matthew Hess, president of MGMbill.org, Foreskin Man is a product of Hess’ mission to prevent infant male circumcision. Like his character, Hess currently works in San Diego, but instead of donning a cape and plasma boots, he is pushing the Male Genital Mutilation (MGM) Bill to ensure government protection against forced male circumcision. Hess has even been restoring his own foreskin.—Read More:http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/foreskin-man-to-the-rescue/
So, why have Israel’s leaders escalated their rhetoric in recent weeks to a fever pitch? Because they, and their allies – including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its spinoff, the Washington Institution for Near East Policy (WINEP), and other, likeminded groups and think tanks – believe that even an outlandish set of threats against Iran can accomplish important objectives for Netanyahu….First, by beating the war drums on Iran since 2009, Netanyahu has succeeded in shifting the world’s focus, including that of the Obama administration, from the Israel-Palestine question to Iran….And third, Israel hopes that by injecting Iran into the presidential campaign in the United States it can blackmail the United States – Democrats and Republicans alike – to give Israel what it wants….
Much of this was stated, quite explicitly, in a New York Times op-ed by Dennis Ross, an official at WINEP who, until earlier this year, was Obama’s chief adviser on the Middle East. To forestall an Israeli attack –or, in Ross’s own words, “in order to give Israel’s leaders a reason to wait,” – the United States “should ask Israeli leaders if there are military capabilities we could provide them with — like additional bunker-busting bombs, tankers for refueling aircraft and targeting information — that would extend the clock…Read More:http://thediplomat.com/2012/08/22/why-israel-wont-attack-iran/3/
And lastly, there is a reminder that Jews and Jewish history have never conformed to reasonable expectation.With all the diversity, geographical and ideological that characterizes Judaism, an indefinable sense of unity remains. Something intangible, not quantifiable and not the product of common racial characteristics, nor the product of a common culture, however widely culture may be defined. It has something to do with persecution and something to do with pride, and everything to do with history and that four letter word: hope. Jewish unity is a matter of memory, conscious or unconscious. When the memory goes the unity will go:
(see link at end) …For nearly three decades, Feld Carr single-handedly arranged the smuggling of more than 3,000 Jews out of Damascus, Aleppo and Qamishli to safety in Israel and America. At the time, the totalitarian Syrian regime didn’t allow Jews to emigrate and tortured those caught trying to escape. But lower officials, she found out, could be bribed into letting Jews leave.
“Oh, my dear,” she says when asked what’s going through her head as she hears the reports from the war zone. “Thank God the Jewish community is out. That’s my first thought. Because if you had a sizable community of 3,000 people, this would be a major problem.”
Feld Carr, who lives in Toronto and has an apartment in Jerusalem, says that both sides in the current war — the troops of President Bashar Assad and the anti-government forces — are committing acts of sheer brutality. “It’s beyond barbaric. There’s nothing to describe it,” she says….In the 1970s, when Feld Carr started her covert escape operation, some 4,600 Jews still lived in Syria, she says. Bribing Syrian officials, including senior members of the country’s intelligence community, she was able to arrange to smuggle out exactly 3,228 Jews. “One at a time.”
The unlikely saga of a protracted covert rescue operation led by an Ashkenazi musicologist who grew up in Sudbury, northern Canada, began when she and her late husband first learned about the plight of Syrian Jewry. The issue wasn’t very much in vogue in the early-to-mid-1970s, as most Jewish activists were focused on demanding freedom for their brethren in the Soviet Union….Read More:http://www.timesofisrael.com/thank-god-there-are-almost-no-jews-in-syria-now-says-the-woman-who-rescued-most-of-them-judy-feld-carr/
— With patience, compassion and fervor, the Baal Shem Tov demonstrated how these secrets were carved into the very stuff of our innermost longings and our sense of self, and thus how they could be teased out of the dark matter of collective and individual experience.
In “Pillar of Prayer,” Dr. Menachem Kallus gives us these teachings, with an English translation and copious footnotes and commentary, revealing the Baal Shem Tov’s spiritual exercises as well as his unique and masterful voice, his adept grasp of earlier Jewish mystical traditions, and his synergetic mixing of a compassionate and sober grasp of the human condition with a soaring vision of a God-soaked cosmos. —Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/culture/books/the-brilliance-of-the-baal-shem-tov-now-in-english.premium-1.459443
So, for all the precarity of life, there has always been a maintenance of a capacity for hope and for joy. The nerve, the chutzpah, to light a candle in the gloom and sing and celebrate, even though they knew the candle might go out and the gloom take over at any moment. …
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…The campaign didn’t bother to check the list ,or simply didn’t care who was on it ,because at least seven of the Rabbis on the list are members of the Rabbinical Council of The Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)–an organization named by the Anti-Defamation League as one of the 10 most anti-Israel organizations in America (I am sure their mothers are proud).
The Rabbis include:
Rabbi Chava Bahle, Suttons Bay, MI
Rabbi Rachel Evelyne Barenblat, Lanesboro, MA
Rabbi Haim Beliak, Los Angeles, CA
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Berkeley, CA
Rabbi Linda Holtzman, Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi Rebecca Lillian, Chicago, IL
Rabbi Brant Rosen, Evanston, IL
According to the ADL analysis JVP, the organization with which these Rabbis are involved:
…calls for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, accuses Israel of “apartheid” policies, and supports divestment campaigns against Israel. Like other Jewish anti-Zionist groups, JVP uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide a greater degree of credibility to the anti-Israel movement. JVP recognizes its role as such, specifically noting that the group’s Jewish nature gives it a “particular legitimacy in voicing an alternative view of American and Israeli actions and policies” and the ability to distinguish “between real anti-Semitism and the cynical manipulation of that issue.” JVP activists regularly attend anti-Israel events wearing t-shirts and holding signs proudly broadcasting their Jewish identity. In March-April 2010, leaders of JVP unsuccessfully lobbied for the passage of a divestment resolution at the University of California, Berkeley, targeting companies that do business with Israel.
Some of the members of Obama’s anti-Israel Jew-crew can be considered “standouts.”
For example, Rabbi Chava Bahle is also a member of an organization called 14 Friends of Palestine, which advocated condemning Israel for the Gaza flotilla incident, in which a boat from Turkey filled with terrorists and weapons was stopped by Israel 2010, resulting in several deaths. Bahle and the group also advocates the false meme that Israel is preventing food and medical supplies from reaching Gaza.
In his book Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity, Rabbi Brant Rosen wrote this about Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s response to thousands of rockets fired into her civilian areas:
I remember reading this news with utter anguish. At the same time, oddly enough, I realized that I was finally observing this issue with something approaching true clarity: This is not about security at all — this is about bringing the Palestinian people to their knees.
Once I admitted this to myself, I realized how utterly tired I had become. Tired of trying to excuse the inexcusable. Tired of using torturous, exhausting rationalizations to explain away what I knew in my heart was sheer and simple oppression….
Rosen is also an advocate of the BDS movement that calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb’s history includes dining with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and being the first American rabbi to visit Tehran. And through her organization, Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence, Gottlieb (as well as other rabbis on Obama’s list) thanked South African Judge Goldstone for his now discredited report on Operation Cast Lead that accused Israel of war crimes…Read More:http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/23/Why-Does-Obama-Have-Anti-Israel-Activists-On-His-List-of-Rabbi-Supporters
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