The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership of the Judeo-Christian Alliance has been working to confront the dishonest narrative offered by the leaders of mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. about the Arab/Israeli conflict. That narrative is hostile to Jews and to Israel, as noted here.

Dexter Van Zile, Christian Outreach Director of the David Project has written an open letter to the United Church of Christ regarding the victory of Hamas in the recent “election” in the Palestine Territories. It is a good letter and can be read here.

The fact is that the Christian left, along with the political left, have been under the delusion that the problems in the Middle-East have been the fault of Israel, and that only if Israel would agree to negotiate with the Palestinians there would finally be peace. I hope they now see that was never the case.

Stephen Plaut remarks in Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) that the win by Hamas can be good in that it will awaken Israel and the world as to the seriousness of the situation with the Palestinians. He points out that the whether Fatah (the PLO) or Hamas is in power is a distinction without a difference.

For months, the media were all in suspense over whether the victors in the “election” would be the Hamas terrorists or the PLO terrorists. As it turned out, Hamas evidently won the “election” by a huge majority.

The first part of the absurdity in the message daily inculcated by the Israeli political elite is that there is any significant difference between the PLO and Hamas. There is not. Both are equally dedicated to unlimited terror and violence, to genocide and the eradication of Israel in any form and in any borders. Both have conducted suicide bombings and in fact, if I am not mistaken, the PLO’s terror brigades carried out more such attacks than Hamas did over the past two years. The Kassam rockets are at least as much the initiative of the PLO as they are that of Hamas. The PLO proliferates anti-Semitic propaganda as much as Hamas and is just as allied with the Hizbullah, Syria and Osama Bin-Laden.

But the Israeli establishment has been repeating the empty “we have a peace partner in the PLO” mantra for so many years that they managed to fabricate artificial suspense over the Palestinian “election”. If the PLO were to win, then “Palestine” would be ruled by moderates, people with whom Israel could strike a deal, could do business – the pragmatists. Nice Nazis. Israel has been awash in speeches by politicians and mindless bumper stickers proclaiming: “We have a peace partner.”

Now, this may strike you as bizarre, but I have been arguing that the best thing that could happen in the Palestinian Authority “election” would be a strong Hamas victory. Let me explain.

A strong Hamas victory is the only thing that stands a chance of forcing Israelis to open their eyes and wake up. As long as the PLO is in charge, the gigantic game of make-pretend continues. When the Hamas is marching about with costumes of suicide bombers and with its swastikas and other paraphernalia, then there can be no delusions about the Nazification of the Palestinians. It is not that the Palestinians would really be any less Nazified with the PLO in charge. It is just that the Abu Mazen-type representatives at the Potemkin negotiations, and the make-pretend respectability of the PLO hoodlum chiefs, allow the politicians and the media to continue acting as if there is a peace process.

The Hamas victory – and I wish it had been stronger – puts the lie to the game of make-pretend. No longer can any intelligent Israeli pretend that there is any way to deal with the Palestinians other than war. The only way to stop the Kassams and suicide bombers is R&D – Re-Occupation and De-Nazification. And with the Hamas in charge, everyone in Israel is forced to acknowledge this.

Hamas has only one goal – the destruction of Israel. There will be no acknowledgement by Hamas or the Palestine Authority of Israel’s right to exist or any commitment to disarm. The world can delude itself that now that Hamas has power it will moderate its militantcy. That only shows its naivete about Islamic terrorists.

The fact is that Islamic radicals do not want a Jewish state in the Middle-East. They want the area to be totally Muslim. They want the area to be Judenrein (cleansed of Jews). If that term sounds familiar it was used by the Nazis in Germany.

Israelis, particularly the left, have deluded themselves into thinking that it could negotiate peace with the Palestine Authority. They felt that Mahmoud Abbas could be a “partner for peace.” That was never the case. At least now with Hamas in control, Israel will realize that the only solution to peace in the Middle-East with the Palestinians is, unfortunately, going to be war.

Plaut concludes:

Leftist after leftist proclaims that the solution is to negotiate with Hamas. After all, Hamas is as “genuine” and “representative” of Palestinians as the PLO, and it even wins “elections”. Some Hamas officials are encouraging the trend of self-annihilation in Israel by putting out duplicitous statements about how Hamas acknowledges that Israel exists (as an empirical reality that needs to be corrected, that is). Such statements recall Yasser Arafat’s duplicitous words.

So, get ready for new calls to enter into negotiations with Hamas. We can try to persuade them to have a salad bar on the cattle cars transporting Israeli Jews, and perhaps institute recycling and free tuition at the concentration camps Hamas is seeking to build. Israeli professors will soon be wearing their Hamas lapel pins. Hamas poetry will soon be taught to Israeli schoolchildren. Israeli schools will be screening films celebrating the heroism of Palestinian suicide bombers (like the University of Haifa screened Paradise Now this week).

And Second Shoah Now will be the fastest growing movement in Israeli society, holding mass demonstrations for peace in Rabin Square.

It is time for Israel, and the rest of the world, to realize that the Palestinians are now under the control of a group of radical Islamists who want nothing less than the destruction of Israel, and who will do what they can to achieve that, while they will deceptively hold themselves out to the world as a group that can make peace with Israel.

I also believe that Hamas’ sister organization, The Islamic Brotherhood, in Egypt will eventually take over that government. Israel and the United States will have to deal with radical Islamist organizations or terror organizations in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Palestinian territories and Egypt. It doesn’t look good for the U.S., for Western civilization, for peace, and especially not for Israel.

Awake from your slumber, O Israel.

Here’s a visual representation as to why we need John Shadegg as majority leader:

Up to Their Earmarks

The amount of money spent on pork barrel projects — special state or local projects tacked onto federal legislation — has almost tripled over the past 10 years, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service.

SOURCE: Congressional Research Service | GRAPHIC: The Washington Post – January 27, 2006

Vasko Kohlmayer at the American Thinker describes how George W. Bush can remain gallant and affable despite the rudeness and brusqueness shown by his liberal opponents.

A relative few presidents in this country’s history have endured the kind of vicious and spurious attacks that have been leveled against George Bush. Completely abandoning any sense of decorum or statesmanship, some of the highest officials in the Democratic Party have repeatedly called him a liar, a loser, an election-thief, an airhead, and a fraud. Regularly likened to Hitler, there have been books discussing his assassination. Recently he was even dubbed the world’s greatest terrorist by one of America’s once-prominent entertainers . There are just a few of examples. Sadly, such views are increasingly becoming part of the mainstream liberal outlook.

But no matter how malicious they have been, George Bush has always faced his critics with affability and goodwill. Even his most bitter enemies – hating him as they do – would be hard pressed to fault him for being uncivil or personally unpleasant. He displays none of the unkindness, harshness or anger one would normally expect from someone engaged in a political struggle against those who frenziedly seek his destruction.

In fact, Bush’s gallant manner has become something of a trademark. His comportment has served him well, for he has triumphed in almost every great battle he has fought, including two heatedly-fought national elections. His successes tend to drive his opponents into what can only be called spasms of political hysteria, and not knowing what else to do, they crank up even further their already outlandish rhetoric. Their near-madness is indeed a sight to behold.

What this shows is that that when you are on the side of right you do not have to be brusque to prevail. Conducting yourself with grace and dignity can in itself have a devastating effect. Insults and vituperation are altogether unnecessary. Quite to the contrary – geniality and personal warmth further augment the effectiveness of your words and actions.

Read more.

What Would Jack Bauer Do?
By Pat Buchanan

Ex-President Palmer had saved Jack Bauer’s life.

The Chinese wanted agent Bauer extradited to execute him for the killing of their Los Angeles consul, gunned down in a crossfire between Chinese security and Bauer’s Counter-Terrorism Unit team that had penetrated the consulate on an espionage mission.

Palmer, though out of office, conspired in a CTU scheme where Jack would appear dead, to the satisfaction of the duped Chinese, and be sent to Mexico with a fake identity.

As this year’s series of Fox’s “24” opened Sunday, President Palmer is shot through an office window and assassinated. Word reaches Bauer, working in the California oil patch.

Emotional at the death of the president he loved, for whom he had often risked his life, Jack returns. He is intercepted and almost killed by the team that murdered Palmer. Wounding the leader of the terrorists, Bauer interrogates him, warning the bleeding man he will die unless Bauer helps him get to a hospital. The terrorist talks.

After he spills all his information, Bauer starts to walk away. The terrorist demands to be taken to the hospital.

Were you the one who shot President Palmer? Bauer asks. Yes, replies the wounded terrorist, in agony on the floor. Bauer stares at him for two seconds — then shoots him.

It is a Jack Bauer moment, and all addicted to “24” knew what would happen to that assassin. For Bauer is a take-no-prisoners patriot who puts love of country and loyalty to friends first, and fights by his own rules. To Jack Bauer, the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

What is the appeal of “24”?

It is the fastest-paced, most exciting TV out there. But at bottom, the appeal is that, as in the Westerns of old and “Dirty Harry” movies of the 1970s, Jack Bauer is a flawed but good man in a struggle against evil, who is there to see that his loved ones are secure and justice is done. To Jack Bauer, as to Clint Eastwood’s Detective “Dirty Harry” Callahan, vigilante justice is not only preferable to no justice at all, it is the best kind. Evil men should get what they deserve, without legal complications.

“24” satisfies the innate demand in all of us that, the law aside, evil should be punished and justice done.

That the audience for “24” is so loyal and large should tell us something about America and our divisions over the war we are in.

For weeks, Democrats and their media allies have been on Bush’s case for using the National Security Agency to intercept, without warrant, phone calls and e-mails to terror suspects abroad. Before that, Bush was charged with using secret detention centers in Eastern Europe to interrogate suspects. Before that, the military was accused of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan. Before that, the Justice Department was charged with violating the civil rights of Jose Padilla and the Shoe-bomber.

Bush thus stands accused of violating the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war, ignoring constitutional protections of U.S. citizens, and violating international agreements prohibiting torture and the “rendition” of prisoners to countries where torture is practiced.

Where do the American people stand?

The left may be right on the law, but the people seem to be standing by Bush. Believing the character of this war, where the enemy’s preferred tactic is to slaughter civilians with terror bombings, people seem to agree that we have to follow Jack Bauer’s rules, not ACLU rules.

Yet one senses that Americans are conflicted. We want to think of ourselves as decent people who fight wars honorably. But we believe the enemies of 9-11 are so evil, so depraved, they forfeit the right to be treated honorably. And while we believe in constitutional rights, human rights, civil rights, Miranda warnings and all that, we also believe in winning our wars. For without victory in the war on terror, freedom may not survive.

“Success alone justifies war,” said Von Moltke, as Germany prepared to violate Belgium’s neutrality to outflank France in 1914. Americans appear to believe that, too.

President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and blockaded Southern ports, without congressional authorization. President Wilson locked up Eugene V. Debs in World War I and never let him out. FDR interned 110,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans in relocation camps, in a wartime act of racial profiling approved by the Supreme Court. Truman dropped atom bombs on defenseless cities, killing 100,000 women and children. Yet all are judged by liberal historians to be great or near-great presidents.

Now, Jack Bauer does not exist, and “24” is made-for-TV escapist entertainment. As we cheer or laugh out loud at his daring exploits, however, one wonders what liberal Democrats of the ACLU variety would do to a real-life Jack Bauer?

My guess: Put him in Leavenworth for life. But President Palmer knew his value, because President Palmer knew the real world.

By Dick McDonald
The Right Scale

In a tease to an IRS editorial article , the NYT states:

“Tax policy during the Bush years has greatly favored rich taxpayers at the ultimate expense of the poor.”

The tragedy of this statement is that it is repeated so often by Democrats and left-wing socialists in the MSM that even those who know better let the propagandists slide. Why dispute a leftist myth so ingrained in our literature and dialogue as to be the bedrock used to sway people to vote for Democrats. Strange thing is that most people in America are not “rich”. The “rich” are in the minority. So how is it that Republicans can get elected at all?

The answer to that question is just plain logic. Most citizens have come to realize that the rich have all the money they need. They really don’t need a tax cut. The poor need for the “rich” to get a tax cut. That’s right, the poor need the rich to get a tax cut so they will take that extra money and invest it the economy to make more and better jobs for “poor people”.

Poor people get hammered when government raises taxes. You see that means the rich don’t have the money to invest and grow jobs and the economy. As a result,the first casualties of tax increases are the poor. This simple fact has come home to the vast majority of Americans who have seen their lives improve during “tax-cutting” administrations. Instinctively, if not rationally they have come to realize the left’s mantra “at the expense of the poor” is purely that; a mantra of empty logic.

When citizens are freed from the socialist myth that government is the answer, the economy can soar. Government does not make money when people pay higher taxes, the government never makes money; it merely redistributes it in accordance with the prevailing opinions of special interest groups. Now if money is invested in the economy rather in the government, real growth and return is realized; and the socialist promise of full employment is attained by capitalism. By virtue of the constant job destruction and creation in our economy, 6% unemployment is considered “full employment”. Today it hovers around 4.9%.

The disaster of socialism in the last century is coming home to roost. Our Democrat lawmakers have promised more than they can deliver. They have triumphantly taken over 15% of the wages of all Americans for each’s person’s working life and spent or promised 20% upon retirement. As a result today we have a $13 Trillion unfunded liability to Social Security and Medicare and a $5 Trillion unfunded liability to city, county and state employees. Add to that the government guarantee of private pension which capsize and you begin to get the picture. Remember all the whining about our national debt; well folks, that is only $4.6 Trillion; not $20 Trillion.

The answer to this dilemma is being stonewalled by the left; simply because Democrats will lose their power to demagogue the poverty issue. You see privatization will take that 15% out of the government’s hands and invest it for each American in a growth fund. By virtue of the magic of compounding, even the poor will become wealthy after a 40-year working life. But the Democrats say we can’t have that, the poor made wealthy? What could be a more disastrous scenario for those donkeys. See www.thenewsocialsecurity.com for some real answers.

Maryland’s lawmakers have acted arbitrarily and unjustly in passing a law designed to force a single company–Wal-Mart–to increase its health benefits. The government has no place dictating to companies what health benefits they offer, period–let alone targeting a single scapegoat company for punishment.

This arbitrary exercise of power by Maryland’s lawless lawmakers against one of America’s best companies should be repudiated by everyone who believes in justice, rights, and the rule of law.

Dr. Yaron Brook
President of the Ayn Rand Institute

I completely agree. If employees don’t like Wal-Mart’s benefit program, they don’t have to work there. Companies should have the right to set their own employee benefit programs without government interference.

For years now I have had pain in my right knee. It really isn’t anything very recent. As a kid I played basketball and I know I somehow injured by knee when I was young because when I had to report to the draft when I was 18, (the U.S. Army draft, not a basketball team draft) I remember that my knee was causing problems at that time. Well, it was the kind of pain that you only feel occasionally for most of my life, so it was tolerable.

Over the past few years the pain has gotten worse and has been pretty consistent whenever I walked. About six months ago I went to have my knee x-rayed and then I had an MRI scan. What the doctors discovered was that there was no cartilage whatsoever between the femur and tibia (the thigh bone and the lower leg bone). Cartilage is present in healthy people and acts as a soft buffer or “cushion” when you walk so that the bones don’t rub against each other. Well, it turns out that, in my right knee, I had what is officially known as osteoarthritis. That is, the loss of cartilage and connecting tissue. Some of it is caused by aging, but injuries to the knee can also accelerate the deterioration.

My doctors said that there is no way to “grow” back cartilage and that a permanent cure would be to have a total knee replacement, or arthroplasty

Being opposed in general to surgery (especially on me, and especially when someone is going to be cutting my bones), I decided to postpone having surgery and decided to try some other treatments. I tried some homeopathic remedies and I tried taking some anti-inflammatory medication. Well, as you can imagine, nothing worked, and I became resigned about surgery. I decided to put my trust in my surgeon and agreed to have a MIS Arthroplasty. That is, a minimally invasive surgery total knee replacement.

I won’t go into the details, but I had the surgery on Monday, September 19th. I was discharged from the hospital yesterday, Thursday, September 22. While they want me to use a cane for safety reasons, I can walk without one. There is, of course, some pain during the healing process, but I am told that that should disappear within six weeks, and I have to do rehab exercises. But, I am able, four days after the surgery, to do my normal activities. I can go for walks, I can go to the office as long as I don’t sit at my desk for more than an hour at a time, I can even go out to restaurants. Since it is my right knee, my driving leg, I won’t be able to drive for about two to three more weeks.

I had a lot of apprehension about the surgery. I consider it amazing that they can remove my old knee and replace it with a new one and have me out and walking within a few days. Modern medicine is so technically advanced from what it was even five years ago. Of course I owe a lot to the Institute for Joint Replacement at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and their fantastic and caring staff of post-operative nurses, physical therapy and occupational therapy specialists. I also owe special gratitude to my surgeon, Dr. Brad L. Penenberg, a man of great and special talent.

We are lucky to be living in a country where the funding for technological advancements and improvements in science are made especially by private contribution but also by government assistance. America is truly a great country. Who would have imagined even 25 years ago that you could remove a knee joint, replace it with a prosthetic knee, and have the patient up and walking within a few days?
[Original Post: September 23, 2005]

UPDATE 16 January 2006:

It has now been four months since I had the surgery. I spent three months going three times a week to a physical therapist doing rehab on my leg for an hour and one-half per session (4 1/2 hours per week). The leg muscles need to be rehabilitated, and long-time habits of limping to avoid knee pain have to be eliminated. I now have fully rehabilitated my right leg. My new prosthetic knee now works better than my original knee, and especially, I have no pain.

I have heard some horror stories from others who have had knee replacement surgery. Thank G-d I didn’t experience any negative reactions relating to my knee. I attribute a good deal of the success of this operation to my doctor, Dr. Brad Penenberg, as I indicated previously.

I have no regrets about having had the knee replacement, and, in fact should have done it sooner.

Niall Ferguson has an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times today. He presents what he thinks future historians will say about the events in the Middle East today.

“With every passing year after the turn of the century, the instability of the Gulf region grew. By the beginning of 2006, nearly all the combustible ingredients for a conflict — far bigger in scale than the wars of 1991 or 2003 — were in place.”

“The first underlying cause of war was, of course, the increase in the region’s relative importance as a source of petroleum. The rest of the world’s oil supplies were being rapidly exhausted, while the breakneck growth of the Asian economies had caused a huge surge in global demand.”

“A second precondition of war was demographic. While European fertility had fallen below the natural replacement rate in the 1970s, the decline in the Islamic world had been much slower. In Iran, the social conservatism of the 1979 revolution conspired with the high mortality of the Iran-Iraq war and the subsequent baby boom to produce, by the first decade of the new century, a quite extraordinary surplus of young men. More than two-fifths of the population of Iran had been aged 14 or younger in 1995. This was the generation that was ready to fight in 2007.”

Read this interesting article.

Clark Baker writes a well-documented essay on the history of the Democratic Party and the secret it does not want disclosed: The Democratic Party was responsible for the lynching and oppression of Blacks (who were mainly Republicans) in the 19th and 20th Century.

Here is an excerpt:

Like my antagonist and many other Americans, public schools taught me that white people had enslaved blacks and that their progeny were entitled to relief. I didn’t question this, although it didn’t square with my ancestors who fought to end slavery 150 years ago. If whites were guilty, why did two million of them interrupt their lives to fight the bloodiest war in American history to free slaves owned by Southern Democrats? If this was a white-against-black thing, why did whites fight the Civil War against other whites?

The answer is that the Civil War wasn’t between whites and blacks, but between Republicans who wanted to end slavery, and Democrats who did not. And as ugly as the Democratic Party’s roots and legacy of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and Disenfranchisement is, why does the party still exist today?

The first clue of this information blackout comes directly from Democrats. Although the Republican Party proudly discloses their Abolitionist roots on their website, the Democratic Party (DNC) website ignores their slavery agenda, excluding the entire period between 1848 and the 20th Century. Instead, the DNC boasts the “longest running political organization in the world”, the “Democratic cause” (slavery) and their dominance in urban (e.g., black) politics – as if Democrats had nothing to do with the brutality used to round up blacks.

Read the whole essay. It is very enlightening.