Lost Logic – Befriending the “better” enemy
Daryl Temkin, Ph.D.
It’s time for America to enroll in a graduate course in advanced logic. The professor presents the following problem.
Continue reading “Lost Logic – Befriending the "better" enemy.”
For decades, Jimmy Carter has continually taken the side of Arab countries and opposed the position of Israel. Most of us suspected an anti-Israel and even an anti-semitic bias in the former President. Now the truth comes out. While he obviously is both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, we now find out that his foundation has, from its inception, been financed by Arabs. Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News reports:
(IsraelNN.com) Former American President Jimmy Carter’s activist foundation received hundreds of millions of dollars from Arab countries, the Washington Times reported. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, founded by Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi, helped the ex-President establish the Carter Center.
Abedi had said he wanted the bank to be “the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.”
But wait, there’s more….
To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.
Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, “poorly managed” and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank’s biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter’s confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.At that time, Mr. Lance’s mismanagement of the NBG got him and the bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank “which would bribe God,” came to Mr. Lance’s rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi then declared: “we would never talk about exploiting his relationship with the president.” Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January 1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance’s $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon secretly gained control over the bank.
Mr. Anderson wrote: “Of course, the Saudis remained discretely silent… kept quiet about Carter’s irregularities… [and] renegotiated the loan to Carter’s advantage.”
You can read the whole article here.
How anyone can reasonably believe the contents of his recent book in which he equates Israel with the South African apartheid, or how anyone can take this doddering old anti-semitic socialist/communist-loving hypocrite seriously is beyond me.
From Jay at StoptheACLU.com:
Just about to walk out the door when I see this news from ABC’s Blotter just in time for the holidays!
Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists.
Continue reading “Al Queda sends a message to the Democrats”
Ignoring Evil is Evil
Daryl Temkin, Ph.D.
In the mid-1970’s, while completing my undergraduate degree at UCLA, I recall a particular ad that appeared in the university’s newspaper, The Daily Bruin. The ad was an invitation to hear the “real story” of the Holocaust and was sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review, — not the ADL or the “1939 Holocaust Survivors’ Club”.
Upon seeing that ad, I and many others considered it to represent the delusions of a “crazed and ignorant” person who should simply be ignored. That was also the general thought in the Jewish community — ignore it and it will go away.
The philosophy of “ignoring” often works well for muscle pain or even a headache, which usually dissipates over time. However, the technique of “ignoring” would be a foolish prescription if the pain was an important indicator of a serious pending disease. When serious signs are ignored, the word “ignore” often grows into to the word “ignorance”.
That experience of my undergraduate years was forgotten until several years later when I again met the “Institute for Historical Review”. This institute had now published their first quarterly journal, slick and academic-looking, and with a table of contents featuring articles penned by authors with the letters, Ph.D. after their names. This was my introduction to published academic manipulation and deception, which at that time was still a counter-intuitive concept. My naiveté was broken, and a new as well as unpleasant realization about academics and university professors had to be analyzed and perceived.
Upon seeing this journal, I remembered my UCLA experience and quickly formulated two theories as to why this movement of Holocaust denial was significant. One theory had to do with the academic belief that “evil” and “evil people” do not exist, and the other theory was a simple addition to the literature of anti-Semitism and support of the Israel illegitimacy movement.
Arguing against the existence of evil and evil actions has been an ongoing “cause” among large groups of academics. By denying evil or claiming that one man’s evil is another man’s good — meaning that evil is only a matter of opinion — represents an attempt to abolish standards, consequences, and objective responsibility.
The levels of human responsibility connected to the Holocaust are huge and require us to learn significant lessons from this catastrophe. The common Holocaust question is “how was it possible for this to have happened?” The serious answers to that question end up pointing fingers of responsibility in a number of painful directions commonly uncovering shameful actions or abundant and abhorrent inactions.
Successful Holocaust denial would effectively remove the blame and responsibility from complacent humans, appeasing or silent political leaders, academic elite, cultural elite, anti-Semites, the Church, Germany, as well as the the Nazis and the infamous Nazi leaders. Holocaust denial allows for the avoidance of ever dealing with or learning from the grave mistakes of ignoring aggression, responding with silence, believing evil things won’t really happen, endless complacency, as well as the short sighted and even blinded “idealistic” predictions of Western leaders. Successful Holocaust denial would absolve society from any demands to rectify even one aspect of behavior following such a blatant historic calamity.
Then, there is the other “logical reason” for Holocaust denial. Years ago, this point may have been ambiguous but now it is undeniably clear. The denial strategy is, to crack the Holocaust “myth” and at least claim that the Holocaust wasn’t so extreme, the death statistics are much smaller than the Jews claim, the overall event wasn’t so bad, the gas chambers weren’t for people but for disinfection, the Jews really didn’t suffer so much, and claim that other nationalities suffered much more than the Jews. When these points are accepted, suddenly the world’s previously believed impetus for creating the Jewish State is shown to be a major “historic” fallacy, falsehood, and an outright lie. The anti- Semitic mantra that the Jews are “professional liars” rings true for the Holocaust deniers. Plus the Arab propaganda has already been actively teaching that the Five Books of Moses, the Torah, is another Jewish lie filled with misleading fabrications including the “false” claim that the Jews are connected to the land of Israel.
In this vein, Holocaust denial supports the anti- Semitic propaganda which claims that Jews want to control the world. They believe that through the Holocaust, Jews falsely have convinced and thereby have convicted the world of a “made-up” genocidal crime, in order to manipulate and obligate the nations to grant the establishment of a Jewish state.
Iran’s latest shenanigan of convening an international Holocaust deniers conference featuring the “credible” KKK Grand Wizard, David Duke along with the other featured act of the “Jewish looking clowns”, the Neturei Karta, may depict the sad and ludicrous quality of the conference delegates. However, not to be “ignored” is the line up of Holocaust deniers with academic letters following their names. For their shameful acts, the Hasidic- looking Neturi Karta are being excommunicated again from the Jewish people.
Knowledgeable Jews know that this group of “act-like Jews” are marginalized and are considered nothing but a freak aberration. However, who will there be to “excommunicate” or marginalize the Holocaust denial professors from their universities and institutes of higher leaning? Or will the university faculties and administrations just say that their schools provide professors with a wide and diverse historic perspective?
Many would like to pass off this Iranian Holocaust deniers’ conference as “laughable” and “inconsequential”. However, it has to be understood that a sizable part of the Islamic and Arab world (1.2 – 1.4 billion people) as well as others in the Western world not only sympathize with this agenda, but have been raised only knowing this “perspective”.
The increasing attempt to delegitimize Israel is happening in a multi-front and multi-dimensional battle. Holocaust denial is just one of those battle fronts. This is a “pain” that is not to be ignored. The pain will not go away, because it is actively being used and fostered to erode Israel’s political, economic and cultural support, and it will form a fictitious basis to further justify Iran’s nuclear desires.
It is important to understand that the Holocaust denial conference’s outcome is designed in a “win- win” fashion. If they conclude that the Holocaust didn’t happen or is questionable, then the State of Israel has no legitimacy and is worthy of “justifiable” destruction. On the other hand, if the Holocaust did happen, then it is the total fault of the Europeans — and the state of Israel must be transferred on to European soil thereby totally removing it from “Arab” land.
How clever to have such a well designed “win- win” result pattern. But what the anti-Semites and even much of the Jewish world must understand is that Israel’s existence is not because of the Holocaust. The Holocaust which did happen and rates as one of the most documented events in human history, was not the reason the State of Israel came into existence. The Holocaust was only an additional proof to the world that evil anti- Semitism is real and the Jews need a national homeland. Even according to difficult to deny and vast amounts of ancient archeology findings, Israel is the time honored 3,000 year old Jewish national homeland.
Note this small historic reminder: Theodore Herzl, the Father of modern Zionism, initiated the Jewish return to Israel long before Adolph Hitler graduated elementary school. The League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, in 1922, voted for the establishment of Jewish Palestine, long before Hitler entered politics and long before there was a Holocaust to be denied.
Holocaust denial is developed and promoted by people who are interested in evil outcomes. Ignoring evil is evil. When applied to evil, to “ignore” is to become “ignorant”. At this time in life, there is no place for the luxury to experiment with ignorance.
Daryl Temkin, Ph.D. is the director of the Israel Education Institute which is devoted to teaching history and contemporary issues of Israel to Jews and Non-Jews throughout the world. He can be reached at: DT@Israel-Institute.com.
There is a hasidic sect of Orthodox Jews (Hebrew: Haredim)whose origins are in Europe called Neturei Karta who oppose the existence of the State of Israel. The Neturei Karta believe that only when the Messiah comes will Jews be entitled to run the Land of Israel. Adherents of Neturei Karta stress those portions in rabbinic literature which state that the Jewish people were first sent into exile from the land of Israel for their sins. Additionally, they maintain the view – based on the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Ketubot, “Marriage IContracts” Pg. 111a) – that any form of forceful recapture of the Land of Israel is a violation of divine will. They believe that the true Commonwealth of Israel can only be reestablished with the coming of the Messiah.
Continue reading “Israel Chief Rabbi Excommunicates anti-Israel Orthodox Jews”
The Jewish holiday of Chanukah begins at sundown on Friday, December 15th. What is this holiday and what does it mean? Why do Jews celebrate it for eight days, and light candles in their Menorah (or, more correctly, their Chanukiah) every night? Michael Medved in an article I recommend you read, says the following about Chanukah:
Continue reading “Chanukah – What is it?”
The Republican Party of Los Angeles County held its re-organization meeting a few days ago and re-elected Linda Boyd as Chairman for the next two years. Elected, along with Linda Boyd were First VP Walt Allen, Second VP Al Han, Secretary Sylvia Southerland, Assistant Secretary Ron Esquivel, Treasurer Gary Aminoff and Assistant Treasurer Armineh Chelebian. The Board represents members from all areas of the diverse geographic areas of Los Angeles County and has members from the Latino, Asian, Jewish, African-American and Armenian communities.
Despite the fact that Republicans currently represent only 27% of the voters in Los Angeles County, RPLAC is determined to increase that percentage over the next couple of years.
The achievements of the LA County Republican Party over the past year have been:
* Met and exceeded all the vote goals set by the California Republican Party and Governor’s Schwarzenegger’s campaign. At their request, we funneled all of our volunteers into their ten large VOIP centers (phone banks/headquarters) and those centers met all expectations in number of volunteers and precincts covered. RPLAC loaned our talented Executive Director Francisco Martinez to the CRP’s Victory ’06 GOTV effort, where he was responsible for overseeing all operations in Los Angeles County.
* More than doubled RPLAC’s fundraising over the last gubernatorial election year four years ago.
* Continued to grow and develop our outside professional direct mail and telemarketing efforts, and look forward to an even better year in 2007.
* Raised almost $100,000 at our annual fundraiser featuring the “Incredible Hulk” Lou Ferrigno, former “Dallas” star Morgan Brittany and then-newly elected Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia.
* Joined the Lincoln Clubs in hosting a very successful fundraising dinner in September featuring Governor Schwarzenegger and former Governor George Deukmejian. Los Angeles and Orange Counties were the only ones granted a fundraising appearance by the Governor and we are very appreciative.
* RPLAC sponsored four training sessions for candidates and Party leaders in 2006.
* RPLAC hosted Election Night Victory parties for the June and November elections, attracting hundreds of grassroots Republican volunteers.
We wish the Republican Party of Los Angeles County much continued success in achieving its goals for the next two years.
Jim Baker’s abysmal track record in diplomacy – in contrast to his impressive business and political track record – suggests that the implementation of his “Iraq Study Group” recommendations would benefit anti-US rogue regimes and harm pro-US moderate elements.
In 1990, the Texan Deal Maker lured Assad into the anti-Saddam Coalition, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He overlooked Assad’s leadership role in international terrorism, showered the Butcher of Hama with international legitimacy, alluded to potential US assistance to Syria, and gave Assad a free hand in Lebanon. In response to Baker’s “Pragmatism”, Assad refrained from assisting the US war on Saddam, but completed Syrian occupation of Lebanon, massacred thousands of Lebanese and violently replaced an anti-Syrian Christian Administration with a pro-Syrian puppet Administration in Beirut. The ripple effects of Baker’s “Pragmatism” still reverberate in crumbling Lebanon.
During the 1980s and until the 1990 Kuwait’s invasion by Saddam, Baker referred to the latter as a “constructive leader,” worthy of US cooperation: “The enemy of my enemy (Iran) is my friend (Iraq).” Consequently, Baker downplayed Saddam’s well-documented horrific belligerency against Iran (1980 invasion) and against Iraq’s own Shiites and Kurds, extended to him $5BN in loan guarantees and EXIM Bank credits, authorized the release of sensitive dual-use technologies to Baghdad, encouraged intelligence-sharing with Iraq, and signaled to Saddam – in April 1990 – that a potential invasion to Kuwait would be considered, by the USA, “an inter-Arab issue.”
Energized by Baker’s “Green Light”, Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, threatening to sweep Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Jordan. Taking advantage of Baker’s “Realism”, Saddam brutally suppressed a 1991 Shiite uprising (which was let down by the US Administration), and rebuilt its capabilities, which were devastated during the 1991 war. The “Realist” did not realize that – in the unpredictable, violent Mideast – “the enemy of my enemy (Iran) could be my enemy (Iraq).” The aftershocks of Baker’s non-realization are still pounding the region.
During the late 1980s and until the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Baker was preoccupied with the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He considered Arafat (before the 1993 Oslo Accord!) an essential partner to a peace process. Hence, he turned a blind eye toward Arafat’s record of (mostly inter-Arab) treachery and terrorism, pandered to the PLO, attempted to break the back of Israel’s Prime Minister Shamir, denied Shamir $10BN loan guarantees (not cash!) for the absorption of Soviet Jewry, convinced President Bush to threaten to veto (or avoid implementation of) any pro-Israeli legislation proposed on Capitol Hill, pressured Israel to freeze Jewish settlements and to roll back to the 1949 Lines, and accused Israel in obstructing the prospects of peace. Responding to Baker’s policy of appeasement, the PLO supplied Saddam with vital intelligence which facilitated the invasion of Kuwait. PLO units in Iraq participated in the invasion and plunder of Kuwait, and the PLO/PA has remained – until today – loyal to Saddam, Ben-Laden and other anti-US rogue regimes.
In 2006, Jim Baker perceives Iran (especially) and Syria – two leading terrorist states – to be a potential asset in moderating the Iraqi Street. In order to realize the Iran/Syria potential, he is willing to enhance their maneuverability. The implementation of Baker’s recommendations would accelerate Iran’s nuclearization process, which would transform Saudi Arabia and the Gulf State into Iranian hostages, would relief Assad off a growing international pressure and isolation, would threaten the survival of the regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, and would force Israel into a unilateral military action, in order to avert the existential Iranian nuclear threat.
Baker’s failures have been the result of a series of refuted assumptions: That rogue regimes prefer a tempting deal over their own ideology, that the Palestinian issue is the crux of Mideast violence and anti-US terrorism, that one can achieve peaceful-coexistence with determined rogue regimes, that the Arab-Israeli conflict evolve around Israel’s size rather than Israel’s existence, and that the US could pay with an “Israeli Currency” (of sweeping concessions) for improved ties with the Arab and Muslim world.
As evidenced by Baker’s track record, wrong assumptions produce wrong policy conclusions, which add fuel to the fire of terrorism, undermining vital US interests and eroding the national security of pro-US regimes in the Mideast.
Baker’s determination to achieve deal-at-any-price has caused him to sacrifice long-term vital concerns on the altar of short-term tenuous illusions.
However, Jim Baker is determined to learn from history by repeating – rather than avoiding – past critical strategic errors.
Will US and Israel adopt Baker’s “Pragmatism”, “Realism”, Even-Handedness and Moral Equivalence, or will the leader of the Free World and its sole soul ally in the Mideast stick to a long-term conviction-driven vision, paved by moral and strategic clarity, making a clear distinction between enemies and allies?!
As Baker has shown in his long public career, he is anti-Israel and would sacrifice Israel in a heartbeat to the Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas terrorists.
What Real War Looks Like
By Elan Journo
The Iraq Study Group has issued many specific recommendations, but the options boil down to a maddeningly limited range: pull out or send more troops to do democracy-building and, either way, “engage” the hostile regimes in Iran and Syria. Missing from the list is the one option our self-defense demands: a war to defeat the enemy. If you think we’ve already tried this option and failed, think again. Washington’s campaign in Iraq looks nothing like the war necessary for our self-defense.
What does such a war look like?
America’s security depends on identifying precisely the enemy that threatens our lives–and then crushing it, rendering it a non-threat. It depends on proudly defending our right to live free of foreign aggression–by unapologetically killing the killers who want us dead.
Those who say this is a “new kind of conflict” against a “faceless enemy” are wrong. The enemy Washington evasively calls “terrorism” is actually an ideologically inspired political movement: Islamic totalitarianism. It seeks to subjugate the West under a totalitarian Islamic regime by means of terrorism, negotiation, war–anything that will win its jihad. The movement’s inspiration, its first triumph, its standard-bearer, is the theocracy of Iran. Iran’s regime has, for decades, used terrorist proxies to attack America. It openly seeks nuclear weapons and zealously sponsors and harbors jihadists. Without Iran’s support, legions of holy warriors would be untrained, unarmed, unmotivated, impotent.
Destroying Islamic totalitarianism requires a punishing military onslaught to end its primary state representative and demoralize its supporters. We need to deploy all necessary force to destroy Iran’s ability to fight, while minimizing our own casualties. We need a campaign that ruthlessly inflicts the pain of war so intensely that the jihadists renounce their cause as hopeless and fear to take up arms against us. This is how America and its Allies defeated both Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan.
Victory in World War II required flattening cities, firebombing factories, shops and homes, devastating vast tracts of Germany and Japan. The enemy and its supporters were exhausted materially and crushed in spirit. What our actions demonstrated to them was that any attempt to implement their vicious ideologies would bring them only destruction and death. Since their defeat, Nazism and Japanese imperialism have essentially withered as ideological forces. Victory today requires the same: smashing Iran’s totalitarian regime and thus demoralizing the Islamist movement and its many supporters, so that they, too, abandon their cause as futile.
We triumphed over both Japan and Germany in less than four years after Pearl Harbor. Yet more than five years after 9/11, against a far weaker enemy, our soldiers still die daily in Iraq. Why? Because this war is neither assertive nor ruthless–it is a tragically meek pretense at war.
Consider what Washington has done. The Islamist regime in Iran remains untouched, fomenting terrorism. (And now our leaders hope to “engage” Iran diplomatically.)
We went to battle not with theocratic Iran, but with the secular dictatorship of Iraq. And the campaign there was not aimed at crushing whatever threat Hussein’s regime posed to us. “Shock and awe” bombing never materialized. Our brave and capable forces were hamstrung: ordered not to bomb key targets such as power plants and to avoid firing into mosques (where insurgents hide) lest we offend Muslim sensibilities. Instead, we sent our troops to lift Iraq out of poverty, open new schools, fix up hospitals, feed the hungry, unclog sewers–a Peace Corps, not an army corps, mission.
U.S. troops were sent, not to crush an enemy threatening America, but (as Bush explained) to “sacrifice for the liberty of strangers,” putting the lives of Iraqis above their own. They were prevented from using all necessary force to win or even to protect themselves. No wonder the insurgency has flourished, emboldened by Washington’s self-crippling policies. (Perversely, some want even more Americans tossed into this quagmire.)
Bush did all this to bring Iraqis the vote. Any objective assessment of the Middle East would have told one who would win elections, given the widespread popular support for Islamic totalitarianism. Iraqis swept to power a pro-Islamist leadership intimately tied to Iran. The most influential figure in Iraqi politics is now Moktadr al-Sadr, an Islamist warlord lusting after theocratic rule and American blood. When asked whether he would accept just such an outcome from the elections, Bush said that of course he would, because “democracy is democracy.”
No war that ushers Islamists into political office has U.S. self-defense as its goal.
This war has been worse than doing nothing, because it has galvanized our enemy to believe its success more likely than ever–even as it has drained Americans’ will to fight. Washington’s feeble campaign demonstrates the ruinous effects of refusing to assert our self-interest and defend our freedom. It is past time to consider our only moral and practical option: end the senseless sacrifice of our soldiers–and let them go to war.
Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (www.AynRand.org) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand–author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Date of Infamy” Speech to Congress
Continue reading “A Date which will Live in Infamy”
BEAR TO THE RIGHT 