Saturday, January 17, 2009

Turkey: Antisemitism Gets Out of Control

The report below was received from Prof. Barry Rubin. Prof. Rubin writes: "This has been sent to me by a very reliable friend who has agreed to distribution as long as his name is not used. You are invited to post or send to your list. It is not unthinkable that the future of the Turkish Jewish community is in doubt"

The Prime Minister in Turkey has encouraged hatred against Israel in his speeches which has become obvious anti-Semitic propaganda among the general public.

There are people around the clock besieging the Israeli consulate in Istanbul shouting their hatred against Israel and Jewish people. All around Istanbul billboards are full of propaganda posters against Israel like; "Moses, even this is not written in your book" and "Israel Stop this Crime." On the streets the people are writing such graffiti as: "Kill Jews," "Kill Israel," "Israel should no longer exist in the Middle East," and "Stop Israeli Massacre."

The week-end before, some people wrote, "We will kill you" on the door of one of the biggest synagogues in Izmir resulted in the closing down of synagogues. Near Istanbul University, a group put a huge poster on the door of a shop owned by a Jew: "Do not buy from here, since this shop is owned by a Jew." A group put posters on his wall saying that: "Jews and Armenians are not allowed but dogs are allowed." Some young people are even threatening others with violence if they are seen as pro-Israel in social networking websites such as Facebook and Hi5.

The document attached is the official statement by the minister of education stating that tomorrow [January 14] at 11am in all the high schools and primary schools the students will pay homage to the women and children dead during the war and furthermore, the teachers of art will organize the session of painting and writing on the subject: "Humanity Drama in Palestine" and the winners will receive awards.

The Jewish community can do nothing in response to what has been going on for the last few weeks, except giving vague statements that the Turkish Jewish Community does not want the war to be continued any more.

We have previously faced some strong reaction regarding previous operations in Gaza and the West Bank but this time is really different from former ones. I feel open anti-Semitism and hatred from all these people. Nobody understood, Even some widely read columnists in Turkey are writing things that lead all these groups toward this hatred becoming much more dangerous day by day.

But I know one thing: that the world should know about the widespread and openly anti-Semitic propaganda which far exceeds anything happening in Europe.



The Media Collude in Terrorist Crimes against Humanity

The Hamas War is now beginning to look like a ritual Kabuki play. We know all the moves -- all we can do is watch how well the actors play out their well-worn moves. Except that this is not a play, and real lives are being lost. The key is not the terrorists. They are stuck in their ways. The real key is the international media --- who are hardly neutral observers as they like to pretend. The international leftist media are essential players in this melodrama.

Put it this way -- do you really think that the Arab civilians in Gaza are volunteering to be human shields for Hamas? Some of the biggest fanatics, maybe -- but how many of Gaza's 1.4 million civilians are really prepared to die, along with their families, when Israel inevitably retaliates against thousands of Hamas rockets? How many Gaza Arabs care less for their children than for their masters? How many would flee from Gaza if Hamas let them? According to Ynet, Hamas gunmen forced Palestinian civilians at gunpoint to go back to their homes.

At a recent anniversary bash for Hamastan, 250,000 Gaza residents showed up. Khaled Abu Toameh, a rare voice of reason in the Palestinian universe, argues that Gazans still support Hamas. But more than a million Gazans didn't turn out to cheer the regime on its birthday. The number of Gazans who didn't celebrate Hamas would seem to be at least as important as those who did. Maybe, just maybe they are not so ready to sacrifice their children for an empty promise of paradise.

Arab governments are now speaking out against Hamas -- including Egypt's President Mubarak, the PA's Mahmoud Abbas and the Saudis. Those are very big names in the Arab world. They see the sacrifice of Arab civilians as useless, as it obviously is. Even an Iranian newspaper had the guts to criticize Hamas --- and was immediately shut down for it.

It was just reported that Gaza City hospital received Arab beheading victims -- not exactly Israel's way of making war. Hamas has been reported to be butchering and breaking the hands of Fatah supporters in Gaza. How many of them were civilians, killed just because they wanted to escape? Remember how Saddam Hussein cut off the tongues of his own bureaucrats, to terrorize them before the American invasion. That's what Hamas is doing right now in Gaza.

The media tell to us that the Arabs of Hamastan are voluntary martyrs -- but remember how CNN told us how beloved Saddam Hussein was, just days before the regime crumbled? And Mookie Al Sadr --- who was also destined to beat the Americans? And the Taliban? CNN and BBC told us that those dictator types were invincible because their people loved them. They all lost miserably. CNN's Baghdad editor confessed his personal complicity with Saddam only after the bloody Butcher of Baghdad was overthrown.

In fact, it is the media themselves who are criminally complicit in the internment of Gaza's civilians in the line of fire. They could stop the terrorists simply by headlining Hamas' responsibility for the plight of the Arabs of Gaza, over and over again. That's the real story --- if only they could headline the facts right in front of their eyes. But they don't.

That shows us the real values of CNN and BBC; morally they are no better than the terrorists. The media are essential to the Kabuki play of terror, response, and renewed terror. They are constantly fanning the flames. So when the media and the Left predictably demand Israeli appeasement of Hamas, let's just ask them: where is your compassion for the Arab victims of a jihadist internment camp called Gaza? How much longer do you want civilians to be turned into the bloody victims of the terrorist publicity machine?

The next time you turn on CNN, remember that you are looking at smiling faces that knowingly collude in the deaths of civilians, both Jews and Arabs. Without the leftist media there is no payoff for terrorists. Shut off the oxygen of publicity and Hamas shrivels to a powerless gang of thugs. The media-terrorist collusion is completely symbiotic -- they are both essential for the drama to work. Separate the terrorists from the media, and you have heat without oxygen -- no explosion. The simple fact is that we are seeing repeated crimes against humanity, an endless collusion between the terror masters and the dominant media, resulting in a reign of terror that blights the lives of millions of people and kills unforgiveable numbers, both in Israel and its neighbors.

Media + terrorism = death and destruction.

Maybe we can't change the terrorists, but Americans can hold their media responsible. It's time to choke off their supply of oxygen.

SOURCE



U.S. Catholic contract unconstitutional says ACLU

A U.S. civil liberties group sued the federal government Monday, charging it violated the Constitution by contracting a Roman Catholic entity to help victims of human trafficking. The American Civil Liberties Union said the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was imposing its beliefs on victims of human trafficking by not allowing federal grant money to be used for contraception or abortion.

When the bishops applied for the contracts, they said they would not work with subcontractors who provided abortion services or contraceptives, such as condoms, which conflict with Catholic teachings, according to the ACLU.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston said the Department of Health and Human Services violated the separation of church and state [Maybe they did but there is no constitutional prohibition on that -- merely a prohibition on establishing a state church] by giving the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops $6 million in grants from 2006 through 2008. Many women victims of human trafficking are forced to work as prostitutes, and face a high risk of assault and rape, the ACLU said in court papers.

The Department of Health and Human Services permitted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops "to impose its own religiously based substantive restrictions on the use of grant funds," the ACLU argued. The suit asks the court to stop the department from allowing its grants being spent in a way that is restricted by religious beliefs.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh of the bishops' conference said the $6 million figure cited in the suit was the full amount authorized. But "far less" money had been appropriated, she said without giving a figure. "The problem of trafficking in this country is huge and serious and the Catholic Church has the best network of services bar none," she said. "Going to the Catholic Church for social services is very logical."

Representatives of the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

SOURCE



How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

By Ben Stein

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end..

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him. A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human. Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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