Purim Roundup

A few thoughts on the after-eve of Purim:

1. Recall last year's point about Quentin Tarantino's Purim-Shpiel. This year both my wife and I couldn't get the idea out of our heads while listening to the Megillah - and that's how the text should be read. I will write this up to a greater extent but it's a subtle razor's edge.
   
   
2. We had the whole family over for the Seudah in our home (i.e. my parents + my brother and his kids) for the first time (we were together at shul seudahs before) and that's the way I like it. Wow, it's so much better. In future years, I look forward to the kids putting on skits.
   
   
3. Sam Adams' Beer, even their Light Beer (which I drank this year) is really durn good!
   
   
4. A sign of creeping assimilation, even amongst Orthodox Jews, is the identification of "Shlach-Manos" (the Yiddish form of Mishloach Manot... you can't really say "shlach-manot") as goyishe-style gift giving. It ain't. It's food. Two people I know gave me a note saying that they have given a donation in my honor to their favorite charity instead of giving me ShM. This may work for Xmas, Chanukah, or Festivus, but it's a totally ignorant way to deal with ShM. For two reasons.
   
   
   1. First of all, as my man Seinfeld also understood, giving to your own favorite charity is not a "gift" for another person. I guess it's striking out against materialism... but is it so bad to give people a plastic bag with some almonds and Hershey's Kisses? Moralists and Anthropologists have been through this: giving gifts are meant to be a sacrifice of yourself to bind yourself with another (cf. the korban olah). That's the meaning of generosity. If you invite someone to your home for dinner and say (with self-righteousness) that you have no food for them because, instead, the value of the food and entertainment was given to your favorite charity, Save the Spotted Sea Slug, then you have not been hospitable. You may have done a totally different mitzvah - charity - but you have simultaneously NOT done (in fact probably violated) the mitzvah of hospitality. It's unseemly, and actually not very generous, to commit an aveira on someone else's terms.
      
      
   2. What's really ignorant is that there's a whole other mitzvah to do on Purim which can fit this anti-materialistic/self-righteous impulse: it's called matanot l'evyonim. It's actually way more important mitzvah, and pretty hard to do, than ShM. If these people sent me the same card but saying that they gave MLE in my name then I'd feel much better about it.
   
   

5. There's an odd phenomenon, noticed by my wife about Israelis in the US (parents of our kids' friends) who don't seem to celebrate Purim. I've noticed secular Jews ignore the holiday as well. My first reaction was: how could anyone not like Purim?! It's the day to legally/religiously eat junk food, get drunk, have fun at parties, dress in costume, mock your leaders, and learn Tanakh! It's the best day ever. So, yeah, after expressing that, I realized that all that greatness applies mainly to those who are religiously repressed for most of the year (it's one reason why people have applied Purim to Simchat Torah, because unlike other chagim, we have only 1 day of Purim - or as my rebbe in Hamivtar said, "you know Israel is better than Golus because in America you have two days of Pesach and one day of Purim and in Israel there's two days of Purim and one day of Pesach.")
   
   While it's possible that the secular Jews who scorn/ignore Purim are actually reacting to the messages of Purim - which is pretty anti-Zionist, anti-Diaspora, and anti-Secular - I don't think it's that deep. I think that secular Jews already celebrate Halloween, Mardi Gras, Saint Patricks, and - especially in free countries without state-sanctioned antisemitism - feel no need to have a Bakhtinian carnival. As such, I can make a dictum that the more secular the Jew, the more distant they are from Purim.
   
   And, true to the genius of the Megillah, is precisely the message of the book.

First pic from here of the Esther fresco from the Dura Europos Synagogue. Second pic from here.

Polygamy and Pilegesh

I was at a conference on Monday at the HBI with the topic: "Polygamy, Polygyny, and Polyamory: Ethical and Legal Perspectives on Plural Marriage." Now I naturally went to the conference expecting that a massively feminist organization like the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute would *oppose* polygyny (multiple wives), polyandry (multiple husbands) maybe, but definitely not polygyny. I based this on my own knowledge of the practice which basically treats women as property and was eliminated from Western and Jewish tradition through the combined force of the otherwise disenfranchised women. It's in fact the best proof that women had 'unofficial' power over the past few centuries.

Well, was *I* in for a surprise. I was only able to go to the first and third sessions (see the above link for the schedule) but that first session was the weirdest, most disturbing, academic panel I'd ever heard. It was filled with pro-polygamy weirdos and the audience, filled with feminists, didn't grab pitchforks and torches - rather they seemed to find the whole thing awesome.

How?! Well, in the airy academic world of anti-empiricism, all that's necessary is to have a compelling *idea* plus one or two anecdotes, and you're all set with a policy proposal! These doofi don't seem to bother with thinking about what the future would look like once the plans are implemented; I guess that's why communism is alive and well in the academy even though it's dead in every country it's been attempted.

There were some sane people in the crew. Prof. Elimelech Westreich, gave a detailed talk on polygamy in halakha, and the best stuff was from Prof. Alean Al-Krenawi who has published studies on the psychological impact of polygamy. His work shows that there's severe unhappiness and anomie in polygamous families. His was the last talk and I could see that he was nearly quivering with frustration and how all these progressives were seriously accepting what he knows to be a retrograde, and even evil, practice.

Yet, the biggest repudiation needs to be given to Prof. Zvi Zohar who spoke about his advocacy for pilagshut, a.k.a. Biblical concubinage (see above for "weird and disturbing"). His article, and a bunch of other wickedness, is found here.

Zohar's point is that there are many current social problems - a singles crisis, an agunah crisis, and his main focus: the crisis of liberal Orthodox Jews who wait until their 30s to get married but want to have sex in their 20s - that can be solved by re-instating 'pilegesh.'

To put it simply, Zohar's idea is both pernicious and ignorant. Pernicious because it will cause many more social problems than it would possibly solve, and of those it cares about, the only thing that will be helped is guiltless sleeping around. It will actually prolong the singles crisis, it won't help agunahs because he acknowledges that people will eventually get married anyway. So all he wants to do is allow nominally-frum Jews to sleep around. Yipee. It's basically the equivalent of saying "people are driving to shul, so let's just make driving OK on Shabbat!" And boy did that work out.

It's ignorant because he actually read the "Pilegesh at Giva" story as somehow advocating pilagshut instead of it being a CLEARLY OBVIOUS ATTACK ON PILAGSHUT. Its kinda like reading the golden calf episode as a support for golden idols.

Anyway, I will end my trashing of his idea with one of my favorite Onion stories: "Desperate Vegetarians Declare Cows Plants"

Ezra Klein - How liberal is Obama?

All I can say about this Ezra Klein piece from today is 'Amen Brother.' Obama's critics from the loony left irk me no end: Ezra Klein - How liberal is Obama?:

The first year of the Obama presidency has been a long tutorial on the difference between liberal ends and liberal means. If I told you America has a president determined to pass large amounts of Keynesian stimulus spending (that's particularly concentrated in impoverished areas), a near-universal health-care plan, and a bill addressing climate change, you'd say liberals had recaptured the White House. Ambitious liberals, even.

But though Obama's program is quite liberal, he doesn't seem to care much how it's achieved. A public option would be nice, but if it's not there, then that's fine, too. Full auction of permits is a good idea, but if most get given away to corporations, then that's how it goes. Infrastructure spending is good, but if tax cuts are the price of passage, then tax cuts there shall be. The best description of the administration's ideology probably came from Rahm Emanuel when he said, 'The only nonnegotiable principle here is success.'

You could imagine a lot of presidents more dogmatically liberal than Obama, but I wonder whether there are a lot of plausible hypotheticals in which they amass more liberal achievements than Obama. At the executive level, it might be the case that being too liberal is a liability to, well, liberalism.

H.t. Sullivan.

Is Sullivan an Anti-Zionist? Part 2

As I asked below, here, Sullivan's swipes against Israel have been getting more frequent and irritating. It's like he's gone enough to the left because of Bush-Cheney that he now has to hate Israel like a J-Streeter.

So thank goodness Jeff Goldberg has been on top of the case. First here in August 2008 he gives Sullivan some pro-Zion backing:

I know Andrew as a supporter of Israel, a Zionist, even,

Fine, but just a few days later he notices the glimmering of a problem:

But "unregistered Israeli lobbyist"? This is vile, like Pat Buchanan-vile. Robert Wexler is pro-Israel, too. Is he an unregistered Israeli lobbyist? What about Rahm Emanuel, and Barbara Boxer, and Frank Lautenberg, and Henry Waxman, and Howard Berman? Are they dual-loyalists as well? Or is their tribal-based treason excused because they're Obama supporters? I wish Andrew would go back to bashing the Jew-baiters, rather than reveling in their smears.

I'd say that it's one of the early signs that Sullivan is equating the GOP with Israel (a problem that I warned about back in 2001 with the stupid frummie love of the evil GWBush) and thus to repudiate the GOP (like Sullivan's been doing) means also attacking Israel.

But in the year since, Sullivan has gotten worse. 'Goldblog' is still defending him, be in doing so we brings up some disturbing counter-proof:

I've gotten a fair number of hostile e-mails for stating that Andrew, in my understanding, is a Zionist. Here's Andrew on his own understanding of what "pro-Israel," or "Zionist," means:

My own definition of pro-Israel would simply be, I think: support for the existence of a secure Jewish state in Palestine. That's my position, and it is as deeply held as it is open to all sorts of arguments about what is best for its security and the interests of the US. I think it should easily be enough to earn one's credentials as a Zionist, as I proudly and passionately remain.

I would make only two points about this. One is small (but actually consequential); the word "Palestine" was invented by the Romans as a deliberate attempt to erase the word "Judea" from the map. So I wouldn't say that Israel is a Jewish home in Palestine; if anything, the future state of Palestine could be called the Arab state in Judea. I know this sounds like a nitpick, but names matter, and chronology matters.

The second, larger point: Zionists generally hold Israel to the same standard they hold every other country. People who don't like Israel very much hold it to a special standard, created for one scapegoated country alone. On this count -- and only this count, so far as I can tell -- Andrew sometimes fails the test. There are times lately when he seems to single out Israel for special excoriation, and times when he holds Israel to a double-standard. By the way, this doesn't make him an anti-Semite, as some marginal figures claim he is. It makes him, if anything, normal. Most of the world holds Israel to a higher standard than it does other countries. Many Jews do, as well. One of our specialties is self-criticism. But even when it comes from Jews, it isn't fair. Context is everything. I'll continue with these profound thoughts on Andrew later on.

I'm not as charitable as Jeff here. Just off-the-bat anybody who casually uses 'Palestine' like Sullivan does is the first strike (he also does a related strike by constantly referring to an 'Israel Lobby' as if it exists as the bogeyman the Looney Left desires it to be). Sullivan's well-known friendship with the scummy anti-Semite Christopher Hitchens is strike two.

And while I have growing respect for Goldberg, I definitely break with him about self-hating Jewish anti-Zionism (J-streetism, for now, until they redeem themselves). Jstreeters hate Israel because it makes them look bad to their imagined goyish friends and neighbors. It's not OK when they do it and definitely not when it's done by goyim.

I'll take this up more later, but there's just something very British about Sullivan's take on Israel - it's a combined paternalism and moral hauteur, as if the Europeans (any of them) have taken the proper moral path on anything.

Backpost finished 2009-12-02.

Obama's Methodology

This is Obama's own words on how he plans to use diplomacy to accomplish his liberal agenda (which I consider a good thing). This is from his senate website, but it was originally sent to the GOS (acronym for the Great Orange Satan, a.k.a. the DailyKos): "Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party."

The venue is important, because - back in September 30, 2005 - Obama was kindly lecturing the frothing hordes at the DailyKos that Democrats will more advance the liberal agenda if they act with respect and wisdom than with bomb throwing.

To recap: it was Obama's first year in the Senate, the Democrats were still in the minority, and even in that environment Obama was telling the biggest rabble-rousers the same message he preaches today. So not only is he consistent, it should be remarked that the GOS is almost an entirely pro-Obama website now.

And that's another example of how good he is.

Backpost finished 4/8/08. Just the link.

Smart Aleck Bunk

I read something right now by Steve Benen on TPM criticizing something Mitt Romney said. Now, before the current campaign, I had moderate respect for Romney - he seemed like a good New England Moderate Republican. Yet now he has all the trappings of Political Skank (i.e. someone willing to do anything to get elected). Nearly all politicians are skanks - it's part of the job and it's important to remember that - yet some are subtle about it. Romney is a joke.

So I don't mind attacks on The Mitt... as long as they make sense. However he was criticized by Benen for something that I myself have been tarred with as well. So in defending myself, I will defend Romney.

Romney said:

"This is about Shi'a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. They also probably want to bring down the United States of America."

Benen's response:

"...but Romney's take didn't make a lot of sense. Romney was articulating a national security strategy that conflates groups, sects, and agendas that have nothing to do with one another..."

The same charge was leveled against me when an op-ed of mine was published which equated Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Queda. My claim was that they were alike in their desire to kill me - no matter if I was in Israel, in Saudi Arabia or in America. A whiny colleague of mine - whose claim to Middle East expertise is a PhD from Harvard in an unrelated field and (for God knows what reason) a stint as a researcher on the 9/11 commission - claimed that my link of Al Qaeda and Hamas shows that I know nothing about terrorism or the Middle East or, equally likely, high-temperature French cooking.

I believe Benen and Mr. Whiny are using the same argument against the logic shared by Mr. Romney and me. Ya see, Benen-Whiny know for a fact that Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and Hamas are different organizations. They even have different letterheads on the suicide-bomb notes (I assume). It's worse, Whiny would say, because Hezbollah is Iranian, and thus Shia, while Al Qaeda is Wahabist, and thus Sunni. And the Sunnis and Shiites are totally different! They hate each other (exhibit A: Bahgdad)! And Sunnis will actually join up with America to fight Al Qaeda *and* Shiites (see Exhibit A). So, Mr. Whiny concludes, these organizations are different and anyone who equates them knows nothing about terrorism, the Middle East, and French cooking.

My rejoinder (and Romney can join me on this if he wants) is that Benen and Whiny don't know crepe about logic. Ya see, my claim is that all three groups are alike because they all want to kill Jews, Americans, and then everyone else who disagrees with them. Who cares if they hate each other? Who cares if they have different beliefs? I'm not researching a term paper, I'm determining who's the greatest threat to my life!

An analogy from the 1940s. Nazis and Stalinists are completely different from each other. I'm sure that if in 1945 I said that the two groups were the same, the Benens and Whinys would bring up their same criticism: the two ideologies are wholly different from each other. And Stalin was even allied with us against Adolph! My response is the same: yes, they have different ideologies but they have the same goal. In that decade it was genocide and world domination. Sure, they're different, and when one became more of a threat than the other, we allied with them (Stalin vs. Adolph in 1942-45, ex-Nazis vs. Stalin in 1945-1990).

Benen and Whiny's specious criticism masks a deep un-seriousness about the issue at hand. It doesn't matter if these groups are different if the SUBJECT is "who is our enemy."

Credit Where it's Due: Ted Rall

Ted Rall is a crazy left winger cartoonist. His normal mode of political discourse is shrieking overblown rhetoric at the top of his cartoon lungs. His art is bad and his logic is bad and, like Moveon.org, he ruins whatever decent point lies within the guano of his screed.

But, he actually had a decent, understated political cartoon the other day. So I will give him credit where it's due.

More About Columbia's Hypocrisy

From the comments section of the New Republic's Marty Peretz's Spine, about Columbia U President Bollinger and his aiding/abetting anti-Semitic nonsense:

When there was a scandal at Columbia with anti-Semitic professors in 2005, he named a committee to investigate that.

Of the five faculty omn the committee, two had signed anti-Israel boycotts (Farah Jasmine Grifin and Jean Howard - subsequently promoted university vice-president). A third (Mark Mazower) had written Israel is Nazi and should not exist. A fourth was none other than lovely Lisa Anderson.

Lisa Anderson had been the PhD advisor of Joseph Massad (and recruited him as a faculty subsequently), one of the most anti-Semitic professors and one of the accused. So much for the honorable lawyer Bollinger handles conflict of interest. Lisa Anderson, as a dean, also invited Khaddafi at a Columbia conference (he din't come but addressed them by video) and then, one year later, invited Ahmadinejad at Columbia.

The man overseeing Bollinger's committee was Nicholas Dirks,a university vice-president who was one of the initiators of the anti-Israel boycott.

Not so surprising that Aminabalajad was invited, eh?

{2009 Update: pic from here.}

More About Ahmadinejad

It still sounds like the Columbia gambit was a fiasco. Was there any other outcome? The hubris of the university and its feckless president - they conceive themselves as international wheelers and dealers, as a sovreign nation with the president as a head of state.

As this analysis from today's Haaretz by Yossi Melman shows, the whole prospect was ludicrous:

50 minutes of fame - Khamenei still calls the shots
By Yossi Melman

The easy questions of Columbia University's moderators enabled him to repeat his familiar mantras, while appearing open to dialogue and both willing to persuade and to be persuaded. But there is no chance of persuading an ideologue whose world view is as clear as Ahmadinejad's, a member of the most radical messianic stream in his country. He is so extreme that his spiritual mentor is Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a man whom even Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, the leader and founder of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, thought should be placed under house arrest.

[snip]

These questions are especially inviting for him, and reflect something of the naivete and liberalism characterizing American academics, who have difficulty understanding that it is almost impossible to have a dialogue between a fanatic religious ideologue and people who truly believe in the freedom of information and human rights. Ahmadinejad took full advantage of this naivete on the stage he was given without even asking. The university had invited him at its own initiative.

Ultimately, the importance of Ahmadinejad's appearance in the United States should not be overestimated. He is not the man who calls the shots in his country. The leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran is Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei who, as the supreme religious authority, head of state and supreme military commander, is the guardian of the revolution. Khamenei brought Ahmadinejad to power, when he supported him against his old rival, former president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Therefore it is all up to Khamenei. When he decides Ahmadinejad is more of a burden than an asset, he could remove his support. It's doubtful Ahmadinejad would be allowed to present his candidacy for president in the elections due in about two years without his approval.

Alternatively, Khamenei could support a rival against him altogether.

So even Bollinger's inane conceit - that by inviting Ahmadinejad, Columbia would help him lose more power by losing Iran's elections - is disproven because the real power doesn't lie in the electorate.

Academics are no better than politicians at learning from mistakes, so I'm sure this folly will be repeated. But let's at least get the idiocy on record.

{2009 Update: the great pic is from here.}

Is it Worth It?

Columbia President Bollinger, in his introduction, really lets Iranian President Aminabalajadalad have it. Bollinger just insults him to his face. And he claims that Iranian experts predict that by letting Aminalalaalahajad say ludicrous things in a public forum, Aminalahaghjdad actually loses power in Iran.

What a noble sacrifice by Bollinger. And he clinches his heroism by saying (and I'm paraphrasing until I can get a transcript)

"I'm only a Professor who is also a University President and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for, I only wish I could do better. Thank you [end of speech]."

Oh, poor Bolly. You took a bullet for all of us.

Again, even with his ability to mock Aminabalajdad to his face, to express his contempt for what he stands for, is it worth it to invite him to your University? To give a propaganda-spouting terrorist - probably the number one bad guy in the world right now - a platform?

I read some live-blogging transcripts of Aminahahdadlhad's statements and I just don't see the value. Someone needs to explain it to me.

h/t TPM.

Boo Freakin' Hoo

From the front page of tonight's NYTimes:

Isolation of Gaza Chokes Off Trade
By STEVEN ERLANGER

With Gaza almost entirely shut off from normal trade, Palestinian businesses are enduring a deep depression.

Aw. I am all, as they say, choked up. I wonder why Gaza is so isolated? Could it be that it's a terrorist state that has been given many gifts from Israel only to use those gifts to slaughter anybody with whom they disagree? Hamas is a criminal, bloodthirsty organization of killers and thieves. I'm surprised the Times doesn't have a story about those poor mobsters who can't feed their families with all that pesky FBI crack-downing.

{2009 Update: Pic from here.}

Quiz: Are You a Liberal Anti-Semite?

[note to people without a sense of humor: this test is absolutely real.]

Take this test. I got, actually, a negative number: Are You a Liberal Anti-Semite?

[note to people with a sense of humor: take a look at all those people who don't have a sense of humor, they think the test is for real!]

Guttman Follow-Up

The Augean Stables is a good pro-Israel academic blog (which has one of the best blog names this side of the Styx).

Here's his rather detailed take on the hack, President of Penn (and Good Witch) Amy Guttman.

P.S. Guttman seems to suffer from Martha Stewart syndrome - if you make too many enemies on the way up, they won't help you on the way down.

On the Lieberman Win

One of the 'vital center' bloggers, the Bull Moose, on the highly gratifying Lieberman win.

Weep, Kos.

Amy Gutmann watch

Amy Gutmann was an overblown professor at Princeton when my brother and I were there. My brother took her class - and it was low-grade leftist philosophy posing as high thought. And she was a vindictive grader - it was either her way or wrong (a wonderful attitude in political philosophy, right out of the Socrates playbook... no, not the Socratic Method or the Search for Truth but the squelching of contrary thought with Hemlock).

She was quickly promoted through the ranks - typical given her emphasis on playing the academic-politics game rather than concentrate on good thought/scholarship. Eventually she left Princeton to be the President of the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you Peter Principle!

So it does not shock me at all that her bad judgment is still on display: The Appletonian: What's wrong with this picture?

Concern Troll - Part 3

A sociological analysis of why the "netroots" hate bothers me (and many, uh, normal people). I think it's because when I meet a jerk in real life, I walk away resolving to avoid that person in the future. What makes the Netroots Hatred so difficult is that not only is it difficult to avoid on many of the best websites but it is compounded by the privacy/intimacy/anonymity that makes the internet so attractive.

People spend hours online because its the quintessence, so far, of the Information Age (the final step will be 3-D cerebral hologramophonic nanochips - though at that point evolution will stop). Online one can be anonymous, alone yet surrounded by information, commerce, schmutz, and completely controlled personal interactions.

However, on the Netroot Hate Blogs the bubble of protection is swiftly jackbooted by these cranked up adolescents. It's jarring.

The sad thing is that they think they are being effective. They will get squashed - badly - just like they were in 1972.

More Left-Wing Foolishness

Background:

This is all of a piece, similar to what I recently posted here, about the inane myths in the left-wing echo-chamber. In the example below, the master of the Great Orange Satan, the Kos himself, repeats the standard nonesense:

Daily Kos: State of the Nation:

I grew up in a war zone. And there was one clear lesson I learned -- there will never be peace unless both sides get tired of the fighting and start seeking an alternative. It's clear that in the Middle East, no one is sick of the fighting. They have centuries of grudges to resolve, and will continue fighting until they can get over them.

Centuries of grudges, eh? Moron.

Backpost finished 4/11/08. The link and the quote.

Juan Cole Sees Some Light

Juan Cole, Professor of Middle East Stuff at the University of Michigan is a well respected member of the left-wing blogosphere and a commonly quoted expert on the Middle East. He also hates Israel. He may or may not hate Jews, I'm sure some of his best friends are Hebrews, but Juanito sure does hate him some Israel.

Just be warned, whenever you see the man quoted in a blog or Mainstream Media, you should know they are employing Edward Said's replacement.

On his website [called Informed Comment, meant to be as truthful as Fox's 'fair and balanced' no doubt] you can read some wonderfully twisted reportage and commentage about the nasty Israelites.

However, as an example of just how bad Hezbollah is, even Juan Cole thinks they have gone too far.

This is important to know because we pro-Israel people don't make a distinction between the PLO, Hamas, or Hezbollah. They are all terrorists; they all want to kill Jews, they will not stop until we're dead. I guess they *do* wear different uniforms and may even kill each other a few times just to keep in practice, but, c'mon, what's the difference?

Anyway, if Juan Cole thinks Hezbollah is off the chain, then I we need to figure out what exactly makes the Hezzies different from the PLO and, uh, explain that to people? Ah, forget it, they'll never follow simple arithmetic.

Anyway, this is what Cole has on his site:

[Ar.] Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah (Hezbollah), gave a televised speech on Sunday explaining his own strategy. He said in an eerily calm and calculating voice that he had aimed his rockets only at military targets, not at Israeli settlements 'in Occupied northern Palestine' (i.e. Israel). In contrast, he said, the Israeli military had from the beginning targeted civilians. (In fact, Nasrallah's katyushas are impossible to aim with any precision and in loosing them on Israel, he inevitably killed and wounded civilians; likewise in Haifa. His opening statement is a self-serving lie.)

He complained at length about Israeli airstrikes against civilian targets. He linked hitting the Israeli warship to Israel's airstrikes on Baalbak [where they hit a Husayniyah or Shiite mourning center].

He added, "We arose to strike at the city of Haifa, and we know the importance and grave significance of this city. Had we targeted with our missiles the chemical and petrochemical factories, an enormous catastrophe would have ensued for the inhabitants of that area. But we deliberately avoided those factories, which were in the sites of our missiles, since we were eager not to push things toward the unknown and were eager that this weapon be a weapon not of revenge but of defense . . . a weapon that would return the crazies in the Olmert government to a modicum of reason and save them from a grandiosity complex, or, I might say, the stupidity whereby they distinguish themselves . . . But because we set those targets aside this time does not mean that we we always adopt this position. At any point where we consider that we are involved in defending our nation and our people and our families, we will resort to all means we can in pursuit of that defense . . . " (-Cole translation)

He also denied that there were any Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon or that he had had Iranian help. He said people were always putting down the Arabs and saying they could not accomplish anything, but, he said, look at the Israeli warship in flames. That was an Arab accomplishment.

Uh, wouldn't an Arab accomplishment be more like, oh, inventing something or building up something nice? Destroying things and killing people is not an accomplishment.

I watched in horror as this maniacal speech unfolded in which Nasrallah actually threatened the Israelis with releasing chemical gas from local factories on civilians in Haifa. Despite fighting them for all those years, he clearly does not understand the Israelis' psyche or the trauma of the Holocaust. A threat like that. The Israelis don't like being caught in a quagmire any more than the next person, which is why Nasrallah could get them to leave southern Lebanon. But his victory appears to have given him megalomania, and he has now gone too far.

Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

Obviously, I do not accept that Hizbullah's actions justify the wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general. But they do have every right to defend themselves against Nasrallah and his mad bombers.

If we can only get Cole to understand that Lebanon, ya know, supports Hezbollah... actually, that's too strong... howzibout: Lebanon effectively is Hezbollah... yeah ... maybe he'll see that 1+1 = 2?

Nah.

{2009 Update: pic from campus-watch.}

Summers' Blunder

What Summers' did wrong was substitute a conclusion for a hypothesis. This happens all the time in the social-sciences. Summers is an economist (I believe) and all they *have* are hypothesis so who can blame him for just repeating the intellectual guano he's been trained to shovel.

Are women innately worse than men in math and science. Don't know. But it's a hypothesis (to answer the question 'how come there are way more men than women in engineering/math/physics'). If you stop at the hypothesis - and its a quick fix - then you'd be able to share your conlusion with your bar buddies but not with scientists and the rare intellectual.

Summers should have said 'Are the centuries-old prejudices true? Are women worse at math than men? I sure hope not, but if not we need to find a compelling reason why my Physics department has 10 men to 1 woman, etc etc).

And another point; speaking as a non-math dude; why is it an insult to suggest that women are worse than men at math? I am a verbal whiz and a math sloth and I am quite happy with that arrangement. The fact that people are angry at the suggestion means that they have incorporated the real prejudice - that because men ruled the culture, they (we) claimed that whatever we were good at was the right and superior set of skills. Anything non-masculine became sub-standard.

Thinking that math skills are inherently better than verbal skills is something that only a math-oriented person would say - or someone immersed in a male values dominated culture.

Ironically, the biggest display of chauvenism in this whole mess comes from Summers' critics who cling to the hierarchical prejudices of an arachaic system.

Harvard's Choice

As you may know, Larry "Lounge Lizard" Summers, President of Harvard is in deep trouble after he said the most terrible things anybody has ever said about women.

Not even getting into whether Summers has a valid point about women in the sceinces is the way the University "community" is handling it. [University Community is simultaneously a tautology and oxymoron; both mean 'all for one' yet universities are by degign fractious. Whenever a University's denizens unify you should run to the hills; academics who agree only do so in order to squash a third person]

According to the Times, Summers said (according to the now released private transcript):

"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination,"

According to his critics, he in fact said "Women are stoo-pid" in a Gomer Pyle voice.

More importantly, the University may throw him out on his pasty white rump. I love this - Harvard is showing its true colors; in the battle between academic freedom and political-correctness, PC will win.

Bye-bye Summers, next time run a real school.