The Deafening Silence On Jewish Education

Everyone is familiar with the age-old question: If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? To some, that may sound like a silly rhetorical quandary, but it actually provides a wonderful metaphor to describe a huge problem facing today’s Jewish community.

Why I’m A Jewish Conservative

There are many kinds of conservatives. I consider myself a small-government conservative. Small-government conservatives believe lower tax rates on employment and capital spur an economy and promote work and entrepreneurship. The alternative is the nanny state – where government seeks to control and provide more services, and tax rates are far higher to support this.

Remembering Bibi’s Inglorious Sendoff

For not the first time in his political career, Benjamin Netanyahu has become Israel’s Great Right Hope – a figure looked to with increasing longing by an electorate fed up with the blunders and corruption of the Olmert government.

Biography, Apocalypse And International Relations

Over the years, I have closely followed the work of Yossi Melman, an outstanding investigative journalist with Ha'aretz and a leading authority on Israel's intelligence communities. Not surprisingly, his earlier book, Every Spy a Prince (co-authored with Dan Raviv) was an international bestseller.

Pulling The Plug On Fatah

During the Israeli cabinet's weekly meeting Sunday, Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin reported that a group of Fatah members from the Palestinian Authority's "security services" plotted to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his meeting with PA Chairman and Fatah chieftain Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho this past August.

Lancut

On my many trips to Poland, I always heard of the amazing synagogue structure in Lancut.

Lies of the Anti-Lobby Lobby

There is a nefarious lobby that controls American policy and subordinates American interests to its own narrow interests.

An Unassuming Hero Standing Up For Truth

Philippe Karsenty is a tall, handsome, charming, and very determined gentleman. Karsenty, a 41-year-old former stockbroker, media analyst, and founder of Media-Ratings, came to America on a lecture and media tour shortly after his interim victory in a Paris courtroom in the matter of Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli army gunfire.

America’s ‘Silver Platter’

After Israel’s War of Independence, poet Nathan Alterman famously memorialized those who fell in that struggle in his poem “Magash Hakesef” – “The Silver Platter.” The reference was to a statement by the country’s first president that no one was going to hand the Jews a state “on a silver platter.” In other words, it would have to be earned by sweat and blood.

Be Very Wary Of Evangelicals’ Support For Israel

Many right-wing Israelis were disturbed by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s recent ruling banning Jews from participating in the evangelical Zionist Feast of Tabernacles parade in Jerusalem and the conference that followed.

How Ethiopia’s Jews Were Rescued: The Inside Story

For students of America’s response to the Holocaust, it is a familiar scenario: a small group of dedicated activists try to bring about the rescue of persecuted Jews, only to find themselves obstructed by cold-hearted bureaucrats, jealous organizational professionals, and an indifferent news media.

Returning The Pink Cheek Or ‘Orange’ Look To Eretz Yisrael Supporters

At precisely 1 p.m. on Sunday, September 30 (Chol HaMoed), something happened. Something new.

Rymanow

In a recent column on the cemetery of Krakow one of the pictures was mislabeled as the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Riminov (Rymanow).

Let’s Make More Global Warming!

For years many of us believed the Nobel Peace Prize could not possibly be debased any worse than it was when Shimon Peres and mass murderer Yasir Arafat were honored for plunging the Middle East into an endless cycle of terrorist aggression against Israel and for putting Israel's very survival in jeopardy.

Germany’s Iran Lobby

Germany needs an Israel Lobby. That was the thrust of Alan Posener’s commentary on Deutschland Radio in late May. Posener, chief columnist for Germany’s largest circulating Sunday newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, attended the yearly AIPAC conference in Washington and posits U.S pro-Israel solidarity as a model for Germany, where “Israel’s Lobby’s consists of six million dead Jews.”

The Big Lie, 34 Years Later

Not many countries celebrate defeat. Syria does. Not many countries want to be reminded of grossly embarrassing encounters. Syria is celebrating Israel’s victory in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It’s a celebration with a twist. While the rest of the world records Israel’s October 1973 victory over Syria and Egypt, Syrian historians, Syria’s military and most importantly Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, tell another story. The Syrians have rewritten history. And in their version, Syria emerged victorious against Israel.

By His Words You Shall Know Him

With its Oct. 5 front-page story on Rudy Giuliani’s experience hosting an often boisterous weekly call-in show on WABC radio for the better part of his mayoralty, The New York Times found yet one more way to portray the Republican presidential frontrunner as a reckless hothead, reflexively rude and not at all willing to suffer fools (or even just annoying callers) gladly.

Opposing Olmert On Golan Surrender: Civil Disobedience As A Legal Imperative (Second of Two...

Can the Olmert government protect Israel's citizens? After last summer's Lebanon war, this is hardly a serious question. Further, following Iran's continuing defiance of the international community in its illegal nuclearization, a defiance carried out with literal impunity, the consequences of Israel's national impotence could soon be genuinely existential. Let us be candid. This is the case even before Mr. Olmert proceeds with his plan to give up the Golan.

B’nai B’rith International Revives Lodge In Poland

In 1938, by decree of the president of the Republic of Poland, all 10 B'nai B'rith Lodges were closed down.

A Values Agenda For The Next President

The next president of the United States will need to address the crumbling social fabric of this great nation.

Terrorists and U.S. Presidential Politics

"If this president does not get us out of Iraq, when I am president, I will," pledged Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in a televised Democratic debate broadcast nationally and around the world.

Will The Center Hold In ’08?

With the first of the 2008 caucuses and primaries only months away, the endless presidential campaign is about to be clarified as the long list of candidates without a prayer are winnowed down to the few viable contenders.

Kick The Tires And Light The Fires

Back in the early 1970’s I served as an Air Force intelligence officer at Udorn Air Base in Thailand, home of the 432nd Tactical Fighter Reconnaissance Wing. Most of the bombing in 1970 and 1971 focused on Laos, especially the Ho Chi Minh Trail logistical network down which Hanoi funneled troops and supplies onto South Vietnam’s battlefields. Occasionally, the 432nd’s F-4 Phantoms would “go North,” striking targets inside North Vietnam.

Leftist Jews And The Longing For Victimhood

In an essay published in the Jewish magazine Tikkun last January, Bertell Ollman, one of the world’s best-known Marxist theorists, recounted how, on his way into the operating room, he realized that if he did not survive his surgery, he would die a Jew. The prospect was so unsettling that, once healed, he wrote his letter of resignation from the Jewish people. The reasons were Zionism, Israel, and the support its policies enjoy from other Jews.

Opposing Olmert On Golan Surrender: Civil Disobedience As A Legal Imperative (First of...

Amid the growing chaos of internal Palestinian violence, the manifest error of every Middle East Peace Process should be altogether obvious. Quite predictably, Fatah and Hamas now validate years of informed Jewish opposition to both the original Oslo Agreements and to the equally twisted cartography of a so-called "Road Map."

The Krakow Bet HaChaim

During my recent trip to Poland I visited many cemeteries where great tzaddikim are buried.

Stop The Lobby!

In an amazing development, archeologists digging in the campus grounds of Harvard University near the statue of John Harvard have uncovered a forgotten buried document about a long-defunct organization of professors and students operating on American campuses in 1937.

Balancing Devotion With Vocation

I was at an employee leadership conference the other day, speaking from the podium and telling Environmental Protection Agency colleagues about my views on leadership. Eventually, my formal remarks were done and we opened the floor to questions. That’s when it really became interesting.

Walt And Mearsheimer On The Road: More Distortion

Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were in Los Angeles last month, speaking to an overflow crowd of more than 300 people at the Armand Hammer Museum – part of a speaking tour with appearances at World Affairs Councils in San Francisco, Dallas and Washington, D.C., the City Club in Cleveland, forums at the University of Chicago, MIT and Columbia University, the Cambridge Forum in Harvard Square, and media slots on NPR, the Colbert Report, and WTTW-TV in Chicago.

Herzl Apikorsim And The Rebuilding Of Israel

It came to pass that the shamash in a little shtetl passed away, leaving an elderly widow. The community volunteered to support her, but she refused to take a “handout.” So an agreement was reached whereby she would receive a good wage for doing her deceased husband’s work of awakening the townspeople for Selichot before Rosh Hashanah. She was given the wooden gavel used for the task and set off at three in the morning to awaken the men of the community.

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