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In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 19, 2003 / 19 Sivan, 5763

IS THE WORLD BLIND, IN DENIAL OR JUST APATHETIC?

By Rod Dreher


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http://www.jewishworldreview.com | A French Jewish friend e-mailed the other day from Paris, hours after an Islamist fanatic blew up himself and 15 Israelis on a Jerusalem bus. "When I heard of the new suicide bombing, I asked myself if maybe all Jews should turn into pianists in order to be safe," he wrote. "If you're a World War II Polish Jewish pianist fighting for his life in a movie, people will give you an Oscar and rush to theaters to watch your story unfold. If you're an Israeli Jew fighting for his life for real, people will call you a murderer."

His bleak humor notwithstanding, none of this is a joke to my correspondent, who writes of Jewish friends and colleagues quietly making plans to emigrate to Canada, Australia and the United States. Jews and their institutions in France are being attacked by anti-Semites throughout the country, with Muslim thugs beating Jews in the streets and holding pro-Palestinian demonstrations at which they chant, "Death to the Jews!" The French establishment, especially the French media, prefers to look away or to perform a collective Gallic shrug.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is denounced for sending his troops against the leadership of Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist terror organization that carries out suicide bombings of Israeli civilians as part of its ongoing campaign to ethnically cleanse the Middle East of Jews and establish an Islamic state. Hamas wants nothing to do with the road map to peace. Here are the recent words of one Hamas leader: "The enemies of Allah ... are cowards. They crave life, while the Muslims crave martyrdom. The martyrdom operations" — that is, suicide bombings — "that shock can ensure that horror is sowed in the [enemies'] hearts. There is no other way. ... [T]here is a need for people who yearn for Paradise, and the shortest way to Paradise is death for Allah."

(w)E-THE PEOPLE
Let your voice be heard! To express your concerns about the administration's plan for the Holy Land, you may contact

President George W. Bush by fax: (202) 456-2461, (Andrew Card, Chief of Staff) or by e-mail.

Dr. Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor, FAX (202) 456-2883, PHONE (202) 456-9491

Mr. Elliot Abrams, the Director for Near East and North African Affairs, at FAX (202) 456-9120, and by phone through his secretary Joanna, (202) 456-9121

Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, 1000 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1000 or by e-mail form: http://www.defenselink.mil/

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1010 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1010 or by e-mail form http://www.defenselink.mil

The man who wrote those words on the Hamas Web site is Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, who narrowly missed dying for Allah the other day when an Israeli missile hit his car in Gaza. More's the pity. When a man like Abdel-Aziz Rantisi broadcasts to the world his intention to keep sending suicide bombers onto your buses and into your cafes, you don't negotiate with him. Negotiations are something that happens between reasonable parties in a conflict, and that never can include religious fanatics who want to exterminate your entire people.

President Bush said he was "deeply troubled" by the Israeli action against Hamas. Well, I'm deeply troubled, too. I'm deeply troubled that the Israelis, for the sake of a putative peace settlement, are expected to watch armed Islamic militants turn their citizens to ash and not defend themselves. I'm deeply troubled that elite Western opinion is quick to find reasons to excuse or overlook Palestinian perfidy, corruption and savagery. (How many Rachel Corries do you suppose are riding those Jerusalem buses as human shields?) I am deeply troubled that the American administration is placing its confidence on the idea that the Palestinian Authority has any intention of disarming its militants — which, if anyone cares, the president's road map called on the Palestinian Authority to do by the end of last month. I am deeply troubled that so many Palestinians hate the Jews more than they love their own lives and children.

I am deeply troubled by how much we in the West have forgotten. We know — we know — where the kind of bloodcurdling hatred of Jews celebrated by Hamas and other radical Islamists leads. The Holocaust wasn't an Oscar-winning movie. "We now hear of Jewish friends gathering information on emigrating to Canada, Australia and the U.S.A.," my French friend writes. "They do it quietly, calmly; they know what's coming, and this time, they don't want to be taken by surprise." If you think the radical Islamists will stop at the Jews, which is the gamble the French seem to be taking, you don't read their material, and you didn't learn a thing from Sept. 11.

Above all, I am deeply troubled by the reality that many of us, safe in our American and European homes, with our easy moral equivalences, are willing to be complicit in the genocidal murder of Jews by hate-filled fascists. Again, so soon.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Rod Dreher, a practicing Catholic, is an editorial writer and occasional columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Comment by clicking here.

© 2003, Dallas Morning News