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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review March 28, 2011 / 22 Adar II, 5771

Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

By Paul Greenberg




http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "…as always in a moment of extreme danger things can be done which had previously been thought impossible. Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas."

       --Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

The world in 2011 seems much like that of the century before, and much unlike it. History doesn't repeat itself, it has been said, but it does rhyme. Not in any simple, clear way. But more like Emily Dickinson's rhymes -- assonant, subtle, on the slant. And sore must be the storm…

Once I tore off dispatches from the teletype machine in a little newsroom, alone in the middle of the night when I couldn't go home, consumed as I was by curiosity, anxiety, desperation about what would happen next in the latest war in the Muddle East. One clattering BULLETIN and FLASH would follow the other as the war approached its climax or anti-climax or neither…

One by one, the dispatches would pile up on the floor while I hastily searched for a clear pattern. There wasn't one. There wouldn't be till the history was written, the pieces of the puzzle forced together, glossed over, properly falsified in a secretary of state's memoirs, the blood washed away and the medals pinned on the corpses. In medias res, in the middle of the action, the fog of war provides decent cover, like a shroud…

The random headlines of victories and disasters, triumphs and tragedies, still carry a sense of urgency years later as they speak of events past in the present tense, making a kind of out-of-time poetry. Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt. It's as if nothing were ever lost, as if it were all still happening in some alternate universe where the dead still hold on to life and care about their fate. The past sends out its emanations from 1942, from 1956…


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"We are quiet, not afraid. Send the news to the world and say it should condemn the Russians. The fighting is very close now and we haven't enough guns. What is the United Nations doing? Give us a little help. We will hold out to our last drop of blood. The tanks are firing now…" --The last telex from Budapest, 1956. The clock ticks off every moment as it enters the past, unchangeable and irretrievable, but some events still echo….

"They bombed us with tanks, airplanes, missiles coming from every direction… We need international support, or at least a no-fly zone. Why is the world not supporting us?" --Mahmoud Abdel Hamid, a fighter with anti-Gadhafi forces in Libya, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2011. This time help has arrived. At last. Like the Allied aircraft breaking through the cloud cover over Bastogne to free the 101st Airborne.

Men still look to the skies from whence cometh their help. And in this endless chess game, the pawns still bleed…

And the statesmen still temporize. Politicians and generals prepare to explain why they were right all along, especially when they were wrong. Some play it safe by saying nothing at length, others by saying everything, covering all the bases. That way, with a little selective quoting, they can pass as prophets in the eyes of some future generation. The secret of forecasting the future is to be equivocal about it…

The complicated calculus of risk and security, advantages and disadvantages, is constantly being compiled in the think tanks and war rooms and around conference tables and in op-ed pieces for the New York Times … but, don't tell anyone, none of it matters. Not when, unexpected and unpredicted, history explodes in one country after another, this year in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya. Where next -- Yemen, Bahrain, Syria? As the shock waves travel, west to east, the strangest of phenomena are reported all across the Arab world: demands for democracy, peaceful demonstrations, fleeing dictators. Along with the most familiar: innocents crushed, cities flattened, civilians massacred…

One headline after another comes as a surprise. Mubarak Departs. Demonstrations Spread Across Arab World. Libya Erupts. "Rebels on Run after Gadhafi Pounds Port/ Libya Dictator Will Prevail, U.S. Intelligence Chief Says … Strikes on Libya get OK at U.N./ No-fly Zone Also to Shield Rebellion … " Gadhafi Declares Cease-Fire, Continues to Attack. "ROMMEL DRIVES ON DEEP INTO EGYPT" --San Francisco Chronicle, June 26, 1942

It's all one big swirl of past and present, expectation and disappointment, an unforeseen sirocco blowing out of the desert, coming out of nowhere and hastening to the place where it arose, covering everything with dust…

None of this was anticipated. It was not possible. So said the graphs and pie charts and PowerPoint presentations and algorithmic computer modeling maintained at the Pentagon, in the think tanks, at Foggy Bottom, in faculty conferences on the Middle East, and they all proved worthless. Fixed ideas stayed fixed…

"All our models are bad," Mark Abdollahian told Wired magazine, "some are less bad than others." He ought to know, having been a government consultant on what the bureaucracy calls Power Transitions. So many probabilities, so few realities…

What went wrong? Why were all these experts, with all their expertise, reduced to blind men trying to grasp fog, always surprised by what is unsurprising once it occurs? The dithering, the vacillation, the reflexive defensiveness of leaders who do anything but lead, it would all be amusing -- except for the usual images of protesters gunned down, desperate refugees, dead children, mothers howling in grief…

The experts were so busy weighing the probable they overlooked what was possible. Or even Field Marshal Rommel's impossible, which suddenly becomes possible when circumstances are dire. Calculating everything, the experts forget about the incalculable. Like man's determination to be free.

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