"Diversity Forum" and Communism

I have been pleasantly surprised by the University Times' publishing my letter that protests against the race-baiting institutionalized by the university's "Diversity" structures. Those seem to multiply like rot - in the body long crippled by the progressive ideology adopted by the majority. I was surprised not only because the letter was clearly outside of the ideological mainstream, but also because my prior letter had been ignored - both by its original addressees, all the university's top machers, and by the UT editor. Understandably, it had no impact. Here it is.

Dear Editor,

Like all Pitt [University of Pittsburgh] faculty, I have received an email signed by Dr. Kathy Humphrey, Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement, inviting participation  in “the 2020 Diversity Forum, Advancing Social Justice: A Call to Action.” The upcoming event was introduced as featuring “Dr. Angela Davis, who has dedicated her life and work to the fight for social justice and human rights.” I am sharing my reply, to which I have received response from neither Dr. Humphrey, nor from Chancellor Gallagher and Associate Vice Chancellor Pope, to whom I forwarded it.

“I am gravely concerned that Angela Davis is featured in any forum outside of her ideological circle. Angela Davis was well familiar to everybody in the Soviet Union as a devoted member of CPUSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the KGB that never deviated from its directives. She was the face of the anti-US Soviet propaganda and earned the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government that murdered and imprisoned true fighters for human rights, about whom she could not care less. A celebrity cherished by the Soviet authorities, she refused requests to speak to them for imprisoned Soviet dissidents, but she has embraced convicted terrorist murderers Rasmea Odeh and Marwan Barghouti. For the enslaved Soviet population, she was a despised symbol of foreign support of the Soviet activities directed at the destruction of freedom.

She is an unrepentant communist who still laments the Soviet Union and is admired by the communists in today’s Russia—for the kind of “social justice” she stands for. She is a supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement. It is no accident that she has floated up these days, when the imperfections of this society, aggravated by extraordinary circumstances, are used as a pretext for attacking its foundations and cutting it at the seams. I doubt she could contribute any perspective of value to Pitt audience. Nobody would ever think about any “conversation” with Nazis, but communists, whose ideology has caused no less death and suffering around the world and still suffocates billions, are still viewed as deserving attention and time.

As a refugee from the Soviet Union, I hope communism is not part of “diversity” that is sought by this society. I respectfully request that Angela Davis be disinvited from participating in the forum.”

I hope there is still time for removing Angela Davis from the program scheduled to start on July 28. Her participation is certain to discredit the forum and negate anything positive that it is planned to accomplish. Communism is not “a more just society” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating.

None of the Pitt leaders I addressed has replied. Angela Davis’s participation in the event is now a fait accompli. The “forum,” which entertained no discussion, let alone a critical one, with expressions of admiration for Davis’s activities from both Drs. Humphrey and Cudd, has been discredited. Communism is not “a more just community” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said about Davis’s cruel refusal to help dissidents in the Gulag, “That is the face of Communism. That is the heart of Communism for you." I never thought, when I left the now extinct Soviet Union, that I would be made to remember that face 30 years later, plastered on my American university’s computer screens.

I watched, nauseated, the old Communist witch spewing her wisdom into the current racialist swill. The "Diversity Forum" was neither forum nor was there any diversity (see also Maher's Pandemic and Mayakovsky's Throat).

Post hoc ergo propter hoc presidency

I am not trying to sound smart, and I can’t really speak Latin. The expression is simply the standard term for a logical error. In vernacular, it means “after that, hence because of that,” as most of you know. It is common for humans to draw causal connections from temporal sequences. In my field, substance use and addiction, "gateway theory," based on the same fallacy, has ruled over research and policy. Hardly anybody cared that it does not matter which drug one starts with for the risk of poisoning or addiction. But it's not just that the false causes are used as guides for action. Once they are in play, the true causes are ignored.

Does anybody doubt Trump would win, hands down, over Biden if not for the Chinese virus? He almost did (or has won) despite the Democrat agitprop that spread the calumny of the virus deaths' being Trump's fault. Nobody cared that Trump's trump card was economics, his China trade measures were substantial part of its success, and the virus came from China smack at the good time to destroy Trump's advantage. The progressive media (a clear redundancy) ignored China's role  in the spread of the virus, while Trump was depicted as a Plague-time well-poisoner.

What is the connection between the China virus and Biden's creeping out of his basement to possible presidency, with his pothead sidekick aiming at the Resolute Desk? All that was thanks to the common human mistake of readily taking “after that” for “because of that”, Trump's presidency—hence COVID deaths, the false conclusion endlessly propagated by Democrats and their media, exactly the "Organs" of the Democrat Party, as their counterparts used to be honestly called in the Soviet Union. Who cares that those deaths have no relationship whatsoever with Trump, who has done the maximum he could to withstand the biological attack while fighting the sabotage of Democrat governors, the posturing of know-nothing buffoons from NIH and WHO, and the constant attempts of political assassination from the Democrat Congress and Biden's "xenophobia" accusations. The NY governor Cuomo has actively murdered seniors by his order for care facilities—nobody will charge him with the crime. It is Trump who bears its consequences. Who cares that the US, despite all the Democrat agitprop, is far from the worst corona-wise in the world. It’s Trump's fault just because he was the president when it happened—forget all the praises Cuomo has given him in a fit of honesty.

Forget that it has been and would still be Trump's team that has born the brunt of the Chinese biological attack—and this is what it is. Even if—and it's a big if—the virus were not cooked in that Wuhan "institute," it was definitely deliberately spread to kill the US economy and thus remove Trump, the enemy of China. The Democrat fifth column was only happy to help, busy with the same work ever since Trump had been elected. Those are the causes ignored. Forget what is at stake: America’s freedom, energy independence, peace, Middle East conciliation, trade fairness, and honesty with allies and enemies. Let’s just pray that the utopia that this country has been does not turn into another nightmare of the communist takeover and bread lines. That has been a true cause-effect relationship.

The party that fought for slavery, that has revived racial conflict in this country and supports pogroms, that has open antisemites as its vocal and unrestrained leaders, that has given Iran billions to fund world-wide terror and pave its way to nukes, that is ready to reinstitute your tax-funded payments for terror murders of Israelis, that has its projected president neck-deep in corruption and client connection with the true enemies of the US—it is now on the verge of gaining unlimited power. A one-party totalitarian state, partnered with its benevolent creditor, Communist China. No Latin needed.

Munich II: An exchange with a Chamberlain

My email to Senator Bob Casey, Democrat from Pennsylvania, his reply (generic, no doubt), and my response.

MV:
September 1, 2015

Dear Senator Casey,
During your tenure you undoubtedly made many important decisions. None will be as important and fateful as your decision on the Iran deal. Your approval of the deal would make you complicit in the murder and suffering of untold numbers of innocent people, which will inevitably follow Iran's getting its hands on the billions of its unfrozen actives [means "assets" - my Russian accent] and the credit it will be able to obtain due to that. The deal is the repeat of the 1938 Munich, with the difference that Hitler was not getting nuclear weapons due to that. Iran, a genocidal regime, openly promising extermination to the U.S. and Israel, is guaranteed to have a nuclear arsenal as the result of the deal. Please do not allow this nightmare to become reality.

Sincerely,
Michael Vanyukov, PhD

_______

On Sep 4, 2015, at 15:26, Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. wrote::

Dear Dr. Vanyukov: Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and Iran’s nuclear program.  I appreciate hearing from you about this issue. Since coming to the Senate in 2007, I have been at the forefront of legislative efforts to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon. I have cosponsored numerous pieces of legislation to increase sanctions on the Iranian regime. It is clear that these tough, bipartisan sanctions brought the Iranian regime to the negotiating table in 2013. The P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China, facilitated by the European Union) and Iran reached an interim agreement, called the Joint Plan of Action, on November 23, 2013.   On February 27, 2015 Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey introduced S. 615, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) of 2015, which requires congressional review of any final nuclear agreement with Iran before the president can waive or lift sanctions imposed by Congress. I am a proud cosponsor of this bill. The compromise bill reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the Senate by 98-1 on May 7, 2015. The House passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act by a vote of 400 to 25 on May 19, 2015. INARA became Public Law 114-17 on May 22, 2015.   After months of negotiations by the P5+1 and the European Union with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran’s nuclear program was agreed to on July 14, 2015. This deal builds on the foundations of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), agreed to in November of 2013, and the framework for this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), announced on April 2, 2015. After careful consideration and a thorough review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and related documents, I have concluded that I will support the JCPOA. Of the realistic alternatives, I believe the JCPOA is the best option available to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. This was a difficult decision to make and I conducted a rigorous evaluation before coming to this determination. I consulted with constituents, outside experts, and Administration officials and received numerous intelligence briefings and read hundreds of pages of analysis and position papers. I have considered the impact of the JCPOA on our national security, the security of Israel and the Middle East and the grave question of war and the related issue of deterrence. My determination on this critical decision was the result of careful study and sober deliberation. I encourage you to read my statement in its entirety.

The JCPOA is the product of tough multiparty negotiations and places significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program for many years.  It limits the number of centrifuges that might be used to obtain nuclear material and restricts Iran’s ability to conduct enrichment research and development, among other things. The JCPOA also essentially blocks Iran’s plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon by requiring the redesign of the Arak reactor and placing other limitations on plutonium activities. The robust monitoring and verification conducted by the IAEA, along with ongoing monitoring by the U.S. intelligence community will significantly lessen, if not eliminate, the likelihood that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon covertly.  Under the JCPOA, Iran will not receive immediate relief from nuclear-related sanctions on Adoption Day of this agreement. Iran must implement 36 nuclear-related measures, verified by the IAEA, before multilateral, U.S. or EU sanctions are lifted. In addition, U.S. statutory sanctions on Iran for its support of terrorism, abuses of human rights and missile activities remain in full force and effect. Furthermore, I will continue to advance legislative efforts that prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, exporting terrorism in the region, and committing human rights atrocities. I have also been a leader in the Senate on efforts to aggressively counter Iran’s nefarious activities in the region, especially its support for terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and the Assad regime. Implementation of this agreement should be reinforced by a clear and unwavering policy commitment by the United States that all options, including the use of military force, remain on the table if Iran violates its commitments not to pursue a nuclear weapon. The most effective strategy to fortify the JCPOA over time is to have in place a strong deterrent. I have and will continue to press President Obama and his Administration on this issue. Israel’s security is of paramount concern when I am analyzing any policy impacting the Middle East. I have always staunchly supported efforts to promote Israel’s security and the important bilateral relationship between our two countries. The bond between our two countries has been and always will be unbreakable, and Israel’s security and that of the United States are inextricably linked. I will continue to support aid for Israel throughout the Senate appropriations process. The FY16 Senate Appropriations bill fully funds the $3.1 billion commitment to the United States-Israel Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). I greatly respect the views of those who have chosen to oppose this agreement and encourage them to continue the dialogue about the areas of convergence: ensuring Israel’s security, countering Iran’s support for terrorism and interference in regional affairs and working with our allies and partners to address the many conflicts that are causing instability in the Middle East.Preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has been, and will continue to be, one of my top national security priorities. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.

For more information on this or other issues, I encourage you to visit my website, http://casey.senate.gov.  I hope you will find this online office a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania. Sincerely, Bob Casey United States Senator P.S. If you would like to respond to this message, please use the contact form on my website: http://casey.senate.gov/contact/

_______

MV:

September 4, 2015

Dear Senator Casey,

Thank you for your reply to my prior message. Unfortunately, it does not allay my concerns - on the contrary, it makes them much graver. Your endorsement of the JCPOA lends support to the disastrous agreement that hands Iran $150 bln, enabling terror and mass murder, which the genocidal regime commits itself and by its proxies non-stop, and opening an unhindered path to the nuclearization of both Iran and the rest of the region. Regrettably, you have ignored "the impact of the JCPOA on our national security, the security of Israel and the Middle East and the grave question of war and the related issue of deterrence." Your decision also disables the very law you sponsored, INARA, defective as it was, upturning and inverting by subterfuge the constitutional requirement for treaties, rendering the most important foreign policy act a minority decision. The JCPOA, a purely partisan act, will forever stain the Democratic party as a political organization with the blood of every future victim of Iran-supported terror and of the wars that this deal will beget.

Sincerely,

Michael Vanyukov, Ph.D.

"Islamism" vs. Occam's razor: Made in West

Dr. Daniel Pipes is a knowledgeable commentator on Islam. His expertise has been sought by policy-makers up to the level of US president. That's enough for me to get interested in Dr. Pipes's opinion, trying to form my dilettante own. Sometimes it is different from his. But first things first.

When America, helped by its few remaining allies, defeated Saddam Hussein, a bloody, bestial and bloated with pride autocrat, it found nothing better than to elect Barack Hussein as President. This is as if to prove that the inevitable associations with Saddam, with Osama, with 9-11, with anything Islam, are of no concern to the home of the brave. The symbolism of this is significant, even though, of course, there is little similarity between the two rulers. If there is any, however (perish the thought), it includes the fact that both have had a relatively thin connection with the religion that provided them with their names.

Saddam was a socialist—of his national kind—and would turn to Islam as a matter of convenience. Just as Islam's founder used to, Saddam used his “religion” to justify his atrocities. Like Muhammad, he had to do that quite a bit, and in his environment Islam generally has wider currency than in the US, being integral part of tradition. While Barack is undoubtedly a socialist of a kind too, his environment gives him much less opportunities to apply his love for the “prettiest”sounds of Islam, and much more for applying the version of Christianity that he was taught by Rev. Wright—the only one he's ever known. Nevertheless, one can't accuse Barack of fully neglecting his “grandfather's” religion. As need be, he recites the Muslim statement of faith, curses those who insult Muhammad, strenuously protects women's "right" to wear hijab, and extols Islamic “learning.” Occasionally, he even (mis)speaks  of himself as a Muslim.

Like his predecessor Bush II, he considers Islam “religion of peace”— despite all the proof to the contrary, from the Islamic scripture to the bloody history of Muslim conquest to the incessant and growing terror committed in the name of Islam. Individual and group terror, which has replaced Muslim nations' terror due to their military inferiority, is very successful. The West, ridden with guilt and ashamed of its religion, lacks moral clarity and ideologic spine. In fact, ideology is a curse word. Because of that, the reaction to Islam's terror is the opposite to rational: instead of Westerners' protecting themselves from the carriers of the murderous ideology, as they would from a foreign invasion, more of those carriers are imported to spread it. Just as Israel, under the same post-ideologic Western pressure and wishful thinking, gives up its hard-won territories for nothing in return, the West loses its territorial and ideological integrity to the alien invasion as well. The losses are tangible: Muslim settlers in the West tend to congregate geographically, squeezing out the infidels, and tend not to assimilate culturally. In effect, parts of countries become off limits to their prior inhabitants. This is combined with the political changes resulting from politicians' seeking votes from the growing Muslim block. Progressives—some from ignorance, others from the need to fight the evils of capitalism, yet others simply sharing antisemitism that is so respected in Islam—provide an abundant supply of collaborationists.

The argument is, of course, that it is “Islamism” that is bad, while Islam is as good as, if not better than, Judaism and Christianity. By implication, Islam should be as acceptable to the West as Judeo-Christian beliefs. Muslims do list those beliefs on the same breath: “Jews and Crusaders.” They do not, obviously, list Islam on the same breath, supposedly another “Abrahamic religion,” nor does anybody with a scintilla of knowledge in the West seriously consider it as another facet of the tripartite system. It does not take much to prove that both “Abrahamic religion” and “Islamism” are Western inventions.

Clearly, even in a culture that fully accepts death sentence, not everybody would want to be an executioner. Similarly, it is no proof of Islam's general rejection of terror that not every Muslim is a terrorist. Anybody familiar with Islamic writings and history knows that terror has played a central role in the spread of Islam.  But why not listen to the prime-minister of a Muslim country, elected from a Muslim party—shouldn't he be trusted as a better expert than the Western thinkers when he says there is no “moderate Islam”? In Erdogan's words, “If you say moderate Islam, then an alternative is created, and that is immoderate Islam. As a Muslim, I can't accept such a concept.” Then, as behooves a fine logician he is, he goes on to state the opposite to what he said: “Islam rejects extreme concepts. I am not an extreme Muslim. We are Muslims who have found a middle road.” Middle—between what and what? If he is not an “extreme” one, what is he if not “moderate,” if confused? His point is, anyway, that he is not a terrorist (who said he was?), and that terror cannot be called “Islamic” just as it could not be called Christian or Jewish. Of course, it could—such as when terror is committed in the name of Christianity, as it was during Jewish pogroms in Russia. Terror committed in the name of Islam, accompanied with proclaiming glory to the Islamic deity, Allah, is Muslim terror. The Turkish army chief General Buyukanit puts it succinctly: “There are certain circles that want to add the title of 'moderate Islam' to the Republic of Turkey. The source of such a title does not come from within Turkey but foreign circles.”

All these facts, and more, are considered in Dr. Pipes's blog entry of 2004 and its updates—without much discussion of whether Erdogan and other Muslims who reject the concept of “moderate vs. immoderate” Islam are right or wrong. Those facts are also recently revisited in Dr. Pipes's May 2013 Washington Times article “Islam and its infidels: How extremists distorted a religion of millions.” There he mentions the same arguments, but as given by his opponents, which is to say the opponents of the division of Islam into "moderate" and "Islamist" that he supports.

Unfortunately, that article presents no support for an entity termed “Islamism” to counter the continuities and consistencies in Islam. Contrary to Dr. Pipes's view, Muslims never needed to “absorb” from Europeans the concept of ideology: Islam has been a totalitarian ideology, by both intent and implementation, from Muhammad's times. Cultural and other achievements listed in the article, the fluctuating proportions of the “extremists,” and variation within Islam that includes “quietists,” are irrelevant. Variation exists among the followers of any ideology, as humans are thankfully not a eusocial species. After all, Schindler was a card-carrying Nazi too. That is no proof of “moderate Nazism,” however.

“Islamism” remains a redundancy invented in the West, however convenient and comfortable it might be to add an “-ism” and thus truncate the distribution of individual devotion to Islam's scriptural ideologic principles. Collapsing that dimension into the categories of “secularism,” “apologism,” and “islamism,” as suggested in Dr. Pipes's article, has no foundation in reality, if only because there are no natural/scriptural boundaries between these groupings. “Quietism” of Sufis, so frequently thought of in the West as meditative mystics, wine-imbibing poets and whirling dervishes, did not prevent Shamil Basayev and other Sufis from multiple terror acts, including the mass murder of non-Muslim children in the Beslan school. Hopefully we won't try now to invent “extremist” and “moderate” Sufis—like the rest of Muslims, they obviously represent a continuum. Historically, Sufis, organized into knight-like orders with blind obedience of members to the leader, have been fanatical warriors spearheading Islamic conquest.

Contrary to Dr. Pipes, adding an “-ism” to Islam is not at all similar to creating a term like fascism—rather, the analog to “Islamism” would be “fascismism,” a clear redundancy. It might be comfortable to think that “Islamism” allows us to fear only “10 to 15 percent of Muslims”rather than all 1.3 bln of them—even though I'd fail to take any comfort in the 10%, especially when it translates into 130,000,000 of vicious “Islamists.” There is no need, however, as Occam's razor warns us, to multiply entities when not necessary—and necessity cannot result from our need in comfort. The attempts to reify a novel entity of “Islamism” only show how well religious mimicry continues to serve Islam to mislead the wishfully thinking West.

Antisemitism by other means: Lecturing against the Jewish state*

I went to Michael Sfard's lecture** with a heavy heart. Why would I be hesitant about listening to this young and famous Israeli lawyer? Because of his fame's source: Sfard is what is called a "Human Rights Lawyer". In other words, so that nobody gets confused, his clients are mainly Palestinian Arabs. The human rights of the Jews are not under his purview, unless those Jews, like he has eventually done himself,  refuse to serve in the Israel Defense Forces or are otherwise anti-Israel. He defends Arabs' rights - but surely not from fellow Arabs. For instance, not from the Palestinian Authority, which sentences to death those who sell land to a Jew, an act of "national treason", and whose courts sentence journalists to jail for "insulting" Mahmoud Abbas by a cartoon on Facebook. As Sfard informed the audience, the PA has merely "the power of a city council", executions notwithstanding. 

Why did I go then? To ask the question that had long preoccupied me: why would somebody choose to defend members of an enemy population - against his own state that protects him and has been under attack from that population for as long as his state existed? The population whose leaders have been financiers, planners and perpetrators of terror, where murder of innocent Jews and Americans is celebrated and schools and stadiums are named after the murderers, where the murderers' families are congratulated and their enormous portraits adorn city walls. I prefaced my question by saying that as a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, it was particularly strange for me to hear that in the "oppressive" Jewish state it was usually sufficient for a Palestinian Arab to petition the court with a help of a lawyer in order to get a satisfactory solution to his or her problems.  I also briefly reminded Sfard of the Arab violent animosity towards the Jews that had long preceded the re-creation of Israel, the history that included Amin al Husseini, a major Nazi collaborator and Arafat's and Abbas's hero. 

The response was striking. Sfard said, deliberately and clearly expecting the audience's reaction, "I don't care about history." I too thought there would be a reaction. I thought, this educated audience , albeit visibly sympathetic to the speaker, would now rise in disbelief and indignation. After all, shouldn't they all have been familiar with George Santayana's maxim, "Those who forget history are destined to repeat it"? One does not need to be an historian to understand how dangerous that forgetfulness would be - for the Jews in particular. Some aspects of our rich history are better to stay in history - but we keep being promised their genocidal repetition, by the likes of the Arab League at the creation of Israel, Nasser in 1967, and Ahmadinejad these days. Alas, no objection arose from the future and present lawyers. On the contrary, Sfard was applauded - especially when he said that he did not believe in the Jewish state. That prompted me to interject, "How about 'Judenstaat'?" No, he did not know what it was, the title of the foundation of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl's book "The Jewish State". Of course, Sfard's not believing in the Jewish state leaves him not believing in the state he lives in, created as "a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel", according to the Israeli Declaration of Independence of 1948. It seems when people don't care about history, they don't care about the present reality either.

It is really hard to briefly summarize Sfard's talk, misinformation by both omission and commission. As usual, it started with the terminology. Long gone are the times when the disputed territories were called Judea and Samaria in general parlance. Those historic names have been ethnically cleansed into the meaningless "West Bank", adopted from Jordan that  illegally occupied those lands from 1949 to 1967. It is also forgotten that Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria to its own east bank  - of the Jordan river, which is, interestingly, the Jewish name, appropriated also by the Arab state created by Britain's fiat in Eretz Israel, which was entrusted by the League of Nations to the UK for the "close settlement by Jews on the land". Amazingly, the UK had no trouble recognizing annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan, which captured that territory in a war of aggression. Even "West Bank", however, is too neutral for Sfard, who prefers calling it "Occupation". According to him, Israel began to "colonize" that land in the 1970's. Never mind that Israelis only by then had restored Jewish access to the heartland of  the Land of Israel, including the old city of Jerusalem with its Western Wall and Temple Mount, the most sacred site for the Jews. While no law except Jordanian ever prohibited Jewish settlement on that land, the world had no qualms when Jordanians murdered and expelled Jews from there. This is how east Jerusalem was turned into the "Arab East Jerusalem"  of today's media. Never mind that this part of town until the 20th century was the only Jerusalem, with a Jewish majority there until the Jordanian murderous invasion in 1948. It is also through bloody pogroms that Hebron, the first capital of ancient Israel, and other parts of Eretz Israel became Judenfrei "Arab cities". If, as is often repeated, the territory cannot be obtained in conquest, why should this rule start being implemented with Jews who captured it in a defensive war, and not with Muslims, who took it in aggression from Crusaders, who took it from Muslims, who took it from the Roman Empire that violently took it from the Jews and exiled them from their land? Let alone the many contemporary examples of the land captured in the defensive war and kept, like  the Kuril Islands or Sudetenland. But Sfard does not care about history.

His main problem is the security barrier. He misnames it "separation wall" - despite the fact that the wall is less than three percent of this largely chain link fence. Never did he mention that the only reason for the construction of the fence that began in 2002 was the terror war that Israel's "peace partners" headed by Arafat started in 2000, after he rejected another Israeli proposal that would create an Arab state. Only in 2002, before construction started, terrorists from the territories murdered 457 Israelis. Already in 2006, before the construction of the fence was finished, the number dropped to 10, and to no fatalities in 2012. Sfard does not care about security -  he derisively calls it a "Jewish obsession". His only focus is his clients' inconvenience, as he shares their conviction that Israel's goal for the barrier is land grab. He lamented that while discussing changes in the "separation wall"  route, the main concern of the Israeli officials was security. Needless to say, the "oppressor" did change the route as per Sfard's petition, and he tells the truly horrific story how an Israeli officer thanked him for letting know about the inconvenience to Arab farmers, since remedied. In fact, Sfard intimated, the evil authorities satisfy his clients' grievances even without any court rulings, "in a shadow of the court". Why? Because, to his satisfaction, they are "willing to barter land for legitimacy. Legitimacy is in very short supply." Just how much legitimacy of the Unites States depends on the route of its security barrier built on its Mexican border - with no terrorist threat?

There is no doubt in Sfard's mind that Israel is oppressor in regard to the Arab population of Judea and Samaria. Never mind that this oppression has resulted in the immense growth in the Arabs' longevity, education, and living standard that is higher than in the surrounding Arab countries. Never mind that no military would be needed in Judea and Samaria, or in entire Israel for that matter, if there were no constant and thousands of times realized threat of death from the Arab population. The threat that is maintained by the incessant antisemitic and anti-Israel brain-washing that Arabs undergo from the beginning of their lives. 

As to the question I asked Sfard, I still do not know the answer. The phenomenon of a Jew crossing to the enemy side, while rare, is not new, however. It used to require apostasy, and the apostate could become an inquisitor burning Jews at stake, or a blood libeler, inciting lethal pogroms. Nothing as dramatic as apostasy is needed nowadays, when religion has largely become for many merely a slightly embarrassing tradition - at least, among the progressive intelligentsia. Today's secular apostates merely defend those who attack the Jewish state's security measures that not only protect Israelis - Jews and Arabs alike - but also obviate the need for military action and casualties that would inevitably result from it, if terror acts were not prevented. Sfard did not see it that way, all the lynchings of random Jewish victims who fell into Arab hands, terrorist suicidal massacres and other murders notwithstanding. A possible motivation used to be the apostate's conflict with the community, or the desire to break from the persecuted minority. These days, all it takes is to become a "Human Rights" lawyer like Sfard. In Israel, this ecological niche is unique enough to avoid competition with other lawyers, kept out of it by their conscience. In that rarefied niche, even a mediocrity can earn his bread and butter - perhaps, with caviar and international travel on top.

I do not know why this annual lecture cycle has been renamed from The Martin Luther King Lecture to Lawyering For Social Change, but I think Dr. King would be happy that his name is no longer associated with it. The "social change" it stands for is not consistent with his vision of Israel, so dramatically different from Sfard's: "Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.” Peace through security is exactly the human right that Sfard the "Human Rights Lawyer" denies his compatriots and, ultimately, his Arab clients as well. As for the Pitt law students, they were denied truth, and for their $25 education credits for this “lawyering” lecture received not education, but anti-Israel ideological indoctrination. 

_____________________

*The published version of this entry is in  The Jewish Chronicle, titled "Michael Sfard: 'I Don't Care About History'". There is also a prior entry in this blog, related to Sfard, "Champion Of Displacement".
** “Can the Occupier Provide Justice? The Dilemmas of Human Rights Litigation in Israeli Courts,”  7 p.m. March 28 in the Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 3900 Forbes Ave..

The pretty sounds of Islam

Defending Islam is a job that is dark but far from lonely. While the whole world observes if not feels the effects of Islam daily - in the continuous warfare Islam wages against it, - apologists of Islam are legion. Moreover, the intended audience for Islamic propaganda is generally quite willing to accept it, happily providing it with high pulpits of the leading newspapers and magazines, and amplifying that propaganda with its own progressive and "tolerant" scholarly commentary. This is understandable - after all, if the world refused to deal with terror-producing Muslim countries, it would have to also refuse another product of theirs, without which it simply cannot survive. Oil, you know. Then there is so-called religious tolerance , which is a definitive sign of civilization and progress. Because Islam is known as a religion, it is immune from the just criticism and accusations that could target its very existence. Thus Muslim propaganda dutifully continues to be fed to the "well-informed" Western audience, which then builds its political sympathies on this information platform. Meanwhile, politicians that are drawn from the same progressive and educated audience know that it's best for them to be in tune with their constituency, and increasingly are on the side of Islam. We now have a US president who, having received Muslim education during his formative childhood years, refers to the call to Muslim prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset”. Perhaps it is worth remembering that this sound contains the same words as heard by Danny Pearl and others who shared his fate, before they were beheaded by other lovers of that sound, - "Allahu Akbar!" and the statement of acceptance of Muhammad as the Apostle of Allah. Barack Obama recites those words perfectly and knows their meaning well. It does not matter to what political orientation the willing or inadvertent propagandists of Islam belong - whether it's George "the Religion of Peace" W. Bush or the naive leftist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times - as long as the job is done, by omission or commission. 

The printed word from the sources accepted as serious and progressive, such as The New York Times, is perceived by the "educated" public like Pravda was by faithful Communists in the Soviet Union - unquestioningly, immediately becoming part of the foundational axiom. Our omniscient intelligentsia like to think of themselves as independent but follow the media's call like Pied Piper's - pick yourself the appropriate group of his listeners. Both their ignorance about Islam and disinformation are used by the Muslim propagandists. In this disinformation, the apologists of Islam employ deceptive cliches that, thanks to the progressive media, never get tired. Recently I wrote about one that was used by the Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison. To counter Bill Maher's characterization of the Koran as a "hate-filled book" (forward the video to 2:26), Ellison quoted a wonderful passage from that book, "anyone who takes the life, it's as if he killed the whole world" (Koran 5:32). What he failed to say, of course, was that the Koran gives that passage only as a quote from what the Jews were "decreed", nowhere indicating that this decree pertains to the Muslims. The Koran mentions this decree only to accuse the Jews of violating it, among their other transgressions ("And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors"), to justify the Koranic hate toward the Jews, unambiguous and lethal. It is remarkable that hardly any other Koranic quote is usually given to illustrate Islam's pacifism - so hard is it to find expressions of tolerance in the "religion of peace". One possible and oft-repeated exception is "There is no compulsion in religion", which is quoted without mentioning, of course, that it was abrogated by verses like "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war" (Koran 9:5). The journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, kidnapped and forced to convert under pain of death, can testify to the veracity of "no compulsion".

No wonder that the same Jewish decree, lifted by Muhammad from somebody familiar with the Talmud, was cited by the 9/11 mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in his recent article, in which he tries to bring the reader to understanding that Islam is just another Abrahamic religion. That decree, having nothing to do with Islam and negated by the whole history of Muslim conquest, is the only support he could muster to his "fact ... that true adherence to Islam at its essence is as peaceful as true adherence to Christianity". These propagandist lies were published by another beacon of the Western capitalist freedom - The Wall Street Journal, which could not stay behind the progress. Now that we know what "true" adherence to Islam is, we only need to enlighten the miriad of Muslim clerics of the highest authority who swear by violent jihad as the primary virtue of a Muslim. Rauf has as much right to call Islam "Abrahamic" as a thief who stole an heirloom to claim his membership in the family he robbed. Muhammad used the Biblical names he learned from Jews and Christians who had lived in Arabia before he mass-murdered and expelled them. Pathetically plagiarizing the Scriptures while accusing the Jews and Christians in intentionally perverting Allah's word (Koran 5:13-15, 41), he distorted the meaning of and relations between those names, conflating Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the wife of Moses, and Haman with pharaoh. In contrast to the Pentateuch, the Koran never names Abraham's son in the sacrifice story, which results in the Muslims' belief that it was Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabs, not Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews. Islam's founder and "perfect man" whose example is to be followed, Muhammad could do no wrong - whether he "married" a 6 year-old girl (Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64), murdered his critics, ordered genocide of the Jews, or reneged on treaties at a concocted pretext. 

As for Islam being a religion, it is telling how imam Rauf describes himself in the article's footnote as "the founder of Cordoba Initiative, an independent, multifaith and multinational project that works to improve Muslim-West relations." Usually, in expressions like that "Muslim-West", a certain symmetry is implied: "Jewish-Christian", "capitalist-communist", "East-West". The "West", to be sure, is not a religion - but so is "Muslim", a totalitarian political ideology counter to the "West" democracy, with the goal of making Muslim both the West and the East, conquering Rome of the West as it did Rome of the East, Constantinople, reconquering Cordoba and Andalus, killing and subjugating the disbelievers - truly a "multinational" project. "True adherence to Islam", Rauf says, "would end terrorist attacks" - and he is right. Of course it would, as that true adherence, from the Muslim standpoint, is when the entire world adheres, and terrorism is needed no longer. When everybody hears the call to Muslim prayer as pretty, and the sounds of other faiths are heard no more, as they are in Saudi Arabia, the land of Allah's Apostle. 

9-11: Tears, no fury...

On the first anniversary of 9-11, I wrote, "On this day, a year after the fanatic Muslim—predominantly Saudi—attack on the American soil, it seems that the affect expressed by the administration as well as the American media has largely been that of teary frustration and pain, not unlike the 'why me?' feelings experienced and expressed by anybody in grief. There has been little anger, let alone fury, in words or facial expressions of the nation’s leadership; instead, there is a lot of solemnity, quivering lips, and—especially initially—calls for reconciliation with Islam that was translated by the President as 'peace' instead of 'submission'. The mighty thunder of the only great power left on Earth, which all terrorists in the world—from Arafat who donated his poisonous blood to injured Americans, to Saudi financiers of terror—braced themselves for, has never come. The mosques, planted in the US and everywhere in the world by the Saudis to teach hatred in preparation for the whole world to become Dar-ul-Islam, the 'abode of Islam', are still churning out brain-washed fanatics ready to die while killing unnumbered 'kaffirs' regardless of their age and sex. Arafat has just recently become undesired in the administration’s eyes, but still remains the 'leader of the Palestinian people' instead of being recategorized into the oldest living terror chieftain. The 'Palestinian' state is still discussed as a desirable goal, while the majority of its potential citizens support continued murder of innocent Israelis. The administration is still trying to convince Arabs that they should support an attack against Iraq, while even its European continental allies, faithful to their familiar tactic of appeasing the murderer, deny their support. And American airlines, ready to risk passengers’ lives in fear of offending “Middle Eastern” guests, waste the effort of their security personnel, incompetent as it is, on checking the underwear of grandmothers in wheelchairs for explosive nail clippers they could hide there.”


What has changed since? Arafat's poisonous blood has eventually killed him. The portrait of that brigand now decorates the office of his comrade-in-arms, Abbas, who is going to ask the UN for recognizing "Palestine" - a nonexistent state with an imaginary president: Abbas's "term", for what it's worth, ended in January 2009. Another US president has just declared now, "I’ve made it clear that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam." Never mind that this statement is irrelevant grandiloquence or worse - a chronic delusion: if militant Islam is at war with the United States as it is, so is the United States with Islam, however unwillingly. It would indeed make sense to say, "We do not want to be at war...", but it would make no difference. 


Yes, it is difficult to identify the enemy: the wars have been between nation-states for a long time. Those wars are "normal", I guess. It seems insane and abnormally regressive to speak in terms of religious wars. In fact, however, there is no need for it, nor would it be correct. This is not a religious war not only because the United States does not represent a religion in conflict with another. It is not religious because there is nothing in Islam relevant to a religion that concerns the non-Muslim world. Does it really matter to anybody but devout Muslims that they believe in having a deity by the name of Allah, who used to have three daughters  - until, that is, that information in the Koran was abrogated in the Koran? What is of concern to the non-Muslim world is Islam as a political ideology: the Koranic claim on the entire Earth and humanity, to be brought into submission to Islam. By force and terror or by dawa, Islamic indoctrination. 


There is nothing truly unfamiliar in this sort of war that is neither religious nor against a nation-state. The Western world has never come into a direct conflict with Soviet Communism - only with its numerous and weakly connected proxies who would kick their Soviet advisers out as soon as they were sure of attaining necessary power. Nonetheless, if it were a direct conflict, it would be an ideological one. The war with Nazism was an ideological war: even though the Germans were a "master race", that notion included, in their eyes, at least the Nordic nations. Also, their allies - Nordic or not - would benefit from Nazi victories. The Nazis were not worried much about the Semitic origins of the Arabs, or the Slavic origins of their SS divisions "Galizien" and "Handschar", organized from Orthodox Ukranians, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks - the latter with the able help of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, Arafat's relative. What mattered to Germans was those troops' zeal in exterminating the Jews, the Gypsies, and the enemies of Nazism. It's easy to forget that it was indeed Nazism and fascism that the world fought against in that war - because it is so much easier to identify the noun, Germany, and forget the adjective, Nazi, or just mean it as synonymous with Germans at the time but not now. Obviously, what's changed is not the nation - inasmuch as nations have continuity. It is the ideology that has dramatically changed. Even though we may conveniently think that it was Germany that was defeated, it was, in fact, Nazism, which had taken possession of the minds of Germans, like Islam has taken possession of the minds of Arabs and many others.


It is the we-are-not-at-war-with-Islam-religion-of-peace attitude of a teary Bush that first portended today's situation, when, after Taliban has been defeated, it is still on the verge of return, when Saddam's Iraq has become Iran's Iraq with a Koran-based constitution, when "friendly" dictators are being replaced with Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey of Ataturk has become Turkey of a new Islamic sultan, Erdogan. It is a bit like leaving Mein Kampf as the foundation of social thought in Germany after Nazi defeat. The same intentional blindness is expressed in Obama's nonsense that "Those who attacked us on 9/11 wanted to drive a wedge between the United States and the world." What about those who attacked England on 7/7 and Spain on 3/11?  Are they also about "wedges"? Or are all these terror attacks by Muslims different, as the world perceives terror against Israel? With Israel, it's always Israel's fault - it's all "occupation", even though it's the same terror that tortured Israel before 1967 and any "occupation". What is so hard for the West to understand in that it's not because of "occupation", land, or any particular grievances? It would be good if it was: if we were the reason, we could and should be able remove it. No, we are not, and we can't. It is because Islam has finally gained sufficient strength to resume violent jihad bequeathed to Muslims by Muhammad, or Allah if you will: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war" (Koran 9:5). Not enough strength to wage a war using armies and battles, but enough to blow up trains and restaurants, demolish buildings symbolic of non-Muslim might with thousands of the infidels inside, and shoot point-blank and cut throats of Jewish babies. It is cynical if not downright dishonest of the US president to claim that "people across the Middle East and North Africa are showing that the surest path to justice and dignity is the moral force of nonviolence". Those unnamed "people", aka Arabs, have shown nothing of the kind: ask Israeli diplomats who have just fled from Cairo, or Lara Logan, raped in the Tahrir square, a symbol of Egyptian newly acquired "freedom".  It is still tears for those who perished on 9/11 - not fury at those who murdered them - that dominate the 9/11 affect. America's post-9/11 wars, delimited by time and not by victories, are indeed not with Islam. That's why they will not prevent terror, a stratagem in the war Islam wages on humanity.

"First we take Manhattan...."

Trying to defend indefensible, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof has become telepathic. He has penetrated the mind of al-Awlaki, and discovered that the Muslim terrorist "must be cheering the Republicans on as they demagogue against the mosque and feed into his terror recruitment narrative" (I guess, Harry Reid is a closet Republican).  This is in Kristof's blog, and a similar connection - between Muslim terrorists and Republicans - is made in his op-ed in the paper. To prove to the non-telepathic part of the population that building that Islamic center will be "force for moderation", he tells us that we already have strip clubs and liquor stores nearby, that Crusaders burnt Jews while singing, and that in Pakistan he knows a woman who fears of honor killing by her Christian brothers. Irrelevant as all that is, she is fortunately alive though, in contrast to so many Muslim women killed by their Muslim fathers, brothers and husbands. We do not know how Mr. Kristof knows of those brotherly intentions, but with his telepathic talents there is no need to doubt his knowledge. Instead, we should confidently rely on his "hunch... that the violence in the Islamic world has less to do with the Koran or Islam than with culture, youth bulges in the population, and the marginalization of women." Now, it is surely common knowledge, isn't it, that "the Koran or Islam" cannot be part of culture, and marginalization of women has nothing to do with Islam. What can Islam have in common with culture when it regulates every single moment of a believer's life? There is simply no room left for culture. Projecting his powerful telepathic probe into the feeble but evil minds of his true enemies, Kristof finds that "many Republicans are prepared to bolster the Al Qaeda narrative, and undermine the brave forces within Islam pushing for moderation." Those must be the very same forces that bravely want to rub this moderation into the wounds of those whose loved ones were murdered by the cultureless 9-11 shahids.

Arguably, the objections of even a single survivor of a victim of the 9-11 Muslim terror should be sufficient to stop the construction, if the Golden Rule still means anything in our culture. In Mr. Kristof's bright mind's eyes, however, such sensitivity to these survivors' anguish would be "just like [that of] the Saudi officials who ban churches, and even confiscate Bibles". Now, it is common knowledge, isn't it, that banning churches in Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with Islam, even though that is done in accordance with Muhammad's prohibition of any faith but Islam in the land of Arabs. Mr. Kristof knows better. The brave Mr. Kristof even brought a Bible with him on his trip there - not because he needed it, but "to see what would happen". His courage, however, went only so far and did not extend to showing it to the customs officer, who did not check our hero's belongings. Nothing happened. Not sure what this proves, but Mr. Kristof got his pointless experiment that may get the customs guy fired if his superiors read the Times, and nobody will be able to bring any Bibles there anymore. Even the curious Mr. Kristof, who thinks that Saudis do that "out of sensitivity to local feelings", not because of the Saudi law. See, the law is Shariah, Islamic, which does not quite fit into Mr. Kristof's "hunches".

But the most interesting piece of Mr. Kristof's convoluted logic is related to Israel's wishful thinking regarding Hamas: "Israeli officials thought that if Gazans became more religious, they would spend their time praying rather than firing guns." The rationale for that, as Kristof recognizes, was the idea that "Palestinian violence has roots outside of Islam". Obviously, but imperceptibly to Kristof who still thinks that to be true, history has shown that to be a grievous mistake. The religious Hamas-led Gazans chant "Allahu Akbar" that surely has nothing to do with Islam, sending rockets to Israeli kindergartens.

I could never understand what that Leonard Cohen song exactly was about. It does not say it clearly, and I am not telepathic. Then again, maybe it's contagious - now, I think, I have a "hunch". With people like Kristof forming the public's opinion, any terrorist can sing, "You know the way to stop me / But you don't have the discipline." Kristof did not have to exercise his telepathy. Like he, Mahmud Zahar of Hamas approves of the 9-11 mosque and thinks that "Muslims have to build everywhere".  As I said before, why not right where the Twin Towers stood? It'll show them...  moderation, Hamas/Kristof style.

An obscure folio, evolution, and Islam

Rabbi Hillel first introduced the Golden Rule - in its negative and feasible form, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow" (Jesus, many years later, reportedly put the rule in its positive form). R. Hillel considered this main rule of social behavior to be as important as to summarize the entirety of the Torah. He also famously said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" (Pirke Avot, 1:14). As befits a true genius, these sayings have universal applicability. That is probably why they also apply to the half-selfish topic of this entry. It concerns a monograph, The Science, Treatment, and Prevention of Antisocial Behaviors (Vol. 2), published six years ago. The monograph is not advertised - there is not even an editorial review on Amazon.com (and it was not originally sold there) - because, as the publisher once explained to me, the book does not target general audience but is intended for policy makers, experts, etc. I am not sure whether this is the best policy even for the alleged target audience. The book ranks 3,163,794 in Amazon.com sales, which likely means that it sells less than one copy a year - and there should definitely be more interested  experts than that.

How do I know? Why should I worry? And how R. Hillel's maxims are relevant? It is obvious that antisociality contradicts the Golden Rule. As for Hillel's triad, I contributed a chapter to that book, and it's about time another couple of people found out about it. Admittedly, it is not popular science, but it is not a trigonometry textbook either, and some information in it may be of interest to an educated reader. 

The chapter (Chapter 4) has a vague, or rather too generic, title, Evolution, Genes, and Environment - Neurobiological Outcomes. It does deal, however briefly, with all these areas as pertains to antisocial behavior. What the title does not immediately reflect, however, is one of the sections, which is germane to the general direction of this blog. The section is titled Logic of Suicide, Mass Murder, and Altruism. In addition to the general issues relating evolution to these titular phenomena (it is not straightforward and requires some discourse, for instance, how suicide can be "beneficial" from the evolutionary standpoint), it includes a discussion of Muslim "martyrdom". The discussion addresses the role of the uniquely human function of the human brain, metaphoric thinking, truly amalgamated in the Muslim tradition with reality, in simulating reproductive benefits in the acts of self-destruction. Considering that this amalgamation results in the suspension of the powerful self-preservation instinct in shahids, the murderous "martyrs", it is not surprising that regular human sympathies are suspended as well. That point is highlighted by the scarcely noted in the media but telling story of how schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia were forced to die in fire by the "religious" police: the girls were pushed back into their burning school because they did not have a chance to put on their abayas, black robes worn over dresses. The text explains sex differences in suicidal terrorism and the mechanisms of xenophobic indoctrination. It compares the eusocial behavior of Hymenoptera insects (such as bees) and the boundaries of altruism in humans, relaxed to malignancy by both Islamic metaphors and material gains of the families of suicidal murderers. Some attention is paid to the contribution of the media in poisoning the information space with lethal misinformation that cannot in principle be remedied by truth even if it were to follow, which it seldom does. 

Despite the rather grim picture arising from this discussion, the conclusion is cautiously positive: "the history of cultural evolution leaves some hopes for the future of sociality. In particular, one of the trends that has expressed itself in the religious codes corresponds to the extension of inclusive fitness to the group, tribe, state and alliance levels. Torah in Leviticus (19:18) commands, “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; I am the Lord”—the word “neighbor” covers all humans (Hertz, 1980). The same metaphor that allows inclusive fitness [the summary effect of all factors that promote or hinder reproduction of the individual's genes] to cover non-relatives in aggression and underlies xenophobia, can thus be turned into its [truly] prosocial form. This creates an opportunity for the fulfillment of Darwin's dream of humans' extending their “social instincts and sympathies” to “all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him,” and then to “the men of all nations and races” (The Descent of Man). We may soon find out whether this conclusion is too optimistic and a much darker evolutionary outcome is on the horizon.

Peaceful bandits

As Debkafile reports, Erdogan may further escalate provocations against Israel, involving Turkish military, after the Turkey-supported attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of terrorist Gaza succeeded in having several of suicidal attackers¹ on Israeli commandos killed. It is hard to imagine that Turkey, a member of NATO, would contemplate not only supporting any escalation, but even that "Free Gaza" flotilla, without permission from the US - if not explicit, then inferred from the actions of the US government. The latest such action is the US-sponsored attack on the supposed Israeli nuclear defense. One only hopes that Americans' dislike for Bush, which has brought a nobody, an impostor, to power, will not be sufficient to justify Obama's lethal retreat, appeasement of fascists and help to terrorists. Since Obama is not a madman to act against himself, his policy expresses whom he wants to see as friends and enemies. Perhaps the continued ascendance of the barbarians, which so obviously follows Obama's policy of punishing friends and rewarding enemies, will open eyes and bring about political change  in the US, and in the world. The price for eye-opening, however, is already too high and is going to grow higher.

1. see MEMRI video: "Gaza-Based Yemeni Professor Abd Al-Fatah Nu'man: As Much as the Heroes on the Flotilla Want to Reach Gaza, The Option of Martyrdom Is More Desirable to Them"