Labels: Campaign 2012, Conservatives, Roger Simon, Victor Davis Hanson
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:30 AM
1 comments
You will recall that during the 2008 US Presidential campaign, the Los Angeles Times had, but would not release, a tape of former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi's going away party when he left Chicago for Bir Zeit on the Hudson. It is alleged that at said party, much hostility toward Israel was expressed, and that one Barack Hussein Obama - then a State Senator from Illinois - was present and a part of the festivities.Perhaps because I live in L.A. and know the LAT well, have written for it on occasion, I am far less optimistic than Stanley that such a revelation would occur. Though better written than the lefty blog, the L.A. Times is barely three degrees to the right of the Daily Kos and many times more stodgy. The Times admits mistakes less often than Markos Moulitsas. And I suspect their editorial board would rather see the return of the McNamara Brothers, who dynamited the Times building in 1910, than do anything that might possibly harm the reelection of Barack Obama.What could go wrong?
This is true even though the L.A. Times seems to have had little problem with Wikileaks or in disseminating their leaked information. It’s not just the Palin emails. Blabbing is fine as long as it’s on the proper side.
Meanwhile, Peter Wallsten, the man who received the clandestine tape from a mysterious donor and wrote the original attenuated LAT article on the Khalidi party (“Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama“), has moved on from the Los Angeles Times to the Wall Street Journal and, now, the Washington Post and he isn’t talking. (At least to me. I called him some time back, but the moment I broached the subject he essentially hung up.) These days he’s cheerleading for Obama at the WaPo with “daring” articles like “White House seeks to connect with young voters” with smiling photos of you-know-who.
No, in all probability, the only way we will ever see the tape or read even a redacted version of the transcript is courtesy of one of the better second story men on the West Coast or a retired KGB agent. (The Mossad need not apply. They will be blamed anyway.)
This is a shame because events are conspiring to make the production of this tape increasingly important, if only to clear the air. Among the soi-disant activists backing the second flotilla currently revving up to bring supposedly needed supplies to allegedly impoverished Gaza is one Rashid Khalidi. He has been raising money in support of one of the vessels with a familiar name:This year’s American vessel, named The Audacity of Hope after US President Barack Obama’s best-selling book, is being organized by an American group called “US Boat to Gaza.”
Obama links to the Audacity do not end there, however. Prof. Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a friend from Obama’s time in Chicago, is among the supporters of an appeal launched by the group last week.
“We must raise at least $370,000 in the next month,” a statement on US Boat to Gaza’s Web site read indicating it doesn’t have the money needed to sail yet.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Los Angeles Times, Peter Wallsten, Rashid Khalidi, Roger Simon, Sarah Palin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:26 AM
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Is Roger Simon being an Islamophobe (whatever that means)? Or is he just being a realist?Of course, at the beginning of the events in Egypt I was trying to be, optimistic that is. Democracy is generally a good thing and Mubarak a bad thing — simple (almost simple-minded) as those statements are. I picked up my Skype phone and made a call to an acquaintance of mine, the estimable blogger Sandmonkey (Mahmoud Salem), who was in the thick of things in Cairo. The interview I recorded with him made the rounds of the Internet and contained such information as the Muslim Brotherhood was not that heavily involved in the demonstrations and that both sides in Egypt were accusing the other of being under the influence of The Jews.My own view is that Roger is just being a realist, but read the whole thing and decide for yourselves.
The latter did not surprise me. The former proved to be dead wrong. Several days later the Islamist al-Qaradawi was able to muster two million supporters in Tahrir Square, the largest demonstration, I believe, so far. The Al-Jazeera commentator banned Google-activist Wael Ghonim from the stage, as I imagine you know.
Since that time, I have been trying to reach Sandmonkey because I was disappointed to learn he too has now appeared to have joined the rabid pack seeking a rapid renegotiation of the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel. I thought my friend Mahmoud would have had the maturity and sophistication to realize that the Jews are the least of Egypt’s problems. In fact, it is obviously the reverse — the more Egyptians fixate on Israel, the less they fix themselves. Indeed I suspect Mahmoud knows that. But you have to go along to get along — or something like that.
Not that the Europeans are any better. Indeed, they may be worse. The recent revelations of corruption at the vaunted London School of Economics — administrators enriching themselves from Gaddafi, who has always been nothing more or less than a mass-murdering sociopath — is again, like the obsession of both sides of the Egypt crisis with the Jews, as totally unsurprising as it is typical of the European intellectual classes. Also typical is the etiology of the LSE affair. It is not just greed and a cozying up to another tyrannical dictator/energy source; it is also, once again, a covert attack on the Jews under the guise of anti-Zionism, for it was nowhere more than at LSE that endless chastisement of Israel, accompanied by calls for economic sanctions and educational boycotts, was and is a constant drumbeat.
Although you will never see it on the pages of the Guardian or the Independent, the cause of that drumbeat, that need to hold Israel to a higher standard than any other nation, could also not be more obvious. It is titanic (and justifiable) guilt over the Holocaust. What Europe did to the Jews, marching innocent human beings into gas chambers, is arguably the most monstrous crime in recorded history. Europeans desperately want something to be wrong with the Jews to exonerate themselves, to some degree anyway, for that unconscionably reprehensible act.
Which leads me back to your recent letter. You would like us to be patient with the Islamic world because it took the West so long to reach even a modicum of civilized maturity.
Well, you’ve got a point there. We are, after all, not so many years from Robespierre and the Reign of Terror, not to mention that Holocaust and the Gulag and other similar atrocities. We should give the Islamic world another couple of centuries to right itself.
The questions are: Can we and Will it?
Labels: Egyptian regime change, European anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Islam, Roger Simon, Sandmonkey
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:34 PM
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Last hour, I posted Roger Simon's interview with the Sandmonkey.UPDATE 8:50 PMThursday, 3 Feb 2011
I don't know how to start writing this. I have been battling fatigue for not sleeping properly for the past 10 days, moving from one's friend house to another friend's house, almost never spending a night in my home, facing a very well funded and well organized ruthless regime that views me as nothing but an annoying bug that its time to squash will come. The situation here is bleak to say the least.
It didn't start out that way. On Tuesday Jan 25 it all started peacefully, and against all odds, we succeeded to gather hundreds of thousands and get them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by Anti-Riot Police who are using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us. We managed to break all of their barricades and situated ourselves in Tahrir. The government responded by shutting down all cell communication in Tahrir square, a move which purpose was understood later when after midnight they went in with all of their might and attacked the protesters and evacuated the Square. The next day we were back at it again, and the day after. Then came Friday and we braved their communication blackout, their thugs, their tear gas and their bullets and we retook the square. We have been fighting to keep it ever since.
That night the government announced a military curfew, which kept getting shorter by the day, until it became from 8 am to 3 pm. People couldn't go to work, gas was running out quickly and so were essential goods and money, since the banks were not allowed to operate and people were not able to collect their salary. The internet continued to be blocked, which affected all businesses in Egypt and will cause an economic meltdown the moment they allow the banks to operate again. We were being collectively punished for daring to say that we deserve democracy and rights, and to keep it up, they withdrew the police, and then sent them out dressed as civilians to terrorize our neighborhoods. I was shot at twice that day, one of which with a semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we the people took joy in pummeling. The government announced that all prisons were breached, and that the prisoners somehow managed to get weapons and do nothing but randomly attack people. One day we had organized thugs in uniforms firing at us and the next day they disappeared and were replaced by organized thugs without uniforms firing at us. Somehow the people never made the connection.
Despite it all, we braved it. We believed we are doing what's right and were encouraged by all those around us who couldn't believe what was happening to their country. What he did galvanized the people, and on Tuesday, despite shutting down all major roads leading into Cairo, we managed to get over 2 million protesters in Cairo alone and 3 million all over Egypt to come out and demand Mubarak's departure. Those are people who stood up to the regime's ruthlessness and anger and declared that they were free, and were refusing to live in the Mubarak dictatorship for one more day. That night, he showed up on TV, and gave a very emotional speech about how he intends to step down at the end of his term and how he wants to die in Egypt, the country he loved and served. To me, and to everyone else at the protests this wasn't nearly enough, for we wanted him gone now. Others started asking that we give him a chance, and that change takes time and other such poppycock. Hell, some people and family members cried when they saw his speech. People felt sorry for him for failing to be our dictator for the rest of his life and inheriting us to his Son. It was an amalgam of Stockholm syndrome coupled with slave mentality in a malevolent combination that we never saw before. And the Regime capitalized on it today.
Today, they brought back the internet, and started having people calling on TV and writing on facebook on how they support Mubarak and his call for stability and peacefull change in 8 months. They hung on to the words of the newly appointed government would never harm the protesters, whom they believe to be good patriotic youth who have a few bad apples amongst them. We started getting calls asking people to stop protesting because "we got what we wanted" and "we need the country to start working again". People were complaining that they miss their lives. That they miss going out at night, and ordering Home Delivery. That they need us to stop so they can resume whatever existence they had before all of this. All was forgiven, the past week never happened and it's time for Unity under Mubarak's rule right now.
To all of those people I say: NEVER! I am sorry that your lives and businesses are disrupted, but this wasn't caused by the Protesters. The Protesters aren't the ones who shut down the internet that has paralyzed your businesses and banks: The government did. The Protesters weren't the ones who initiated the military curfew that limited your movement and allowed goods to disappear off market shelves and gas to disappear: The government did. The Protesters weren't the ones who ordered the police to withdraw and claimed the prisons were breached and unleashed thugs that terrorized your neighborhoods: The government did. The same government that you wish to give a second chance to, as if 30 years of dictatorship and utter failure in every sector of government wasn't enough for you. The Slaves were ready to forgive their master, and blame his cruelty on those who dared to defy him in order to ensure a better Egypt for all of its citizens and their children. After all, he gave us his word, and it's not like he ever broke his promises for reform before or anything.
Then Mubarak made his move and showed them what useful idiots they all were.
You watched on TV as "Pro-Mubarak Protesters" – thugs who were paid money by NDP members by admission of High NDP officials- started attacking the peaceful unarmed protesters in Tahrir square. They attacked them with sticks, threw stones at them, brought in men riding horses and camels- in what must be the most surreal scene ever shown on TV- and carrying whips to beat up the protesters. And then the Bullets started getting fired and Molotov cocktails started getting thrown at the Anti-Mubarak Protesters as the Army standing idly by, allowing it all to happen and not doing anything about it. Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and there was no help sent by ambulances. The Police never showed up to stop those attacking because the ones who were captured by the Anti-mubarak people had police ID's on them. They were the police and they were there to shoot and kill people and even tried to set the Egyptian Museum on Fire. The Aim was clear: Use the clashes as pretext to ban such demonstrations under pretexts of concern for public safety and order, and to prevent disunity amongst the people of Egypt. But their plans ultimately failed, by those resilient brave souls who wouldn't give up the ground they freed of Egypt, no matter how many live bullets or firebombs were hurled at them. They know, like we all do, that this regime no longer cares to put on a moderate mask. That they have shown their true nature. That Mubarak will never step down, and that he would rather burn Egypt to the ground than even contemplate that possibility.
In the meantime, State-owned and affiliated TV channels were showing coverage of Peaceful Mubarak Protests all over Egypt and showing recorded footage of Tahrir Square protest from the night before and claiming it's the situation there at the moment. Hundreds of calls by public figures and actors started calling the channels saying that they are with Mubarak, and that he is our Father and we should support him on the road to democracy. A veiled girl with a blurred face went on Mehwer TV claiming to have received funding by Americans to go to the US and took courses on how to bring down the Egyptian government through protests which were taught by Jews. She claimed that AlJazeera is lying, and that the only people in Tahrir square now were Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. State TV started issuing statements on how the people arrested Israelis all over Cairo engaged in creating mayhem and causing chaos. For those of you who are counting this is an American-Israeli-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian-Hamas conspiracy. Imagine that. And MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT IT. I recall telling a friend of mine that the only good thing about what happened today was that it made clear to us who were the idiots amongst our friends. Now we know.
Now, just in case this isn't clear: This protest is not one made or sustained by the Muslim Brotherhood, it's one that had people from all social classes and religious background in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood only showed up on Tuesday, and even then they were not the majority of people there by a long shot. We tolerated them there since we won't say no to fellow Egyptians who wanted to stand with us, but neither the Muslims Brotherhood not any of the Opposition leaders have the ability to turn out one tenth of the numbers of Protesters that were in Tahrir on Tuesday. This is a revolution without leaders. Three Million individuals choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive. Imagine that.
The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one till we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay "because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people". This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can't. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can't allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful. If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn't over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak's gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.
Labels: Egyptian regime change, Roger Simon, Sandmonkey
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:06 PM
1 comments
Here's an interview that Roger Simon conducted with the Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey, whose blog I have linked many times on this blog. It's a sound-only Skype call, and you can listen in.Labels: Egyptian regime change, Roger Simon, Sandmonkey
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:05 PM
5 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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