Political Insider: With Olmert Going, What Peace Process?

Here's one of the more puzzling headlines of the month, right off the AP ticker:  "US Trying to salvage Gains in Mideast Talks."

According to the story, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called top Israel and Palestinian negotiators to Washington this week to "preserve modest momentum" in the U.S.-backed effort to get a deal - any kind of deal, please - by the end of the year and the end of President George W. Bush's term.

That leads one to wonder: what, exactly, is the administration's definition of "momentum?"  And will such whimsical headlines continue in the wake of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Wednesday announcement that he will step down after the Kadima primaries?

Well, probably; on Wednesday the Washington Post wrote that Olmert's decision to step down and set off an electoral frenzy to replace him is "raising doubts about prospects for peace with the Palestinians and Syria."

Oh really?  What tipped them off?

Even before Olmert announced he was toast, the peace talks had taken on an almost surrealistic quality. All the major players had a stake in preserving the illusion that a deal was still possible; none had the credibility or the will to actually make that happen.

President George W. Bush continues to say Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking is a strong priority, but he has done next to nothing to back up a secretary of state who took him at his word.  And if there's a democratic - small "d" - leader with more credibility problems in the world, it's President Bush.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to be touted as the "moderate" answer to the problem of a radicalized Palestinian population, but more and more he looks like a leader with no followers, impotent in the face of Hamas inroads in the West Bank.

So what happens now is a holding action.

Rice and Co. will still go through the motions of pushing peace efforts, but you could probably count on one hand the number of people who believe the effort is serious. 

The Bush administration is deep into lame duck status; the next president will have much more immediate and close-to-home problems on his hands than a stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, starting with a sour economy and wobbly financial institutions, as well as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So while Sen. Barack Obama promises an accelerated peace push if he is elected, don't place any bets on that actually happening.

Israel will go about the messy and protracted business of picking a new leader, and with former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looking like a pretty good bet to remove the "former" from his title, the next Israeli government could have a very different view of peacemaking.  Olmert may say he can produce some kind of agreement before he leaves office in September, but it's hard to picture how.

Bush, Olmert and Abbas will talk about the need for a continuing peace process, but their real goals will be to get through the next six to nine months without too much new bloodshed and without any more erosion to public support for the idea of a negotiated peace.

Given factors like Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, that won't be easy.

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Route 17: A Brief History of God's Mailbox

An interesting footnote to Obama's letter in the Kotel is not only how relatively new the custom is, beginning in the 1700s, but how dramatically the concept of the Kotel has changed in that time period.

For much of history, the rabbinic sense was that the Kotel had Temple-level sanctity and therefore the Wall shouldn't even be touched by human hands (as the Temple Mount may not be trod or touched), let alone touched by anyone's scraps of paper, even if written prayer.

The Kotel was considered a site of mourning for the Temple's destruction, and the tradition of first-time visitors to the "Wailing Wall" was to tear clothes and recite sorrowful Psalms, not write personal letters. (One can't imagine a politician being asked to rip his expensive suit but that was, for many years, far more of a tradition than writing personal notes).

The 18th century was marked by a rise in chasidic-kabbalist influence emphasizing the ability of the dead to intercede with God on behalf of the living. Chasidim would send written petitions not only to holy men but even to their graves (as Chabad chasidim most famously still do), and the holiest "grave" of all, the ruins of the Temple, became a place for similar written petitions. The chasidic custom was to leave the letters at the grave, like the custom of leaving a stone, a physical remnant of the supplicant, and so notes were left at the Kotel, as well.

The Chabad custom is to rip the notes (to better ensure privacy, as clearly was not the case for Obama at the Kotel), and eventually burn the notes - turning the physical paper into spiritual, as the smoke heavenly ascends.

The rabbinic authorities at the Wall (who gather the notes out of the wall twice a year, before Rosh Hashana and Passover) bury the accumulated notes, as if a worn-out Torah or prayer book, acknowledging the notes' sanctity, even if the notes were (like Obama's) not written by a Jew, not written in Hebrew, and do not contain God's formal name.

When the Jews were driven from Jerusalem in 1948, the Kotel was still "the Wailing Wall." A place for notes, yes, but mourning, too. Then the Wall and its grounds lay fallow. A historical change was in the offing and the area needed an abstinece, of sorts, such as the time a bride and groom don't see each other in the days before their wedding.

The Wall was liberated in the Six-Day War and it felt like a wedding. It was neo-messianic liberation, with the shofar being blown on the Temple Mount itself.

Almost no one felt the need to "wail" or mourn anymore, not with the first return of Jewish sovereignty over the Wall since the Romans. The custom of stuffing notes and letters into the Wall resumed, but with a 180-degree twist. The Wall became a place not of mourning, for most, but of answered prayers, a symbol of renewal and survival.

The lesson? Don't let anyone tell you that Jews "always did things this way." Jews think they always left notes at the Wall. They didn't. And the Jews who thought it proper to mourn, they thought that was as "authentic" as it could get. And it wasn't that either.

The only thing that stayed the same was that God is always listening and He always reads His mail.

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Route 17: Happy Birthday, Reuter / by Jonathan Mark

Everyone one of us who cares about news is familiar with Reuters. But until I heard "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR the other day, it never occurred to me that there was a man, Paul Reuter, who started it all, let alone that he was the son of a rabbi who converted to Christianity. You can hear Garrison Keillor tell you about the man by clicking here:

Here's the Writer's Almanac text: (July 21. It's the birthday of) Paul Reuter-born Israel Beer Josaphat, the son of a rabbi-in Kassel, Germany (1816). After finishing school, he worked at a bank, where he came into contact with a renowned physicist who worked to apply math and science theory to the practical uses of electricity. He also experimented with the telegraph, and young Josaphat was greatly enthused by the prospects of the new technology.

When Josaphat was 29, he moved to England and converted to      Christianity. He changed his name to Paul Julius Reuter, and one week after his baptism in London, he got married at the same Lutheran church where he was baptized. He moved back to Germany, where he worked at a publishing company. He published controversial political pamphlets, which caught the undesirable attention of German government leaders, and Reuter had to flee to Paris.

He earned a living as a translator for a news service agency. Then he moved back to Germany and started a financial news agency that relied on carrier pigeons. At the time, there was a short gap in the telegraphic lines between Berlin and Paris. In order to deliver stock prices and other economic news, pigeons were used between Aachen (the end of the German telegraph lines) and Brussels, Belgium, where the lines picked up and ran to Paris. It was four times as fast to send the messages by pigeon than by the post train. When this missing telegraph link was completed a few years later, his pigeon carrier service-which had a fleet of more than 200 birds-went  out of business.

He went back to London and set up an office close to the London Stock Exchange. From here, he used the telegraph to transmit financial news, mostly stock market quotes, to and from Paris. For several years, he tried to persuade newspapers that they could greatly benefit from his services. In 1858, The London Times and others subscribed, and Reuter's news agency became an integral part of European media.

Reuters was the first in Europe to report the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which they found out about less than two weeks after it occurred. An American agent of Reuters hired a tugboat to catch up to the mail boat that had already left the U.S. and was heading across the Atlantic, and then he tossed onto the ship a canister with the news. When the ship was off the coast of Ireland 12 days after it left America, Paul Reuter came out to meet it. He telegraphed news of the Lincoln's assassination to London. The agency was more than a week ahead of its European competitors in reporting the news.

In an 1883 memo, he wrote about what type of news should be reported over the wires: "fires, explosions, floods, inundations, railway accidents, destructive storms, earthquakes, shipwrecks attended with loss of life, accidents to war vessels and to mail steamers, street riots of a grave character, disturbances arising from strikes, duels between and suicides of persons of note, social or political, and murders of a sensational or atrocious character." He further instructed "that the bare facts be first telegraphed with the utmost promptitude, and as soon as possible afterwards a descriptive account, proportionate to the gravity of the incident." His instructions in this memo formed a sort of industry standard for future news media.

Reuter shares a birthday with Ernest Hemingway. More on him by clicking the link above.

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A Rabbi's World: A Little Reality Check
 



There are few more banal ways to open any kind of blog, article or sermon about Israel than to say "These past few days have been extraordinarily difficult ones for Israel."  But- that having been said- these past few days have indeed been extraordinarily difficult ones for Israel.


The painful reality of the death of both Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, coupled with the necessary release of a horrific terrorist and child-killer, Samir Kuntar, has unleashed a torrent of emotion both here and in Israel.  Grief, mixed with anger and frustration, is so real and immediate as to be a palpable, immanent presence.  From where I sit, the celebration that greeted Kuntar's return to Lebanon only served to highlight the sharp distinction that is to be drawn between a culture that glorifies violence and death, and one that will go to remarkable lengths to pursue peace.  I am only grateful to be a part of the latter; Baruch She'asani Yisrael!


Where I live in Queens, the weekend editions of all the major newspapers in Israel are available for purchase on Friday, and they constitute my Friday night required reading.  Ma'ariv, Ha'Aretz, and pretty much anything I can get my hands on enable me to get a real-time sense of what Israel and Israelis are feeling and thinking. 


Needless to say, there's been a lot of soul-searching in those papers about Israel's willingness to release such a notorious terrorist, even for the sake of redeeming the bodies of two soldiers.  Many have pointed with pride to the IDF doctrine of lo mafkirim bashetach- the inviolable principle of not leaving a soldier behind in the field, regardless of condition.  For every soldier and reservist, the lengths that Israel has gone to to bring Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser home are an important reminder that, when they go into the field of battle, all of Israel and its government go with them.  It is no small comfort as you are called on to risk your life.


But, of course, there are also those who think that the imbalance of the exchange compromises Israel's security, and further complicates the delicate negotiations to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, who still languishes in Gaza.


This is an important debate, and both views have merit.  Thank God that Israel is a country where such debate is part and parcel of the body politic, and one is free to passionately agree or disagree with a decision of the government without fearing reprisal.


But as I see it, where this debate does not belong is here in the Diaspora.  It is a discussion for Israel and her citizens, which, no matter how passionately we might identify with Israel, most of us are not.  And as long as we are not, and we live here and not there, who are we to offer judgment on what the right thing is for Israel to do in a painful, no-win situation like this one?


Not far from where I live in Forest Hills, in the Jewishly dense neighborhoods of central Queens, I occasionally see windows that proudly display banners with some of the more ubiquitous slogans of Israeli politics.  One in particular that has always caught my attention is Lo Zazzim MehaGolan- We are not moving from the Golan Heights!  Every time I see it, I can't help thinking to myself "Hey, you're not moving from Jewel Avenue… how can you make claim to have what to say about the Golan Heights?"


I have three children who are of Israeli army age more or less, and a fourth who will be in a few short years.  As long as my major decisions and theirs are about how they might be able to afford living on the Upper West Side, which most young Jews their age consider to be Yerushalayim shel Mattah anyway, or which gap year program in Israel to go to before they come back to their dorms and homes here, I don't see any of us having the right to offer Israel the benefit of our comfortable armchair wisdom.  On some religious policy issues, yes.  Those issues affect us directly.  On security issues like this, no.  It's not our security that is at risk.


My whole birth family lives in Israel.  My sister and her family made aliyah almost thirty years ago, and her children have all fought (and still do) in the IDF.  One nephew-in-law, about whom I've written in this paper, nearly lost his life in the second Lebanon War.  My parents made aliyah about six years ago.  All of this may grant me some added measure of empathy with what goes on there, along with my own familiarity with Israel from the years when I lived there.  But empathy is not citizenship, and neither I nor my children are putting our lives on the line.  Crossing Queens Boulevard is about as dangerous as it gets for me. 


It is, indeed, a good time for a reality check.

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Political Insider: Another Take on Hagee Conference





Last week the Political Insider reported on the curious fact that leaders of Christians United for Israel had decided to make most of their "Washington Summit" this week off limits to the press.

Apparently some members of the Fourth Estate didn't get the memo. In today's Washington Post the irrepressible Dana Milbank has a tart item about what happened to reporters who showed up to hear Pastor John Hagee, whose controversial comments and writing may be the reason CUFI didn't want reporters snooping around.

Read Milbank's story here.

In the meantime, the Political Insider is heading to the Washington Convention Center for the group's gala Night to Honor Israel, which will be open to the press -- we think. 


And there should be plenty of press in attendance, thanks in part to the keynote address by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who this week was handed a petition with some 42,000 signatures urging him not to address the Christian Zionist group.  The petition was organized by J Street, the new pro-peace process lobby and political action committee which is also no fan of Hagee, who in the past has opposed land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians.

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Political Insider: Big News During Obama Israel Visit?  Don't Count On it





Pro-peace process groups are hoping Sen. Barack Obama will use this week's trip to the Middle East, which will include stops in Jerusalem and Ramallah and talks with top Israeli and Palestinian leaders, to lay out more explicitly how he will intensify U.S. efforts to mediate the conflict if he wins in November.

They're almost certain to be disappointed. If all goes according to plan, the Obama trip will generate some front page stories and lots of pictures of him with world leaders, but no controversy. And when it comes to the Arab- Israeli conflict, almost any substantive statement ignites controversy.

Officially, the  presumptive Democratic nominee is going to the region to listen and to introduce himself to Mideast leaders.

What this trip is really about is laying the groundwork to rebut GOP charges that Obama is a foreign policy naïf ready to wave the white flag of surrender around the world.

It is about refining his public stance and image on Iraq and Afghanistan,  potentially deadly minefields for both presidential contenders.

It is about looking presidential and statesmanlike, a critical step in changing the perception among some voters that he is too young and too inexperienced for the job, a view Republican strategists are working feverishly to solidify.

It's about generating positive photo ops and bolstering the impression he can interact with world leaders as an equal.

Against that backdrop, the Israel-Palestinian issue will be relatively easy for the Democratic contender.

Look for the broadest possible statements about his unwavering commitment to Israel's security, the horrors of terrorism, his determination to help the parties come to an agreement but also about how peace can't be imposed from the outside.

He will seek to reassure nervous Israel-focused voters that he connects with Israel and its leaders on a gut level, without offering details that the Republicans will use to stir up those anxieties.

Obama's Jewish advisers aren't stupid; they know that if he went to the region and laid out a detailed plan for Palestinian statehood identical to that of President Bush - still touted by Republicans as the best-ever pro-Israel president - the Republicans and the Jewish right would savage him as a mortal danger to the Jewish state. ("What do you mean, he supports a viable Palestinian state?"  "He thinks the status of Jerusalem should be negotiated? He must be anti-Israel.")

Look for mild sympathy for the Palestinians but nothing too specific; no doubt he will also speak sternly to Palestinian leaders about the need to do more to curb terrorism and end incitement.   Obama will issue strong warnings about Iran, but with an emphasis on sanctions and diplomacy, not war.

Look for Obama to be extraordinarily well briefed when speaking about anything connected to Israel and its efforts to find a route to peace.  That's why former Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross is tagging along.  Ross, associated with the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, knows both the intricacies of Middle East peacemaking and the even more complicated realities of Jewish politics.

But while the Jewish press and pro-Israel groups across the political spectrum will understandably focus on what he says about Israel and its neighbors, those issues are not Obama's top priorities as he takes his campaign to the global stage.

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Route 17:  Hey George, Tell Me About Obama




Barack Hashem Obama's followers still don't get it, beside showing themselves to be as humorless as Satmar and easily the most paranoid and thin-skinned political operators since Richard Nixon.


Some of the Obama people fancy him as a new Kennedy but both John and Bobby Kennedy's campaigns sparkled with self-deprecating humor. The Kennedy camp never took such an elitist offense to jokes and cartoons the way the Obama people have jumped up and down taking offense over the  cartoon on The New Yorker's cover. Of course, by the logic of the Obamaphiles, I can't say what was on the cover because that might add to the smear every bit as the cartoon itself added to the smear. So I silence myself.


The contempt and elitism that Obama showed for religious working-class Americans in his "bitter" remarks during the Pennsylvania primary is echoed in the contempt for Americans that his followers, in and out of the media, exhibit when they insist that most Americans are too stupid to "get" The New Yorker cartoon.


Americans have a great tradition of mass populist political humor, from late night talk shows to newspaper cartoons (from Herblock to Doonesbury) to stand-up comedians that have skewered, smeared and exaggerated politicians in a distorting fun-house mirror from Lincoln to both Roosevelts to Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. Somehow the Republic survived. Suddenly when a cartoon is about Obama, Americans are too stupid to understand the incredibly difficult concept of a political cartoon.


When, during a time of black-chasidic tension (I won't say black-Jewish tension because few secular Jews acted like it was their fight, only their embarrassment) The New Yorker had a similar cover cartoon, equally circulated, about a chasidic man smooching with a black woman. Plenty of chasidim took offense but you didn't see liberal Jews lining up to say Americans were too stupid to get it, only that chasidim ought to lighten up and see the brilliance. Only when the satire is in the vicinity of Obama do liberal Jews think Americans need George to explain about the rabbits.


Two of the most self-flattering fantasies of liberal American Jews is that there is such a thing as a black-Jewish alliance and that Jews have a sense of humor, a great tradition of comedy. The black-Jewish alliance, based on Freedom Riders in a flicker of time in the early 1960s, has become as much of an old man's fantasy, as much of a one-sided alliance as the Jewish-Spanish alliance in the 1930s when Communist Jews in New York signed up for the Lincoln Brigade in Spanish civil war. Now we see that the great Jewish tradition of satire and wisecracks is just as meaningless and antiquated, rendered unfit for service in the Jewish sycophantic phalanx that has been set up to protect the "Negro" from what is made out to be a satirical lynching.


In the Obama administration prepare to see enemy lists of the sort that Nixon had. Except that Nixon's enemy list was comprised of real people with real names who really hated Nixon. The Obama enemy list is being comprised of anonymous e-mails and even liberal and creative people at The New Yorker who actually like Obama. And of course, the infantry troops for Obama's enemy list will be the progressives, those who love the First Amendment until the other guy - even a liberal cartoonist -- gets protected by it, too.


The Obama people, the professional offense-takers, really see themselves as the good guys, and many of them are good guys. But it is ironic, if irony is still permitted, that after these good guys hurled around the word "fascist" to describe every conservative policy of the last 40 years, we'll be seeing some very real repression in the next four, from attempts to shut down conservative talk radio, to making Reichstag fires out of anonymous, unsourced e-mails. All in the name of progress, in the name of being liberal.


George Carlin once said that fascism won't come to America in jackboots, it will come wearing a smiley face. A smiley face that doesn't like cartoons.

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A Rabbi's World:  Hearing God in Music

I've just returned from spending the past two days at the 19th annual North American Jewish Choral Festival in upstate New York. I am an officer of the Zamir Choral Foundation, which sponsors the festival, and spending time there is something I look forward to every year.  This year, as always, I am so proud of what it has accomplished.

This festival- the only one of its kind in the Jewish world- brings together many hundreds of accomplished and aspiring singers of Jewish choral music from around North America, and a few from Israel as well, to sing and celebrate the best of Jewish music.  In a world where Carlebach melodies are reverentially considered high art, this festival uses the vehicle of choral music to remind the Jewish world that there is culture beyond the easily singable melody.  Not that there's anything wrong with singable melodies- I love them like the next person- but there's more and better music out there, part of our cultural legacy.  And this festival is a resounding reminder of just how incredibly beautiful that music can be.

The festival has a little of everything.  There are pick-up choirs that rehearse together for three days and then perform on the last day.  There are master classes with great singers and conductors, and performances by some of the most prominent performers of our time.  This year, Theodore Bikel entertained us all with his amazing Yiddish and Hebrew repertoire, and some French, too!   There are premieres of new music commissioned by the Foundation, and, of course, there are also chances to network with other like-minded people and to create new friendships.  At this year's program, Dr. Ruth Westheimer received a special award for her devotion to the Jewish cultural arts and support of the Zamir Choral Foundation and its work.  All of this is the brainchild of my dear friend Matthew Lazar, a musical giant whose incredible energy has transformed a "nice dream" into an overpowering reality. 

But I think what consistently amazes me the most about the festival is its transdenominational appeal. 

In a Jewish world so fractionalized and contentious that sometimes even simple conversation becomes impossible between Jews of different ideological stripes, the Choral Festival uses the medium of music to transcend senseless hatred and find common ground. 

There are religious services of every stripe available, and I would wager that other than a place like the GA, this is one of the few venues in the Jewish world where Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews not only attend the same conference, but actually interact and learn to enjoy each other's company and passion for Jewish life.  

Both literally and figuratively, they make beautiful music together.  In harmony.  Jewish texts come alive in ways that speak to all participants without concern for turf or legitimacy.  In ensemble music, no one note matters more than another, for all of them are a part of a whole that is simply incomplete without all the others. 

Block that metaphor, you must be saying… but really, the metaphor is exactly and entirely what today's Jewish world needs.  Music provides us all with a common vocabulary that transcends words.  Soaring harmonies set to sacred texts and Hebrew folk songs can take you places that you never dreamed of.  It's all the power of great music, with the power of Judaism factored in.

Matthew Lazar does what no one else in the Jewish world does today, fusing his passion for great music with an unequaled devotion to the Jewish people, the State of Israel, and Judaism itself.  And he does it with style- great style and class.  Both he and the festival are precious gifts to us all.

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Route 17: Number One With A Bullet

When Jews talk dictators, we're talking the 1930s and '40s, the great heyday of dictators. But now the great dictator action has shifted from Europe to the African, Asian and Arab world - yes, that "world" before whom we should feel ashamed because of how we treat prisoners and conduct foreign policy.

The good news is that clarity of language is ascendant. After years in which journalists preferred to call dictators by the honorarium of  "chairman" or  "president," let alone Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (Yasser Arafat), the word "dictator" is making a comeback,  particularly by the antics of Zimbabwe's Bobby Mugabe.

Slate recently asked, "Who's Africa's Worst Dictator?"  Not Mugabe. They fingered Teodor Obiang of Equitorial Guinea.

Then (June 30) Times columnist Nicholas Kristof blogged, "Who's The World's Worst Dictator?" . He nominates North Korea's Kim Jong-il, Sudan's Omar Al-Bashir, and Than Shwe of Burma. Kudos to Kristof for calling Burma by it's rightful name - Burma - not Myanmar.

Myanmar is only used by progressives so progressive they live in fear that somebody, somewhere, might say Barack Hashem Obama's ineffable middle name. Burma's name was changed to Myanmar by its military dictatorship. To call Burma "Myanmar" is like calling Patty Hearst "Tania," her nom de guerre while kidnapped.

Earlier this year, Parade, the Sunday newspaper supplement, ran what has become an annual list, "The World's Worst Dictators,"  a nice  interactive feature. (Alert: Parade calls Burma…)

Parade's ranking:

1: Kim Jong-il, North Korea
2: Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan
3: Than Shwe, Myanmar
4: King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia
5: Hu Jintao, China
6: Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
7: Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran
8: Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan
9: Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan
10: Isayas Afewerki, Eritrea
11: Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya;
12: Bashar al-Assad, Syria;
13: Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea;
14: King Mswati III, Swaziland;
15: Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia; 
16: Aleksandr Lukashenka, Belarus;
17: Hosni Mubarak, Egypt;
18: Raul Castro, Cuba;
19: Choummaly Sayasone, Laos;
20: Idriss Deby, Chad.

Next time you ask, "What would the world say?" look over that list. That's what the world looks like.

Unlike Slate, Parade has Obiang only at number 13. Israel is doing all it can to sign a treaty with number 12. The Bush administration really likes number 4, and the recipient of the most American foreign aid (after Israel) is number 17. Meanwhile, I'm constantly getting e-mails offering me banking transactions from the land of number 20.

Of course, "it can't happen here." But on a Sunday in 1917, with our boys fighting "over there," you could have read this headline in The New York Times Sunday magazine with your morning coffee: "NEED OF DICTATOR URGED BY HARDING; Republican Senator from Ohio Favors Absolute Power for President, Even If He Is a Democrat."

The article begins: "What the United States needs and what it must have if it is to win the war is a supreme dictator with sole control of and sole responsibility for every phase of war activity, and this today means practically every phase of Government."

Only until the war is over, added Harding.

"My own conviction," said the senator, "is that the world is aflame and we have a republic to save."

In fairness to Harding, he was talking in 1917, the dead ball era, before the great sluggers of the 1930s redefined the genre. But it is nevertheless remarkable that Harding's calling for a dictatorship did not stop the American public from electing him chief executive in 1920.

I would have voted for him, after Wilson got us into that horrific, wasteful war, with its thousands of dead soldiers, and his delusion of "making the world safe for democracy," that solved nothing except creating more terrorists, like Germany's Corporal Hitler.

What really would have been important to me in 1920 was that Harding was "good for  the Jews." When he was running for president,  he condemned the "barbarity" of European pogroms and anti-Semitism "in many lands, even sometimes in our own." The Jews, said Harding, have "commanded my admiration by their genius, industry, endurance, patience and persistence, the virtue and devotion…"

Okay, you can stop, I'm flattered! I can hear the Jewish leaders saying, Harding really is a friend of the Jews!

And he supported Zionism! Harding said he hoped that Jews "will be restored to their historic national home," surely he must have been thinking of Hebron and a united Jerusalem, "and there enter into a new and yet greater phase of their contribution to the advance of humanity."

Teapot Dome? What's Shabbos without a teapot?

So what if he had a middle name? He was the best friend Israel ever had.

Until Coolidge.

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Political insider:  J Street Poll: Jews Eager for Compromise but Wary on Jerusalem; Good but not Great News for Obama

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Political Insider: Hagee Pro-Israel Conference to Bar Reporters

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Route 17: No Big Bad Wolf In This Housing Crisis

The housing crisis we keep hearing about is being reported almost entirely from the vantage point of speculators and sellers. But if you are a young couple starting out in life, seeking to buy your first apartment or home, why is it a crisis if the housing market is in a recession, prices dive and you can suddenly afford to buy?

The great Jewish renaissance on the Upper West Side that began in the 1960s and '70s was, to a large  extent, the result of a depression in the West Side housing market. Young people, fresh out of college and graduate school; artists; writers; academics; young marrieds; and civic servants were able to move into large apartments on West End Avenue and its side streets at very low rents. These were the people who formed the core of Lincoln Square Synagogue in its heyday, who gave Shlomo Carlebach the congregation he deserved on 79th Street, who revived Anschei Chesed, who developed what was arguably the most creative, religiously and intellectually stimulating Jewish neighborhood in New York City in the last century or any other century.

What we're seeing in New York City is not a crisis but a correction, the first price declines in a decade. According to a recent article in The Sun, "The slowdown spells trouble for next year," said an appraiser for Prudential Douglas Elliman. "Unless the credit crunch lessens… it will have the effect of  tempering prices."

Whose "trouble" is that? If you're selling, it's trouble. If you're buying, it would have been trouble if prices kept rising as dramatically as they had  been.

Again, according to date acquired by The Sun, "the average sales price of condominiums and cooperative apartments fell between 1% and 3% versus last quarter, but jumped between 25% and 36% from a year ago." That inflation was a crisis for buyers. Who cried for them?

According to the Associated Press, the National Association of Realtors reported that in May, "Sales went up 2 percent… The median sales price, however, fell to $208,600, down 6.3 percent from a year ago. That was the fifth biggest year-over-year price decline in records that go back to 1999."

That's right, based on records that go all the way back, um, less than a decade. "Fifth biggest" in a decade seems to be just about right, Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold. Exactly how would this be a crisis in a non-election year?

The Wall Street Journal noted (June 26) that Rep. Barney Frank, author of Congress's $300 billion housing bailout, said, "Having Bank of America buy up Countrywide is a good thing for America."

The Democrat from Massachusetts may be right about Bank of America's better management, said the Journal's editors, "but there's no doubt his legislation is very good for both Countrywide and B-of-A. Thanks to this bailout that is now on the Senate floor, taxpayers could end up on the hook for more than $25 billion in loans originated by Countrywide."

Whose crisis is that, except those whose taxes will pay for the bailout?

Before you cry for those apartment owners in Manhattan who might be suffering through a housing crisis that might shave a few thousand off a price in the high six-figures, even seven-figures, check out this piece in the Times to see what co-ops were being sold for just thirty years ago.

The Upper West Side became one of the greatest Jewish neighborhoods ever -- pre-war Europe and modern Israel included - because rents were in free fall. The Zionist revival got going because JNF "blue box" nickels and dimes were able to buy up what is now the State of Israel at depressed prices. Every crisis has its blessing. To twist the Grateful Dead, one man's touch of grey is another's silver lining.

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Political Insider:  McKinney Gets Green Party Nod, Pro-Israel Activists Yawn

The Green Party has apparently decided to accelerate its plunge toward political irrelevance.

Last week the party, most remembered for its spoiler role in 2000, nominated former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) as its presidential candidate.

McKinney, you will recall, lost her House seat in 2002, in part because pro-Israel campaign givers, angered by her persistent criticism of Israel, helped finance her Democratic opponent. Her father, speaking on local television, explained on a local television station why she lost:  the "J-E-W-S," he spelled out, adding to the former lawmaker's reputation with Jewish voters.

McKinney regained her seat two years later - but lost it again in a 2006 primary.

The response from the pro-Israel world to her nomination as the Green Party standard bearer? Mostly, a collective yawn. Not a single organization sent out a press release or made a statement criticizing the nomination, mostly because almost nobody believes it will have any significant impact on the election. 

The Greens have come a long way from their initial focus on issues like the environment and energy, analysts say, and American voters don't seem much interested.

While the party, with perennial candidate Ralph Nader at the top of the ticket, snagged about 2.7 percent of the vote in 2000, it didn't even get to .2 percent four years later as many Green voters apparently decided that their earlier vote - with a little help from the Supreme Court --  had just ensured the Republican victory.

The Greens apparently hope McKinney will win a substantial portion of the African American vote, but that seems pure fantasy with Sen. Barack Obama heading up the Democratic ticket.

And Nader, who long ago revived memories of Harold Stassen, is running once again, this time as an independent, thus promising a split in the miniscule Green vote.

Anybody care to guess how much of the Jewish vote McKinney will capture in November?

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A Rabbi's World:  In Appreciation of Jewish Early Childhood Education

More than twenty years ago, when my now twenty-five-year-old son was in Nursery School, I learned how little I understood about how the minds of young children work.

Instead of walking him to school one rainy morning, I decided to drive.  We were sitting at a red light when I noticed that the vehicle in front of me was a police van, and there was a horse inside.  "Hillel," I said to my son.  "Look at that horse in the police van!"  There was a long pause, after which my son said, half to himself, "I wonder what the horse did…"

It was at that remarkable moment that I realized how much more than "child care" quality early childhood education is.  And as I progressed as a parent and grew as a rabbi as well, I came to understand how precious the contribution is that quality Jewish early childhood education makes in the developing Jewish identity of a young child.

When I watch parents coming to the orientation that opens each year of our Jewish Early Childhood program, I am always keenly aware that, for many of them, it's the first time they're setting foot in a synagogue since their bar/bat mitzvah.  Ambivalence abounds.  Some very powerful rooting instinct pulls them back, but it's not an easy step for them, and their mixed feelings about their own Jewishness are written on their faces.

Their children, however, have no such ambivalence, and it is the magic of great Jewish early childhood educators that makes their first encounters with Judaism and Jewish living magical and enriching.  At the most basic level, they learn to associate the very act of walking into a synagogue building with a pleasurable experience. What a concept!  But of course they learn much more.  They learn the joy of anticipating Shabbat's arrival, and how even Friday feels special because of it.  They learn the wonderful rituals that make Jewish holidays special and unique, the importance of tzedakah, the special place of Israel in the life of a Jew, and maybe- just maybe- by learning how to play nicely with each other, they can extrapolate the importance of Jews learning to play and work nicely with each other as well.

Our Nursery School director of fourteen years, a wonderful woman named Adrienne Cohen, just retired following the completion of this past school year.  As I stood with her at a dinner in her honor, I tried to come up with the right words to pay her tribute.  I think I spoke nicely, but I realized as I was speaking that I couldn't really say enough.  There's really no adequate way to acknowledge the contribution of a Jewish educator whose life's work has been to teach our youngest children how to love being Jewish.

Undoing the cynicism and alienation that some adult Jews bring with them to synagogue life is a terribly difficult challenge.  I hope it's as difficult to lose the good feelings that are produced by a great Jewish Early Childhood program! 

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Route 17: Potiphar's Wife & The Spiritual

History is written by the winners, and so is the Torah. Korach is depicted as a bad guy, when an honest reading of the last three-and-a-half books of the Torah suggest that Moses was a singularly uninspiring leader, a less poetic speaker than most any prophet that followed, and just begging for a challenge from Korach or anyone else. The real tragedy is that a more suitable challenger to Moses was surely intimidated into silence by the heavy-handed obliteration of Korach, but surely God knows what He's doing.

I trust the Torah's version of things, and that it always works out for the best, but what would I have thought at the time? As much as I would have been sinfully sympathetic to Korach, if I were around in Egypt, during the final chapters of Bereshit, I'd have told Joseph to sleep with Potiphar's wife. Looking at the story, Joseph owes nothing to Mr. Potiphar, his slave master. I'd have pointed out to Joseph that Judah's relationship with Tamar was considerably more ethically challenged than sleeping with Potiphar's wife, and yet the child from Judah and Tamar is destined to be Moshiach. Abraham's convincing Sarah to pretend they weren't married when they went into Egypt was also more unseemly than the goings on between Joseph and Lady Potiphar, and that incident doesn't hold Abraham back from his elite place in our hearts and history.

I figure Joseph never have had a girlfriend before being sold into slavery -- and here was Potiphar's wife. If God didn't excommunicate and disinherit the slave-selling brothers from the Children of Israel, then how woud it be worse, exactly what crime would Joseph be committing that could threaten his Biblical standing? 

If a depressed slave, abandoned by God's chosen family, could find a few hours of affection with Madame Potiphar; if young, rejected Joseph could experience even the illusion of love (if not the real thing) then, really, what would be the harm?

There's even a chasidic interpretation that absolves Potiphar's wife; she had a vision of who Joseph was to become, and that her children were to be a part of it, she wanted to be a part of it. Though her vision was not understood entirely correctly, as visions are prone to misinterpretation, she was on to something that was more holy than not. 

There was no apparent reason for Joseph to say no. Instead, Joseph became the first person in the written chronicles of Judaism to walk away from something that could have been personally satisfying simply because he was convinced it was wrong; simply because it would be wrong in God's eyes, even if no other eyes would have known.

What had me thinking of Joseph's slave days was an item on NPR's "Speaking of Faith," the most consistently intelligent venue for religious conversation on the national airwaves. The host, Krista Tippett, was re-running an old interview with the late Joe Carter, the great singer of black spirituals, about the religious sensibility of the spiritual (there are some 5,000 spirituals in the canon) born of the American slave experience, often filtered through biblical themes and verses in Psalms.

"The thing we find," Joe said of the slaves, "is that in the midst of all of the most horrible pain, some of these powerful individuals lived transcendent, shining lives. They were able to be loving and forgiving in the midst of it all. Mammy was taking care of master's baby. She could have smothered that child. But she loved the child like it was her own child, because there was something in her faith that said, 'You're supposed to be loving, you're supposed to be kind, you're supposed to be forgiving - and there's no excuse if you're not.'"

Like Joseph, the Mammy owed nothing to anyone, and yet - by all Southern accounts - did the right thing by white children, simply because, like Joseph, there was an awareness of what would be the right thing in God's eyes, even if no other eyes were watching.

You can catch the interview with Carter here .

Some other worthwhile "Speaking of Faith" programs available online are a pair of conversations with Yossi Klein Halevi,here and here , and a conversation with JTS Chancellor Arnold Eisen on Abraham Joshua Heschel, here.

I'd love to hear a conversation with Joseph and Potiphar's wife.

Their chapter in Bereshit is as incomplete, unconvincing and inconclusive as any in the Holy Book, perhaps because their chapter was unfinished. There's a mystical tradition that various star-crossed lovers in Tanach had successful conclusions later in history. Dina and Shechem were reincarnated as Cosbi and Zimri, only to fail again as lovers, returning yet again as Rabbi Akiva and the kindly wife of a Roman general, Turnus Rufus, as you can see here,   centuries after their earlier fiascos.

Joseph and Potiphar's wife may not yet have written their final chapter either, several millennia later. It's why we tell the stories of the Torah in the present tense. Because their stories, like ours, are never over. Even after we   seem to be gone, the story is never over.

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Political Insider:  Good News for McCain -- or Polling Mush?

Here's a political shocker for you: Jews who say religion is "an important part of my daily life" are more likely to vote for Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, than those who say religion isn't as important.

How do you spell "Duh?"

This nugget was part of a Gallup poll released this week that shows the same dynamic working in the broader population, but even more so.

According to Gallup,  only 39 percent of  Jews  surveyed say religion is important to them, far behind the national average of 66 percent. That minority of Jewish is evenly divided between McCain and Sen. Barack Obama supporters, both at 45 percent.

The majority of Jews who say religion is not that important - 61 percent - break strongly for Obama,  68-26 percent.

Among voters in general,  50 percent of those who say religion is important chose McCain, 40 percent Obama; those on the other side of the religious divide break for Obama 55-36 percent.

So what do the data on presidential preference and level of religious observance mean? Statistically, that's a hard one to answer.

Numerous studies have indicated that as levels of observance go up, voters tend to be more conservative and more Republican, and that the same dynamic holds true in the Jewish community, albeit at a lower level.

Nathan Diament, political director for the Orthodox Union, said there are elements of good news in the Gallup data  for both presidential candidates.

"For Sen. McCain, it is indicative that he is doing better among Orthodox or otherwise traditional Jews," he said  "It shows that McCain is at least competitive in this group."

But the data also shows that Obama "still has persuadable voters" among Jews who take their religion seriously.

He said Gallup's definition of what it means to be a religious person leaves something to be desired.

"The problem is that the definition they use of 'observant' is somebody saying religion is 'important' in their life," he said. "That's pretty fuzzy."

University of Florida political scientist Ken Wald, who studies Jewish politics, agreed, calling it a "truly mush question."

Wald  offered an interpretation of the survey much more hopeful for the Democrats.

"Jewish support for Obama is still almost 20 points higher than among Protestants and almost 10 more than among Catholics," he said. "This tells me that Jews will probably continue to vote 25-30 percent more Democratic than the  electorate as a whole."

So extrapolating from that,  if Obama wins half the overall vote in November he could get 75-80 percent of the Jewish vote, bringing him right up there with recent Democratic candidates.

But extrapolation is a risky business - especially months in advance of a volatile election and especially in view of a question on religion that won't win any awards for precision.

Read the poll results here.

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Behind the Headlines:  Mordechai Gafni Is Back

The last time Mordechai Gafni was in the news was two years ago, when the charismatic and controversial rabbi accused of sexual misconduct here and in Israel was dismissed as the rebbe of Bayit Chadash, a spiritual renewal community in Tel Aviv.

Faced with sexual abuse complaints filed with the police in Israel by several women who were former students or employees of Bayit Chadash, Gafni came to the U.S., issued a public statement apologizing to those he had hurt, said he was "sick" and needed treatment, and disappeared.

This was the conclusion of the column I wrote then (June 9, 2006): "In the past, when Gafni said he had made mistakes in his life but that he had done teshuva, some were ready to believe him; others were not. At some point in the future he is sure to reappear, eager to resume his role of spiritual guide and teacher, insisting he has gone through therapy and is cured.

"Will we believe him then?"

Well, Gafni has resurfaced in Salt Lake City, Utah and is insisting that he, not his female accusers, was the victim of the events of two years ago. He has an extensive web site (www.marcgafni.com), which includes not only his teachings and writings on kabbalah and spirituality, but an aggressive defense of his previous actions, complete with a report on the results of a polygraph test he took and which he claims clears him of abuse.

The test indicates that Gafni was engaged in mutual and consensual relationships with the women, he says.

(Gafni, formerly known as Mordechai Winiarz, was ordained by Shlomo Riskin, an Orthodox rabbi, but later evolved into a spiritual guru who wrote and lectured on incorporating Eros into Judaism. At 47, he has been married and divorced three times, and surrounded by accusations of sexual misbehavior his entire adult life.)

Gafni appears to have been embraced by a New Age spiritual community (not Jewish) in Salt Lake City, as evidenced by a lengthy and sympathetic profile in Catalyst, a local magazine focused on "the world's ecological, social and spiritual crises," and to which he has contributed a column called "Spiritually Incorrect."

The profile, written by editor and publisher Greta deJong, portrays him as having saintly qualities but hounded by accusers -- as often happens with "charismatic spiritual leaders," she notes.

Gafni now says that he wrote his public apology for his behavior two years ago under stress, and that the women accusers banded together to destroy his career. He also argues that his chief critics are bloggers who are irresponsible and untrue in their accusations.

On his web site, where he describes himself as "a cutting edge spiritual teacher, author, television personality, mediator, corporate consultant, iconoclast and gentle provocateur," as well as a "Heart Servant," he writes that his primary motto is "Do No Harm."

He has done plenty, though, based on interviews I have had with those once close to him, including two of his former wives, and rabbis and Jewish educators who feel he misrepresented himself to them.

Gafni has always been best at re-inventing himself, and no doubt he will continue to charm, if not seduce, others with his ideas and personality. But with the attention he has received in The Jewish Week and elsewhere, people can no longer say they were unaware of his past.

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Political Insider:  Jesse Helms and the Pro-Israel Divide

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), who died on Friday at the age of 86, was a perfect lightning rod for one of the critical divides in Jewish life.

For many pro-Israel activists, Helms' conversion from staunch foe of their agenda  -- in 1983 he suggested breaking diplomatic relations with Israel because of the war in Lebanon, and he was a consistent foe of foreign aid  - to ardent Likudnik was the stuff of legends and a turning point in pro-Israel politics. 

After Helms traveled to Israel and saw the Zionist light, many pro-Israel leaders came to the belief that their strongest support in the future would come from conservative Republicans with ties to the evangelical movement.

That belief seemed confirmed in 1995 when Helms took over as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a post he used to oppose Clinton administration involvement in the Oslo peace process.

For many liberal Jewish activists, Helms' elevation to iconic status was a symbol of everything they see as wrong with pro-Israel politics today.

Helms, they said, was a fierce foe of all their top priorities, starting with civil rights, hate crimes protections and strict church-state separation. Helms was seen as an unrepentant son of the white southern segregationist system and the most influential supporter of the Christian right in Congress.

It infuriated liberal Jewish groups that the North Carolina lawmaker would be welcomed as a hero by major pro-Israel groups even as he was working effectively to undermine much of the domestic agenda of Jewish groups - and as he opposed the policies of the Israeli government during the Oslo years.

And so it goes. 

Single-issue pro-Israel groups argued that defending Israel should be the top priority of the organized Jewish community, and that in that fight, you ally yourself with whoever can effectively advance that agenda without regard to their views on other issues. 

Multi-issue Jewish activists said that's a dangerous kind of parochialism that undercuts traditional domestic coalitions, alienates a majority of Jews with broader political interests and ultimately strengthens politicians and groups that, while pro-Israel, work against other community priorities.

Jesse Helms, and the chasm between his Jewish admirers and detractors, was the perfect reflection of that divide.

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Route 17:  Cooperstown, Carousels And Torah Arks / By Jonathan Mark

All good Americans, at some point, ought to visit Cooperstown,  a most beautiful village rightfully known for baseball's Hall of Fame, but if you're planning a visit, consider an excursion to Cooperstown's Fenimore Art Museum, about a mile north of the Hall.

This summer, the Fenimore is presenting "Gilded Lions And Jeweled Horses," celebrating the Eastern European Jewish woodcarvers who not only created the classic shul artistry of a previous century but who were the woodcarvers behind many of the classic American carousels.

I'm sorry I didn't get to this exhibit when it was in New York City at the American Folk Art Museum, but the American Folk people put together a terrific online exhibit, right here, that explains and displays the journey of these Jewish woodcarvers from shtetl shuls to Coney Island carousels. Turn up the volume because when the online exhibit gets around to the carousel display there's some fine calliope carousel music that plays along with it.

And click here  to see more on what's going on at the Fenimore.

Suddenly the wide-eyed, nostril-flaring lions carved on an old Aron Kodesh or flanking a shul's Ten Commandments will be seen in a new light, as first cousins to the wide-eyed, nostril-flaring horses and lions that are still running in circles from Rye Playland to the Orange County Fair, just off Route 17.

The Orange County Fair, in Middletown, N.Y. (July 16-27), is the closest cattle-and-carousel traditional large-scale county fair to New York City. A much smaller fair, quaint and worth visiting if you're already in the mountains, is Sullivan County's 129th Grahamsville Little World's Fair, Aug. 15-17.

Rest assured, the Grahamsville Little World's Fair has absolutely nothing to do with the world beyond Grahamsville; nothing to do with anything at all that existed before July or will exist again after August, except in memory.

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A Rabbi's World:  I Can Do That… Can I?

It doesn't happen all that often, but occasionally I do go to funerals where I'm not officiating.  As a professional, I "enjoy," if I can use that word in this context, the opportunity to see how colleagues do what I am so often called upon to do.

Just a few days ago, I attended the funeral of a close friend, and it was one of those instances when I got to sit with friends and pay my respects as a private citizen.  At this particular funeral, the primary eulogy was delivered not by any professional clergy, but rather by the man's son.  An Assistant District Attorney, he obviously had a great deal of experience speaking in public, and I can say without any reservation at all that it was one of the finest eulogies I had ever heard, including those delivered by seasoned clergy.

More and more these days, family members and friends are speaking at the funeral services of their loved ones, to the degree that it has become pretty much the norm.  When I first began the practice of my rabbinate almost thirty years ago, it was relatively rare.  That's not the case today.  There are still instances when I'm the only speaker at a funeral, but it's become the exception as opposed to the rule.

The eulogy I heard earlier this week was the clearest proof that, when it's done by a capable writer and speaker, the people who knew the person who died the best are most certainly the right ones to eulogize him/her.  But I also am obliged to admit that I've sat through some eulogies by family members that made me cringe.  In some rare but memorable instances, sons or siblings have used their eulogies to "work through" issues that have no place being worked out in public.  And since I can't ask people to vet their eulogies with me before they deliver them, either for content or length, I always run the risk of wishing- too late- that I had.

We Jews are not alone in this trend.  It's become very much the norm in Catholic funeral masses as well, and the Church is none too happy about it.  The funeral mass is a sacrament that priests alone can administer, and there is a question as to whether or not lay participation is even allowed, much less a good thing.  We have no such problem in Judaism.  Nothing that I or any rabbi does is a "sacrament."  Any layperson with the appropriate knowledge may do what a rabbi can do- teach a class, deliver a sermon, even officiate at a marriage (although the state would not recognize the marriage as binding).   It's not a question of intruding on a rabbi's space.  The goal at a funeral is to honor the person who died.  In theory, the people who knew him/her best are uniquely positioned to do that.

The only question that I ever have goes to the unanticipated difficulty of standing in front of the casket of your loved one and keeping yourself in good enough shape to actually say what you would want to say in a way that people can hear you.  My friend's son did it like he'd been doing it his whole life, and I was appropriately humbled by his skill.  There's so much talent in the laity that rabbis would do well to embrace!

But it's harder than it looks.

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Political Insider:  Obama Campaign Kicks Off Jewish Leadership Team in NY

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Route 17: The Latest Jerusalem Massacre

I'm as sympathetic as the next guy to the idea of a "united" Jerusalem but I love Jews more than I love Arab neighborhoods and meaningless municipal boundaries that have zero historic validity. It's time to keep those parts of Jerusalem that Jews actually live in and visit, and throw the rest overboard. 

What's the point in having a security fence up and down the West Bank if Israel won't have one in Jerusalem because Israel is more interested in proving a Zionist point about a united Jerusalem than Israel is in saving Jewish lives?

What's the logic in not allowing bloodthirsty Palestinians from Nablus to cross a fence but allowing bloodthirsty Palestinians from East Jerusalem to freely cross the street and perpetuate massacres at the Rav Kook yeshiva in March, and now downtown?

"To our regret the attackers do not cease coming up with new ways to strike at the heart of the Jewish people here in Jerusalem," said Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski.

Hey, mayor, come up with your own "new ways" of dealing with these attacks before Jerusalem turns into Baghdad. Extend the security wall across the Arab neighborhoods where these last two mass murderers came from, and revoke all work permits from those neighborhoods, giving them the status of Nablus. That's their de facto status anyway. If any of them have reason to enter Jewish Jerusalem, make them wait for hour after humiliating hour at checkpoints. It ought to be more humiliating to Zionists, after seven years of rockets, murders, maiming and amputations, that Israel doesn't have a clue how to protect the Jewish people. That's humiliating. The security fence is a clue. Put it up tomorrow in Arab Jerusalem.

If Israel refuses to protect the Jewish people under its flag, than Israel should be man enough to tell tourists to stay home in America, and not send our children to post-graduation programs in a Jerusalem whose politicians refuse to make a distinction between a Jew and a jihadist.

Now some Honesdale Moshava Zionists may say to me, "Hey pal, you ought to keep quiet because you're in America." I say in return, I keep seeing Israelis jump through hoops, risking and losing Jewish lives, because of "pressure from America," because "what will the world say?" Well, I'm part of the world so I'll tell Israel what to do just like everybody else.

I can give a pretty good list of American Jews that were murdered in Israel while Israel was worrying about Condi Rice or Madeline Albright. Those dead American Jews give me the right. When Israel completes its transition from a Jewish State to Canaan, I'll keep quiet. In the meantime, I want to see a wall and I want checkpoints in Jerusalem.

You're worried about the Arab street? Start worrying about the Jewish street.

Will long and humiliating checkpoints make Palestinians more radical? How could you tell? 

And here's a question for you, dear reader: Why don't dead Jews in the street make you more radical?

Let me present two witnesses from the left, B'tselem and Haaretz, radicalized by events.

Many of the most leftist columnists love quoting B'tselem, the self-appointed "information center" for the "occupied territories" when it comes to making Israel look bad. Suddenly, no columnists are quoting B'tselem when B'tselem says this about the lastest mass murder:

"Intentional killing of civilians is a grave breach of international humanitarian law and is considered a war crime that can never be justified, whatever the circumstances may be. The main justification raised by Palestinian organizations for attacks on Israeli civilians is that 'in the struggle to end foreign occupation and achieve independence, all means are legitimate.' This argument is baseless and undermines the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, which requires that civilians remain outside the sphere of hostilities, and therefore stipulates that a distinction must be made between combatants and civilians and that intentional attacks on civilians are prohibited. These rules are part of international customary law and apply to every state, organization, and person. The Palestinian organizations must immediately stop attacks on civilians…. Since the attack was carried out by Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority has the obligation to prosecute the persons responsible for planning and carrying it out."

And this, from Bradley Burston in the leftist Haaretz: "The attack came after the latest in a series of attempts by groups in the states, some of them atheist/anarchist, some of them Muslim, some of them Jewish, to lobby Protestant churches and respected universities to divest from Caterpillar, because the IDF uses its bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes.

"I would like to hear them now. Just once. I would like them to divest from terrorism. Not understand it as the natural outgrowth of the crimes of occupation. For once, I would like my sisters and brothers on the left to be every bit as hard on their comrades the Palestinians for taking a bulldozer and crushing Jews, as they are on Israel for bulldozing homes. Write a letter to Ismail Haniyeh, to Mahmoud Zahar, to Sami Anu Zuhri. Protest in your own communities, for once, calling terrorism what it is. Intentional, brutal, premeditated, immoral. Murder.

"What's a decent person to think when Palestinian groups fall over one another trying to claim the bulldozer attack? … I, for one, would like to ask for proof of what it is that Palestinians really want. I no longer believe that it's as simple as wanting statehood. This is what I don't yet want to admit: that for all these years, in 2008 no less than in 1902, what a critical mass of Palestinians want most, perhaps even more than statehood, may be as simple as the vile thrill [of] seeing Jews dead and gone."

It's time for another wall in Jerusalem, a lifesaving wall that will be every bit as sacred as that other wall in the Old City.

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