Dawn Eden Goldstein, "Was the Pope Wrong to Compare Refugee Centers to Concentration Camps?": Holocaust Trivialization Given a Platform by The New York Times

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On Tuesday, in a speech commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Trump declared, "Today, we mourn, we remember, we pray and we pledge: Never again."

Meanwhile, in a guest New York Times op-ed entitled "Was the Pope Wrong to Compare Refugee Centers to Concentration Camps?" published on Tuesday, Dawn Eden Goldstein sought to rebuff criticism by The American Jewish Committee of Pope Francis's comparisons of migrant and refugee holding centers in Europe with Nazi concentration camps. Goldstein, who tells us that she is "a Jewish convert to Catholicism," declares:

"[A]re parallels between Europe’s treatment of migrants and the Nazis’ treatment of Jews and other persecuted populations during World War II really such a stretch? In late 2015, The Times reported that, while the migrant crisis “is no genocide,” not since the “Jews were rounded up by Nazi Germany have there been as many images coming out of Europe of people locked into trains, babies handed over barbed wire, men in military gear herding large crowds of bedraggled men, women and children.”

The situation today is no less distressing. In January, Moria saw a spate of deaths as tents collapsed under heavy snowfall at the overcrowded camp."

As regards "a spate of deaths," Goldstein provides a link to a January 30, 2017 Reuters article entitled "Third migrant dies in a week in harsh Greek camp conditions" by Karolina Tagaris, which states:

"The third migrant to perish in a week was found dead in his tent on Monday on Greece's Lesbos island, raising alarm about the grim winter conditions in overcrowded camps that critics have denounced as deplorable.

. . . .

The death at the island's Moria camp follows those of a 22-year-old Egyptian and a 46-year-old Syrian who shared a tent and died days apart. Greek media reported they had inhaled fumes from a heater, but authorities would not confirm or deny that."

As regards "tents collapsed," Goldstein provides a link to a January 11, 2017 New York Times article entitled "Wintry Blast in Greece Imperils Refugees in Crowded Camps" by Liz Alderman, where, in a caption above the article it is stated: "Freezing conditions in Europe threaten thousands of refugees and migrants. Four deaths have been attributed to the weather in the last week, according to the United Nations migration agency."

Indeed, the seven deaths in these camps are deplorable and to be regretted, but how can they be compared with the 6,000 Jews who were gassed each day at Auschwitz (not taking into account those murdered each day at the Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka killing centers)? How can they be compared with the some 3,000,000 Jews who died during the Holocaust in Nazi concentration camps from gassing, starvation, disease, shooting and hanging?

Abraham Foxman wrote in a 2014 article entitled "Inappropriate Comparisons Trivialize the Holocaust":

"Now that 69 years have passed since the liberation of Auschwitz, the danger is that an overuse of words — and inapt comparisons — will contribute to a lessening of the true impact and meaning of the Holocaust.

It must be our commitment to remember and to constantly speak out against those who would trivialize, distort or deny the Holocaust and to inoculate the public against trivialization through education."

By giving a platform to Goldstein, The New York Times chose to ignore Foxman's warning.

Karen Heller, "The improbable story of the man who won history’s ‘biggest murder trial’ at Nuremberg": Ben Ferencz, a Five Foot Giant Among Men

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In a Washington Post article entitled "The improbable story of the man who won history’s ‘biggest murder trial’ at Nuremberg," Karen Heller tells us of 96-year-old Ben Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials. Read this article from top to bottom. See the video, too. Thank you, Ms. Heller. God bless you, Mr. Ferencz.

My fervent wish? That President Obama, the author of the unsigned nuclear deal with Iran, which continues to call for the extermination of Israel and sponsors Holocaust cartoon contests, also read this article.

How successful is Obama's unsigned deal with Iran? Well, Supreme Leader Khamenei has just declared:

"In a world where the bullying powers are ruling without the least essence of morality, conscience and humanity and are not shy of invading other countries and massacring innocent people, the development of defensive and offensive industries is quite natural.

. . . .

I insist that (we) are required to avoid negotiating with the US, and experience has proven that instead of understanding, the American are seeking to impose their will in the negotiations, a conspicuous example of which was the recent developments."

Mere rhetoric intended for the Iranian masses? I don't think so. Not after Iran's recent placement of a Russian-made S-300 air defense battery to protect its Fordo nuclear facility. Not after recurrent Iranian harassment of US Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz over the past week.

Meanwhile, in a Reuters article entitled "Exclusive: U.S., others agreed to 'secret' exemptions for Iran after nuclear deal - report," Jonathan Landay writes:

"The United States and its negotiating partners agreed "in secret" to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year's landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a report reviewed by Reuters.

The report is to be published on Thursday by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said the think tank’s president David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and co-author of the report.

. . . .

Among the exemptions were two that allowed Iran to exceed the deal's limits on how much low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep in its nuclear facilities, the report said."

So, Obamacare is in a death spiral, and Obama's unsigned nuclear agreement with Iran is not worth the paper on which it was not written.

What's left of Obama's legacy? Oh, that's right, $20 trillion in unsustainable federal debt.

But not to worry: Hillary or Donald will soon put America back on course ... not.

Chris Cillizza, "What not to say if you're running for president: Mike Huckabee on the Iran deal": Even If It's the Truth?

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"If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

- Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General, Hezbollah, October 2002

Today, in a video entitled "What not to say if you're running for president: Mike Huckabee on the Iran deal," The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza pokes fun at Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for declaring:

"This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven." 

Sorry, Chris, but I agree with Mike Huckabee.

Chris, are you even aware that Iran has supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with 130,000 missiles, all pointed at Israel, which is approximately the size of New Jersey? Sure, they are not nuclear-tipped, but over the past several years, Iran was forced to cut back on aid to Hezbollah owing to budgetary constraints stemming from international sanctions. Thanks to Obama, those sanctions will now be removed, and as even acknowledged by Susan Rice, significant funds for arms will once again be flowing to Hezbollah when Iran receives more than $120 billion for signing Obama's nuclear deal. Those Hezbollah missiles will not be used against Israel? Nasrallah will launch them in a blink of an eye if he receives instructions to do so from Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei.

Hezbollah, i.e. "The Party of God"? That's the same organization used by Iran to bomb a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 87 people and wounding more than 100.

And what about Iran itself, which is being given the right to acquire or manufacture a nuclear arsenal within 15 years pursuant to Obama's nuclear deal - if the mullahs don't cheat before that time, which they will?

Sadly, Chris's video fails to relate to weekly threats from Iran to eradicate Israel. Relevant to the issue of a second Holocaust? You bet!

Also not a word from Chris about Iran's annual International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which awards prizes for the "best" cartoons denying that the Holocaust ever occurred.

Nor does Chris's video mention that Iran hangs gay men, stones to death women accused of adultery, savagely persecute Baha'is, Christians, Kurds and Sunnis, jails and brutalizes journalists and political opponents, backs Shiite militias in Iraq that are engaged in ethnic cleansing, and executes poets for "waging war on God." Or stated otherwise, Iran is crazy enough to use atomic weapons.

Mutually assured destruction will prevent Iran from launching a nuclear-tipped missile against Israel? I don't think so. None other than Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the fourth president of Iran, declared: "Israel is much smaller than Iran in landmass and therefore far more vulnerable to nuclear attack." As reported earlier this month in a Times of Israel article entitled "Ex-Iran president: Israel a fake, temporary regime" by Tamar Pileggi:

"Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told a Hezbollah-affiliated outlet that he was confident that the 'forged and temporary Israeli entity' would be wiped off the map, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. According to the report, Rafsanjani, often described by Western media as a moderate in Iranian politics, said that Israel was an alien existence forged into the body of a nation which would eventually be destroyed."

No mention of Rafsanjani by Chris.

By the way, Chris, did you happen to notice that US Secretary of State John Kerry is avoiding a stopover in Israel next week, when he visits Egypt and Qatar? That's because of overwhelming disapproval of the nuclear deal among Israelis and the likelihood that he would be met in Israel with massive protest demonstrations. As recently reported by The Jerusalem Post, 78 percent of Israelis believe the nuclear deal will "endanger Israel;" 71 percent think the deal will "bring Iran closer to a military nuclear capability;" and 47 percent "support an Israeli military strike on Iran if it would be necessary to prevent the Islamic state from getting nuclear weapons." You see, Israelis know more than a little about what's good or bad for them, particularly when it involves their continued existence on this planet.

In short, before shooting off his mouth at Mike Huckabee, Cillizza would have done well to learn some basic facts.

Maureen Dowd, "Still Mad as Hell": At Everyone Except The New York Times

Is Maureen Dowd "mad as hell"? I suppose that depends upon how you define "mad."

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Still Mad as Hell" (http://observer.com/2014/02/the-tyranny-and-lethargy-of-the-times-editorial-page/#axzz2sl80ftwH), Dowd wonders what Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the 1976 flick "Network," would think about today's media. Dowd specifically asks how Chayefsky might regard:

• Kim Kardashian
• Brian Williams
• Internet
• Twitter
• cable news
• Murdochization of the news
• Norman Pearlstine
• Google
• Facebook

Dowd's conclusion:

"If Paddy, who used to say 'truth is truth,' could see how far beyond 'Network' we’ve gone, he would not only be mad as hell. He’d be scared as hell."

Needless to say, Maureen does not inquire how Chayefsky might regard The New York Times of today.

Do any of you remember Max Frankel? Frankel was the editorial page editor of The New York Times from 1977 to 1986, before becoming the newspaper's executive editor from 1986 to 1994. On November 14, 2001, in its 150th anniversary issue, the Times published an article by Frankel entitled "Turning Away From the Holocaust" (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/news/150th-anniversary-1851-2001-turning-away-from-the-holocaust.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm), which acknowledged that during World War II, the Times ignored reports of the Holocaust. Frankel wrote:

"There is no surviving record of how the paper's coverage of the subject was discussed by Times editors during the war years of 1939-45. But within that coverage is recurring evidence of a guiding principle: do not feature the plight of Jews, and take care, when reporting it, to link their suffering to that of many other Europeans.

. . . .

'You could have read the front page of The New York Times in 1939 and 1940,' [Laurel Leff, an assistant professor at the Northeastern School of Journalism] wrote, 'without knowing that millions of Jews were being sent to Poland, imprisoned in ghettos, and dying of disease and starvation by the tens of thousands. You could have read the front page in 1941 without knowing that the Nazis were machine-gunning hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Soviet Union.'

. . . .

And to this day the failure of America's media to fasten upon Hitler's mad atrocities stirs the conscience of succeeding generations of reporters and editors. It has made them acutely alert to ethnic barbarities in far-off places like Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. It leaves them obviously resolved that in the face of genocide, journalism shall not have failed in vain."

Well, some 70 years after the Holocaust, The New York Times is again keen on papering over barbarism, this time that of the Assad regime in Syria.

Five months ago, in an editorial entitled "More Answers Needed on Syria" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/opinion/more-answers-needed-on-syria.html?_r=0), The New York Times took the position that there was insufficient evidence of the use of chemical weapons by Assad against civilians on the outskirts of Damascus. According to the Times:

"For starters, where is the proof that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria carried out the attack? American, British, French and Turkish officials have been unequivocal in blaming Mr. Assad for the attack, which seems likely since there has been no indication that his regime has lost control of its chemical weapons arsenal or that the opposition has the capability to deliver such a weapon. Still, no evidence to support this claim has been released."

Today, no one denies that Assad used chemical weapons against civilians.

Obama of course stated that the use of chemical weapons against civilians would be a "red line" for the US. However, when faced with the ugly reality that Assad had indeed killed his own people with sarin, America's procrastinator-in-chief first asked Congress for authorization to act against the Syrian mass murderer, and then reached a deal brokered by Russia's Putin, providing for the destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal.

During his State of the Union address, Obama claimed that he had achieved a remarkable foreign policy success involving the destruction of this arsenal:

"American diplomacy, backed by the threat of force, is why Syria’s chemical weapons are being eliminated, and we will continue to work with the international community to usher in the future the Syrian people deserve – a future free of dictatorship, terror and fear."

Obama, of course, was lying. As reported by Reuters in an article entitled "U.S. accuses Syria of stalling on chemical arms handover" by Lesley Wroughton and Matt Spetalnick(http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/30/us-syria-crisis-chemical-idUSBREA0S19720140130):

"The United States on Thursday accused Syria of dragging its feet on giving up its chemical arms, putting at risk a deal to remove such weapons of mass destruction from the country as it splits apart in a chaotic civil war.

President Barack Obama this week touted the chemical weapons agreement as one of the few U.S. diplomatic achievements on Syria, but the State Department said just 4 percent of Syria's deadliest chemical agents has been shipped out of the country for destruction at sea.

The United States has few good choices to force President Bashar al-Assad to comply."

And now we are learning that Assad (John Kerry's "dear friend") is moving his chemical weapons stockpiles to "Alawite enclaves on the western coast of Syria" (see: http://www.jpost.com/Home/Assad-armed-to-the-teeth-stockpiling-weapons-of-mass-destruction-340081).

Any mention of this falsification on the op-ed page of the Times? Not a chance.

Worse still, pictures are now emerging of children starving as the result of the ongoing civil war in Syria. Have a look - if you have a sufficiently strong constitution - at a CNN article entitled "Syrian children dying of hunger" (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/05/world/syria-children-dying-hunger/index.html?hpt=hp_c1). Query: Is the killing of children by starvation more acceptable than murder by chemical weapons?

Any mention of this barbarism on the op-ed page of the Times? Again, not a chance. It would embarrass Obama.

Regarding the decision of the Times to ignore the Holocaust, Max Frankel wrote that "in the face of genocide, journalism shall not have failed in vain." As evidenced by the behavior of the Times over the past year, Frankel was dead wrong.

So, what would Paddy say today about the op-ed and editorial team of the Times, which, under the able guidance of Andrew Rosenthal, has become little less than an Obama cheerleading squad? Yes, I'm also mad as hell.

How about an airlift of food to those dying of starvation in Syria, President Obama?

John Kerry "Swift-Boats" Israel: Another Holocaust? What Me Worry?

Desperate for a diplomatic achievement as America's Secretary of State, John Kerry travelled to Geneva last week to sign a deal with Iran, which would have eased sanctions and demanded minimal concessions involving Iran's nuclear weapons development program. However, Kerry was in for a surprise: Recognizing that the agreement did little or nothing to stop Tehran from pursuing its nuclear weapons goals, e.g., prevent operation of Iran's Arak IR-40 Heavy Water Reactor that is designed to produce sufficient plutonium for two atomic bombs each year (see: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/09/bad-iran-deal-worse-than-no-deal/?hpt=hp_t2), France refused to go along.

Kerry is now having to face criticism from the US Congress for his rush to reach an empty pact with Iran, and he was in full damage control mode on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” As reported by The Washington Post in an article entitled "Kerry defends proposed Iran nuclear deal; Israel objects" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/kerry-defends-proposed-iran-nuclear-deal-israel-objects/2013/11/10/53025956-4a49-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html?hpid=z3) by Karen De Young:

"If negotiators in the next several weeks can reach an agreement on the draft proposal — a result that eluded top world diplomats in intensive sessions with the Iranians that ended here Sunday — talks can move toward making 'absolutely certain . . . that Iran never has a nuclear weapon,' Kerry said in an interview on NBC’s 'Meet the Press.'

Far from being naive about Iran’s capabilities and intentions, as some opponents have suggested, Obama administration negotiators are 'some of the most serious and capable, expert people in our government, who have spent a lifetime dealing with both Iran' and nuclear proliferation issues, Kerry said.

'We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid,' he added. 'I think we have a pretty strong sense of how to measure whether or not we are acting in the interests of our country and of the globe.'"

"We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid"? This is coming from a man who labeled Assad, a mass murderer, "my dear friend."

Obama administration negotiators are "some of the most serious and capable, expert people in our government"? These are the same people who reached a deal with Syria's Assad and Russia's Putin for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, only to later learn that Assad was hiding much of his illicit stockpile (see: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/05/first-on-cnn-us-intelligence-suggests-syria-may-hide-some-chemical-weapons/).

And let us not forget that the P5+1 negotiating team is being led by the EU's imbecilic (I'm being kind) Catherine Ashton.

More about Ashton? She is a former chairwoman of the Health Authority in Hertfordshire and has never held elected office. Ashton has a BSc degree in sociology and has a life-sized Dalek (a fictional race of extraterrestrial mutants from the British science fiction television series "Doctor Who") in her sitting room.

Quite apart from what decorates her sitting room, what might be hiding in Ashton's closet? Questions have arisen over her role as national treasurer in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (no mention of this position in her EU profile), which was suspected of having received funding from the Soviet Union.

In short, Israel has every reason to be concerned by Kerry's attempt to declare "Peace in our time." Take the time to read Jackson Diehl's Washington Post opinion piece entitled "John Kerry’s Middle East dream world" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jackson-diehl-john-kerrys-middle-east-dream-world/2013/11/10/5b17d2d2-47cf-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html?hpid=z3). Diehl correctly observes:

"Imagine a world in which the Middle East is not descending into carnage and chaos but is on the brink of a monumental series of breakthroughs. By next spring,Iran’s nuclear program will be secured and Egypt will be a liberal democracy. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has stepped aside. And, not least, Israelis and Palestinians have settled on the terms for a Palestinian state.

This is the world that John Kerry inhabited as he shuttled across the world last week: a fantastical realm created by his billowing vision of what he can accomplish as secretary of state. Meanwhile, on this planet, aid agencies reported starvation and an outbreak of polio in Syria; Egypt’s last elected president was put on trial; Israeli and Palestinian leaders described their U.S.-brokered peace talks as broken; and France’s foreign minister suggested the would-be accord with Iran was 'a fool’s game.'

Call it Kerry’s Magical Mystery Tour."

I call it frightening, and more than that, it is Obama, who, with no one to answer to in his second term, is delighted to throw Israel under the bus ("Surprise, surprise, surprise!) and is fully responsible for Kerry's malfeasance.

New York Times Editorial, "More Answers Needed on Syria": Ignoring Another Holocaust

Does history repeat itself? At The New York Times it sure as heck does.

Max Frankel was editorial page editor of The New York Times from 1977 to 1986, before becoming executive editor from 1986 to 1994. On November 14, 2001, in its 150th anniversary issue, the Times published an article by Frankel entitled "Turning Away From the Holocaust" (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/news/150th-anniversary-1851-2001-turning-away-from-the-holocaust.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm), which acknowledged that during World War II, the Times ignored reports of the Holocaust. Frankel wrote:

"There is no surviving record of how the paper's coverage of the subject was discussed by Times editors during the war years of 1939-45. But within that coverage is recurring evidence of a guiding principle: do not feature the plight of Jews, and take care, when reporting it, to link their suffering to that of many other Europeans.

. . . .

'You could have read the front page of The New York Times in 1939 and 1940,' [Laurel Leff, an assistant professor at the Northeastern School of Journalism] wrote, 'without knowing that millions of Jews were being sent to Poland, imprisoned in ghettos, and dying of disease and starvation by the tens of thousands. You could have read the front page in 1941 without knowing that the Nazis were machine-gunning hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Soviet Union.'

. . . .

And to this day the failure of America's media to fasten upon Hitler's mad atrocities stirs the conscience of succeeding generations of reporters and editors. It has made them acutely alert to ethnic barbarities in far-off places like Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. It leaves them obviously resolved that in the face of genocide, journalism shall not have failed in vain."

Well, some 70 years after the Holocaust, The New York Times is again keen on papering over barbarities, this time those of the Assad regime in Syria. In an editorial entitled "More Answers Needed on Syria" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/opinion/more-answers-needed-on-syria.html?_r=0), The New York Times takes the position that there is insufficient evidence of the use of chemical weapons by Assad against civilians on the outskirts of Damascus. According to the Times:

"For starters, where is the proof that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria carried out the attack? American, British, French and Turkish officials have been unequivocal in blaming Mr. Assad for the attack, which seems likely since there has been no indication that his regime has lost control of its chemical weapons arsenal or that the opposition has the capability to deliver such a weapon. Still, no evidence to support this claim has been released.

. . . .

On Wednesday, the Syrian government added to the fog by blaming the rebels for three previously unreported chemical attacks last week. Those claims also must be investigated."

First, it should be observed that the new president of Iran, which has championed Assad's struggle against the rebels, acknowledges that chemicals were used against civilians, although he refuses to admit that they were used by Assad's forces (see: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/24/us-syria-crisis-iran-idUSBRE97N06P20130824). Is it possible that Syrian rebels were responsible for the sarin nerve gas attack that killed more than a thousand people in an area under their control, as both The New York Times and Iran would have us believe possible? I don't think so.

The Times editorial goes on to say:

"Despite diplomatic frustrations, the Security Council, on which Russia and China sit and have veto power, should be the first venue for dealing with this matter since chemical weapons use is a war crime and banned under international treaties.

Ideally, [italics added] once presented with evidence, the council would condemn Mr. Assad, impose a ban on arms shipments to Syria (including materials used to make chemical weapons, which the regime is trying to buy on the open market) and send Mr. Assad’s name to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. That is what should happen; Mr. Assad’s Russia and Chinese enablers are the ones most able to stop his brutality."

Excuse me, "ideally" the Russians and Chinese would back sanctions of any kind against Syria? What is the editorial board of The New York Times smoking, or do they wear their naivete on their sleeves? Let me assure the editorial board of the Times that idealism has absolutely nothing to do with Russian and Chinese foreign policy.

The Times editorial continues:

"Mr. Obama has yet to make clear how military strikes — which officials say will last one to two days and target military units that carried out chemical attacks, the headquarters overseeing the effort and the artillery that have launched the attacks — will actually deter chemical attacks without further inflaming a region in turmoil and miring the United States in the Syrian civil war."

Well, here the editorial board of the Times and I are actually in agreement: A US attack, intended, as Obama stated in a "PBS Newshour" interview, as a mere "shot across the bow" (see: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us-syria-crisis-usa-obama-idUSBRE97R1A920130828), will be viewed as a sign of impotence by Syria, Iran and Russia. But then, any such attack is intended by the Obama administration as a face-saving device, i.e. superficial effectuation of the "red line" he announced a year ago, and not as a serious effort to deter Assad from future attacks against civilians.

How is the Assad regime preparing for this telegraphed US attack? They are calmly vacating army posts, to minimize the damage (see: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Sources-Syria-evacuates-army-post-in-Damascus-324552).

The Times editorial concludes:

"Any action, military or otherwise, must be tailored to advance a political settlement between the Assad regime and the opposition, the only rational solution to the conflict."

"Tailored" to advance a political settlement? Where did we see that exact same word several hours earlier? Oh, now I remember: In his "PBS Newshour" interview (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec13/obama_08-28.html), Obama also declared:

"And if, in fact, we can take limited, tailored approaches, not getting drawn into a long conflict, not a repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about – but if we are saying in a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across the bow saying, stop doing this, that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term, and may have a positive impact on our national security over the long term and may have a positive impact in the sense that chemical weapons are not used again on innocent civilians."

Peculiar how New York Times editorials and Obama's comments seem to dovetail. Or perhaps not so peculiar . . .

Yes, Obama's wavering West Wing and the intellectually and morally bankrupt New York Times are in convivial lockstep.

I opposed the Second Gulf War. I opposed US ground involvement in Afghanistan. But now, with respect to Assad's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, the time has come for the US to act forcefully and resolutely to ensure that this barbarism does not continue.

Yes, journalistic history has again repeated itself. Shame on The New York Times!

Marci Shore, "The Jewish Hero History Forgot": Is The New York Times Questioning the Need for a Jewish State?

Go to "The Opinion Pages" (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html) of today's New York Times, and there you will currently see on the upper left hand side of your computer screen a black and white rendition of people wading through a sewer together with a link to an op-ed contributor piece by Marci Shore entitled "The Jewish Hero History Forgot." The accompanying blurb by The Times:

"Not everyone who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising saw a Jewish state as the ultimate goal."

In her contributor op-ed piece, Ms. Shore, an associate professor of history at Yale University, writes of Marek Edelman, a commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising who remained in Poland after World War II :

"The Jews who found themselves sealed within the ghetto, like the millions of other Jews living in Eastern Europe, were deeply divided — by language and religiosity and class, by national identification and political ideology. Inside the ghetto were Polish speakers and Yiddish speakers; Orthodox, Hasidic, secular Jews; assimilated Jews and nationalists. The Zionists ranged from radical right to radical left. And most politicized Jews were not Zionists; some were Polish socialists, some Communists, some members of the secular socialist Bund. A debate raged between Zionists and the Bund over the issue of 'hereness' versus 'thereness' — and the Bund believed firmly that the future of the Jews was here, in Poland, alongside their non-Jewish neighbors.

. . . .

Edelman, who had survived by escaping through the sewers, was the last living commander of the uprising. After the war, in Communist Poland, he became a cardiologist: 'to outwit God,' as he once said. In the 1970s and ’80s he re-emerged in the public sphere as an activist in the anti-Communist opposition, working with the Committee for the Defense of Workers and the Solidarity movement. He died in 2009, and to this day, he is celebrated as a hero in Poland.

He is remembered with more ambivalence in Israel. 'Israel has a problem with Jews like Edelman,' the Israeli author Etgar Keret told a Polish newspaper in 2009. 'He didn’t want to live here. And he never said that he fought in the ghetto so that the state of Israel would come into being.' Not even Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense minister and an admirer of Edelman, could persuade an Israeli university to grant the uprising hero an honorary degree."

And yet, on Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, less than two weeks ago, Israeli television broadcast the movie "Defiance" concerning the Bielski partisans, a group led by three Jewish brothers who saved Jews and fought the Nazis in Belarus during the Second World War. Both Tuvia Bielski, the commander of this partisan unit, and his brother Zus Bielski, made their homes in New York after the war. They are heroes in Israel, notwithstanding the fact that they did not make "aliyah," i.e. immigrate to Israel.

I have no beef with Ms. Shore's piece. She is entitled to her opinion. But I can assure her that Edelman's decision to remain in a Communist, anti-Semitic Poland after the war (42 Jews died in the Kielce pogrom in 1946) is now a non-issue in Israel. Israel is too concerned with existential threats emanating from Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah, which has 60,000 rockets and missiles pointed south, and the crumbling Assad regime in Syria, which still controls one of world's largest arsenals of chemical weapons.

Jews may soon be fighting again for survival.

On the other hand, what does the Gray Lady mean when it writes "Not everyone who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising saw a Jewish state as the ultimate goal"? Is The Times hinting that notwithstanding a rising level of global anti-Semitism, there is today no need for a Jewish state?

Given the rising level of anti-Semitism that has slithered its way into The Times in recent years, I think there is reason for concern regarding the ulterior motives of this newspaper, which disregards its own ethical guidelines as regards Israel (see, for example: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/sodom-and-gomorrah-plagiarism-and.html).

Maureen Dowd, "How Mary Feels About Being a Virgin": Is It All About Sex?

"Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory."

- Irena Sendler

It's rarely black and white, except at The Times.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "How Mary Feels About Being a Virgin" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/dowd-how-mary-feels-about-being-a-virgin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), Maureen Dowd recounts her discussion concerning "The Testament of Mary," a show soon previewing on Broadway, with it's iconoclast author, Colm Toibin. Dowd concludes:

"Toibin says that the church must have tolerance, and that its leaders have lost any sense of how their sanctimonious denunciations clash with their scandals and imagery, causing nothing but pain.

'I remember being at the Vatican at Easter 1994,' he recalled, 'and watching all the cardinals and bishops, wonderfully powerful old men with great chins, sitting nobly with a long row of extraordinarily beautiful young seminarians standing behind, shading them with different colored sun umbrellas, some of which were pink.

'It was remarkable that none of them seemed to know what it looked like, and I watched it thinking, somebody must tell them.'"

No question about it: The Vatican's attitude toward women and homosexuals is troublesome for someone like me. (I also question why orthodox synagogues separate between men and women.)

And then there is the behavior of the Vatican during the Holocaust, which goes unmentioned in this opinion piece.

Yet, if one is troubled by the conduct of Pope Pius XII while millions of Jews were massacred by the Nazis throughout Europe, there can also be no forgetting the angelic conduct of Oskar Schindler, a Catholic member of the Nazi Party, who single-handedly saved 1,200 Jews.

Far less famous than Schindler, immortalized by Steven Spielberg, was Irena Sendler, a Catholic woman of extraordinary valor, who saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto from certain death.

Irena, born in 1910, joined the Żegota resistance in Poland, and owing to her work with the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, she was able to enter the ghetto to check for signs of typhus. Irena smuggled Jewish children out of the ghetto in crates, boxes and suitcases and hid them with Polish families and Catholic convents and rectories. She made lists of the children's former and assumed names and promised that after the war they would be returned to their families.

Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, she was tortured and left for dead in the woods with broken limbs. Irena was forced to go into hiding until the end of the war, but immediately thereafter sought to reunite the Jewish children whom she saved with those of their parents who remained alive (90% of Polish Jewry was exterminated by the Nazis).

In 2007, at the age of 97, a year before her death, she was nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Irena did not receive the award. As we all know, the prize is reserved for such renowned men of peace as Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama.

In short, religion is capable of inspiring unspeakable acts of hatred as well as all that is noble in our lives.

Again, it's never black and white, except at The Times.

Roger Cohen, "The Last Jew in Zagare": No Mention of the Last Jews in Alexandria

In his New York Times op-ed "The Last Jew in Zagare" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/cohen-the-last-jew-in-zagare.html?ref=opinion), Roger Cohen writes of the death of the last Jew in Zagare, Lithuania, whose Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, and where his grandmother once lived. Cohen proceeds to link the Holocaust to the creation of the State of Israel. Reading Cohen's op-ed, one is led to believe the falsehood disseminated by the left that the Palestinians were forced to pay the price for a European abomination. There is not a single mention that the majority of Jews in Israel arrived from North Africa and the Middle East, after being forced out of their homes in Muslim countries, stripped of all their belongings.

I strongly urge reading another New York Times op-ed, published more than two years ago, entitled "The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09aciman.html), by André Aciman, a professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York. Referring to Obama's 2009 speech to the Arab world from Cairo, Professor Aciman writes:

"The president never said a word about me. Or, for that matter, about any of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in the 20th century. With all his references to the history of Islam and to its (questionable) 'proud tradition of tolerance' of other faiths, Mr. Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world.

Nor did he bother to mention that with this flight and expulsion, Jewish assets were — let’s call it by its proper name — looted. Mr. Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My mother’s house, my father’s factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle.

. . . .

In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish names have been renamed. A few years ago, the Library of Alexandria put on display an Arabic translation of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' perhaps the most anti-Semitic piece of prose ever written. Today, for the record, there are perhaps four Jews left in Alexandria."

Yes, I believe that the Palestinians should have their own state beside a Jewish Israel (which Abbas refuses to accept), where they can live in dignity and independence, and reap the economic rewards of peace. But there should also be no denying or falsifying from where the homeless refugees who created the State of Israel arrived.

Siemens, Iran, Stuxnet and a Second Holocaust: Dinner Invitation to Peter Löscher

The news organizations are abuzz with reports that a sophisticated computer worm, Stuxnet, has infected industrial plants across Iran. As reported today by David E. Sanger of The New York Times:

"Stuxnet, which was first publicly identified several months ago, is aimed solely at industrial equipment made by Siemens that controls oil pipelines, electric utilities, nuclear facilities and other large industrial sites. While it is not clear that Iran was the main target — the infection has also been reported in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and elsewhere — a disproportionate number of computers inside Iran appear to have been struck, according to reports by computer security monitors.

Given the sophistication of the worm and its aim at specific industrial systems, many experts believe it is most probably the work of a state, rather than independent hackers. The worm is able to attack computers that are disconnected from the Internet, usually to protect them; in those cases an infected USB drive is plugged into a computer. The worm can then spread itself within a computer network, and possibly to other networks.

. . . .

The fact that the worm is aimed at Siemens equipment is telling: the company’s control systems are used around the world, but have been spotted in many Iranian facilities, say officials and experts who have toured them. Those include the new Bushehr nuclear power plant, built with Russian help."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/world/middleeast/26iran.html?_r=1&hp

Everyone is guessing who introduced the worm into the Iranian facilities. Personally, I am more troubled by the involvement of Siemens in the erection of these facilities.

Siemens is no ordinary company:

• Siemens funded the rise of the Nazi party.
• Siemens manufacturing facilities, built in close proximity to concentration camps, used slave labor during World War II.
• Siemens helped build V-2 rockets fired at England.

Sixty-five years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, Siemen's equipment is being used by the nuclear development facilties of a country which is calling for Israel to be wiped off the face of the map.

Peter Löscher, President and CEO of Siemens, I would like to invite you for dinner with my family, and perhaps you would care to stare into my children's eyes and explain exactly why Siemens has sold equipment to Iran that is being used to realize that country's frightening nuclear ambitions.

New York Times "Moderators" Now Tolerate Holocaust Denial

After writing to Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of The New York Times, concerning a vulgar anti-Semitic reader's comment posted by The Times's "moderators" in response to Paul Krugman's "Bad for the Jews" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/08/vicious-anti-semitic-readers-comment-in.html), a new reader's comment, no. 226, was posted in response to the same column, which states in relevant part:

In other words survivors of the alleged Holocaust can say whatever they want, accuse whomever they choose, make the most outrageous and irrational statements i.e. fabricate reality and lie and not have to produce an iota of evidence to sustain their contentions nor suffer the rigors of cross examinations.

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/bad-for-the-jews/?sort=oldest&offset=10

Excuse me, "alleged Holocaust"? Are we to understand that Holocaust denial according to The Times is "not abusive" and a legitimate contention that will be posted in response to op-eds?

Today I received an e-mail from CAMERA detailing New York Times anti-Israel bias and asking that I suggest to Times advertisers that they "reconsider linking their reputation to the agenda-driven publication." Peculiar. This is exactly what I proposed to them regarding advertisers placing ads on The Times's readers' comment pages, but received a cold shoulder (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/07/can-intellectualizing-alone-keep-us.html).

Meanwhile, I sent additional complaints to the investor relations departments of Levi Strauss and Gap concerning their online advertisements with The New York Times.

Andrew Rosenthal? Silence.

The Banality of Roger Cohen

In an op-ed entitled "The Banality of Good" in today's New York Times, Roger Cohen asks:

"What was it like in the leafy Grunewald neighborhood [of Berlin] to watch your Jewish neighbors — lawyers, businessmen, dentists — trooping head bowed to the nearby train station for transport eastward to extinction?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/opinion/04iht-edcohen.html

Cohen, of course, was born after the Holocaust, yet we can nevertheless ask him, what was it like to sojourn in the Islamic Republic of Iran at a time when Baha'is, Kurds, Sunni Muslims, homosexuals, political dissidents, and journalists were trundled off to prison, torture and/or execution? In this regard, Cohen's op-eds speak for themselves:

• In "The Other Iran" (Feb. 1, 2009), Cohen declared that the "Islamic Revolution has proved resilient in part through flexibility", and "axis-of-evil myopia has led U.S. policy makers to underestimate the social, psychological and political forces for pragmatism, compromise and stability" in Iran.

• In "Reading Khamenei in Tehran" (Feb. 18, 2009), Cohen insisted that "Khamenei sees his primary task as safeguarding a revolution whose core values include . . . social justice."

• In "What Iran's Jews Say" (Feb. 22, 2009), we were told that the "reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran - its sophistication and culture - than all the inflammatory rhetoric." Cohen failed to inform us that he was speaking with Iranian Jews via an interpreter who was reporting back to the Iranian government. He also failed to inform us of what he later acknowledged at Sinai Temple in LA: the Jews with whom he spoke were exercising self-censorship.

• In "From Tehran to Tel Aviv" (Mar. 22, 2009), Cohen told us that the Iranian "regime's provocative rhetoric masks essential pragmatism" and "the mullahs are anything but mad".

• In "Israel Cries Wolf" (Apr. 8, 2009), Cohen concluded: "What's critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu's fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran".

• In "Iran Awakens Yet Again" (Jun. 10, 2009), Cohen enthused: "For months now, I've been urging another look at Iran, beyond dangerous demonization of it as a totalitarian state. Seldom has the country looked less like one than in these giddy June days." Cohen described Iran's democracy as "incomplete but vigorous".

• In "Iran's Day of Anguish" (Jun. 14, 2009), Cohen finally backtracked a bit and acknowledged "I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness."

• In "My Name Is Iran" (Jun. 18, 2009), Cohen labeled Mir-Hossein Moussavi "the reformist of impeccable revolutionary credentials". No mention that as prime minister, Moussavi presided over the execution of thousands of dissidents. No mention that Moussavi defended the taking of hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and backed the fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie.

• In "Children of Tomorrow" (Jun. 22, 2009), Cohen described his meeting with the son of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom Cohen called "the establishment's embittered eminence grise". Cohen failed to note that Rafsanjani, a leading backer of the "reformist" Moussavi, is charged by Argentine prosecutors with masterminding the 1994 suicide bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which resulted in the murder of 85 people and the serious wounding of 151.

• In "Iran's Second Sex" (Jun. 26, 2009) Cohen came full circle and acknowledged that Iranian women's "subjugation became a pillar of the Islamic state," despite his original premise that the Islamic revolution's "core values" include "social justice". Cohen of all people complained that Qom's mullahs "have lots of training in how to say the opposite of what they said before."

In today's op-ed, Cohen would have us know, that "In the quiet Quangels, Fallada has created an immortal symbol of those who fight back against 'the vile beyond all vileness' and so redeem us all." Yet where in all of Cohen's commentary from Iran was there a meaningful analysis of the stoning to death of women convicted of adultery, the hanging of homosexuals, or the savage persecution of Iran's Baha'is?