Third letter to the Globe - Copenhagen conference

After criticizing Harper for following the U.S., the Globe's editorial now criticizes him for not following Obama to the Copenhagen conference. Make up your mind. Contrary to your editorial, Harper is showing leadership by refusing to attend meetings of international flap-jaws and spending his time in potentially useful meetings.

Two letter to the Globe - Nov 26

1. The Globe's front page has two major articles. The first deals with success in rescuing
a Canadian from torture by the Somalis and the other is a criticism of Canadian leaders who may have
allowed Canadian soldiers to hand over Afghani prisoners to the local government to be tortured.
What is clear is that torture is part of the culture of much of the non-western world and if we have to be there
we must accept this barbaric custom as normal for them. We continually look away from torture used by our
allies in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and many of the African countries. Canadians certainly should participate
in it as little as possible, but sometimes in a war, it is not possible to adhere to political and social niceties.

2. Israel's offer of a new settlement freeze has been rejected by the Palestinian leasership as as not enough
to begin peace talks. The message is clear. For the Palestinians, either a Palestinian state or Israel can
exist in the area, but not both. Since Israel will remain, peace can only come through the annexation of the
the West bank by Israel, as Jordan has absolutely rejected it. What happens to the local Arabs after this
will no longer concern the world as it will be an "internal matter".

incitement to genocide

The other day I went to see a mock trial of Ahmadinejad on charges of incitement to genocide put on by the Simon Weisenthal Centre. It is clear that genocide can use weapons like ovens, machetes, or bombs and it is still genocide. To his credit Cotler has brought the suggestion to try Ahmadinejad in an international court on a private members bill to the Canadian parliament. However my question is as follows. If we want to try Ahmadinejad before an international court, why is Cotler and most of the world supporting a two state solution? Both Hamas, which will probably govern a Palestinian state, and Fatah, are undoubtedly guilty of inciting to genocide. It is only necessary to look at their constitutions and their hatred expressed in their children's books and radio and TV programing to see the truth of this. Why support the establishment of a state whose leaders are already guilty of inciting to genocide? It may be politically correct, but isn't it suicidal?

Letter to the Globe - Simpson - the Liberal Spin

I'm afraid Mr. Simpson's head must have been spinning when he talked about the Conservative spin machine. He must have meant the Liberal spin machine, not the Conservative one.. The Liberals found people who disagree wth the useless and extremely costly gun control laws. Big deal. It should have been repealed long ago. Secondly, the Liberals complained that the Conservatives gave probable terrorists to their countrymen to do what they wanted with them. What else were they to do, set up another Guantanamo Bay or perhaps free them so they could return to kill more Canadian soldiers? If the latter happened the Liberals would jump on Consevative policy. Lastly the Liberals criticized the Conservatives for saying they were more pro-Israel than the Liberals. Firstly it is obvious from the voting patterns at the UN that they are, and secondly it implies that the Liberals never supported a particular issue of a minority group in order to get votes. Please! What hypocracy! The Liberal spin machine is spinning so fast that Ignatieff is falling off his perch.

Re: National Post - Nov 19th

Funny I thought that people went to university to learn for their future life. Apparently Father de Souza would be disappointed if, after graduation, one of his football players ended up as a professional doctor, lawyer or priest, instead of a football player.

Welcome back Mark Steyn to the National Post. It is another reason to keep reading Canada's best paper.

Harper's "nobnobing" with Chabad in India is indicative of his fight against terrorism whether the terrorism is against the strong or the weak, and wherever it occurs. It is wholly admirable.

The assumption that East Jerusalem is Arab lands because more Arabs than Jews live there has no more validity than saying that Bramalea and Detroit are Arab lands because more Arabs than others live in those two places.

If Jew-haters on campus and Islamic countries can say Nazism = Zionism why can't B'nai Brith etc publish an ad that Islamist = Nazism? Shouldn't the former be protested more strongly than the latter and the hatred shown in the former have been protested loudly for years as it has been going on for years? Isn't the constant Zionism = Nazism proof that Islamism = Nazism?

National Post - who is a Jew? - Nov 16th

Who is a Jew

It is quite clear that since there are Ethiopian Jews who look like Ethiopians, Indian Jews who look like Indians, Iranian Jews who look like Iranians, Syrian Jews who look like Arabs, and Scandinavian Jews who look like Scandinavians, Jews are not a race. They are a culture, a civilization, a religion or more likely, a combination of all three. Suggesting that Jews are a race is a show of ignorance. Jews are a small minority of the population and it is easy to look at them and avoid the larger, more immediate and more important questions that should have been raised by this court case. As Jews are generally peaceful, the important question after the Hasan incident is "Who is a Muslim? Is it a person of peace or a radical Islamist jihadist?" Another question is "If a religion shows prejudice or racism against others, such as the prejudice shown against Gays by all three Abramic religions, what should the state do and should the religious institution have state funding?"

The real question is not whether Jews constitute a race, but whether religions should be exempt from the standards of morality and the values of the host country.

Discover Canada

There should be a mandatory test on the new Discover Canada document for new driver's licence applicants. This would especially apply to new immigrants and the young applying for licences for the first time. Later, if successful, it could apply periodically to all licence renewals.

Lorne Gunter in the National Post 11/11

This is a great article by Gunter in today's National Post. I would like to add my comments. The first is that we should not be Islamophobic but we should be Islamist-phobic or Islamofascism-phobic. Following Burke, it is our duty is speak out against evil. When political correctness is used to avoid speaking out against evil, it itself is evil. The source of this evil is obviously mosques and madrasses. It is time to close down all institutions that teach radical Islam. Logic should tell us that our safety and culture must trump the free speech of Islamofascists. Religion must no longer be a cover up for incitement to murder and mayhem. John Tory lost the last election because he didn't see this self-evident truth.

Ruth Wisse's lecture and Jordan acquiring part of the West Bank

Ruth Wisse

Last night I went to the Ruth Wisse lecture at Holy Blossom. It was excellent. It was a continuation of the thoughts in her book, Jews and Power but updated to the current time. She will undoubtedly make the speech into an article in due course.

Meanwhile these were her main points.

One of the good things about Judaism is that it suggests that a person is responsible for what happens to him and what happens in the world. This makes for great achievements but it also means that Jes think that they are responsible for political occurrences that don’t work out for the best. But Jews are not responsible for the political positions of others and their ability to change politics by their own deeds is extremely limited. Thus giving away more Israeli land is a useless exercise in that it changes nothing.

Know before whom you stand applies to God, not to politicians. Jews must realize the difference. Blacks have been successful in changing their political fortunes in America. They haven’t looked at themselves and said that they must effect the change. They said that America must change – and fortunately it changed for them although it has not politically changed for Jews. The changes were not due primary to Black activism but primarily to the general culture and circumstances of America

No one else is as self-critical as Jews. You don’t find any other group that holds meetings to criticize themselves as Jews do. This is not beneficial to Jews or Israel. It divides them and gives ammunition to the enemy

When Jews stopped following the Torah they replaced it by liberalism. Thus Jews are liberals even to their obvious detriment ie they have replaced the Jewish religion by some of its better social aspects but without understanding the consequences of what they are doing.

Ruth Wisse’s lecture and someone on Facebook suggesting that intelligent people came up with dumb answers had me thinking about the solution to the Arab-Israeli. My answer for a long time is that Jordan and Israel should split the West Bank. But they say that Jordan doesn’t want it. Why not? All countries want more land. The usual explanation is that they are afraid of destabilization. However I would suggest that the real reason is that they are being pressured by the other 22 Muslim countries not to take over part of the West Bank so that the conflict can continue and that eventually they hope Israel will be destroyed. Alternately, if Ruth Wisse is correct, Israel should stop feeling that the West Bank is their fault, build a fence around itself, call it their border and absolutely stop all Arabs from entering Israel. If the UN does not fund the West Bank Arab economy, then the people will either starve or join Jordan. In either case, it will be better for Israel and not their responsibility.

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch says it spends a proportionate amount of time on Israel as other countries.
Umm. Saudi Arabi is not a paragone of Human Rights Freedoms. It has 2,240,000 square kilometers in area and in 1997, a population of 16,000,000 people which now must be at least 25,000,ooo people. Israel has an area of 21,000 square kilometers or 1/100th of the area of Saudia Arabia and currently a population of about 7,000,000 people or between 1/3 and 1/4 of the population. Human Rights Watch should be spending between 3 and 100 times the amount of time on Saudi Arabia.Yet it is obvious that Human Rights Watch and everyone else spends much more time on Israeli Human rights than on the much more serious Saudi human rights. So Human Rights Watch has most likely lied and Siddiqui has printed the lies. Am I surprised? No. Am I disappointed? Yes.

Re: Toronto Star

Well, I have received a few free Toronto Stars and they did the expected. They printed my rather irrelevant letter and didn't print the important one. Today there was an article by Siddiqui where Human Rights Watch said they spend a proportionate amount of time on Israel as they do other places. umm lets see - New Jersey is about the same size as Israel and has 1/3 more population than Israel. How much time does Human Rights Watch spend monitoring New Jersey? I have been boycotting the Star for years. Its foreign news has moved from moderate left to extreme left. I would suggest that it is not only not worth paying for and thereby supporting but it is not worth reading.

Printed letter
If we let short term workers into Canada who in practice stay here and become undocumented, isn't the answer to ensure Canada's unemployed get the jobs, and not as Siddiqui suggests, to let them in as permanent immigrants?

Not printed letter


Linda McQuaig has an interesting argument. She believes that Harper is an extremist because he supports the continued existence of a member of the United Nations - Israel. I presume that supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, two terrorist organizations, is therefore a moderate stance. Harper even objects to universities that hold meetings to publicize Israel's anti-apartheid policies. The fact that Israel is not an apartheid state, and gives its minorities more rights than any of its neighbours seems only relevant to extremists like Harper and irrelevant to moderates. Another reason for accusing Harper of being an extremist is that he opposes anti-Semites. Again, I presume that moderates must support anti-Semites as part of their liberal attitudes towards terrorists, enemy agents, and the ill-used Khadr family. Lastly McQuaig accuses Harper of not supporting the Goldstone report. Imagine not supporting a report based on hearsay evidence from sources that have proven previously to lie to make their points. Moderates know that Hamas and Hezbollah have always told the truth about Jenin and Israel's other actions. Only extremists and Islamophobes would question the truth of anything that comes from the mouth of an Arab terrorist. Linda McQuaig has accused Harper of being an extremist when he has acted with due regard for the facts and the nature of the people he is dealing with. How have the words "Moderate" and extremist" become reversed by our left leaning intellectuals?

Goldstein and Major Hasan - National Post letters

Jacob Mendlovic criticisizes orthodox Judaism for having the prayers - Thank God for not having made me a Jew or a woman. This morning Moishe Goldstein wrote that we shouldn't worry about these prayers because the essence of real Judaism is to do unto others as you want others to do to you and love your neighbour as yourself. However we should worry if his interpretation of the objectives of Judaism is correct. The prayers about women and gentiles can be interpreted in a positive way, but mostly they will be interpreted as they are read, that is, negatively. Therefore, Goldstein's answer to Mendlovic should be that these prayers should not be said as they lead readers away from true Judaism. This is the same problem in Islam where prayers or the Koran lead people away from what Tarek Fatah would call "true Islam. If the object of religions is peace or a proper encounter with others and the devine, then prayers and passages of all religions that lead people away from these objectives must be eliminated. Passages in religious books that lead people in the wrong direction at best are ignored and at worst lead people to actions such as that taken by Major Hasan yesterday. It is harmful to our society to keep these passages as parts of our respective religions.

Note on op-ed about Ignatieff

Rodriquez, the Liberal party's Canadian Heritage Critic, wrote an op-ed in the National Post today, 05/11 on Ignatieff that included the sentence "He lived the life of an artist, with all the financial insecurity that comes with it." Ignatieff comes from a rich and famous family and lived the life of a well-paid Harvard professor. He never had to bear the financial insecurity of an artist. If this statement of Rodriquez is an example of the truth of the rest of the op-ed and of other Liberal writings, then they are not worth reading. He also says that the Liberal vision is "a cultured Canada." Does that mean that we will be like France where every "cultured" married man has a mistress and they are famous for caving in to and appeasing dictators?

Letter to the Toronto Star re Linda McQuaig

Linda McQuaig has an interesting argument in the Nov. 3 Star. She believes that Harper is an extremist because he supports the continued existence of a member of the United Nations - Israel. I presume that supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, two terrorist organizations is therefore a moderate stance. Harper even objects to universities that hold meetings to publicize Israel's anti-apartheid policies. The fact that Israel is not an apartheid state, and gives its minorities more rights than any of its neighbours seems only relevant to extremists like Harper and irrelevant to moderates. Another reason for accusing Harper of being an extremist is that he opposes anti-Semites. Again, I presume that moderates must support anti-Semites as part of their liberal attitudes towards terrorists, enemy agents, and the ill-used Khadr family. Lastly McQuaig accuses Harper of not supporting the Goldstone report. Imagine not supporting a report based on hearsay evidence from sources that have proven previously to lie to make their points. Moderates know that Hamas and Hezbollah have always told the truth about Jenin and Israel's other actions. Only extremists and Islamophobes would question the truth of anything that comes from the mouth of an Arab terrorist. Linda McQuaig has accused Harper of being an extremist when he has acted with due regard for the facts and the nature of the people he is dealing with. How has the words "Moderate" and extremist" become reversed by our left leaning intellectuals?

My letter published in National - Nov 3rd

Just who do we thank for this?
When I read that the National Post is continuing to publish, as a Jewish reader and letter writer, my first thought was “Thank God”. Op-ed contributor Tarek Fatah would have said, “Praise Allah”. Father Raymond de Souza would have thanked Jesus, as the Father always works through an intermediary, and he knows that Jesus is definitely the one to thank. Most of your “ faithful” readers would say “Thank heaven” or Thank God”. Your secular readers would say “Thank goodness” and Hitchens would say “Thank me” because he knows that there is definitely no one or nothing else to thank.