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Jan. 8, 2009

Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Arab regimes secretly rooting for Israel?

Larry Elder: Israelis and Palestinians: Who's David, Who's Goliath?

Jeff Jacoby: Yes, it's anti-Semitism

Jan. 7, 2009

Jonah Goldberg: Who are the real Nazis?

Anne Applebaum: Pointless Peace Proposals

Jan. 6, 2009

Caroline B. Glick: Iran's Gazan diversion?

Dennis Prager: Dissecting Dershowitz

Jan. 5, 2009

Mark Steyn: Gaza has its version of rocket scientists

Mona Charen: The So-called International Community

Jan. 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Having a holy tongue

Caroline B. Glick : Hamas' march to victory

Dec. 31, 2008

Dore Gold: Is Israel Using 'Disproportionate Force'?

Renee Enna:: Succulent 'stewp' is quick, easy fix

Dec. 30, 2008

Jonathan Mark: Israel's Response Is Disproportionate

Wesley Pruden: It's time once more to blame the Jews

Dec. 29, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Chanukah: 'Give me Judaism or give me death'

Michael B. Oren: A crisis and an opportunity

Dec. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: When the past meets the future

Caroline B. Glick: Iran and Hamas do Christmas

Dec. 24, 2008

Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Judaism's Santa problem

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman CHANUKAH FORK-FINGER FOOD FEAST

Dec. 23, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: Repeating failure in Gaza

Dec. 22, 2008

Rabbi Boruch Leff: Too many Jews today are missing the intended purpose of one of Judaism's most beloved holidays

Barry Rubin: Liar, liar, pants on cease-fire

Dec. 19, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Final Battlefield

Caroline B. Glick: Betting on a dead horse

Dec. 18, 2008

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Juicy Chef's hella top, hella bottom, hallelujah in the middle

Craig Crossman : More gifts for geeks --- and those who love them

Dec. 17, 2008

Dion Nissenbaum: Israel kicks out outrageously biased UN official

Craig Crossman : Gifts for geeks --- and those who love them

Dec. 16, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Gift of Joy

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Uncle Shariah

Dec. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Expert witnesses who put themselves first

Barry Rubin: What they say isn't what you hear

Dec. 12, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Can the Bible be a secular language?

Caroline B. Glick: What a PM Netanyahu faces from Washington

Dec. 11, 2008

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Our role in the Divine's global corporation, World Inc.

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: A retro-tasting pareve pot pie made with a light hand

Dec. 10, 2008

Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn: Groom admits he was caught "red handed"

Kara McGuire: No money for gifts? No problem

Dec. 9, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Can I make my boss treat me fairly?

Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Next Steps in the Indo-Pakistani Crisis

Dec. 8, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: 'Chanukah Bush' flap and graciousness

Mark Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable

Dec. 5, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Truth --- The Key to Gratitude

Jeff Jacoby: UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 17, 2005 / 10 Sivan, 5765

Welcome to the war on image

By Diana West


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Finally, our guards at Guantanamo Bay are getting the hang of showing "reverence and respect" toward that "fragile piece of delicate art" (military-speak for the Quran), and, wouldn't you know it, our politicians and pundits, from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to Tom Friedman and Bill Kristol, are angling to put a lock on Gitmo.

Why? It's an "international embarrassment," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who should know. His colleague, Sen. Richard Durbin, (D-Ill.), is himself so internationally embarrassed that he compared the terrorist detainee facility to Nazi deaths camps, Communist gulags and Khmer Rouge killing fields.

And so what if closing Gitmo lets hundreds of jihadists out of their prison cages and into their terror cells? "Sure, a few may come back to haunt us," writes Friedman. But being haunted — which presumably requires some additional number of American dead to do the haunting — is apparently a risk worth taking in order to win the war.

I'm not talking about the so-called "war on terror." It seem there's been a change in focus. Islamic jihad is out. The war on "image" is in. And, according to the anti-Gitmo-nists, we're getting creamed.

Go figure: "They" kill people over a soggy Quran, and "we" lose the image war — and all over the world, according to Sen. Hagel. He thinks closing Guantanamo is the only way to win World Image War I.

That's because closing the detention center would "give us a clean slate in the Muslim world," as Nancy Pelosi said, revealing an ignorance of history so vast and untamed that facts alone would perish there. Clean slate — like on Sept. 10.

Projecting power is not the same thing as winning a popularity contest. Nor is winning a popularity contest the same thing as winning hearts and minds — at home where it really counts, or abroad — which seems to be another point of desperate confusion.

But in our poll-driven age of celebrity worship, the popularity contest is becoming the preferred forum for geopolitics, a kind of "Survivor"-slash-"Who Wants to Be a Superpower?" reality show for world leaders. If this is the case, by all means go for that "clean slate" and close Gitmo. Miss Congeniality would do the same. But don't stop there.

After all, reverence and respect, even surrender, only go so far. More sensitivity is needed as well. In a recent meeting with Daniel Sutherland, head of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties division of the Department of Homeland Security, American University's Akbar Ahmed had some suggestions, beginning, according to an online report in the Pakistani Daily Times, with pretty much eliminating Muslim profiling at airports. This, of course, would do nothing to spare my own white-haired mother and white-haired mother-in-law from the next checkpoint body search, but the boost to world image would be colossal. "You simply cannot humiliate Muslims like this," Akbar said, describing a "peak level of anger" in "the young generation on the edge." Just one more pat-down and they'll blow. He also suggested "more social and cultural contacts" between government officials and American Muslims, and an unspecified reading list on Islam.

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Maybe such a list would include one of his own books, "Islam Under Siege" (Polity Press, 2003). There, he describes the kind of gathering Homeland Security could really learn from — roughly 60 Muslim-American professionals from Cleveland, Ohio, whom Ahmed addressed in October 2001.

"When I stated that Islam had suffered a major setback after Sept. 11 (for a grossly un-Islamic act of violence), that every Muslim was in the dock as a result ... I was challenged by some Arabs and Pakistanis," he writes. "They" — Muslims in Cleveland, Ohio — "called Sept. 11 a glorious event for Islam. The taking of innocent lives was justified, they argued, as Sept. 11 was the continuation of a full-scale Islamic war taking place against Israel, which is backed by the United States. I heard a similar debate when the Muslim Council of Britain hosted a dinner for me in London in July 2002."

Maybe this last bit helps explain why the Queen of England this month bestowed a knighthood on Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. "Sir" Iqbal Sacranie: a body blow in the war on image. And also why, as Sutherland reportedly told Akbar, Homeland Security "has undertaken many measures to eliminate racial profiling." I think I see a strategy emerging. Little by little, we'll win this war on image. So what if we no longer recognize ourselves.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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