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May 12, 2008

Chosen Words: A newsletter for personal and spiritual growth gleaned from classic biblical and other sources that will help you enhance your day to day life. Likely the most constructive three minutes you will spend today

Mark Steyn: Israel's 'doom' could also be Europe's

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When Faith Meets Fate, Part One

May 9, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Reverence, Yes; Worship, No

Mona Charen: Did Israel Drive Out the Arabs 60 Years Ago?

JWisdom: Ultimate opportunities by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

May 8, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Israel at 3,500+

Jonathan Tobin: Still Fighting the Same War

Steven Plaut: How ‘nakba’ proves the fiction of a Palestinian Nation

JWisdom: Taking Israel for Granted? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

May 7, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Israel is irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Dion Nissenbaum: Latest Olmert scandal could derail efforts to force Israel's compromises

JWisdom: My Inner Ventriloquist by Sara Yoheved Rigler

May 6, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: Anti-Zionism at 60

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: In honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, the former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with a smorgasbord featuring the taste and essence of the Jewish homeland

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Jewish Deer in Nazi Headlights

May 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Busy work

Jonathan Mark: Remarkable half-century old Mike Wallace interview with Abba Eban puts current anti-Israel sentiment into perspective

May 2, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Rote religiosity

Caroline B. Glick: Whitewashing Hamas

JWisdom: Parent trap?

May 1, 2008

David Zwiebel: Faith communities can learn from Orthodox Jews in stimulating private philanthropy for religious education

George Friedman and Peter Zeihan of Stratfor: The Shift Toward an Israeli-Syrian Agreement

JWisdom: It's time to wake up by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis

April 30, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Pennsylvania's Democratic slugfest may leave some Jewish votes up for grabs

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Fresh herbs, sauteed veal and tiny creamer potatoes makes a light spring dinner

JWisdom: How to Build a Mentch by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 29, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood

Joel Brinkley: On human rights, the U.N. once again strikes out

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When The Truth is Unbelievable

April 28, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I'm often stuck in the doctor's waiting room for hours! Doesn't he owe me something for my wasted time?

Steven Emerson: New U.S. government policy advises agencies to avoid using some of the very same words that make up terror groups' names

JWisdom: Why You & I Never Die: A Jewish View of Immortality, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

April 25, 2008

Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg: Schadenfreude isn't kosher for Passover --- or at any other time

Rabbi Berel Wein: The secret of how the data bank of memory is transferred from one generation to the next

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part III

April 24, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The successful failure

Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor: Placing the terrorist threat to the food supply in perspective

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part II

April 23, 2008

Connie Ogle: An intricate game of a novel

Jonathan Tobin: Making Sense of the 'J Street' Jive

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen

April 22, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Why Israel's 'Leaven law' matters

Caroline B. Glick: Obama the Savior

April 18, 2008

Rabbi Harvey Belovski: Multimedia tool of antiquity

Caroline B. Glick: Revealed Truths vs. revealed lies

JWisdom: More than miracles by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Deconstructing Dayeinu

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: Is innovation at the Seder a slap at tradition?

JWisdom: Discovering Your Divine Mission, Part III by Rabbi David Aaron

April 16, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: A Prayer for Sderot's Children

Ethel G. Hofman: Sumptuous Seder

JWisdom: The Divine is in the details by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 15, 2008

Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Let Charlton Heston Go!

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Jimma, tyranny's enabler

JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part IV by Dr. Lisa Aiken

April 14, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: The Snitching Supervisor

Jonathan Tobin: Forget the Fun and Games!

JWisdom: Sincerity is Valued Most by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.

April 11, 2008

Rabbi David Gutterman: A Mystery in the Middle East

Caroline B. Glick: Why Ahmadinejad smiles

JWisdom: Elevated illness by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 10, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing by George Friedman: A Mystery in the Middle East

The Kosher Gourmet By Steve Petusevsky: The spring elegance of asparagus

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: The Power of Rational Lies

April 9, 2008

Michael Feldberg: An all but forgotten Colonial doctor who put his Jewish values before his life

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's "Everything's Relative" gets philosophical

JWisdom: Four Rabbis in Bnei Brak by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 8, 2008

Caroline Glick: Covering for the enemy

Elliot B. Gertel: 'House' goes Hasidic

JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part III by Dr. Lisa Aiken

April 7, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I have a translating business. Recently someone asked me to translate some financial documents that are clearly forged. Should I agree?

Jonathan Rosenblum : Israel is unwittingly helping to fuel the international campaign of delegitimization against it

JWisdom: Matzah and leaven as a life philosophy by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.

April 4, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The Mystery of Suffering

Caroline B. Glick: Fear of democracy

JWisdom: Dirty Jews by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 3, 2008

Rabbi Y. Y. Rubinstein: Parents --- and the children who would be them

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Tempted by restaurant dressings? Don't be. Here are recipes that can be made at home, healthier!

JWisdom: The importance of retaining a 'slave mentality' by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 2, 2008

Mitch Albom: Child abuse, disguised as faith

Jonathan Tobin: Unreasonable Accommodations

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith with Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Eliminating Jewish Influence over Germans

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

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

Jewish World Review Oct. 8, 2007 / 26 Tishrei 5768

Princess Diana's murder and Islamoparanoia

By Mark Steyn


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Last week, a London court began pondering the vexed question of whether Diana, Princess of Wales, was, ahem, murdered. There was so much public suspicion, declared the coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, that it was time for the rumors to be either "dispelled or substantiated."


So who killed her? On the night of Diana's death in 1997, there were apparently two top agents for MI6, the British secret service, on the loose in Paris, and possibly a third, if you believe that Henri Paul, the chauffeur, was also on the spooks' payroll.


That's the theory of Mohammed Fayed, Monsieur Paul's employer and father of the princess's last boyfriend, Dodi. Fayed asserts that Diana was at the time of her death carrying Dodi's baby, and thus the car crash was arranged because Buckingham Palace decided it would be unacceptable for Prince William, the future king, to have a Muslim stepbrother, a Muslim step-dad, and a soon-to-be-Muslim mom.


The Princess of Wales' fortuitous demise was, as Fayed puts it, "murder in the furtherance of a conspiracy by the Establishment, in particular His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who used the secret services to carry it out." It is not thought His Royal Highness will be called to testify.


Look, I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, and I'm entirely prepared to consider the possibility that Di got whacked. But not because she was dating a Muslim.


On hearing the news that the princess' new beau was a Mohammedan, the British establishment would have been more likely to pop the champagne than order up a hit team.


One can easily picture the calculations: Excellent! Sums up the new Britain. A Muslim in the Royal Blended Family, just the kind of dynamic multicultural rebranding we need. Di will be a role model for Muslim women in northern England. Show the bloody Yanks a thing or two as well: Anyone can grow up to be president? Ha! In Britain, any old Muslim can grow up to join the Royal Family, etc.


Seven decades ago, when King Edward VIII decided to marry Mrs. Simpson, soundings were taken round the empire, and his majesty was apprised that she was unacceptable to Australia because she was divorced and unacceptable to Canada because she was American.


But times change, and in the new Commonwealth the Princess of Wales would have been boffo in Britain because she was divorced and boffo in Malaysia because she was Muslim. She would have embodied so-called "Prada Islam" — the stylish sophisticated Euro-Muslims at ease with both sides of their identity. After years of shagging cavalry officers and other assorted chinless wonders from the English upper class, Diana had finally made a smart move. Tony Blair would have been kicking himself for not thinking of it first.


You see something similar in the persistent stream of e-mails from readers demanding to know why I don't refer to Barack Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama," that being his full dress handle. The argument is that, if you use his middle name, people will realize he's some sort of Indonesian madrassah alumnus, and his numbers will head south.


Well, his numbers seem to be heading south without any help from me. My correspondents might be better advised to demand that I start referring to Hillary Saddam Clinton. But that's not the reason I demur. Like Fayed, they're mistaking a virtue for a liability. If the Right were to start insisting that Sen. Obama is not the first African-American president-in-waiting but the first Islamo-African-American president-in-waiting, a big chunk of progressive voters would merely go: Wow! Even cooler.


The senator surely knows that. When he was at school, he was known as Barry Obama, and if he were concerned about excessive exoticness that's presumably what he'd be running as. But he's not: He knows his market, and he has no reason to fake being a regular Joe (Biden). He's now, ostentatiously if somewhat clumsily, announced that he's foresworn the Stars-and-Stripes pins so ubiquitous on politicians' lapels these past six years. He said he felt it had become a "substitute" for "true patriotism." But you can't help feeling that among his constituency in Democratic primaries the lapel flag just seems crass and squaresville. Too obvious.


Stable democratic institutions sustained across the centuries are so rare on this planet that, if you live in one of the handful of countries to have them, it's easy to get complacent, and then bored, and then to start looking elsewhere for something with a bit more of a kick.


That's something else they know about in the House of Windsor. After all, there's not much point getting the princess eliminated for going Muslim when the Prince of Wales himself has a roaring case of Islamofever.


Even though he will one day be, like his mother, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, he's had an "Islamic garden" built at his home. It was designed by the Muslim great-grand-daughter of Herbert Asquith, the prime minister who took Britain into the Great War and thus ended the caliphate. Ninety years on, Charles gives the impression he'd far rather be a caliph than a king. He loves dressing up in Muslim garb. A couple of days after 9/11, for a dinner engagement with a sibling of Osama bin Laden, he got dolled up like a Saudi prince and amused the guests with droll cracks like, "So, what's your brother doing these days?" On present course, he seems more likely to be crowned as the first emir of the United Kingdom.


National Review's David Pryce-Jones made the point that, in persisting with his lurid accusations, Mohammed Fayed revealed how little he understands Britain: He's lived there for years, it's been good to him, he owns Harrod's and the Paris Ritz and various other baubles. No big deal. He's one of many, many beneficiaries of Western openness to "the other." And yet he's convinced himself that Buckingham Palace is so consumed by "Islamophobia" that the queen's husband dialed M, and M called in Moneypenny, and Moneypenny faxed 007, and a week later the princess and her Islamostud are dead.


Reality is more humdrum: In multiculti Britain, everyone was indifferent to Di's Muslim lover. Could have been a Hindu, could have been a Buddhist. Who cares? But, instead, Fayed has retreated into the paranoia and victim mentality that stunts so much of the Muslim world. A while back, I was in Jordan, and a wealthy Saudi told me that the Iraq war was part of a continuous Western assault on Islam that includes the British Royal Family's assassination of Dodi Fayed. And so, in a London courtroom, a freak one-off celebrity death becomes just another snapshot of the big geopolitical picture.


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JWR contributor Mark Steyn is is a Chicago Sun-Times Columnist. Comment by clicking here.

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"America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It"  

It's the end of the world as we know it…      Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are.
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     Steyn argues that, contra the liberal cultural relativists, America should proclaim the obvious: we do have a better government, religion, and culture than our enemies, and we should spread America's influence around the world—for our own sake as well as theirs.
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