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July 3, 2008

Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget (TOUCHING!)

Jeff Jacoby: Israel still paying for its defeat

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part IV by Rabbi David Aaron

July 2, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Appeasers Make Poor Patriots

The Kosher Gourmet By Kathleen Purvis: Slaw, y'all: For BBQs or Sabbath dinner, these southern recipes are something else!

JWisdom:: Rabbi Mordechai Becher: Jewish Rx for A Simpler Life

July 1, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. I think it's important to leave a legacy to my children. How much should I save towards this end?

Paul Greenberg:A President who is history deficient?

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism

June 30, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Remembering the architect of Torah Judaism for the modern world

Abe Novick: Hulk: Still a Jew?

JWisdom: : Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 2: The Abandoned Child

June 26, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Quantum leap to evil

Caroline B. Glick: Victimized families must not be allowed to dictate policy

June 25, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Today in Biblical History: King Jeroboam of Israel prevents pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Jonathan Tobin: Real Friends and Real Enemies

JWisdom: Raping of reason By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 25, 2008

Steven Emerson: Kristof: Never Mind the Terrorists

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch?

JWisdom: Rabbi David Aaron: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part III

June 24, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: What were they thinking!?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Guilty knowledge

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Warping Innocence

June 23, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Diploma dilemma

Jeff Jacoby: A world without children

JWisdom: Rabbi Dovid Gross: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality --- Introduction

June 20, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Man: The Crowning Glory of Creation

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's darkest week

JWisdom: We aren't worthy? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 19, 2008

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: The saints who don't come marchin' in

Chris Christoff: Muslim woman demands an apology from Obama after camera snub

June 18, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Still Dancing Around Jerusalem

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Chilled fruit and vegetable soups

JWisdom: Souls Need A Check Up? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Baby Einstein

Caroline B. Glick: Bush's rhetoric, Bush's policies

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part II by Rabbi David Aaron

June 16, 2008

Varda Branfman: Bob Dylan, won't you please come home?

Diana West: Academic dares to question the 'religion of peace'

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Positive Backfire

June 13, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Trading manna for whine

Caroline B. Glick: Peace with friends

JWisdom: From the mouths of … by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 12, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet Paul Revere's pal, the Orthodox Jew who played a key role in laying Boston's cultural and business infrastructure

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: No need to be tempted by Wendy's mandarin chicken salad

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

June 11, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: What would Hillel say?

Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA and NGOs: The Real U.N. 'Insult'

JWisdom: Sara Yoheved Rigler: Greatness Made Simple: How a momentary decision shifted life's course and destination

June 6, 2008

Rabbi Pinchas Stolper: Revelation: The basis of faith

Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Mere hours after becoming Israel's new 'best friend' Obama backtracks on status of Jerusalem

Caroline B. Glick: UN choosing to protect rogue nuclear programs

JWisdom: Sameness in difference by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 5, 2008

David Lightman: Now Obama wants to be Israel's newest 'best friend'

Obama's remarks to AIPAC policy conference

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Lokshen Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread

JWisdom: Why a Jewish Jerusalem makes so many nervous by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 4, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: A different sort of 'religious broadcaster'

Jonathan Tobin: Misgivings on the Road to Damascus

JWisdom: 44 Years Without An Argument? by Sara Yoheved Rigler

June 3, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East

Everything's Relative: There is a crisis growing in Orthodox synagogues worldwide, reveals Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel

JWisdom: White Facades; Black Secrets by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Lie to outsmart discriminator?

He writes the songs that make our souls sing:Gavriel Aryeh Sanders interviews Jewish music legend Ben Zion Shenker; includes stirring, uplifting song

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Of laws and lives

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 Dec 20, 2007 / 11 Teves 5768

The Value of a Life

By Jonathan Gurwitz


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Gillian Gibbons is back home, safe in Britain. Rachid Dahiye Zakaria is still trapped in a dangerous refugee camp in Chad.


Gibbons, 54, is the teacher who made the mistake of allowing her pupils in Sudan to name a teddy bear Mohammad. The 7-year-old students obviously didn't have a problem with the name. Neither did any of their parents, none of whom complained.


Repeating a process that Islamic clerics and Islamist governments have employed to great effect with cartoons, books and movies, however, authorities in Khartoum used the great teddy bear incident to gin up outrage at an alleged Western plot to demean Islam.


Gibbons had been sentenced in November to 15 days in prison, avoiding a much harsher potential sentence for blasphemy of six months and 40 lashes. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside her prison — not to plead for her release, but instead to demand her execution.


Following the intervention of two Muslim members of the British House of Lords, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir issued a pardon. By the first week of December, Gibbons was issuing a plea for privacy from a hotel in her hometown of Liverpool.


Zakaria is 12. His mistake is to be a member of the Massalit tribe, one of the ethnically African, religiously Muslim groups targeted for annihilation by the Sudanese government. Janjaweed militia attacked his village in Sudan's Darfur region. According to an Associated Press account, the armed men threw him into a fire and left him to die.


Zakaria survived. Badly disfigured, he walked for days to reach a refugee camp in neighboring Chad and his sole surviving relatives — a grandmother and a sister. He's been waiting there for months as an international charity, Children of Fire, has struggled to bring him to South Africa for a series of painful operations to repair his small body so that he can perform basic tasks.


Which is the greater outrage — the blasphemy of children innocently naming a stuffed animal, or the blasphemy of adults burning, raping and murdering children? And which is the greater evil — the intolerant shouts for murder for any perceived offense against Islam or the silence that has accompanied the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of its followers?


Whenever one of these contrived grievances comes along, Muslim defense groups, the 22-member Arab League and the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference spring into action to condemn the assault on Islam. Last year, the OIC went so far as to establish an Observatory of Islamophobia to address a "consistent pattern and continuity of sacrilege and blasphemy."


Which sacrilege? The documented burning of Korans, along with people, in Darfur? No. The OIC, along with the Arab League, has led the international defense of Omar al-Bashir's genocidal regime. The toughest statement it has meted out over four years in which 2.5 million black Muslims have been driven from their homes and into barren refugee camps is a call for strict compliance with a cease-fire agreement.


Now al-Bashir is poised to score his biggest diplomatic coup. Security Council Resolution 1769, which the U.S., Britain and France worked diligently to pass last summer, authorized the deployment of 26,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur by year's end. Yet through a combination of bureaucratic obstruction and outright deceit, al-Bashir has stymied deployment of the troops and the equipment necessary to protect Darfur civilians.


The violence, meanwhile, continues, not only directed at children like Zakaria, but also at humanitarian aid groups trying to help them. As the New Year approaches without implementation of Resolution 1769, the plight of the people of Darfur stands to slip even further from international consciousness.


The West could do much more to save lives in Darfur, for instance, by putting as great a value on the life and health of Rachid Dahiye Zakaria as it does on the well being of Gillian Gibbons. The leading institutions of the Muslim world could do no less.

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

Comment by clicking here.

JWR contributor Jonathan Gurwitz, a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, is a co-founder and twice served as Director General of the Future Leaders of the Alliance program at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. In 1986 he was placed on the Foreign Service Register of the U.S. State Department.

Jonathan Gurwitz Archives


© 2007, Jonathan Gurwitz

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