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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 April 24, 2007 / 6 Iyar, 5767

Terror's lobbyist

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | This week, the Ohio Legislature will hold its second hearing on legislation designed to help the state make a real contribution to America's triumph in the War for the Free World. It would prevent investment by Ohio's public pension funds in companies that do business with the terrorism-sponsoring, nuclear weapons- and ballistic missile-building and genocide-threatening Islamic Republic of Iran.


Unfortunately, the Iranian regime and the corporations partnering with it (almost all of whom are foreign-owned and -operated, since American companies are prohibited from participating directly in such dealings and only a few circumvent that prohibition using off-shore subsidiaries) are being abetted by a well-heeled Washington lobby: the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC). Its president is William Reinsch and the effect of its lobbying at the moment would be to keep American taxpayers and pension fund beneficiaries underwriting our enemies through their institutional and personal investments.


Reinsch had a checkered career prior to assuming his current role as Terror's Lobbyist. For example, during the Clinton Administration, he used his senior position in the Commerce Department to facilitate and excuse China's acquisition of an array of sensitive and even dual-use technologies, despite restrictions on such transfers.


Now, the former Commerce Under Secretary heads a trade council that favors doing business with America's enemies and runs interference for those determined to do so. In his present role, Reinsch is working to counter citizens and their elected representatives who believe such business dealings are strategically ill-advised and morally repugnant.


Specifically, Reinsch's trade association is mobilizing its considerable resources to help public pension fund managers, their Wall Street advisors and state treasurers fight off initiatives like one adopted last year by Illinois. It put an end to investments on the part of that state's firefighters, police officers, National Guard personnel and other public employees in companies doing business with the Islamofascist and genocidal regime in Sudan.


Until, that is, Reinsch and his friends sued to have the law overturned. While a federal judge did not find the law's divestment provisions represented an unconstitutional infringement on the foreign policy-making responsibilities reserved for the federal government, he did object to certain technical points. At the moment, efforts to fix those technicalities and restore the requirement for Sudan-free investing are being discouraged by what amount to Sudan's lobbyists at the National Foreign Trade Council.


Reinsch is also working to prevent Ohio from joining other states striving to protect their fiduciaries from what the Securities and Exchange Commission calls "Global Security Risk" arising from investments in companies partnering with the Iranian regime. His team is horrified at the prospect of Ohio compelling Wall Street to create Iran-free accounts, indexes and index-managed products — investment vehicles that would exclude companies doing business with Tehran from many billions worth of state pension fund investments.


In advance of a hearing last week to consider legislation sponsored by State Reps. Joshua Mandel (who knows a thing or two about Iran from his recently completed combat tour as a Marine in Iraq) and Shannon Jones, Reinsch circulated a letter warning the bill "would broadly and indiscriminately harm U.S. and foreign companies as well as individual pensioners" in Ohio. He also claimed that a funding cut-off would be "extremely unlikely to affect the behavior of the Iranian government or help the Iranian people."


Neither of these can be said of the Mandel-Jones legislation in Ohio. It is targeted legislation that would affect only companies that are doing business in or with our enemies in Iran. In a riveting congressional hearing chaired in Washington last week by Rep. Brad Sherman (Democrat of California), Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman testified that her state's similar efforts to invest terror-free have not harmed pensioners, let alone indiscriminately so. In fact, the Missouri Investment Trust, the first public fund in the country to divest the stocks of companies doing business with Iran, Syria, Sudan and North Korea, has actually performed better since it was taken terror-free.


As to the effect on Iran of such initiatives as those underway in not only Ohio and Missouri but Florida, California, Illinois, Georgia and Louisiana, they actually could prove as dramatic as the divestment campaign mounted twenty years ago against South Africa. That campaign indisputably helped compel the apartheid regime to abandon its racist policy and ultimately contributed to the government's fall from power. Iran is already in difficult economic straits; if fully brought to bear, the power of America's capital markets could mightily affect corporate behavior, undermining — and, hopefully, helping to bring down — the mullahocracy in Iran.


Interestingly, Reinsch told a reporter, "You don't win this particular battle in the hearings; you win the battle in the backroom, where you can explain the consequences of the legislation." In other words, his clients' case cannot stand the light of day. Their only chance of success lies in spooking legislators in settings where their constituents and the press cannot monitor the lobbyists' misinformation and intimidation.


All the more reason for the eyes of Ohioans, and indeed the Nation, to be on Wednesday's hearing in Columbus of the House Financial Institutions, Real Estate and Securities Committee. It should be there, rather than the "backrooms" preferred by terror's lobbyists, that the fate of the most effective terror-free investing legislation introduced to date should be determined, clearing the way for its swift approval and enactment and the creation thereby of a model for every state and American investor.


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 Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

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"War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World"  

America has been at war for years, but until now, it has not been clear with whom or precisely for what. And we have not been using the full resources we need to win.

With the publication of War Footing, lead-authored by Frank Gaffney, it not only becomes clear who the enemy is and how high the stakes are, but also exactly how we can prevail.

War Footing shows that we are engaged in nothing less than a War for the Free World. This is a fight to the death with Islamofascists, Muslim extremists driven by a totalitarian political ideology that, like Nazism or Communism before it, is determined to destroy freedom and the people who love it. Sales help fund JWR.

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