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Oct. 13, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Happiness Quotient

Jonathan Rosenblum: Ignore the Grandchildren

Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

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 August 1, 2006 / 7 Menachem-Av, 5766

Sometimes survival gets a bit noisy

By Wesley Pruden



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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If the Jews would just die without making a lot of noise, the Nice People could get on with the really important things in life, stuffing their faces with salmon and bean sprouts, watching the Rev. Billy Don Moyers pontificate on PBS, and making more Nice People.


The Nice People, manipulated by the coverage of the fighting in Lebanon, are getting fed up with the Israelis, who are acting as if they have the right to survive in peace to live lives of quiet exasperation. But the Jews insist on "disproportionality," on firing back when fired on by the Hezbollah "guerrillas," as the newspaper and television correspondents insist on calling "terrorists."


Louise Arbour, the high commissioner of human rights at the United Nations, is typical of the Nice People of the West who are losing patience with the Jews. She's against killing, and not only that, she "strongly condemns" it. Or some of it. She demands an investigation, but only of the Israelis, and not just an investigation by anybody. She wants "international expertise."


"In order to establish facts and conduct an impartial legal analysis," her "office" says, employing the magisterial third person, "the high commissioner reiterated the need for independent investigations." To this end, she advocates "the active involvement of international expertise."


It's important to be fair, even to be fairer to some than to others, so we can guess who these paragons of "international expertise" might be, recruited from the crowded ranks of the compassionate of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, maybe even North Korea, all, naturally, determined to protect and preserve human rights.


The Israelis, once efficient and savvy, now seem to be as confused as everyone else in the West, so fearful of giving public-relations offense that they can't speak for themselves. There's plenty to show and tell, but they're allowing the world media to get away with the usual evasions, distortions and prevarications, to draw the outlines of the fighting with the moral equivalence so prized in the salons of the West. The photographs of the dead children of Qana would break the hearts of anyone but an Islamist terrorist, but the photographs of the Hezbollah artillery and missile batteries, planted among the women and children precisely to draw Israeli fire, were smuggled out of Lebanon by an Australian journalist and published yesterday in the Herald Sun of Melbourne. The photographs are proof of Hezbollah courage, of terrorists hiding behind the chadors of their women and cowering with the children.


"Israel is losing this war because it is not fighting it in a manner calculated to win it decisively," observes Jed Babbin of the American Spectator. "It is fighting only Hezbollah, a proxy of its real enemies. If Israel accepts a cease-fire without breaking Hezbollah's hold on southern Lebanon, all of Lebanon will become a colony of terrorist Iran. And Israel will have suffered a strategic defeat. On the ground and on the airwaves, the war must be fought ... to win decisively, or lose inevitably."


But enabling Hezbollah will be more than a defeat for Israel. George W. Bush understands this. The restraint so admired in the West is regarded as the weakness of poltroons in the land of Allah, and grand talk of diplomacy and compromise is merely the funk and fear of frightened old women. The extraordinary ordinary American gets it, as he nearly always does, even when others don't. Everyone is "tired of war," a barber in Des Moines tells an inquiring reporter for The Washington Times. "The consensus here is that if Israel laid down their arms, there would still be fighting. But if Hezbollah laid down its arms, there would not be."


The president laid down "clear objectives" yesterday, and for the sake of Lebanon as well as for Israel and the United States, he must stick to them. This means that Syria and Iran must for once behave themselves.


"It's important to remember this crisis began with Hezbollah's unprovoked attacks against Israel," he said. "Israel is exercising its right to defend itself." And so it is. Survival is often noisy, and the rest of the world will just have to put up with it — and thank the Jews.

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

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.


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