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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 August 8, 2007 / 24 Menachem-Av, 5767

Lack of imagination clouds Sept. 10 minds

By Jonathan Gurwitz


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Travel back six years in time. It's the summer of 2001. Lance Armstrong has just won his third consecutive Tour de France. President Bush signed an extension of the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, reiterating that cooperation with other nations "is essential to pursuing the most effective approaches to solving the problems of proliferation and terrorism."


Anchorman Dan Rather is in hot water with the NAACP for saying on the Don Imus show that CBS news executives "got the Buckwheats" and were frightened into reporting on the smoldering scandal involving Rep. Gary Condit and missing intern Chandra Levy. The scandal itself is the most important story coming out of Washington as the Capitol empties for August recess.


Now imagine an alternate history that goes along with these events. Imagine that law enforcement officials catch a lucky break or that a particularly dogged FBI agent prevails over the inertia of her superiors.


Imagine that the news in early August 2001 also contains this blurb: "FBI agents made several arrests today in a plot to hijack U.S. airliners using box cutters. Some of the alleged conspirators reportedly received rudimentary flight training. Terrorism experts say they were in an early stage of planning and dismiss the plot as the work of amateurs."


Had history unfolded this way, had the 9-11 conspirators been discovered and deported, would anyone believe that they could have commandeered four aircraft, piloting three of them into U.S. landmarks and killing 3,000 people?


The world allegedly changed on Sept. 11, 2001. Watching people leap to their deaths and the twin towers come crashing down was supposed to be an effective antidote to what the 9-11 commission called "a failure of imagination."


But today, as a National Intelligence Estimate warns that the United States faces a heightened threat environment for terrorist attack, 9-11 is increasingly viewed as a one-off that's unlikely to be replicated. The inconveniences caused by heightened security — no curbside parking at airports, only 3 ounces of liquids or gels on planes — simply aren't commensurate with the risk of mass murder.


Neither are the many "freedoms" that the Bush administration, Congress and the courts have compromised — including the freedom for individuals in the United States to participate in international conference calls with foreign jihadists without fear of surveillance.


Those are the ranks of the incredulous, who suffer not only from a failure of imagination, but also from a failure of recognition. When the FBI charged six radical Muslims, foreign nationals, in a plot to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., U.S. News & World Report carried the story under the headline, "Targeting Soldiers in an Amateur Plot."


In June, federal authorities busted an alleged plot by a retired airport worker and fellow Islamic extremists to inflict massive casualties by blowing up fuel pipelines at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Conspirators were recorded boasting of an operation more stunning than 9-11, one that would leave "the whole country in mourning."


The JFK plot wasn't even front-page news in the New York Times. Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt defended the decision to play the story inside the paper because "the accused men were a long way from action and that despite the apocalyptic comments of the U.S. attorney, their ability to carry out an attack on the airport was very much open to question."


Worse than those who suffer from failures of imagination and recognition are the cynics who reject the threat of terrorism as a mere tool to manipulate the masses. John Edwards summed it up nicely in a Time magazine interview in which he rejected the war on terror as political language "used to justify a whole series of things that are not justifiable, ranging from the war in Iraq, to torture, to violation of the civil liberties of Americans, to illegal spying."


The imaginatively challenged live in a Sept. 10 world of bliss. The cynics live in a Sept. 12 world of conspiracies. The plotters and victims of Sept. 11 are facts of history. And history has an uncanny way of repeating.

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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