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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 Nov. 15, 2007 / 5 Kislev 5768

Good intentions no match for this Godzilla

By Jonathan Gurwitz


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If you ever attended one of those late-night animated film festivals that theaters used to sponsor during the 1970s, then you may have seen a short cartoon — very short — called "Bambi Meets Godzilla."


The cartoon begins with the innocent deer standing in a tranquil meadow as the opening credits roll past. A pastoral melody from the Rossini opera "William Tell" plays in the background as Bambi sniffs the flowers in his animated paradise.


Seconds into the cartoon, the brief credits conclude. Suddenly, Godzilla's giant foot comes crashing down on Bambi, smashing him into oblivion. In less than two minutes, it's over.


If "Bambi Meets Godzilla" were made today, some creative mind would almost certainly find a way to extend it into a two-hour cinematic indictment of global warming, the war on terror or the pharmaceutical industry. When Marv Newland created it in 1969, he gave his cartoon the improvisational brevity merited by an encounter between a naïf and a monster.


Jimmy Carter reenacted "Bambi Meets Godzilla" during a recent visit to Darfur. The people of Darfur are suffering the fifth year of a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by the government of Sudan and its Janjaweed militia allies.


The numbers and the atrocities are by now so well-known, so commonplace as to be stultifying: 2 million people driven from their homes, as many as 400,000 killed, mass rapes of women and girls.


During his two-day mission to Sudan, Carter intended to meet with Darfur refugees. But when he arrived outside the town of Kabkabiya, a Janjaweed stronghold, the people were too frightened to come out. The former president and his entourage tried to venture into the village. Along the way, according to an Associated Press account, residents slipped handwritten notes to Carter's traveling companions.


Billionaire Richard Branson produced a note from his pocket scribbled in Arabic. "We (are) still suffering from the war," it said, "as our girls are being raped on a daily basis."


Carter made it to a school where he met with one refugee. But when he tried to proceed farther, Sudanese security officers — if not the actual monsters of the Darfur genocide, then at least their accomplices — stopped him. Carter railed at the armed men, "I'll tell President Bashir about this."


Of course, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is one of the principal architects of the strategy of rape and civilian slaughter.


Carter left Darfur complaining that the West was responding too slowly to the humanitarian tragedy while also criticizing the use of the word "genocide" to describe the situation, a designation he called legally imprecise and "unhelpful."


It was a surprising criticism coming from a man who tosses the word "apartheid" around with careless abandon. The African tribes of Darfur have the bad luck of being ethnically cleansed by fellow Muslims rather than by Jews.


More to the point, when the men with guns who do the killing confronted Carter, his only response was to threaten to talk to someone about it — someone, it turns out, who gives the orders to the men with guns to do the killing.


Well-intentioned words won't do a thing to help the people in Kabkabiya today, tomorrow, next month or even next year. One of the frightening consequences of the Iraq war is that people of good will seem to have forgotten that sometimes words are not enough.


"The biggest problem we have today is that we never join words and action," Paul Rusesabagina told the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board in a meeting last month.


Rusesabagina is a hero of the Rwandan genocide whose exploits are portrayed in the movie "Hotel Rwanda." It wasn't a call for reckless adventurism, as Rusesabagina made clear in his criticism of the Bush administration's motives for going into Iraq. But sometimes, words alone are not enough.


In the animated world, Godzilla squashes Bambi and the cartoon ends. In the real world, ruthless monsters ignore pleas for peace and verbal threats and keep raping and killing.

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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