Reading material

All of these are read-in-full recommendations.

Sidney Zion in the NY Daily News, a paper I used to devour on the long bus ride to school back in the days of my freshman year:

But I don’t include Kushner in that category. He’s no anti-Semite.

So what, I say? If you’re anti-Israel, you’re an enemy of the Jewish people. All this debate over anti-Semitism is nothing but a detour and, for that matter, a roundabout way to excuse anti-Israel propaganda.

Recently, a couple of academics from Harvard and the University of Chicago produced a long piece accusing the Israeli lobby of dictating American policy to the harm of the U.S. – even leading to 9/11.

This was without question an anti-Israeli attack. If believed, it would leave Israel alone against the Arab world, bereft of American help, in the name of “realism.”

The defense comes this way: they are not anti-Semites.

As if that makes it legit.

The Gathering Storm over Iran in the Boston Globe.

In Three myths about Christians, the myth of Islam’s religious tolerance:

In Egypt, for example, there are at least 10 million Christians, but under the constitution, only a Muslim can be president – and there are similar provisions in other Muslim republics. In Saudi Arabia – where no one can be elected president, since the entire state and all its oil are claimed as private property by the ruling family – there are millions of Christians, but they are not allowed to have a single church, and it is a criminal offense to hold a prayer service, however informal, anywhere else. In all Muslim lands, the penalty for assisting a Muslim to convert was and is death for all concerned – no small matter for believing Christians whose highest duty is to save other souls by conversion.

Spare the rod, spoil the peace:

Legally and morally, neither the U.S. nor Europe owes the Palestinians any assistance — much less hundreds of millions of dollars worth on a continuing basis. There are plenty of needy causes to which to devote the scarce humanitarian resources of our overburden governments: Darfurians subject to genocidal campaign by an Islamist government, Congolese trying to recover from “Africa’s World War,” Tibetans sitting in exile in India, etc. The only justification for our governments’ paying good money to the PA is our national interest in a stable Middle East — and we are hardly getting our money’s worth if the dividend is a casus belli against Israel.

Read them all.