By Andrew L. Jaffee

When perverted, evil, Islamist terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, they demolished a true “community center” — a model of human diversity and opportunity. (Why is it that so many “progressives” [cowards] hold “diversity” to be an ideal, but nonetheless double-think and apologize for radical Islamic savagery, e.g., Sunni Muslims killing Shi’ite Muslims or Islamist hatred of Jews and gays?) Claudia Rosett reminds us that New York City had one of the greatest community centers on Earth — at least before Islamists struck:

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… I keep thinking that on Sept. 10, 2001, lower Manhattan had a community center. A spectacular center. It was called the World Trade Center, though I always found the name Twin Towers more alluring. One of my favorite views used to be the scene that opened up when you drove east across the Tappan Zee Bridge — from which, on clear days, looking miles down the Hudson to the southern tip of Manhattan, you could see those two white towers.

The World Trade Center was, as some of its chroniclers have said, a vertical city. It was a place of shops, cafes, restaurants, news stands, many offices and a huge plaza where in summer there were concerts, and people lunched outdoors around the fountain. Its basement concourse was the place where in 1982, as an aspiring journalist, I engaged in the oxymoronic business of calming my nerves with a cup of coffee, at one of the multitude of coffee shops, before going across the street for a job interview. It was the place where over many years I came and went from subway stops that let out into the World Trade Center complex, where you could buy everything from t-shirts to airplane tickets. I bought my favorite briefcase there, won a raffle for a bread-basket, picked up shampoo, toothpaste and dishracks; I met friends and business contacts for lunch there, walked through it on the way to more distant shops and restaurants, and interviewed people in the offices above. When I moved back to New York in 1997, after almost a dozen years working abroad, my editor took me to lunch in the North Tower, more than 100 stories up, at Windows on the World.

In one of the lower buildings of the complex, there was a huge and marvelous Borders bookstore, with a big poetry section, a cafe, and benches outside. It was a great place to play hooky from the office. It’s gone. It’s all gone. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

In a rare moment of clarity, the BBC published an article explaining why Americans can burn Korans, Bibles, Torahs, or American flags as expressions of free speech. Maybe a few people around the world will read this article and get a better understanding of the values we cherish and make us strong — time better spent than blaming the U.S. for every problem under the sun. Perhaps the “teaming masses” will get a clue as to why millions of immigrants, probably emigrants related to/known to most of these masses in some way (family, friendship, neighbors, etc.), have flocked to our great nation. And if new immigrants to the U.S. don’t understand our values, we’re pretty good at assimilation — or at last resort, there’s always police, riot police, the FBI, or the National Guard. For foreign entities who wish to destroy our cherished values, as in 911, that’s why we have aircraft carriers, Marines, F-16s, and cruise missiles. In other words, if you don’t like Americans’ right to free speech — e.g., the many “progressives” who would suspend free speech when it suits their cowardly agendas — you can just piss off. From the Beeb:

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by Benjamin T. Acosta*

Beginning with the 1979 Shi’i Iranian revolution and the subsequent success of the Sunni mujahideen’s resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s, acts of violence committed in the name of Islam have risen sharply. Increasingly, the role of martyrdom has taken a central position in violent campaigns conducted by Islamic groups. The suicide bomber has become the ideal of Islamic martyrdom, simultaneously appalling Western audiences and captivating Islamic ones. What seems to have gone unnoticed, however, is how the concept of Islamic martyrdom has undergone a transformation that blends and synthesizes notions that were once limited to one or the other of the main Muslim sects. In order to better address the challenge of Islamic violence, it is necessary to examine both the Islamic world’s attachment to such behavior and to understand better how the role of the martyr has changed with the times.

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By Barry Rubin

Two readers asked me questions well worth answering. The first asked whether Islam itself isn’t the enemy; the second, how these distinctions appear from an Israeli standpoint.

Regarding the first question, I would stress that “Islam” as a religion functioning in the world is not at war with anyone as such. There are those who want to steer Islam toward an active war against how the majority of Muslims live at present and almost all the governments ruling them, using valid quotations and interpretations. And there are those who oppose them, including most of those governments, also using valid quotations and interpretations of Islam.

Western leaders’ and media’s mistake is not that they aren’t “anti-Islam” or that they are “pro-Islam” but that they don’t understand fully this conflict happening among Muslims, the contending forces, the stakes, and the nature of the struggle. Thus, dire Islamist enemies are often misjudged as friends merely because they aren’t violent at present or because they say soothing words to Western audiences, while genuinely moderate Muslims are shunned as “inauthentic” merely because they disagree with the radicals.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

TIME Magazine recently wrote a generally news-like article called, “A Defiant France Steps Up Deportation of Roma.” But the magazine didn’t do a cover story on this subject — France’s ethnic cleansing of almost 9000 Gypsies (”Roma”) from its soil this year alone. TIME had no qualms about smearing Israel with age-old, anti-Semitic canards in a front-page article. And are the “progressives” at UC Irvine, Berkley, Cambridge, and Concordia going to get “outraged,” throw public tantrums, and label France an “apartheid” state, as they do so flippantly and erroneously at/to Israel? First, what TIME wrote about Israel; then, what France is doing.

Was TIME’s Karl Vick, author of its recent “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” article:

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by Daniel Pipes*

The furor over the Islamic center, variously called the Ground Zero Mosque, Cordoba House, and Park51, has large implications for the future of Islam in the United States and perhaps beyond.

The debate is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. One would have thought that the event to touch a nerve within the American body politic, making Islam a national issue, would be an act of terrorism. Or discovery that Islamists had penetrated U.S. security services. Or the dismaying results of survey research. Or an apologetic presidential speech.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

President Bush was right about Iraq, sticking to his guns, and helping plant the seeds of democracy there. Even John Murtha admitted that Bush’s troop surge was working. More importantly, Iraqis agree:

… A new poll by an Iraqi company found that nearly 60 percent feel it is the wrong time for U.S. soldiers to leave and 53 percent oppose President Obama’s ending of the combat mission. A little more than half believe the withdrawal will hurt the country and only one-fourth view the development positively. And in a statistic that is sure to bother those that boast of Obama’s worldwide popularity, nearly 42 percent feel the president does not care about the situation in Iraq.

Back in September 2006, the year when Iraq nearly fell to civil war, 71 percent of Iraqis wanted U.S. forces to leave their country in a year or less. There was a widespread perception that U.S. soldiers were the ones responsible for their misery. Most disturbingly, 61 percent of Iraqis felt attacks on U.S. soldiers were legitimate, a 14 percent increase from the beginning of 2006. But by March 2008, only 38 percent wanted U.S. forces to leave immediately and a majority wanted them to stay until the country was secured.

What happened? The surge is what happened. Contrary to what opponents of the surge said, the increased presence and aggressiveness of U.S. forces did not trigger a popular backlash because security visibly improved. The increased exposure to American forces likely also led to a certain degree of affection and respect as the anti-American myths were busted by reality. …

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by Phyllis Chesler

The September 13, 2010 issue of TIME Magazine arrived yesterday. The cover story is titled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” and is illustrated by a large Jewish star composed of daisies. Yes, daises — as in “counting daisies, don’t have a care in the world.”

This is precisely the point of Karl Vick’s article. He writes:

Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter [of peace with the Palestinians]. They’re otherwise engaged: They’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of the late summer … they have moved on.

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By Fern Sidman

Dozens of Jewish supporters of Israel gathered across the street from the Israeli Consulate in New York City, on Thursday evening, September 2nd, to call upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “just say no to demands for more concessions from Israel that will continue to endanger the lives of Jews throughout Israel.” Organized by Helen Freedman of Americans For A Safe Israel, the demonstration came at the end of the first round of direct peace talks between Prime Minister Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Barack Obama at the White House.

Pro-Israel Protest, NYC

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Abbas and Netanyahu met for 90 minutes, with the two leaders pledging to work together to maintain security and reiterating their goal of a two-state solution. The three-way meeting was “long and productive,” Mr Mitchell said, adding the leaders pledged to work in “good faith” and with “seriousness of purpose.” He said Mr. Netanyahu and Mr Abbas then went off on their own for a one-on-one meeting, which may be designed to build trust between the two leaders. There were no note-takers or translators in either of the meetings.

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By Barry Rubin

I’m not a big fan of conferences. There’s nothing more repetitive than sitting in a panel where the presentations have interesting titles but are otherwise disappointing. Or listening to a speaker who may be very good but says absolutely nothing you don’t know already.

But sometimes you have fascinating experiences which are not exactly on the agenda. Here are three from a conference I attended in Prague a few years ago, each of which contains its own lessons. Incidentally, nothing about the below was off the record, though the names and some details have been omitted since this is about points, not personalities.

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by Steven J. Rosen*

Just before dawn on May 31, 2010, a team of Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship to enforce a blockade against the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. As they came aboard, the Israelis were assaulted by a violent faction of Islamic militants. A melee followed in which several of the commandos were seriously injured and nine of the Turkish militants were killed. The clash was over before the sun came up.

It was still daylight when, 5,600 miles away, the Israeli delegation to the United Nations was summoned to appear before an emergency session of the Security Council to be chastised for the actions of the commandos. Convened just hours after the violence, the council spent the night of May 31, into the wee hours of the morning, absorbed in “a highly emotional emergency session…[to express] international anger over the Israeli attack,” as the Washington Post described it.

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WASHINGTON (August 31, 2010) — Every year, 300,000 to 400,000 children are born to illegal immigrants in the United States, each one of them automatically a U.S. citizen despite the illegal status of their parents. This practice of automatic, or birthright, citizenship is not the result of any specific legislation, regulation, executive order, or judicial ruling, and yet has become de facto law of the land.

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by Phyllis Chesler

Yale University’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism hosted a major conference in which I was privileged to be a participant. “Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity” was envisioned by Professor Charles Asher Small who founded the Initiative. The conference was also sponsored by the Issac and Jessie Kaplan Center for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town, in association with the Vidal Sasoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University; The Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University; and the Rabin Chair Forum, George Washington University. … Continue reading…

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by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman*

The 2002 Arab peace initiative, commonly referred to as the “Abdullah plan” after its chief author, then-Saudi crown prince Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz, constitutes the most significant and explicit collective Arab declaration in favor of a peaceful, mutually agreed-on resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict ever made. By adopting the plan at the March 2002 League of Arab States’s Beirut summit and reaffirming it in Riyadh in 2007, the collective Arab position towards the conflict has been modified in the direction of a more explicit recognition of Israel. Notwithstanding the ambiguities of the declaration, especially on the issue of Palestinian refugees, a shift is discernable. From complete rejection (the “Three Nos” of the 1967 Khartoum summit) to qualified acceptance (the 1982 Fez summit) to the current expressed willingness to declare an end to the conflict and establish normal relations with Israel, the Arab states have moved to an officially proclaimed acceptance of the reality of a Jewish state in the region. Attaining a proper understanding of the initiative, however, requires an examination of the larger contexts in which it was forged.

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