From Aish.com:

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by Steven Shamrak

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” - Edmund Burke

“…Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.” - Pastor Martin Niemöller

In his book “My Life”, Adolf Hitler clearly described his vision of the future of the Jews in Europe. By 1939 his anti-Semitic and xenophobic vision became reality. Concentration camps were built to detain communists, socialists, Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others. Disabled children and adults were ‘relieved’ of their lives as a part of the systematic campaign of German national purification. (Please visit and view the chronology of the Holocaust.)

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by Asaf Romirowsky*

An Islamic group came to Temple University last spring with an offer to provide $1.5 million for an endowed chair in Islamic studies to honor religion professor Mahmoud Ayoub. After months of talks, the deal never got off the ground, once trustees and others raised concerns about the contributor, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a nonprofit research group that had been under scrutiny as part of a government probe into the funding of suspected terrorists.

Some would like to consider money given by Saudis and other Arab nations to American universities as generous gifts to those U.S. universities who have educated their elites. A closer look reveals a different picture that includes incitement, anti-Semitism and a skewed view of Islam.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Today, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has taken a high-minded, utterly rational, and insanely expensive full-page ad in the New York Times and in the International Herald Tribune in which it denounces “Suicide Terror.” It calls upon the “world to act” against the “plague” of such attacks which have “murdered thousands of innocents,” and it displays the photo of the late Benazir Bhutto, whose claim to innocence has been widely disputed but whose assassination, in my opinion, was utterly tragic.

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By Ted Belman

Post Annapolis, the Palestinian Authority made it crystal clear that it will never recognize Israel as a “Jewish state”. Furthermore, it made it crystal clear that it will not compromise on Jerusalem making it a capital offense to do so. Yet negotiations continue. Either Olmert doesn’t believe the PA or what is more likely, he will still cut a deal where Israel is denied that recognition and will divide Jerusalem according to Arab demands.

Do not think for a moment that these entrenched Arab positions are negotiable. They aren’t and never have been.

Ever since Theodor Herzl wrote The Jewish State in 1896, the Arabs, with one exception, Faisal ibn Hussein, have opposed it.

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by Steven Shamrak

Israel is trying to persuade hundreds of thousands of its citizens living overseas to return home (about 650,000 Israelis live abroad). The project, dubbed “coming home”, will try to lure Israelis living abroad to come back with tax breaks, employment and small business loans. “Every Israeli, even if he lives abroad, is Israeli at heart and knows that his home is here. I call on all Israelis to return home,” Olmert said. This is another misguided publicity stunt of the desperate, politically bankrupt government.

First of all it should be, “Every Jew,” not just Israeli, Mr. Olmert. And the way things go there will be, G-d forbid, no Israel to come home to, as corrupt, leftist self-haters continue the implementation of the current policy of national self-obliteration.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I have a “secret” life. I study Jewish religious texts and observe the holy days. ‘Twas not always thus. There was a time when I fled from a Judaism that had no place for women in terms of religious learning and ritual. I returned to religion as a feminist and helped create many feminist Jewish, life-cycle and inter-faith rituals.

On December 1st, 1988, in Jerusalem, I was privileged to be among the Jewish women who prayed for the first time in the women’s section at the Western Wall (or Kotel). While there are no exact parallels, this was analogous to Catholic women officiating at an all-female Mass in the Vatican. On that day, I was asked to open the Torah for the women to read from and it wedded me faithfully to the ensuing struggle for Jewish women’s religious rights which involved grassroots activism, consciousness raising, fundraising, and a lawsuit in the Israeli Supreme Court. You may read about some of this in a book I co-authored with Rivka Haut, Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site.

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More evidence has been found corroborating Biblical texts:

A wall mentioned in the Bible’s Book of Nehemiah and long sought by archaeologists apparently has been found, an Israeli archaeologist says. …

The findings suggest that the structure was actually part of the same city wall the Bible says Nehemiah rebuilt, Mazar said. The Book of Nehemiah gives a detailed description of construction of the walls, destroyed earlier by the Babylonians. …

See also: Jeremiah: Biblical and Historical Convergence

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By Jonah Cohen

Recent studies show that, relative to their small population, the Jewish people have disproportionately and significantly contributed to “the top ranks of the arts, sciences, law, medicine, finance, entrepreneurship, and the media.” Oddly, Jewish day schools have yet to highlight such intellectual accomplishment in a coherent curriculum. This article argues that Jewish day schools are in need of a “Jewish Great Books” program which would introduce Jewish youth to the original works of eminent Jewish intellectuals in the various academic and artistic fields.

Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis, quipped Tertullian, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Answer: quite a bit. The metaphor that western civilization rests on two opposing cities, Athens and Jerusalem, highlights one of the major difficulties confronting Jewish day schools nowadays. How do we coordinate secular curricula and influences (Athens) with Jewish courses and values (Jerusalem)?

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By Phyllis Chesler

In the midst of my unshakable preoccupation with Hell, I suddenly found myself flung back into the Garden of Earthly Delights, where for six full hours I experienced holiness right here on earth. Time stood still, time no longer existed: a small, sure sign of eternity.

Ambassadors from many universes all came together to celebrate a peaceable, celestial, wedding. I felt as if we were participating in an episode of Star Wars—except we were not actors and the gathering was both real and yet beyond reality. So many different kinds of people were there. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, pagans, and atheists, feminists and traditionalists, leftists, and rightists, gay and straight, and people with no overriding view of the events of the day whatsoever.

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By Benjamin Balint

Abstract: Another generation of anti-Israel intellectuals is coming into its own. To understand what this portends, we might do well to listen to the pronouncements of Tony Judt, historian première classe and representative of a new group that dangerously restyles old ideas.

I. Tony Judt, the accomplished New York University historian, brings both impressive lucidity and considerable learning to his uncommonly readable studies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century social history.

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By Stanislaw Krajewski

Abstract: This paper studies the problem of Jews, communism and Jewish communists, primarily with a Jewish audience in mind. Despite there having been Jewish communists, who like other communists may have been victimizers, there was no such phenomenon as Jewish communism. The Jews who remained in Eastern Europe were often victims rather than victimizers. The number of Jewish communists was important, but not as large as antisemites asserted. The problem lies in the quasi-religious zeal of communists who were Jews. The message is that communism does pose a moral problem to Jews.

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By Phyllis Chesler

This Amazon warrior has become something of a schoolmarm, a veritable Ms Manners of the raging Cultural Wars. Thus, say I, “I don’t like delivering savage soundbites nor does debate as a blood sport turn me on.” Primly, I say: “Ideological opponents should engage in civilized exchanges and they should keep talking rather than retreating into dangerous silences or into overt warfare.”

Oh what fine and pretty words—but what about those moments in history in which we must either act or we become collaborators in the death of others?

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By Phyllis Chesler

Professor Norman Simms was born in 1940 and grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn (my home town). He studied at Machzike Talmud Torah, Styuvesant High School, Alfred University, and received his Ph.D from Washington University in English Literature. He protested the War in Vietnam, moved to Canada to teach at the University of Manitoba, and from there to the University of Waikato, in Hamilton, New Zealand where he has been ever since.

He has increasingly devoted himself to Jewish studies and to the phenomenon of “crypto-Jews” as “secret agents” of rabbinic wisdom. He has published 15 books, including “Masks in the Mirror: Marranism in Jewish Experience” (Peter Lang, 2005) and “Festivals of Laughter, Blood and Justice” (Sussco, 2007) and hundreds of articles. He also edits and publishes the inter-disciplinary journal, Mentalities/Mentalities.

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by Robert Sklar*

We talked for 30 minutes but historian and political analyst Daniel Pipes’ core message came quickly: The civilized world is at war. And American Jews are engaged on two distinct fronts: against Islamists who hate the West and against Jew-haters who despise Zionism.

Pipes helped crystallize why there’s something to the belief that diplomacy doesn’t end wars - victory by one side over the other does. I’m not willing to scuttle hope that compromise won’t resolve America’s war against Iraqi insurgents or Israel’s conflict with Palestinian terrorists. But I understand that if you don’t win a war, you lose it by default.

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