The following editorial is a formal response to the September 2007 visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to Columbia University.

Anti-Semitism never really died after the Holocaust, it just became unfashionable. That is no longer the case. In the wake of the Gaza War, and with the global economy in a tailspin, disturbing events have been occurring in Britain - events that do not bode well either for the future of British Jewry or for the future of British democracy.

Undoubtedly the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush will be hailed in many quarters as a great victory for the rule of law. It is not. It represents the continuing trend in our society to convert every form of decision-making into a potential cause of action. For the first time in our history, the Supreme Court in Boumediene vs. Bush has rejected the judgment of both the Congress and the President on an issue of national security. The writ of habeas corpus has now been extended to foreign nationals whose only connection to the United States is their capture by our military in time of war.

"Tell you what, if you recognize Israel as a sovereign state in the Middle East, prove you are dismantling your terrorist infrastructures, stop sending your suicide bombers into our cities, towns and marketplaces, stop inciting hatred and spreading blood libels through your media, your mosques, your educational system and throughout your society, stop brainwashing your children into believing that the fast track to virgins in Paradise requires them to become human grenades, and stop firing missiles at us, we'll come to the table with a settlement offer that will bring both our societies peace and prosperity."

If the anti-Semites of the world believe that by murdering Jews, they can destroy their ideas, they are wrong, for their ideas have become the engines of history. So to those who seek to make the world Judenrein, I say this - be careful what you wish for. This world would be a lesser place had Jews never walked the earth.

 

 

On May 21, 2008, the French Court of Appeals found in favor of Philippe Karsenty, the head of the media watchdog group Media Ratings, by overturning a lower court decision that found Karsenty had libeled France-2 TV and its Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin when he accused them of knowingly misleading the world about the death of a Palestinian child (Muhammad al-Dura) in the Gaza Strip in September 2000.

The French playwright Moliere once wrote that hypocrisy is a vice that often passes for virtue. The 2001 Durban Conference was such an example. Three days prior to 9/11, the first World Conference against Racism (WCAR) organized by the United Nations in Durban, South Africa ended. Its stated intention was to promote tolerance between nations. Instead, it became a festival for promoting hatred of Israel and the West by some of the most repressive, dictatorial regimes in the world encouraged by European and American NGOs.

If there is any lesson to be learned from the recent Russian-Georgian war, it is that Western security commitments should not to be made unless and until they can be enforced. The war was the by-product of a mismanaged American foreign policy in the region because it attempted to gain American influence against Russia without providing sufficient American power to sustain that policy when challenged by Russia. This does not excuse the brutal application of Russian power against a neighboring state, but it goes a long way in explaining why America responded as it did.

U.S. foreign policy in the Arab Middle East is now shifting from actively promoting democratic change to the previous policy of realpolitik - a policy based on the appeasement of dictators and despots that was discredited in the post 9/11 world because it had failed to secure American interests and security even in its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Despite the belief of President Obama and his advisers that not talking to our enemies is a mistake, and given the pressure the Europeans can be expected to exert on Mitchell to negotiate with Hamas, the Obama administration had best tread carefully before engaging an organization that is the ideological cousin of al Qaeda and the Palestinian offspring of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood. Granting Hamas legitimacy and access to the prerogatives of state power in conjunction with the Palestinian Authority will prove to be a costly strategic error for all parties concerned - except Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and its terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East.

“If they (the Jews) gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
Lebanese Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (Beirut Daily Star)

“All the world is a battlefield open in front of us…..It is Jihad for sake of Allah and will last until our religion prevails from Spain to Iraq…. every participant in the crime will pay the price.”
(filmed in front of a photo of the World Trade Center)
Ayman al-Zawahiri ( al Qaeda), July 27, 2006

On September 11, 2001, this nation was attacked by an enemy whose vision of the future, whose culture and value system, and whose concepts of life and death are a universe apart from ours. In Gaza City recently, an Israeli air strike killed two Hamas terrorists who were about to launch missiles at the Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. One of those killed was a son of senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya. At the funeral of his son, al-Haya said, "I thank God for this gift. This is the 10th member of my family to be martyred". And in Pakistan, another Salafist wrapped a baby in an explosive belt and detonated it killing scores of Muslims.

Mark Silverberg Lecture at the University of Florida: Saudi Arabia and the War on Terror. Sponsored by the Lubavitch Chabad Stundent Group at the University of Florida and the Lubavitch Jewish Center in Gainesville Florida.