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moonbats vs Israel

Alan Dershowitz
Posted: July 28, 2010 09:31 AM
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Moonbats Against Israel
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Read More: Iran , Israel , Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , Oliver Stone , World News
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It must be the summer heat but the moonbats seem to be loonier than ever when it comes to Israel and Jews.

Oliver Stone urges us to see the positive side of Hitler and Ahmadinejad, while imitating his two heroes by railing against Jewish control of the media. (To his credit, Stone has apologized for his bigoted statements.) According to Newsweek, Meg Ryan canceled a scheduled appearance at an Israeli Film Festival, despite the fact that this artistic festival is well-known to feature pro-peace and even pro-Palestinian films. Ryan's publicist insists that the film star never agreed to attend the festival. If that is true, Ryan should issue a public statement denying that she has boycotted, or would boycott, an Israeli film festival.

Doctors Without Borders suddenly erects borders when it comes to Israeli doctors who flew to the Congo to treat 50 local villagers who had been severely burned. The Israeli volunteers worked around the clock, treated the burn victims and trained local doctors to perform skin grafts, and donated tons of medical equipment. But the bigoted Doctors Without Borders refused to work with them and treated them "as though we were occupiers." This should not surprise people who have been following Doctors Without Borders over the years. Dr. Marie Pierre Allie, President of the French Branch of the organization, said that Israel's self defense actions in Gaza were actually worse than the Darfur genocide in the Sudan. Only a blind moonbat could even make such a comparison! As one critic put it well, these are doctors with borders but without scruples.

J Street, a leftist organization that pretends to be pro Israel, puts out a TV ad suggesting that I am against peace between Israel and the Arabs and that I agree with Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin in opposing the two state solution and supporting expansion of civilian settlements. When told that this was a lie, the head of J Street publicly acknowledged that, "He [Dershowitz] does support the notion of a two-state solution," but he has kept his mendacious ad unchanged.

Radical leftist, who support the expansion of rape law to cover obtaining sex by fraud, rail against Israel when Israel actually enacts such a law and applies it. An Israeli court sentenced a married Arab man to several months in prison for having sex with a woman after claiming that he was an unmarried Jew interested in marrying her. The Israeli courts had previously applied this law to Jewish men who had perpetrated comparable frauds. Though I personally think these sex-fraud law are seriously misguided (except in extreme cases such as lying about AIDS), I find it hypocritical in the extreme for radical leftist, who generally favor such laws, to use them as a club against the Jewish state and only the Jewish state.

A fifth rate French University has cancelled a writer's conference that was supposed to deal with "writing today in the Mediterranean Region: exchanges and tensions," because some unnamed participants refused to take part in a dialogue that included an Israeli Jewish author. This university, Provence Aix Marseille would have been lucky to attract any accomplished Israeli authors, but the conference could not go forward because the president of the school, to his credit, would not allow a conference to be held by bigots who would exclude others on the ground of religion or national origin.

New names for Conservative Judaism

JTS Chancellor Eisen said maybe it is time for a new name. Ideas floating aroundfrom colleagues:


some are meant to be funny


Normative Judaism

Judaism

Just Judaism

Catholic Israel

The people who have three sets of dishes

The Commandment Keepers (usually)

Bnai Hillel

Religious but not Meshugah Jews

Jews R Us

Frum in Shul Judaism

Its Okay to Drive Judaism (but not in Israel)

The Seventh Day Triennials

United Synagogue

Divided Synagogue

The Shul You Wouldn't go to if they Paid You Judaism

The Yiddin

The Chosen

Middle Class Suburban Judaism

Torah True Judaism
>>>
>>> Middle of the Road Judaism
>>>
>>> Orthodox-Lite
>>>
>>> Fanatical Moderates
>>>
>>> The Real McCoy
>>>
>>> Pretty Traditional Judaism
>>>
>>> The Responsive Readers
>>>
>>> Nisht a her, nisht a hin Judaism
>>>
>>> Hazy, not Crazy or Lazy
>>>
>>> Schecterians

Yes No Maybe So
>>> Judaism"?
> > 1.
> > Masorati - Yiddishkeit with horsepower
> >
> > 2.
> > The Absolutely Positively Hysterical School of Judaism
> >
> > 3.
> > Majority Rules, and Minority Rules too
> >
> > 4.
> > Goldilocks Judaism - our porridge isn't too
> > hot, and it's not too cold. It's JUST RIGHT
> >
> > 5.
> > Tzimtzum Judaism - Shrinking for the 21st
> > Century
> >
> > 6.
> > Tradition and Change Judaism What the flux?
> >
> > 7.
> > Jokers to the left of me; Zealots to the right
> > here I am back in the middle with Jew (okay, you have to know the song)
> >
> > 8.
> > Beth El Realty Synagogues for sale
> >
> > 9.
> > Ultra-Conservative Judaism - when being
> > Conservative isn't enough
> >
> > 10.Arnie’s Army

The Bagel Eaters

The People With Whom God Broke Every Promise Made in the Torah Judaism

The Second or Maybe Third Group to Ordain Women Judaism

The Judaism is Really Just for Rabbis Judaism

The Shul with th Pool Judaism

TzivOT Hashem

Ethical Mom-othisists

Ethical Dad-othisists

The Bar Mitzvah Factory.

Those Who Eat Chinese Food Judaism

Conservative-Liberal Judaism

Liberal-Conservative Judaism

want to go to Italy with us March 21?

why are Israelis so happy?

kosher stretched

More Than Matzo Balls: Kosher Cooking Revisited
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 29, 2010

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Filed at 11:58 a.m. ET

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The men behind a unique six-hour eating marathon in Jerusalem want diners to know two things about locusts: First, they taste great stir-fried, and second, they're kosher.

When 240 observant Jews sat down to the 18-course dinner earlier this month, they were served a veritable zoo of animals that were unlikely candidates to be eaten under traditional Jewish dietary laws, known as kashrut.

Eating kosher, the organizers want to say, does not just mean chicken soup and matzo balls; the list of animals eaten by Jewish communities around the world throughout history is longer and stranger than most people think.

''It's about keeping a 2,500-year-old tradition in our hands,'' said Ari Greenspan, one of the organizers. ''We have such a rich tradition but because of commercial food production, the only things slaughtered today are those that are financially feasible and grow quickly.''

The biblical rules that govern Jewish diets include a blacklist of animals that may not be eaten, like pigs, vultures or fish without scales. Beef is kosher, pork is not. Trout is kosher, crab is not. Religious Jews abide by these rules to the letter, but probably wouldn't think to replace standards like beef or chicken with permitted alternatives like the water buffalo or pheasant served at the dinner.

The dinner's organizers -- Greenspan, a dentist, and Ari Zivotofsky, a rabbi, both 47 -- have spent decades investigating the nether reaches of the kosher kitchen.

The two met as teens in a Jewish religious school near Jerusalem. When they learned kosher slaughter, they realized the list of permitted animals was under threat because people were dying and taking little-known traditions with them. Some dietary directions not spelled out clearly in the Bible -- particularly methods of poultry slaughter -- must be passed down orally by a living witness, Greenspan said.

Without witnesses, more animals may go the way of the peacock. It was one of 30 birds pictured in a 150-year-old Italian book on kosher poultry, but no one alive remembers how to slaughter it in a kosher way, the organizers said. So today peacock is off the Jewish menu.

The two traveled to more than 40 countries, interviewing aging kosher butchers and documenting traditions like eating locusts, common among the Jews of Yemen.

The research culminated in the July 22 dinner.

Dishes included sparrows, doves, deer, roasted elk and grilled cow udders. Pheasants flown in from Rome were rolled into cinnamon pastille pastries. Greenspan and Zivotofsky found three kosher butchers, from Algeria, France and Israel, who remembered how to properly slaughter guinea fowl.

A cadre of rabbis and academics explained each course to the diners. They also discussed long-running debates over the kosher status of some animals, such as swordfish, which was also served.

Zivotofsky read from a ruling by a 16th-century rabbi who said that swordfish has scales in water, meaning it is kosher, though the rabbi claimed the scales fall off when the fish is out of the water. That made it suspect enough that Zivotofsky wouldn't eat it at the dinner, though others did.

The organizers also restored a species to the kosher menu: the shibuta, a fish mentioned in the Talmud, the ancient commentary on the Bible that defines Jewish law. It is believed to refer to the Barbus grypus, a carp that grows in the Euphrates River. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, Greenspan said, he asked a military rabbi to confirm the fish was kosher. It was. At the dinner, shibuta from Turkey was served as a fried fish cake.

The locusts were nearly a disaster.

''We had someone raising them for us in Israel, but then there was a heat wave,'' Greenspan said. ''They all died. We were up a creek. Locusts are the big hit of dinner.'' The organizers heard about an institution in Britain that grows insects, and Greenspan called a British cousin who brought the locusts to Israel in his suitcase.

Accountant Gadi Levin tore off the six legs of one of the brown locusts, about the length of his thumb, and bit into its crunchy body. Stir-fried, the locust was earthy and redolent with soy sauce.

''It was delicious,'' said the 37-year-old South African-born Israeli. ''It tasted like a barbecue crisp.''

Protest Oliver Stones antisemitism

to Showtime send your individual protest to
Showtime, mailto e Chairman's email address:
Matthew.Blank@showtime.net
boycott all Stone's movies

"Does Showtime really need an irresponsible ideologue creating a series that
purports to "understand" Hitler in context? I deeply resent Stone's ignorant
and uninformed assertion that Jewish control of the media is preventing an
open discussion of the Holocaust. There has been open discussion of the
Holocaust for decades. Honest Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic scholars from
the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and Israel have worked diligently to
understand and make publically available knowledge of the Holocaust,
National Socialism, and Hitler. Stone's cheap attempt to get media attention
cannot compare to the enormous amount of honest work that has been done on
these subjects. Speaking personally, I have devoted more than half a century
to this endeavor. Moreover, I have lectured on the Holocaust in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Israel and France, including
lectures at Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and major German universities.

I understand that Stone has "apologized," a cheap and costless gesture after
the damage has been done. He has impugned the honesty and integrity of
hundreds of scholars who have devoted their careers to this study. When HBO
and some of the other major studios produced films on the Holocaust and
National Socialism, they have at least used internationally recognized
consultants like Dr. Michael Berenbaum to get their facts straight.

Stone has demonstrated that he is incapable of producing an honest
historical work on Hitler, Stalin, and the Holocaust. If Showtime must
proceed, it can retrieve its reputation by replacing Stone with a
knowledgeable producer who is untainted by the demons that appear to plague
Stone.

Richard L. Rubenstein, STM (Harvard Divinity School); PhD (Harvard);
Post-doctoral Fellow (Yale)"
"

Rabbi Brad Hershfield
Of late however, he seems to be moving from his typical love of whacky conspiracy theories to rather more ugly ones.

Stone's newest project, a Showtime documentary entitled "The Secret History of America" will, Mr. Stone claims, put Hitler "in context". Stone wants to make sure that our understanding of Hitler does not remain a product of "the Jewish dominated media", as he claims it has been.

I am all for expanding our understanding of even the most terrible events in history. In fact, it is those events, including the Holocaust, which are most often addressed in dangerously over-simplified ways. But somehow, a filmmaker who describes his work in terms reeking of Jew-hatred does not seem likely to make any constructive contributions on this issue.

Of course, that was this weekend. Mr. Stone is turning apologetic, issuing statements in which he says he "made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry".

Which is the "real" Oliver Stone? Is he the conspiracy theorist who resents the mythic power of Jews or the contrite artist seeking to bring deeper understanding to one of the darkest moments in human history?

My guess is that he's a bit of both. But because he simply calls his words a "clumsy error" and refuses to explore how they are actually part of his ongoing approach to world events, one in which some evil external force is always driving decent "little people" into horrible circumstances, I suspect that we have not heard the last of such claims about Jews from Mr. Stone.

There is no doubt that we need fuller explanations of the Holocaust, more sophisticated than those which invoke a demonic individual, Hitler, at whose feet all blame can be laid. In fact, to the extent that Stone demands a wider picture of accountability -- an appreciation that there is plenty of blame to go around in a world which stood largely silent as millions of human beings were murdered simply because of who they were -- I am with him. The list of those who bear responsibility should grow, not shrink, with the passage of time. That is what it means to be increasingly morally sensitive.

There is also no doubt that the Jewish community would do well to more fully appreciate, articulate and memorialize the horror of the Holocaust for people other than Jews. This is crucial if for no other reason than that it is only when the Holocaust can be remembered as a tragedy for all of humanity, that we can expect all of humanity to properly remember it.

None of that will be accomplished by minimizing the unique horror of the Nazis' "Final Solution" to the "Jewish problem", and certainly not by those, like Mr. Stone, who perpetuate some of the central underpinnings of the methodology which fueled the hatred which led to it.

Oliver Stone is no Nazi, but both his work and his words reflect something far more sinister than one clumsy error. They reflect deep and long-held hostilities of which Mr. Stone should be ashamed.

Let's hope the next Hollywood influential who wants to present a new angle on the Holocaust, can do so without resorting to any of the motifs and myths of those who perpetrated it. And let's hope that those new stories help all people to appreciate that all suffering is epic, when it happens to those about whom we care.


Follow Brad Hirschfield on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bradhirschfield