I don't get it

I don't get it.

Hamas fires missiles into Israel.

No one complains.

No one descends on nations' capitols saying, as a woman said for tv cameras in Washington DC the other day that "we are peaceful people; see, we live here (in the US) with no problem."

Israel responds, granted with an intensity that was long overdue, and "Palestinians" - some of who probably can't SPELL "Palestine" let along have been there - along with their bleeding heart supporters mass in the streets complaining that Israel's attacks are unprovoked (never mind the barrage of Hamas missiles that fall every day on Israeli civilians).

Why, they ask, won't Israel stop attacking the poor innocent Hamas terrorists.

Why, they plead, won't The World condemn Israel and force it to quit defending itself.

Why, they know but don't say, won't Israel stop sending the planes so they can restock their arsenal of weapons to send death to Israeli civilians.

But no one asks why Hamas doesn't stop sending rockets into Israel.

No one seems to think it appropriate to tell Hamas to stop its provocations.

No pressure on Hamas.

None.

Zero.

Zip.

Nada.

Why won't Israel act in a humanitarian manner and allow supplies into Hamas' Aza?

It did - and got rockets in return.

For the liberals who believe Israel should be using a kid glove on Hamas and its supporters, I respond: Israel tried the kid glove. It only emboldened Hamas. To an Islamist, a kid glove is a sign of weakness.

Since the kid glove kindness was reciprocated by missiles, Israel struck with a steel fist.

Not, as it probably should have done, when the first Hamas rocket fell on Israel, but after days of attacks.

If Hamas wants Israel to ground its air force and call back the tanks and troops, it must stop shelling Israelis.

Simple.

Israel will - and I will tell you I think foolishly - cease its counter-attacks (which will allow Hamas to import more weapons to indiscriminately kill Israelis, Jews, Arab, and others.

While Hamas is promising to keep up the attacks until Israel withdraws from "Palestinian" land - that means all of Israel - Israel is allowing humanitarian aid into Aza and even accepting wounded from Aza into its hospitals.

Lousy Israelis.

They have the nerve to object to being shelled.

They get upset when a suicide murderer slaughters innocent civilians.

Stupid Israelis - giving aid to people whose primary goal is to kill them.

Idiot Israelis - if they wound you defending themselves, they will give you world-class medical care FOR FREE . . . the stupid Israeli taxpayer will foot the bill.

Those poor folks in Aza: Hamas and its supporters.

If only Israel would just disappear.

But, in the meantime, Hamas sends rockets toward Israeli cities. to fall "wherever." An elementary school is good. Hospitals, too. (Course what's a poor Hamas militiaman - or woman - to do when they need excellent medical care if the hospital is gone.)

I guess I'm missing something.

Hamas attacks Israeli civilians for days on end.

When Israel finally responds, Hamas wants the world to force Israel to stop the retribution.

Think about it.

Israel already "turned the other cheek" time after time.

After 9/11, when the US was attacked by Islamic terrorists, the US government went into attack mode, which is why US troops are in Afghanistan and US agents are hunting al-Qaida across the Indian subcontinent.

From my perspective, what Israel is doing is long overdue.

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Looking for something else, I stumbled across the Heretical Librarian blog http://hereticallibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/07/ala-council-and-dina-carter.html and some comments about Dina Carter, a librarian working at the Mount Scopus Campus of Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Hamas murdered her - her "crime?" Was because she was a librarian or because she was an American in Jerusalem or was she simply a human being that Hamas could slaughter. The blog is worth a read, unless of course your point of view is that Ms. Carter was somehow attacking Hamas.

---

Yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail dot com

Civilian causalities in Aza

29 December 2008

The "World" is, as expected, criticizing Israel for its aerial attacks on Hamas which, unfortunately, resulted in some civilian causalities.

The Arab world has generally taken to the streets to protest Israel's defense of its population.

It seems to me that this Israeli response to repeated rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel could easily, and quickly, be brought to a halt.

All it takes is for Hamas to cease its efforts to murder Israelis - with rockets, with suicide murderers, with whatever diabolical tactics it could devise.

Meanwhile, let's consider civilian causalities.

In truth, they are "collateral damage" that rightly should be laid at Hamas' feet - no attacks on Israel and Israelis, no counter-actions by the Israelis.

Beyond that, let's consider the nature of war.

"Civilians" are killed.

I put "civilians" in quotes because in some cases, these people were in bed with the perpetrators (e.g., Germans and Poles and Hungarians in recent memory) either as willing collaborators or as silent onlookers.

I include the US government in this group, in particular the FDR (WWII) and Eisenhower (Hungary) administrations.

I recognize that once a party comes to power it is hard to dislodge, but it can be dislodged if the people stop supporting it.

In the case of Aza, Hamas is dependent upon the good will of the Arab states - Iran, Saudi, and Syria in particular. If these countries wanted a cessation of attacks on Israel, Hamas would be forced to cease the attacks.

At the same time, if Iran and Saudi - the money countries - wanted to turn Aza into a place where "Palestinians" wanted to live, these two countries could fund and supervise the building of the cities (for which Arafat received millions) the previous (PLO) Aza regime promised when Israel withdrew. With cities, the camps - set up in 1948! - could be closed, at least in Aza.

In case anyone missed my point, the Arab states are largely responsible for the camps continued existence. To be fair, Jordan - truly a "Palestinian" state - did welcome those Arabs who got out of the way of the glorious invading armies (in 1948) or who were forced out by the Jewish defenders for fear they (the Arabs) were a Fifth Column.

Before anyone shakes a finger at the Jews who expelled their Moslem neighbors, consider the American Indian's plight (even today), and the people "relocated" to Siberian camps by the Soviets - never mind the Jews and Gypsies and others sent to Hitler's camps, particularly those in Poland.

Back to Jordan - after welcoming the Moslems who left Israel, the guests tried to kill the monarch and over-throw the government.

Jordan chased them out - and Lebanon became their next victim.

I specify "Moslem" vs. "Arab" because, as I understand it, the Druze are Arabs but not Moslem. Many of the Baha'i in Israel are Arab, but not Moslem.

By the way, what of the Moslems who elected to remain in Israel?

Last time I was there - when we were being shelled from the north - I shared a beach near Haifa with an obviously Moslem family (wondering if an obviously Jewish family could do the same in Syria or Iran). I also keep in the front of my mind the Arab - Moslem or ?? - who was the first to help my sister-in-law when she fell and broke her leg on a Haifa sidewalk. I am neither "anti-Arab" nor "anti-Moslem," but I am very much anti-Hamas and the people who, willingly or quietly, support it.

The bottom line is that civilian causalities in a war are unfortunate but to be expected even in attacks that do not target civilians (unlike Hamas' attacks that DO SPECIFICALLY target civilians).

Hamas is directly responsible for the injuries and deaths in Aza.

When it stops murdering Israelis then Israel will cease its counter-attacks.

Simple.

Parting question. Why is it that Israel is the only country condemned for reducing aid to an enemy? Note I wrote "reducing," not "refusing" aid to an enemy. Aza also borders the Med and Egypt. Egypt, like Israel, closed its border to its fellow Arab Moslems. Could it be the Egyptians have the same concern for Hamas as Israel? And why, given the billions poured in to Aza's politicians pockets over the decades, does Aza lack a decent port?

Things to consider as Hamas' friends and the safely-distant-from-Hamas-terrorists liberals condemn Israel for having the audacity to finally protect its population - Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

---

5:30 news bulletin 29 Dec 2008: There now are four Israelis killed by Hamas' rockets. One of those Israelis was an Arab who apparently preferred Israel's freedoms to Hamas' terror.

---

Yohanon

Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail dot com

Why Israel?

The voices in Aza (Gaza) once again are crying to the world that Israel has closed its border with Aza.

Why?

Aza borders Egypt.

Remember, the Azans recently broke through the physical barrier and invaded Eqypt.

Aza has a long border on the Medierranean Sea. With all the money poured into Aza (OK, Arafat & friends' pockets) an excellent port could have been built.

So why is the finger always pointed at Israel?

The Azans shell Israeli towns.

The Azans send in suicide murderers to kill innocent civilians.

And then have the chutzpah to complain that Israel closes ONE border.

Let Eqypt open its border.

Let Aza's despots develop a port; I'm sure the world will donate billions more to Aza's rulers.

Meanwhile Israel still provides electricity and, at a minimum, "humanitarian aid" to people who vow to destroy it.

Once again, "Why Israel?"

Yohanon

yohanon.glenn @ gmail.com

Holocaust Conspiracy - no surprise

I've known it for a long time.

Now I discover it is far worse, and far more pervasive, than I every expected.

What is it?

"It" is the world's reaction to the Nazi's holocaust.

I'm reading a smallish book - only 255 pages of fairly large (~12 point) print - by William R. Perl. The book is titled "The Holocaust Conspiracy, An International Policy of Genocide." We all know about the Nazi's attempt to make Europe free of Jews. We also know of the enthusiasm of the Nazi friends in Eastern Europe. We know because "they" lost the war.

We are starting to learn about the Vatican's role in the holocaust.

We know about the SS St. Louis*, the Hamburg-America Line (Hapag), ship that sailed from Germany to Cuba with a passenger list of Jews with Cuban entry papers, papers declared invalid by Batista. The Jews, refused entry, stayed on board as the St. Louis sailed up the coast of the United States, with the captain trying to convince the US government to allow the passengers entry. In the end, the St. Louis returned the passengers to the only country to accept them ... and to their deaths.

Some of us know - and many more have refused to acknowledge the reality - that FDR was anything but a "savior" of the Jews that many Jews of his time believed. Like JFK after him, he received credit for things he never did,

Perl's book, with an introduction by Claiborne Pell, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1987-1994, bares the US State Department's on-going anti-Jewish attitude with proof after proof. At the same time, it identifies those in the US government - mostly Treasury - who tried to move the US to save at least children.

On the other side of the pond, Churchill gets high marks although he was surrounded by those who were all too willing to let the Germans have their way with its own Jews and the Jews they inherited as they occupied their neighbors' lands. Many of the neighbors were, of course, all too willing to aid and abet the Nazis.

This is a book that ought to be in every Jewish home; every synagogue library ought to have several copies.

The one bright point is that we can, in the US, publish a book that embarrasses us as a nation so that we can learn and prevent a repetition.

FDR was a politician's politician and he did nothing to jeopardize his position. Many of the positive things he did - both domestically and internationally - can be laid at the feet of his wife.

Perl's book is well documented both with references and a mid-section that contains some of the damning documents cited by the author.

The table of contents is brief:

• Conspiracy: The Psychosocial Context
• Setting the Course: The Fiasco of the Evian Conference - An American-British Conspiracy
• Conspiracy in the American Hierarchy
• Conspiracy in the British Hierarchy
• Soviet Policies that Supported the Final Solution
Photographs and Documents
• How the Allies Kept Auschwitz Operating
• The Other Americas; Latin American - Canada
• The Moral Powers; The Vatican, the IRC, Switzerland
• Epilogue: Could it happen again?

The copy I read came from the local lending library, but I can assure you I will be searching the WWW for a copy to purchase.

---

*  About the SS St. Louis
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/j/jarvik-laurence/Jarvic-01.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html
Return to text

yohanon
yohanon.glenn @ gmail.com

Politically (in)correct Song

It's a funny thing, "political correctness."

This is prompted by a Disney decision - actually a continuing decision by the corporate mouse masters - to withhold distribution of "Song of the South" as a DVD or on other media.

Some of us know "Song of the South" as Uncle Remus stories. Uncle Remus was the main character, albeit overshadowed by the likes of Br'r Rabbit, Br'r Fox, and Br'r Bear.

An American Aesop Uncle Remus was.

Unfortunately, Uncle Remus was a black cartoon - sorry, "animated" - character.

The reason Disney officials present to the public is that they fear Uncle Remus might offend people with a permanent suntan.

I'm always amazed at "white" folk who look down on "colored" folk . . . and then go to the beach or tanning parlor to become as "colorful" as the "colored" folk. Boggles my mind.

The Disney people may be partially correct in their concern.

I used to live in Pinellas County in Florida. Pinellas is across the bay from Tampa.

What's the connection ?

This.

Pinellas County, with a fair sized Jewish population, has a Jewish museum with a boxcar said to have carried Jews to the extermination camps. The rail car is a physical reminder of our history.

Tampa had an opportunity to be a permanent host for the ship Amistad. The Amistad was a Portuguese sailing vessel that came to fame when its cargo of bound-for-slavery Africans overthrew the crew and took over the ship. Steven Spielberg turned the tale into a movie and brought the ship's history to a new audience.

The Tampa Bay black community, for whatever reason and unlike the Jewish community, considered the Amistad to be insulting, a reminder of a time they apparently would prefer to forget. (Forgetting slavery is a bit hard for a Jew to understand; we still recall, at least once a year, our slavery in Egypt. But, different strokes for different folks.)

Anyway, the Amistad finally found a home in New Haven CT.

Apparently the New Haven black community had a different view of the ship than the people of Tampa Bay.

I believe I saw "Song of the South" as a child. I know - no doubt about it - that I read Uncle Remus stories complete with "deep south" accents ("Lawd, don' throw me inta that briar patch, Br'r Bear"). I recall the tar baby story every time I say "Howdy" to someone who fails to respond in kind.

I knew a grandmother who searched and searched for "Uncle Remus Tales." Unlike this scrivener, she lacked Internet search experience or else sufficient nosiness. She was delighted when I told her the name of the book she sought was "Song of the South." Did she buy it? I never found out.

To paraphrase a phrase attributed to a mid-19th century president, "You can satisfy some of the people some of the time, but you can't satisfy all of the people all of the time."

There is, I read, the fear that youngsters seeing "Song of the South" or reading the book (do kids still read? do parents still read to them?) will develop prejudices or inferiority complexes.

I think we are being over cautious. I doubt any of the denizens of "Song of the South" inculcated racism in me. (Who knows, maybe there is a racial or political or, gasp, sexual undertone to Winnie-the-Pooh stories - Tigger does enjoy jumping on the other characters. Hummm.)

Uncle Remus is not a character who invites derision or scorn. Indeed, Uncle Remus is like the uncle, or grandfather, most of us would delight in having. I can't see why there are those who would feel lessened by a release of "Song of the South."

But then I still don't understand why some folks don't want history in their briar patch and others do.

yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail.com

Holocaust - a Jewish PR mistake

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties)

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The Holocaust took the lives of between 5.1 to 6.0 million Jews.

Other groups persecuted and killed by the Nazis included

• Gypsies: 130,000 to 500,000
• Handicapped: 150,000 to 200,000
• Soviet POWs: 2.6 to 3 million
• Poles: 1.8 to 1.9 million
• Soviet civilians: 4.5 to 8.2 million
• Gay males: about 10,000
• Jehovah's Witnesses: 1,000
• Roman Catholics: 1,000 to 2,000
• Freemasons: unknown number

"The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder."

From 1933-1939 the number of German deaths in Nazi concentration camps were 165,415, primarily Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, and trade union leaders.

---

The above is NOT to denigrate our loss.

It is an attempt to make a point that we were not the only group that the Germans - with plenty of help from their Eastern European friends - slaughtered "just because."

As long as we continue to remind the world that 6 million Jews were murdered and as long as we fail to also tell the world that these same "civilized" Germans, and their friends, killed others as well, the holocaust will remain a "Jewish event."

"Jewish events" only get our attention; the rest of the world already is forgetting.

It was not just a "Jewish event" and both we and the world need to acknowledge that and remember that.

There is no denying that 6 million (6,000,000) is a large number of lives lost - how many survived with lives destroyed, how many generations were lost - but we were not the only group to be singled out.

If truth be known, the Gypsies probably suffered, if not a greater proportional loss than we, then a similar loss. According to Modern History Sourcebook: Gypsies in the Holocaust (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/gypsy-holo.html), "It is known that perhaps 250,000 Gypsies were killed, and that proportionately they suffered losses greater than any other group of victims except Jews."

Like us, the Gypsies have a long history of persecution at the hands of the Germans, a history that precedes German unification. Indeed, some of the anti-Gypsy actions mirror anti-Jewish actions.

By the by, let's stop talking about "anti-Semitism." Our cousins, the Arabs, also are Semites. What we face is not "anti-Semitism"; what we face is either "anti-Jewish" or "anti-Israel" - there are no other options. True enough, there are those who are "anti-Arab" or "anti-Moslem" - which depends on (a) the price of oil (anti-Arab) or (b) the latest Islamic-sponsored terror attack, unless of course if the attack is against Jews in Israel or, it seems, any place on the globe.

A pretty good book about the Gypsies and the Germans is The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies by Guenter Lewy. My copy was borrowed from the local lending library.

Most sources I've seen suggest that the Gypsies lack the capacity to tell their story. Add that to a reluctance to share anything with the "world outside the Roma world" and it is understandable that, compared to knowledge of the slaughter of our people, the Gypsy holocaust is unknown.

We, Jews, need to tell their story as best as we are able.

We, Jews, also need to remind the world that the Germans and their friends made it Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to torture and murder anyone who was "not like" them, even if, as in the case of the Gypsies, the persecuted truly were "Aryans."

We may not agree with the philosophy or sexual or political preferences of the people the Germans and their friends sent to their deaths, but we must - must - tell the world again and again and again that while we lost 6 million, a number that excludes Jews serving in the armies and navies facing the Axis, many, many more millions also were persecuted - tortured and murdered - by the Germans and their friends.

We were not alone. It was not a "Jewish only" event and we all - humanity - must both remember and be vigilant to assure it doesn't happen again.

Not to us.

Not to any group.

yohanon
yohanon.glenn @ gmail.com

Old and new friends

I've been hittin' the books lately.

Heavy stuff.

Pooh Perplex (Frederick C. Crews, E.P. Dutton book, ISBN 63-15770) was first off the shelf. I remember Master Robin's adventures from when I was his age. Pooh Perplex is something else.

Pooh Perplex' premise is that "Though critics everywhere acknowledge A.A. Milne's Christopher Robin books to be great masterpieces, critics nowhere agree on what they mean."

The book's subtitle is "A Freshman Casebook." It includes 12 critiques including "A Bourgeois Writer's Proletarian Fables," "O Felix Culpa! The Sacramental Meaning of Winnie-the-Pooh," and, "A la recherche du Pooh perdu" (which I shall refrain from translating).

I recommended the work to a once-upon-a-time English major (don't call me "majorette!") and a librarian who is named neither Marion nor even Marian. Both ladies long have been acquainted with Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore and all the rest - although I didn't recall Tigger from my toddler days, but there he was in glorious orange and black in Chapter 2 of The House at Pooh Corner.

The English major recalled taking a stab at reading a Pooh work in Latin, which may be why she decided to major in English. She since went on to dabble in numbers and now is an Oracle of a sort.

There's a nice Pooh & Friends Web site at http://www.just-pooh.com.

Pooh Perplex is a short work, so I hied myself back to the local lending library, hereafter The 3 Ls, where I armed myself with a couple of P.G. Wodehouse works.

An aside: Microsoft's Word 2007 - the last version of Word that will take up disk space on my computer - has a spell check that, well, lacks a decent vocabulary. It tells me this word and that word are incorrectly keyed, but I know better. To get a warm fuzzy, I "confirm" my spelling at Merriam-Webster OnLine (http://www.merriam-webster.com. If I wasn't so lazy, I could as easily look in the unabridged; trouble is, I get lost in it . . . go looking for "hied" and never get past the D words.

I am acquainted with Bertie and Jeeves, but I am now being introduced to Uncle Fred - all 25 chapters and 448 pages of "The World of Uncle Fred." Next up is a book of about the same heft but having several "short" stories, including a visit with the aforementioned Bertie and Jeeves.

When I was very young - probably well before your time - I used to spend hours at The 3 L in my hometown where, funny enough, my librarian friend now shares her wealth of knowledge. By the by, can anyone provide a good answer why "doctor," "lawyer," "librarian," and other professional titles are all lower case while "realtor" - a title for people who need no formal education and who pass a single test (often after the third try) , rate a CAPITAL R? I know I'm jousting at windmills; it ranks right down there with Things To Worry About with PhDoctors (and any other "doctor" that lacks an MD or DO suffix to his or her name).

I have not given up "serious" reading and my two Wodehouse books are paired with two with heavier subjects. The second Wodehouse book will be Shabat recreation since it is more easily put down (between stories) than the other books.

I remember reading books back when Amos-n-Andy were white and once again books are becoming a favorite pastime. It's like coming home and greeting old friends again.

Sitting down with a book is almost as good as sitting down with long-time (I think I'll pass on the "O" word here) friends who challenge each others' minds; absolutely the best way a geezer can keep his wits about him.

Yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail.com

Just like "them"

The following is from Yahoo.

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Settlers clash with Israeli troops, Palestinians
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081202/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

By NASSER SHIYOUKHI,
Associated Press Writer

HEBRON, West Bank – Dozens of Jewish settlers rioted Tuesday in the West Bank town of Hebron, clashing with the Israeli troops who guard them but who may also soon evict them from a disputed building they've occupied.

In two villages elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinians said groups of settlers burned animal feed and slashed tires in what appeared to be part of a broader tactic meant to deter Israeli authorities from dismantling unauthorized settlements or attempting to rein settlers in.

Israeli soldiers used stun grenades against the Hebron settlers, most of them teenagers, in clashes near a building which settlers took over early last year.

The building's ownership is under dispute in a Jerusalem court. But the settlers moved in without government authorization and the Supreme Court has ordered them to leave immediately.

On Monday evening, rumors were circulating that the Israeli military would evict the settlers by force and hundreds of extremists flocked to the site to help resist eviction. No attempt was made to evacuate the building.

The military says rioters broke windows of cars and homes and defaced a Muslim cemetery in the area near the house. Settlers in several other locations in the West Bank also blocked roads and threw stones at Palestinian cars.

In recent months some West Bank settlers have pioneered a policy they term the "price tag," in which they attack Palestinians and security forces in response to any attempt to evacuate unauthorized settlements.

Apparently in keeping with that tactic, several dozen settlers burned animal feed in the West Bank village of Kablan at around 3 a.m. Tuesday and slashed the tires of dozens of cars, according to resident Abdallah Snobar. In a neighboring village, Assawiyah, settlers who arrived at around the same time slashed tires and spray painted the "Death to the Arabs" and an anti-Islamic slur on the local mosque, according to village official Mohammed Mahamdeh.

---

Several things came to mind as I read the article.

One: How fast will "The World" condemn Israel as a whole for the actions of a few? Will it treat this as casually as it does Moslem murderers who slaughter Israelis at home and abroad? Slashed tires and burned feed hardly equates to murder of non-combatants, but time will tell how "The World" will react.

For my part, I can understand the "settlers" frustration both with the government and with their neighbors. The article fails to provide any excuse for the attacks on the neighboring villages, but given the author and the level of journalism today, the reason may have been omitted or deleted somewhere between the action and the published report.

Two: The "Death to the Arabs" and the "anti-Islamic slur" painted on a mosque are out of line for Jews. Never mind that Islamic rhetoric regularly calls for death of all Jews, or at least Zionists, and never mind that the synagogues of Yamit which the Arabs promised to respect were desecrated. Jews don't DO that. Raze the building to the ground, perhaps, but to paint it like a street hoodlum is indeed desecration and it's not what we do.

Again, how will The World react to what amounts to a minimal reaction to continued Moslem provocation?

There was a time in the United States when the expression "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" was common. That was stupid. Replacing "Moslem" for "Indian" is equally stupid. There are Moslems in Israel who are in Israel because they want to be there; they are better off than they would be in the neighboring Moslem countries. They may not be Israel's most loyal citizens, but they are not pressing for the country's destruction, either.

A brief note about "second class citizenship." It's the norm for most peoples.

Non-Moslems in Moslem controlled countries are, at best, second class citizens.

Not too long ago in the U.S., non-Anglos had to surrender the sidewalk to Anglos.

That doesn't, of course, make it "right" or "OK," but it does show us it is a fact of life. In Israel, a Moslem is a second class citizen, primarily because fellow Moslems deem it a worthy goal to kill Jews . . . and if they murder some non-Moslems as well (as in 9-11).

Not all Moslems are murders or potential murders. I know that. Most Jews know that, albeit those who lived in even "tolerant" Moslem-controlled countries tend to distrust them.

I understand the frustration of the Jews living in Arab-occupied Israel at both the Israeli Army and their neighbors, but there are limits to which we should not descend.

Yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail.com

Headline writers - a dangerous breed

I was looking at what I presume (dangerous thing to do) a Yahoo headline over an Associated Press article.

The headline reads: "Rice: Pakistan must cooperate in terror probe"

MUST cooperate? MUST ?

Most parents know that if you tell a child he or she "must" do something the child is less than enthusiastic about, the child will resist. Likewise countries' politicians.

The U.S. already has a "bad rep" with many counties around the world - deserved or not, its how the U.S. is perceived by others that counts - so a headline such as the one on Yahoo is either a match to ignite anger or fuel to further inflame anti-U.S. sentiment.

To be fair, the article fails to support the head writer's "must" wording. Rice is "sending a message" in very clear terms to the Pakistani government, but I never saw the word "must" in her admonishment.

Back when Hector was a pup, I got a management lesson from a U.S. Forest Service officer named John Glenn - no relation to the Marine; the manager of the local Forest Service office said a good manager (by extension Secretary of State) should never need to "tell" someone to do something; it should be enough to "suggest" a job needs to be done.

A variation of the honey vs. vinegar to catch flies admonishment.

There was a time when I wrote "heds." I wrote them for "major metropolitan dailies," suburban dailies, and weeklies. Since it also was an era when reporters wrote headline leeds (leads), hed writers were expected to write titles that accurately reflected the article.

Granted, that was sometimes trying and it helped to have both a large vocabulary and neighbors with equally large vocabularies to ferret out "right-size" synonyms. Euphemisms were discouraged.

I wonder how a person in Pakistan would react to the Yahoo headline. Especially a person with English as a Second Language.

Add to the above that most non-US and Canadian newspapers I have seen use passive voice in their heds; they "back in" to the subject. Drove me nuts when I lived overseas.

Taken altogether, the "Pakistan must cooperate in terror probe" hed is inflammatory and could be, indeed probably will be, counter-productive. Or maybe because I am who I am, I am over reacting. Maybe the Pakistanis will read the Yahoo headline and ignore the words and tone.

It is both what we say and how we say it.

I agree with Ms. Rice that Pakistan's government should look into a government connection (even if only ignoring a threat) to the terror in India if only because the same mentality can work against the government. But I don't believe we - the United States - should tell Pakistan, as a parent might with a small child, to "do" anything.

Just a thought.

Yohanon
Yohanon.Glenn @ gmail.com