Is Richard Falk a Self-Hating Jew? | Forward.com

On Language: Richard Falk, and How We Feel About Ourselves

by Philologos

Since reading the front-page profile of Richard Falk in the July 29 issue of the Forward, I’ve been thinking about the phrase “Jewish self-hatred.” Falk, for those of you who missed the article, is a retired professor of international law who has pilloried Israel repeatedly in different places and capacities, among them that of a United Nations investigator in the Palestinian territories, and recently posted on his blog site a cartoon of a dog with a yarmulke urinating on a blindfolded female figure of Justice. He also, it so happens, is a Jew — one who has been called a “self-hating” Jew by some people, and “nothing of the sort” by others.

Is he or isn’t he? The author of the Forward profile, Naomi Zeveloff, came down delicately on the side of “he isn’t” when she wrote, “To call Falk ‘a self-hating Jew’… would imply that Falk harbors a deep discomfort with his Jewish identity, and that this anguish manifests itself as anti-Semitism in his personal life and academic work.” It’s an implication, her piece suggested, that has no basis, since Falk, although having had little contact with Jewish life, says he is comfortable with his Jewish identity and is acting in the spirit of Judaism’s concern for social justice by helping to lead the international assault on Israel as a human rights violator. Read more »

“Jimmy Carter Is the best-case scenario.” | Vodkapundit

by Stephen Green

The Carter comparisons to President Obama are coming fast and furious now, even coming from at least one Senate Democrat. Nobody who wanted to go on the record with his name, of course — but just wait. It won’t be too much longer now before somebody slips, whether on accident or on purpose.

For a while now, Glenn Reynolds has argued that “Jimmy Carter is the best-case scenario” for Obama — because it’s been pretty obvious for a while now. But it’s only this morning that I figured out the why.
Carter, for all his silly notions, learned on the job and came up with some decent policies — eventually.

Jimmuh was dealt an extremely weak hand on national defense, probably the weakest in the post-war era. The armed forces — especially the Army — were making the slow and painful transition to an all-volunteer force. Drugs were still a problem, and a sense of defeat still hung in the air after Vietnam. Public trust in the armed forces was at an all-time low. Carter couldn’t have engaged in any successful saber-rattling with the Soviets, even had he been inclined to. Instead, Carter made human rights the cornerstone of America’s foreign policy, setting the stage for Reagan’s “evil empire” speech. It was a weak policy, yes — but the best he could do given a weak hand. And when the invasion of Afghanistan made Soviet expansionism became too much to bear, Carter changed course. The defense buildup under Reagan really began under Carter. Read more »

WH Ramadan Dinner: OBAMA HONORED THE SACRIFICES THAT MUSLIM AMERICANS MADE ON 911 Atlas Shrugs

(I have to admit I was not aware of the American Muslim sacrifices on 9/11. I remember non-American Muslims sacrificed 3,000 people on that day (in the name of peace of course).)

The idea of talking only of the Muslim who died on 911 or the Muslim first responder that died on 911 (if there were more, you'd have heard about it) is classic Islamic supremacism. Every death was an incalculable loss, every death an attack on this country.



I am so disgusted by the singling out of the few Muslims who were part of the attack. If Obama and the Islamic supremacist machine is so insistent on pointing that out, why not point out that, according to Islam, they died as martyrs in an act of jihad? Further, why is the motive behind these acts of war, jihad, prohibited from the national conversation or more specifically, this dinner? Read more »

Yiddish's Enduring Influence on Literature | Tablet Magazine

Yiddish is far from dead. It’s undead, and it haunts everything from Harvey Pekar’s comics to the vampire literature of the early 20th century.



Yiddish isn’t dead; if anything, it’s undead. Think about it: Is there anything more unkillable, vaguely erotic, ridiculous, and toothy than the language of the Ashkenazim? In fact, a book published this spring—Sara Libby Robinson’s Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I (Academic Studies, March)—argues that Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the single most recognizable undead gentleman in history, was, as Allan Nadler phrases it, a reflection of “widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood (and the blood) of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Great Britain.” Read more »

Barack Obama’s Emotional State of Mind Commentary Magazine

I’ve developed an interest in President Obama’s speeches not because they are eloquent or uplifting — they are neither — but because of what they reveal about his emotional state of mind. And Mr. Obama’s remarks in Holland, Michigan yesterday are helpful in that respect.

by Peter Wehner

After once again blaming the economic slowdown on (among other things) the Arab Spring and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Mr. Obama said this:

Unfortunately, what we’ve seen in Washington the last few months has been the worst kind of partisanship, the worst kind of gridlock — and that gridlock has undermined public confidence and impeded our efforts to take the steps we need for our economy…. This downgrade you’ve been reading about could have been entirely avoided if there had been a willingness to compromise in Congress. See, it didn’t happen because we don’t have the capacity to pay our bills — it happened because Washington doesn’t have the capacity to come together and get things done. It was a self-inflicted wound. That’s why people are frustrated. Maybe you hear it in my voice — that’s why I’m frustrated. Because you deserve better. You guys deserve better.

Mr. Obama then added, “The only thing preventing these bills from being passed is the refusal of some folks in Congress to put the country ahead of party. There are some in Congress right now who would rather see their opponents lose than see America win." Read more »

The Mystery of the Forty Percent | Pajamas Media

Roger L. Simon

It’s been a while since I’ve written a thriller, but I’ve finally been impelled to dust off the old fedora and channel my inner Phillip Marlowe (or Moses Wine) to unravel the mystery of just who are those forty percent or so who still favor Barack Obama in the polls.

(Cue noir thriller music)

With the economy and the stock market tanking faster than the 1976 Buccaneers, anarchists, thugs, and eye doctors wreaking mayhem from London to Damascus, our foreign policy, energy policy, and every other policy somewhere between non-existent and imploded, the reputation of the United States lower than Lindsay Lohan’s shoe, and the perpetually-vacationing president putting Nero to shame when it comes to fiddling, you would think Obama’s popularity would be in the low naughts.

But no. Something approaching half your fellow citizens still want this bozo to continue. Surely that large a percentage of the country could not simultaneously have had a lobotomy. There simply are not enough hospital rooms for that — with or without health care reform. Read more »

The new Jewess: A rising generation of actresses overturns old tropes | Jewish Journal

by Danielle Berrin

The year is 1950. The setting is a dimly lit movie studio backlot. It’s the middle of the night, and an attractive young woman named Betty Schaefer is explaining to her screenwriting partner why she became a writer instead of what she really wanted to be — an actress. The movie is “Sunset Boulevard.”

“I come from a picture family,” Schaefer (Nancy Olson) tells Joe Gillis (William Holden). “Naturally, they took it for granted I was to become a great star.  So I had 10 years of dramatic lessons, diction, dancing. Then the studio made a test.  Well, they didn’t like my nose — it slanted this way a little. I went to a doctor and had it fixed.  They made more tests, and they were crazy about my nose — only they didn’t like my acting.”

Though it’s never overtly stated, the obvious implication is that Betty Schaefer is Jewish. If you’ve ever wanted to understand the ambivalence Hollywood has felt toward Jewish women, there it is in glorious black and white. Read more »

The Russian-American Jews of ‘Russian Dolls’ Tablet Magazine

The new Lifetime reality show Russian Dolls portrays the Russian-American Jews of Brighton Beach as celebrating neither America nor their Judaism but the freedom to be stereotypically Russian

BY ALLISON HOFFMAN

In the first episode of Russian Dolls, a new Lifetime reality show set in Brooklyn and billed as a cross between Jersey Shore and the Real Housewives franchise, a 23-year-old bleached-blonde named Diana Kosov spends a lot of time fretting about her new boyfriend, Paul, who drives a Maserati and lavishes her with flowers and teddy bears but who is unfit to bring home to her parents. The problem? “He’s Spanish, and I’m Russian,” Kosov explains. “In this community, if I date someone who’s not Russian, it’s a big deal.” Later, her mother, Anna, shows up to prove the point. “I would like you marrying Russian guy,” she tells her daughter, as they practice making borscht. “We have same kultur. It’s very important, you understand?

The astute viewer will notice that, in both of these interludes, Kosov is wearing a large Star of David pendant that dangles above her dramatically pushed-up cleavage. In a phone interview this week, she said the message she heard was clear: “I’m looking for a Russian Jewish guy.” But, on the show, the word Jewish never enters the dialogue—not in an aside to the camera, not with Kosov’s mother, and not, eventually, with Paul, who gets the heave-ho over a plate of tuna tartare. “My parents, they came to America for a reason,” Kosov says, earnestly. “To look for Russians?” Paul retorts. “Yeah,” Kosov replies, without elaboration. Read more »

Telling It Like It Wasn’t | The Jewish Week

Former Times reporter looks back on coverage of the event, and what went wrong.

Ari L. Goldman

Twenty years ago next week, on the night of Aug. 19, 1991 — the night that Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum were killed — my editor called me at home to tell me that riots had broken out on the streets of Crown Heights. “We’re covered for tonight but I want you to start your day there tomorrow,” he said.
Over the next three days, working 12 hours shifts and only going home to sleep, I saw and heard many terrible things. I saw police cars set on fire, stores being looted and people bloodied by Billy clubs, rocks and bottles. One woman told me that she barricaded herself into her apartment and put the mattresses on the windows so her children would not be hurt by flying glass.
Over those three days I also saw journalism go terribly wrong. The city’s newspapers, so dedicated to telling both sides of the story in the name of objectivity and balance, often missed what was really going on. Journalists initially framed the story as a “racial” conflict and failed to see the anti-Semitism inherent in the riots. As the 20th anniversary of the riots approaches, I find myself re-examining my own role in the coverage and trying to extract some lessons for myself and my profession. Read more

Good Debate, Bad Candidates | Commentary Magazine

John Podhoretz

Last night’s debate was immensely entertaining, as I relate in today’s New York Post. And it ought to put paid to the notion that the Fox News Channel is a Republican shill machine, since it featured the toughest and most pointed questioning in any presidential-primary debate ever. But the debate highlighted a very strange aspect of this race: Just how second-rate the candidates are. When it comes to speaking seriously about issues, showing appropriate demeanor, and connecting both to an actual political record, there are only two candidates in the race now that seem remotely plausible in the arena with Barack Obama, and one of them (sorry, Abe) knocked himself out of the race last night for good.

Tim Pawlenty is a mystifying candidate. He’s fluent. He’s smart. He’s quick on his feet. He knows policy. He’s a conservative and he has mainstream credentials and a history of accomplishment. What he doesn’t have is…it. He’s lacking it, whatever the it is that a candidate who can connect to voters has. And when he decided last night to tussle with Michele Bachmann, who is a stone killer of a politician, he literally shrank before our eyes. Read more »

An IDF Reservist's Final Tour | Tablet Magazine

A Long Island-born, middle-aged Israeli soldier patrols the Egyptian border on reserve duty—and reflects on two decades of civilian and military life.

BY MICHAEL RIPSTEIN

In 20 years of military service, I thought I’d seen all the crappy training camps the Israeli army had to offer. But there I was, early one morning last spring, walking from the glorified gravel pit that passed for a parking lot at the Southern Command training base, under the unforgiving Negev sun, beginning another reserve deployment in the Israel Defense Forces. And since I’d just passed my 40th birthday, the tour I was starting was quite possibly my last.

If it had been a normal Monday morning for me, I would have been checking emails, attending sales meetings, writing proposals, or doing any number of the activities associated with my job at a software company in the high-tech industrial park of Ranaana, north of Tel Aviv. On this day, however, I was clad in green, wiping the oil off my rifle, squaring away gear, and trudging off to some range to make sure that both man and machine were in functioning order. The smells of cordite, grease, and diesel fumes accompanied the switch—from citizen to soldier—which, despite having made it some dozen times in the last two decades, never ceased to amaze me. Read more »

White House Cleanses Israel from Website The Weekly Standard

At 3:22 p.m., I posted this photo of Vice President Joe Biden and Shimon Peres, with an accompanying caption that indicated it had been taken last year in Jerusalem, Israel:

The point of posting the photo was to show that, although the State Department refuses to say that Jerusalem is in Israel, even the White House website acknowledges this elementary truth (at least for Western Jerusalem, west of the 1949 armistic lines). But not any more. Within two hours of posting, the White House has apparently gone through its website, cleansing any reference to Jerusalem as being in Israel.

Source: The Weekly Standard