Tuesday, December 4, 2007

KUDOS TO A NOBLE LADY...

[Who, amazingly, has even more brains than she has beauty!]



I've called The Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick the Jeanne d'Arc of Israel...But the great Pamela Geller, creator of the "AtlasShrugs" blog, perhaps merits the "Jeanne d'Arc of America" title even better. Every day she publishes brilliant, passionate essays and links, but today's about the Annapolis conference and its meaning was exceptional even for her:
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Submitting to Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs. VILE, all of it. Sanctioned and insitutionalized by the President of the United States. I thought Bush was a Christian, A man of faith? Shocking. He has squandered his second term and has not acted in good faith. We did not elect him to carry Condi's water.

It is unfathomable to consider this with any other race, creed or color. Imagine separate entrances for the leader of an African nation because a "white" leader refused to walk through the same door as the black man? Because it would be unclean.

And Israel took it like the ghetto Jew. They should have walked out like any self respecting human would have done. But no, they lowered the bar yet again. Offering all, and getting nothing. Sheba Farms, Golan, Jerusalem - all of it in play. The post Oslo Jew has returned to the pre- Holocaust mentality of the 'ghetto' Jew. The Jew that doesn't want to be noticed, the Jew who will do anything to appease those that hate us, just to live in peace. Instead of asserting OUR rights, OUR will that we have a right, are the rightful heirs of Israel and Jerusalem, we are acting as if we have no rights and instead are begging, begging, our enemies to recognize us and accept us!" Behaving like beggars! And the silence of American Jews, well it's the ghetto mentality mixed with those that have assimilated into American culture, the let's not rock the boat crowd.

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If I may be so bold to second that emotion, from my own essay:

Until about 100 years ago, almost all the Jews in the world lived in some form of the shtetl, or Jewish quarter, as they had for generations uncounted. As we all know, in the modern era of citizenship and human rights this undignified existence was rightly condemned as obsolete. But it is almost as if Jews haven't internalized that, indeed, the shtetl is gone. The Czar/Sultan will not protect us. And we fully have it in our capability to protect ourselves.

Read all of Ms. Geller's powerful essay here:

2 comments:

Jeremayakovka said...

Love the Hellenic overlay to Judaism. Pardon the self-promotion, but this relates to your post, "Ann of Arc"

Jewish Odysseus said...

When the self being promoted is so worthy, it is always welcome! ;-) That was a fine post, and comments thereafter!

JMK, I'm really NOT a Hellenist, but a militant Jewish survivalist. As in: "I want the Jews to survive in dignity, freedom, peace, and prosperity, in that order."

The revival of Israel has meant so much for the dignity, freedom and peace of Jews, yet merely 60 years after the Shoah it appears millions of Jews are uncomfortable with it!

My belief is they've been psychically crippled/disabled by centuries of slavery and threat...I always admired the perspective and qualities of Homer's Odysseus, and thought we Jews could learn a lot of valuable lessons from him.

Odysseus was clearly not psychically crippled nor disabled from responding adeptly to his enemies or to the enormous challenges the Fates threw in front of him. Hence he seems a fine exemplar, to me.