This is the Enemy

An amazing sermon delivered by Rabbi Schlomo Lewis of Atlanta over the Jewish New Year.

I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share.  We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel.  We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much.  We want to be guilt-schlepped – but not too much.  We want to be provoked but not too much.  We want to be transformed but not too much.

I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard.  And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express.  I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious.  I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.

We are at war.  We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters.  We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants.   We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors.  We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault.  We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people.
We did not apologize for Dresden , nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein , nor for D-Day.

Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake.  It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna , not just Casablanca .  It was the entire planet.  Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.

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North Korea has Loudspeakers Too

An excellent piece in the Australian about Clover Moore's fun police.

A few weeks ago I noticed council workers putting up signs on telegraph poles, alerting residents to a phone number they could call if they were inconvenienced by excessive noise. No, this wasn't in the outer suburbs or in the leafy northern beaches, but on the main street of the Cross, where on the weekends up to 20,000 revellers arrive to drink, and dance and puke. I was tempted to call the number myself when, at 8am on a Sunday I was rudely awakened by the sound of AC/DC blaring through loudspeakers. Mind you, this wasn't the result of an all-night party thrown by some drugged-up neighbour but of the council's thoughtful decision to entertain joggers.

Since when is noise an issue in the Cross? Having lived near The Cross for years, I can only say that if you live there and complain about pubs and bars, you've about as much credibility as someone who moves to Lucas Heights and complains about the Nuclear Reactor. The problem is drunken violence. Booze isn't the problem either. It's the people consuming it, their background and their attitude to police and other people. Add to this grog and Red Bull (to keep them going until 3am as they only leave home at 10) and the result is predictable. The trainloads of pre-fuelled drunken bogans who converge on the Cross every Saturday night from two hours away, don't add a lot of colour (aside from what ends up in the gutter). Clover Moore says they should run trains all night. I say close them at 6pm. Problem solved. Update: Non-local attention seeker.

The Dirty UN Audience Loved It...

What was Prime Minister Gillard thinking, telling the UN that " Denigration of religious beliefs is never acceptable". A religion is simply a series of beliefs. If I started a new religion tomorrow whose central tenets were the murder of non-members and say sleeping with young children, the outcry would be palpable. Would such outcry be unacceptable? Of course not. I'd expect it. However it seems once a religion gets to a certain size, all bets are off. The prophet of one such major religion was a mass-murderer who married a six year old and slept with her when she was nine. Fact. Followers of this religion are encouraged to live their lives exactly like their prophet with predictable consequences. I dare not name the religion of course, lest I be accused of denigrating it and blamed entirely for any rioting and mayhem. Let's just pretend it's a "religion of peace", whose founder was a "man of peace". That seems to be the politically correct mythology. Yes.

Vote or Die

Internet polls are largely worthless, however here's the one currently running on 2GB's website courtesy of broadcaster Alan Jones.

The Alan Jones breakfast show daily poll In the wake of the Muslim riots across the world and here in Australia, around about the time of the anniversary of September 11, various Western leaders fell over themselves to apologise for an anti-Islamic video which had been accessible for some months on the internet. But Western leaders were quick to accept that this violent and militant behaviour, resulting in the death of a senior American diplomat in Libya and appalling placard-waving in Sydney urging that infidels be beheaded – in the wake of all of that there seemed to be a greater focus on apologising for the video than on dealing, here in Australia, with appalling anti-Australian, anti-social behaviour. My question today, knowing that if any other Australian behaved in this way the treatment would be swift and severe, is the treatment of such militant minorities too soft to the extent that they don’t get the message that you can’t behave this way in this country. The question is, is our response to these militant minorities too soft?

Currently running at 98% Yes, 2% no. Chances of him and his listeners being called racists? 100%.

Outrage Highly Selective

A word to rioting Muslims from Pat Condell.

Poor Mike Carlton

Further to the Sydney Islamoriots, Mike Carlton writes in the Syrian Moaning Halibut:

The nutters on the fringes went berserk, of course. There were a few snarling blogs calling for ''them'' to be sent back home, and text messages demanding reprisals. Although I deliberately did not listen to talkback radio, I imagine the usual shock jocks were doing their best to whip up fear and loathing as they did with the Cronulla riots.

It only seems fair. People deliberately didn't listen to Mike Carlton on radio, so why should he listen to others? Especially when he can simply "imagine" what they said and then attack them for saying it. I am imagining a giant man made of straw.

But everyone else stayed cool. Most impressive of all was the gathering of 25 Muslim organisations, coming together as never before to hose things down.

As never before? Here's a summary of the hosing:

a) Not all Muslims want to kill Australians. Yes, yes...
b) It's only a fringe minority. Yes, yes...
c) Quick... Look over there: It's really about Palestine.
d) Ho hum, can we please talk about Israel.

The one coming together as never before, would be a few thousand Muslims marching in the streets, denonuncing Jihad and doing so without trying to appear as victims.

Will we ever see Muslims marching in the streets this way? I doubt it. And yet, we know they can get a crowd together when it suits them...

Carlton continues:

And the woman who photographed her child with that placard calling for the beheading of those who insult the prophet apparently had no idea what ''behead'' meant. The police found she had been in the country just two years and spoke little English.
Silliest of all was the assertion by a handful of the loopy right-wing commentariat that multiculturalism is in crisis or has failed.

A woman has been in the country for two years and barely speaks English. How's that for success in multiculturalism. Fortunately the posters at Centrelink are translated into in Arabic.

Wankerley

One can only hope Paul Sheehan is the last one out of the Fairfax building before the lights are turned out.

He has written an excellent piece calling local councils out for revenue raising. Notably this included Waverley and Woollahra councils , both of whose officers have booked me at least once for two different parking offences nobody I know has ever heard of.

One can only hope that with the massive swing to the Liberals, the councils will eventually get their hands out of people's back pockets and focus on what they should be doing. Roads, Rates and Rubbish, not saving the world with costly social engineering and feel good exercises.


Unfortunately, councils are addicted to fines revenue and spend the money before they've made it. It's not as simple as just firing the parking officers (or perhaps re-issuing them with brooms).

...And we're back.

See what happens? You take a break from blogging for a couple of months, Clover Moore gets re-elected, Muslims riot in Sydney and Antony Loewenstein says "Six million" Jews should die.

It was all the usual standard anti-Israel rhetoric.

But, during the Q&A Jonathan Hoffman asked Loewenstein how many people Loewenstein thinks should die for this one-state solution, that Loewenstein wants so much, to come into existence. The idea being that Israelis are not going to vote themselves out of existence, so presumably such a state could come about only by force involving more bloodshed.

As Loewenstein wasn’t quite answering the question he was pressed further by Hoffman as to how many people Loewenstein thinks should die. First, Frank Barat, the Chairman, answered “200,000″ (here is more on Barat). Then Loewenstein answered “Six million. That’s my answer. Write that down.“

What sort of individual comes out with such an answer? Mocking the Holocaust seems to be becoming de rigeuer within anti-Israel activism. Here is someone calling herself Jane Green back in October last year.
Maybe “six million” was randomly plucked out of thin air by Loewenstein. That seems doubtful. Hopefully, he will be pressed further on what made him say such a cruel thing when he returns home to Sydney, Australia.

Follow the links for audio.