Keeping an eye on the weasels of the world

I was rather appalled by Friday’s article in the New York Times, Palestinians Honor a Figure Reviled in Israel as a Terrorist:

The woman being honored, Dalal Mughrabi, was the 19-year-old leader of a Palestinian squad that sailed from Lebanon and landed on a beach between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They killed an American photojournalist, hijacked a bus and commandeered another, embarking on a bloody rampage that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, 13 of them children, according to official Israeli figures. Ms. Mughrabi and several other attackers were killed.

To Israelis, hailing Ms. Mughrabi as a heroine and a martyr is an act that glorifies terrorism.

But, underscoring the chasm between Israeli and Palestinian perceptions, the Fatah representatives described Ms. Mughrabi as a courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history. Defiant, they insisted that they would not let Israel dictate the names of Palestinian streets and squares.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer minced no words in response:

At no point does the reporter point out the sophistry of the position. There is nothing mysterious in the notion. It is an action designed to frighten a population. Hijacking a random public bus and murdering the passengers can have no other motivation but spreading fear, i.e., terror.

A judicious reporter would have asked the Palestinians she interviews to provide their definition of terrorism. She did not. Nor did she point out that after 9/11 the Palestinian leadership understood that continued US support mandates ending their terrorist advocacy, if not practice. So, they stopped arguing that their terrorist acts are justified. Instead, they renamed those acts. She simply cooperated with them by accepting that renaming as legitimate.

It’s amazing that 16 1/2 years after the Oslo Accords were signed that terror against Israel is still considered legitimate by Palestinians. In part it’s due to the acquiesence of diplomats, politicians and journalists of the West as demonstrated in this article.

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Last week council member, The Glittering Eye had a post Earth needs Women, commenting on a recent report in The Economist about the dearth of women in Asian countries, especially India and China.

He actually had a rather positive observation.

I’ve heard people express fears that the gender imbalance in favor of males in China will lead to a more aggressive, warlike China. I think it’s rather likely to be the opposite. In a Confucian society largely without non-familial social safety nets will parents be inclined to send their sons, their only children, off to war?

Jeff Jacoby today has a column about the same article.

The war against baby girls has spread to South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, to the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and even to Asian-American communities in the United States. And if you think that the antidote to this “gendercide’’ is modernization, better living standards, and more education, think again.

“It is not the country’s poorest but its richest who are eliminating baby girls at the highest rate, regardless of religion or caste,’’ the Times of London reported in 2007. “Delhi’s leafiest suburbs have among the lowest ratio of girls to boys in India, while the two states with the absolute lowest ratio are those with the highest per-capita income: Punjab and Haryana.’’ Similarly in China, the higher a province’s literacy rate or income per head, the more skewed its sexual disparities.

Another place where there’s an extreme gender imbalance is in the Persian Gulf kingdoms as you can see from this table. It’s been pointed out to me, that in the Persian Gulf, at least some (maybe all) of the imbalance may be due to the importation of foreign workers.

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When I first read Charles Krauthammer’s “In praise of the rotation of power,” I was impressed. He argued:

The rotation of power is the finest political instrument ever invented for the consolidation of what were once radical and deeply divisive policies. The classic example is the New Deal. Republicans railed against it for 20 years. Then Dwight Eisenhower came to power, wisely left it intact, and no serious leader since has called for its repeal.

Similarly, Bill Clinton consolidated Reaganism, just as Tony Blair consolidated Thatcherism. In both cases, moderate leaders brought their center-left party to accept their predecessors’ highly successful conservative reforms.

A similar consolidation has happened with many of the Bush anti-terror policies. In opposition, the Democrats decried warrantless wiretaps, rendition and detention without trial. But now that they are charged with protecting us from the bad guys, they’ve come to view these as indispensable national security measures.

Leaving aside his argument for the New Deal, I can agree with his premise that the rotation of power has the effect of giving legitimacy to once controversial policies, but is it always good?

Take Bookworm Room’s non-council submission last week, Defeat vs. Repeal:

The practice of limited government encourages a goodly circle of social virtue, as people find that they must serve their fellow men and women in economic goods and services to gain prosperity and distinction. The practice of big government encourages a vicious cycle of rent-seeking, as people find that the only way to get on is to support a politician and agitate for a subsidy or a bailout.

The argument is that it’s much more difficult to reverse a bad governmental decision than to prevent it. Rotation of power, then, is just as likely to preserve bad governmental actions as it to preserve good ones.

What do you think?

If you’re a blogger, do you agree with Krauthammer? Why or why not? Send me a link by 11:59 EDT Monday and, if I like it, I’ll include it in a roundup. All I ask is that you link back to the roundup.

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Ah, this made me feel good.

The beautiful building pictured above is the historic Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, which dates from the 1700’s.

In 1948, it was vandalized and desecrated by the Jordanians, along with 28 other historic synagogues and shrines in the Old City. But it has now been beautifully restored and will be rededicated this Sunday and Monday, the 28th and 29th of Adar.

And that just drives the Palestinians insane:

Naturally, the Muslims are furious at Jews daring to rebuild a synagogue in a spot that they had lived continuously for well over two thousand years. As I reported a few months ago, what really bugged them was the height of the structure, because in Islamic tradition mosques should always be the tallest buildings in the area. Since the Jewish Quarter is on a hill, the Hurva dome will be higher than the domes on the Al Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock.

And we can’t have that, can we?

What really fries the Palestinians is two things – first, that the Hurva Synogogue being restored like this gives the lie to their claims that East Jerusalem was ever ‘traditionally Arab’, except for a brief 19-year period between 1948 and 1967 after they ethnically cleansed the original inhabitants . And second, once again, the very fact that Jews build, while they destroy. That’s how it’s always been.

Ponder for a moment the mentality of people like that and imagine trying to live in peace next to them.

BTW, below are pictures ( click to enlarge ) circa 1940 showing the old Hurva Synagogue before it was destroyed by the Arabs, and how it dominated the Jerusalem skyline. No wonder the Arabs wanted it to remain merely a memory.

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From Walter Russell Mead:

Hint to the youth: Anytime a young intellectual is trapped in a nasty spot like this, squatting in a foxhole with anti-Semites and assorted tinfoil hatters, your first thought should be, “Where did I go wrong?”

Good advice for Jeremy Ben Ami.

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As Watcher, I’d like to keep the blogging world apprised of the activities of the Council members. A number of us are polled weekly by the National Journal. The latest bloggers poll is here. The question were whether passing health care reform will help the Democrats or the Republicans and between Rahm Emanual and David Axelrod, who helps and who hurts the White House.

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Congratulations to JoshuaPundit for this week’s winning entry Obama Tells Israel They Have No Right To Their Religious Shrines. As Vice President Biden leaves the Middle East, Jennifer Rubin observes, regarding a comment he made to PM Netanyahu:

“… it is precisely the sort of ill-conceived, bullying message that certainly must convince the Israelis not to place their trust in the American negotiators.”

But the Israel isn’t the only country that’s being handled clumsily, as the top rated non-council submission (submittd by JoshuaPundit) of the week notes:  Obama’s Iran Policy Collapses to the Accompaniment of Mockery Around the Globe. One of Joel J. Sprayregen’s observations that’s well worth remembering is:

Saad Hariri is now Lebanon’s prime minister. Seeing the weakness of U.S. policy, he now embraces Hezbollah and the Syrian forces who killed his father.    

Clumsiness in foreign affairs doesn’t merely alienate allies, it can push the weaker ones to embrace our foes.

One council member had 2/3 of a point deducted for not voting.

Winning Council Submissions

• First place with 2 2/3 points!  – JoshuaPundit - Obama Tells Israel They Have No Right To Their Religious Shrines
• Second Place with 2 points  - Bookworm Room - Obama Care and abortions
• Third Place with 1 2/3 points – Right Truth - History of Insurance
• Fourth Place *t* with 2/3 point - The Glittering Eye – The Nightmare Scenario
• Fourth Place *t* with 2/3 point – American Digest - Massa’s Reason for Resigning. Doing (or not doing) Barney Frank’s Job
• Fifth Place *t* with 1/3 point – Wolf Howling – The UK Through Labour’s Looking Glass
• Fifth Place *t* with 1/3 point – The Provocateur - Ideological Wars Bore Me

Winning Non-Council Submissions

• First place with 2 2/3 points! Joel J. Sprayregen/ American Thinker – Obama’s Iran Policy Collapses to the Accompaniment of Mockery Around the Globe
• Second Place with 1 2/3 points - Chicago Boyz – Seizing the Opportunity to Destroy Western Civilization
• Third Place with 1 1/3 points - Big Lizards Palin and Reagan: Together Again for the First Time 
• Fourth Place *t* with 2/3 point - American Thinker -  Defeat vs. Repeal
• Fourth Place *t* with 2/3 point Across the Bay - Juan Cole’s Social Protest 
• Fourth Place *t* with 2/3 point Chicago Tribune/John Kass -  24 Has Jumped the Shark 
• Fifth Place *t* with 1/3 point The Volokh Conspiracy - Could National Juries Alleviate the Problem of Political Ignorance? 
• Fifth Place *t* with 1/3 point Chesler Chronicles - It’s International Women’s History Month and Where is Secretary Clinton?

Congratulations to all the winners!

For a complete list of this week’s submissions see here.

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via memeorandum

Chief Justice John Roberts was bothered by the atmosphere at the State of the Union address:

“The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.”

James Joyner thinks this is a consequence of the growing partisanship surrounding the State of the Union:

It’s not so much that Obama’s dig at the Court was improper but that the nature of the address has gradually evolved over the years into a more partisan, overtly political affair. Perhaps that’s to be expected, since American politics has similarly changed. But it may well be time for the Justices to stop attending, lending the impression that the SOTU is some sort of national unity moment. Ditto, incidentally, the Joint Chiefs.

Instapundit, though, sees the partisanship more narrowly.

Meanwhile, it seems clear to me that had a Republican President behaved similarly, we’d be hearing loud cries of “Fascism!” from all the usual suspects.

I think so too.

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The New York Time explains what went wrong with the Obama administration.

By the end of his first year, Obama expected to have revamped the nation’s health care system, restructured its energy industry to curb climate change, reined in Wall Street with a new regulatory structure, closed the prison at Guantánamo Bay, signed an arms-control treaty with Russia, begun rapprochement with Iran and jump-started the Middle East peace process. Instead, the president’s approval ratings have fallen by more than 20 percentage points, unemployment remains higher than even the worst initial White House forecasts and much of the president’s agenda is stalled. Most significant, the fate of Obama’s signature health care initiative is uncertain. “What looked like it was going to be a huge achievement for 2009 became a huge challenge for 2010,” Anita Dunn, the former White House communications director under Obama, told me. “Obviously, the landscape looks a lot different heading into the second year.”

That was a mighty ambitious agenda. But did anyone consider whether it was one that had popular support. To put it succinctly:

Frankly, Obama has a big picture. It’s just the wrong one — a statist spend-a-thon that seeks to reorient the balance between private and public sectors, grow the scope of the federal government, and do it all without popular support.

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The New York Times tells of how the National Enquirer put together the John Edwards story.

Pulling together reporters to dig into the rumor, Mr. Levine began something that once seemed unthinkable: not only the downfall of a presidential candidate with a meticulous image, but, for the sensational tabloid, something resembling respectability.

By being the first and, largely, the only publication pursuing the Edwards story through his denials of the affair and of fathering a child out of wedlock, The Enquirer is under consideration for a Pulitzer Prize, and it has strong support for its bid from other journalists. The success has Mr. Levine considering opening a Washington bureau to look for more dirt among politicians.

But if reporting something that the MSM ignored – seemingly in order to protect a favored politician – what does that say about the respectability of the MSM? Or at least about their credibility?

Did the MSM learn their lesson?

“There’s no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge links to it,” according to NBC’s chief White House correspondent, Chuck Todd. Really? No worse crime? Not Dan Rather’s use of forged documents in a one-sided 60 Minutes hit piece intended to cost President Bush re-election? Not the plagiarism and fabrications of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair and the New Republic’s Stephen Glass?

No. They wouldn’t want to use Drudge. But wait. Didn’t he break another story about a politician favored and protected by the media? Just asking.

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