Tag Archives: ethics

Syria and the Jews — Fast Online Look — When the Neighbors are Fighting

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Israel, Politics, Psychology, Syria

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Saving the Bashar al-Assad regime by getting it to junk weapons of mass destruction it doesn’t need while vastly improving Russia’s international image is a good deal for them

Syria U-Turn Sends Troubling Message of American Weakness – Forward.com, by Hillel Halkin, September 22, 2013

(Reuters) – In the photograph the two robed men stand shoulder-to-shoulder, one tall and erect, the other more heavyset. Both smile for the camera. The picture from Tehran is a rare record of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meeting Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite paramilitary group.

Special Report: Hezbollah gambles all in Syria | Reuters, by Samia Nakhoul, September 26, 2013

A family in Israel’s Arab minority is mourning the death of their son, killed fighting in the Syrian civil war.

Zaki Agbariah said he is proud of his 28-year-old son Mueid. The family told Channel 1 television Wednesday that Mueid didn’t tell anybody that he was going to Syria to fight.

Israeli Arab Killed in Syrian Civil War – ABC News, AP, September 18, 2013

Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Thursday.

“Originally, we produced chemical weapons in the 1980s as a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” Assad said in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated, Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that “today, we have weapons that are far more important and sophisticated and that can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.”

Assad: We have weapons that could blindside Israel | The Times of Israel, September 26, 2013.

Suddenly there is a volley of fire. “Get down guys,” the soldiers say. Some dive for cover in a concrete trench.

A sergeant explains that bombs and bullets from the Syrian war regularly land inside Israeli territory. The shooting may have been warning shots, or maybe just some stray bullets from a gunfight on the outskirts of Quneitra.

Israel eyes Syria warily from border buffer zone in Golan Heights – World News, by Geraint Vincent, September 25, 2013.

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When it’s the people in the apartment next door, one monitors the loud voices, the character of the yelling, something breaking like a plate or glass.  Then something big and heavy pounds against the wall.

Him?  Her?  The kid?  Furniture?

Time to call the police.

Even that level of involvement may not be so easy.

If the domestic combatants figure out it was you called the cops, watch your back.

If there are children involved, you have not only called the police but social services and probably initiated a separations investigation, and some suffering mama or papa may not be too happy about that — and might figure you convenient for blaming first.

And all you was doin’ was watchin’ tv.

* * *

In the big bad ol’ world, states don’t intervene in wars so much as get sucked into them, rather like ships trying to sail on their way past the darkest of expanding vortex.

So the Jews, who were just watchin’ the tv too, stand beside the conflict in Syria not exactly unhappy to see Hezbollah invested in the battle while Russia and the United States stand outside the bloody sandbox trying to keep to keep the flying shit from spilling out farther into their own affairs.

That’s not really neighborly, but what’s a good and highly functioning state or two very powerful ones to do?

* * *

Israel has stepped up its sensitivity to potential activity on its borders; beyond that, and some sales of gas masks, it’s busy with being.  With life.  It has its security arrangements in place; it’s people — Jewish and other Israelis — have taken steps to be helpful to those in need of help — e.g.,

Israeli raising funds to help Syrians ‘dying near us’ – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yitzhak Benhorin, May 10, 2013

Israel sets up ‘field hospital’ to treat injured Syrians – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yoav Zitun, AFP

Israeli organization delivers hundreds of tons of food, medicine to Syrian refugees | JPost | Israel News, September 9, 2013: “Nobody asks permission to kill. We do not ask permission to save lives,” says NGO’s founder.”

* * *

Delusional narcissistic reflection of motives — as with propaganda, the aggressor claims defense from what he himself has in mind for his target — would seem to have organized the Assad mentality to believe itself the target of Israeli aggression, a belief and posture abetting and motivating the state’s and state culture’s own aggression against Israel.

Give that a moment to settle.

______

Within the framework of “civilizational narcissism”, Haider Mobarak’s term, this nifty nugget that you will find only here — “Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motives” — accounts much for the form of rhetoric embraced (language) and combat pursued (behavior) throughout the Islamic Small Wars.

The social grammar — the hidden rule learned early — is probably the message that if not defended, something will be taken from the child (e.g., “If you don’t eat your supper now, I shall give it to your brother” — a common enough phrase according to Raphael Patai).

What happens with the ancient and modern House of Israel with its civilizational psychology operating quite differently is that it’s outside of and unconcerned with this mess that is of intense interest to someone else enveloped in what might be called a narcissistic trap, that is the world spun around the narcissist’s delusions in such a way that it organizes the surrounding social architecture.  In essence, the dictator at some point cannot escape his own dictatorship: he’s created too much myth, made too many corrupt deals, bargained himself right into a prison of the soul.  The flow down is to fighters who cannot refuse the fight however absurd and surreal its imagined basis.

Who needs Pharaoh, that most magnificent construct of the malignant narcissist around whom the world revolves?

The Jews, and with a mixed multitude suffering the same insight, walked.

Who needs Assad?

The Jews, and the Israelis who are not only Jews, stand to the side eager only to help the bereaved, injured, and lost and otherwise maintain their defenses.

* * *

“Two mad wasps in a bell jar” — those who go into Syria to fight other than the one dictatorship go to combat over issues irrelevant to existence, the humanity of humanity, and probably to God as well, to whom, in the ancient manner, they may serve as illustration for the ages.

Additional Reference

Syria war, refugees to cost Lebanon $7.5 billion – World Bank | Reuters, by Dominic Evans, September 19, 2013.

The Arab Mind: Raphael Patai: 9780967201559: Amazon.com: Books

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Syria – Define Your World

01 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, North America, Politics, Regions, Syria, United States of America

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Chemical and biological weapons are absolutely prohibited under international humanitarian law. Debates and questions surrounding the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria are not fading away. Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s head of operations for the Near and Middle East, explains the organization’s position.

ICRC.  “Chemical weapons: An absolute prohibition under international humanitarian law”.  July 18, 2013.

Tell me about the world in which you would like to live.

Will it be a world that holds itself to time honored ethical and moral standards?

Will it be a world in which self-awareness and the awareness of others inspires an integrating compassion and consideration for the humanity shared?

Will it be a world in which the most notable and powerful of public speakers may be trusted to keep their own laws, to restrain themselves from excessive or unbridled appetites, and to tell the truth whether it becomes them or not?

If you should wish to live in some other world, don’t bother with this blog.

* * *

Unknown to Syrian officials, U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged chemical attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials. Those records and intercepts would become the core of the Obama administration’s evidentiary case linking the Syrian government to what one official called an “indiscriminate, inconceivable horror” — the use of outlawed toxins to kill nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children.

Warrick, Joby.  “More than 1,400 killed in Syrian chemical weapons attack, U.S. says.”  The Washington Post, August 30, 2013.

Additional Reference

BackChannels.  “Syria – Chemical Warhead Launch Ascribed to 155th Brigade – 4th Armored Division – Syrian Army.”  August 28, 2013.

Bishara, Marwan.  “US and Syria: the calculus of war.”  Al Jazeera, August 30, 2013.

Boerma, Lindsey.  “U.S. has firm evidence sarin gas was used in Syria chemical weapons attack, Sec. Kerry says.”  September 1, 2013.

ICRC.  “The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols”. PDF Address: The Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.

ICRC.  “War and international humanitarian law”.

Raum, Tom.  “Syria: Conflict, an alleged chemical attack, and fallout.”  MPR News, August 31, 2013.

Warrick, Joby.  “Even after 100,000 deaths in Syria, chemical weapons attack evoked visceral response.”  The Washington Post, September 1, 2013.

Wikipedia.  “American Way”.

Wikipedia.  “Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907”.

Wikipedia.  “Laws of War”.

Wikipedia.  “Lieber Code”.

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Syria – Marking Time

30 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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The absence of conscience on the part of the Assad regime in its military actions, an aspect that reaches its nadir with the use of chemical weapons, and the historically astigmatic vision of the Al Qaeda-types serve to keep “awareness, self-awareness, and conscience” — God’s gift to humanity in my interpretation of the Jewish ethos expressed in Genesis 2 and 3 — restricted to their own minds, concerned only with themselves, and consequently locked in true “mortal combat” on a small stage surrounded by mirrors of their own image.

The primers are out.

Fisher, Max.  “9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask.”  The Washington Post, August 29, 2013.

I like Max Fisher’s term in the lead, ” . . . possibly imminent series of limited military strikes . . .” and the later too true observation, “The government responded, there is no getting around this, like monsters.”

Rankin, Seija.  “What you Need to Know About the Crisis in Syria.”  Refinery29, August 28, 2013:

However, over time the FSA became dominated by Islamist extremists (including some affiliated with Al Qaeda), bolstered by Sunni rulers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The rebels, as the overarching group is now referred to, slowly split into fractured groups, with the more radical fighters taking over areas to the north and east of Damascus, and the more secular fighters holding court in the southern suburbs.

In Seija’s backgrounder, the Assad will-to-dynasty gets referenced but not its dependence on the politics of the Cold War and the prism provided by Putin’s now delicate diplomacy of the day, which has seen the retrieval of Russian civilian and military personnel and assets from Syria while fulfilling old military contracts at the Iran-Syria nexus.

Russia may be yet interested in defeating the “Yankee Imperialists” in the cause of the “New Russian Oligarchs” — just a thought — but it has to work at keeping itself apart from the European part of NATO identity as a Christian state fending off Islamist intentions in Chechnya and as a modern proto-democratic (all the parts are in place) still autocratic state enjoying a somewhat pagan muscularity.

* * *

* * *

* * *

Is that above an Ayatollah’s best buddy?

* * *

Back on center stage, Amos Harel writing for Haaretz asks, “In all the global talk over the last week about the chemical weapons attack in Syria and the expected U.S. response, one interesting question has been shunted aside: Why on earth did Syrian President Bashar Assad do it?”

(Harel, Amos.  “Despite words of warning, Israel wants to stay out of Syria conflict.”  Haaretz, August 30, 2013).

Harel’s piece also covers the strategic basics.

Syria, specifically, and Putin in Syria, specifically, and a fair number of interlopers, not so specifically, would seem to be running around in there without much of a moral compass.

Again, “Syria Dark Star” consumes energy without transforming itself into a positive region although some of what has been taking place may be moving toward that, e.g., the Kurdish separation from Syria forced by the presence of Al Qaeda in the Kurdish sphere amid the absence of Syrian state forces; the fact that the seemingly moderate General Idris remains afield with a capable force fighting both Assad’s military and such as Al Nusra.

Still: where can the Syrian Civil War resolve?

The inability of Syrians and the world at large to address that question both ideally and politically serves to keep the conflict, in the way of fire, consuming and deadening.

* * *

An Aside on Generalized Syrian Anti-Semitism

The presence and effects of general Syrian anti-Semitic acculturation also spells a dismal future, for that facet also stands signal to a lost humanity.

The absence of conscience on the part of the Assad regime in its military actions, an aspect that reaches its nadir with the use of chemical weapons, and the historically astigmatic vision of the Al Qaeda-types serve to keep “awareness, self-awareness, and conscience” — God’s gift to humanity in my interpretation of the Jewish ethos expressed in Genesis 2 and 3 — restricted to their own minds, concerned only with themselves, and consequently locked in true “mortal combat” on a small stage surrounded by mirrors of their own image.

In a sense, these actors cannot see themselves.

Those not a part of it and out searching on the World Wide Web may nonetheless see the same as they are and caught in a predicament of their own making, starting with the “malignant narcissism” so well displayed by the Assad’s in their “Arab Spring” response to their constituents.

“The government responded, there is no getting around this, like monsters,” wrote Max Fisher a few hours ago, and that is the truth.

How is it that they could not see themselves when they needed to see themselves most accurately, most completely, and most of all?

The coin “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” may apply, but it serves as an aid to observation of leadership type and may not provide quite the key to insight and guidance needed in Syria.

Unfortunately, the conventions of diplomacy and war fighting won’t quell the dark energy in Syria either because in some the accumulated language-based “content of mind” has pushed them beyond the reach of their own and better humanity.  In reach-out, one may point to those who have exceeded limits, but, here’s the problem, they are also those fulfilling their programming.

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Each Name Opens To A Universe

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Free Speech, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, North America, Politics, Qatar, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Hours before his arrest, Abdelke had signed a petition that averred (here’s where Chrome’s translate option comes in handy) “support to the forces of the revolution who advocate the establishment of a pluralistic democracy” and “desire for a peaceful solution to stop the bloodshed and to preserve national unity and territorial integrity, which involves the departure of Bashar al-Assad and pillars of his regime.

http://artfcity.com/2013/08/01/the-web-petitions-to-free-syrian-artist-youssef-abdelke/

Youssef Abdelke — never hard of him before two minutes ago — but as one who has learned the ways of the World Wide Web, the third minute opens on eternity.

(Reuters) – Syrian government forces have detained a dissident left-wing painter in a new wave of arrests of non-violent critics of President Bashar al-Assad, opposition groups said on Friday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/19/us-syria-crisis-arrests-idUSBRE96I0LP20130719

“A place to share art, uninhibited without a bunch of stupid ass rules. A place to help your fellow page owners grow and succeed. A group to have fun with no dictator shoving shit down your throat and bowing down. A group to be FREE to help as you see fit. A group to rock the fuck on!”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/639798962716250/

It’s a closed Facebook group, one to which I would apply if I were shooting the local downtrodden as opposed, say, to the leisured, business, and community development classes.

Nonetheless, “Art and FREEDOM”, my soul is with you and your author, Youssef Abdelke.

* * *

I really don’t know why Putin darkens his role in history by keeping in his hand with  the Ayatollah’s Iran and the Assad’s Syria.

* * *

Novelist Daniel Silva has a great deal of fun with the “Russian President” — in fiction, merely a character, never named, nothing more than coincidental with anything or anyone in reality, in his latest best seller The English Girl.

As a fiction writer, Silva’s actually, probably, one of the very best political analysts on the international stage, and while playing that role through his characters and plots, the Russian President looms large and rightly so for the behind-the-curtain strategy pursued by the post-Soviet oligarchs  of the Latest and Greatest in Russian States.

As we know about narcissists and narcissistic hunger and supply, they are ultimately about themselves, and whatever their charms, political and social, may be.  Not that Bashir Assad has enjoyed abundance in dimension, but it’s the Russian President who has been most quiet on the obscenity of a state that deploys jets to suppress, at first, a small challenge to its authority.

While the Syria of 2010 has been destroyed, culturally, socially, structurally, one might note that Russia, in her defense, has ferried both the larger part of its civilian and military presence out of the country — not exactly a show of confidence, that, but not exactly either a show of humanist resolve.

The world wonders at the conundrum that has pit a brutal dictatorship against partially but deeply virulent Islamist forces.  There is in that aspect of Syria’s agony the “no good dog in the fight” and the “black hole” of the Islamic Small Wars constructed of a contempt, hatred, and self-contempt in the inhumanity that draws in military energy and burns without end.

Nearly one hundred thousand dead and four million displaced in Syria’s furnace and neither of two of the most powerful statesmen of our era either cares to or knows how to shut it down.

Instead of the kumbaya “reset” between the states and the federation (how young is Obama?), Putin appears to be draining the former plus NATO by keeping the oven hot while avoiding, rightly, the imposition of another Chechnya in its sphere of influence.  And yet . . . the Assad regime was the Soviet’s monster, and one would think that after 1991 the state would have been concerned with other than filling its pockets in collusion with it for another 22 years.

But that perhaps would have been too caring, too ethical.

Too English.

* * *

While the superpowers dick around with trivial issues like Snowden, Syria, in part, draws to it the “worst of the worst” — or just the most spirited — of fighters representing Shiite and Sunni Islam, those two angry wasps someone left in a bell jar separating their concerns from the much, much greater world surrounding.

On a portion of that, I would blame the west.

We’ve done business, haven’t we, for how many years?

And barely a word, most certainly few, if any, of outrage in regard to humanity and human rights in the contained but also dark medieval quarters of the globe.

So why not leave them — today in Syria, tomorrow perhaps in Egypt or somewhere else — in their own mess?

Whether the President of the Free World or that of the Russian Empire, is it incumbent on either to reorganize a middle east state as a pet humanitarian project?

There are, of course, other ambitions in the mix, much including Iran’s and Qatar’s, but one may one wonder between them whether either will wake up from their dream or with history pass away into it.

* * *

http://youtu.be/vqkXV1FMcVs

Prestige matters.

As a Jew, I may wonder how global memory will treat of today’s powerful in the days beyond their reclamation by the earth.

Additional Reference

Kasparov, Garry.  “Putin Toys with Obama as Syria Burns and Snowden Runs Free.” The Daily Beast.  July 2, 2013.

Official Site of the Bureau International des Expositions.

RT.  “At least 600 Russians and Europeans fighting alongside Syrian opposition – Putin.”  June 21, 2013.

World Bulletin News Desk.  “Erdogan, Putin discuss Syria and Egypt.”  August 5, 2013.

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FNS — Two Notes on Islam — From Islam

29 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Fast News Share, Free Speech, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

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For the biggest form of blasphemy that we all almost always commit is to force another to live in fear for believing, speaking, thinking and sometimes even existing, as we justify it in the name of our faith or stand silent as we bear witness.

No videos, sketches or hate speeches have hurt Islam more than the reckless army of blood thirsty goons justifying vandalism in the name of religion.

Saleem, Sana.  “In Pursuit of Clarity.”  Dawn, July 29, 2013.

As I have said in previous articles, a devout government must always support such principles as libertarianism, modernity and valuing women, beauty, art and science. It must not allow the slightest pressure or measure or reference reminiscent of pressure. It must turn its back on the possibility of radicalism and, as a “devout” administration, must apply democracy in the most perfect manner. We must admit that Mohamed Morsi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have made errors on this.

Kocaman, Aylin.  “A simple but burdensome word: Islamist.”  Al-Ahram Weekly, July 23, 2013.

The World Wide Web has turned out a global mirror.  Signal sent — signal returned: in language, we see ourselves as others (not always remote) may see us.

If the latest sentiments out of Pakistan and Turkey prove sustained, that thing called “The West” may have to resign itself to following rather than leading in the realm of ethical and moral investigation and righteousness, no doubt, however, while welcoming the competition.

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Holocaust Reparations – The Cost of Genocidal Hate – The Price of A Just and Lasting Peace

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Published in 1999:

Well, what do you expect, reply the claimants, when so many of these cases refer to stolen assets? “We are not talking about putting a price on those who died, but on what was stolen from them,” declares Elan Steinberg, the executive director of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in New York.

The Economist.  “Putting a price on the Holocaust.”  November 25, 1999.

Published today, July 17, 2013:

Holocaust survivors and victims’ heirs have received $1.24 billion from a Swiss fund set up after a scandal over dormant accounts of Jews killed in World War II, a magazine said Monday . . . The banks were accused of keeping money owned by Jews who had hidden funds in secret accounts in neutral Switzerland but then perished in the Holocaust, and of having given heirs the cold shoulder when they tried to track down the money.

AFP.  “Swiss Banks ‘Shoah fund’ paid out $1.24B'”.  YNet News, July 17, 2013.

I often repeat Hillel the Elder‘s “prime directive” — if I may borrow from Star Trek’s language — as he distilled it from the study of the Torah: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.”

That one thought, among other of Rabbi Hillel’s many judgments and observations, has provided not only Jews but a vast portion of the modern world with an outlook expressed in contemporary legal philosophy and liberalism.  However, there seems to me also a more roughly spoken basis for justice and peace between often adversarial and contentious humans: “Because it could happen to you!”

“Because it could happen to you,” the best law that we may develop between us must serve us both.

There are corollaries, including that ages old punch-the-shoulder game between brothers (“If you hit me, I’ll hit you back twice as hard”).

That one leads to equal bruising and a very doubtful “winner”.

As a language string, “It could happen to you” has a small life online as the title of a movie, also a domestic abuse blog, and a gay rights video produced in relation to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) recently savaged by the U.S. Supreme Court, and as a line in a song sung by Frank Sinatra.

“Because it could happen to you” barely exists at all.

And yet what is our sense of fairness, of justice, if not wrapped around “because it could happen to you” integrated with “because it could happen to me”?

If not immediately involved in a crime as either criminal or victim, we are continuously engaged with the ethical and moral choices available to both.  )As an aside, I would note the best storytellers find the twisting moral core of their stories right fast).

Back on beam, Hillel the Elder also observed by way of a question, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am not for others, who am I?”

Again, “because it could happen to you” and you / I / we could wake to a world absent of compassion, empathy, measure, and reason.

“Because it could happen to you,” don’t make me wake up in that world, and because it could happen to me, it’s incumbent upon me to see that you not wake up in such a world either.

What Hitler’s poison did to Germans and then what the Nazis did to the Jews and others by way of theft of labor, property, and life has found some justice in reparations, and, however reluctant, Swiss cooperation in the restoration of funds left abandoned by way of Nazi murder has also contributed to justice.

I could end this post with this from The New York Times:

On Thursday, Mr. Kent opened his speech with a quotation from a German poet, Heinrich Heine, who converted to Christianity from Judaism. Mr. Kent drew a parallel, reflecting how the process of working with the former enemy toward a common goal has altered his perception.

“We survivors and the Germans of today are together united,” Mr. Kent said. “Both of us do not want our past to be our children’s future.”

Eddy, Melissa.  “For 60th Year, Germany Honors Duty to Pay Holocaust Victims.” The New York Times, November 17, 2012.

As sweet as sentiment may be and whatever good has come from a necessary and responsible reconciliation, one may wish not to set aside the Roma, who today with the Jews are again in the cross-hairs of a resurgent Hungarian nationalism, nor the Poles who got caught in the Nazi vice — with those in addition to losses, one wonders at the memories left in the forests and carried into the present by the now elderly remnant of World War II.

We have a long way to go, and not necessarily with reparations but with one another and a sturdy enough central concept of justice to serve the coming ages.

Additional Reference

With basic Wikipedia references in the area of justice, mention of Lassa Oppenheim (no relation to me, so far as I know), Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, I’ve included a little more in this section that I would usually; however, through the Holocaust story, from its 1930s prelude to its now 2010s epilogue, one may see also a window into a future with an international law and legal structure that better ensures fairness and justice for thee and me — perhaps because we should regard what we do to one another as part and parcel of what we do to ourselves — across the broadest cultural, ethnic, national, religious, and tribal global campus.

Ghosh, Palash.  “Germany to Pay Out $1 Billion in Reparations for Care of Aging Holocaust Survivors.”  International Business Times, May 29, 2013.

Jewish Virtual Library.  “Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations”:

On Sept. 20, 1945, three months after the end of World War II, Chaim Weizmann, on behalf of the Jewish Agency, submitted to the governments of the US, USSR, UK, and France, a memorandum demanding reparations, restitution, and indemnification due to the Jewish people from Germany for its involvement in the Holocaust. He appealed to the Allied Powers to include this claim in their own negotiations for reparations with Germany, in view of the “mass murder, the human suffering, the annihilation of spiritual, intellectual, and creative forces, which are without parallel in the history of mankind.”

Powers, Charles.  In the Memory of the Forest.  Penguin Books, 1998.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

Spiegel Online International.  “Holocaust Reparations: Germany to Pay 722 Million Euros to Survivors.”  May 29, 2013.

Telushkin, Joseph.  “On One Foot: A new Nextbook Press biography of Hillel makes clear that the rabbi’s words and thoughts–though millennia old–resonate today.” Tablet, September 8, 2010.

Telushkin, Joseph.  Hillel: If Not Now, When?  Schocken, 2010.

Tzvi, Rina.  “Hungary Signs New Holocaust Survivor Reparation Deal.”  Arutz Sheva, July 7, 2013.

Wikipedia.  “Distributive Justice”.

Wikipedia.  “Hillel the Elder”.

Wikipedia.  “L. F. L. Oppenheim”: “Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim (March 30, 1858 – October 7, 1919) was a renowned German jurist. He is regarded by many as the father of the modern discipline ofinternational law, especially the hard legal positivist school of thought. He inspired Joseph Raz and Prosper Weil.”

Wikipedia.  “Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany”:

The Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany(German: Luxemburger Abkommen, Hebrew: הסכם השילומים Heskem HaShillumim) was signed on September 10, 1952,[1] and entered in force on March 27, 1953.[2] According to the Agreement, West Germany was to payIsrael for the slave labor and persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, and to compensate for Jewish property that was stolen by the Nazis.

Wikipedia.  “Restorative justice”.

Wikipedia.  “Retributive justice”.

Wikipedia.  “Restorative justice”.

Malala’s Sweet Tough 16th

12 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Pakistan, Politics

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Thanks to Al Jazeera:

In less than 20 minutes, Malala Yousafzai has done what few to none of Pakistan’s politicians have ever done: pushed Pakistan to the forefront of ethical and moral progress in the world.

Additional Reference

A World at School.  “The text of Malala Yousafzai’s speech at the United Nations.”  Transcript.  July 12, 2013.

Ellick, Adam B.  “Class Dismissed: Malala’s Story.”  Video.  (Back Story).  The New York Times, October 9, 2012.

Imam, Zainab.  “Malala and the lague of extraordinary Pakistani women.”  The Express Tribune, July 13, 2013:

But on July 12, when a young Pakistani woman wowed the entire world by her simple yet powerful views, I let go of trying to look logically at the other view — I saw the tear that fell out of Malala’s mother’s eye and I felt what had caused it. Malala’s mother, purported to be a CIA agent, was crying because the little girl who she had carried in her womb for nine months and nurtured for 15 years was finally able to speak with her characteristic vigour after surviving a bullet to her head.

Johnston, Ian.  “Malala Yousafzai: Being shot by Taliban made me stronger.”  NBC News, July 12, 2013.

Plank, Elizabeth.  “9 Best Quotes From Malala’s United Nations Speech.” Policymic, July 12, 2013.

Reuters.  “Pakistan’s Malala celebrates 16th birthday with emotional U.N. speech (1:32), July 12, 2013.

Spiegal Online Staff.  “Girl Rising: Malala Fires Up a New Generation.”  Spiegal Online, July 12, 2013.

The Globe and Mail.  “‘They thought that the bullet would silence us’: Malala addresses UN Youth Assembly.”  July 12, 2013.

A Glimpse of Qatar’s Generational Transition and Portent for The Middle East Conflict

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Qatar, Regions, Religion

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http://youtu.be/k6IC3IZJCqw

These days, the term “middle east conflict” would seem to refer to conflict and unrest in every state in the region but Israel.

Nonetheless, while Egypt roils and Syria burns and the King of Jordan fends off the seeding of perhaps a new class of secular Palestinian politico*, Qatar’s new head of state, Sheikh Tamim has this to say of the refugees of numerous Arab-led wars since 1948:

One day when our “Blue Dot” of a planet is a little more gathered together — that as opposed to riven with war — we may find common ground in five language principles:

Compassion

Humility

Integrity

Justice

Security

Of the four, the most difficult term and the one most relevant to autocracies seems to me to be “integrity” — just the power to be honest about ourselves and with others.

This is not as easy as it may sound.  If it were, we would not have the fairy tale that is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, which is in essence and for the ages a story about lying and power.

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It may be noted that God placed two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  When the snake entices Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, only mention is made of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, effectively hiding the other tree through omission.

You know the rest of the story: Eve eats the apple, becomes conscious or comprehending, also self-conscious, and, with Adam joining her, possessed of conscience, out of which reaction, perhaps, come the fig leaves, a courtesy, each to the other, and practical too (God, a few sentences later, provides clothing made of skins — one imagines chamois — lending perhaps dignity and protection to their introduction to life as men and women would experience it forever after).

The “Middle East Conflict” — which is never about conflicts in the middle east but only about the creation of the Jews and Israel (or, lost in the Pharaohnic dawn, the gathering together beneath the unrestrained ego and violence of a tyrant)l — seems to me to be always about two things not at ease with one another: 1) the possession of good conscience in light of the knowledge of good and evil; 2) the testing of God for favor when the relationship needs to be the other way around.

*****

Where kings are concerned, I suspect there may be more to the story than meets either eyes or ears.

When God, being God, and with Torah received as divine message, hides the second tree — the Tree of Life that we are told is there but when it counts is not mentioned by the snake and, later, will be barred from access (by cherubim and an eternally revolving sword guarding the Garden left behind) — the sin of omission becomes a virtue: to have eaten of the Tree of Life also would have been too much, for God forbids it, and so protects His children.

*****

To be as gods, lower case that term, with nuclear capabilities, among other extraordinary but still human capacities, one might counsel also a prudent humility.

Carl Sagan’s clip about the “Pale Blue Dot” that is our planet viewed from space, has many renditions on the web — and there’s an entire film available too (somewhere — I’m going to be lazy here) — but this may do for essence.

http://youtu.be/p86BPM1GV8M

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