Condi's Cultural Short Circuit?

Ahmadinejad's 18-page letter to President Bush touched only indirectly on the hottest dispute between the two countries - Iran's nuclear program. Instead, it focuses on a long list of grievances against the United States and seeks to build on a shared faith in God to resolve them.
Rice told The Associated Press the letter "isn't addressing the issues that we're dealing with in a concrete way."

If this is for real, there may never have been such a missed opportunity to truly communicate because of the US State Department's "tunnel vission" and the United States "cultural myopia" in modern history. I admit the entire idea of sending such a letter is probably just a good public relations move on the Iranian's side! But like Churchill is quoted as saying, its better to "Jaw, jaw than war, war".

What someone in the State Department (or higher) seems to miss, is that business isn't done the same way in Iran (or the Middle East) the way it is done in Foggy Bottom. Here there is an entire "courtship ritual" of smoke and mirrors, pretenses and platitudes which are obligatory before anything of consequence can be discussed - and even then more likely in the most oblique fashion, to avoid either side from loosing face if a concensus can't be reached.

I'm the last one to be a fan of Ahmadinejad, but Condoleezza blew it this time.

Daled Amos: "They Will Always Hate You"

Daled Amos: "They Will Always Hate You"

When the self-confessed murderers of several Jews, when tried in Israel, can expect to spend a few months or at best years in jail before Israel eventually releases them in some self-deluding attempt at "confidence building initiatives" - how do you expect Arabs to relate to us!

It is clear to me that those who have "blood on their hands" should expect the death penalty. Even if it does not act a deterrent, at least we won't experience additional loss when these released terrorists return to their profession of killing more Jews.

Quota's for National Religious?

According to Middle East Newsline, a news service that specializes in coverage of the IDF, Stern recently revised theIDF's guidelines for recruitment. In light of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's intention to expel tens of thousands of Israelis from theirhomes in Judea and Samaria, the IDF no longer believes that soldiers from the national religious camp are trustworthy. So, according to an officer in the Manpower Division quoted in the report, the IDF willnow limit the recruitment of religious soldiers. The shortfall will bemade up by juvenile delinquents who are currently barred from servingin combat units.

I can't find the quote mentioned in the article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post "Our World: The IDF's Suicide Attempt:, but if true, what would they do, place quota's on the drafting of National Religious?

Where have all the [American] Jews gone ...

I've read somewhere that today there are more Jews in Israel than any other country in the world. So where have all the American Jews gone? They certainly haven't all made Aliyah! The American Jewish Committee undertook a study of the 1.5 million younger Jews, ages 18 to 39, who comprise 29 percent of the U.S. Jewish population. The study came to some interesting conclusions.

" ... Orthodox Jews are more likely to be married by age 30, more than 50 percent of all American Jews under the age of 40 are not yet married, and this has implications for fertility and population growth. Further, approximately 50 percent of Jewish women are childless until the ages of 35-39.
“These patterns suggest that with a static population a higher percentage of future Jewish communal leaders are likely to be Orthodox, Jewish day school attendance among the Orthodox will continue to grow and the community as a whole could be more politically conservative,” said AJC Report.

If you add into the equation that the majority of North American Jews who make Aliyah are observant, the net long term results of the "birth-dirth" are pretty clear.

[Note how affect of the political leanings of the resulting Jewish population are of primary concern to the writer of this synopsis. Interesting?]

Thanks for the tip by JewSchool

One faceless story ....

"Philip Balhasan's relatives said he traveled to Tel Aviv with his two children, Linor and Uri, after promising to buy them CDs and computer games for Passover. The son, Uri, recounted the moment of horror: "When we heard the blast, dad wrapped his arms around me and Linor and hugged us tightly. Then he said 'grab the phone, call mom and tell her about the attack.'" Shortly thereafter, Balhasan collapsed, but police officers who led him to an ambulance were able to talk to him and heard him say he was hurt by shrapnel and by the force of the blast. It appears some of the shrapnel hit Balhasan's heart and he died on the way to the hospital."

As a father to six children who has spent seemingly endless Chol HaMoed taking his various offspring to "the big city" and other attractions, I can't but identify with Philip Balhasan. I looked for a photograph of the man, something to help turn the "statistic" to a real person, but I couldn't find one! Philip is like all of us, a simple faceless individual who lives his life, raises his family and hopes for a better tomorrow ...

[BTW the quote came from the "Sultan Knish" blog. Well worth visiting if you are interested in the "stories" behind the sound bytes and dry statistics of the conventional media!]

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