There is a reason Israel doesn’t roll over when Mahmoud Abbas bats his eyelashes

Most of the PA declarations, therefore, about Israel’s “intransigence” in building this apartment building or that are a form of semaphore, mostly directed to the EU – we can’t be expected to offer our people a free press or end incitement to terrorism while we’re under Zionist occupation so please keep giving us aid

We call upon our supporters to petition the government of Israel for change, and are inviting all who feel a connection to the place of the Holy Temple to join us as we ascend the Mount.

By Yitzchak Reuven, YNet News, March 12, 2010

Enshrined in Israeli law are two cardinal principles of democracy: freedom of access to places of worship, and the freedom of worship to practitioners of all religions. Successive Israeli governments have proudly and rightly cited Israel’s unflinching assurance of the freedom of worship for Muslims and Christians in the city of Jerusalem. This fact is presented in its case to maintain Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli sovereignty. Ironically, in the very heart of Jerusalem lies a parcel of real estate which has been granted de facto some sort of extra-legal, extraterritorial status, a veritable “wild West” where the rule of law does not exist and the most basic and inalienable democratic rights are not honored. This is the Temple Mount.

The facts on the ground are as such: The Muslim Waqf, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, has been granted absolute say over the administration of the Mount. Illegal destruction of archaeological remains of the first and second Holy Temples takes place on a daily basis, as does illegal construction. The Waqf’s unambiguous and oft-stated aim of this policy is the destruction of evidence of the Holy Temple and the transformation of the entire Temple Mount plateau into one massive Mosque, thus achieving exclusivity to the site for Muslims.

But no less pernicious is the manner in which non-Muslims are treated both atop the Mount and upon approaching it. And this discriminatory policy is enforced by the Israeli police. Non-Muslims are simply not allowed to carry with them a Bible or prayer book and are not allowed to pray. Jews who ascend the Mount, in accordance with Jewish law (first immersing in a ritual bath, and only treading on areas that are permissible according to halacha), are singled out and discriminated against in an abusive, humiliating and derogatory fashion. They are detained at the security booth, their identification cards are inspected (not the case for non-Jews), they are given oral instructions on what they cannot do, (stop in any one spot for more than a few minutes, pray, silently move their lips or sway their bodies. Jews are even warned not to cry, sing or close their eyes).

Furthermore, unlike any other group of human beings ascending the Mount (and thousands of tourists from around the world do so every day), Jews are not allowed to be on the Mount in gatherings of more than 10 or 20 at a time, and they are accompanied during the entire duration of their visit by police officers and a Waqf official to ensure that they do not violate the prohibitions. Needless to say, prayer books, the Tanach, tefillin or a tallit are strictly forbidden. Non-Jews (by and large, non-Israelis), who accompany Jewish visitors to the Mount (and many do so out of a desire to experience the Temple Mount from a Jewish perspective), are accorded the same shabby treatment. 

It is a positive commandment for Jews to visit the Temple Mount, the site of the Holy Temple. This commandment is known as “showing reverence to G-d in the place of the Holy Temple,” its source is Leviticus 19:30. It is enumerated by Maimonides, (Mishneh Torah, Sefer HaAvoda, Hilchot Beit HaBechira, chapter 7). As Maimonides explains, this commandment remains in effect, despite the fact that the Temple is in ruins.

Democracy itself is threatened

In a number of recent rulings, the Supreme Court has emphatically upheld the right of Jews to pray on the Mount, and has reproved the police for not honoring the law. Yet the police adhere to a tried and true method to circumvent the upholding of the worshippers’ rights. If the danger exists that Jewish prayer on the Mount could be met by a disturbance of the peace (read: Muslim violence), then freedom of worship is denied. As can be expected, the Muslim Waqf, famous for its incitement, never fails to provide the goods.

We all agree on the importance of preventing a conflagration, and unfortunately, the Temple Mount, which the prophet Haggai proclaimed, “And in this place I will grant peace,” has become a flashpoint. But when the rule of law and the very human rights that a democratic society is entrusted to guarantee, become subordinate to violence or the threat of violence, democracy itself is threatened.

Yes, the Temple Mount is a flashpoint, but so was Oxford, Mississippi in the 1960s, as well as Selma Alabama, when the Civil Rights movement in America was struggling to achieve equality before the law for African Americans. Violence was threatened, and violence was delivered. But it was met by a government increasingly determined not to sacrifice its very reason for being before a violent mob. If justice could begin to flower in Oxford and Selma, how much greater is the promise of the Temple Mount, the place chosen by G-d, which Isaiah describes as “a house of prayer for all people.” (Isaiah 56:7)

If the essence of American democracy can be summed up by the words guaranteeing “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” then the challenge of the Jewish democratic state of Israel should be no less than the guaranteeing of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of keeping G-d’s commandments.” Jettisoning these basic tenets of human liberty, especially on the Temple Mount, will never lead to peace, but will ultimately undermine and destroy the freedoms that are meant to be protected for all of us to enjoy.

The Temple Institute has declared this coming Tuesday, March 16, the first of the month of Nisan, to be International Temple Mount Awareness Day. We call upon our supporters to petition the government of Israel for change, and are inviting all who feel a connection to the place of the Holy Temple to join us as we ascend the Mount. The gathering is intended to be one of religious expression and is not political in nature. Our intentions are only peaceful. In the likely case that we are denied our democratic right to be seen and to be heard on the Mount, we will disperse peacefully.

The author, Yitzchak Reuven, is the Director of Multimedia at the international department of The Temple Institute in Jerusalem

Only one policy, Only one platform, Only one plan. Pressuring Israel for more concessions

By Daniel Greenfield,  Canada Free Press,  March 10, 2010

“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem”  —Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, March 09, 2010

For nearly twenty years the great sham of the Middle East Peace Process has dragged on. And this despicable scam has consisted of only one policy, only one platform and only one plan. Pressuring Israel for more concessions.

Year in and year out, new peace conferences were declared and new plans for peace were hammered out. All of them had one thing in common, they carved up Israel for a non-existent peace. When Arafat and his gang of terrorists made a concession, it was to demand 5 percent less of Israel in the current phase of negotiations. When Israel made a concession, it was to turn over another 10 percent of land to its worst enemies in this phase of negotiations… in exchange for them putting off their demands for that 5 percent into the next phase of the negotiations. And this sick charade in which Israel gave and the terrorists took was the peace process.

While this great surrender process was going on, outside the bombs went on exploding, tearing apart buses, restaurants, malls and families—the politicians and diplomats in charge excused the terrorists and damned Israel if it so much as lifted a finger to defend itself, or erected a single checkpoint to catch at least one of the terrorists on the way to kill a dozen people in Jerusalem.

And now finally the Vice President of the United States arrives in Israel to reaffirm his absolute commitment to Israel’s security, a commitment he and just about every other politician who let that phrase trip lightly off their lips, honors by pressing Israel to surrender again the terrorists. He arrives and condemns the greatest impediment to peace. Jewish families living in the capital of their own nation.

Biden did not take the time to condemn Abbas for his failure to hold elections, for his attendance at a funeral for the terrorists in his own militia who murdered an Israeli Rabbi, for his violation of the Gaza Jericho agreement or for his recent threats of a Holy War against Israel. Not even the Palestinian Authority naming a municipal square two days ago after Dalal Mughrabi, one of the Coastal Road Massacre bus hijackers, resulted in any statements of condemnation. Let us for a moment balance the horrifying scene of Jews moving into new apartments in Jerusalem, vs the Coastal Road Massacre in which Fatah terrorists murdered Gail Rubin, an American nature photographer, hijacked a bus, and murdered 38 passengers, 13 of them only children.

But the murder of Israelis never “undermines the trust we need right now”. Only Jews living in East Jerusalem can do that. Not Israelis, Jews, for if Arab citizens of Israel were moving into new buildings in East Jerusalem, Biden and the media would not be condemning Israel for it. It is precisely Jews that are the problem for the Obama Administration and its Media-Government Complex. Just as they were a problem for Hitler and Stalin. Just as they have always been a problem for would-be tyrants.

There are, of course, no worries about whether Israel will trust Abbas and his Fatah gang. As if anybody in their right mind would, after nearly two decades of terrorism that followed the ballyhooed signing of the Peace Accords and the famous handshake overseen by a smiling Clinton. After violating nearly every agreement he ever signed with Israel, Arafat unleashed a wave of terror, while pocketing a fortune in foreign aid. And after every bombing, the same despicable conglomeration of diplomats and politicians and diplopols that form the “World Community” pointed Israel to the negotiating table. Their only solution, then as now, was more concessions; by Israel to the terrorists—of course.

And so here we are in the splendid year 2010, 5770 in the Hebrew calendar, and 1431 in the Muslim calendar. In a few months it will be 43 years since the Liberation of Jerusalem. Since Jews returned to the Old City they were ethnically cleansed from by Muslim soldiers. And today the Hurva synagogue, twice destroyed by Muslims, has been completely reconstructed. In 1948 the Jordanian command expelled the Jews from East Jerusalem and destroyed the Hurva synagogue, vowing that the Jews would never return. And today in the year 2010, the Vice President of the United States comes on a mission to carry on their work. That of the dynamiters and the bombers and the expellers.

This is where nearly two decades of negotiations have brought us. In the early nineties, Israel was discussing the status of certain West Bank towns. Today, Israel is being warned against allowing Jews to live in Jerusalem. Tomorrow… I would dearly like to say that the possibilities are endless, but there are only so many parts of Israel where Jews still live, and no doubt the eager ethnic cleansers in the Obama Administration and the EU have plans for them, too.

And so the Middle East Peace Scam marches on. There is a great deal of preparation for intense rounds of negotiations at which it will be determined what else Israel must give for there to be no peace. East Jerusalem will naturally end up on the table soon enough. Meanwhile the entire farce has less legal basis than a kangaroo court and all the consistency of a drunken liar on the witness stand.

Today there are three Palestinian states. One in Jordan, divided to create an Arab State in the bygone days of the Palestine Mandate; A second state in Gaza, which is ruled over by Hamas as part of the spoils from their war with Fatah; A third state in the West Bank ruled over by Abbas and Fatah, even though his term ended and there have been no new elections. Out of this hodgepodge, Israel is expected to negotiate, even though Hamas refuses to negotiate any permanent peace agreement, and Fatah has no legal authority to represent anyone.

You will not, of course, hear about any of this in the media, which is still busy being outraged by the thought of Jews living in Jerusalem. When they’re not being outraged by the thought of Israel treating Rachel’s Tomb as a heritage site. After all, the Prime Minister of Turkey has declared that Rachel’s Tomb is not Jewish, but Islamic. Just as all of Israel is Islamic. Just as all of the world is Islamic. But the world isn’t paying attention. The world is certain that the rage and violence of a billion Muslims can be calmed with some Jewish land and Jewish blood. Just as the rage and violence of Nazism could be calmed with some Czech land and blood.

But why listen to me? Listen instead to the soothing words of Ahmad Bahar, the Speaker of the Palestinian Authority Parliament.

“Make us victorious over the infidel people… Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies… Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.”

Ah, but you say it’s about “the occupation”. And there will be peace when the terrorists have all the land they feel they’re entitled to. But… no.

“Our enmity with the Jews is a matter of faith, more than an enmity owing to occupation and the land.”

Oh yes, there will be peace when they have all the land that they feel Muslims are entitled to. And this is the scope of their territorial demands.

“Soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, like Constantinople was conquered, according to the prophecy of our prophet Muhammad. Their capital will be the first post of the Islamic conquests that will spread all over Europe then it will turn to the two Americas and even to Eastern Europe.”

But don’t worry. Joseph Robinette Biden is deeply committed to fighting against Jewish families living in Jerusalem. And the Middle East Peace Scam marches on.

Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and freelance commentator. “Daniel comments on political affairs with a special focus on the War on Terror and the rising threat to Western Civilization. He maintains a blog at Sultanknish.blogspot.com.

Daniel can be reached at: sultanknish@yahoo.com

Everything is narrative. And the present “responsible” narrative, we are told, comes from President Obama. It’s too bad he knows very little about the intrinsic history of the dispute or about its present contours, which, after all, he–in his arrogance, vanity, and suave–has done much to make both sides more rigid rather than more amenable to compromise. (Actually it’s at least three sides if you count Hamas-controlled Gaza, which the president blithely ignores … and more if you count the so-called “Palestinians-in-exile” and the Arab interlopers, like the Saudis, worthy of an executive genuflection, who agitate but don’t really much care. OK, this may be harsh. They do care, maybe a fig or two.)

There is some confusion in the Obama administration about its attitude toward Israel. Joe Biden’s visit to Jerusalem over the last few days actually must have focused all participants and observers on the ambiguities of the relationship. Herb Keinon, the very astute observer of U.S.-Israel relations at the Jerusalem Post, published an article today titled “Veep shows Israel some love.” And in a subhead: “In Jerusalem, Biden reiterates Washington’s ‘absolute, total unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.’” And this was not all. Biden has his own longtime and almost maternally breastfed affections for Israel. Before meeting with the gaga president of Israel, he observed that the Jewish state “captured my heart. I make no bones about it. That does not mean I do not understand and have a great empathy for the circumstances of the Palestinians, but Israel captured heart and my imagination.”

Then the prime minister gave the vice president a certificate attesting to the fact that a ring of trees had been planted by the Jewish National Fund–for those of you who remember the blue collection box (or, as it was called, the pushke)–in memory of Biden’s mother, Catherine Eugenia Jean Finnegan Biden, who passed on at 92 in January. Biden took the certificate and said, “My love for your country was watered by this Irish lady, who was proudest of me when I was with and for the security of Israel.” This Irish lady, believe me, did not attend the Reverend John Hagee’s church.     

Netanyahu’s colleagues did not reciprocate Biden’s gesture at all. The fact is that Bibi is continually undermined by several members of his cabinet and by the members of parliament who belong to their political parties. (Alas, the Israeli parliamentary system is not disciplined parliamentarianism at all.) My guess is that Netanyahu was as surprised as Biden when the interior ministry announced that it had approved construction for 1,600 apartments in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, which already houses 18,000 (mostly) ultra-orthodox Jews. But I do not believe that Interior Minister Eli Yishai–leader of Shas, the benighted ultra-orthodox party of many Sephardic Jews–was at all surprised as he claimed in a craftily wrought “apology.”

That said, I believe that the great rabbi in the skies has not instructed Israel to force history to stand still. So let me be direct: The Palestinians have only themselves to blame on Jerusalem, as on other disputed matters. In 2000 and 2001, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a peace that included handing over the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem for the Palestinian capital. (Ehud Olmert made the same offer in 2008). The Arabs always believed that time was on their side, that their reluctance to negotiate and then their reluctance to sign would somehow improve their position. But time does not stand still, and it certainly no longer stands still for the Jews. Having waited in exile for 2,000 years, having struggled over nearly a century for a Jewish commonwealth, have tried to engage its neighbors in parley for more than half a century, the Jewish polity will no longer tarry, and it is justified in not tarrying.

Indeed, the American quick fix of “indirect” negotiations (with poor self-deluded George Mitchell shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah) plays into the Palestinian historic habit of eluding reality. But, if they will not sit with the Israelis, how can they possibly make peace with the Israelis? So what Obama’s affinity for the Palestinian sensibility has forced is a dangerous historic retreat that puts American sanction and blessings on fantasy. I actually believe that Netanyahu should have rejected this foolish formula. It is, however, an earnest representation of his commitment to move on with whatever “peace process” there is … and there will be a peace process. It will end in nothing.

Now, back to Biden. Given that he surely understands this Israeli narrative and doubtless sympathizes with it as well, why did he use the word “condemn” about the announcement of the far-into-the future East Jerusalem housing? After all, if a peace agreement is struck beforehand, the 1,600 units can easily be cancelled. In fact, as Jennifer Rubin aptly points out today at Commentary, “condemn” is a rather shrill word in the affairs of state and is not used casually by the Obami. Mrs. Clinton, no longer a supplicant for Jewish votes and money, has also rushed to the strident in speaking about and to Israel. I conclude that this is actually administration policy. There is curious confirmation illuminating this in a column by Roger Cohen which has nothing to do with Israel. His piece fixes on Obama’s affinities for cultures and polities that had not been central in the minds of previous American presidents. So this president has actually played rough with our traditional allies and ideological companions. He is, as I have said a few times, a third worlder. We will see how America will do with our true friends sidelined. Perhaps the Brits will console themselves that Obama returned the bust of Winston Churchill that they lent to the White House after 9/11.

Anyway, it is increasingly clear that the president feels more connection to the Palestinians specifically and the Arabs generally than he does to the Israelis (and just possibly more connection to Muslims than to Jews, to Islam than to Judaism and Jewishness.)

So he is stuck with the allies he has chosen. In the long run, it will not matter. The Palestinians will not play even the minimal accommodating role in peace-seeking that Obama has assigned them. There are relentless facts about Palestine that even the president’s disregard for Jewish sensibility and for Israel’s security will not be able to alter.

PM Netanyahu’s Address to the Christians United For Israel Jerusalem Summit

Make no mistake about it.  The attempt to deny our history in this land is an attempt to deny our future in this land.   That is why to defend our past is to defend our future.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, March 8, 2010

Welcome to Jerusalem, the undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

Your presence here today represents a profound transformation in the relationship between Christians and Jews.  This transformation has its roots in the 19^th century when the early Christian Zionists came to the Land Israel and when they began exploring the land of the Bible, when they began to yearn for the Jewish restoration in this land, the restoration of our numbers, the restoration of our sovereignty.

In fact, Christian Zionism preceded modern Jewish Zionism, and I think enabled it.  But it received a tremendous impetus several decades ago when leading American clergymen, among them most notably, Pastor John Hagee, a dynamic pastor and leader from Texas, began to say to their congregations and to anyone who listened, it’s time to take a stand with Israel.  It was time to take a stand with the sole democracy in the Middle East.  It was time to take a stand against the lies and the slander and the vilifications.  It was time to defend the Jewish state’s right to defend itself.

Today, Christians by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, by the tens of millions – today they have heard this call, and they stand with Israel.  I salute you, the people of Israel salute you, the Jewish people salute you.

Time after time, through thick and thin, you have stood shoulder to shoulder with our state, and I have come here tonight to thank you for your unwavering friendship.  And today that friendship is more important than ever because Israel faces unprecedented challenges to its security and its legitimacy.    

No security challenge is more important to our common future than preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  I have said before and I’ll say again, that the greatest threat facing mankind is the specter of a militant Islamic regime acquiring nuclear weapons, or the specter of nuclear weapons acquiring a militant Islamic regime.  The first is dangerously close to happening in Iran, and the second may or may not happen in Pakistan.  I believe that with the right policies both can be averted.

If Iran develops atomic weapons, the world would never be the same.  We would witness a cascade of terrorism across the globe as terrorists would operate under an Iranian nuclear umbrella.  Look at how much havoc, how much terror they sow now, when there is no such umbrella, and understand what can happen if Iran, their patron, sponsor, supplier and supporter, if that Iran had nuclear weapons.  Equally, the region’s vital oil supplies could be severely threatened and efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East would collapse as one regime after another would rush to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.  Worst of all, if nuclear weapons would be given to terrorists, or to terrorist states, a 65 year-old era of nuclear peace would be endangered for the first time.

Remember that for the tyrants in Tehran, Israel is only the little Satan.  In their eyes, America is the Great Satan.  America is their ultimate target.  Yet for Israel, the threat from Iran could not be clearer.  Iran’s leaders openly call for Israel’s destruction.  They brazenly deny the Holocaust and they hope, and they say so just about every other day, they hope to wipe Israel off the map of the Middle East.

We must not allow such a regime to threaten the peace of the world, the peace and security of all humanity.  All responsible members of the international community must do everything in their power to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons.

As we speak the United States is leading an international effort to impose sanctions on Iran.  We believe those sanctions must have teeth.  And to have teeth, they must bite deep into Iran’s energy sector.  Simply put, they should prevent Iran from importing gasoline and from exporting oil.  I believe that such measures might convince the regime to choose between continuing the weapons program and between assuring the regime’s future.  But there must be tough, biting sanctions.

I said that we face great challenges to our security, but we also face unprecedented challenges to our legitimacy.  Now this assault on our legitimacy comes in many forms – it comes from the so-called human rights bodies in the UN which would deny Israel its legitimate right of self-defense, it comes by falsely charging Israel’s political and military leaders with imaginary war crimes, and it comes by the outrageous waging campaigns to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.  You are all familiar with that.

But I think that there is an even greater assault on our legitimacy.  I think it is the attempt to perpetrate one of the greatest lies of history — to deny the connection between the people of Israel and the land of Israel; to cast the Jewish people as foreigners in the land of our forefathers.  Make no mistake about it.  The attempt to deny our history in this land is an attempt to deny our future in this land.   That is why to defend our past is to defend our future.

I ask you all to join us in this battle to defend the truth.  Remind them of Abraham and Isaac, remind them of Joshua and Samuel, remind them of David and Solomon.  Remind the world that the land of the Bible is not in the heavens but right here on earth.  And that the people of the Bible, are on the land of the Bible.

Let me tell you how I remind foreign officials of this connection of the Jewish people to our history and to this land.  You see, they visit my office.  And I say, Would you come and look at this little signet ring that I was given on loan from the Department of Antiquities?  It was found next to the Wall of the Second Temple, but it dates back to the First Temple.  It goes back some 2800 years ago, to the period of the Kings.  It is a signet seal of a Jewish official, and it has a name written in ancient Hebrew, which I can read.  The name is: Netanyahu.  Netanyahu Ben-Yoash.  I say, that’s my last name.  My first name, Benjamin, dates back 1000 years earlier, to Benjamin the son of Jacob, who also walked these hills.  That is our connection.  And nobody can deny the connection of the Jewish people to the Jewish land.

Israel faces great challenges.  We must prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  We must repel the assault on our legitimacy.  We must find a way to achieve peace with our neighbors.  We must all pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

After centuries in exile, I have come here to assure you, the people of Israel have come home and no force on earth will ever make us leave our home again.

Israel could well be ordered to submit to arbitration or judicial settlement. Perhaps this is the reason PM Netanyahu keeps reaffirming Israel’s desire to negotiate.

By Ted Belman, Israpundit, March 10, 2010

President Obama intends to impose a solution on Israel.

During the lead up to his election victory, he surrounded himself with a host of vehemently anti-Israel advisors including Lee Hamilton, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Gen Jones, many of whom advocated imposing a solution on Israel..

He also made common cause with Jewish leftists represented by J Street and Israel Policy Forum who were urging him to increase the pressure on Israel and if that didn’t work, to impose a solution on Israel.

So it was no surprise that he started his term of office by attacking Israel, America’s best and most steadfast ally, declaring that all settlements were illegal and demanding a complete settlement construction freeze east of the greenline including in Jerusalem. He went so far as to repudiate the US commitment set out in the Bush letter ’04 to Sharon, declaring there was no agreement. Elliot Abrams and others involved in the negotiations which led to the letter, testified otherwise.

This letter also affirmed that “as part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.” Pres Bush had always supported a negotiated settlement and this letter did likewise. Noticeably absent was any reference to the Saudi Plan. The letter also contained a commitment, that “the United States will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan”.

By repudiating this letter as a U.S. commitment, Pres Obama opened the way for a settlement to be imposed according to the Saudi Plan rather than Res 242.

He set a goal of achieving an agreement in two years. One year is up, what has he accomplished? At first blush, it would appear, not much. But the reality is otherwise.

He got PM Netanyahu to agree to a two-state solution for the first time and to the terms of reference for negotiations, namely, “an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.” These terms leave very little wiggle room so it does not matter that Pres Obama agreed with PM Netanyahu’s demand that there be no pre-conditions or that negotiations not start where Ehud Olmert left off.

Noticeably absent from the terms of reference were Jerusalem and refugees, two items that could scuttle talks and probably will. Pres Obama is on record of wanting Jerusalem divided and not favoring the return of refugees to Israel

He also got Netanyahu to agree to a temporary constructions freeze, not near what he was demanding, but enough to enable him to get Abbas to agree to the proximity talks.

Since attaining these building blocks, Pres Obama’s has witnessed falling approval ratings and increasing pressure to focus on domestic issues. How will this affect the progress made?

The Arab League has given its support to “proximity talks” but only for four months. This has enabled Abbas to likewise agree. The talks therefore will start soon and end before the temporary freeze ends. But no one expects an agreement to be reached.

The U.S. managed to accomplish this by sending a document to the Palestinians responding to their enquires which provided, “We expect both parties to act seriously and in good faith. If one side, in our judgment, is not living up to our expectations, we will make our concerns clear and we will act accordingly to overcome that obstacle,”

The document also committed the US to “sharing messages between the parties and offering our own ideas and bridging proposals.” and reiterated “Our core remains a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967,”

This commitment by the U.S. was a determining factor in the Palestinians’ and the Arab League’s decision to agree to the U.S. proposal on indirect talks.

Both the agreed terms of reference above quoted and this document imply that Israel must return all occupied territories rather than some occupied territories as was the original intention of Res 242.

One wonders why PM Netanyahu would enter fruitless negotiations that would result in Israel being blamed and ultimately dictated to. In doing so, PM Netanyahu abandoned Israel’s previous demands for direct negotiations thereby allowing the Arab League to have a say. For that matter, Abbas also abandoned a long held position that only the PA can negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians.

The Arab League has thus given Obama four months only to achieve an agreement, failing which it will take over of the process. Pres Obama is only too happy to pass the buck.

When the Arab League announced their support, their Secretary General said;

“We intend in four months time to bring back the whole of the peace process to the Security Council thus ending the role of honest broker role played so far by the US and to put an end to the peace process.

“We will put the results of the talks before the Security Council and then ask this important body in charge of maintaining peace and security to decide on the steps forward.“

This in effect would abrogate the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap which heretofore have been considered binding.

Pursuant to Article 33, of the United Nations Charter, members, Israel included, who are “parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice” and the Security Council “shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.”

.

Israel could well be ordered to submit to arbitration or judicial settlement. Perhaps this is the reason PM Netanyahu keeps reaffirming Israel’s desire to negotiate.

The Security Council has the “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”. In fact, Article 37 provides, “If the Security Council deems that the continuance of the dispute is in fact likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, it shall decide whether to take action under Article 36 or to recommend such terms of settlement as it may consider appropriate.” Chapter VII gives the Security Council the right to enforce these recommendations.

You can be sure that the Arab League is well aware of these provisions. It is highly doubtful that the US will veto any such move.

The EU is already on board. European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, told a British audience in London on Saturday,

“After a fixed deadline, a UN Security Council resolution should proclaim the adoption of the two-state solution,”

“It would accept the Palestinian state as a full member of the UN, and set a calendar for implementation. It would mandate the resolution of other remaining territorial disputes and legitimize the end of claims.”

“If the parties are not able to stick to it [referring to the UN-imposed timetable -ed.], then a solution backed by the international community should be put on the table.”

Solana added that the UN-imposed “two-state solution” should include resolution of issues such as control over Israel’s capital, the city of Jerusalem, as well as border definitions, security arrangements and the “right of return” by millions of foreign descendants of Arab refugees who abandoned their homes during the 1948 war..

Netanyahu will thus be faced with making the best deal he can for fear of a worse deal being imposed. He can also decide to reject the authority of the United Nations resulting in Israel’s expulsion and the imposition of serious sanctions.

Speaking of serious sanctions, it appears unlikely they will be imposed on Iran. Israel’s only option then is the military one the sooner the better.

Pres Obama may well decide to posture as Israel’s defender and save her from the worst thereby improving his reelection chances without jeopardizing the imposed solution. For him, a win-win all around, that is, if Israel doesn’t reject it.

*First published by American Thinker

by Gil Zohar, Jewish Journal,  March 9, 2010

After four years of construction, the Jewish Quarter’s landmark Hurva Synagogue – built by Polish Jews in 1701, destroyed by Arab creditors two decades later, rebuilt in 1864 by followers of the Vilna Gaon, and dynamited in 1948 by Jordan’s Arab Legion – is being re-dedicated this Sunday and Monday (March 15-16, 2010). All the rest is commentary.

During a media tour this week, a beaming Nissim Arazi, who since 2003 has served as the CEO of the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem Ltd. (the JQDC), showed off the venerable if controversial NIS 43 million project which has been his dream for nearly a decade.

Arazi follows a distinguished list of public servants, starting in 1969 with then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who have served as either chairman or director of the government agency charged with rebuilding the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. That historic job had largely been completed when Arazi stepped onto the scene. But the new CEO resisted calls for the JQDC to be disbanded as redundant, instead pressing ahead with the Hurva project and protecting his fiefdom. (In Jerusalem, Nov. 2, 2007)

As the Hurva’s construction crane was being taken down, Arazi launched into the synagogue’s convoluted story, hailing the many figures responsible for the rebuilding. In 1999, he explained, a public committee was formed by then Minister of Housing, Rabbi Yitzhak Levi and headed by Rabbi Simha Hacohen Kook with the intention of recreating the building whose famous dome once dominated the skyline of the Jewish Quarter.       

Levi and Rabbi Kook ultimately prevailed, ending a protracted architectural argument about whether to build a new and modern synagogue or to symbolically copy a building which had been the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer’s plan was adopted to faithfully reconstruct the quadrangular synagogue with its central dome designed by Ottoman court builder Assad Effendi, incorporating the extent ruins and making adjustments for today’s building code.

Among those Arazi thanked were: Dov Kalmanovitch, then chairman of JQDC’s board; Yinon Ahiman, the company’s CEO; Minister of Housing Natan Sharansky and his successors Ministers Effy Etham, Tzipi Livni and Ze’ev Boim; MKs Yitzhak Herzog and Meir Shitrith; Jerusalem’s two previous mayors Ehud Olmert and Uri Lopliansky; and deputy mayor Rabbi Yehoshua Pollack.

Before construction could begin, Arazi noted, the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted a thorough survey of the site. That dig, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, exposed findings dating back to the First Temple period and three plastered ritual baths from the time of Herod. The most significant discovery was an intact Byzantine arch standing along the remnant of a stone-paved street leading off from the Cardo. The arch – 3.7-meters wide, 1.3-meters thick and five-meters high – is preserved in the basement of the Hurva.

The archaeologists also found a small weapons “slick” from the riots of 1936, seemingly forgotten by the outgunned defenders of the Jewish Quarter during the 1948 War of Independence.

Moving indoors and dodging construction workers and porters delivering the pews, Arazi discussed the furnishings, stained glass windows and wall paintings. (At the time of the tour the chandeliers, Torah ark cover and other furnishings had yet to be installed.) The two-storey high Torah ark is a faithful copy of the original that was carved in Ukraine, he explained. In another layer of symbolism, Arazi noted that Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich was one of the key donors of the new synagogue.

Selecting an interior design was problematic since the Hurva had undergone various renovations over the decades, Arazi noted. According to B&W and color photos unearthed by Israel Antiquities Authority restoration expert Faina Milstein, there were three stages in the decoration and painting of the prayer hall, each “correcting” the previous – from 1864 until the 1920s, from the 20’s to the early 1940s, and from 1940-41 until the synagogue’s destruction in May 1948.

Meltzer prevailed over Arazi and his steering committee to select a minimalist approach sensitive to Assad Effendi’s original design – thus visually emphasizing the Holy Ark and pulpit, as well as the remaining non-plastered masonry walls still standing after the building was blown up. Pointing to the relatively small women’s gallery upstairs, Arazi noted that stepped platforms were added in the new building where none had originally existed so as to maximize worshippers’ view.

Under the barrel dome Arazi opted, based on the spirit of the past paintings, to depict holy cities and sites in Israel. Jerusalem is symbolized by the Tower of David; Bethlehem by Rachel’s Tomb; Tiberias by a view of the Sea of Galilee; and Hebron by the Cave of the Patriarchs. Above the main door is a painting depicting Psalm 137:1 “By the waters of Babylon there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.” Artist Yael Kilmenik’s designs, none of which include human figures, allude to the romantic style of Bezalel founder Boris Schatz.

Turning to discuss the operation of the rebuilt Hurva, Arazi was on shakier ground. Though built by the JQDC in accordance with the decision of the Israeli government, the synagogue will be jointly operated by the Company and the Western Wall Heritage Foundation now headed by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich.

That decision reflects the process whereby the Jewish Quarter – intended for both secular and Zionist Orthodox Jerusalemites – has over the decades become predominantly ultra-Orthodox. Indeed three years ago, when the concrete was still being poured for the Hurva, Rehovot’s chief rabbi Simcha Hacohen Kook was already appointed as a rabbi for the synagogue. Kook, who is considered close to the ultra-Orthodox non-Hassidic leader Rabbi Yosef Elyashiv, was chosen by a panel of rabbis, with the blessing of Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar.

Arazi, who said he was surprised by the rabbi’s appointment, refused to attend Rabbi Kook’s investiture ceremony.

Arazi himself may be forced to limiting his involvement at the Hurva to praying there. He will be replaced soon, along with five out of the eight JQDC board members. By statutory law, the new board members are to be chosen by the Housing Minister – and Ariel Atias is a Shas party stalwart.

Notwithstanding the growing influence of the hareidim, Arazi promised the Hurva will be operated for the general public, including Jewish Quarter residents, Israeli visitors and foreign tourists. But with only 200 seats in the vast building, it remains to be seen who the congregants will be.

During the opening week, the JQDS will conduct tours during the day and will show a son et lumiere presentation during evening hours – for free.

• • •

The Hurva, literally “The Ruin” symbolizes the fortunes of Jerusalem’s yishuv over the last three centuries. In 1700, Rabbi Yehuda he-Hassid (Segal), a preacher who may have secretly believed in the false messiah Shabtai Zvi, led an en masse aliya of between 300 and 1,000 of his followers (sources vary on the number) from Siedlce, Poland to the Holy City. It was the largest immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel in centuries.

The group bought the courtyard next to the Ramban Synagogue – which itself stood on the ruins of the Crusader church of St. Martin. The Ramban synagogue, named for the Spanish sage Moshe ben Nachman who founded the house of worship in 1267, had been closed by the Ottomans in 1589 due to Muslim incitement. Here the rabbi and his Ashkenazi followers began building a large synagogue to accommodate the increased Jewish population of the city.

The project foundered on internal dissent, debt and the sudden death of the charismatic rabbi. In 1720 Arab creditors burned the unfinished structure together with the 40 Torah scrolls it contained. Whence the ruined site became known as Hurvat Rav Yehudah ha-Hasid — the Ruin of Rabbi Judah the Pious, or simply “the Hurva”.

In 1836 the site was returned to the Ashkenazi community by the Egyptian reformer Ibrahim Pasha, and a modest synagogue, yeshiva and mikveh were consecrated there the following year. In 1856 Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Tzoref together with British philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore received a fiman from Sultan Abdulmecid permitting an expansive new synagogue – and forgiving the old debt. Montefiore personally brought the imperial edict from Constantinople (today Istanbul) during his fifth visit to the Holy Land.

The cornerstone was quickly laid in the presence Chief Rabbi Shmuel Salant, who had been instrumental is raising the necessary funding – and paying the requisite baksheesh, and Baron Alphonse James de Rotschild, brother of Edmond James de Rotschild who dedicated much of his life supporting the Jews of Palestine. The not yet built synagogue was officially named Beit Yaakov — House of Jacob — after their father Baron James (Yaacov) Rotschild although popularly it continued to be called the Hurva.

Construction progressed fitfully. Emissaries crisscrossed Europe collecting funds with the slogan “Merit eternal life with one stone”. The new synagogue was intended as an Ashkenazi house of prayer, in particular for the Perushim also called Misnagdim – disciples of Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman Kramer (1720–1797), better known as the Vilna Gaon, who had immigrated to Palestine in the early 1800s but settled in Safed to avoid the outstanding debt from the time of Yehuda he-Hassid. Dressed in the traditional Damascene garb of local Arabized Jews, called Musta’arabeen, some of the Perushim had moved to Jerusalem, especially after the earthquake that devastated Safed in 1837.

Notwithstanding the inter-ethnic rifts between the Sephardim and the two Ashkenazi groups the Hassidim and their opponents who followed the Vilna Gaon, the largest single gift to build the Hurva came from Yechezkel Reuben, a wealthy Sephardi merchant from Baghdad, who donated one tenth of the one million piasters needed. Another contributor was Prussia’s King Frederick William IV.

The synagogue, finally completed in 1864. was designed by the Sultan’s official architect Assad Effendi – who had come to Jerusalem to restore the Islamic shrines on the Haram ash-Sharif. Effendi’s neo-Byzantine design, evoking Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia cathedral and imperial mosques, contained 14-meter-high window arches and a domed ceiling that soared 27 meters.

The Hurva became identified with the return of the Jewish people to its homeland. Theodor Herzl visited there in 1898. Similarly shortly after Sir Herbert Samuel disembarked in Jaffa in 1920 wearing a white uniform with a gleaming sword strapped to his waist, the first British High Commissioner for Palestine stood up in the Hurva on the Sabbath following Tisha b’Av to proclaim: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 40:1)

But the hour of redemption had not come. Two days after conquering the Jewish Quarter in May 1948, the Jordanians blew up the synagogue in an act of cultural vandalism, just as they desecrated all 58 of the Jewish Quarter’s synagogues. Abdullah a-Tal, commander of the 6th Battalion of the Arab Legion, reported to headquarters: “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”

After the re-unification of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Tzoref’s great-great-grandson Ya’acov Salomon led a campaign to rebuild the Hurva as part of the complete reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter. Salomon turned to Ram Karmi, who was to subsequently design Israel’s Supreme Court together with his architect sister Ada Karmi-Melamede.

Karmi proposed Louis Kahn, the famous Philadelphia modernist architect who was also a founding member of Teddy Kollek’s Jerusalem Committee. Between 1968 and 1973, Kahn presented three ambitious plans for the Hurva, each of which would have left the synagogue ruins in place as a memorial garden, and placed the new structure on an adjacent lot. More controversially, his plan called for a promenade, dubbed “the Route of the Prophets,” to connect the complex with the nearby Western Wall.

For years, Kahn’s model was on display in the Israel Museum, but after the architect died in 1974 his plans were shelved. This was due to a combination of bureaucratic inaction and aesthetic misgivings of the design which was described as “too radical” for government officials. Former mayor Teddy Kollek wrote candidly to Kahn in 1968 that “the decision concerning your plans is essentially a political one. Should we in the Jewish Quarter have a building of major importance which competes with the (al-Aqsa) Mosque and the Holy Sepulcher, and should we in general have any building which would compete in importance with the Western Wall?”

Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie, who has built extensively in Jerusalem including Yad Vashem and Mamilla, and who trained with Kahn in Philadelphia, also favored a modern design for the Hurva. “It’s absurd to reconstruct the Hurva as if nothing had happened. If we have the desire to rebuild it, let’s have the courage to have a great architect do it.”

The aesthetic brouhaha ultimately led to the losing of the gift of Sir Charles Clore, a British financier and owner of Selfridges department store. Yet another plan was drawn up by Sir Denys Lasdun, the designer of London’s Royal National Theatre. But then Minister of the Interior Menachem Begin refused to sign the papers authorizing construction to begin. Time ran out, Clore passed away in 1979, and the Hurva was not rebuilt.

Instead in 1978, one of the four arches that had originally supported the synagogue’s monumental dome was symbolically rebuilt as a stark reminder of the grand building that had once stood there.

Finally in 2005, the Israeli government announced that Assad Effendi’s 19th-century design would be faithfully rebuilt, and allocated NIS 28 million to the Jewish Quarter Development Corporation. Jerusalem architect Nahum Meltzer was given the task of updating the Ottoman design to today’s building code.

While the project is now finished, the ghosts of the past still haunt the scene. Historian Gavriel Rosenfeld, co-author of Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past, notes the Hurva illustrates the manifold links between architecture, politics and memory.

“The reconstruction of the Hurva seems to reflect an emotional longing to undo the past. It has long been recognized that efforts to restore ruins reflect a desire to forget the painful memories that they elicit. Calls to rebuild the Word Trade Center towers as they were before the September 11, 2001, attacks represent a clear (if unrealized) instance of this yearning. And the recently completed reconstruction of Dresden’s famous Frauenkirche — long a heap of rubble after being flattened by Allied bombers in February 1945 — represents a notable example of translating this impulse into reality.

“And yet, the reconstruction project is problematic, for in seeking to undo the verdict of the past, the project will end up denying it. Denial is inherent in the restoration of ruins, as is frequently shown by the arguments used to justify such projects. In Dresden, for example, many supporters of the Frauenkirche’s restoration portrayed themselves as the innocent inhabitants of a city that was unjustly bombed in 1945, thereby obscuring the city’s longtime support for the Nazi regime and its war of aggression during the years of the Third Reich. Similarly, the physical appearance of the restored Frauenkirche — despite its incorporation of some of the original church’s visibly scorched stones — has effectively eliminated the signs of the war that its ruin once vividly evoked.

“In the case of the Hurva, the situation is somewhat different. If many Germans in Dresden emphasized their status as victims to justify rebuilding their ruined church, the Israeli campaign to reconstruct the Hurva will do precisely the opposite — namely, obscure traces of their victimization. As long as the Hurva stood as a hulking ruin, after all, it served as a reminder of Israeli suffering at the hands of the Jordanians. Kollek said as much in 1991, when he noted: “It is difficult to impress upon the world the degree of destruction the Jordanian authorities visited upon synagogues in the Old City…. The Hurva remnants are the clearest evidence we have today of that.” Indeed, as a ruin, the Hurva served the same kind of function as sites such as Masada and Yad Vashem — which, by highlighting the tragedies of the Jewish past, helped to confirm the Israeli state as the chief guarantor of the Jewish people’s future.

“At the same time, however, it seems the Hurva’s existence as a ruin conflicted with the State of Israel’s Zionist master narrative: the idea that ultimately, heroic achievement triumphs over helplessness. In fact, in the end it may be the project’s ability to confirm the national desire to control its own destiny that best explains its appeal. Israel faces many intractable problems that make present-day life uncertain. But in the realm of architecture, Israelis can indulge in the illusion that they can at least control and manipulate the past. In this sense, the Hurva’s reconstruction may express deeper escapist fantasies in an unpredictable present.”

Rosenfeld’s theorizing makes little impression on Nissim Arazi. Even as the CEO faces the end of his term at the helm of the JQDC, he is moving ahead with his next visionary project on the scale of the rebuilt Hurva – a faithful reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter’s second largest destroyed synagogue the Tiferet Israel.

Together the two rebuilt monuments will engage Jerusalem’s skyline not as authentic landmarks but as postmodern simulacrum.

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Fodor, Nagel, and Plantinga don’t need to turn themselves into biochemists, but some awareness of the issues and advances would not be entirely misplaced.

By Michael Ruse, Chronicle Review, March 7, 2010

Last year was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The anniversary was marked by conferences the world over. I will not tell you how many I attended; ecologically sensitive readers of The Chronicle might start whining about carbon footprints and that sort of thing. Let me just say that I found myself going no fewer than three times through the Quad City International Airport, in Moline, Ill. Moline!

I mention this as background to the publication of a new book by Jerry A. Fodor, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, a professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona. The title of the book, What Darwin Got Wrong (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), tells you their opinion of the old English naturalist and of his theory of evolution through natural selection. If Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini were an isolated case, one could dismiss their book with a grimace (if you were a biologist), or welcome them with a cheer (if you were a creationist). But in the philosophical community, there is an increasingly vocal cadre of eminent philosophers harboring doubts about Darwin. To understand their critique, we must first put the clock back a year, to the beginning of the celebrations.

The anniversary conferences usually had a smattering of professional Darwin types like me—I am a historian and philosopher of science specializing in evolutionary theory—but the bulk of the presenters and attendees were evolutionary biologists. For two reasons, the atmosphere was universally positive. First, scientists deeply respect Darwin and his achievements. These people are evolutionists—they take the past seriously. Second, there was not a person at these conferences who was not excited about the science today. Evolutionary biology is on a roll, and that was a cause for celebration—and frenetic presentations that jammed in as much new science as possible. Moreover, to a person, the scientists saw that the first point led smoothly into the second. Everyone appreciates the tools of Darwinism, above all the mechanism of natural selection. But great science doesn’t stand still. It picks up and carries ideas and findings way beyond the wildest hopes of its founders. Evolutionary biology today is deeply Darwinian, but it has outpaced the Origin in ways that its author could never have imagined. To use a hackneyed phrase, Darwin gave biology a paradigm, and biologists have been expanding it ever since.

Here is some of the work I heard about. This is important for what I have to say in this essay. Peter and Rosemary Grant, emeritus professors of biology at Princeton University, have for many years been tracking and studying the finches of the Galápagos archipelago. The Grants have recently become more interested in speciation, when groups pull apart and set up reproductive barriers. Paleoanthropologists like Dean Falk, my colleague at Florida State University, have been studying the brain of the humanlike little beings recently discovered in the Indonesian archipelago, Homo floresiensis, better known as the hobbit. I also several times heard Donald Johanson, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, who, in 1974, discovered Lucy, a three-million-year-old female hominid skeleton. She walked upright yet had a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s. The buzz now is about the reconstructed Ardipithecus ramidus. Older than Lucy by about a million years, she, too, walked upright. She still lived a lot of the time in the trees, hence challenges earlier hypotheses about proto-humans moving out to the plains as the jungles dried up, and then needing to stand upright. Bipedalism came while we were still in the jungle.

Sean Carroll, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a master of evolutionary development ("evo devo"), and his team are turning up fantastic findings about how genes regulate development. The most exciting discovery in recent evolutionary biology is that humans and fruit flies, Drosophila, are remarkably similar at the molecular level, like DNA. Organisms really are built on the Lego principle, with the same building blocks: Go one way and get a human, another way and get a fly. Meanwhile evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists like Marc Hauser, at Harvard University, are studying moral behavior with such precision that they are able to pinpoint the parts of the brain involved in ration-al thinking, emotional reactions, and motivations. And, as always, the context is Darwinian. Why did natural selection push things this way rather than some other way?

Exciting times, which makes it all the more remarkable to hear voices from within the mainstream of philosophy questioning the veracity of evolutionary theory. I’ll mention three. First there is Alvin Plantinga. Although he teaches at the University of Notre Dame, a Roman Catholic institution, Plantinga is North America’s most distinguished Protestant philosopher of religion. A deeply sincere Calvinist, he has never hesitated to argue for his faith and has done groundbreaking work on questions of knowledge and belief. Even if you disagree with his conclusions, you can admire his skill and learn from his arguments. Plantinga, however, has long harbored a distrust, even an ardent dislike, of evolutionary theorizing in general and of Darwinian thinking in particular. In an essay published in 1999, he wrote, "Consider the role played by evolutionary theory in our intellectual world. Evolution is a modern idol of the tribe; it is a shibboleth distinguishing the ignorant fundamentalist goats from the informed and scientifically acquiescent sheep. Doubts about it may lose you your job. It is loudly declared to be absolutely certain, as certain as that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun—when it is no such thing at all."ause for The Chronicle Review

Plantinga is an open enthusiast of intelligent design, the belief that at some points in life’s history an intelligent being intervened to move the process along. I am not quite sure whether this makes him a full-blooded creationist, although he has in the past said he does not think it an impossible position. Some supporters of intelligent design, like Phillip E. Johnson, an emeritus professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial (Regnery, 1991), seem to reject all forms of evolution. Others, like Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Free Press, 1996), seem to accept a lot of common descent and might even be called theistic evolutionists, meaning that they think God guides the course of continuous development. Wherever Plantinga stands on this spectrum, he stands with the intelligent-design theorists in strongly emphasizing what they see as the falsity of Darwinian evolutionary biology.

Why does Plantinga feel this way? In his view, Darwinism implies that there is and can be no direction in life’s history. All change is a function of randomly appearing new variations (mutations) that are then sifted by the opportunistic mechanism of natural selection. Although new variations are not uncaused, they do not appear according to need. As Darwin himself argued, to think otherwise is to illicitly bring in a directing God. The late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould used to pun that the arrival of the human species was entirely an accident brought on by our lucky stars—a comet that hit the earth 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and allowing for the rise of mammals. It is precisely that kind of thinking to which Plantinga is opposed.

Plantinga’s reactions to evolutionary biology are disappointing but understandable. Disappointing because, generally speaking, Calvinists are favorable to science: It is all part of God’s sovereignty, and it is our task to discover his immutable laws. As the Victorians used to say about sexual intercourse, if God decided that we should reproduce in such a disgusting way, then it is for us to accept this fact and put it in context. The same can be said about Darwinian evolution. Plantinga’s views are understandable because philosophy today tends to be very secular, and there is a lot of sympathy for the claims of the so-called New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens—that if you are a Darwinian, then you ought to be at least an agnostic, if not an outright atheist. Philip Kitcher, a professor of philosophy at Columbia University and author of Living With Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith (Oxford University Press, 2007), has spoken of Plantinga’s decision to blurb Johnson’s book as revealing "a combination of Schwärmerei [excessive sentiment] for creationist doctrine and profound ignorance of relevant bits of biology," which has caused Plantinga to put his brain "in cold storage."

Much more surprising is the position of the New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has established himself right at the top of the field thanks to a long series of dazzling essays on topics as diverse as the thinking apparatus of a bat and the nature of sexual perversion. Although he states firmly that he does not believe in a deity, he has now come out against Darwinism. If Nagel is not a supporter of intelligent design, one wonders why he says what he does. He has endorsed a book by Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2009), naming it one of the top books of 2009 in the Times Literary Supplement.

In a recent article, Nagel argues that it is proper to teach intelligent design in the classroom. Doubting the Darwinian claim that the sources of variation are undirected, Nagel quotes Behe as an authority. "Are the sources of genetic variation uniformly random or not? That is the central issue, and the point of entry for defenders of ID," Nagel writes. He goes on to tell us that Behe’s recent book, The Edge of Evolution, examines the "currently available evidence about the normal frequency and biochemical character of random mutations in the genetic material of several organisms."

Nagel leaves the reader with the impression that Behe’s concerns are well taken. Behe, according to Nagel, argues that "widely cited examples of evolutionary adaptation, including the development of immunity to antibiotics, when properly understood, cannot be extrapolated to explain the formation of complex new biological systems. These, he claims, would require mutations of a completely different order, mutations whose random probability, either as simultaneous multiple mutations or as sequences of separately adaptive individual mutations, is vanishingly small."

Like Plantinga, Nagel is skeptical about the whole evolutionary enterprise. Suppose someone says that doubting evolutionary theory is equivalent to thinking the earth is flat. Nagel writes: "This seems to me, as an outsider, a vast underestimation of how much we do not know, and how much about the evolutionary process remains speculative and sketchy." He goes on to tell us that those who think we are now well on the track to understanding the mechanisms of evolution are wrong: "Nothing close to this has been done." And in a comment to which I shall refer below, he writes: "A great deal depends on the likelihood that the complex chemical systems we observe arose through a sufficiently long sequence of random mutations in DNA, each of which enhanced fitness. It is difficult to find in the accessible literature the grounds for evolutionary biologists’ confidence about this."

Naturally the origin-of-life issue is raised—and found wanting ("a complete scientific mystery at this point"). It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Nagel thinks that evolutionary biology is more happily accepted by nonbelievers than by theists: "This is just common sense."

Jerry Fodor, no less distinguished than Nagel and Plantinga, is well known for his claim that the mind is composed of separately functioning modules. And he, too, has taken to criticizing Darwinian theory, first in an article in the London Review of Books and now in What Darwin Got Wrong. Fodor finds something deeply flawed in contemporary evolutionary thinking: "An appreciable number of perfectly reasonable biologists are coming to think that the theory of natural selection can no longer be taken for granted. This is, so far, mostly straws in the wind; but it’s not out of the question that a scientific revolution—no less than a major revision of evolutionary theory—is in the offing."

To Fodor the notion of natural selection is flawed. He has long been on record arguing that metaphors in science are misleading, and that they must be eliminated as science matures. In the case of Darwinism, we have an analogy or metaphor at work, between the artificial selection that breeders use when they improve livestock—shaggier sheep, beefier cows—and the process of differential reproduction that Darwinians think leads to evolutionary change (in the direction of adaptive advantage). Fodor believes that differential reproduction illicitly brings mind into the natural process:

The present worry is that the explication of natural selection by appeal to selective breeding is seriously misleading, and that it thoroughly misled Darwin. Because breeders have minds, there’s a fact of the matter about what traits they breed for; if you want to know, just ask them. Natural selection, by contrast, is mindless; it acts without malice aforethought. That strains the analogy between natural selection and breeding, perhaps to the breaking point. What, then, is the intended interpretation when one speaks of natural selection? The question is wide open as of this writing.

Fodor argues that this problem is insoluble. Fortunately we need not worry much, because in going with selection, evolutionists have been grasping the wrong end of the stick. In his view, today’s proper-thinking evolutionary biologists are finding that it is all in the variations anyway. All evolutionary change comes about through the genes and their development. Even if natural selection were at work, Fodor argues, the most it could do is clean up afterward.

What does one say about these critics? One could certainly pick apart individual things, for instance Fodor’s claims about selective breeding versus natural selection. The very last thing that Darwin and his followers are trying to do is put mind into nature. In both artifice and nature, some organisms are going to reproduce and others are not, and the reasons for that are (on average) going to be connected to the different features of the winners and losers. To say that a speckled moth is less likely to be eaten by a robin than a dark moth, because the robin can less easily see the speckled moth against the lichen-covered tree, is to say nothing about God or any other conscious being.

One could also pick up on the fact that neither Plantinga nor Nagel seems to have the slightest awareness of the scientific criticisms that have been launched against intelligent design. Every example that supporters of intelligent design produce to suggest that natural causes are not adequate—the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade—has been shown to be the exquisite end result of evolution. And one could certainly groan at the tired suggestion that Darwinians are unaware of or threatened by developments in evolutionary development. No evolutionary biologist, least of all Sean Carroll, suggests that one day the eye just appeared. However the new sources of variation play out, selection is going to be there right along with them.

But rather than work over the details, I want to draw attention to the way this crop of critics ignores evolutionary biology—aside from the kind of cherry-picking in which Fodor engages. Nagel may sneer about the failure to find "accessible literature" that answers his worries. In what part of the library was he doing his literature search? Where, for example, is any discussion of the Grants’ work on the Galápagos finches? What about a detailed look at the new scholarship that is challenging earlier thinking about the evolution of bipedalism? What about the discoveries of molecular biology and of the similarities (homologies) between humans and fruit flies? And why no mention of Marc Hauser and his work uncovering the secrets of moral thinking? There is a deafening silence on those and other issues. Fodor, Nagel, and Plantinga don’t need to turn themselves into biochemists, but some awareness of the issues and advances would not be entirely misplaced.

This total lack of interest in the science is surely suggestive. The critics are being driven by other, for them deeper, concerns. And as an evolutionist, I turn to the past for clues. What fueled the initial opposition to Darwin was a concern with our species, with Homo sapiens. For 150 years, since the Origin, critics have feared that we humans might become part of the evolutionary picture—not just our bodies, but our minds, our very souls. What makes us distinctively and uniquely human? This worry is still alive and well in today’s philosophical community. Plantinga is open in his fear that Darwinism makes impossible the guaranteed existence of our species. More, for years he has argued that Darwinism is bound up with the metaphysical belief that everything is natural (as opposed to supernatural), and that this leads to a collapse of rational belief and knowledge. The chance elements in Darwinism are simply not compatible with Plantinga’s Christian faith.

As nonbelievers, Nagel and Fodor are a bit different, but not that different. For years Nagel has argued against a reductive view of the human mind, believing it to be more than just molecules in motion—the obvious end result of Darwinism. At some level, Nagel believes, the mind is above the material. It is perhaps a stretch, but probably not too much of a stretch, to say that the kind of sympathetic attitude that Nagel takes toward intelligent design points not so much to a concealed theism (akin to Plantinga’s open theism) as to a kind of vitalism, in which there are nonnatural, nonphysical forces that direct things in the material world.

And then there is Fodor. The final section of his new book is very revealing. As a dreadful warning to those who do not accept his main conclusions, Fodor prints passage after passage of claims by Darwinians that one can understand human nature and thinking as the product of natural selection: This is where we will all end up if we don’t stop the rot right now. My suspicion is that Fodor doesn’t really give a damn about fruit flies or finches or anything else out there. But when it comes to Homo sapiens, he wants no part of a naturalistic explanation that reduces design to the workings of blind law. There may not be a God, but we sure are made in his image.

I often joke, as one who spends a lot of time fighting creationists, that when one of them says something silly, that means more work for me: bread on the table. When one of them says something really silly, there is strawberry jam, too. In 2005, after a trial in Dover, Pa., a federal judge ruled that intelligent design should not be taught in schools. Pat Robertson’s response—"God is tolerant and loving, but we can’t keep sticking our finger in his eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them"—kept me and my family well fed for weeks.

Now those of us who love Darwin and his theory have got the philosophers to deal with, too. I see steak in my future. But in truth, I am not really happy. I might even turn vegetarian if I could persuade my fellow philosophers to start taking science seriously. Could they possibly entertain the idea that being at one with the living world does not make us any less worthy as human beings? After the Origin was published, the wife of the Bishop of Worcester supposedly reacted: "Descended from monkeys? Let us hope that it is not true. But if it is true, let us hope that it not become widely known."

A century and a half later, the time has come to shout the truth from the rooftops.

Michael Ruse directs the program in the history and philosophy of science at Florida State University. His latest book, Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, was just published by Cambridge University Press. He contributes to The Chronicle Review’s blog, Brainstorm.

If Great Britain could have stopped the London subway attack by misusing passports, would M6 have allowed the terrorism to go forward in the name of preserving passport integrity? Of course not. The same is true of Spain with regard to the Madrid bombing and to every other country in the world that seeks to prevent terrorism. Well, if the Mossad did in fact kill al-Mabhouh, they too did it to prevent the killing of their innocent civilians.

by Alan M. Dershowitz, Aish.com, March 7, 2010

An Intelligence Agency misused passports: OMG!

The complaints leveled against Israel by European countries and Australia, regarding the alleged misuse of passports by the Mossad in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, ring hollow and smack of blatant hypocrisy. Whoever did kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh — whether it was the Israeli Mossad or someone else — clearly did have their agents use stolen or forged passports. Big deal.
Every good intelligence agency uses stolen and forged passports. The British have been especially adept at this means of spycraft. No country that uses fake passports in their intelligence operations has the moral authority to complain about the alleged misuse of passports in this case. The only ones that have a legitimate grievance are those individuals whose passports may have been misused without their knowledge.
I guess it’s the job of foreign ministries to complain publicly when other nations do what they themselves do secretly. Hypocrisy is, after all, the homage that vice pays to virtue. I’m reminded of the famous scene in Casablanca, when officer Renault declares, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” A croupier then approaches Renault, and hands him a roll of currency: “Your winnings, sir.”
The hypocrisy in this case seems even more blatant than usual. Is it because Israel is the alleged offender, and the world has gotten accustomed to singling out Israel for double standard condemnation?
Shortly after the terrorist attacks in Bali, which killed a large number of Australian tourists, I had the opportunity to meet with the Australian Prime Minister. I was writing a book at the time on preemption, and I asked him whether he would have authorized a preemptive attack on the terrorist who killed Australian citizens, if such an attack would have saved their lives. His response was that Australia would have done anything it could, to prevent these terrorist attacks. Anything, I guess, except misusing passports? Is there anybody who believes that Australia would not have used forged or stolen passports to prevent the Bali massacres?

If Great Britain could have stopped the London subway attack by misusing passports, would M6 have allowed the terrorism to go forward in the name of preserving passport integrity? Of course not. The same is true of Spain with regard to the Madrid bombing and to every other country in the world that seeks to prevent terrorism. Well, if the Mossad did in fact kill al-Mabhouh, they too did it to prevent the killing of their innocent civilians.
The Israelis are always accused by their enemies, and sometimes even by their friends, of taking “disproportionate” action to stop terrorists. But what could be more proportionate than a carefully planned and specifically targeted attack on an admitted terrorist who boasted of being an active combatant? Whoops! I guess I forgot about those darn passports. That must be the disproportionate action complained about. Saving innocent lives, on the one hand—misusing passports on the other. I guess the right moral resolution, according to some foreign ministries, is to let innocent victims die — at least as long as its only Israeli victims.
It’s interesting, and disturbing, that more criticism is being directed against Israel for allegedly using stolen passports than for allegedly killing a terrorist. That’s because no Western country wants to appear to be sympathetic to a terrorist. The “victims” of passport fraud are innocent civilians, but the injury they have suffered pales in comparison to the injuries – deaths — prevented by the well-deserved death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
If the deaths of a small number of innocent civilians is deemed “proportional” to the killing of a terrorist combatant, than surely the discomfort of a small number of innocent victims of passport fraud is proportional.
The high dudgeon expressed by foreign ministries over stolen passports is worse than hypocritical. It undercuts the war against terrorism.
There ought to be concern, among Western democracies, about how easy it is to use forged or stolen passports. Dubai should be conducting an investigation, but the focus should be on how simple it was for those carrying these phony passports to get into their country. The misuse of passports is, after all, a primary tool used by terrorists to smuggle themselves into Western countries, from which they can engage in worldwide terrorism. There are thousands of forged and fraudulent British passports circulating around the world today. Many are in the hands of terrorists. That should be the focus of any investigation, not the occasional and controlled misuse of passports by Western intelligence agencies to combat terrorism.
Whoever sneaked into Dubai using fake passports may have done that country a service in warning them to tighten up their passport procedures. Next time it may be a terrorist who tries to enter the country. Wait! Isn’t that exactly what happened when al-Mabhouh walked through security using a real passport with his real name? I guess in Dubai you don’t have to use a fake passport if you’re a terrorist, but you do if you’re trying to stop terrorists — at least if the terrorism is directed only against Israel. I guess Dubai is less concerned about letting terrorists into their country with real passports than in letting those who would stop terrorism into their country with fake passports. It’s a topsy turvy world out there.

Iraq poll hit by deadly attacks

Iraq’s second parliamentary election since the 2003 invasion has been hit by multiple attacks, with at least 35 people being killed.

Two buildings were destroyed in Baghdad and dozens of mortars were fired across the capital and elsewhere.

Despite the violence, there were long queues of voters at polling stations in a number of cities.

Polls closed at 1700 (1400 GMT) but people already in line were allowed to cast their votes.

An immense security operation was mounted, involving more than 500,000 Iraqi security personnel.

The border with Iran was closed, thousands of troops were deployed, and vehicles were banned from roads.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had called on voters to turn out in large numbers, saying that participation would boost democracy.

“ I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home ”
Baghdad voter

In Washington US President Barack Obama issued a statement after polls had closed, saying Iraqis had chosen "to shape their future through the political process".

"We mourn the tragic loss of life today, and honour the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people who once again defied threats to advance their democracy," he said.

Multiple attacks

There were mortar, grenade and bomb attacks in Baghdad and in other cities, including Mosul, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra.

But the capital was hardest hit, with dozens of mortar shells falling in several neighbourhoods. Twenty-five people were killed in one explosion that destroyed a residential building in the north of the city.

AT THE SCENE
By Gabriel Gatehouse, BBC News, Baghdad

Despite the violence of the morning there was a steady stream of voters throughout the day at polling stations around Baghdad.

Some complained that their names were missing from the register and so were unable to cast their vote.

But overall the poll appears to have gone smoothly and the massive security operation to have prevented any large scale attacks.

The counting of the vote will be followed by what is likely to be a long and fragile period of negotiations between the various political parties before a new government is formed.

Despite the attacks, turnout was reported to have been steady in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Queues were also reported at polling stations in Sunni areas of the country, where many people in 2005 decided not to vote.

The election took place against a backdrop of much-reduced violence, with casualty figures among civilians, Iraqi forces and US troops significantly lower than in recent years.

But hundreds of people are still being killed each month, corruption is high and the provision of basic services such as electricity is still sporadic.

Islamic militants had pledged to disrupt the voting process with attacks – a group affiliated to al-Qaeda distributed leaflets in Baghdad warning people not to go to the polls.

‘Important choice’

Candidates from 86 factions were vying for 325 parliamentary seats, with some 19 million Iraqis eligible to vote.

IRAQI GENERAL ELECTION

Despite Sunday’s attacks, Iraq’s independent electoral commission said only two of 50,000 polling stations across the country had been closed for short periods due to security concerns.

In Azamiyah (northern Baghdad), Walid Abid, 40, cast his vote to the crumple of mortars exploding not far away.

"I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home," said the father-of-two.

"Until when? We need to change things. If I stay home and not come to vote, Azamiyah will get worse," Associated Press news agency quoted him as saying.

The previous election, in 2005, saw Mr Maliki become prime minister with Shia Muslim parties dominating the legislature.

President Jalal Talabani was among the first to vote on Sunday in Suleimaniya, and said the election marked both a step, and a test, on Iraq’s march to democracy.

In a rare public appearance, radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, speaking in neighbouring Iran, urged Iraqis to vote and to reject violence.

Test for democracy?

Iraq’s last elections were in February 2009, when voters chose local representatives.

Sunday’s elections are being seen as a crucial test for Iraq’s national reconciliation process ahead of a planned US military withdrawal in stages.

US President Barack Obama plans to withdraw combat forces by the middle of this year and all US troops are expected to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.

Correspondents say Prime Minister Maliki looks likely to retain power at the head of his Shia-led coalition.

The key will be whether Mr Maliki can bring Iraq’s embittered Sunni minority into his government and make them feel they have a stake in Iraq’s political future again.

Expatriate votes cast in Jordan and Syria could play a deciding role in a tight election race, counting for around 10 seats.

There was a reportedly high turnout, with estimates suggesting 800,000 people cast ballots.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8553929.stm
Published: 2010/03/07 17:32:46 GMT