January 4, 2008 | 1:13 pm

‘Honor killing’ not Islam’s fault

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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The Crunchy Con says no in a post in which he evaluates whether the double murder of two teenage girls in Texas even was a so-called “honor killing”:

Police have not used the phrase “honor killing” in talking about the murder of the two Muslim teenage girls in Lewisville, allegedly by their father, Egyptian immigrant Yaser Abdel Said, but there are signs emerging that it might be something like that. Today’s DMN story says:

Police did say they are looking into the possibility that the father was upset with his daughters’ dating activities.

  Like, what? Were they dating non-Muslims? Were they behaving in any way that fits the well-established “honor killing” pattern we’ve seen among some Muslim communities in the West? Channel 11 has a bit more detail in its report:

Sisters, Amina, 18, and Sarah, 17, were each shot to death. Friends of the girls say their father was Egyptian and critical of popular American lifestyles. ““He was really strict about guy relationships and talking to guys, as well as the things she wears,” Kathleen Wong, a friend of the dead teenagers. “I’m definitely 100% sure that it was her dad that killed her.”

  Honor killings are present in Middle Eastern Muslim societies, but it seems that the religion is not to blame—that it’s a relic of harshly patriarchal culture. Muslim countries outside the Middle East don’t really have these things, it appears. You also see it lingering in non-Muslim Mediterranean societies.

I agree that such familial violence is not endemic to Islam. There was, however, a disturbing “honor killing” in Canada last month that allegedly was motivated by a teenage girl’s refusal to wear the hijab.

January 4, 2008 | 10:28 am

Robertson predicts recession, stock crash

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Morning humor from the DMN religion blog:

In what’s become an annual tradition (or, if you prefer, joke) televangelist Pat Robertson revealed his predictions for 2008—or, more accurately, he let the rest of us in on what he says God has told him will happen.

Here‘s the story from the Associated Press.

According to Robertson, God has economic disaster in store for us: A deep recession, $150-a-barrel oil, a tumbling dollar. All of this will lead to a major stock market crash in 2009 or ‘10.

It’s worth noting that Robertson’s past predictions have often been wrong.

As for the 2008 presidential race, in which Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani, the televangelist was silent on who will win.

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January 4, 2008 | 3:59 am

Evangelical vote buries Romney, buoys Huckabee

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

About 80 percent of those who helped Mike Huckabee trounce Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses last night described themselves as evangelicals. More from The New York Times.

Despite some major stumbles in the final stretch of his Iowa campaign as he endured a ferocious assault on his record from Mr. Romney, Mr. Huckabee struck a chord among Iowa Republicans with a distinctive mixture of humor, Christian conservatism and economic populism.

His stump speeches evoked comparisons to the prairie populism of William Jennings Bryan. And he charmed audiences with a witty and extemporaneous speaking style honed over 10 years in the pulpit as a preacher and local televangelist before he entered politics; he is a former governor of Arkansas. He told voters to pick a candidate who was “consistent” and “authentic,” an unstated contrast to Mr. Romney’s recent conversion to opposing abortion rights.

What most distinguished Mr. Huckabee from the rest of the Republican field, though, were his escalating appeals to the economic anxieties of lower-income voters. He emphasized his own roots as “the son of a fireman who worked a second job,” denounced stagnant wages and rising inequality, and portrayed his underfinanced fight with Mr. Romney as “the people” against “the Wall Street-to-Washington axis of power”

“People would rather elect a president who reminds them of the guy they work with, not that guy who laid them off,” Mr. Huckabee said at a campaign stop Thursday morning, invoking an implicit contrast with Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts.

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January 3, 2008 | 3:12 pm

The easy answer: The Jews did it

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, The Jewish Journal ran a cover story that superimposed these words over silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers: “THE JEWS DIDN’T DO IT, YOU IDIOTS!”

I mentioned this in September as one of many immortal fallacies,  and was just reminded of it while reading a remembrance of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated last week.

Bhutto told me she knew that if she returned to Pakistan, she’d probably be killed. She was, on December 27, shot after a rally in Rawalpindi, the military garrison town abutting Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. No one who knew her — or understood what she was — was surprised.

Least of all Hamid Gul, the former director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s notorious intelligence service, famously aligned with Islamist extremists, and still known as the man at the ISI’s controls. Days after my first conversation with Bhutto, I met with Gul in his home in Rawalpindi, a few hundred yards from where Benazir was to die. First, Gul told me he knew for a fact that the Mossad was behind the 9/11 attacks, and that Monica Lewinsky was an Israeli agent sent by Tel Aviv to undo the Clinton presidency. Then he said, matter-of-factly, “Being prime minister again is a job Benazir will not do.” He paused and cocked his head. “But she can try it if she likes.”

Tucked in there, right in the middle, are two less-than-flattering-but-oft-mentioned maligns of Jews. These are, in essence, the descendant lies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” And not only in the Muslim world.

Season 10 of “South Park” saw Cartman finger Kyle, the fourth grade’s only Jew, as the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks. Here in Los Angeles, the head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council pondered on the radio whether Israel  was behind the attacks “because, I think, this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories, so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.” He later apologized for the remark.

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January 3, 2008 | 2:57 pm

Israel’s ‘non-Jewish Jews’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In Israel, the “non-Jewish Jews,” as some Israelis call them, are everywhere. They drive buses, teach university classes, patrol in army jeeps and follow the latest Israeli reality TV shows as avidly as their Jewish counterparts.

For these people—mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jews according to Israeli law—the question of where they fit into the Jewish state remains unanswered nearly two decades after they began coming to Israel.

At an estimated 320,000 people and with their ranks growing due to childbirth, the question is growing ever more acute.

“They are not going to be religious but want to be part of what is called the Jewish secular population,” said Asher Cohen, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, who has written a book on the subject.

“Thousands are being born here, and they are no longer immigrants,” he said. “They are raised just like their secular neighbors, and these children want to know why they are not Jewish because their mother is not Jewish. The problem is just getting worse.”

This story raises serious questions about identity and affiliation that reminds me of the plight of half-Jews. Tough not mentioned in this article from this week’s Jewish Journal, the disenfranchisement of this population of Israelis has had more negative consequences than simply a sense of outsiderness. Remember the case of those Israeli neo-Nazis?

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January 3, 2008 | 9:59 am

Effort to destroy Old Damascus

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The city of Old Damascus is presently threatened by an obtuse and cynical plan that would destroy great chunks of it. The Syrian regime is trying to push through a “modernization” and “re-development” scheme, which would raze areas dating back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, including Syria’s second oldest mosque, Jami’ al-Tawba, of great beauty and historical significance. The company that aims to do this is a regime protégé. The boorish mayor of Damascus, Bishr Sabban, recently described the buildings to be razed as “garbage”, not heritage. Like most regime officials, he has been ordered to say (and may, to his shame, actually believe) that the ripping out of the world’s oldest city’s heart, to replace it with banal and vulgar multi-story hotels, tower blocks, American-style shopping malls and motorways, is a laudable thing.

I found this article in the current issue of Islamica magazine, which I picked up at the MPAC conference two weeks ago. It is a familiar story not simply because historic buildings are being destroyed for the sake of “progress” and profit but because, as is the case with many things in Syria, the hand of Iran is seen in this effort to reshape a neighborhood that is predominantly Sunni Muslim and Christian.

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January 2, 2008 | 10:53 pm

Congress’ only Holocaust survivor won’t run again

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Rep. Tom Lantos announced today that he has cancer of the esophagus and won’t seek re-election. Lantos, 79, is Congress’ only Holocaust survivor and has been a staunch advocate for Israel. The Chronicle offers this appreciation:

Right or wrong, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, has never failed to raise his voice for human rights in parts of the world Washington has often forgotten. Even if you disagreed with him, as this newspaper did when Lantos supported President Bush’s push to send U.S. troops to Iraq, you knew he did what he thought was right.

Lantos took his status as the only Holocaust survivor elected to the House seriously. In 2006, he was arrested at a Darfur protest. In 2007, Lantos accompanied Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Syria. He has long sought a visa to visit Iran - where he wants to hector Tehran’s tyrannical clerics. “I believe in talking with everyone,” he explained.

In November, Lantos scolded Yahoo executives for their role in helping China identify and jail two journalists. “While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” Lantos railed.

Lantos will leave the House a giant.

 

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January 2, 2008 | 10:02 pm

McCain-Lieberman ticket hot with the Orthodox

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Iowa caucuses tomorrow night will be followed by the primaries in New Hampshire next Tuesday, and the popularity of former Republican front-runner-turned-bottom-dweller John McCain has been surging. The NY Times’ blog The Caucus credits his duet with Sen. Joe Lieberman for some of that.

But the northeast is not the only place McCain is gaining some cred thanks to his Jewish friend. The Orthodox community is all abuzz about the prospect of a McCain-Lieberman ticket.

Radio host Michael Medved, a hardcore Republican, and political scientist David Luchins, former adviser to the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), disagree on just about everything related to the presidential race.

Except the idea of John McCain.

In a campaign that they say is filled with adulterers, fundamentalists, crooks, bigots, and wildcards, the GOP senator from Arizona is the only candidate both men say they could endorse — especially if his running mate were Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Sabbath-observant Democrat-turned-Independent who crossed party lines last week to endorse the Republican war hero.

On Sunday, at the Orthodox Union’s West Coast Torah Convention in Beverly Hills, Calif., during a session titled “Should Torah Jews Vote Democratic or Republican?,” Medved and Luchins examined the campaign lineup. With about 100 people in attendance, they ruminated on which candidates deserve the support of Orthodox voters, the majority of whom bucked the overall Jewish trend and voted for President Bush in 2004.

The two men trashed one candidate after another, until a woman in the back of the room offered the final question of the day: What about a McCain-Lieberman ticket?

Heads swiveled back to enjoy what would surely be another of Medved’s sharp witticisms, as he skewered the woman’s political naïveté.

But no. Medved paused. He’d had lunch several times with McCain, he confessed. And maybe — no, he couldn’t tell about it. It was off-the-record information.

“Turn off the tape!” one man shouted at the video technician recording the session.

Smiling slightly, Medved relented: “I don’t think it’s an unthinkable possibility, and it would be a very strong ticket.”

But like the Kerry-McCain ticket floated in 2004 that the Republican hawk refused to join his dovish Democratic friend on, I don’t really see how McCain could run with a Democrat VP. Like he said in 2004 only reversing the roles:

n a series of phone conversations with McCain, Kerry offered to augment the power of the Vice-Presidency with the defense portfolio—in effect, a combined Vice-President and Secretary of Defense, according to John Weaver and Mark Salter. “Kerry was saying, ‘You can still call yourself a Republican,’ and John was saying, ‘No! I can’t just call myself a Republican,’” Salter recalled. “‘We don’t have the same philosophy. I’m a hawk, I’m for nation-building, I’m pro-life, I’m a free trader, I believe in small government. If you’re hit by a lightning bolt and I become President, the people who voted for you will feel betrayed.’”