March 12, 2008 | 11:12 am

‘They low-down, they dirty, they some snitches’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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I came across this video a few days ago, and it has no religious hook. But it’s too funny not to share and it reflects my sentiments for USC.

March 12, 2008 | 9:14 am

Mourning the Mercaz Harav massacre

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The killing of eight students at a Jerusalem yeshiva last week, the first terror attack in the Holy City in four years, broke the hearts of Jews around the world. Here in Los Angeles, their were vigils and peace rallies and very shaken Jewish teenagers like Aaron Begin.

“Rabbi, I have a question,” he says to his principal, Rabbi Heshy Glass, who is standing with him. “Doesn’t it say you can’t die while you’re learning Torah?”

Glass tells him the story of the Mishnaic sage Rabbi Akiva, who was taken by the Romans while he studied. Like these boys, he tells Begin, he was a Jewish hero, remembered for the ages.

Glass doesn’t try to make sense of the tragedy, just to continue the conversation about what is so troubling to Begin and other boys at YULA, many of whom plan to study in Israeli yeshivas when they graduate.

“You hear about tragedies in Israel, but it hits so close to home because this is us next year. Next year we’re going to yeshiva,” said Chaim Gamzo, a 17-year-old senior. “These guys had their whole lives ahead of them—like me. I hope to go to yeshiva, to go to college, to have a normal successful life, but they didn’t have the opportunity to do that.”

On Sunday, a peace rally packed Young Israel of Century City and L.A. Councilman Jack Weiss said the massacre at Mercaz Harav was not an attack on a seminary affiliated with the settler movement.

“Judaism is about Torah and the transmission of Torah. The essence of Judaism is Torah, and its transfar from one generation to the next, “Medor le’dor.” And that’s what Mercaz HaRav does, all day and all night, year in and year out.

“The attack on the students of Yeshiva Mercaz Harav had absolutely nothing to do with politics. The terrorist was not acting because of national grievances, it was not a dispute about territory—as if that would excuse such an atrocity—for it wouldn’t.

“No, the terrorist was attacking Judaism.

“By murdering these eight pure students the terrorist was trying to eradicate the core of Judaism: Torah and the transmission of Torah.

“In addition, the rockets that fly from Gaza into S’derot may appear as if they are connected to a dispute about land, but that’s a lie.

“The rockets are also an attack on Judaism. The rockets are an attack on Jews in Israel and on Jews in every corner of the world.

“The battle that Israel wages against the Muslim jihadists is not a local conflict, but just one front in a world-wide jihad.

“Make no doubt about it, this war is a genocidal attack against all Jews.

“The goal of the Islamic jihadists is to eradicate Judaism from the face of the earth.

“And that’s why the eight Torah students were chosen for slaughter.

“If you don’t understand this simple calculus, then you have no understanding of the true nature of the enemy.”

Tied to the Mercaz Harav attack, I have a short piece in tomorrow’s Jewish Journal, online now, about a protest against the Jewish state that was held outside the Israeli consulate in L.A. while officials inside mourned the deaths that occurred only the day before. The protest was organized by the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine in response to the IDF’s entry into Gaza the weekend before, which left 100 Palestinians dead, and among the speakers was Amir Abdel Malik Ali, who referred to Zionists as “the new Nazis.”

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March 11, 2008 | 12:47 pm

The tale of three former terrorists

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

InFocus is a relatively new monthly newspaper for the Muslim community in Southern California that circulates 25,000 copies to Muslim businesses and mosques. In the same way that one would expect Jewish publications to be pro-Israel, it is clearly pro-Palestinian and uses the dateline “Occupied Jerusalem.”

In the current issue, InFocus’ senior writer—like a Muslim me, though I don’t think he’s Christian—has a story that questions the authenticity of three speakers on the ex-terrorist circuit. Well, it doesn’t so much question their story as it does indict them for being fallacious Islamophobes.

For self-proclaimed “former terrorists” Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani, all with a history of alleged blood and murder, nothing even close to legal action has ever been taken against them. On the contrary, the trio has, for the past few years, actively been appearing on TV shows across the nation, speaking at conferences and fund-raisers in churches and synagogues and openly proclaiming their so-called bloody past to anyone who is willing to listen.

As recently as last month, the three, whose stories are riddled with lies and inconsistencies according to critics, were invited by the prestigious United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, which held its annual conference on terrorism, to speak about the dangers of “Islamic terrorism.” The appearance of these individuals drew the ire of Muslims and religious freedom organizations alike. The former were incensed by the fact that the speakers were notorious Islamophobes cashing in on the post-9/11 Islam-bashing industry, and the latter worried by the increasing presence of evangelicals in the armed forces.

“It’s a puzzle as to why the Air Force would invite these three Muslim bashers,” said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “We see a history, unfortunately, of proselytizing for particular faith groups and this seems to have been part of that whole effort.”

Maj. Brett Ashworth, a spokesman for the academy, told the New York Times that the three would be paid a total of $13,000 for their appearance, some of it from private donors. Ashworth justified the invitation saying “they offered a unique perspective from inside terrorism.” The findings of the conference will be compiled into a report on methods to combat terrorism that will be sent to the Pentagon, members of Congress and other influential officials, he added.

A group that calls itself the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is suing the federal government for what it calls “creeping evangelism in the armed forces.” The group accused the Air Force Academy of constantly inviting born-again Christians, rather than experts, to address cadets on terrorism.

“This stuff going on at the academy today is part of the endemic evangelical infiltration that continues,” David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a foundation member, told the Times.

On his own web site, (www.shoebat.com) Shoebat claims to have belonged to the Palestinian Liberation Organization early in his life and to have committed “acts of violence and terrorism against Israel.” In his bio, Anani, who now resides in Canada, claimed to have joined a militant group in Beirut, Lebanon, when he was a teenager and boasted to have killed 223 people at a tender age, most of them with a dagger. Saleem claims to have been recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood when he was just 7 years old, and then later as a teenager to have joined the PLO.

However, to most, the trio’s stories seem more fiction than fact.

“You have three people who are openly claiming to be former terrorists,” said Hooper. “I don’t think that in any other case, law enforcement officials would look at the word ‘former’ and excuse people. If these three people are indeed former terrorists, why aren’t they in jail or at the very least deported?”

Not to dismiss the possibility that some opportunists are using the religious speaking circuit to make a buck—it has happened, oh, a few times before—but the speculative “evidence” here feels pretty weak.

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March 10, 2008 | 9:30 pm

Spitzer’s folly

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

He stands close to ruin’s precipice, this tireless crusader and once-charmed politician reduced to a notation on a federal affidavit: Client 9.

The ascent and descent of Eliot Spitzer’s career have been dizzying. He was the brainy kid who graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School and became an avenging state attorney general, hunting down Wall Street malefactors with a moralistic fervor that sounded pitch-perfect. Everywhere he found “betrayals of the public trust” that were “shocking” and “criminal.”

Then he ran for governor in 2006 and seized a vast electoral mandate. Reformers chortled at the thought of this young bull with a national reputation stomping about the calcified halls of Albany.

Mr. Spitzer cast himself, self-consciously, as the alpha male, with a belief in the clarifying power of confrontation. Long predawn runs, fierce basketball games: He did nothing at half-speed. “Listen, I’m a steamroller,” he told a State Assembly leader in his first days as governor, adding an unprintable adjective into the mix for emphasis.

Soon enough, his enemies and even admirers and friends came to affix another adjective to his name: reckless. So often the new governor seemed to accumulate enemies for sport, to threaten rivals with destruction when an artful compromise and a disingenuous slap on the back might do just as well.

“I am not naturally suited to this job,” he told a reporter recently, and perhaps he knew more than he was letting on.

The tawdry nature of his current troubles — to be caught on tape arranging a hotel-room liaison with a high-priced call girl, according to law enforcement officials — shocked even his harshest critics, though not all were surprised that he would risk so much.

“Here’s a guy who won an overwhelming electoral landslide and has inflicted fatal wounds on himself publicly and privately,” said Douglas A. Muzzio, a political scientist at Baruch College and a student of the state’s politics. “I’m not a psychologist, but this is just utterly, completely reckless.”

The assumed end of Eliot Spitzer the public figure has been all over the Web today. I found this story from the NY Times and this piece—“after 9 on the night before Valentine’s Day when she finally arrived, a young brunette named Kristen. She was 5-foot-5, 105 pounds. Pretty and petite.”—particularly interesting.

For more eye-popping revelations, see this bit at The Huffington Post, which explains that Kristen was no Divine Brown. Some of the Emperor Club’s call girls, rated in diamonds, cost as much as $3,100 an hour. This is a truly sad, sickening and, yes, prurient story. We can expect to hear a lot about Eliot’s mess for months to come.

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March 10, 2008 | 7:18 pm

Conditions worsen for Palestinian Christians

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve mentioned before the plight of Palestinian Christians. Here’s the latest from Christianity Today:

Gaza Baptist Church used to draw hundreds of Palestinian worshipers to its two Sunday services. But on a recent Sunday in January, less than 10 people risked attending the only evangelical church in the 25-mile coastal strip.

Palestinian evangelicals, a group of hundreds living among 1.5 million Muslims, have been fleeing the Gaza Strip for the West Bank in response to increased violence and threats from Islamic extremists. In October, Rami Ayyad, the 29-year-old manager of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, was kidnapped and murdered. Then on February 15, a group of 14 masked gunmen forcibly entered the ymca offices and set off a bomb in the library, burning thousands of books.

“In Gaza, when you say, ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ you have to mean it literally,” said Hanna Massad, displaced pastor of the Baptist church. “The Lord is the only one who can protect you.” Massad left Gaza in November for personal safety; eight families in his church fled with him.

Life for Gazan Christians became more difficult when Hamas seized control of the 140-square-mile territory in June. Conditions have also worsened due to Israel’s security efforts, which have constricted the incoming flow of food, electricity, and fuel. Israel tightened security in response to ongoing Hamas rocket attacks and the first suicide bombing in Israel in three years.

“This is one of the toughest times we have seen,” said Massad. His church has been seized twice by police forces and suffered a collapsed roof six times from Israeli missile strikes.

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March 10, 2008 | 2:07 pm

The Johns and the ‘Great Whore’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been trying to score an interview with John Hagee, who is scheduled to speak tomorrow night at Stephen S. Wise Temple. But the controversy surrounding his endorsement of John McCain has made him a bit media shy. This video from TPM Cafe gives a good recap.

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March 10, 2008 | 10:52 am

Christians looking for a fight

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember the Fightin’ Christians of Elon University? Me neither. But Elon is now one win away from entering the NCAA Division I Tournament—and possibly meeting my divinely elected Bruins—but Rick at Deadspin won’t be rooting for Elon to upset Davidson tonight.

That’s because Elon athletics once had one of the greatest nicknames of all time; the Fightin’ Christians. But when the school moved up to Div. I competition in 1999, they changed it to the Phoenix.

That’s just lame and wrong. By Elon officials caving to political correctness, we are deprived of seeing a pugnacious parson with a pilgrim beard squaring off with the Tar Heel logo in the first round of March Madness. Well anyway, since Elon isn’t using the nickname any more, maybe Bob Jones University could pick it up.

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March 9, 2008 | 7:34 pm

Turkey moves to modernize Islam

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The country’s powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.

The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University’s School of Theology.

Fr Felix Koerner, a Christian theologian who has observed the project, says some of the sayings - also known individually as “hadiths” - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

“Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation,” he says.

“You can find messages which say ‘that is what the Prophet ordered us to do’. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition.”

More about the Islamic Reformation can be found here.

There have been tensions in the past year as Turkey struggles to find its soul. The country has been more moderate and secular than its neighbors to the east. (This is where Ismail Bardhi earned his doctorate in Islamic studies.) And it isn’t entirely surprising that such a reformation would spring out of a country that straddles Europe and the Middle East.

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March 9, 2008 | 3:01 pm

Atheist soldier sues Army

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“There are no atheists in foxholes.” That’s how the saying goes. But last week a U.S. soldier again sued the Army for allegedly violating his right to be an atheist. No, not because they wouldn’t let him into their foxhole during a firefight, but because, he claims, he was denied the ability to hold a meeting in Iraq to discuss his godlessness.

The suit was filed in September but dropped last month so the new allegations could be included. Among the defendants are Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Hall alleges he was denied his constitutional right to hold a meeting to discuss atheism while he was deployed in Iraq with his military police unit. He says in the new complaint that his promotion was blocked after the commander of the 1st Infantry Division and Fort Riley sent an e-mail post-wide saying Hall had sued.

Fort Riley spokeswoman Alison Kohler said the post “can’t comment on ongoing legal matters” and offered no further statement.

According to the lawsuit, Hall was counseled by his platoon sergeant after being informed that his promotion was blocked. He says the sergeant explained that Hall would be “unable to put aside his personal convictions and pray with his troops” and would have trouble bonding with them if promoted to a leadership position.

Hall responded that religion is not a requirement of leadership, even though the sergeant wondered how he had rights if atheism wasn’t a religion. Hall said atheism is protected under the Army’s chaplain’s manual.

“It shouldn’t matter if one is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist,” said Pedro Irigonegaray, an attorney whose firm filed the lawsuit. “In the military, all are equal and to be considered equal.”

The AP article also quotes Mikey Weinstein, the firebrand crusader who sued the Air Force for proselytizing and now runs the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which joined Hall in the suit. Weinstein calls the Army’s actions are “beyond despicable, indeed wholly awful,” which sounds like the kind of language and hyperbole that accompanies a lawsuit that probably will be settled quietly and for a handsome sum.

The real question, though, is whether Hall was discriminated against because his “religious beliefs” were out of line with the “established religion” of the military. (Just to be clear: The military has no established religion, though the chaplaincy program certainly favors Christians.) But, to be fair to Hall, does dogmatic opposition to religion count as its own form of religion? To answer that, I’d like to revisit an old post on a church of Christians and Jews that used marijuana to communicate with God.

“You have to give people a feeling or a sense of the sacred and then you have to bond them in community,” Robert C. Fuller, a religion professor at Bradley University in Illinois and author of Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American Religious History, told me. “The fact of the matter is anything that helps with those two function has religious values.”

Now, Fuller isn’t a constitutional lawyer, and certainly not a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, but based on his explanation, for atheists to be recognized as a religious group they would have to give fellow believers a “sense of sacred.”

(Hat tip: GetReligion)

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March 7, 2008 | 1:07 am

Mainline churches at odds with Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Tensions are re-emerging between Jewish organizations and some mainline Protestant churches in the wake of a renewed drive for churches to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

The United Methodist Church opened discussions last Friday on a resolution calling for divestment from Caterpillar, the tractor manufacturer, because the company supplies Israel with bulldozers used in building the separation barrier and in demolishing Palestinian homes. The divestment resolution comes only months after the publication of a church-sponsored report referring to the creation of the State of Israel as the “original sin.”

Relations with the Presbyterian Church (USA) are also strained, following remarks by church officials criticizing Israel because of the Gaza closure. A recent study by an affiliate of the Presbyterian Church called on American Jews to “get a life” instead of focusing on defending Israeli policies.

“This reflects a very disturbing trend in these churches,” said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “These developments are a result of work of several very wicked forces that play in the church.”

This report is from The Forward. I don’t know what these “wicked forces” are, but if Christians are going to use insincere metaphors like comparing Zionism to the Fall of Man, I guess Jews are afforded similarly inflammatory language. Though I’m not sure what good dissolving this disagreement into a diatribe would do.

Most Jews have assumed the drive by mainline denominations to divest from Israel was over. But from what I understand, it’s just picking up again and a divestment resolution will be discussed at the United Methodist Church’s general conference next month. Such a move might encourage the PCUSA to reconsider the resolution it passed two years ago but then set aside.

For years, the chasm between mainline Protestants and their evangelical and Pentecostal counterparts has been growing in terms of their relationship to Israel. Not every evangelical is the gentile Maccabi John Hagee, who coincidentally gives much of the Jewish community the creeps, but during the past year I’ve encountered a number of Christian groups that have a more profound love for, and unconditional defense of, the Holy Land than many American Jews.

Last summer, the same week that Walt and Mearsheimer’s “The Israel Lobby” was published, Christianity Today explained why Christians should love not only God’s promised land but his chosen people too.

The key complaint offered against dispensationalists is that they talk as though God had separate plans for saving Israel and the church. And contemporary Reformed Christians are accused of having a “replacement theology” in which the church takes the place of Israel, inheriting all of God’s promises with no remainder for the Jewish people. The one view tends to find no fault with Israeli government decisions as long as they do not compromise dispensational theology. The other view tends to consider the continued existence of the Jewish people a historical anomaly with little theological significance.

But we cannot read the New Testament without seeing that the Jews continue to have a place in God’s economy. Gentile Christians do not replace the Jews, but are joint heirs and wild branches grafted onto the Jewish olive tree. God’s ultimate purpose in saving Gentile Christians is to save the Jews (Rom. 11).

The evangelical mainstream needs to do some rigorous theological work on its relationship to Judaism, to the Jewish people, and to the state of Israel. The concerns we must address include: The need to learn how Judaism and the Jewish people understand themselves. ... The fundamentally Jewish character of God’s revelation in Jesus. ... What justice means for a Jewish state and its neighbors. ... What kind of theological and ethical significance evangelicals can give the state of Israel before the return of Messiah Jesus. ... Optimism for a negotiated solution to Israeli-Palestinian tensions fluctuates with the news. But Christians must hope in God’s covenant faithfulness. Meanwhile, we should keep reminding those involved in direct negotiations that we long for a solution that provides a secure Jewish homeland and self-determination and prosperity for Palestinians. In God’s eyes, the peace of Jerusalem is to bless all peoples.

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March 6, 2008 | 2:54 pm

Tommie Harris’ anti-Semitic joke

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Peter King is Sports Illustrated’s senior NFL writer, and this week he is on a USO trip with pro football players to visit troops in Afghanistan. He’s keeping a diary at his Inside the NFL blog, and I imagine this joke by Bears defensive tackle Tommie Harris, one of a few ribs that King says bring “levity to serious surroundings,” wouldn’t go over well with the ADL.

Harris riddles us for a while, then produces a joke best saved for last.

“What did the pig say to the Muslim?”

Silence.

“Shalom.”

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March 6, 2008 | 2:11 pm

At least eight killed at Jerusalem yeshiva

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Magen David Adom have confirmed 10 wounded civilians, including three seriously. One terrorist was said to have been killed by a student.

Witnesses said that only one terrorist had entered the building and that he managed to fire 500-600 bullets over the course of 4-10 minutes before he was killed.

Although witnesses said only a single terrorist carried out the attack, police were searching the building for an additional terrorist, preventing the entrance of rescue workers. Later Police Chief David Cohen confirmed that there were no additional attackers.

The terrorist entered the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in the neighborhood of Kiryat Moshe carrying weapons. He was not wearing a suicide-bomb belt as earlier reported.

The gunman entered the library where about 80 people were gathered, witnesses said, and opened fire.

Yitzhak Dadon, a student, said he was armed with a rifle and waited on the roof of a nearby building. “He came out of the library spraying automatic fire ... the terrorist came to the entrance and I shot him twice in the head,” he said.

Approximately 50 ambulances were sent to the scene and a 16-year-old boy in serious condition and suffering from chest wounds was seen being evacuated from the scene.

“It’s very sad tonight in Jerusalem - many people were killed in the heart of Jerusalem,” Mayor Uri Lupolianski told Channel 2,

“We bless the (Jerusalem) operation. It will not be the last,” Hamas said in a statement.

This terrorist attack, which was likely retaliation for last weekend’s incursion into Gaza, was the first in Jerusalem since early 2004. It is not going to help those peace talks that ostensibly were about to resume.

(Photo: AP)

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