RAEL JEAN ISAAC

PRESIDENT OF THE GLOBE

Shimon Peres, in a Yom Kippur eve statement, called upon mankind to meet “two of the most significant challenges which the world currently presents us with: the Terror against the Environment – or in other words, Global Warming – and the Terror against Humanity, that is, the prevention of the safety of mankind, as well as poverty.”

Here you have it, the reason Peres can’t be bothered with such petty issues as Israel’s survival. In his self-assigned role as Global President he must weigh Israel in the scale of his whole-earth responsibilities and in that framework Israel is a tiny, trivial geographic speck, scarcely worth of notice.

Perhaps next year Israel’s Prince of Grandiosity will decide he is President of the Universe and take upon himself the challenge of the black hole.

ARABS HONOR HERSH

Seymour Hersh is scheduled as the keynote speaker at the Arab American Chamber of Commerce’s conference on November 15 in Detroit. The conference is entitled “View Our World with Crystal Clarity” and there’s no doubt the Arabs demonstrate “crystal clarity” in assessing who their friends are. In the meantime Jews are clueless to distinguish friend from foe – witness their adulation for the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman with “investigative reporter” Seymour Hersh a close second. (For an in depth look at Hersh’s shoddy performance as a reporter see this writer’s “Investigating Seymour Hersh” in The Jewish Divide Over Israel, Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor eds., Transaction Publishers, 2006).

DEATH OF THE GROWNUP

Our favorite columnist Diana West has a new book "Death of the Grownup, "linking the emergence of the youth culture in the 1950s and 60s with the triumph of multiculturalism. But the book does much more.

In an interview with Frontpage, West explains the book’s contribution: “The book makes a connection between what seem to be superficial trappings of fashion and custom and what are the most significant challenges a civilization must contend with—war and survival.” West observes: “One of the things we all enjoy about childhood is getting lost in the world of pretend. But such flights of fancy are not supposed to govern us as adults formulating geo-political strategy. I write at length in the book about how our understanding of the struggle underway between the West and Islam begins and ends in the world of pretend: the PC, multicultural, ‘non-judgmental’ outlook on life that insists all cultures, religions, and peoples are equally benign and equally valuable, with the great exception being that of Western cultures, religions and peoples, which, according to multiculti cant, cause all evil in the world….We stick to a PC script that consigns all dangerous aspects of jihad violence and the Islamization of the West to a nasty, sort of mythical ‘band of extremists’ who have no connection to Islam’s teachings, history and goals. This explanation, while comforting as a bedtime story, is demonstrably absurd, as I show in the book. But such is the prevailing wisdom in our 21st century Age of Faith—multicultural faith.”

DOUBLE STANDARDS

Much has been made of the double standard practiced by Columbia, which invited Ahmadinejad but refuses to permit ROTC on campus. But the most important double standard is overlooked and goes far beyond Columbia. The real double standard is the one that condemns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (a Daily News headline told him to “Go to Hell”) while celebrating Mahmoud Abbas. Ahmadinejad is condemned for denying the Holocaust, yet Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis “proving” it did not happen. Ahmadinejad and Abbas have precisely the same genocidal goal—eliminating Israel. So why is Ahmadinejad condemned while many of those most vociferous in attacking him applaud his clone, Abbas, and an Israeli government falls over itself in efforts to give him a state, with (unbelievably) Jerusalem as its capital?

INDIFFERENT TO ISRAEL

A recent study (by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies) has found that young non-Orthodox Jews (Orthodox Jews are estimated to be only 8% of affiliated Jews) are increasingly alienated from Israel with implications for the future of support for Israel in this country. The study found that “feelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference and indifference gives way even to downright alienation.” According to the study only 48% of non-Orthodox U.S. Jews under 35 believe Israel’s destruction would be a personal tragedy for them (compared with 77% 65 and older) and only 54% are even “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state” (compared with 81% 65 and over). (continued on page 12)

The study’s findings are apt to produce much beating of breasts among Jewish organizations, but one can be sure little recognition by the breast-beaters of their own responsibility. In the March 2001 Outpost, in an article entitled “Into the Twilight: The Decline of American Jewish Influence,” Ruth King and I described the developments now coming into full flower. We wrote of the loss of focus of Jewish organizations as they “augmented their issues to include many that had nothing to do with Jews or Israel.”

We wrote how a segment of Jews with backgrounds in radical movements moved into professional Jewish communal work, encountering “a welcoming liberal Jewish community receptive to anything identified as a ‘progressive’ cause.” A growing array of trendy issues, from affirmative action to gay rights to environmentalism to multiculturalism were sanctified as “commanded” by Jewish religious tradition. “The end result,” we wrote, “was both to dissipate the energy of the organized Jewish community on a host of issues unrelated and often actually opposed to Jewish interests and to turn many Jewish organizations into vociferous critics of this or that aspect of Israeli policy (everything from insufficient ‘peace efforts’ to religious ‘coercion’ to inadequate ‘sensitivity’ to Israeli Arabs).”

How can it then be cause for surprise that the next generation of Jews feels indifferent (at best) to Israel? Or are blind to how important Israel is to their own welfare? What we wrote in 2001, before the huge upsurge in anti-Semitism in the West, remains as true as ever: “At their peril, American Jews have lost sight of the fact that Israel’s fate is inextricably bound to the fate of Jews worldwide…that a strong and secure Israel is the guarantor of the safety and well being of Jews in America.”