Obama on Wright: “Outrageously Wrong” March 23, 2008

And I agree.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s decision to publish a Hamas manifesto in his church bulletin — perhaps one of the most abrasive things one could print in one’s church newsletter — seems to be part of his now increasingly indefensible MO. Obama has called the decision “outrageously wrong” and told the JTA:

“I have already condemned my former pastor’s views on Israel in the strongest possible terms, and I certainly wasn’t in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin,” Obama said in a statement e-mailed to JTA late Thursday.

“Hamas is a terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of many innocents, and dedicated to Israel’s destruction, as evidenced by their bombarding of Sderot in recent months. I support requiring Hamas to meet the international community’s conditions of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and abiding by past agreements before they are treated as a legitimate actor.”

Obama needs to keep this guy as far away as possible.

“The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood” March 7, 2008

Only the most accomplished linguist could properly strike a phrase to accurately describe the carnage which occurred in Jerusalem’s Merkaz HaRav yeshiva today. Two Hezbollah-affiliated terrorists from the “Galilee Freedom Battalion” dressed as charedi Orthodox Jews, entered the yeshiva and one opened fire, showering the library with 500-600 bullets.
“The whole building looked like a slaughterhouse. The floor was covered in blood. The students were in class at the time of the attack…”
“The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood.”
– Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, ZAK”A rescue service
When it was over, 8 yeshiva students would be dead, another minyan of ten injured, and the two terrorists dead at the hands of a well-prepared yeshiva student, Yitzchak Dadon, armed with nothing but a rifle and a good vantage point.

Here’s why this story is so particularly disturbing to me — to the point of hysteria — a murder in a place of Torah scholarship says something more horrifying than anything which could happen on a bus.

It is written in Jewish tradition that the Melaveh Malkah meal, eaten by observant Jews at the conclusion of Shabbat, is done in honor of King David, who died on Saturday night, Jewish tradition teaches. It is written that King David knew that he had been decreed to have a short life span (only 70 years, borrowed from Adam’s life, who was supposed to live 1000 years), and that he would die at the conclusion of Shabbat, and it was for this reason that every Saturday night he would celebrate G-d’s keeping him alive by honoring the Shabbat one last time.

However, during the Shabbat, he would still take his own spiritual precautions just to be safe. He would engage exclusively in the study of Torah — because he knew the Torah would protect him from Death. Once, the angel sent to take King David’s soul was exasperated — he knew that he could do nothing while King David was engaged in the study of Torah — and decided to make a noise outside to catch King David off guard. The interruption of study was long enough for him to be able to take King David’s soul, and it was then that he died.

Torah is supposed to protect people. People aren’t supposed to die while holding their volumes of Talmud in their hands. “Holy books covered in blood”? How does this happen? Why isn’t the Torah protecting us?

Stories like this shake me to my core — things like this are supposed to be metaphysical impossibilities. In yeshiva they would tell us stories of how during Gulf War I, one of the most righteous heads of yeshivas would sit on the roof of the yeshiva and learn Torah continuously in hopes that the merit of their learning would protect the students, and those students would be proudly telling these stories, alive at Shabbos tables all over Brooklyn.

Forget the security — metaphysically, how could a terrorist walk into a room full of volumes and volumes of Torah and shoot down 8 people who dedicated a year of their lives to learning them? On the spiritual plane, what breach in our collective soul’s “security fence” was exploited to facilitate such death?

Israel is not Canada, is not Switzerland, is not Taiwan. Its security is not solely in the hands of its military and paramilitary forces, as it is written in Deuteronomy 11, Israel is “a land which the L-rd, your G-d, looks after; His eyes are upon it continually”. When something like this happens in a place of Torah scholarship in the holy city of Jerusalem, when yeshiva guys dedicated to Torah learning spill their lifeblood over the text of Gemara they were just learning, when a room full of prayers requesting life go so pungently replied to with a sharp “no” (on the physical plane) — then one who believes in G-d takes pause.

Hezbollah can not be the only reason this happened — though their murderous evil will be paid back to them by G-d eventually (Mishnah). We must put our minds, hearts, and souls into the spiritual reconnaissance mission we have been called upon — to find out where our “security breach” is, repair it, and come back united in tikkun, because apparently we are in dire straits.

“The Torah, Israel, and the Holy One, Blessed be He are One.” If the Torah is not protecting members of the nation of Israel IN Israel, what does that say?

We must ask ourselves “how did this happen” and prevent, both physically and spiritually, such carnage from ever happening again.

Rare Music Post: Amy Martin’s “All About Oil” November 8, 2007

As I do not know who this woman is, for me, there is, according to all opinions, no issue of kol ishah, but this song is a very potent synopsis of why we’re in Iraq, why our national debt has hit an unprecedented $9 trillion, why the US dollar is in the toilet, why social programs get the ax while Iraq spending is set to increase, why Bush can screw over the S-CHIP program while simultaneously not providing medical coverage for hundreds of thousands of veterans.

Allow Amy to state the reasoning simply for you. It’s about oil, greed, and old-boy systems.

Lyrics to the song are available here.

More Veterans On the Streets

A disturbing story from the New York Times today, “Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans”, highlights some of the plight of post-9/11 veterans, who have been turning up homeless or in need of assistance in greater numbers:

More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead.

[…]

The National Alliance to End Homelessness in Washington will release a report on Thursday saying that among one million veterans who served after the Sept. 11 attacks, 72,000 are paying more than half their incomes for rent, leaving them highly vulnerable.

Mr. Dougherty of the V.A. said outreach officers, who visit shelters, soup kitchens and parks, had located about 1,500 returnees from Iraq or Afghanistan who seemed at high risk, though many had jobs. More than 400 have entered agency-supported residential programs around the country. No one knows how many others have not made contact with aid agencies.

More than 11 percent of the newly homeless veterans are women, Mr. Dougherty said, compared with 4 percent enrolled in such programs over all.

Veterans have long accounted for a high share of the nation’s homeless. Although they make up 11 percent of the adult population, they make up 26 percent of the homeless on any given day, the National Alliance report calculated.

While veterans are returning, by and large, to more private welcomes than Vietnam veterans received during the 70s, 72% of Americans believe that the government should be doing more for its veterans, according to a March 2007 survey from the Pew Research Center. The founder of New Directions, a treatment center for veterans in Los Angeles, says that he foresees a bleak future for Iraq and Afghanistan vets:

“When the Vietnam War ended, that was part of the problem. The war was over, it was off TV, nobody wanted to hear about it,” said John Keaveney, a Vietnam veteran and a founder of New Directions in Los Angeles, which provides substance abuse help, job training and shelter to veterans.

“I think they’ll be forgotten,” Keaveney said of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. “People get tired of it. It’s not glitzy that these are young, honorable, patriotic Americans. They’ll just be veterans, and that happens after every war.”

The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness — mostly related to post-traumatic stress, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.

Overall, 45 percent of participants in the VA’s homeless programs have a diagnosable mental illness and more than three out of four have a substance abuse problem, while 35 percent have both, Dougherty said.

Iraq veterans have a higher incidence of post-traumatic stress than their counterparts from previous wars. The VA has been slow to respond to cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a fact which came to light after one veteran seeking treatment for the disorder was found hanging from an electrical cord at his Minnesota home after being put on a waiting list at a VA hospital.

Aid agencies expect a “tsunami” of new cases as time goes on. Indeed, as David W. Gorman, Executive Director of the Washington Headquarters of Disabled American Veterans (DAV) attests, while the media is touting a “30,000 injured veterans” number, the real number of injured vets is much higher:

On Veterans Day, politicians will praise the 30,000 troops “officially wounded” in action in Iraq and Afghanistan as if this “statistic” were some kind of “fact.” In doing so, they’ll harm the men and women who carry the burden of our nation’s defense in today’s very dangerous world.

That 30,000 number is a fantasy.

Here’s the truth about the human cost borne by the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as shown by data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Of the 1.5 million troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 720,000 (48%) are now veterans in the civilian population.

Of these, 202,000 have filed claims for VA disability benefits. The VA granted benefits in more than 90% of the cases processed so far, and will grant more upon appeal or presentation of additional evidence.

In other words, real statistics show that one out of four veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan is disabled in military service. This should shock no one as troops return to the war zones for their third, fourth, and now fifth tours of combat duty.

Of the 720,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, a quarter million have turned to the VA for treatment - more than one out of every three veterans of the combat theaters.

Gorman’s piece also highlights perhaps the crux of this entire issue — why are so many veterans being screwed by the very country we went out defend, and why is it happening at such a higher incidence lately?

Our government tried to do war on the cheap, failing to recognize the back-end cost of veterans with disabilities. True, it increased funding for VA programs each year - by amounts far below the rapidly increasing needs of our disabled heroes.

And it is these “back-end costs” which are going to continue to haunt us. Yet another example of the short-sightedness of starting a war with no foreseeable end, in a conflict where no one knows what constitutes “winning” anymore.

Who Cares About Ethiopians? October 16, 2007

An article from YNet today caught my eye. The body of Gabi Ababao Dwait a”h was returned to Israel from Lebanon on Monday, ending a three-year harrowing experience for the Dwait family, during which they had no idea where he was. No whereabouts. No videotaped messages flooding CNN. Nothing.

YNet reporter Danny Adino Ababa’s op-ed piece today, entitled “Who Cares About Ethiopians?” asks a question which I think should both ask, and answer, itself:

The Dwait family is a typical Ethiopian family whose world collapsed. The family was hit by one tragedy after another: A father who was run over by a car; a brother who committed suicide. For three years now, the family has been engaged in a search for the lost son. The son who nobody heard about, saw, or cared about. He just disappeared. Evaporated.

Just like any of us would do under such circumstances, they turned to the authorities, to the Israel Police. Yet the answer they received at the police stations in Haifa and Be’er Sheva was always the same: “He’s a big boy, he’ll return home.” Just like that. Just another Ethiopian guy wandering around – as if all members of the Ethiopian community are destined to wander forever.

Imagine that Gabi Dwait’s name was in fact Danny Gutshtein; imagine his family was Israeli-born and that his parents had connections in the right places – what would the last three years look like? Wide-scale searches, photos in the media, interviews with leading journalists?…Maybe some good will also come out of the fact that Gabriel Dwait’s tragedy finally exposed the humiliating attitude of the establishment, media, and Israel Police to members of the Ethiopian community.

Danny Admasu, director of the Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ), in his Jerusalem Post interview, shows that the Israeli Mishtara (Police Dept) is not the sole culprit, and that “integration of Ethiopians” into mainstream society (i.e., decreasing passive and covert racism) must be put on the front-burner in numerous arenas:

Admasu believes his role is to create awareness and dialogue so that Ethiopian Jews are more readily integrated and accepted.

“I want people to know that even if they don’t want us here, we are here to stay,” he says in a tone that he has made many an MK sit up and take notice.

“In the beginning, when Ethiopians first arrived here people said, ‘They are not educated; it will take at least 50 years for them to catch up,’ but that has happened much faster than anyone thought. Today, there are many educated Ethiopians, but they still end up working as security guards in the mall.

This is a serious problem and it must be solved. These people are the leaders of their family and their immediate community. If these people, who went to college, end up guarding a mall, everyone in the next generation sees that and says why do we bother? Why do I have to go to college if I will just end up working in a mall? We need to make this a big issue.”

Israeli security forces were unaware Dwait’s body was even in Lebanon until Hezbollah hinted that they had another Israeli there. “He’s a big boy, he’ll come home?” Would any Israeli-born family with “the right connections” even be told such a callous thing by an official? As his death wasn’t caused by Hezbollah fire (he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea), perhaps we can say this caused some of the lag in information gathering (after all, if you’re picking up bodies from a battlefield, drowning victims do begin to fade in priority), but to dismiss a grieving mother for three years and not even be aware of whether or not a soldier is in one’s own country or in enemy territory?

My condolences to the Dwait family, and I hope they are comforted in their time of need. I hope the Ethiopian community gets the representation it deserves. And above all, I hope that the worth of one’s lifeblood does not remain inversely proportional to the amount of melanin in their skin.

Rare Music Video Post October 2, 2007

Rarely do I post a music video from a band that I like on this blog. Unless it’s something particularly newsworthy or political.

In this case, though, there’s another reason to make an exception. Serj Tankian, the vocalist from System of a Down, has released a couple videos on YouTube, promoting singles from his upcoming solo album. One of them, “Empty Walls” is transparent in its intent: to redirect our attention away from the rhetoric and towards the tragic losses of humanity in our invasion of Iraq.

Of course, it’s nothing less than the politically supercharged wake-up call we’ve come to expect from System of a Down and Serj Tankian.

This video leaves little left unsaid and bears reposting and replaying. Bring the troops home…if not immediately, then at least bring them home alive.

Presidential Candidates On The Issues: Syria August 8, 2007

I’m going to give the nutshell version of the Jerusalem Post’s “Road to the White House” blog’s redacting of some of the presidential candidates’ responses to the question, “Which Assad do you believe? The one who threatens war or the one who says he wants to make peace?”

The candidates all gave responses which alluded to their future plans on how to deal with Syria’s Hezbollah links, and with Syrian President Assad in general.

First, the Democrats:
Obama: “I would engage Syria in direct bilateral talks.”
Clinton: “I have long argued that diplomatic discussions with Syria can aid our efforts…”
Edwards: “We must reengage Damascus today with tough diplomacy…”
Biden: “There could be real benefits to hard-headed diplomacy…”

McCain on the other hand does not use the word “diplomacy” (or any variant thereof) in his statement. He said “the US and the international community must face Syria from a position of strength”. McCain being a known warmonger hell-bent on not bringing American troops home, I can only hope that he doesn’t mean “position of strength” as being the military opposite of “diplomacy.”

McCain said that Hezbollah must be disarmed “one way or another” - I fear that his “or another” means deploying more American troops or American weaponry.

Then again, maybe America does need McCain — how else are we supposed to spend a whole $2 trillion on Iraq by 2016?

Thoughts On Bush War 3: The US-Iran War September 26, 2006

Thank you, Mr. David Lindorff:

Ordinarily one would say that the real sign of an imminent attack would be a convening of Congress to consider a use of force authorization, or perhaps an attempt in the United Nations to win endorsement for an attack from the UN Security Council, but clearly this is not happening.

And for good reason.

Bush would never succeed in winning Security Council approval for a military action against Iran, particularly after embarrassing and insulting the council members by the massive lying that he did the last time he sought such a vote–for an attack on Iraq–in 2003.

Nor would he likely be given the go-ahead by Congress this time around, with all of the House and a third of the Senate facing re-election on November 7 by an electorate that has grown weary of war, angry at a half trillion dollars wasted, and sick at heart about the thousands of flag-draped coffins and broken GIs returning home, with nothing to show for it all but two dysfunctional, war-torn former countries in the Middle East.

At issue is the obvious war exercises going on in and around Iran (see Mr. Lindorff’s The Nation article for detail and analysis).

Another Bush War? Is it more sickening or frightening? I can’t even fathom another budgetary catastrophe as such. I couldn’t have said it better than Mr. Lindorff.