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By Elana Estrin, www.JPost.com

From Fiddler on the Roof to the ubiquitous fiddler in the works of painter Marc Chagall to world-renowned musician Itzhak Perlman, the violin has long been associated with the Jewish people.

What accounts for this connection? The answer is still unclear, but scholars believe that Jewish ties to the violin may go back to the very beginning.

“It doesn’t look like the violin is of Italian origin. It looks like it’s of Jewish origin,” says Monica Huggett, a violinist and artistic director of the Historical Performance Program at the Juilliard School in New York City.

The origin of the violin has always been murky. Scholars have suspected that the violin’s precursor, the viol, was invented in Spain in the second half of the 15th century — before the Jews were expelled. Then, shortly after the Spanish expulsion, the viol showed up in Italy, where it quickly developed into the violin we know today. But who brought the viol to Italy and who is responsible for its development into the violin have largely remained a mystery.

In the last few decades, some scholars have concluded that Jewish musicians were the ones responsible. The violin seems to have originated in Italy in the first half of the 16th century, around the same time that the expelled Spanish Jews would have settled there. And the viol seems to have traveled the same path and at the same time that the Jews fled Spain.

While few scholars have published research backing this theory, the idea is beginning to strike a chord in the music world. At a biannual violin symposium at the Juilliard School in May, which draws the world’s top violinists, Huggett presented a keynote lecture outlining the history of the violin. She excitedly announced to the roughly 100 violinists in the audience that she’s waiting for more research to be conducted that would definitively add the violin to the list of Jewish achievements.

The first to propose this theory was Roger Prior, 73, a retired lecturer from the University of Belfast. He’s written two articles and a book about Jewish musicians around the time of the violin’s origin.

“Did you know that there’s no reference to the violin in Spain in the 16th century? When the Jews were pushed out of Spain, one of the obvious places they went to was Italy. That’s where the violin seems to have been developed. That’s the reason for linking the Jews and the violin. I think that’s been quite well-documented,” Prior says.

Prior serendipitously came to unravel the mystery of the Jewish musicians while researching a different discipline and a different part of Europe – the court of King Henry VIII. Around 1983, as a lecturer in the University of Belfast’s Department of English, Prior was researching the identity of the “Dark Lady,” the mysterious woman mentioned in several of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Noted British historian A.L. Rowse suggested that the Dark Lady was a woman by the name of Emilia Bassano, and Prior began investigating her biography.

He noticed parallel language describing her and Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It led him to suspect that Bassano was Jewish. He began to gather evidence confirming his hypothesis, but didn’t expect to find that several members of the Bassano family were the original members of the wind consort at King Henry VIII’s court. That discovery led him to the king’s Jewish string consort.

HERE’S HOW the story goes: In the early 16th century, King Henry VIII began a campaign to increase the prestige of the English court. He started by hiring prestigious Italian musicians, and in 1540 a group of six Italian viol players showed up at his doorstep. Prior’s research concludes that most of these viol players were probably Spanish or Portuguese Jews who had fled to Italy after the 1492 Spanish expulsion. Since Jews seem to have been leading viol players around the same time that the viol developed into the violin, Prior concludes that Jews may have played a role in the creation of the violin.

“I haven’t got any definite proof, but there’s an awful lot of evidence that the viol players were Jewish,” Prior says.

One piece of the puzzle Prior points to is a historically mysterious event in English history. Scholars have always known that in 1541, Henry VIII was told that there were “Marranos,” Portuguese Jews who formally converted to Christianity but still practiced Judaism in secret, living in London. He had these crypto-Jews imprisoned. Prior says that Henry normally wouldn’t hurry to imprison crypto-Jews, but the circumstances were exceptional; he was trying to win Charles V’s favor at the time, and thought that prosecuting “secret Jews” would prove himself as a Catholic. Charles’s English ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, praised the arrests. But suddenly, Charles’s sister and even the king and queen of Portugal wrote to Chapuys as advocates of the prisoners. In the end, the crypto-Jews were released.

Though this story has long been known, the identity of these secret Portuguese Jews has always been a mystery – that is, until Prior connected this account to his research of Henry VIII’s viol consort. First, he noticed that the records used to support the arrests came from Milan, which is where many of the viol players lived before coming to England.

Prior also studied a chilling letter Chapuys wrote in 1542, referencing the imprisoned Portuguese Jews: “Most likely, however well they may sing, they will not be able to fly away from their cages without leaving some of their feathers behind.”

According to Prior, this cryptic sentence is no longer a mystery: The birds Chapuys refers to must be a metaphor for musicians – namely, the Jewish viol consort of King Henry’s VIII’s court.

Though the songbird reference strongly suggests that the prisoners were musicians, what does Chapuys mean when he says that the prisoners can’t leave “without leaving some of their feathers behind”? Prior thinks that he may be referring to the deaths of two of the musicians while in prison. Here, another piece of the puzzle comes together.

John Anthony, a Jewish sackbut (early trombone) player, and Romano of Milan, a viol player, both died in prison. Anthony drew up a will, using the four members of the royal viol players as witnesses. Prior noticed two oddities in the official record of his will two days after his death: Anthony’s name suddenly appears as “Anthonii Moyses,” and one witness’s name, Ambrose of Milan, suddenly becomes “Ambrosius deolmaleyex.” Prior quickly concluded that Anthony was Jewish, since “Moyses” was a common Jewish name meaning “son of Moses.”

The trickier name to unravel was the enigmatic name “deolmaleyex.” Prior thinks that an incompetent English clerk butchered the name in a failed attempt to write down “de Olmaliah” or “de Almaliah,” which Prior says is the Sephardi version of “Elmaleh.” Prior presumes that the two probably changed their names to John Anthony and Ambrose of Milan to hide their Jewish identities. Most likely, he suspects, they revealed their real names in prison because they had nothing to hide anymore since they were imprisoned for being Jewish. And, on his deathbed, John Anthony probably figured he had nothing to lose.

It’s probably no coincidence that most of Henry VIII’s court musicians were Jewish. According to Prior, Henry probably chose Jewish musicians because they didn’t owe allegiance to either the Catholic Church or the Lutheran Church and were therefore more likely to be reliable servants for the English court. Another possibility is that at that time in England, Jews were renowned for being excellent musicians. Jewish musicians, in turn, saw England as a safe place of refuge from the Inquisition.

THERE’S FURTHER evidence that the violin may be of Jewish origin. It’s based on Prior’s second theory: that the renowned Amati family was Jewish. The Amatis are famed for being the first makers of the modern violin (and for teaching Antonio Stradivari, widely regarded to be the best violin craftsman in history). If the Amatis were Jewish, this could once again point to the violin being of Jewish origin since they were the earliest prominent makers of the modern violin.

Once again, in collecting evidence about the Amatis, Prior looked to their last name. He consulted Bibliografia Ebraica, a book of Jewish-Italian names by Carlo Barduzzi, which posits that the Hebrew surname “Haviv,” which means lovable or likable in Hebrew, is equivalent to the Italian surname “Amato,” which means beloved in Italian.

“Their last name may be evidence of the Jewish connection with the violin. They may have chosen the name, of course. I think it’s the Jewish habit of taking positive-sounding names which bring good luck,” Prior says. Despite this evidence, he acknowledges that it’s not enough to verify for certain that the Amatis were Jewish.

At this point, Prior’s theories are only theories. One skeptic is Prof. Alexander Knapp, an ethnomusicologist from the University of London who specializes in Jewish music. He contends that there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the violin is of Jewish origin.

“As far as I understand, the viol existed in Italy and lots of other places throughout Europe. One can’t say it existed in Spain and was then brought to Italy. Even if it was, it doesn’t mean to say that Jews are the only ones who played the viol. So the violin could have been invented by others, then the Jews traveled. But other people traveled too, like gypsies. So I think it’s unrealistic, wishful thinking to say that,” Knapp says.

WHETHER OR not Jews were instrumental in creating the violin, some of today’s leading violinists have their own theories about Jews’ historically disproportionate affinity for it. These violinists, needless to say, are Jewish, too.

“The violin has always been a Jewish instrument,” says Russian-Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman. “I hope I’m not perceived as chauvinistic, but it’s a fact of life: The greatest violinists who ever lived were Jewish. I do feel that I am the next link. I carry on the tradition, to the best of my ability of course. I feel the weight of generations on my shoulders.”

That tradition includes 17th-century Jewish virtuoso violinist Salamone Rossi (credited with being one of the first composers of violin music), and three of the leading violinists in the 19th century: Joseph Joachim, to whom Johannes Brahms dedicated his violin concerto; Ferdinand David, to whom Felix Mendelssohn dedicated his violin concerto; and Henryk Wieniawski, who was a virtuoso violinist and composer of significant works for the violin.

The list of the 20th century’s leading violinists is heavily dominated by Jews, each considered to be among the best violinists of all time: Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein and Mischa Elman, among others. And many of today’s leading violinists carry on the torch in the world’s concert halls, including Itzhak Perlman, Shlomo Mintz, Pinchas Zukerman, Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell, Hagai Shaham and Vadim Gluzman.

What accounts for the phenomenon? There are about as many theories as there are Jewish violinists. A popular theory posits that the Jews have historically been a mobile people and therefore have preferred a mobile instrument. So why is there no strong connection between the Jewish people and, say, the flute?

“The flute hasn’t captured the Jewish imagination as much as the violin has,” Knapp conjectures. “String instruments have a certain intensity and passion, and capture the feelings of the heart in a way that’s intense and immediate.”

Israeli violinist Hagai Shaham suggests that this “intensity and passion” of the violin is well-suited to Jewish music. And he has an answer for why the clarinet, which is both portable and important in klezmer music, has not been picked up by as many Jewish musicians.

“Jewish music in general is much more expressive. The violin is a much more sophisticated instrument than the clarinet – it’s much more versatile. And there are more job possibilities for a violinist, since there are many more violin seats than clarinet seats in an orchestra. The violin was a better bet,” Shaham says.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, when career paths for Jews were limited, the potential for job opportunities was a strong selling point for taking up the violin.

“At least for Russian Jews, that was the only way out of settlements,” Gluzman says. “If you were accepted into the St. Petersburg Conservatory, that was your way into the big city. So the violin became a tool of hope, because it was convenient. They were the children of hope: Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein. That was the way for them and their families to move and have the legal right to bigger cities.”

He adds that this inevitably led to competition among families: “Every Jewish momma had to have her son play the fiddle; otherwise she’d be losing to the mom next door.”

Shaham says that Jewish families in recent history were prepared for the challenge to rise to the top.

“Jewish society is very competitive; it strives for excellence. Part of the culture of excellence was that young kids from the age of three were sent to study in the heder [Hebrew school]. Education, discipline and perfectionism were very important. It yielded good results, and they applied it also in musical studies,” Shaham says.

IF A culture of excellence and discipline accounts for the number of leading Jewish violinists, this same cultural tradition could account for the recent surge in leading Asian violinists.

“In the 20th century, it was part of the Jewish culture – everyone studied the violin. In recent years, we have Asian violinists in great numbers because everyone studies violin there,” Shaham says.

A further link between Judaism and the violin may lie in the hassidic musical tradition.

“The root of it is in the hassidic tradition, of course,” Gluzman says. “Hassidism gave importance to celebration in music. The violin was the instrument, next to clarinet and bass drum, depending on what they had in the village at the time. They played music to celebrate everything, from births to weddings.”

Yet another consideration is the musical tradition in the synagogue.

“It may be that the violin appeals to the Jewish soul because of the intensity of its music. Maybe it recollects the intensity of the hazan’s voice,” Knapp says.

The jury is still out on the origins of the violin, and the reasons for the remarkable affinity Jews have had to this instrument. But there’s one more theory, proposed by a simple dairy farmer named Tevye.

“A fiddler on the roof: sounds crazy, no?” Tevye begins in the opening of the popular musical which has become synonymous with Jewish life. “But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say, every one of us is a fiddler on the roof – trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy… And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition! Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as, as… as a fiddler on the roof!”

By Cybele Weisser, www.TIME.com

While the recession hasn’t spared any age group, it’s been particularly brutal for older Americans who were counting on their (now shrunken) nest eggs to last through their retirement years. To supplement their stash, an increasing number of seniors are turning to reverse mortgages, which function essentially as a cash advance on their home equity, repaid only when they sell their home or die. The loans are available to those 62 and over, and lenders have to eat the difference if a home ends up declining in value. In the three months after February–when a provision in the economic-stimulus package raised the eligible home-value limit from $417,000 to $625,500–the number of federally insured reverse-mortgage originations jumped 10% compared with the same period last year. Industry experts predict that reverse mortgages will play an increasingly important role in the coming years as some 70 million baby boomers hit their 60s–often with a lot less saved than they’d hoped.

This has some folks in Washington concerned. In June, the Government Accountability Office said it had uncovered misleading marketing practices in the reverse-mortgage industry, and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, a longtime consumer advocate, chaired a hearing to investigate predatory lending tactics. A big no-no is cross-selling, e.g., trying to persuade a senior to get a reverse mortgage and use the funds to buy an annuity or other financial product.

Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan recently noted that reverse mortgages, like some flavors of the infamous subprime mortgages, are too complex for many seniors to understand. “Millions of older Americans still have a lot of equity in their homes, and it’s tempting for them to tap into this pot of money,” he says.

Still, under the right conditions, these loans can be a sensible solution to a tough financial situation. So if you or your parents are considering one, here’s what you need to know:

The amount you can borrow is based on interest rates, your age and the value of your home. (Use the calculator at www.rmaarp.com for an estimate.) There are no credit or income requirements to get a reverse mortgage, but you must be able to keep up with property taxes and insurance bills–or you could lose your home. The up-front costs are high. Generally, $10,000 to $15,000 in fees are lopped off the amount you can borrow. Finally, if someone is pressuring you to take one of these loans in order to buy something else, that’s a huge red flag. Walk away.

Lenders aren’t allowed to close on a federally insured reverse mortgage until borrowers meet with a HUD-approved counselor, who is required to help them explore alternatives such as selling their home or lowering their expenses. That’s because the greatest reverse-mortgage risk, especially for younger borrowers, may be that they will live longer than they expected and drain all the available equity from their home. Says reverse-mortgage specialist Bronwyn Belling: “If you borrow the money now, you may not have it when you need it later on.”

By Amro Hassan, LATimesblogs.LATimes.com

Gamal Mubarak

Opposition leaders and political parties have started a new front to challenge the prospect that President Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal, an untested politician with limited domestic and international experience, will succeed in the 2011 elections.

Talk of succession has gripped the country in recent months as Gamal Mubarak’s profile has risen, including a trip to Washington with his 81-year-old father. Gamal is an influential voice in the ruling National Democratic Party. But many Egyptians, who have suffered under the government’s economic programs and repressive human rights policies, don’t want the presidency kept in the Mubarak family.

The new front took the name Mayehkomsh — Egyptian slang for “You don’t have the right to rule” — as its slogan. The question, however, remains: How can a disparate group of opposition parties successfully come together to challenge a police state that has pressured them for years with intimidation and arrests?

The anti-succession coalition, initiated by former presidential candidate and founder of El Ghad party, Ayman Nour, gained momentum in a conference held October 14 among representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Movement for Change (Kefaya), the Democratic Front, the Egyptian Communist party, and the Justice and Development party.

“This is a campaign to confront this irregular and illogical state, where a president-in-waiting is practicing all the duties of the president already,” Nour said at the conference. “Our constitution is for a republic, not a kingdom,” he said.

Hassan Nafee, a professor of political science at Cairo University, was chosen to be general coordinator of the campaign. “Fighting the succession is only part of a bigger project targeting the establishment of a democratic ruling system,” Nafee said.

Nour, who was runner-up to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt’s first contested elections, in 2005, received a five-year imprisonment in December of that year after the government accused him of forging signatures in order to establish his party. He was released on health grounds in February this year and has been strongly calling for democratic reforms and fighting succession plans. He can’t run in the next elections because of his earlier conviction.

Iran’s proxy army in Lebanon will think twice before launching another round of missile attacks.

By Ronen Bergman,

On October 12, a secret Hezbollah munitions bunker in South Lebanon blew up under mysterious circumstances, injuring a senior official in the organization. This is the second such incident in recent months. The first occurred on July 14, when an explosion destroyed a major Hezbollah munitions dump in the South Lebanese village of Hirbet Salim. Hezbollah immediately pointed fingers at the Mossad. Whether or not Israel was to blame, the explosion caused Hezbollah considerable discomfort by proving that it was in flagrant violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which forbids stockpiling weapons south of the Litani River.

The U.N. issued a strongly worded rebuke and sent representatives to investigate. But their efforts were thwarted by Hezbollah fighters, who, with the assistance of Lebanese troops, prevented the foreigners from examining the site. This caused further embarrassment to Lebanon, as it exposed the army’s lack of neutrality and the active aid that it extends to Hezbollah.

The episode also led to heightened tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border. The specter of renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah looms as large today as it has at any time since the end of the Lebanon war in August 2006. Yet senior military officers in Israel’s Northern Command are confident that the embarrassing outcome of the last round will not be repeated.

“By all means, let the Hezbollah try,” one officer told me two weeks ago when I asked if he was concerned about the possibility of warfare. “The welcome party that we are preparing for them is one that they will remember for a very long time.” That sentiment is shared by many of his colleagues.

The recent explosions have highlighted the weakened geopolitical status of Hezbollah, a diminishment which no one could have foreseen at the end of the last war. In 2006, on both sides of the border—and elsewhere in the Middle East—Hezbollah was seen as having triumphed. Not only was it able to withstand the vastly superior invading Israeli force, but it also inflicted heavy military casualties and brought civilian life in northern Israel to a standstill with its rockets. At the end of the war, a commission of inquiry was set up in Israel to investigate the military and political failure. A number of senior army officers resigned, and Israel’s deterrence power was seen as having sustained a severe blow.

If the 2006 war underlined the military might of Hezbollah—a repeat, in a sense, of Hezbollah’s success in driving out the Israeli occupying forces from South Lebanon in May 2000—it also forced Israel to include Hezbollah in any assessment of possible responses to an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear installations.

As part of its combat doctrine, which eschews reliance on reinforcements and resupply, Hezbollah has stockpiled its weapons throughout Lebanon, but particularly near the Israeli border. According to current Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah has an arsenal of 40,000 rockets, including Iranian-made Zelzal, Fajr-3, Fajr-5, and 122 mm rockets (some of which have cluster warheads), and Syrian-made 302 mm rockets. Some of its rockets can reach greater Tel Aviv. Hezbollah also has a number of highly advanced weapons systems, including anti-aircraft missiles, that constitute a threat to Israeli combat aircraft.

But all is not rosy for Hezbollah. After the war, considerable dissatisfaction with the organization was voiced inside Lebanon. Many blamed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, for Israel’s retaliatory bombardments that caused widespread damage. Nasrallah stated that had he known Israel would respond as forcefully as it did, he would have thought twice before ordering the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers—the act that sparked the conflict.

Harsh criticism of Hezbollah also came from an unexpected source: Tehran. The Iranian strategy calls for Hezbollah to play two roles. One is to instigate minor border provocations. The other is to launch, on Tehran’s command, a full-scale retaliatory attack should Israel target Iran’s nuclear facilities. The 2006 war met neither criterion, and, as the Iranians complained, merely served to reveal the extent of Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

Then, in February 2008, Imad Mughniyeh, the organization’s military commander and Nasrallah’s close associate, was killed in a car bomb in Damascus. The assassination of the man who topped the FBI’s most-wanted list prior to Osama bin Laden was a severe blow to morale, as well as to Hezbollah’s strategic capabilities. Nasrallah was convinced that the Mossad was responsible, and vowed to take revenge “outside of the Israel-Lebanon arena.”

The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, which is also responsible for protecting the country’s legations abroad, has been on high alert ever since. But as of today, Hezbollah has not exacted its revenge. This fact was a topic of discussion at a high-level, secret forum of Israel’s intelligence services that took place from late July to early September.

Israeli officials raised four possible reasons for Hezbollah’s failure to act, all of which reflect its current weakness.

First, no replacement has been found for Mughniyeh, whose strategic brilliance, originality, and powers of execution are sorely missed by Hezbollah.

Second, Israel’s intelligence coverage of Iran and Hezbollah is far superior today to what it was in the past. Planned attacks, including one targeting the Israeli Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, have all been foiled. The Israeli security services have warned Israeli businessmen abroad of possible abduction attempts by Hezbollah. They also shared information with Egyptian authorities that led to the arrest of members of a Hezbollah network who intended to kill Israeli tourists in Sinai. The arrest of these operatives resulted in sharp public exchanges between Egypt, Hezbollah, and its Iranian masters when Nasrallah admitted that these, in fact, were his men.

Third, Nasrallah cannot afford to be viewed domestically as the cause of yet another retaliation against Lebanon. Any act of revenge that he contemplates needs to be carefully calibrated. On the one hand, it needs to hurt the enemy and be spectacular enough to stoke Hezbollah pride. On the other hand, it cannot be so murderous as to cause Israel to respond with force. To complicate matters further, Israel has made it clear that because Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, despite the fact that the party that it backed lost in the recent election, any Hezbollah action against Israel would be viewed as an action taken by the Lebanese government. Thus Israel would regard Lebanese infrastructure as a legitimate target for a military response.

Finally, there are the Iranians. Their primary focus is on proceeding with their nuclear program without unnecessary distractions. Tehran’s main concern is that a terror attack that can be linked to Iran would result in the arrest of its agents overseas, who are currently procuring equipment for its uranium-enrichment centrifuges.

Tehran has avoided direct involvement in foreign terrorism ever since 1996, when a group of Iranians were convicted in Germany of murdering political opponents of the Iranian regime. And unlike in the past (as, for instance, in the case of the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in retaliation for the assassination of Nasrallah’s predecessor), it is now reluctant to place intelligence resources at Hezbollah’s disposal. This is a serious blow to Hezbollah, which is not yet able to function internationally as a full-fledged independent operational organization.

Hezbollah is also clearly aware of the severe blow in terms of power and prestige that the Iranian mullahs suffered as a result of the massive protests following June’s presidential election. Automatic support from Tehran is no longer a certainty. For now, at least, the Iranian hardliners have troubles of their own.

In short, despite the fact that Hezbollah today is substantially stronger in purely military terms than it was three years ago, its political stature and its autonomy have been significantly reduced. It is clear that Nasrallah is cautious and he will weigh his options very carefully before embarking on any course of action that might lead to all-out war with Israel. There are some experts in Israel who believe that even Hezbollah’s retaliatory role in the Iranian game plan is currently in question.

Whether or not this is the case, all of this is being considered in Jerusalem as part of Israel’s calculations about whether to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Mr. Bergman, a correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, is the author of the “The Secret War With Iran” (Free Press, 2008).

www.nydailynews.com

Dare defend yourself from terrorist attacks and risk international war crimes prosecution.

That is the lesson of the October 16 action by the UN Human Rights Council, which voted 25 to 6, with 11 abstentions, to endorse the Goldstone Report, a document that brands Israelis as war criminals for trying to stop deadly rocket-fire from Gaza 10 months ago.

Ever since Israel’s 2005 pullout from Gaza, Israeli civilians were battered by thousands of mortars and rockets launched by Hamas in its war to destroy the Jewish state and kill its people.

And, straight from the terrorist textbook, Hamas was assembling and launching its rockets from civilian neighborhoods, near mosques, near schools, near hospitals.

Late last year, Israel finally launched a military offensive to stop the terror. Wherever and whenever civilians might be harmed, Israel’s military dropped leaflets to urge civilians to clear out. An innovative new technique of “knocking” on roofs with non-exploding noisemakers was employed as well, to give ordinary Palestinians every opportunity to save themselves.

Because, it was Israel’s objective to punish and disarm the terrorists, no one else.

For this, the Human Rights Council – already known for its anti-Israel bias – opened an investigation, producing a report calling the terrorists and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) equally culpable. Equally guilty of crimes against humanity.

The Council has now formally ratified this libel and urged Israeli and Palestinian authorities to demonstrate that they are investigating the alleged crimes. Or else the charges will be referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

In fact, Palestinian Authority officials recenlty visited that court to argue for its jurisdiction over these matters.

Which means Israeli commanders who set out to defend innocent people from indiscriminate attacks, with painstaking plans to protect civilians in the process, could wind up alongside the butchers of Darfur, alongside those tried at Nuremberg.

Only five nations stood with the U.S. in opposition: Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Good for them.

We have to ask, again, what’s the use of Americans sitting on the Council, spitting into its hurricane-force winds? 25 nations are party to the crime—among them: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. Shame on them. Do you see a pattern?

France and Britain were among the abstainers. Unlike the abstaining dictatorships, the democracies should have known better; so, double shame on them.

As Elie Wiesel once said, “Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor.”

Retired General Says Israeli Attack to Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Not Only Possible, the U.S. Should Join In

By Dan Raviv, www.CBSnews.com

Expect the unexpected at a conference of Middle East experts.

Several hundred spent a recent weekend at a resort hotel 30 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., forced by cold rain to focus on nothing but Iran and the nearly moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

At this annual gathering of financial backers of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy – joined by diplomats, journalists, and analysts – many had expected a feisty debate between proponents and opponents of a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Instead, the crowd heard experts suggesting the military option is a very realistic one; and a retired U.S. Air Force general said Israel might open fire first – and that the United States would find it wise to join in.

Gen. Charles Wald, former head of strategic planning and policy for the Air Force who also had been deputy commander at U.S. European Command, said a bombing campaign – while “unpalatable” – could set back Iran’s nuclear work for many years.

“I don’t think Israel can do it alone,” Wald added. “They have a fantastic military, but not big enough for weeks or months of attacks – hundreds of sorties per day.”

Wald said the U.S. would not exactly be dragged into air strikes on Iran, but if “our great ally Israel” decided that it “can’t take it anymore” – the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb – then “pressure will mount for us to stand by Israel.”

The general said that after commanding the air portion of the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan, he thought deeply about neighboring Pakistan and the possibility that it might one day use its nuclear arsenal. “I asked my staff to look into what would happen if there were a Pakistani-Indian nuclear exchange. They said there’d be tens of millions of dead at the low end, and 300 million dead at the high end.”

Wald said he soon discovered what the Pakistani leaders’ reaction to that analysis was: They had not thought of that.

Wald suggested Iran, Israel, and other Middle Eastern nations that were likely to feel compelled to acquire nuclear bombs might also be failing to face facts.

“In 2003, General Jim Jones [now President Obama's National Security Adviser] and I sat down with our Strategic Advisory Group for Europe. I couldn’t get anyone interested in talking about Iran. The subject was always Iraq. And now Afghanistan is sucking all the oxygen out of the room.” Wald added that Arab governments along the Persian Gulf, however, have for years had Iran as their main concern.

Sitting near Wald, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence – retired General Aharon Farkash – agreed that the U.S. Air Force could be far more effective than Israel in crippling Iran’s nuclear program. “The U.S. can destroy the nuclear capacity, and the war would not be long,” Farkash said, though he cautioned that Western intelligence still might not know about all of Iran’s nuclear sites.

Like other Israelis, Farkash stressed the importance of making Iran believe that U.S. and Israeli threats are real. Harsh sanctions might lead to a decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to stop nuclear enrichment.

“The Teheran regime doesn’t seek suicide,” said the Israeli, who heads a new high-tech security company. “When they realize we mean business this time, they won’t want to lose their regime.”

David Makovsky, a senior analyst at the Washington Institute and co-author (with Obama administration official Dennis Ross) of a book on Middle East policy, commented that the generals gave the impression of two different attack philosophies: “The U.S. believes ‘do it huge, and make it overwhelming,’ while Israel would do what it can because not acting is so much worse.”

Makovsky asked General Wald to comment on the suggestion by Jimmy Carter’s former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski – in a Daily Beast interview last month – that the U.S. shoot down Israeli warplanes if they try to fly over Iraq to attack Iran.

“The chance of that,” Wald replied, “is zero. No, less than zero.”

Earlier, the same audience heard a former vice-president of the Islamic Republic of Iran argue that if his country is attacked, the pro-democracy “Green Movement” would be extinguished. Ata’ollah Mohajerani, who resides in London but is considered close to opposition candidate Mehdi Karoubi, said he strongly supports the reform movement, and considers Ahmadinejad’s re-election illegitimate. But he said a military strike or severe sanctions would serve to strengthen the regime.

The Iranian politician’s unexpectedly long speech included references to books by Dostoevsky, Kafka, Walt Whitman, Elie Wiesel, and even Britain’s chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Mohajerani claimed that any good Muslim would not want nuclear weapons, but he made a point of saying that most of the nations putting pressure on Iran now have their own nuclear arsenals, alleging also that the United States and Israel wanted Iran to have atomic bombs when the late Shah was in power.

Responding to questions from supporters of Israel at the conference, Mohajerani refused to condemn Iranian-supported terrorism and declined to say if he thought Israel has a right to exist. Many in the crowd, believing that Mohajerani’s goal in this rare appearance near Washington was to raise money and support for the Green Movement, said they were bitterly turned off. It looked to them like a Green-led Iran would not necessarily be much different from Ahmadinejad’s regime.

Based in Washington, CBS News correspondent Dan Raviv is host of radio’s “CBS News Weekend Roundup,” and co-author of “Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israeli Intelligence.”

The USS New York sails down the Mississippi River through the Port of New Orleans in New Orleans, La., Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009. The ship was built with about eight tons of steel from the World Trade Center site and is on its way to New York, its home port. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

By Alan Sayre, www.Globe.com

AVONDALE, La.—A Navy assault ship built with tons of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center towers began its journey to New York on Tuesday, Oct 13, sailing down the Mississippi River in a pea-soup fog as watchers along the levee strained for a glimpse.

The USS New York, named to commemorate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, left the Northrop Grumman shipyard where it was built for the trip to its namesake city. The $1 billion ship will be formally commissioned in New York in early November.

The New York is 684 feet long and can carry up to 800 Marines. It has a flight deck that can handle helicopters and the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Four tugboats performed an intricate set of maneuvers to pull the warship from the dock at the New Orleans-area shipyard and turn it 180 degrees toward the waters of Gulf of Mexico. An armed Coast Guard speedboat and a helicopter flying overhead guarded the vessel. The ship will sail through the Gulf and around Florida before turning north and continuing to New York.

Deputy project manager Doug Lounsberry said the vessel was important to the builders, not only because it honors those killed in the terrorist attacks, but because workers were hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 during the early phases of construction.

“It’s like raising a kid,” Lounsberry said. “We’re sending this one off to college. But after they leave, they remain near and dear to your heart.”

Farther down the Mississippi, hundreds of people lined up along the river bank to watch the ship pass. Around 9:45 a.m., a man called “Here she comes!” prompting well-wishers to raise U.S. flags and camera phones, as the hulking warship emerged from the haze.

Tourists Dorice and Victor Brown and Christine Cox, of Sterling, Va., were getting coffee and pastries at a nearby cafe when they asked about the commotion and decided to check it out for themselves.

“It’s awesome for anything so tragic to be so uplifting here,” Cox said, just after the ship had passed.

Brian Corcoran, a mechanical contractor, brought his four children, who range in age from 12 to 5. He figured they might be a bit late for school but was OK with that, given the importance of the occasion.

“Hopefully, it’s going overseas to do damage to them like it did to us,” he said.

When terrorist hijackers crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, destroying the twin towers and killing nearly 2,800 people, the ship was already on the drawing board. In September 2002, the Defense Department announced the selection of New York as the ship’s name, honoring the city and state and those who died in the attacks.

About 7.5 tons of World Trade Center steel was melted at the Bradken Inc. foundry in Amite, La., and used in the New York’s bow.

The New York revives a name held by at least four other Navy ships, including a Spanish-American War-era cruiser, a battleship that served in World Wars I and II and a nuclear submarine retired from the fleet in 1997.

The ship is a San Antonio-class amphibious dock vessel. The first four ships in the series — the USS San Antonio, USS New Orleans, USS Mesa Verde and USS Green Bay — are in service. Four other ships in the class ate under construction: Somerset and Anchorage at the Avondale yard, and Arlington and San Diego at Northrop Grumman’s yard in Pascagoula, Miss.

Arlington and Somerset also carry names connected to the Sept. 11 attacks: Arlington for the attack on the Pentagon and Somerset for the Pennsylvania county in which United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after being hijacked.

By Phyllis Chesler, www.PajamasMedia.com

Finally, at the midnight hour, some European governments have begun to fight back—not against the Islamification of Europe but against inhumane, even barbaric political practices in the name of religion that violate Western standards of universal human rights.

Thus, first France, but now Italy have called for a ban on the burqa. Italy’s Northern League proposal “aims at amending a 1975 law, introduced amid concern over domestic terrorism, which bans anyone wearing anything which makes their identification impossible.” The Northern League also has the backing of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party. The League’s Roberto Cota said: “We are not racist and we have nothing against Muslims but the law must be equal for everyone.”

When France’s President Sarkozy first called for a similar ban, a self-identified branch of al-Qaeda in Northern Africa threatened to attack France over this.

Predictably, center-left opposition MPs criticized the Italian proposal and said it was

“unconstitutional because it infringes on religious freedom and justifying it because of law and order is totally out of place.”

Not so fast.

Verily, we live in an age of miracles; thus, none other than Sheik Mohammed Tantawi, the leading religious figure of Al-Azhar, was, just the other day, “reportedly angered” when he toured a school in Cairo and saw a girl wearing “ niqab,” which means that her face was masked or possibly that she was wearing a full head, face, and body covering.

“Sheik Tantawi, regarded by many as Egypt’s Imam and Sunni Islam’s foremost spiritual authority, asked the teenage girl to remove her veil saying: “The niqab is a tradition, it has no connection with religion.” The imam instructed the girl, a pupil at a secondary school in Cairo’s Madinet Nasr suburb, never to wear the niqab again and promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against its use in schools. The ruling will not affect use of the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn by most Muslim women in Egypt.

Following the imam’s lead, Egypt’s minister of higher education is to ban female undergraduates from wearing the niqab at the country’s public universities, Cairo’s Al-Masri Al-Yom newspaper reported.

Again, don’t rejoice too soon.

Even the very influential Sheik Tantawi has his fundamentalist detractors who have excoriated him for supporting France’s ban on hijab in public schools and for shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres. And, clearly, the Egyptian government is unhappy about the gathering forces of Islamic fundamentalism that consistently manipulate women and women’s clothing as symbolic political statements. Some have even called for more severe Islamic clothing for women in which only one eye (Algerian style) can show. The Egyptian government understands that it is at risk vis-à-vis Islamic fundamentalists.

Now, some European politicians understand this too.

Follow the burqa. Where it goes, you will probably find normalized wife-battering, serious child abuse, including honor killings too—as well as polygamy, and a pathological hatred of Jews, Israelis, Hindus, Americans, and all other

“infidels.” There you may also find terrorist cells or supporters of terrorism. From this point of view—ban the burqa, and it may lead to an exodus of terrorists back to their fundamentalist-friendly home countries. But there is another point of view that interests me more, namely, the human rights/woman’s rights argument as grounds to ban the burqa. I have made that argument in these pages. I have found support from Muslim feminists, first at an international conference in Rome, and now in a new book on the subject.

I have been reading the most elegant and excellent book on the subject of the Islamic veil written by Marnia Lazreg. Questioning the Veil. Open Letters to Muslim Women is carefully reasoned and beautifully written. Lazreg is an Algerian Muslim feminist academic and her mother once wore the veil. She is respectful of Muslim women’s own feelings and of their religious desires. She argues that the veil (face, head, and full body covering) is not commanded in the Koran; that it is harmful to women’s physical and mental health; and that it is mainly a political statement about fundamentalism and misogyny. She has little patience for feminist academics who themselves are not forced to veil and who “play” at imagining or de-constructing the veil as “liberating” or as a statement of “resistance.” Of course, she is also on record as having objected to the “manner in which Muslim women have been portrayed in books as well as the media,” namely, in ways that focus on them only as oppressed victims.

In her last letter, Lazreg implores Muslim women to stop wearing the veil. “It is a symbol of inequality…it undermines faith… it objectifies women for (reasons of) political propaganda just like advertising in Western society does: one by covering, and the other by exposing women’s’ bodies.” Lazreg also views the veil as harming Muslim women’s employment because “hijab symbolically inserts her into a virtual domestic space” and affects how she is viewed and treated at work. She re-defines “modesty” as related to behavior and character rather than to appearance and opposes “the straitjacketing of a woman’s body. Removing or refusing to veil does not mean that a Muslim woman has succumbed to the West. She writes:

“Not wearing the veil is not a victory of the ‘West,’ it is women’s victory over a custom that inflects their thinking about themselves as human beings. Wearing the veil is not a strike against anti-Muslim prejudice…As long as states mandate or prohibit veiling, as long as political movements advocate for it, as long as organized networks with books, lectures, DVDs, and course packets promote it far and wide, a woman can never be sure she takes up the veil freedly…Ultimately, there is no compelling justification for veiling, not even faith…No one is entitled to turn the veil into a political flag.”

There’s more, much more, and I encourage you all to read this fine book.

The Muslim Canadian Congress just recently urged that the burqa be banned in Canada. Given Sheik Tantawi’s statement and the fact that the burqa is also forbidden at Mecca, the Congress argues that it should be forbidden in Canada too.