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by Rabbi Ken Spiro www.aish.com

An excerpt from Spiro’s WorldPerfect: The Jewish Impact on Civilization

The creation of the United States of America represented a unique event in world history. Unlike other countries where democracy evolved over a period of hundreds of years, the United States was the first country to be created, from its inception, as a democracy. And the Bible ― and Jewish values ― played a major role in this process.

Many of the earliest “pilgrims” who settled the “New England” of America in early 17th century were Puritan refugees escaping religious persecutions in Europe.

Over the next century, America continued to be not only the land of opportunity for many people seeking a better life but also the land of religious tolerance. By the middle 1700′s, the east coast of America was settled by a virtual “Who’s Who” of Christian splinter sects from all over Europe. Among them were:

* the Puritans, whom we already know so well
* the Quakers, an extremist Puritan sect who did not believe in ministers and for whom a Society of Friends meeting together was good enough to bring down the Holy Spirit
* Calvinists, who early on had challenged the Catholic belief that the bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus in the celebration of the mass
* the Huguenots, or French Calvinists
* the Moravians, followers of John Hus, the protestant martyr from Bohemia
* the Mennonites, a Swiss sect of Anabaptists who rejected infant baptism
* the Amish, the most stringent of the Mennonites

These were just some of the numerous groups who arrived in America in search of religious freedom.

The majority of the earliest settlers were, of course, Puritans. Beginning with the Mayflower, over the next twenty years, 16,000 Puritans migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and many more settled in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Like their cousins back in England, these American Puritans strongly identified with both the historical traditions and customs of the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament. They viewed their emigration from England as a virtual re-enactment of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. To them, England was Egypt, the king was Pharaoh, the Atlantic Ocean was the Red Sea, America was the Land of Israel, and the Indians were the ancient Canaanites. They were the new Israelites, entering into a new covenant with God in a new Promised Land. Thanksgiving ― first celebrated in 1621, a year after the Mayflower landed ― was initially conceived as day parallel to the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur; it was to be a day of fasting, introspection and prayer.

Gabriel Sivan, in The Bible and Civilization, (p. 236) observes:
No Christian community in history identified more with the People of the Book than did the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed their own lives to be a literal reenactment of the Biblical drama of the Hebrew nation. They themselves were the children of Israel; America was their Promised Land; the Atlantic Ocean their Red Sea; the Kings of England were the Egyptian pharaohs; the American Indians the Canaanites (or the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel); the pact of the Plymouth Rock was God’s holy Covenant; and the ordinances by which they lived were the Divine Law. Like the Huguenots and other Protestant victims of Old World oppression, these émigré Puritans dramatized their own situation as the righteous remnant of the Church corrupted by the “Babylonian woe,” and saw themselves as instruments of Divine Providence, a people chosen to build their new commonwealth on the Covenant entered into at Mount Sinai.

In England, the Puritan identification with the Bible was so strong that some Puritan extremists sought to replace English common law with Biblical laws of the Old Testament, but were prevented from doing so. In America, however, there was far more freedom to experiment with the use of Biblical law in the legal codes of the colonies, and this was exactly what these early colonist set out to do.

The earliest legislation of the colonies of New England was all determined by Scripture. At the first assembly of New Haven in 1639, John Davenport clearly stated the primacy of the Bible as the legal and moral foundation of the colony:

Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to God and men as well as in the government of families and commonwealth as in matters of the Church … the Word of God shall be the only rule to be attended unto in organizing the affairs of government in this plantation. (See Abraham I Katsch, The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy, p. 97)

Subsequently, the New Haven legislators adopted a legal code ― the Code of 1655 ― which contained some 79 statutes, half of which contained Biblical references, virtually all from the Hebrew Bible. The Plymouth Colony had a similar law code as did the Massachusetts assembly, which, in 1641 ― after an exhortation by Reverend John Cotton who presented the legislators with a copy of Moses, His Judicials ― adopted the so-called “Capitall Lawes of New England” based almost entirely on Mosaic law. A very significant political evolution was taking place in the New World. Unlike the Puritans in England who, of necessity, lived under English common law and were ruled by a King and Parliament, the Puritans of America had no central authority or national governing body. Yet, they did not lapse into anarchy. Instead, they created communities governed by elected councils of elders similar to the “presbyters” of England. Their communities were both stable and prosperous, with mandatory school systems modeled after the Jewish ones.

This unique political evolution goes a long way toward explaining the strong sense of independence shared by the colonies and the early success of democracy in America. The Puritans felt that God was watching them, and fear of Heaven was a thousand times stronger than fear of the crown.

It almost seems as if these early settlers had recreated the Biblical period of the “Judges,” when, following the conquest of Jericho and settlement of Canaan, Israel had no king or central authority and “every man did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)

What was right in Puritan eyes, of course, was what the Bible said. But what did it say exactly? So much of it could be subject to interpretation of the reader.

Without the Jewish Oral Law, which helped the Jews understand the Bible, the Puritans were left to their own devices and tended toward a literal interpretation. This sometimes led to a stricter, more fundamentalist observance than Judaism had ever seen. For example, the Jewish Sabbath is a day of refraining from work as the Bible mandates. However, “work” ― in Hebrew melacha, or Sabbath prohibitions ― is defined by Jewish Oral Law as cessation of all creative activity that was in progress when the Tabernacle was being built and which, the Bible states, ceased on the Sabbath. But the Puritans took the commandment to cease work as unconditional. And their prohibitions were actually more restrictive than what the Jews had themselves practiced. Even household chores such as sweeping floors, making beds, or feeding animals were not allowed for the twenty-four hours of the day of rest. Adherence was enforced by fines and public floggings.

While we stress the importance of the Hebrew Bible to the early American settlers, it is important to note that, of course, the “New Testament” was revered as well. However, the Hebrew Bible was seen as the original and pure source of Christian values, and also as a legalistic and ritualistic guide, something which the New Testament was not.

In addition, there was a political agenda involved in this special focus in the Old over the New Testament. Many New Englanders viewed the New Testament as an instrument of justification, used by powers-that-be in Europe, to preserve the existing order. Had not Paul written in his letter to the Romans (13:1-2):

Every person must submit to the authorities in power, for all authority comes from God, and the existing authorities are instituted by him. It follows that anyone who rebels against authority is resisting a divine institution, and those who resist have themselves to thank for the punishment they receive.

That sure smacked of the divine right of kings and condemnation of the rebels of the Puritan revolution. No wonder that the Hebrew Bible, with its message of obedience to God alone, of personal responsibility, and of freedom from tyranny, was far more in tune with the mindset of these Protestant splinter sects of America.

Focusing even further on the issue of individual responsibility, the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted legislation requiring parents to teach their children to read and understand the basic principles of religion and capital laws. All towns in New England with a minimum of 50 households were required by law to establish schools and appoint teachers.

In 1670, British commissioners making a survey of conditions in the American colonies reported that in Connecticut fully one-quarter of the annual revenues were set aside for free public education. Universities were established (the first being Harvard University founded in 1636 as training school for Puritan ministers), and many printing presses were imported for the printing and dissemination of books.

In insisting on education for all, the Puritans were following Jewish law. (Had not the 12th century Jewish philosopher Maimonides admonished: “Appoint teachers for the children in every country, province and city. In any city that does not have a school excommunicate the people of the city until they get teachers for the children.”)

Education for all thus became a hallmark of early America and not just New England. In addition to Harvard, many other colleges and universities were established under the auspices of various Protestant sects: Yale, William and Mary, Rutgers, Princeton, Brown, Kings College (later to be known as Columbia), Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth etc. The Bible played a central role in the curriculum of all of these institutions of higher learning with both Hebrew and Bible studies offered as required courses. (See Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience 1697-1783, p. 16.)

Many of these colleges even adopted some Hebrew word or phrase as part of their official emblem or seal. Beneath the banner containing the Latin Lux et Veritas, the Yale seal shows an open book with the Hebrew Urim Vtumim, which was a part of the ceremonial breastplate of the High Priest in the days of the Temple. The Columbia seal has the Hebrew name for God at the top center, with the Hebrew name for one of the angels on a banner toward the middle. Dartmouth uses the Hebrew words meaning “God Almighty” in a triangle in the upper center of its seal.

So popular was the Hebrew Language in the late 16th and early 17th centuries that several students at Yale delivered their commencement orations in Hebrew. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania taught courses in Hebrew ― all the more remarkable because no university in England at the time offered it.

Many of the population, including a significant number of the Founding Fathers of America, were products of these American universities ― for example, Thomas Jefferson attended William and Mary, James Madison Princeton, Alexander Hamilton King’s College (i.e. Columbia). Thus, we can be sure that a majority of these political leaders were not only well acquainted with the contents of both the New and Old Testaments but also had some working knowledge of Hebrew. Notes Abraham Katsh in The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy (p. 70):

At the time of the American Revolution, the interest in the knowledge of Hebrew was so widespread as to allow the circulation of the story that “certain members of Congress proposed that the use of English be formally prohibited in the United States, and Hebrew substituted for it.”

Their Biblical education colored the American founders’ attitude toward not only religion and ethics, but most significantly, politics. We see them adopting the biblical motifs of the Puritans for political reasons. For example, the struggle of the ancient Hebrews against the wicked Pharaoh came to embody the struggle of the colonists against English tyranny.

Numerous examples can be found which clearly illustrate to what a significant extent the political struggles of the colonies were identified with the ancient Hebrews. The first design for the official seal of the United States recommended by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson in 1776 depicts the Jews crossing the Red Sea. The motto around the seal read: “Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” The inscription on the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall in Philadelphia is a direct quote from Leviticus (25:10): “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Patriotic speeches and publications during the period of the struggle for independence were often infused with Biblical motifs and quotations. For example, Benjamin Rush, in his editorials denouncing the Tea Act, drew on inspiration from the Hebrew Bible:

What did not Moses forsake and suffer for his countrymen! What shining examples of patriotism do we behold in Joshua, Samuel, Maccabees and all the illustrious princes, captains and prophets among the Jews.

Likewise, Thomas Paine’s anti-monarchial pamphlet Common Sense cited the Hebrew Bible and words of the Prophet Samuel concluding:

These portions of the Scriptures … admit no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchial government is true, or the Scriptures are false.

Even the basic framework of America clearly reflects the influence of the Bible and power of Jewish ideas in shaping the political development of America. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Whereas, these words echo the Enlightenment’s ― specifically John Locke’s — idea of “the inalienable rights of man,” without a doubt, the concept that these rights come from God is of Biblical origin.

This and the other documents of early America make it clear that the concept of a God-given standard of morality is a central pillar of American democracy. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his The State acknowledges the obvious:

…it would be a mistake…to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages… The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see… we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew.

Thus we see that it is with the birth of American democracy that we have the next milestone in the process of the spread of Jewish ideas in civilization. For the first time in history, Jewish ethical ideas were legally enshrined into the laws of a non-Jewish nation. That country, the United States, would, in turn, become a powerful model to be emulated by numerous countries around the world.

Herodium or Herodion (Hebrew: הרודיון‎, Arabic: هيروديون‎, Jabal al-Fraidees) is a hill shaped like a truncated cone (758 m / 2,487 ft above sea level), 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) located in the West Bank, southeast of Bethlehem and under control of Israel, built as a fortress palace by King Herod the Great. It was known by the Crusaders as the “Mountain of Franks”, but local Arab inhabitants call it Jabal al-Fourdis or “Mountain of Paradise”. Herodium was conquered and destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 71, when Lucilius Bassus and his X Fretensis were on their way to Masada. Hebrew University Professor Ehud Netzer reported on May 8, 2007 that he discovered Herod’s gravesite atop of tunnels and water pools at a flattened desert site halfway up the hill to Herodium 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) south of Jerusalem, the precise location given by Josephus in his writings. Later excavations strengthened the idea that this site is Herod’s mausoleum. The base of the tomb has now been uncovered and is visible to visitors to the site.

By Richard Allen Greene, religion.blogs.CNN.com

(CNN) – The relationship between Jews and Jesus has traditionally been a complicated one, to say the least.

As His followers’ message swept the ancient world, Jews who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah found themselves in the uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, position of being blamed for His death.

Jews, for their part, tended largely to ignore Jesus.

That’s changing now.

In the past year, a spate of Jewish authors, from the popular to the rabbinic to the scholarly, have wrestled with what Jews should think about Jesus.

And overwhelmingly, they are coming up with positive answers, urging their fellow Jews to learn about Jesus, understand Him and claim Him as one of their own.

“Jesus is a Jew. He spent His life talking to other Jews,” said Amy-Jill Levine, co-editor of the recently released The Jewish Annotated New Testament.

“In reading the New Testament, I am often inspired, I am intrigued. I actually find myself becoming a better Jew because I become better informed about my own history,” she said.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a media personality who recently launched a bid for a U.S. House seat, argues in his own new book, Kosher Jesus, that “Jews have much to learn from Jesus – and from Christianity as a whole – without accepting Jesus’ divinity. There are many reasons for accepting Jesus as a man of great wisdom, beautiful ethical teachings, and profound Jewish patriotism.”

And Benyamin Cohen, an Orthodox Jew who spent a recent year going to church, admitted that he’s jealous that Christians have Jesus.

“He’s a tangible icon that everybody can latch on to. Judaism doesn’t have a superhero like that,” said Cohen, the author of the 2009 book My Jesus Year.

“I’m not advocating for Moses dolls,” he said, but he argued that “it’s hard to believe in a God you can’t see. I’m jealous of Christians in that regard, that they have this physical manifestation of the divine that they can pray to.

“There could be more devout Jews than me who don’t need that, but to a young Jew living in the 21st century, I wish we had something more tangible,” he said.

The flurry of recent Jewish books on Jesus — including this month’s publication of The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ by Daniel Boyarin — is part of a trend of Jews taking pride in Jesus, interfaith expert Edward Kessler said.

“In the 1970s and 1980s, Christian New Testament scholars rediscovered the Jewish Jesus. They reminded all New Testament students that Jesus was Jewish,” said Kessler, the director of the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, England, which focuses on relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

A generation later, that scholarship has percolated into Jewish thought, he said, welcoming the trend: “It’s not a threat to Jews and it’s not a threat to Christians.”

For Jews in particular, he said, “It’s not so threatening as it was even 30 years ago. There is almost a pride that Jesus was a Jew rather than an embarrassment about it.”

Boteach agrees, writing in Kosher Jesus that “Jews will gain much from re-embracing Him as a hero.”

“The truth is important,” Boteach writes. “A patriot of our people has been lost. Worse still, He’s been painted as the father of a long and murderous tradition of anti-Semitism.”

Boteach aims to claim, or reclaim, Jesus as a political rebel against Rome and to exonerate the Jews of His death. But Boteach’s book has attracted plenty of criticism, for instance for blaming the Apostle Paul for everything he doesn’t like about Christianity, such as hailing Jesus as divine and cutting his ties to Judaism.

“Paul never met Jesus, and Jesus certainly never would have sanctioned Paul’s actions and embellishments,” Boteach argues about the apostle who wrote much of the New Testament. “Jesus … would have been appalled at how His followers would later define Him.”

“Jews will never accept His divinity. Nor should they,” Boteach writes, in one of many instances of presuming to know what Jesus really thought and meant. “The belief that any man is God is an abomination to Judaism, a position that Jesus Himself would maintain.”

He cherry-picks the Gospels to to suit his arguments, writes in casual modern idioms (calling Pontius Pilate a “sadistic mass murderer” and comparing him to Hitler), and gets wrong the most basic details of the Passion story, such as the amount of money Judas took to betray Jesus.

Other experts in the field label Boteach’s book “sensationalistic,” and call him a “popularizer,” but Kessler sees Kosher Jesus as part of the trend of Judaizing Jesus. Cohen, the My Jesus Year author, offered some support for Boteach even as he expressed doubts about the book.

“I understand what Shmuley is trying to get at there,” he said, but added: “I don’t think anyone has the right to say ‘This is the definition of Jesus,’ especially a rabbi. He’s not ours to claim.”

Levine, who teaches New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, also framed Jewish efforts to study Jesus in terms of mutual respect.

“Speaking personally as a Jew, if I want my neighbors to respect Judaism, which means knowing something about Jewish history, scripture, and tradition, I owe my Christian neighbors the same courtesy. It’s a matter of respect,” she said.

She urged Jews to “become familiar with the material and make up their own mind as to how they understand Jesus.”

Ironically, she added, Jews can understand their own history more thoroughly through studying the life of Jesus.

“The best source on the period for Jewish history other than (the first-century historian) Josephus is the New Testament,” she said.

“It’s one of those ironies of history that the only Pharisee writing in the Second Temple Period from whom we have records is Paul of Tarsus,” she said. “The Jewish Annotated New Testament is designed in part to help Jews recover their own history.”

But she also wants Christians to use it to understand Judaism more deeply, she said. While many Christian leaders acknowledge that Jesus was a Jew, she said, not many know much about what that means.

“Many Christian ministers and educators have no training in what early Judaism was like,” she said. “Not to take seriously first-century Judaism seems to dismiss part of the message of the New Testament.”

Cohen, the My Jesus Year author, found that Christians were very interested in Judaism during the 52 weeks he spent going from church to church.

“Many Christians look on Judaism as version 1.0 of their own religion. Because of that historical relationship, they’re interested in a lot of the theology of Judaism,” he said.

For his part, Cohen learned much that surprised him. “I was shocked when I went to church and heard them give sermons about the Old Testament,” he said. “I had no idea Christians read the Old Testament.”

“One week, I went to church and the pastor gave exactly the same sermon my rabbi did the night before about Moses and the burning bush, and the pastor did it much better,” he continued.

Cohen came away from his Jesus year with a clear understanding of what he believes.

“People ask me all the time if I believe in Jesus. Do I believe He exists? Sure. Do I believe He’s your God? Sure, I have no problem with that,” he said he tells Christians who ask.

“I understand Christians’ love for Jesus and I respect that,” he said. “If anything, I learned a lot from them and did become a more engaged Jew, a better Jew, and I appreciate my Judaism more because I hung out with Jesus.”

One possible Israeli target, the uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran, was guarded in 2007 by antiaircraft artillery. Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press

By Elisabeth Bumiller www.NYTimes.com

Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.

That is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.

“All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh, yeah, bomb Iran’— it ain’t going to be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as the Air Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War.

Speculation that Israel might attack Iran has intensified in recent months as tensions between the countries have escalated. In a sign of rising American concern, Tom Donilon, U.S. national security adviser, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem recently, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, warned on CNN that an Israeli strike on Iran right now would be “destabilizing.” Similarly, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that attacking Iran would not be “the wise thing” for Israel to do “at this moment.”

But while an Israeli spokesman in Washington, Lior Weintraub, said the country continued to push for tougher sanctions on Iran, he reiterated that Israel, like the United States, “is keeping all options on the table.”

The possible outlines of an Israeli attack have become a source of debate in Washington, where some analysts question whether Israel even has the military capacity to carry it off. One fear is that the United States would be sucked into finishing the job — a task that even with America’s far larger arsenal of aircraft and munitions could still take many weeks, defense analysts said. Another fear is of Iranian retaliation.

“I don’t think you’ll find anyone who’ll say, ‘Here’s how it’s going to be done — handful of planes, over an evening, in and out,’ ” said Andrew R. Hoehn, a former Pentagon official who is now director of the Rand Corporation’s Project Air Force, which does extensive research for the United States Air Force.

Michael V. Hayden, who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009, said flatly that airstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear program were “beyond the capacity” of Israel, in part because of the distance that attack aircraft would have to travel and the scale of the task.

Still, a top defense official cautioned, “We don’t have perfect visibility” into Israel’s arsenal, let alone its military calculations.

His views were echoed by Anthony H. Cordesman, an influential military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “There are a lot of unknowns, there are a lot of potential risks, but Israel may know that those risks aren’t that serious,” he said.

Given that Israel would want to strike Iran’s four major nuclear sites — the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, the heavy-water reactor at Arak and the yellowcake-conversion plant at Isfahan — military analysts say the first problem is how to get there. There are three potential routes: to the north over Turkey, to the south over Saudi Arabia or taking a central route across Jordan and Iraq.

The route over Iraq would be the most direct and likely, defense analysts say, because Iraq effectively has no air defenses and the United States, after its December withdrawal, no longer has the obligation to defend Iraqi skies. “That was a concern of the Israelis a year ago, that we would come up and intercept their aircraft if the Israelis chose to take a path across Iraq,” said a former defense official who asked for anonymity to discuss secret intelligence.

Assuming that Jordan tolerates the Israeli overflight, the next problem is distance. Israel has American-built F-15I and F-16I fighter jets that can carry bombs to the targets, but their range — depending on altitude, speed and payload — falls far short of the minimum 2,000-mile round trip. That does not include an aircraft’s “loiter time” over a target plus the potential of having to fight off attacks from Iranian missiles and planes.

In any possibility, Israel would have to use airborne refueling planes, called tankers, but Israel is not thought to have enough. Scott Johnson, an analyst at the defense consulting firm IHS Jane’s and the leader of a team preparing an online seminar on Israeli strike possibilities on Iran, said that Israel had eight KC-707 American-made tankers, although it is not clear they are all in operation. It is possible, he said, that Israel has reconfigured existing planes into tankers to use in a strike.

Even so, any number of tankers would need to be protected by ever more fighter planes. “So the numbers you need just skyrocket,” Mr. Johnson said. Israel has about 125 F-15Is and F-16Is. One possibility, Mr. Johnson said, would be to fly the tankers as high as 50,000 feet, making them hard for air defenses to hit, and then have them drop down to a lower altitude to meet up with the fighter jets to refuel.

Israel would still need to use its electronic warfare planes to penetrate Iran’s air defenses and jam its radar systems to create a corridor for an attack. Iran’s antiaircraft defenses may be a generation old — in 2010, Russia refused to sell Iran its more advanced S-300 missile system — but they are hardly negligible, military analysts say.

Iranian missiles could force Israeli warplanes to maneuver and dump their munitions before they even reached their targets. Iran could also strike back with missiles that could hit Israel, opening a new war in the Middle East, though some Israeli officials have argued that the consequences would be worse if Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon.

Another major hurdle is Israel’s inventory of bombs capable of penetrating the Natanz facility, believed to be buried under 30 feet of reinforced concrete, and the Fordo site, which is built into a mountain.

Assuming it does not use a nuclear device, Israel has American-made GBU-28 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs that could damage such hardened targets, although it is unclear how far down they can go.

Earlier this month, a Bipartisan Policy Center report by Charles S. Robb, the former Democratic senator from Virginia, and Charles F. Wald, a retired Air Force general, recommended that the Obama administration sell Israel 200 enhanced GBU-31 “bunker busters” as well as three advanced refueling planes. The two said that they were not advocating an Israeli attack, but that the munitions and aircraft were needed to improve Israel’s credibility as it threatens a strike.

Should the United States get involved — or decide to strike on its own — military analysts said that the Pentagon had the ability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to help direct further strikes. Unlike Israel, the United States has plenty of refueling capability. Bombers could fly from Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or bases in Britain and the United States.

Nonetheless, defense officials say it would still be tough to penetrate Iran’s deepest facilities with existing American bombs and so are enhancing an existing 30,000-pound “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” that was specifically designed for Iran and North Korea.

“There’s only one superpower in the world that can carry this off,” General Deptula said. “Israel’s great on a selective strike here and there.”

Gawker.com

Anti-Semitic graffiti and anti-Semitism fighter Jon Lovitz

After three teenage girls left dog poop and anti-Semitic syrup graffiti in front of the home of a classmate whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, actor/comedian/critic Jon Lovitz sprang into action.

Lovitz, who is a friend of the family, took to Twitter to denounce the hateful act as perpetrated by “3 popular girls in school who did this” to bully his friend’s daughter. “You mess with me, I retaliate … TIMES TEN!” Lovitz continued. “Jews are no longer victims. And the world doesn’t like it.”

The perps were eventually apprehended, but not charged. The involvement of a mother who drove them to the home is still under investigation.

Lovitz followed up with his own update, telling his Twitter followers that the girls “have been expelled from their school permanently.”

Bullies: 0, Jon Lovitz: 0 (because 10 times 0 is still 0).

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Despite the final score, ZLM is with Jon in claiming this a victory!