Sephardic Jews Receive a Spanish Embrace

Five hundred years ago Spain implemented the Inquisition. The Inquisition was originally intended in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. This regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1501 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave. The following report is a fascinating situation that evokes one question for me. Why would the decendants of the Jews of Spain want to return to a country that persecuted them so severely?

David Bancroft

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By Aran Heller, The Associated Press

MADRID» They were burned at the stake, forced to convert or chased into exile. Now Spain is moving to right a half-millennium old “historic mistake” against its onetime flourishing Sephardic Jewish community: the European Union country is on the verge of offering citizenship to descendants of victims estimated to number in the millions.

The Spanish conservative government plans to make amends with a law expected to be passed within weeks or months in Parliament that offers citizenship to the descendants of legions of Jews forced to flee in 1492. Asked whether the new law amounted to an apology, Spanish Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon replied: “Without a doubt.”

“What the law will do, five centuries later, is make amends for a terrible historic mistake, one of the worst that Spaniards ever made,” Ruiz- Gallardon told The Associated Press in an interview.

Descendants of Sephardic Jews, he said, will be considered “children of Spain.”

The term “Sephardic” literally means “Spanish” in Hebrew, but the label has come also to apply to one of the two main variants of Jewish religious practice. The other and globally dominant one – being Ashkenazic,” which to Jews whose lineage, in recent times, is traced to northern and eastern Europe.

Because of mixing between the groups and other factors, there is no accepted figure for the global Sephardic population, but reasonable estimates would range between a fifth and a third of the world’s roughly 13 million Jews.

The largest community is in Israel, where almost half of the 6 million Jews are considered Sephardic.

It is not completely clear how much of a historical link Spain will require. Most of Israel’s Sephardics hail from North Africa and southern Europe, which were early ports of call after the expulsion from Spain, and so they may be able to easily show direct links. But other communities, from places like Iraq and Yemen, are considered Sephardic by religious practice yet may have trouble proving a connection to Spain.

Hundreds of Israelis claiming Sephardic ancestry have contacted the Spanish Embassy in Tel Aviv, begun researching their family histories and taken to the airwaves to discuss their newfound citizenship possibilities.

Winston Churchill 1899

“Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

This is amazing. Even more amazing is that this hasn’t been published long before now.

CHURCHILL ON ISLAM

Unbelievable, but the speech below was written in 1899… (check Wikipedia – The River War).

The attached short speech from Winston Churchill, was delivered by him in 1899 when he was a young soldier and journalist. It probably sets out the current views of many, but expresses in the wonderful Churchillian turn of phrase and use of the English language, of which he was a past master. Sir Winston Churchill was, without doubt, one of the greatest men of the late 19th and 20th centuries.

He was a brave young soldier, a brilliant journalist, an extraordinary politician and statesman, a great war leader and British Prime Minister, to whom the Western world must be forever in his debt. He was a prophet in his own time. He died on 24th January 1965, at the grand old age of 90 and, after a lifetime of service to his country, was accorded a State funeral.

HERE IS THE SPEECH:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

“A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

“Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome …”

Sir Winston Churchill; (Source: The River War, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London).

Churchill saw it coming……

US Mutual Defense Treaties

From the Los Angeles Times (abridged)

U.S. bombers defy China restrictions

Two fly through a newly declared (Chinese) air defense zone.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to the mutual defense treaty with Japan and said the U.S. considered the Senkaku islands to fall under that treaty.

Are we to believe that the United States would go to war if the unpopulated Senkaku Islands (China calls them the Diaoyu Islands) are attacked? Would we fight to defend Japan proper if it were attacked over a dispute for control of the unpopulated islands?

An even more important question is will the United States honor the list of mutual defense treaties that have been negotiated, signed, and approved by the United States Senate? The list is long.

Japan

NATO

At present, NATO has 28 members. In 1949, there were 12 founding members of the Alliance: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. The other member countries are: Greece and Turkey (1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia (2004), and Albania and Croatia (2009).

Philippines

ANZUS military alliance

Australia
New Zealand

South Korea

Taiwan

So let’s imagine that China decides to take control of Taiwan by force. Is the United States prepared to face war with China to defend the freedom of Taiwan? China seems to be taking an evermore controlling position in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

Is the United States prepared to confront China? Apparently the USA did defend its rights this time with a flyover. If the situation becomes more heated will congress honor America’s commitments?

There is NO PROOF We Can Trust Iran

The agreement with Iran over its right to a nuclear program that is for peaceful purposes must be viewed with significant skepticism. There should be no agreement without a complete and verifiable elimination of all their facilities that could develop a nuclear weapon. A new president was selected in Iran and suddenly that country has turned a page and is willingly agreeing with demands of the world. It is too incredible to be taken seriously.

I don’t have to be an expert on nuclear and missile diplomacy to be suspicious of Iran’s ultimate intent. I only have to look at the time line of events that ultimately led to a North Korea with the ability to shoot nuclear armed missiles at the United States, Japan, South Korea and most of the nations rimming the Pacific Ocean.

Iran is using the North Korean template to further its development of nuclear weapons that will threaten the world.

The Arms Control Association has posted on its web site Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy along with some extra details from Wikipedia.

Here are the highlights of the sequence of events dealing with North Korea.

December 12, 1985:North Korea accedes to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) but does not complete a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Under Article III of the NPT, North Korea has 18 months to conclude such an arrangement. In coming years, North Korea links adherence to this provision of the treaty to the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea.

September 27, 1991: President George Bush announces the unilateral withdrawal of all naval and land-based tactical nuclear weapons deployed abroad. Approximately 100 U.S. nuclear weapons had been based in South Korea. Eight days later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocates.

January 30, 1992: More than six years after signing the NPT, North Korea concludes a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

February 9, 1993: The IAEA demands special inspections of two sites that are believed to store nuclear waste. The request is based on strong evidence that North Korea has been cheating on its commitments under the NPT. North Korea refuses the IAEA’s request.

Late 1993: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea had separated about 12 kilograms of plutonium. This amount is enough for at least one or two nuclear weapons.

January 1994: The director of the CIA estimates that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons.

June 15, 1994: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter negotiates a deal with North Korea in which Pyongyang confirms its willingness to “freeze” its nuclear weapons program and resume high-level talks with the United States. Bilateral talks are expected to begin, provided that North Korea allows the IAEA safeguards to remain in place, does not refuel its 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, and does not reprocess any spent nuclear fuel.

October 16, 1996: After detecting North Korean preparations for a test of its medium-range Nodong missile, the United States deploys a reconnaissance ship and aircraft to Japan. Following several meetings in New York between U.S. and North Korean diplomats, the State Department confirms on November 8 that the missile test has been canceled.

July 15, 1998: The bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission concludes that the United States may have “little or no warning” before facing a long-range ballistic missile threat from “rogue states,” such as North Korea and Iran.

September 9, 1999: A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate reports that North Korea will “most likely” develop an ICBM capable of delivering a 200-kilogram warhead to the U.S. mainland by 2015.

January 14, 2005: North Korea says it is willing to restart stalled talks on its nuclear programme, according to the official KCNA news agency. The statement says North Korea “would not stand against the US but respect and treat it as a friend unless the latter slanders the former’s system and interferes in its internal affairs”.

January 24, 2013: The North Korean National Defense Commission announces its intentions to conduct another nuclear test and continue rocket launches.

March 13, 2013: North Korea confirmed it ended the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, declaring that North Korea “is not restrained by the North-South declaration on non-aggression” and warned that the next step was an act of “merciless” military retaliation against its enemies.

March 26, 2013: The U.S. again dispatched B-52 bombers from Guam to overfly South Korean territory as part of the ongoing Foal Eagle exercise. These flights were, according to US Department of Defense sources, routine flights intended to demonstrate America’s capability of maintaining a “continuous bomber presence” in the region.

March 30,2013: North Korea declared a ‘state of war’ against South Korea. A North Korean statement promised “stern physical actions” against “any provocative act”. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared that rockets were ready to be fired at American bases in the Pacific. This was in response to two nuclear-capable American B-2 stealth bombers flying over the Korean peninsula on March 28.

What happened in Benghazi?

The 60 Minutes report and apology was of no import. I do not care what Dylan Davies told them or what was written in his book. It did not answer the primary questions.

Why was there such poor security at Benghazi?
Who was the person outside of Libya who made the decision to not reinforce the security?
How long did the attack last?
Was there time to send aid?
Who made the decision not to send aid to Benghazi while the attack was occurring?
Who makes the decisions on security at our embassies and consulates?

Congress is entitled to know the answers.

Not a Pin Prick Strike on Syria

The president’s speech dealing with Syria clearly defined our moral outrage and our leadership in enforcing internationally accepted norms. Unfortunately America’s history dealing with Muslim countries has been a failure.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Egypt are all realities. Despite America’s efforts to help those nations transition to democracies, all have been a failure.

Even if this proposed attack on Syria will be significant, it is unlikely to change Bashar al-Assad’s behavior.

If the president really does believe that the United States has a moral responsibility to deal a significant blow against Syria, he could have acted without congressional approval. Other presidents have acted in the past without that approval.

He still can act today without that approval. He won’t. Why? He does not have the backbone.

Arab Spring: Mirror, mirror on the wall ABDULATEEF AL-MUHLIM

Why can’t more Arabs recognize that Israel is not their enemy and if they would ever make peace with Israel, their lives would be forever improved… but then they are, well, Arabs.

David Bancroft

Very interesting article by an Arab about the Arab Spring and Israel

The article was published in a Saudi newspaper – Arab News – on 9 July 2013

Arab Spring: Mirror, mirror on the wall ABDULATEEF AL-MUHLIM

Published — Tuesday 9 July 2013

In the past, whenever an American secretary of state arrived in any Middle Eastern country, it would be primetime news. He would meet the highest political figures and his/her visit would be given the maximum news coverage with everyone hoping for an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

John Kerry, the current US secretary of state, came and went and no one knew about his many visits. He wanted to restart the negotiation process, but the Arabs are busy with their never-ending Arab Spring and the Israeli military and political figures are in no rush because they are watching Arabs kill each other. Whenever they have extra time, they watch an Arab TV show called, the “Arab Idol.”

Ofir Gendelman, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister and Avichay Adraee, Israeli Defense Forces spokesman, said it is part of their job to watch “Arab Idol.” I thought their job is to keep an eye on the threat that Arab Spring countries pose to Israel. However, why would the Syrians have killed hundreds and thousands of their own people and displaced more than four million? The Israelis couldn’t pull something like this off, but the Arab Spring did it for them.

According to news media, the Arab Spring caught the world by surprise on Dec. 18, 2010. I will, however, add that the Arab Spring didn’t come out of the blue. It is an accumulation of years of political corruption, human rights violations, sectarianism, poor education systems and unemployment. To sum it all up, the Arabs were not fighting the enemy, they were sleeping with it. This is why it is impossible to analyze and forecast the outcome of the Arab Spring. The Arab world never looks at mirrors. We don’t like to say mirror, mirror on the wall because mirrors don’t lie and we don’t want to know the truth. We can’t handle it.
During the Arab Spring, I read a lot of analyses about the root of the Arab Spring — it is decades of hiding from reality, chasing a mirage of enemies, conspiracies and blaming the outside world. We never blamed our systems for the many failures to develop the Arab mind. We talk about Sykes-Picot, imperialism and Zionism, but we never look at the mirrors on the wall. Some people, however, did.

On June 15, 2013 a Saudi columnist who I have never met wrote an article in the Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq titled “Israel, the everlasting Arab treasure.” The columnist, Abdusalam Alwael, is a very highly educated Saudi who gained a bachelor’s degree from a Saudi university, his master’s degree from a university in California and his doctorate degree from a university in Virginia. He basically said that Israel was a bounty for Arab dictators who use the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to rule their countries and make a lot of money by just issuing hollow threats to Israel. Israel is a moneymaking machine for Arab dictators and many Palestinian corrupt officials. In other words, the Arab dictators have forgotten to develop their countries and innocent people have paid for it with their own lives. This is the reality of the Arab Spring.

Everyone knows the truth, but we won’t admit it. During the Arab Spring, we saw our real faces in the mirrors. It showed that the Arabs were never united and are now divided beyond anybody’s imagination. We hate each other more than we hate the outside enemy. This is why no one in the Arab world showed any sympathy to the Syrians when Israeli planes attacked Syrian targets a few weeks ago. As a matter of fact, even hardcore anti-Israelis wished the Israeli planes had continued eastward and attacked the Syrian Presidential Palace and killed an Arab leader named Bashar Assad. In other words, many in the Arab world sided with Israel against an Arab country. After the attack, we saw many Syrians approach the Israeli-fortified checkpoints in the Golan Heights, not to attack Israeli soldiers, but to seek refuge and get medical attention. I am not talking about simple medical care. I am talking about major surgeries like the four-year-old Syrian girl who got a heart transplant at Wolfson Hospital in Holon, Israel.

This is the real Arab Spring. Syrians are hurting Syrians and the Israelis are the ones who treat the Syrian wounds. Yes, the Arab Spring is a joke and I mean a very bad joke. The Arab Spring is not about seeking democracy, it is about Arabs killing Arabs. And this is why Israeli soldiers are busy on the Golan Heights. They are not busy with loading ammunition; they are busy picking cherries and other fruits. What is more, they are also busy giving guided tours to show the world Syrian planes targeting civilians, Scud missiles destroying villages and tanks attacking schools and mosques. What goes inside Syria is more horrific. Syrian men humiliate Syrian women in front of their relatives, rape and kill them. It is not only the killing that is ugly. We saw a Syrian kill another Syrian and then open his chest with a knife and take a bite of his heart. It can’t get any uglier.

Now, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the ugliest of them all? Well, they are all ugly. It has turned out that the Arab Spring is not about a search for democracy, social justice and better standards of living. The Arab Spring is all about hate and sectarian violence. The world didn’t hear anything about rebuilding the countries or eradicating poverty. The talk is all about fighting among the same people from the same country.
Just look at the land of one of the oldest civilizations, Egypt. A country that failed to bring one, just one iconic figure like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King — individuals who talk about peace and harmony and are respected the world over. Not someone who enjoys destroying his own country and killing his own people.

Hope this will clarify the Mideast situation…….

Opposition to the Involvement of the U.S.A. In Syria

I Oppose the Involvement of the U.S.A. In Syria.

Some event in the future could change my mind. However, at this time there is no justification for our entry into the Syrian Civil War. After writing this piece I read in the Los Angeles Daily News that there was a protest march in downtown Los Angeles that was objecting to the possible intervention of the USA in Syria. For a change I am not alone.

On July 25, 2013 The number of dead in Syria‘s civil war had passed 100,000, according to a United Nations report.

200 missiles at $569,000 each is over $11 million. Who said the military-industrial complex isn’t alive and well? 1,000 people have been killed by the use of chemical weapons but at least 40,000 civilians have been killed by conventional weapons. If the United States is concerned about human rights why aren’t we concerned about those deaths?

So the first question is how will bombarding Syria for three days change their behavior? No one that I have heard or read believes there will be any impact.

Is there a moral imperative that we become involved? The United States has taken on the mantle of “the right thing to do.” It remains to be seen if President Obama will have the courage and the will to take steps that many American oppose.

The third question is if there is no impact of a three day missile attack what will the next move be for the United States?

Will we invade? Probably not as most Americans are opposed to any involvement.
Will we resort to more bombardment? Maybe.
Will we create no fly zones? Possibly.

Setting aside the morality issue the other question is what will Syria’s neighbors and Russia do if we involve ourselves in their civil war? Are we prepared to face down those that would oppose our involvement?

The Assad regime has a faithful army. The truth is that there are large numbers of Syrians who support the regime. The opposition apparently consists of al Qaeda supported groups that are among the rebel’s most successful warriors. If they win, enemies of the United States will be stronger and more emboldened. So just exactly why are we taking any action to protect their insurgency? The children? Among the tens of thousands killed in Syria there have been many children. We only care about those children killed by gas. What kind of logic is this?

An aerial view shows the Zaatari refugee camp on July 18, 2013 near the Jordanian city of Mafraq, some 8 kilometers from the Jordanian-Syrian border. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

I see this civil war as an effort by Assad to drive those opposing him out of Syria. Different reports vary but from 1 million to 2.5 million people have left the country. There was even a televised report of Israeli hospitals treating some victims of the war. Once opposition has been driven out the war will be over.

I do not have a solution. No matter who wins this war, there are no benefits to the United States. Chemical weapons are not a consequential part of this war.