November 7, 2004

THE OX KNOWETH HIS OWNER:


Bad News for Jews: With Bush's rise and Arafat's decline, much is in peril (Jack Miles, November 7, 2004, LA Times)

Whatever else may be said of Yasser Arafat, his death will leave a dangerous leadership vacuum in the Mideast. Meanwhile, George W. Bush's victory has created a power surge in the U.S. that is pushing the nation toward one-party rule. This ought to concern all Americans. But speaking as a non-Jew, I think it ought to concern Jewish Americans most of all because the welfare of Israel affects all the world's Jews, and the Republicans' power consolidation bodes especially ill for Israel in the imminent post-Arafat era.

Written off as irrelevant when not despised as a terrorist, the president of the Palestinian Authority paradoxically kept alive the Jewish and Israeli hopes for a secular Palestinian alternative to the fanatical violence of Hamas and kindred smaller groups. With Arafat gone, Israel may have to cope in a new way with the full truth of its complaint that there is no Palestinian partner with whom to make peace. If there is none and if there will be none, then what?


One has to have been paying awfully little attention to national and world events to think that George Bush and the evangelicals aren't the best thing to happen to Israel since God chose the Jews.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2004 4:39 PM
Comments

Hey don't mess with Jack Miles. He wrote God's biography.

Kiss and tell. Up close and intimate.

Don't mess with Jack Miles. (Even when he's delusional.)

Posted by: Barry Meislin at November 7, 2004 5:40 PM

Best thing since God chose the Jews? Cranking up the hyperbole a little this evening aren't we, OJ?

Posted by: Brandon at November 7, 2004 6:13 PM

Remember, our alliance with Israel is what guarantees that we stay in the game against the rags. It's all about the oil, and the Dardanelles, and Suez and the clash of civilizations, but Israel is what keeps us from backing off from the show-down.

Posted by: Lou Gots at November 7, 2004 6:26 PM

Brandon:

They haven't exactly been on a roll the past few thousand years.

Posted by: oj at November 7, 2004 6:52 PM

The idea that Israel is worse off without Arafat has always seemed silly to me. He's not a "secular alternative," he's a terrorist gangster, trained by Nazi sympathizers, disguised as a "statesman." I have lost almost all my sympathy for the largely self-inflicted "plight of the Palestinians," and look forward to a civil war among the various terror factions. And if Hamas or whoever comes out on top, the only difference it might make is that bonehaeds like Miles will have less of an excuse to delude themselves about the "peace process."

Posted by: PapayaSF at November 7, 2004 7:39 PM

OJ,

True. True.

Posted by: Brandon at November 7, 2004 8:08 PM

Some of us pray for God to choose somebody else.

Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at November 7, 2004 9:05 PM

Further proof, if any was needed, that HaShem has protected the Jews across the millennia that separate us from Sinai, not for our own merit. Because, as we admit every year during the Days of Awe, we have little merit. But for the merit of our forefathers, and more importanly to demonstrate his own saving power to a disbelieving world.

Study Torah, you will learn that it has always been impossible to get the Jews to do anything no matter how pressing the need or exigent the circumstance. Unlike George Bush, Moses had the Devine Presence manifest next to him as a pillar of fire and the Jews still were grumbling and trying to elect other leaders.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at November 7, 2004 9:23 PM

I've been reading "Six Days of War" recently and an interesting tidbit there is that Arafat referred at the time his very first terrorist mission against Israel in 1964 as "jihad".

Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 8, 2004 12:00 AM

Perhaps, but Jihad in this context (clearly) means personal improvement.

And since that fateful day, Arafat, clearly, has been personally improving, honing his non-pareil leadership skills and other assorted abilities.

Today, forty years later, he has now achieved the epitome of Jihad, where his acolytes valiantly withhold the bitter news clearly because of the tremendous respect he still commands from the respirator.

While faithful minions in the West weep in unadumbrated (that's for you, Semolina) adulation verging on love.

No, pulling the plug on the Palestine's icon is not an option.

Jihad can't get any better than that.

Posted by: Barry Meislin at November 8, 2004 9:47 AM
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