OP-ED COLUMNIST Jews, Israel and America By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Across the Arab-Muslim world is a rising perception that the great enemy of Islam is JIA - "Jews, Israel and America."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/opinion/24friedman.html?th -- Friedman's term, JIA is new to me -- and frightening in its implications. I was raised in the era of not so mild American anti-Semitism. It was a near thing that the U.S. sided with the British and not the Nazis at the beginnings of WW2 with the American Firsters singing the sweet song of disengagement from that 'European conflict' -- while doing business with the major German industrialists: then: http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_002900_americafirst.htm and now: http://www.jewish-history.com/editorial_12312001.html And check out Prescott Bush's involvements with the Nazi during that period as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush Bush was a cordial enough type -- none too bright. We invited him as an adjunct speaker to our Yale Daily News banquet where our primary honoree was Scotty Reston, NY Times reporter and columnist of our day. What is terrifying to me is not just Friedman's report, but wider ones from France and the Muslim world in general of the spill over of antiSemitism from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where the U.S. -- now the direct aggressor against two Muslim nations, Afghanistan and Iraq -- is identified as the hit operation for Israel. If we further coincide in attacking Iran's nuclear plant(s) and pressure other Muslim countries or see the fall of some of our shaky supported dictators in such places as Afghanistan and Pakistan, we may see a culture war emerging that will make the Cold one look pacific in comparison. We only fought proxy wars during the confrontations of the great powers during the second half of the 20th century -- Korea and Viet Nam. As bloody as these were, they did not eventuate into the use of -- in those terrible words of today -- Weapons of Mass Destruction. But let's face it, no missile shield will protect, say, the U.S. or any other nation from a shipping container delivered to the city (or several of same) of someone's choice with a suitcase-sized nuclear weapon set to explode on arrival. I fear these hatreds. I editorialized against the anti-Semitic admissions policies of my undergraduate university (Yale) and chatted with our few Jewish faculty (Paul Weiss and Chet Lieb who urged me not to extend my editorials there) about the comparable anti-Semitic faculty hiring policies still in effect at that time -- except in the philosophy department where I did my major. I am appalled by the none too quiescent anti-Muslim sentiments of some of my colleagues at Brooklyn College, CUNY, where I have had to battle on behalf of one of our former Muslim students (who got her family safely to Canada and away from our Brooklyn gulag) simply to pry loose an official transcript so that she could resume her studies in Canada -- they insist that she send them $75.00 a month in back tuition owing out of a Canadian welfare budget that has not yet included beds for the family to sleep on?! So Friedman tells us that the slogan word for our soldiers in Iraq is "Jews?" That is not good news for anyone, lest it be forgotten that we live in a terribly small world interconnected with trade and rapid travel that can enable horrors to erupt anywhere anytime. The American who is elected president November 2 must undertake major peace making efforts in both the Israel/Palestinian conflict and by stopping the killing games that we are playing in the territories occupied by our 'JEW' soldiers -- Afghanistan and Iraq. The costs of not doing so are unimaginable -- far worse than those being tallied daily in Iraq by our Purple Heart Veterans Against the War: http://www.pvaw.org/ -- "A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy) -- Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns Yahoo! Groups Links -- "A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy) -- Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/XgSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ----- / o o \ ===OO=====OO============================================= (4)Portals (2)News Wikis (2)Conferences - No More BuSHIT! Start here: http://pnews.org/ (On Internet since 1982) http://pnews.org/PhpWiki/ (West Coast News Wiki) http://g0lem.net/PhpWiki/ (East Coast News Wiki) ========================================================= Yahoo! 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