Goodstein has been with the Times for ten years, after working at the Washington Post for eight years in the New York bureau.***
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Laurie Goodstein, National Religion Correspondent, NY Times
Laurie Goodstein is national Religion Correspondent for the New York Times.
Goodstein has been with the Times for ten years, after working at the Washington Post for eight years in the New York bureau.
***
Goodstein has been with the Times for ten years, after working at the Washington Post for eight years in the New York bureau.***
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Some New York Times Staff and Management Profiles
by Michael A. Hoffman II
Today I'm copy-editing someone else's book and continuing to work on my own ("Judaism Discovered," now rapidly heading in the direction of 800 pages), and after all day toiling on these projects, I thought I'd relax by offering brief profiles of a few of the New York Times' staff and management.
I have only scratched the surface, obviously. Even reporters with bylines in the national edition of the Times may have very little written about them and available online; and the Times itself is often not forthcoming, at least in public files I've examined.
Some of what is missing in terms of key personnel are corporate finance and middle management, including at the other newspapers owned by the Sulzbergers, and staff at their huge online operations (nytimes.com is allegedly the #1 online newspaper site in America); I'd also like to see the names of the copy editors working with people like Gordon, Erlanger, and Slackman as well as the assignment editors for national and international stories.
Sam Zell now owns the Chicago Tribune and Murdoch will soon have the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has been securely in the monopolists' corner for decades. Nothing more need be said.
If you follow the links column, you should find profiles of: Steven Erlanger, Michael Slackman, Alissa J. Rubin, Roger Cohen, Daniel H. Cohen, Sharon Waxman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Thomas L. Friedman, Karen W. Arenson, Andrew Rosenthal, Michael R. Gordon, Isabel Kershner, Adam Liptak and Steven Greenhouse. Tomorrow's (Sept. 27) blog entry (above) will feature Laurie Goodstein.
I will add to this file now and then. I encourage others to build upon it. If you use this material, let met see what you've done with it, and have the decency to credit your source: Michael A. Hoffman II and www.RevisionistHistory.org
***
Today I'm copy-editing someone else's book and continuing to work on my own ("Judaism Discovered," now rapidly heading in the direction of 800 pages), and after all day toiling on these projects, I thought I'd relax by offering brief profiles of a few of the New York Times' staff and management.
I have only scratched the surface, obviously. Even reporters with bylines in the national edition of the Times may have very little written about them and available online; and the Times itself is often not forthcoming, at least in public files I've examined.
Some of what is missing in terms of key personnel are corporate finance and middle management, including at the other newspapers owned by the Sulzbergers, and staff at their huge online operations (nytimes.com is allegedly the #1 online newspaper site in America); I'd also like to see the names of the copy editors working with people like Gordon, Erlanger, and Slackman as well as the assignment editors for national and international stories.
Sam Zell now owns the Chicago Tribune and Murdoch will soon have the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has been securely in the monopolists' corner for decades. Nothing more need be said.
If you follow the links column, you should find profiles of: Steven Erlanger, Michael Slackman, Alissa J. Rubin, Roger Cohen, Daniel H. Cohen, Sharon Waxman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Thomas L. Friedman, Karen W. Arenson, Andrew Rosenthal, Michael R. Gordon, Isabel Kershner, Adam Liptak and Steven Greenhouse. Tomorrow's (Sept. 27) blog entry (above) will feature Laurie Goodstein.
I will add to this file now and then. I encourage others to build upon it. If you use this material, let met see what you've done with it, and have the decency to credit your source: Michael A. Hoffman II and www.RevisionistHistory.org
***
Michael Slackman, Middle East Correspondent, NY Times
Michael Slackman covers Arab and Iranian affairs for the New York Times.
He is said to be based in Cairo.
***
Karen W. Arenson, Education reporter, NY Times
Karen W. Arenson reports on colleges and universities, their faculty, staff and curricula for the New York Times.
Prior to that, she was Deputy business editor, Sunday business editor and reporter, New York Times, (1978–94).
***
Prior to that, she was Deputy business editor, Sunday business editor and reporter, New York Times, (1978–94). ***
Steven Greenhouse, Economics Correspondent, NY Times
Steven Greenhouse reports on labor and business for the New York Times.
***
***
Adam Liptak, National Legal Correspondent, NY Times
Adam Liptak is the national legal correspondent of The New York Times, contributing reporting and analysis on legal matters.
Mr. Liptak, a lawyer, joined The Times's news staff in 2002. During law school, he worked as a summer clerk in the The New York Times Company's legal department. After graduating, he spent four years at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a New York City law firm, as a litigation associate. In 1992, he joined The Times's legal department, spending a decade advising The Times and the company's other newspapers, television stations and new media properties on defamation, privacy, newsgathering and related issues, and he frequently litigated media and commercial cases. In 1999, he received the New York Press Club's John Peter Zenger award for "defending and advancing the cause of a free press." In 2006, the same group awarded him its Crystal Gavel award for his journalistic work. He has served as the chairman of the New York City Bar Association's communications and media law committee, and on the board of the Media Law Resource Center.
***
Mr. Liptak, a lawyer, joined The Times's news staff in 2002. During law school, he worked as a summer clerk in the The New York Times Company's legal department. After graduating, he spent four years at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a New York City law firm, as a litigation associate. In 1992, he joined The Times's legal department, spending a decade advising The Times and the company's other newspapers, television stations and new media properties on defamation, privacy, newsgathering and related issues, and he frequently litigated media and commercial cases. In 1999, he received the New York Press Club's John Peter Zenger award for "defending and advancing the cause of a free press." In 2006, the same group awarded him its Crystal Gavel award for his journalistic work. He has served as the chairman of the New York City Bar Association's communications and media law committee, and on the board of the Media Law Resource Center.***
Isabel Kershner, Jerusalem correspondent, NY Times
Isabel Kershner reports for the New York Times on Israel and the Palestinians, from Jerusalem.
Prior to being employed by the Times, she was a faculty member of the Anita Saltz Education Center of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, Jerusalem.
***
Prior to being employed by the Times, she was a faculty member of the Anita Saltz Education Center of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, Jerusalem.***
Alissa J. Rubin, Baghdad reporter, NY Times
Alissa J. Rubin reports on Iraq for the New York Times from the Baghdad bureau.
Prior to that she was a bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.
***
Prior to that she was a bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.***
Sharon Waxman, Hollywood Correspondent, NY Times
Sharon Waxman is a New York Times reporter based in Hollywood.
She is working on a book about the tug-of-war over antiquities. The book will be published by Times Books, a division of Henry Holt, which is co-owned with the NY Times. Waxman has been a New York Times correspondent for Hollywood since 2003. As a Times' correspondent, Waxman's is an influential voice. She has covered studio sales and corporate mergers, the Oscars, inside the filmmaking and deal-making process, and key players.
***
.
She is working on a book about the tug-of-war over antiquities. The book will be published by Times Books, a division of Henry Holt, which is co-owned with the NY Times. Waxman has been a New York Times correspondent for Hollywood since 2003. As a Times' correspondent, Waxman's is an influential voice. She has covered studio sales and corporate mergers, the Oscars, inside the filmmaking and deal-making process, and key players.***
.
Michael R. Gordon, Chief Military Correspondent, NY Times
Michael R. Gordon is the chief military correspondent for The New York Times.
Together with his reporting partner, the now disgraced Judith Miller, he wrote much of the Times' pro-war coverage of the Bush administration's WMD assertions with regard to Iraq in 2002 and asserted, with Miller, that the failure to stop Hussein could result in a nuclear mushroom cloud over America. He is an advocate of war with Iran and a supporter of the war in Iraq (his Sept. 8, 2007 NY Times report is titled, "Assessing the 'Surge'; Hints of Progress...").
***
Together with his reporting partner, the now disgraced Judith Miller, he wrote much of the Times' pro-war coverage of the Bush administration's WMD assertions with regard to Iraq in 2002 and asserted, with Miller, that the failure to stop Hussein could result in a nuclear mushroom cloud over America. He is an advocate of war with Iran and a supporter of the war in Iraq (his Sept. 8, 2007 NY Times report is titled, "Assessing the 'Surge'; Hints of Progress...").***
Steven Erlanger, Middle East Reporter, NY Times
Steven Erlanger is Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times.
Prior to covering the Middle East and Israel, Erlanger's previous posts at the Times included metropolitan reporter, Southeast Asia correspondent and Bangkok bureau chief, Moscow bureau chief, chief diplomatic correspondent based in Washington D.C.; Berlin bureau chief and cultural affairs editor.
***
Prior to covering the Middle East and Israel, Erlanger's previous posts at the Times included metropolitan reporter, Southeast Asia correspondent and Bangkok bureau chief, Moscow bureau chief, chief diplomatic correspondent based in Washington D.C.; Berlin bureau chief and cultural affairs editor.***
Daniel H. Cohen, Board of Directors, NY Times
Daniel H. Cohen is a member of the Board of Directors of The New York Times Company.
Mr. Cohen was senior vice president for advertising for The New York Times from 1996 to 1999. During his 16 years with The Times, he was also group director of promotion from 1993 to 1995, managing director of sales from 1992 to 1993, circulation sales development manager, northeast circulation manager and corporate planning analyst from 1983 to 1992. Mr. Cohen also serves on the Tufts University Board of Overseers.
***
Mr. Cohen was senior vice president for advertising for The New York Times from 1996 to 1999. During his 16 years with The Times, he was also group director of promotion from 1993 to 1995, managing director of sales from 1992 to 1993, circulation sales development manager, northeast circulation manager and corporate planning analyst from 1983 to 1992. Mr. Cohen also serves on the Tufts University Board of Overseers.***
Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman, NY Times
Mr. Sulzberger's family owns the New York Times Company.
The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2006 revenues of $3.3 billion, includes newspapers: The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and 15 other daily newspapers, WQXR-FM and more than 30 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com
***
The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2006 revenues of $3.3 billion, includes newspapers: The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and 15 other daily newspapers, WQXR-FM and more than 30 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com ***
Thomas L. Friedman, columnist, NY Times
Thomas L. Friedman became the New York Times foreign-affairs columnist in 1995.
Previously, he served as chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau and before that he was the chief White House correspondent. Mr. Friedman joined The Times in 1981 and was appointed Beirut bureau chief in 1982. In 1984 Mr. Friedman was transferred from Beirut to Jerusalem, where he served as Israel bureau chief until 1988. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel). Mr. Friedman's latest book, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century," was released in April 2005 and won the inaugural Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. In 2004, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE), by Queen Elizabeth II. His book, "From Beirut to Jerusalem" (1989), won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 1989. Mr. Friedman also wrote the text accompanying Micha Bar-Am's book, "Israel: A Photobiography."
***
Previously, he served as chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau and before that he was the chief White House correspondent. Mr. Friedman joined The Times in 1981 and was appointed Beirut bureau chief in 1982. In 1984 Mr. Friedman was transferred from Beirut to Jerusalem, where he served as Israel bureau chief until 1988. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel). Mr. Friedman's latest book, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century," was released in April 2005 and won the inaugural Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. In 2004, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE), by Queen Elizabeth II. His book, "From Beirut to Jerusalem" (1989), won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 1989. Mr. Friedman also wrote the text accompanying Micha Bar-Am's book, "Israel: A Photobiography." ***
Roger Cohen, columnist, NY Times
Roger Cohen, began writing an Op-Ed column for the New York Times in May 2007.
Mr. Cohen had been foreign editor for The New York Times since March 2002. He became deputy foreign editor in August 2001 and acting foreign editor on September 11, 2001. Previously, Mr. Cohen had been bureau chief of the newspaper's Berlin bureau since September 1998. He was a correspondent in its Paris bureau from June 1995 until August 1998, The Times's Balkan bureau chief based in Zagreb from April 1994 until June 1995, and the newspaper's European economic correspondent based in Paris from January 1992 to April 1994. Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Cohen was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
***
Mr. Cohen had been foreign editor for The New York Times since March 2002. He became deputy foreign editor in August 2001 and acting foreign editor on September 11, 2001. Previously, Mr. Cohen had been bureau chief of the newspaper's Berlin bureau since September 1998. He was a correspondent in its Paris bureau from June 1995 until August 1998, The Times's Balkan bureau chief based in Zagreb from April 1994 until June 1995, and the newspaper's European economic correspondent based in Paris from January 1992 to April 1994. Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Cohen was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.***
Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor, NY Times
Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of The New York Times, is answering questions from readers Sept. 24-28. Questions may be e-mailed to askthetimes@nytimes.com
Mr. Rosenthal is in charge of the paper's opinion pages, both in the newspaper and online. He oversees the editorial board, the letters and Op-Ed departments, as well as the editorial and Op-Ed sections of nytimes.com. Mr. Rosenthal answers directly to the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger.
***
Mr. Rosenthal is in charge of the paper's opinion pages, both in the newspaper and online. He oversees the editorial board, the letters and Op-Ed departments, as well as the editorial and Op-Ed sections of nytimes.com. Mr. Rosenthal answers directly to the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger. ***
Antiwar Protesters Decry Handling of Iran
By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post
September 26, 2007; Page A11
A group of antiwar protesters demonstrated outside the White House yesterday to condemn what they termed the government's "demonization" of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said they think the Bush administration is preparing the public for an attack on Iran.
The 25 protesters, most of them from the Troops Out Now Coalition, walked in a circle on the sidewalk north of the White House, chanting "Get out of Iraq! Stay out of Iran!" and holding signs that read: "Don't Terrorize Iran" and "Don't Appease Israel."
They dismissed the criticisms this week of the Iranian president, saying the United States had criticized Saddam Hussein before invading Iraq.
"There's a hysteria in the media emanating from New York . . . against the president of Iran," coalition spokesman Larry Holmes said. "We're here in response to what's been going on in New York: the Columbia debate, the front pages of the tabloids, the electronic media, demonizing the president. And we know what it's about.
"We know that the government is in very advanced stages of planning for a war in Iran. They've got a naval armada" in the Persian Gulf, he said. "The Pentagon's got its plans. And now we see the psychological preparation."
The Iranian president has been criticized this week for questioning the Holocaust and saying there are no homosexuals in Iran.
Referring to Ahmadinejad's controversial statements, Holmes said: "I don't think it's relevant. I think that's an interesting philosophical discussion about theology, about social views, that you have over coffee."
Yesterday's protest is part of week-long antiwar rally that will culminate Saturday in a march scheduled to begin at noon from a coalition camp on the west side of the U.S. Capitol.
Spokesmen said the events are aimed mainly at stopping the war in Iraq and what they called injustice at home. The march route was being worked out, organizers said. The National Park Service said the group's permit suggests that between 2,000 and 5,000 marchers are expected.
"The focus here is stop the war at home and abroad," coalition spokesman Dustin Langley said Monday. "We think there's a real connection between the fact that they're spending $750 million a day on the war and people here die because they don't have access to health care."
The march comes after a large antiwar protest Sept. 15 and precedes an antiwar, anti-global warming rally scheduled for next month. The coalition says there have been numerous marches because the war has not ended and because antiwar groups might have different targets.
"Repeated protests are even more important than whether we get half a million people out here," Langley said. "It may just be important to be here and just dog them because they're lying to us."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/25/AR2007092502162.html?hpid=topnews
***
Washington Post
September 26, 2007; Page A11
A group of antiwar protesters demonstrated outside the White House yesterday to condemn what they termed the government's "demonization" of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said they think the Bush administration is preparing the public for an attack on Iran.
The 25 protesters, most of them from the Troops Out Now Coalition, walked in a circle on the sidewalk north of the White House, chanting "Get out of Iraq! Stay out of Iran!" and holding signs that read: "Don't Terrorize Iran" and "Don't Appease Israel."
They dismissed the criticisms this week of the Iranian president, saying the United States had criticized Saddam Hussein before invading Iraq.
"There's a hysteria in the media emanating from New York . . . against the president of Iran," coalition spokesman Larry Holmes said. "We're here in response to what's been going on in New York: the Columbia debate, the front pages of the tabloids, the electronic media, demonizing the president. And we know what it's about.
"We know that the government is in very advanced stages of planning for a war in Iran. They've got a naval armada" in the Persian Gulf, he said. "The Pentagon's got its plans. And now we see the psychological preparation."
The Iranian president has been criticized this week for questioning the Holocaust and saying there are no homosexuals in Iran.
Referring to Ahmadinejad's controversial statements, Holmes said: "I don't think it's relevant. I think that's an interesting philosophical discussion about theology, about social views, that you have over coffee."
Yesterday's protest is part of week-long antiwar rally that will culminate Saturday in a march scheduled to begin at noon from a coalition camp on the west side of the U.S. Capitol.
Spokesmen said the events are aimed mainly at stopping the war in Iraq and what they called injustice at home. The march route was being worked out, organizers said. The National Park Service said the group's permit suggests that between 2,000 and 5,000 marchers are expected.
"The focus here is stop the war at home and abroad," coalition spokesman Dustin Langley said Monday. "We think there's a real connection between the fact that they're spending $750 million a day on the war and people here die because they don't have access to health care."
The march comes after a large antiwar protest Sept. 15 and precedes an antiwar, anti-global warming rally scheduled for next month. The coalition says there have been numerous marches because the war has not ended and because antiwar groups might have different targets.
"Repeated protests are even more important than whether we get half a million people out here," Langley said. "It may just be important to be here and just dog them because they're lying to us."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/25/AR2007092502162.html?hpid=topnews
***
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Documents show Israel lobbying to import nuclear material
Haaretz (Israeli newspaper) | September 26, 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907403.html
Israel is looking to a U.S.-India nuclear deal to expand its own ties to suppliers, quietly lobbying for an exemption from non-proliferation rules so it can legally import atomic material, according to documents made available Tuesday (Sept. 25) to The Associated Press.
The move is sure to raise concerns among Arab nations already considering their neighbor the region's atomic arms threat. Israel has never publicly acknowledged having nuclear weapons, but is generally considered to possess them.
The new push is reflected in papers Israel presented earlier this year to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group - 45 nations that export nuclear fuel and technology under strict rules meant to lessen the dangers of proliferation and trafficking in materials that could be used for a weapons program.
The initiative appeared to be linked to a U.S.-India agreement that would effectively waive the group's rules by allowing the United States to supply India with nuclear fuel despite its refusal both to sign the nonproliferation treaty and allowing the IAEA to inspect all of its nuclear facilities.
Israeli officials began examining how their country could profit from that deal as early as last year, at one point proposing that the U.S. ask for an exemption from restrictions stipulating safeguards by the U.N. nuclear agency on all nuclear facilities, said a diplomat. The U.S. rejected that request, he said, demanding anonymity for discussing restricted information. Still, the documents show that Israel has not given up its quest.
Under a cover letter labeled confidential, the two papers - titled Israel's Credentials in Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Safety and Security, and Toward a Criteria Based Approach for Nuclear Collaboration with Non-NPT States - were circulated among the group March 19 by Japan, whose mission to Vienna's International Atomic Energy Agency serves as the liaison office for the group.
Among the hurdles still to be cleared before the U.S.-India pact becomes reality is NSG approval of a special exemption for India from group restrictions. Critics have warned that the deal, if it goes through, will deal a blow to efforts to contain the spread of nuclear arms by effectively rewarding a country that has developed nuclear weapons while evading the nonproliferation pact.
Besides India, only Pakistan and North Korea are known to have nuclear weapons and be outside the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. But Israel is considered an undeclared weapons state; its doctrine of nuclear ambiguity - never formally confirming or denying that it has such weapons - is meant to scare potential enemies from considering an annihilating attack while denying them the rationale for developing their own nuclear deterrent.
In the paper proposing a list of criteria to be used by NSG countries for Nuclear Collaboration with non-NPT States, Israel inadvertently appeared to touch on the debate over its own status, saying one condition should be application of stringent physical protection, control, and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons ... in its territory.
The other document, meant to outline Israel's commitment to the global non-proliferation regime, urges the international community at large and NSG Member States in particular to cooperate with non-NPT states with strong non-proliferation credentials in the supply of (nuclear) know-how and equipment.
The diplomat, who is familiar with the issue, said the Israeli papers were acknowledged but definitely not embraced by the NSG member nations.
The NSG is expected to consider a U.S. proposal later this year lifting restrictions on trade with India as an offshoot of the U.S. exemptions for individual countries from nonproliferation rules and standards, he said.
The most recent tensions over Israel's nuclear capabilities surfaced at the IAEA's 148-nation general conference. On Thursday, the Vienna meeting's penultimate day, only the U.S. and Israel voted against a critical resolution implicitly aimed at the Jewish State for refusing to put its nuclear program under international purview.
***
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907403.html
Israel is looking to a U.S.-India nuclear deal to expand its own ties to suppliers, quietly lobbying for an exemption from non-proliferation rules so it can legally import atomic material, according to documents made available Tuesday (Sept. 25) to The Associated Press.
The move is sure to raise concerns among Arab nations already considering their neighbor the region's atomic arms threat. Israel has never publicly acknowledged having nuclear weapons, but is generally considered to possess them.
The new push is reflected in papers Israel presented earlier this year to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group - 45 nations that export nuclear fuel and technology under strict rules meant to lessen the dangers of proliferation and trafficking in materials that could be used for a weapons program.
The initiative appeared to be linked to a U.S.-India agreement that would effectively waive the group's rules by allowing the United States to supply India with nuclear fuel despite its refusal both to sign the nonproliferation treaty and allowing the IAEA to inspect all of its nuclear facilities.
Israeli officials began examining how their country could profit from that deal as early as last year, at one point proposing that the U.S. ask for an exemption from restrictions stipulating safeguards by the U.N. nuclear agency on all nuclear facilities, said a diplomat. The U.S. rejected that request, he said, demanding anonymity for discussing restricted information. Still, the documents show that Israel has not given up its quest.
Under a cover letter labeled confidential, the two papers - titled Israel's Credentials in Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Safety and Security, and Toward a Criteria Based Approach for Nuclear Collaboration with Non-NPT States - were circulated among the group March 19 by Japan, whose mission to Vienna's International Atomic Energy Agency serves as the liaison office for the group.
Among the hurdles still to be cleared before the U.S.-India pact becomes reality is NSG approval of a special exemption for India from group restrictions. Critics have warned that the deal, if it goes through, will deal a blow to efforts to contain the spread of nuclear arms by effectively rewarding a country that has developed nuclear weapons while evading the nonproliferation pact.
Besides India, only Pakistan and North Korea are known to have nuclear weapons and be outside the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. But Israel is considered an undeclared weapons state; its doctrine of nuclear ambiguity - never formally confirming or denying that it has such weapons - is meant to scare potential enemies from considering an annihilating attack while denying them the rationale for developing their own nuclear deterrent.
In the paper proposing a list of criteria to be used by NSG countries for Nuclear Collaboration with non-NPT States, Israel inadvertently appeared to touch on the debate over its own status, saying one condition should be application of stringent physical protection, control, and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons ... in its territory.
The other document, meant to outline Israel's commitment to the global non-proliferation regime, urges the international community at large and NSG Member States in particular to cooperate with non-NPT states with strong non-proliferation credentials in the supply of (nuclear) know-how and equipment.
The diplomat, who is familiar with the issue, said the Israeli papers were acknowledged but definitely not embraced by the NSG member nations.
The NSG is expected to consider a U.S. proposal later this year lifting restrictions on trade with India as an offshoot of the U.S. exemptions for individual countries from nonproliferation rules and standards, he said.
The most recent tensions over Israel's nuclear capabilities surfaced at the IAEA's 148-nation general conference. On Thursday, the Vienna meeting's penultimate day, only the U.S. and Israel voted against a critical resolution implicitly aimed at the Jewish State for refusing to put its nuclear program under international purview.
***
Iranian President's Speech to the U.N. Sept. 2007
Subject: THE WAR CRIMES OF THE 'BIG POWERS" WHICH THE U.N. DOES NOT PROTEST OR INTERDICT
The following is a transcript of remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2007
Madam President, Distinguished Heads of State and Government, Distinguished Heads of Delegation, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I praise the Merciful, All-Knowing and Almighty God for blessing me with another opportunity to address this Assembly on behalf of the great nation of Iran and to bring a number of issues to the attention of the international community.
I also praise the Almighty for the increasing vigilance of peoples across the globe, their courageous presence in different international settings, and the brave expression of their views and aspirations regarding global issues.
Today, humanity passionately craves commitment to the Truth, devotion to God, quest for Justice and respect for the dignity of human beings. Rejection of domination and aggression, defense of the oppressed, and longing for peace constitute the legitimate demand of the peoples of the world, particularly the new generations and the spirited youth, who aspire a world free from decadence, aggression and injustice, and replete with love and compassion. The youth have a right to seek justice and the Truth; and they have a right to build their own future on the foundations of love, compassion and tranquility. And, I praise the Almighty for this immense blessing.
What afflicts humanity today is certainly not compatible with human dignity; the Almighty has not created human beings so that they could transgress against others and oppress them.
By causing war and conflict, some are fast expanding their domination, accumulating greater wealth and usurping all the resources, while others endure the resulting poverty, suffering and misery. Some seek to rule the world relying on weapons and threats, while others live in perpetual insecurity and danger.
Some occupy the homeland of others, thousands of kilometers away from their borders, interfere in their affairs and control their oil and other resources and strategic routes, while others are bombarded daily in their own homes; their children murdered in the streets and alleys of their own country and their homes reduced to rubble.
Such behavior is not worthy of human beings and runs counter to the Truth, to justice and to human dignity. The fundamental question is that under such conditions, where should the oppressed seek justice? Who, or what organization defends the rights of the oppressed, and suppresses acts of aggression and oppression? Where is the seat of global justice?
A brief glance at a few examples of the most pressing global issues can further illustrate the problem.
A. The unbridled expansion of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
Some powers proudly announce their production of second and third generations of nuclear weapons. What do they need these weapons for? Is the development and stockpiling of these deadly weapons designed to promote peace and democracy? Or, are these weapons, in fact, instruments of coercion and threat against other peoples and governments? How long should the people of the world live with the nightmare of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons? What bounds the powers producing and possessing these weapons?
How can they be held accountable before the international community? And, are the inhabitants of these countries content with the waste of their wealth and resources for the production of such destructive arsenals? Is it not possible to rely on justice, ethics and wisdom instead of these instruments of death? Aren't wisdom and justice more compatible with peace and tranquility than nuclear, chemical and biological weapons? If wisdom, ethics and justice prevail, then oppression and aggression will be uprooted, threats will wither away and no reason will remain for conflict. This is a solid proposition because most global conflicts emanate from injustice, and from the powerful, not being contented with their own rights, striving to devour the rights of others. People across the globe embrace justice and are willing to sacrifice for its sake.
Would it not be easier for global powers to ensure their longevity and win hearts and minds through the championing of real promotion of justice, compassion and peace, than through continuing the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and the threat of their use? The experience of the threat and the use of nuclear weapons is before us. Has it achieved anything for the perpetrators other than exacerbation of tension, hatred and animosity among nations?
B. Occupation of countries and exacerbation of hostilities
Occupation of countries, including Iraq, has continued for the last three years. Not a day goes by without hundreds of people getting killed in cold blood. The occupiers are incapable of establishing security in Iraq. Despite the establishment of the lawful Government and National Assembly of Iraq, there are covert and overt efforts to heighten insecurity, magnify and aggravate differences within Iraqi society, and instigate civil strife.
There is no indication that the occupiers have the necessary political will to eliminate the sources of instability. Numerous terrorists were apprehended by the Government of Iraq, only to be let loose under various pretexts by the occupiers. It seems that intensification of hostilities and terrorism serves as a pretext for the continued presence of foreign forces in Iraq. Where can the people of Iraq seek refuge, and from whom should the Government of Iraq seek justice?
Who can ensure Iraq's security? Insecurity in Iraq affects the entire region. Can the Security Council play a role in restoring peace and security in Iraq, while the occupiers are themselves permanent members of the Council? Can the Security Council adopt a fair decision in this regard?
Consider the situation in Palestine: The roots of the Palestinian problem go back to the Second World War. Under the pretext of protecting some of the survivors of that War, the land of Palestine was occupied through war, aggression and the displacement of millions of its inhabitants; it was placed under the control of some of the War survivors, bringing even larger population groups from elsewhere in the world, who had not been even affected by the Second World War; and a government was established in the territory of others with a population collected from across the world at the expense of driving millions of the rightful inhabitants of the land into a diaspora and homelessness.
This is a great tragedy with hardly a precedent in history. Refugees continue to live in temporary refugee camps, and many have died still hoping to one day return to their land. Can any logic, law or legal reasoning justify this tragedy? Can any member of the United Nations accept such a tragedy occurring in their own homeland?
The pretexts for the creation of the regime occupying Al-Qods Al-Sharif are so weak that its proponents want to silence any voice trying to merely speak about them, as they are concerned that shedding light on the facts would undermine the raison d'être of this regime, as it has. The tragedy does not end with the establishment of a regime in the territory of others.
Regrettably, from its inception, that regime has been a constant source of threat and insecurity in the Middle East region, waging war and spilling blood and impeding the progress of regional countries, and has also been used by some powers as an instrument of division, coercion, and pressure on the people of the region. Reference to these historical realities may cause some disquiet among supporters of this regime. But these are sheer facts and not myth. History has unfolded before our eyes. Worst yet, is the blanket and unwarranted support provided to this regime.
Just watch what is happening in the Palestinian land. People are being bombarded in their own homes and their children murdered in their own streets and alleys. But no authority, not even the Security Council, can afford them any support or protection. Why?
At the same time, a Government is formed democratically and through the free choice of the electorate in a part of the Palestinian territory. But instead of receiving the support of the so-called champions of democracy, its Ministers and Members of Parliament are illegally abducted and incarcerated in full view of the international community.
Which council or international organization stands up to protect this brutally besieged Government? And why can't the Security Council take any steps?
Let me here address Lebanon. For thirty-three long days, the Lebanese lived under the barrage of fire and bombs and close to 1.5 million of them were displaced; meanwhile some members of the Security Council practically chose a path that provided ample opportunity for the aggressor to achieve its objectives militarily. We witnessed that the Security Council of the United Nations was practically incapacitated by certain powers to even call for a ceasefire. The Security Council sat idly by for so many days, witnessing the cruel scenes of atrocities against the Lebanese while tragedies such as Qana were persistently repeated. Why?
In all these cases, the answer is self-evident. When the power behind the hostilities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can this Council fulfill its responsibilities?
C. Lack of respect for the rights of members of the international community
I now wish to refer to some of the grievances of the Iranian people and speak to the injustices against them. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a member of the IAEA and is committed to the NPT. All our nuclear activities are transparent, peaceful and under the watchful eyes of IAEA inspectors. Why then are there objections to our legally recognized rights? Which governments object to these rights? Governments that themselves benefit from nuclear energy and the fuel cycle. Some of them have abused nuclear technology for non-peaceful ends including the production of nuclear bombs, and some even have a bleak record of using them against humanity.
Which organization or Council should address these injustices? Is the Security Council in a position to address them? Can it stop violations of the inalienable rights of countries? Can it prevent certain powers from impeding scientific progress of other countries? The abuse of the Security Council, as an instrument of threat and coercion, is indeed a source of grave concern.
Some permanent members of the Security Council, even when they are themselves parties to international disputes, conveniently threaten others with the Security Council and declare, even before any decision by the Council, the condemnation of their opponents by the Council. The question is: what can justify such exploitation of the Security Council, and doesn't it erode the credibility and effectiveness of the Council? Can such behavior contribute to the ability of the Council to maintain security?
A review of the preceding historical realities would lead to the conclusion that regrettably, justice has become a victim of force and aggression. Many global arrangements have become unjust, discriminatory and irresponsible as a result of undue pressure from some of the powerful; Threats with nuclear weapons and other instruments of war by some powers have taken the place of respect for the rights of nations and the maintenance and promotion of peace and tranquility;
For some powers, claims of promotion of human rights and democracy can only last as long as they can be used as instruments of pressure and intimidation against other nations. But when it comes to the interests of the claimants, concepts such as democracy, the right of self-determination of nations, respect for the rights and intelligence of peoples, international law and justice have no place or value. This is blatantly manifested in the way the elected Government of the Palestinian people is treated as well as in the support extended to the Zionist regime. It does not matter if people are murdered in Palestine, turned into refugees, captured, imprisoned or besieged; that must not violate human rights.
Nations are not equal in exercising their rights recognized by international law. Enjoying these rights is dependent on the whim of certain major powers. Apparently the Security Council can only be used to ensure the security and the rights of some big powers. But when the oppressed are decimated under bombardment, the Security Council must remain aloof and not even call for a ceasefire. Is this not a tragedy of historic proportions for the Security Council, which is charged with maintaining the security of countries?
The prevailing order of contemporary global interactions is such that certain powers equate themselves with the international community, and consider their decisions superseding that of over 180 countries. They consider themselves the masters and rulers of the entire world and other nations as only second class in the world order.
The question needs to be asked: if the Governments of the United States or the United Kingdom who are permanent members of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of international law, which of the organs of the UN can take them to account?
Can a Council in which they are privileged members address their violations? Has this ever happened?
In fact, we have repeatedly seen the reverse. If they have differences with a nation or state, they drag it to the Security Council and as claimants, arrogate to themselves simultaneously the roles of prosecutor, judge and executioner. Is this a just order? Can there be a more vivid case of discrimination and more clear evidence of injustice?
Regrettably, the persistence of some hegemonic powers in imposing their exclusionist policies on international decision making mechanisms, including the Security Council, has resulted in a growing mistrust in global public opinion, undermining the credibility and effectiveness of this most universal system of collective security.
How long can such a situation last in the world? It is evident that the behavior of some powers constitutes the greatest challenge before the Security Council, the entire organization and its affiliated agencies.
The present structure and working methods of the Security Council, which are legacies of the Second World War, are not responsive to the expectations of the current generation and the contemporary needs of humanity.
Today, it is undeniable that the Security Council, most critically and urgently, needs legitimacy and effectiveness. It must be acknowledged that as long as the Council is unable to act on behalf of the entire international community in a transparent, just and democratic manner, it will neither be legitimate nor effective. Furthermore, the direct relation between the abuse of veto and the erosion of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Council has now been clearly and undeniably established. We cannot, and should not, expect the eradication, or even containment, of injustice, imposition and oppression without reforming the structure and working methods of the Council.
Is it appropriate to expect this generation to submit to the decisions and arrangements established over half a century ago? Doesn't this generation or future generations have the right to decide themselves about the world in which they want to live?
Today, serious reform in the structure and working methods of the Security Council is, more than ever before, necessary. Justice and democracy dictate that the role of the General Assembly, as the highest organ of the United Nations, must be respected. The General Assembly can then, through appropriate mechanisms, take on the task of reforming the Organization and particularly rescue the Security Council from its current state. In the interim, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the African continent should each have a representative as a permanent member of the Security Council, with veto privilege. The resulting balance would hopefully prevent further trampling of the rights of nations.
It is essential that spirituality and ethics find their rightful place in international relations. Without ethics and spirituality, attained in light of the teachings of Divine prophets, justice, freedom and human rights cannot be guaranteed.
Resolution of contemporary human crises lies in observing ethics and spirituality and the governance of righteous people of high competence and piety.
Should respect for the rights of human beings become the predominant objective, then injustice, ill-temperament, aggression and war will fade away.
Human beings are all God's creatures and are all endowed with dignity and respect. No one has superiority over others. No individual or states can arrogate to themselves special privileges, nor can they disregard the rights of others and, through influence and pressure, position themselves as the "international community".
Citizens of Asia, Africa, Europe and America are all equal. Over 6 billion inhabitants of the earth are all equal and worthy of respect. Justice and protection of human dignity are the two pillars in maintaining sustainable peace, security and tranquility in the world. It is for this reason that we state:
Sustainable peace and tranquility in the world can only be attained through justice, spirituality, ethics, compassion and respect for human dignity.
All nations and states are entitled to peace, progress and security.
We are all members of the international community and we are all entitled to insist on the creation of a climate of compassion, love and justice.
All members of the United Nations are affected by both the bitter and the sweet events and developments in today's world.
We can adopt firm and logical decisions, thereby improving the prospects of a better life for current and future generations.
Together, we can eradicate the roots of bitter maladies and afflictions, and instead, through the promotion of universal and lasting values such as ethics, spirituality and justice, allow our nations to taste the sweetness of a better future.
Peoples, driven by their divine nature, intrinsically seek Good, Virtue, Perfection and Beauty. Relying on our peoples, we can take giant steps towards reform and pave the road for human perfection. Whether we like it or not, justice, peace and virtue will sooner or later prevail in the world with the will of Almighty God. It is imperative, and also desirable, that we too contribute to the promotion of justice and virtue.
The Almighty and Merciful God, who is the Creator of the Universe, is also its Lord and Ruler. Justice is His command. He commands His creatures to support one another in Good, virtue and piety, and not in decadence and corruption.
He commands His creatures to enjoin one another to righteousness and virtue and not to sin and transgression. All Divine prophets from the Prophet Adam (peace be upon him) to the Prophet Moses (peace be upon him), to the Prophet Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), to the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), have all called humanity to monotheism, justice, brotherhood, love and compassion. Is it not possible to build a better world based on monotheism, justice, love and respect for the rights of human beings, and thereby transform animosities into friendship?
I emphatically declare that today's world, more than ever before, longs for just and righteous people with love for all humanity; and above all longs for the perfect righteous human being and the real savior who has been promised to all peoples and who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood on the planet.
0h, Almighty God, all men and women are Your creatures and You have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.
***
The following is a transcript of remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2007
Madam President, Distinguished Heads of State and Government, Distinguished Heads of Delegation, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I praise the Merciful, All-Knowing and Almighty God for blessing me with another opportunity to address this Assembly on behalf of the great nation of Iran and to bring a number of issues to the attention of the international community.
I also praise the Almighty for the increasing vigilance of peoples across the globe, their courageous presence in different international settings, and the brave expression of their views and aspirations regarding global issues.
Today, humanity passionately craves commitment to the Truth, devotion to God, quest for Justice and respect for the dignity of human beings. Rejection of domination and aggression, defense of the oppressed, and longing for peace constitute the legitimate demand of the peoples of the world, particularly the new generations and the spirited youth, who aspire a world free from decadence, aggression and injustice, and replete with love and compassion. The youth have a right to seek justice and the Truth; and they have a right to build their own future on the foundations of love, compassion and tranquility. And, I praise the Almighty for this immense blessing.
What afflicts humanity today is certainly not compatible with human dignity; the Almighty has not created human beings so that they could transgress against others and oppress them.
By causing war and conflict, some are fast expanding their domination, accumulating greater wealth and usurping all the resources, while others endure the resulting poverty, suffering and misery. Some seek to rule the world relying on weapons and threats, while others live in perpetual insecurity and danger.
Some occupy the homeland of others, thousands of kilometers away from their borders, interfere in their affairs and control their oil and other resources and strategic routes, while others are bombarded daily in their own homes; their children murdered in the streets and alleys of their own country and their homes reduced to rubble.
Such behavior is not worthy of human beings and runs counter to the Truth, to justice and to human dignity. The fundamental question is that under such conditions, where should the oppressed seek justice? Who, or what organization defends the rights of the oppressed, and suppresses acts of aggression and oppression? Where is the seat of global justice?
A brief glance at a few examples of the most pressing global issues can further illustrate the problem.
A. The unbridled expansion of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
Some powers proudly announce their production of second and third generations of nuclear weapons. What do they need these weapons for? Is the development and stockpiling of these deadly weapons designed to promote peace and democracy? Or, are these weapons, in fact, instruments of coercion and threat against other peoples and governments? How long should the people of the world live with the nightmare of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons? What bounds the powers producing and possessing these weapons?
How can they be held accountable before the international community? And, are the inhabitants of these countries content with the waste of their wealth and resources for the production of such destructive arsenals? Is it not possible to rely on justice, ethics and wisdom instead of these instruments of death? Aren't wisdom and justice more compatible with peace and tranquility than nuclear, chemical and biological weapons? If wisdom, ethics and justice prevail, then oppression and aggression will be uprooted, threats will wither away and no reason will remain for conflict. This is a solid proposition because most global conflicts emanate from injustice, and from the powerful, not being contented with their own rights, striving to devour the rights of others. People across the globe embrace justice and are willing to sacrifice for its sake.
Would it not be easier for global powers to ensure their longevity and win hearts and minds through the championing of real promotion of justice, compassion and peace, than through continuing the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and the threat of their use? The experience of the threat and the use of nuclear weapons is before us. Has it achieved anything for the perpetrators other than exacerbation of tension, hatred and animosity among nations?
B. Occupation of countries and exacerbation of hostilities
Occupation of countries, including Iraq, has continued for the last three years. Not a day goes by without hundreds of people getting killed in cold blood. The occupiers are incapable of establishing security in Iraq. Despite the establishment of the lawful Government and National Assembly of Iraq, there are covert and overt efforts to heighten insecurity, magnify and aggravate differences within Iraqi society, and instigate civil strife.
There is no indication that the occupiers have the necessary political will to eliminate the sources of instability. Numerous terrorists were apprehended by the Government of Iraq, only to be let loose under various pretexts by the occupiers. It seems that intensification of hostilities and terrorism serves as a pretext for the continued presence of foreign forces in Iraq. Where can the people of Iraq seek refuge, and from whom should the Government of Iraq seek justice?
Who can ensure Iraq's security? Insecurity in Iraq affects the entire region. Can the Security Council play a role in restoring peace and security in Iraq, while the occupiers are themselves permanent members of the Council? Can the Security Council adopt a fair decision in this regard?
Consider the situation in Palestine: The roots of the Palestinian problem go back to the Second World War. Under the pretext of protecting some of the survivors of that War, the land of Palestine was occupied through war, aggression and the displacement of millions of its inhabitants; it was placed under the control of some of the War survivors, bringing even larger population groups from elsewhere in the world, who had not been even affected by the Second World War; and a government was established in the territory of others with a population collected from across the world at the expense of driving millions of the rightful inhabitants of the land into a diaspora and homelessness.
This is a great tragedy with hardly a precedent in history. Refugees continue to live in temporary refugee camps, and many have died still hoping to one day return to their land. Can any logic, law or legal reasoning justify this tragedy? Can any member of the United Nations accept such a tragedy occurring in their own homeland?
The pretexts for the creation of the regime occupying Al-Qods Al-Sharif are so weak that its proponents want to silence any voice trying to merely speak about them, as they are concerned that shedding light on the facts would undermine the raison d'être of this regime, as it has. The tragedy does not end with the establishment of a regime in the territory of others.
Regrettably, from its inception, that regime has been a constant source of threat and insecurity in the Middle East region, waging war and spilling blood and impeding the progress of regional countries, and has also been used by some powers as an instrument of division, coercion, and pressure on the people of the region. Reference to these historical realities may cause some disquiet among supporters of this regime. But these are sheer facts and not myth. History has unfolded before our eyes. Worst yet, is the blanket and unwarranted support provided to this regime.
Just watch what is happening in the Palestinian land. People are being bombarded in their own homes and their children murdered in their own streets and alleys. But no authority, not even the Security Council, can afford them any support or protection. Why?
At the same time, a Government is formed democratically and through the free choice of the electorate in a part of the Palestinian territory. But instead of receiving the support of the so-called champions of democracy, its Ministers and Members of Parliament are illegally abducted and incarcerated in full view of the international community.
Which council or international organization stands up to protect this brutally besieged Government? And why can't the Security Council take any steps?
Let me here address Lebanon. For thirty-three long days, the Lebanese lived under the barrage of fire and bombs and close to 1.5 million of them were displaced; meanwhile some members of the Security Council practically chose a path that provided ample opportunity for the aggressor to achieve its objectives militarily. We witnessed that the Security Council of the United Nations was practically incapacitated by certain powers to even call for a ceasefire. The Security Council sat idly by for so many days, witnessing the cruel scenes of atrocities against the Lebanese while tragedies such as Qana were persistently repeated. Why?
In all these cases, the answer is self-evident. When the power behind the hostilities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can this Council fulfill its responsibilities?
C. Lack of respect for the rights of members of the international community
I now wish to refer to some of the grievances of the Iranian people and speak to the injustices against them. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a member of the IAEA and is committed to the NPT. All our nuclear activities are transparent, peaceful and under the watchful eyes of IAEA inspectors. Why then are there objections to our legally recognized rights? Which governments object to these rights? Governments that themselves benefit from nuclear energy and the fuel cycle. Some of them have abused nuclear technology for non-peaceful ends including the production of nuclear bombs, and some even have a bleak record of using them against humanity.
Which organization or Council should address these injustices? Is the Security Council in a position to address them? Can it stop violations of the inalienable rights of countries? Can it prevent certain powers from impeding scientific progress of other countries? The abuse of the Security Council, as an instrument of threat and coercion, is indeed a source of grave concern.
Some permanent members of the Security Council, even when they are themselves parties to international disputes, conveniently threaten others with the Security Council and declare, even before any decision by the Council, the condemnation of their opponents by the Council. The question is: what can justify such exploitation of the Security Council, and doesn't it erode the credibility and effectiveness of the Council? Can such behavior contribute to the ability of the Council to maintain security?
A review of the preceding historical realities would lead to the conclusion that regrettably, justice has become a victim of force and aggression. Many global arrangements have become unjust, discriminatory and irresponsible as a result of undue pressure from some of the powerful; Threats with nuclear weapons and other instruments of war by some powers have taken the place of respect for the rights of nations and the maintenance and promotion of peace and tranquility;
For some powers, claims of promotion of human rights and democracy can only last as long as they can be used as instruments of pressure and intimidation against other nations. But when it comes to the interests of the claimants, concepts such as democracy, the right of self-determination of nations, respect for the rights and intelligence of peoples, international law and justice have no place or value. This is blatantly manifested in the way the elected Government of the Palestinian people is treated as well as in the support extended to the Zionist regime. It does not matter if people are murdered in Palestine, turned into refugees, captured, imprisoned or besieged; that must not violate human rights.
Nations are not equal in exercising their rights recognized by international law. Enjoying these rights is dependent on the whim of certain major powers. Apparently the Security Council can only be used to ensure the security and the rights of some big powers. But when the oppressed are decimated under bombardment, the Security Council must remain aloof and not even call for a ceasefire. Is this not a tragedy of historic proportions for the Security Council, which is charged with maintaining the security of countries?
The prevailing order of contemporary global interactions is such that certain powers equate themselves with the international community, and consider their decisions superseding that of over 180 countries. They consider themselves the masters and rulers of the entire world and other nations as only second class in the world order.
The question needs to be asked: if the Governments of the United States or the United Kingdom who are permanent members of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of international law, which of the organs of the UN can take them to account?
Can a Council in which they are privileged members address their violations? Has this ever happened?
In fact, we have repeatedly seen the reverse. If they have differences with a nation or state, they drag it to the Security Council and as claimants, arrogate to themselves simultaneously the roles of prosecutor, judge and executioner. Is this a just order? Can there be a more vivid case of discrimination and more clear evidence of injustice?
Regrettably, the persistence of some hegemonic powers in imposing their exclusionist policies on international decision making mechanisms, including the Security Council, has resulted in a growing mistrust in global public opinion, undermining the credibility and effectiveness of this most universal system of collective security.
How long can such a situation last in the world? It is evident that the behavior of some powers constitutes the greatest challenge before the Security Council, the entire organization and its affiliated agencies.
The present structure and working methods of the Security Council, which are legacies of the Second World War, are not responsive to the expectations of the current generation and the contemporary needs of humanity.
Today, it is undeniable that the Security Council, most critically and urgently, needs legitimacy and effectiveness. It must be acknowledged that as long as the Council is unable to act on behalf of the entire international community in a transparent, just and democratic manner, it will neither be legitimate nor effective. Furthermore, the direct relation between the abuse of veto and the erosion of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Council has now been clearly and undeniably established. We cannot, and should not, expect the eradication, or even containment, of injustice, imposition and oppression without reforming the structure and working methods of the Council.
Is it appropriate to expect this generation to submit to the decisions and arrangements established over half a century ago? Doesn't this generation or future generations have the right to decide themselves about the world in which they want to live?
Today, serious reform in the structure and working methods of the Security Council is, more than ever before, necessary. Justice and democracy dictate that the role of the General Assembly, as the highest organ of the United Nations, must be respected. The General Assembly can then, through appropriate mechanisms, take on the task of reforming the Organization and particularly rescue the Security Council from its current state. In the interim, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the African continent should each have a representative as a permanent member of the Security Council, with veto privilege. The resulting balance would hopefully prevent further trampling of the rights of nations.
It is essential that spirituality and ethics find their rightful place in international relations. Without ethics and spirituality, attained in light of the teachings of Divine prophets, justice, freedom and human rights cannot be guaranteed.
Resolution of contemporary human crises lies in observing ethics and spirituality and the governance of righteous people of high competence and piety.
Should respect for the rights of human beings become the predominant objective, then injustice, ill-temperament, aggression and war will fade away.
Human beings are all God's creatures and are all endowed with dignity and respect. No one has superiority over others. No individual or states can arrogate to themselves special privileges, nor can they disregard the rights of others and, through influence and pressure, position themselves as the "international community".
Citizens of Asia, Africa, Europe and America are all equal. Over 6 billion inhabitants of the earth are all equal and worthy of respect. Justice and protection of human dignity are the two pillars in maintaining sustainable peace, security and tranquility in the world. It is for this reason that we state:
Sustainable peace and tranquility in the world can only be attained through justice, spirituality, ethics, compassion and respect for human dignity.
All nations and states are entitled to peace, progress and security.
We are all members of the international community and we are all entitled to insist on the creation of a climate of compassion, love and justice.
All members of the United Nations are affected by both the bitter and the sweet events and developments in today's world.
We can adopt firm and logical decisions, thereby improving the prospects of a better life for current and future generations.
Together, we can eradicate the roots of bitter maladies and afflictions, and instead, through the promotion of universal and lasting values such as ethics, spirituality and justice, allow our nations to taste the sweetness of a better future.
Peoples, driven by their divine nature, intrinsically seek Good, Virtue, Perfection and Beauty. Relying on our peoples, we can take giant steps towards reform and pave the road for human perfection. Whether we like it or not, justice, peace and virtue will sooner or later prevail in the world with the will of Almighty God. It is imperative, and also desirable, that we too contribute to the promotion of justice and virtue.
The Almighty and Merciful God, who is the Creator of the Universe, is also its Lord and Ruler. Justice is His command. He commands His creatures to support one another in Good, virtue and piety, and not in decadence and corruption.
He commands His creatures to enjoin one another to righteousness and virtue and not to sin and transgression. All Divine prophets from the Prophet Adam (peace be upon him) to the Prophet Moses (peace be upon him), to the Prophet Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), to the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), have all called humanity to monotheism, justice, brotherhood, love and compassion. Is it not possible to build a better world based on monotheism, justice, love and respect for the rights of human beings, and thereby transform animosities into friendship?
I emphatically declare that today's world, more than ever before, longs for just and righteous people with love for all humanity; and above all longs for the perfect righteous human being and the real savior who has been promised to all peoples and who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood on the planet.
0h, Almighty God, all men and women are Your creatures and You have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.
***
Monday, September 24, 2007
Iran's Ahmadinejad at Columbia University
Contents
1. Synopsis of highlights from Ahmadinejad's talk at Columbia
2. Reactions from students and the public
3. Brief observations by Hoffman
***Synopsis of highlights from Ahmadinejad's talk at Columbia University
Inside the auditorium, the Columbia students laughed appreciatively when Mr. Ahmadinejad pushed back against the attempts by Dean John H. Coatsworth, the event's moderator, to get him to answer questions directly about the Zionist regime. "Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?" Mr. Coatsworth asked.
"We love all people," Mr. Ahmadinejad said. "We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran." He went on to say that the Palestinian "nation" should be allowed a referendum to decide its own future.
Mr. Coatsworth persisted: "I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no."
Mr. Ahmadinejad was having none of it. "You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it," he shot back. "I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no."
For that, he got a round of applause from the students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium. Online tickets evaporated in 90 minutes last week, they said, almost on par with a Bruce Springsteen concert.
Mr. Ahmadinejad asked of the United States: “If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and tested them already, what position are you in to question the peaceful purposes of others who want nuclear power? We don’t believe in nuclear weapons, period. It goes against the whole grain of humanity.”
President Ahmadinejad completed his appearance by thanking his audience. “I ask Almighty God to assist all of us to work hand in hand for a future filled with peace, justice and brotherhood,” he said. “Best of luck to all of you.”
He added that Columbia’s faculty members were “officially invited” to come to Iran to speak — to which the audience gave a rousing round of applause. “You are welcome to choose any university in Iran,” he said. “We’ll give you the platform, we’ll respect you 100 percent, we will have our students sit and listen to what you have to say.”
***REACTIONS FROM STUDENTS AND THE PUBLIC (from NY Times' blogs):
There is an interesting problem with selling the “Iran as Nazi Germany” line. If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel’s Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews. The Ma’ariv newspaper pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was, noted the report, “a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave”.
According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a campaign to convince Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152 out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for economic reasons, not political ones. To step up these efforts — and presumably to avoid the embarrassing incongruence of claiming an imminent second Holocaust while thousands of Jews live happily in Tehran — Israel is now backing a move by Jewish donors to guarantee every Iranian Jewish family $60,000 to settle in Israel, in addition to a host of existing financial incentives that are offered to Jewish immigrants, including loans and cheap mortgages.
The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews, which issued a statement that their national identity was not for sale. “The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran’s Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews.”
--Posted by Thomas
Ahmadinejad was gracious and thanked the crowd (read the full transcript) even after being attacked viciously by his host.
— Posted by Jessica Hunt
Lee Bollinger embarrassed himself and his University. He behaved like the quintessential “ugly American”. Ahmadinejad was an invited guest, he should have been treated as one regardless of what Bollinger thinks of him. If anyone looked petty it was Bollinger.
— Posted by David
Can anyone imagine, even for a moment, George W. Bush being interviewed by a hostile media overseas, say in Iran; fielding any and all questions, and putting himself through a gauntlet such as Ahmadinejad endured today at Columbia University? Being held to account for his own war crimes, not to mention his wars? Being taken to task for his own hypocrisies, lies, and atrocities without a manager or teleprompter? The mere notion is laughable, and that should tell you something about this courageous, if sometimes misguided, leader of Iran.
— Posted by Mike Conrad, Washington DC
There were demonstrations seen and heard - which is something the Bush Administration has not allowed to happen within hearing or eyesight of President Bush.
— Posted by Katy
Ahmadinejad's openness to questions is far greater than Bush or Cheney has ever done, and this to an audience that would be hostile. If this were a Bush or Cheney Q&A, everyone would have been screened to assure unimpeachable neo-con credentials, and the question would have been of the type, Mr. President, what do you consider your greatest success, the magnificent job you did after protecting people and restoring New Orleans after Katrina, or the destruction of Iraq WMDs?
— Posted by Joseph Chiara
When was the last time Bush faced an unbiased, intellectual community like Columbia and answered non-scripted questions in a straight-forward manner? Bush doesn’t speak before any other groups other than the American Legion, Bob Jones University and the American Enterprise Institute. Look at home first people rather than at other nations. Are our leaders held accountable?
— Posted by Charles
I came to this country, from India, thinking this is the country with fair and balanced view. Only after coming here I realize that America has pledged its independency and interests to Israel and is controlled by powerful Israeli lobbyists though this group itself does not constitute more than 5% of the U.S Population. God save America from Israel.
— Posted by Sam Swaminathan
I listened to both the National Press Club meeting and the Columbia University presentation by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran from my perch here in Minnesota. I have been led to believe (in the NY Times, News Hour, NPR, Washington Post, not to mention the popular press) that he is not grounded, that he is a nut, not a thinking person, blinded by ideology…not smart.
I was amazed at how wrong I was. He is clever, quick on his feet and well spoken...his message was clear and thoughtful. I agree with much more than I disagreed with. He took the hard questions and answered them with confidence....There is so much bias in the reporting that I highly recommend that all interested observers listen to the actual recordings. It is some of the best listening in a while. The guy is very interesting and he has a point of view. It would be a terrible mistake to dismiss his words or to that them out of there context. Another knee-jerk Republican war is a stake.
— Posted by Larry
***FROM MICHAEL A. HOFFMAN II--
1. Transcripts and in particular, complete recordings of Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia Univ. are difficult to find online.
2. Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia has harmed the Israeli lobby. He came off as an interesting human being and not a devil. Contrasted with George W. Bush's filtered and scripted appearances before heavily screened audiences, Ahmadinejad showed himself to be a real mensch.
3. Ahmadinejad's brief reference in his speech at Columbia to academics imprisoned in Europe for critically studying certain aspects of the "Holocaust" is not being discussed anywhere online that I have seen. It's a subject that's just too hot to handle, since it short circuits the brains of a generation of American youth hard-wired to believe that "The West" represents Enlightenment. Germar Rudolf, who is not a "neo-Nazi" of any kind, but a chemist, sits locked in a German prison solely because his scientific research into the alleged execution gas chambers of Auschwitz blasphemes the sacred tenets of the West's civic religion, Holocaustianity. We cannot face the fact that our vaunted western society harbors religious fanaticism and persecutes independent thinkers who violate the taboos of the all-powerful cult of Holocaustianity.
***
1. Synopsis of highlights from Ahmadinejad's talk at Columbia
2. Reactions from students and the public
3. Brief observations by Hoffman
***Synopsis of highlights from Ahmadinejad's talk at Columbia University
Inside the auditorium, the Columbia students laughed appreciatively when Mr. Ahmadinejad pushed back against the attempts by Dean John H. Coatsworth, the event's moderator, to get him to answer questions directly about the Zionist regime. "Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?" Mr. Coatsworth asked.
"We love all people," Mr. Ahmadinejad said. "We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran." He went on to say that the Palestinian "nation" should be allowed a referendum to decide its own future.
Mr. Coatsworth persisted: "I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no."
Mr. Ahmadinejad was having none of it. "You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it," he shot back. "I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no."
For that, he got a round of applause from the students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium. Online tickets evaporated in 90 minutes last week, they said, almost on par with a Bruce Springsteen concert.
Mr. Ahmadinejad asked of the United States: “If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and tested them already, what position are you in to question the peaceful purposes of others who want nuclear power? We don’t believe in nuclear weapons, period. It goes against the whole grain of humanity.”
President Ahmadinejad completed his appearance by thanking his audience. “I ask Almighty God to assist all of us to work hand in hand for a future filled with peace, justice and brotherhood,” he said. “Best of luck to all of you.”
He added that Columbia’s faculty members were “officially invited” to come to Iran to speak — to which the audience gave a rousing round of applause. “You are welcome to choose any university in Iran,” he said. “We’ll give you the platform, we’ll respect you 100 percent, we will have our students sit and listen to what you have to say.”
***REACTIONS FROM STUDENTS AND THE PUBLIC (from NY Times' blogs):
There is an interesting problem with selling the “Iran as Nazi Germany” line. If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel’s Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews. The Ma’ariv newspaper pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was, noted the report, “a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave”.
According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a campaign to convince Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152 out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for economic reasons, not political ones. To step up these efforts — and presumably to avoid the embarrassing incongruence of claiming an imminent second Holocaust while thousands of Jews live happily in Tehran — Israel is now backing a move by Jewish donors to guarantee every Iranian Jewish family $60,000 to settle in Israel, in addition to a host of existing financial incentives that are offered to Jewish immigrants, including loans and cheap mortgages.
The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews, which issued a statement that their national identity was not for sale. “The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran’s Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews.”
--Posted by Thomas
Ahmadinejad was gracious and thanked the crowd (read the full transcript) even after being attacked viciously by his host.
— Posted by Jessica Hunt
Lee Bollinger embarrassed himself and his University. He behaved like the quintessential “ugly American”. Ahmadinejad was an invited guest, he should have been treated as one regardless of what Bollinger thinks of him. If anyone looked petty it was Bollinger.
— Posted by David
Can anyone imagine, even for a moment, George W. Bush being interviewed by a hostile media overseas, say in Iran; fielding any and all questions, and putting himself through a gauntlet such as Ahmadinejad endured today at Columbia University? Being held to account for his own war crimes, not to mention his wars? Being taken to task for his own hypocrisies, lies, and atrocities without a manager or teleprompter? The mere notion is laughable, and that should tell you something about this courageous, if sometimes misguided, leader of Iran.
— Posted by Mike Conrad, Washington DC
There were demonstrations seen and heard - which is something the Bush Administration has not allowed to happen within hearing or eyesight of President Bush.
— Posted by Katy
Ahmadinejad's openness to questions is far greater than Bush or Cheney has ever done, and this to an audience that would be hostile. If this were a Bush or Cheney Q&A, everyone would have been screened to assure unimpeachable neo-con credentials, and the question would have been of the type, Mr. President, what do you consider your greatest success, the magnificent job you did after protecting people and restoring New Orleans after Katrina, or the destruction of Iraq WMDs?
— Posted by Joseph Chiara
When was the last time Bush faced an unbiased, intellectual community like Columbia and answered non-scripted questions in a straight-forward manner? Bush doesn’t speak before any other groups other than the American Legion, Bob Jones University and the American Enterprise Institute. Look at home first people rather than at other nations. Are our leaders held accountable?
— Posted by Charles
I came to this country, from India, thinking this is the country with fair and balanced view. Only after coming here I realize that America has pledged its independency and interests to Israel and is controlled by powerful Israeli lobbyists though this group itself does not constitute more than 5% of the U.S Population. God save America from Israel.
— Posted by Sam Swaminathan
I listened to both the National Press Club meeting and the Columbia University presentation by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran from my perch here in Minnesota. I have been led to believe (in the NY Times, News Hour, NPR, Washington Post, not to mention the popular press) that he is not grounded, that he is a nut, not a thinking person, blinded by ideology…not smart.
I was amazed at how wrong I was. He is clever, quick on his feet and well spoken...his message was clear and thoughtful. I agree with much more than I disagreed with. He took the hard questions and answered them with confidence....There is so much bias in the reporting that I highly recommend that all interested observers listen to the actual recordings. It is some of the best listening in a while. The guy is very interesting and he has a point of view. It would be a terrible mistake to dismiss his words or to that them out of there context. Another knee-jerk Republican war is a stake.
— Posted by Larry
***FROM MICHAEL A. HOFFMAN II--
1. Transcripts and in particular, complete recordings of Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia Univ. are difficult to find online.
2. Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia has harmed the Israeli lobby. He came off as an interesting human being and not a devil. Contrasted with George W. Bush's filtered and scripted appearances before heavily screened audiences, Ahmadinejad showed himself to be a real mensch.
3. Ahmadinejad's brief reference in his speech at Columbia to academics imprisoned in Europe for critically studying certain aspects of the "Holocaust" is not being discussed anywhere online that I have seen. It's a subject that's just too hot to handle, since it short circuits the brains of a generation of American youth hard-wired to believe that "The West" represents Enlightenment. Germar Rudolf, who is not a "neo-Nazi" of any kind, but a chemist, sits locked in a German prison solely because his scientific research into the alleged execution gas chambers of Auschwitz blasphemes the sacred tenets of the West's civic religion, Holocaustianity. We cannot face the fact that our vaunted western society harbors religious fanaticism and persecutes independent thinkers who violate the taboos of the all-powerful cult of Holocaustianity.
***
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Hoffman's Questions on Iran for French President Sarkozy
Excerpts From a NY Times Interview With Nicolas Sarkozy
--Followed by inconvenient questions for "French" Pres. Sarkozy by Michael A. Hoffman II
***
NY Times September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/world/europe/24excerpts.html?pagewanted=print
Following are excerpts from an interview with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on Sept. 21, 2007. The interview was conducted in French and translated by The New York Times.
Q. You have mentioned Iran, and lately there has been much confusion over French policy. You have said — including [on Thursday night, on French television] — that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons would be unacceptable.
A. I confirm that. I confirm that. Iranian research into military nuclear technology is putting the world at grave risk. This is unacceptable, just as military nuclear capability was unacceptable for Libya or for North Korea. Iran is a great country. The Iranians are a great people. Iran is a great civilization. Iran is entitled to play its full role. Iran can have access to civilian nuclear technology. Iran has an extremely important role to play in the region. And Iran has better things to do than try to obtain nuclear weapons. I want the Iranian leadership to understand this without a shadow of ambiguity. But I am ready to explain that in order to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, we must strengthen sanctions. For my part, I don’t use the word “war.”
Q. But would you be so kind as to explain the expression you use in your address to the ambassadors, in which you speak of a “catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.” Would France be prepared to...
A. That is what I do not want. That is what France does not want. And between these two extremes there is a path for negotiations, for sanctions, for firmness, and for discussion. There it is. Everything together. It is not true that there is no solution other than submission or war. There is a whole range of decisions that the international community must take in order to convince the Iranians that they are headed toward a dead end. Just as we succeeded in convincing the North Koreans. Just as we succeeded in convincing the Libyans. We are not condemned to the two extremes.
Q. But would France be prepared to use force to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb?
A. But that is precisely the choice I reject in my expression — “either acceptance or force.” It is exactly what the Iranian leaders want. I am not obliged to fall into this trap. Between submission and war, there is range of situations, of solutions, such as strengthening sanctions, which eventually will produce results.
Q. Concerning sanctions, for example, there’s talk of recommending to companies such as Total or Gaz de France that they end their activities in Iran. Is that...?
A. France will not have two lines. France wants to tell the Iranians: no military nuclear weapon. And we are not seeking to negotiate through the intermediary of private companies’ contracts. We have only one line. That’s it. And therefore we strongly urge French companies to refrain from going to Iran as long as the international community has decided to apply sanctions. And if the sanctions are not enough, I would like there to be a third series of stronger sanctions, with the understanding that sanctions can only work if there is unanimity and so we must get everybody on-board.
Q. But this strategy is really new for France. It’s a complete break with France’s traditional policy that resists applying sanctions, or even to think about sanctions, outside the framework of the U.N....
A. I prefer U.N. sanctions, but the third series of sanctions will be approved, I hope, by the U.N. But for the European community itself to apply sanctions, that is not unilateralism, that is an international, a multilateral decision. Therefore, it is fine by me.
Q. But is this political strategy different?
A. Listen, I’m not going to do an extensive analysis of what was being done previously; I’m trying to be consistent with what is being done now. There you have it. France’s position, it’s that: no nuclear weapon for Iran, an arsenal of sanctions to convince them, negotiations, discussions, firmness. And I don’t want to hear anything else that would not contribute usefully to the discussion today.
Q. But can you explain precisely what your proposals are to increase economic and financial pressure on Iran, because there’s talk of a sanctions mechanism at the European level, either by the European Union or domestically.
A. I don’t have to go into details. What I want to achieve is for Iranian society to realize the dead end into which the attitude of some of its leaders is leading them. What I would like is for there to be a genuine debate in Iranian civil and political society so that Iran can see that, like all the other countries of the world, it cannot survive in total isolation. There it is. And the sooner they understand it, the less time the Iranian people — who are not to blame in this affair — will have to suffer the consequences.
Q. It is difficult...
A. It is difficult... This is an international crisis that must be managed with a great deal of sang-froid, with a great deal of firmness, with a great deal of thought. That is what I am trying to do. In any case, I will not go further. That’s that. Because it is not France’s policy. There’s no point in mentioning other alternatives. It’s completely counter-productive.
Q. Some say that France’s policy on Iran is similar to American policy on Iran. Is it correct to say that at this stage, for France as for the United States, “All options are on the table?”
A. For me the question regarding Iran is not to know whether or not we are close to the United States. The question is to maintain the unity of the international community with regards to Iran. After that, I’ll leave it up to the commentators to judge whether we are closer or less close.
What’s more the expression, “All the options are on the table,” is not mine. And I do not make it mine. I have explained what our strategy was and I will stick to it. That’s it. I am quite ready to talk about the United States. But I am not determining my position based on the position of the United States alone. The Russian position, the Chinese position, they count for getting sanctions. We can’t have as the alpha and the omega the French position or the position of the United States....
Q. In the English-language version of your book “Témoignage” [Testimony], you refer to Iran as “an outlaw nation.” This doesn’t appear in the French version. If Iran really is an outlaw nation, does the doctrine of containment apply, or does it [the regime] have to be replaced?
A. I wouldn’t say that Iran is an “outlaw nation,” a nation on the outside, since that would mean that the Iranian people themselves are on the outside [of the law]. I think that the Iranian people are first and foremost victims rather than being guilty. I think that some Iranian leaders have set themselves outside the international community. But not the nation, because the Iranian people have a right to live, a right to prosperity, a right to peace, a right to development.
...Q. There have been other initiatives from France since you were elected: Kosovo, Darfur, Lebanon.
A. ...Darfur — we cannot allow genocide to take place. And so which have strongly pushed the creation of a hybrid force in Darfur, and for a European force in Darfur on the Chad side. It is entirely in our interest....
(End quote)
***
HOFFMAN'S QUESTIONS FOR FRENCH PRESIDENT SARKOZY
Questions which the Zionist New York Times should have asked the French Prime Minister if they were indeed journalists rather than partisans of "Israel":
Q. The Israelis are estimated to have one of the largest arsenals of nuclear weapons in the world. Why do the Israelis have a right to these weapons and the Iranians do not?
Q. Under George W. Bush the US has a policy of aggressive war against Muslim nations like Iraq. If Iraq had nuclear weapons it's very likely Bush would not have invaded Iraq and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians would still be alive. How can you fault the Iranians for wanting to prevent the Zionist-American overthrow of their elected government and the shielding of their civilian population against genocidal carpet-bombing disguised as "collateral damage," by possessing a nuclear deterrent against such an eventuality?
Q. You mention the need for France to intervene in Darfur for humanitarian reasons, to prevent genocide, but you have said not one word about the Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians. Why do you wear your alleged French humanitarianism on your sleeve, while passing by in silence at the systematic occupation and killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli colonizers?
Q. Your repeated praise for the Iranian people and the Iranian nation as a "great" people seems hypocritical in light of the fact that you would deny them the right of nuclear deterrence and self-defense against Zionist America, which has troops in dozens of foreign countries on several continents, naval fleets patrolling the planet bristling with weapons, and a Talmudic foreign policy that puts the imperialist requirements of a few million Israelis ahead of the security needs and technical advancement of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Persians in the Middle East. If Iranians are a "great" people do they not have the same rights to advanced weapons as the Judaics of so-called "Israel," or are you just talking out of both sides of your mouth?
You say that "the Iranian people have a right to live, a right to prosperity, a right to peace, a right to development," but what you really mean is, they have a right to exist as a Zionist subsidiary like Egyptians, Jordanians and Lebanese, and that if they accept this subsidiary Zionist support role, certain limited concessions will be conferred upon them, correct?
***
HOFFMAN WIRE: Columns by e-mail
To have Mr. Hoffman's essays and columns e-mailed to you free-of-charge or obligation, send an e-mail to: HoffmanWire-subscribe@topica.com When you receive Topica's e-mail in response to your subscription request, simply click on your reply button; that's all there is to it. You need not visit Topica's website in order to subscribe. You may easily unsubscribe, hassle-free, at any time.
***
--Followed by inconvenient questions for "French" Pres. Sarkozy by Michael A. Hoffman II
***
NY Times September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/world/europe/24excerpts.html?pagewanted=print
Following are excerpts from an interview with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on Sept. 21, 2007. The interview was conducted in French and translated by The New York Times.
Q. You have mentioned Iran, and lately there has been much confusion over French policy. You have said — including [on Thursday night, on French television] — that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons would be unacceptable.
A. I confirm that. I confirm that. Iranian research into military nuclear technology is putting the world at grave risk. This is unacceptable, just as military nuclear capability was unacceptable for Libya or for North Korea. Iran is a great country. The Iranians are a great people. Iran is a great civilization. Iran is entitled to play its full role. Iran can have access to civilian nuclear technology. Iran has an extremely important role to play in the region. And Iran has better things to do than try to obtain nuclear weapons. I want the Iranian leadership to understand this without a shadow of ambiguity. But I am ready to explain that in order to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, we must strengthen sanctions. For my part, I don’t use the word “war.”
Q. But would you be so kind as to explain the expression you use in your address to the ambassadors, in which you speak of a “catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.” Would France be prepared to...
A. That is what I do not want. That is what France does not want. And between these two extremes there is a path for negotiations, for sanctions, for firmness, and for discussion. There it is. Everything together. It is not true that there is no solution other than submission or war. There is a whole range of decisions that the international community must take in order to convince the Iranians that they are headed toward a dead end. Just as we succeeded in convincing the North Koreans. Just as we succeeded in convincing the Libyans. We are not condemned to the two extremes.
Q. But would France be prepared to use force to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb?
A. But that is precisely the choice I reject in my expression — “either acceptance or force.” It is exactly what the Iranian leaders want. I am not obliged to fall into this trap. Between submission and war, there is range of situations, of solutions, such as strengthening sanctions, which eventually will produce results.
Q. Concerning sanctions, for example, there’s talk of recommending to companies such as Total or Gaz de France that they end their activities in Iran. Is that...?
A. France will not have two lines. France wants to tell the Iranians: no military nuclear weapon. And we are not seeking to negotiate through the intermediary of private companies’ contracts. We have only one line. That’s it. And therefore we strongly urge French companies to refrain from going to Iran as long as the international community has decided to apply sanctions. And if the sanctions are not enough, I would like there to be a third series of stronger sanctions, with the understanding that sanctions can only work if there is unanimity and so we must get everybody on-board.
Q. But this strategy is really new for France. It’s a complete break with France’s traditional policy that resists applying sanctions, or even to think about sanctions, outside the framework of the U.N....
A. I prefer U.N. sanctions, but the third series of sanctions will be approved, I hope, by the U.N. But for the European community itself to apply sanctions, that is not unilateralism, that is an international, a multilateral decision. Therefore, it is fine by me.
Q. But is this political strategy different?
A. Listen, I’m not going to do an extensive analysis of what was being done previously; I’m trying to be consistent with what is being done now. There you have it. France’s position, it’s that: no nuclear weapon for Iran, an arsenal of sanctions to convince them, negotiations, discussions, firmness. And I don’t want to hear anything else that would not contribute usefully to the discussion today.
Q. But can you explain precisely what your proposals are to increase economic and financial pressure on Iran, because there’s talk of a sanctions mechanism at the European level, either by the European Union or domestically.
A. I don’t have to go into details. What I want to achieve is for Iranian society to realize the dead end into which the attitude of some of its leaders is leading them. What I would like is for there to be a genuine debate in Iranian civil and political society so that Iran can see that, like all the other countries of the world, it cannot survive in total isolation. There it is. And the sooner they understand it, the less time the Iranian people — who are not to blame in this affair — will have to suffer the consequences.
Q. It is difficult...
A. It is difficult... This is an international crisis that must be managed with a great deal of sang-froid, with a great deal of firmness, with a great deal of thought. That is what I am trying to do. In any case, I will not go further. That’s that. Because it is not France’s policy. There’s no point in mentioning other alternatives. It’s completely counter-productive.
Q. Some say that France’s policy on Iran is similar to American policy on Iran. Is it correct to say that at this stage, for France as for the United States, “All options are on the table?”
A. For me the question regarding Iran is not to know whether or not we are close to the United States. The question is to maintain the unity of the international community with regards to Iran. After that, I’ll leave it up to the commentators to judge whether we are closer or less close.
What’s more the expression, “All the options are on the table,” is not mine. And I do not make it mine. I have explained what our strategy was and I will stick to it. That’s it. I am quite ready to talk about the United States. But I am not determining my position based on the position of the United States alone. The Russian position, the Chinese position, they count for getting sanctions. We can’t have as the alpha and the omega the French position or the position of the United States....
Q. In the English-language version of your book “Témoignage” [Testimony], you refer to Iran as “an outlaw nation.” This doesn’t appear in the French version. If Iran really is an outlaw nation, does the doctrine of containment apply, or does it [the regime] have to be replaced?
A. I wouldn’t say that Iran is an “outlaw nation,” a nation on the outside, since that would mean that the Iranian people themselves are on the outside [of the law]. I think that the Iranian people are first and foremost victims rather than being guilty. I think that some Iranian leaders have set themselves outside the international community. But not the nation, because the Iranian people have a right to live, a right to prosperity, a right to peace, a right to development.
...Q. There have been other initiatives from France since you were elected: Kosovo, Darfur, Lebanon.
A. ...Darfur — we cannot allow genocide to take place. And so which have strongly pushed the creation of a hybrid force in Darfur, and for a European force in Darfur on the Chad side. It is entirely in our interest....
(End quote)
***
HOFFMAN'S QUESTIONS FOR FRENCH PRESIDENT SARKOZY
Questions which the Zionist New York Times should have asked the French Prime Minister if they were indeed journalists rather than partisans of "Israel":
Q. The Israelis are estimated to have one of the largest arsenals of nuclear weapons in the world. Why do the Israelis have a right to these weapons and the Iranians do not?
Q. Under George W. Bush the US has a policy of aggressive war against Muslim nations like Iraq. If Iraq had nuclear weapons it's very likely Bush would not have invaded Iraq and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians would still be alive. How can you fault the Iranians for wanting to prevent the Zionist-American overthrow of their elected government and the shielding of their civilian population against genocidal carpet-bombing disguised as "collateral damage," by possessing a nuclear deterrent against such an eventuality?
Q. You mention the need for France to intervene in Darfur for humanitarian reasons, to prevent genocide, but you have said not one word about the Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians. Why do you wear your alleged French humanitarianism on your sleeve, while passing by in silence at the systematic occupation and killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli colonizers?
Q. Your repeated praise for the Iranian people and the Iranian nation as a "great" people seems hypocritical in light of the fact that you would deny them the right of nuclear deterrence and self-defense against Zionist America, which has troops in dozens of foreign countries on several continents, naval fleets patrolling the planet bristling with weapons, and a Talmudic foreign policy that puts the imperialist requirements of a few million Israelis ahead of the security needs and technical advancement of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Persians in the Middle East. If Iranians are a "great" people do they not have the same rights to advanced weapons as the Judaics of so-called "Israel," or are you just talking out of both sides of your mouth?
You say that "the Iranian people have a right to live, a right to prosperity, a right to peace, a right to development," but what you really mean is, they have a right to exist as a Zionist subsidiary like Egyptians, Jordanians and Lebanese, and that if they accept this subsidiary Zionist support role, certain limited concessions will be conferred upon them, correct?
***
HOFFMAN WIRE: Columns by e-mail
To have Mr. Hoffman's essays and columns e-mailed to you free-of-charge or obligation, send an e-mail to: HoffmanWire-subscribe@topica.com When you receive Topica's e-mail in response to your subscription request, simply click on your reply button; that's all there is to it. You need not visit Topica's website in order to subscribe. You may easily unsubscribe, hassle-free, at any time.
***
Monday, September 17, 2007
Israelis Object to Madonna Studying their Black Magic Text
Israeli Kabbalists Object to Gentile "Shells" Studying their Black Magic Texts
by Michael A. Hoffman II
I can imagine some Judeo-Churchian conservatives misreading the following article from the Jerusalem Post as a noble Judaic rebuff of Hollywood harlots like the misnamed "Madonna." If so, they are reacting from a sinkhole of ignorance. The Kabbalah is based on the worship of pagan black magical deities that are in turn the inspiration for Hollywood's sewage.
If you know anything at all about Judaic esoterica you will see how amazingly candid this report is from the Jerusalem Post. Madonna is not being criticized for studying the Kabbalah because she's a trollop. The rabbis are disgusted because she's a gentile and a woman. Here's the key passage: "It is a known fact in Kabbala that impurity and evil are inherently attracted to sanctity,' said a director of one of the most respected Kabbala yeshivot in Jerusalem who preferred that he and his institution remain anonymous. ...The director of the yeshiva said he was explaining a basic Kabbalistic concept according to which 'sparks' of holiness tightly connected to 'shells' of impurity are waiting to be let free. These 'shells' [klipot] are naturally attracted to their polar opposite - holiness."
Klipot (more commonly spelled kelipot) are all gentiles. Therefore what the rabbis are saying is that all gentiles, who are soulless and totally evil "shells," are attracted to their "polar opposite": the totally good and holy Judaics and their Kabbalah.
They don't dare mention Madonna's gender as also being a factor in the proscription against her, since Taliban analogies would be instantaneous. Orthodox Judaism has a far more degrading dogmatic instruction on the nature of women than does fundamentalist Islam.
(Hoffman is the author of the forthcoming book, "Judaism Discovered").
RABBIS DISGUSTED BY MADONNA'S VISIT
Jerusalem Post | Sep. 17, 2007
Orthodox teachers of Kabbala reacted with disdain Sunday to pop idol Madonna's Rosh Hashana visit in Israel, during which she took part in a study session of Judaism's most esoteric texts. "It is a known fact in Kabbala that impurity and evil are inherently attracted to sanctity," said a director of one of the most respected Kabbala yeshivot in Jerusalem who preferred that he and his institution remain anonymous.
"That's why people of Hollywood, a place of iniquity and lasciviousness, are naturally attracted to the holiness of Kabbala." The director of the yeshiva said he was explaining a basic Kabbalistic concept according to which "sparks" of holiness tightly connected to "shells" of impurity are waiting to be let free.
These "shells" [klipot] are naturally attracted to their polar opposite - holiness. "Wherever there is holiness and sanctity there is also evil," added the director, who said that during her last visit to Israel three years ago, Madonna repeatedly tried to contact his institution, but her calls were not returned. "That's why someone like that lady - I don't even want to mention her name - is so attracted to the Kabbala."
Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri, son of Jerusalem-based kabbalist David Batzri, head of the Shalom Yeshiva, said that it was forbidden to teach Kabbala to non-Jews such as Madonna. "Even Jews are not allowed to delve into the secrets of the Kabbala until they have thoroughly reviewed the entire Talmud and the legal commentaries, and also scrupulously adhere to all the commandments," added Batzri. "
But we as Jews can learn something from the interest non-Jews have in Kabbala. Even the non-Jews understand the power of the Kabbala. They are willing to come from the ends of the earth to learn it."
During her trip to Israel, Madonna toasted Rosh Hashana with President Shimon Peres and declared herself an "ambassador for Judaism." The singer, who is not Jewish, met Peres at his official Jerusalem residence on Saturday evening, and the two exchanged gifts, with Madonna receiving a lavishly-bound copy of the Old Testament.
She presented Peres with a volume of the Zohar (The Book of Splendor), the guiding text of Jewish mysticism, or Kabbala, inscribed, "To Shimon Peres, the man I admire and love, Madonna," the Yediot Aharonot daily said. A Peres aide confirmed the meeting but had no details. Madonna arrived in Israel Wednesday night, the eve of the New Year, with her film director husband, Guy Ritchie, to attend a Kabbala conference.
Other celebrities who flew in for the event included movie star Demi Moore and her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, ex-talk show host Rosie O'Donnell and fashion designer Donna Karan. "You don't know how popular the Book of Splendor is among Hollywood actors," Yediot quoted Madonna as telling Peres. "Everyone I meet talks to me only about that." Kutcher was quoted by an Israeli daily as telling a group of Israeli businessmen and entertainers on Saturday that Kabbala had answered fundamental questions in his life and made him a better actor.
Madonna, who was raised a Roman Catholic, has taken the Hebrew name Esther, and has been seen wearing a red thread on her wrist in a Jewish tradition to ward off the evil eye. Madonna paid her first visit to Israel three years ago, on another Kabbala-centered trip. "I can't believe that I'm celebrating the new year with you in Israel," Ma'ariv quoted her as telling Peres on Saturday. "It's a dream come true."
***
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by Michael A. Hoffman II
I can imagine some Judeo-Churchian conservatives misreading the following article from the Jerusalem Post as a noble Judaic rebuff of Hollywood harlots like the misnamed "Madonna." If so, they are reacting from a sinkhole of ignorance. The Kabbalah is based on the worship of pagan black magical deities that are in turn the inspiration for Hollywood's sewage.
If you know anything at all about Judaic esoterica you will see how amazingly candid this report is from the Jerusalem Post. Madonna is not being criticized for studying the Kabbalah because she's a trollop. The rabbis are disgusted because she's a gentile and a woman. Here's the key passage: "It is a known fact in Kabbala that impurity and evil are inherently attracted to sanctity,' said a director of one of the most respected Kabbala yeshivot in Jerusalem who preferred that he and his institution remain anonymous. ...The director of the yeshiva said he was explaining a basic Kabbalistic concept according to which 'sparks' of holiness tightly connected to 'shells' of impurity are waiting to be let free. These 'shells' [klipot] are naturally attracted to their polar opposite - holiness."
Klipot (more commonly spelled kelipot) are all gentiles. Therefore what the rabbis are saying is that all gentiles, who are soulless and totally evil "shells," are attracted to their "polar opposite": the totally good and holy Judaics and their Kabbalah.
They don't dare mention Madonna's gender as also being a factor in the proscription against her, since Taliban analogies would be instantaneous. Orthodox Judaism has a far more degrading dogmatic instruction on the nature of women than does fundamentalist Islam.
(Hoffman is the author of the forthcoming book, "Judaism Discovered").
RABBIS DISGUSTED BY MADONNA'S VISIT
Jerusalem Post | Sep. 17, 2007
Orthodox teachers of Kabbala reacted with disdain Sunday to pop idol Madonna's Rosh Hashana visit in Israel, during which she took part in a study session of Judaism's most esoteric texts. "It is a known fact in Kabbala that impurity and evil are inherently attracted to sanctity," said a director of one of the most respected Kabbala yeshivot in Jerusalem who preferred that he and his institution remain anonymous.
"That's why people of Hollywood, a place of iniquity and lasciviousness, are naturally attracted to the holiness of Kabbala." The director of the yeshiva said he was explaining a basic Kabbalistic concept according to which "sparks" of holiness tightly connected to "shells" of impurity are waiting to be let free.
These "shells" [klipot] are naturally attracted to their polar opposite - holiness. "Wherever there is holiness and sanctity there is also evil," added the director, who said that during her last visit to Israel three years ago, Madonna repeatedly tried to contact his institution, but her calls were not returned. "That's why someone like that lady - I don't even want to mention her name - is so attracted to the Kabbala."
Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri, son of Jerusalem-based kabbalist David Batzri, head of the Shalom Yeshiva, said that it was forbidden to teach Kabbala to non-Jews such as Madonna. "Even Jews are not allowed to delve into the secrets of the Kabbala until they have thoroughly reviewed the entire Talmud and the legal commentaries, and also scrupulously adhere to all the commandments," added Batzri. "
But we as Jews can learn something from the interest non-Jews have in Kabbala. Even the non-Jews understand the power of the Kabbala. They are willing to come from the ends of the earth to learn it."
During her trip to Israel, Madonna toasted Rosh Hashana with President Shimon Peres and declared herself an "ambassador for Judaism." The singer, who is not Jewish, met Peres at his official Jerusalem residence on Saturday evening, and the two exchanged gifts, with Madonna receiving a lavishly-bound copy of the Old Testament.
She presented Peres with a volume of the Zohar (The Book of Splendor), the guiding text of Jewish mysticism, or Kabbala, inscribed, "To Shimon Peres, the man I admire and love, Madonna," the Yediot Aharonot daily said. A Peres aide confirmed the meeting but had no details. Madonna arrived in Israel Wednesday night, the eve of the New Year, with her film director husband, Guy Ritchie, to attend a Kabbala conference.
Other celebrities who flew in for the event included movie star Demi Moore and her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, ex-talk show host Rosie O'Donnell and fashion designer Donna Karan. "You don't know how popular the Book of Splendor is among Hollywood actors," Yediot quoted Madonna as telling Peres. "Everyone I meet talks to me only about that." Kutcher was quoted by an Israeli daily as telling a group of Israeli businessmen and entertainers on Saturday that Kabbala had answered fundamental questions in his life and made him a better actor.
Madonna, who was raised a Roman Catholic, has taken the Hebrew name Esther, and has been seen wearing a red thread on her wrist in a Jewish tradition to ward off the evil eye. Madonna paid her first visit to Israel three years ago, on another Kabbala-centered trip. "I can't believe that I'm celebrating the new year with you in Israel," Ma'ariv quoted her as telling Peres on Saturday. "It's a dream come true."
***
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Sunday, September 16, 2007
Lev Leviev: The Missionary Mogul
EDITOR'S NOTE: I am distributing this article by the Israeli journalist Zev Chafets despite the fact that it contains some disinformation. To counter it, we must point out that the subject of the report, Lev Leviev and the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim, are not anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-communist or liberal toward women. Chabad consists of gentile-hating crazies who regard every Arab as "Amalek" and fit only for slaughter.
There is no love lost between Leviev and Vladimir Putin; they are two scorpions circling each other. The Christ-hating Leviev cannot be pleased that Putin has helped restore Christianity in Russia. The supposed alliance between the two conceals a high-stakes' chess game. Leviev is a Mossad-connected (via Danny Yatom) billionaire with ties to one of the largest criminal money-laundering operations in the world, the Israeli Bank Leumi. His silent business partner is the Russian-Israeli gangster, Arkady Gaydamak.
Having corrected Chafets' deliberate omissions and obfuscations, most of the rest of his information on Leviev appears to be reliable, however. It indicates the extent to which clever movers-and-shakers like Leviev are acquiring fantastic political and material power, through the accumulation of vast wealth, which is then used to advance Judaism at levels that are mind-boggling. If we add American-based media moguls into the mix, like Sam Zell, the new owner of the Chicago Tribune, and Rupert Murdoch, who now sits atop Dow Jones which owns the Wall Street Journal, one gains insight into billionaire Judaic-Zionist solidarity and altruism, unmatched by any other religion or nation. With these levels of money and power married to unity and unselfish dedication to the welfare of their Talmudic creed and its adherents, their supremacy on earth is no mystery.
THE MISSIONARY MOGUL
By Zev Chafets
New York Times Magazine
September 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16Leviev-t.html?hp
When Lev Leviev’s first son, Shalom, was born in 1978, Leviev decided to circumcise the baby himself. He was only 22 years old. He had never studied the art of circumcision and never performed one. But he had seen it done. His father, Avner, had been an underground mohel in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbek Republic, at a time when performing any Jewish ritual act could get you in trouble with the Soviet authorities. The family had been in Israel for eight years. There were plenty of trained ritual mohelim in Tel Aviv. But Leviev regarded the act of circumcising his own son as both a religious duty and the fulfillment of a family tradition.
Avner Leviev advised his son to prepare by cutting chicken legs, but young Lev felt no need to practice. “I knew what I was doing,” he told me when I spoke to him recently at his office in Yahud, a suburb of Tel Aviv. “I was a diamond cutter, after all. It’s not all that different.” He extended his hands, palms down, for my inspection and smiled. “I’ve got steady hands.”
In the years since he introduced his son into Israel’s blood covenant with the almighty, Lev Leviev has performed more than a thousand ritual circumcisions — many on the sons of employees in his ever-expanding business empire. In those years, Leviev has gone from impoverished immigrant to the man who broke the De Beers international diamond cartel. His companies build vast shopping malls, housing projects, highways and railways throughout Israel, the former Soviet Union and Western Europe. He owns everything from diamond mines in Angola to a string of 7-Elevens in Texas. Recently he has been buying up iconic American properties, including the former New York Times Building in Manhattan for a reported $525 million.
Lev Leviev is probably Israel’s richest man. Forbes ranks him 210th among the world’s wealthiest people, with an estimated personal net worth of $4.1 billion. (People close to Leviev put that figure closer to $8 billion.) However much Leviev has, he is hungry for more. His business role model is Bill Gates, whom he says he hopes to eventually join in what he calls, in Russian-accented Hebrew, “the world’s starting 10.”
Leviev admires not only Gates’s wealth but also his activist style of philanthropy. “A lot of very rich men wait too long to give their money away,” he told me. “Warren Buffett, for example. He’s in his 70s now, and he should have started earlier. But Bill Gates is a young man, and he’s already giving to help the world. That’s the right way to do it.”
Leviev, who is 51, is a legendary philanthropist, too — he refuses to say how much he gives away each year, but he did not dispute an estimate of $50 million. He does not share Gates’s universalist outlook, however. Leviev is a tribal leader, a benefactor of Jewish causes, particularly in the former Soviet Union, where he underwrites Jewish day schools, synagogues, orphanages, social centers and soup kitchens for more than 500 communities. To make this vast philanthropic enterprise run, Leviev subsidizes an army of some 10,000 Jewish functionaries from Ukraine to Azerbaijan, including 300 rabbis.
Most of the 300 rabbis are Chabadniks, adherents of the Brooklyn-based Hasidic group Chabad — fundamentalist, missionizing, worldly and centered on the personality and teachings of the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe. Chabad is anti-abortion, regards homosexuality as a sexual perversion and generally finds itself aligned with other fundamentalist religious groups on American domestic issues. In Israel, it has supported right-wing Greater Israel candidates. Most controversially, during Rebbe Schneerson’s lifetime, Chabad entertained the notion that he might be the messiah; a vocal group in the community still does. (This led the ultrapious Rabbi Eliezer Shach to acidly define Chabad as the sect closest to Judaism.) Lev Leviev’s loyalty to Chabad is unquestioning. “The rebbe is my role model, and my values are his values,” he says.
Lev Leviev arrived in Israel as a teenager in 1971, at a time when Moshe Dayan, hero of the Six Day War, was the legendary embodiment of the Israeli WASP (Well-born/Ashkenazi/Secular/Paratrooper). Immigrants were classified by their potential to attain this ideal. The Leviev family — unconnected, uneducated, not even real Russians but Bukharan Jews, primitives from the steppes of Central Asia — were classified as “bad material” and dispatched by government authorities to the dusty “development town” of Kiryat Malachi.
Avner Leviev enrolled his son in a Chabad yeshiva. It was a match that didn’t take. “I’m not a born yeshiva scholar,” Leviev admits. In Tashkent he had finished 10th grade. He left the yeshiva after a few months, ending his formal education. If Leviev regrets this, he doesn’t show it. “I just wanted to make money,” he told me.
Through a family friend, Leviev found work as an apprentice diamond cutter. It was industry practice not to teach anyone all 11 steps of the diamond-cutting trade, but Leviev paid his fellow workers to show him every facet of the process. By the time he finished an undistinguished stint in the rabbinical corps of the army, he was ready to go into business for himself.
“I never doubted that I would get rich,” Leviev told me. “I knew from the time I was 6 that I was destined to be a millionaire. I’d go with my father to shops, and while he was talking business, my eyes automatically counted the merchandise.”
Leviev chose a tough industry. “The diamond business is usually a family business,” says a Tel Aviv diamond merchant. “People accumulate wealth slowly, over generations. When Leviev started out, all he had was an amazing amount of ambition and the ability to understand the stone. Understanding the stone — that was the key.”
The headquarters of Leviev’s U.S. diamond company, LLD USA, is located at the mouth of the Manhattan diamond district, on the corner of 47th Street and Fifth Avenue. To get up to his office, you need to be both photographed and fingerprinted by a very high tech security system.
People who handle gems are cautious and security-conscious, and Leviev is no exception. Perhaps for that reason, many of his closest associates are relatives or longtime friends, most of them also Bukharan Jews. Paul Raps, the general manager of LLD USA, has known Leviev since they were both young diamond merchants in Ramat Gan. “One day we were sitting there, just chatting, and suddenly Leviev said to me: ‘You know what we need? We need to get our hands on the gelem.’ Uncut diamonds. I thought he was kidding. Nobody could find uncut diamonds back then.”
Before Leviev’s epiphany, the world’s diamond market was strictly regulated by De Beers, a company founded in the 19th century to mine its first shaft of diamond-bearing kimberlite. In 1930, De Beers established a cartel that over the next few decades came to dominate diamond mining in the Soviet Union, Africa and the rest of the world. It regulated the market through a system of “sightholders,” handpicked producers of rough diamonds and dealers of finished diamonds, who were allowed to buy quantities of unfinished diamonds at fixed prices, via De Beers.
When Leviev started out, there were about 100 sightholders around the world. They came to London several times a year and, at syndicate headquarters, were offered diamonds on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Those who left it too often were decertified, and new sightholders were selected.
Small diamond cutters and merchants like Leviev couldn’t afford to buy from sightholders. They were allowed to buy rough diamonds from “secondary dealers” who managed to get their hands on small, smuggled quantities. It was a limiting arrangement, and Leviev didn’t like limitations. He applied to become a De Beers sightholder.
“There was resistance to him at first,” recalls the Tel Aviv diamond merchant, who knew Leviev at the time. “A lot of people thought he was uncouth, not really civilized. This wasn’t anti-Semitism. Most of the people who rejected him were European Jews themselves. Leviev was an outsider, a Bukharan. But he was so industrious, so ambitious, such a good businessman, that eventually they had no choice. They had to accept him.”
Soon Leviev became a rising star in the De Beers syndicate. He brought his extended family into his business, leveraged their resources and prospered. But he chafed under the control of the syndicate.
In the late ’80s, Leviev saw an opportunity. De Beers had encountered antitrust problems in the United States. In South Africa, the apartheid government that had worked with De Beers was losing political power. At the same time, the Soviet Union, whose leaders had long had a mutually profitable partnership with De Beers, was nearing collapse.
Leviev has a complicated relationship with his former homeland. In our first meeting, when I asked him about his boyhood memories, he surprised me by saying: “Fear. I grew up in fear.”
Tashkent is a Muslim city, and although there wasn’t much overt anti-Jewish violence, there was a climate of mistrust. “Many times I was beaten up in school,” he recalls. But his biggest fear was of the Communist government.
“As a boy, they used to make us stand at attention and salute the statue of Lenin,” he told me. “I’d curse him and the other Communists under my breath. They sent my grandfather to Siberia. They wouldn’t let us keep the Sabbath — we had to go to school on Saturdays. Just being Jewish was dangerous.”
Still, he saw business potential in Russia. He spoke the language, knew the local customs. His father, sensing danger, begged Leviev not to go. So Leviev traveled to Brooklyn, to the headquarters of the Lubavitcher rebbe, for a second opinion.
It is a meeting that has become folklore, both in Chabad and in the diamond industry. Leviev tells the story with obvious relish: “I spoke to the rebbe in Hebrew. I asked him, Should I go or not? He answered me in a kind of antique Russian. He said: ‘Go. Go to Russia and do business, but don’t forget to help the Jews. Remember your family tradition.’ ”
This was more than good advice. The rebbe’s blessing gave Leviev the keys to the Chabad network in the former Soviet Union at a very dangerous time.
Officially, Leviev was invited by the Soviet minister of energy in 1989, which was exploring ways of ending the De Beers grip on the country’s diamonds. “When I got there, Gorbachev was still in power, but you could sense that things were coming apart,” Leviev says. “Everything was unsettled, and I felt the fear again.”
There were other risks, too. To do business with the Russians, Leviev had to give up his position as a De Beers sightholder. This shook the international diamond business. “It was unbelievable,” says the Tel Aviv merchant. “He was breaking the rules, going after the source. When he succeeded in Russia, and then in Angola, others saw it and were suddenly emboldened. That’s how Leviev cracked the De Beers cartel. With the instincts of a tiger and the balls of a panther.”
There’s no need to cry for De Beers, which still controls a major share of the world’s uncut diamonds. But the syndicate no longer sets the worldwide market value of diamonds or decides who can manufacture and sell them.
Neither can Leviev. But he has become the world’s largest cutter and polisher of diamonds and one of its major sources of rough diamonds — the gelem he dreamed of.
A key to his success is his vertical integration. He mines the diamonds in Angola, Namibia and Russia, cuts and polishes them, ships them and sells them, wholesale and retail. He has a string of high-end shops in Russia and a luxury boutique, Leviev, on Bond Street in London. Next month, Leviev is opening a store on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, which, as the president of Leviev Jewelry, Thierry Chaunu, told a reporter, will cater to “the young hedge-fund professional who just got his bonus.”
One of Leviev’s first moves in Russia was to set up a high-tech cutting and polishing plant. It provided jobs and, more important, showed the Russians how they could gain control of their own industry. In turn, the Russian government helped him gain a foothold in Africa. In 1997, Leviev bought into the Catoca diamond mine, Angola’s largest, in a joint venture with the Russian state diamond company, Alrosa; a Brazilian partner; and the Angola state diamond company. Leviev soon established warm ties with the Angolan president, José Eduardo Dos Santos, who speaks fluent Russian from his days as an engineering student in the U.S.S.R.
When Leviev arrived in Angola, Dos Santos was fighting a civil war against Unita rebels, who were financed by the sale of smuggled “blood diamonds.” Leviev had a suggestion: Why not create a company that would centralize control of all diamonds? The company that grew out of that idea was the Angola Selling Corporation, or Ascorp, jointly owned by the Angolan government, a Belgian partner and Leviev. While Leviev’s plan took aim at the trade in conflict diamonds, critics say that Ascorp took advantage of mounting international pressure to establish and profit from a monopoly.
Unita surrendered in 2002, after the death of its leader, Jonas Savimbi. By then, the Angolan government had effectively pushed De Beers out of the country, and Ascorp had generated great sums for the Dos Santos government (and, it is rumored, the Dos Santos family), created thousands of jobs for Angolans in newly established factories and mines and made Lev Leviev a vast fortune. None of this would have been possible without the Russian connection.
On a shelf in Leviev’s Ramat Gan office sits a framed photo of Vladimir Putin. Leviev describes him as a “true friend.” The offices of many Israeli business magnates feature photographic trophies, grab-and-grin shots with (in ascending order of importance) the prime minister of Israel, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton and A-list Hollywood stars. Leviev has a different collection. Aside from the Lubavitcher rebbe and Vladimir Putin, there are photos taken with the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Kazakhstan, for which he serves as honorary consul in Israel. (“Yes, I saw ‘Borat’ ” Leviev told me wearily. “Yes, I thought it was funny. But silly.”) Leviev’s picture gallery reflects his status as the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the former Soviet Union, an organization he has led since 1998. Nobody knows exactly how many Jews live in the former Soviet Union, but estimates range from 400,000 to upward of one million. Leviev leads them with his checkbook.
“When it comes to contributing to the Jewish people, Lev Leviev is in a class by himself,” says Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and former Israeli deputy prime minster. “I know a lot of rich people who give money. But Leviev is on a completely different level. He’s building entire communities.”
More than this, he is a power broker and intercessor on behalf of beleaguered Jews throughout the former U.S.S.R. Take, for instance, the case of the Jewish private schools in Baku, Azerbaijan. Three years ago the government, concerned about the influence of neighboring Iran and the spread of local madrassas, decided to close all the private schools in the country. This, of course, included the Jewish school in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. The community elders petitioned the government, but to no avail.
“They even tried to get American Jewish organizations to intervene,” Leviev recalled. “But the Jewish organizations couldn’t do a thing.” He smiled thinly. He has a generally low opinion of American Jewish activists, especially his fellow billionaires.
And so Leviev decided to ride to the rescue. He flew to Baku on his private plane, parked at the airport and went straight to the synagogue.
“The Jews were all gathered there,” he recounted in what is obviously a favorite story. “I told them to wait while I talked to the president.” At the time, that was Heydar Aliyev. “There were journalists in his outer office. Everyone was excited to see me there, because they thought I had come to invest money in the country. Heydar thought so, too. He said: ‘Just tell me what you’re interested in — oil? Gas? Tourism? What can I do for you?’
“I asked him, ‘How can I invest in a country that doesn’t like Jews?’ Heydar got very upset when I said that. He began telling me how many Jewish friends he had and how much the Jews had contributed to his culture and the country and so on.
“ ‘But you’re closing down the Jewish school,’ I told him. ‘I’ve come to ask you to allow it to remain open. Right now the Jews of Baku are gathered in the synagogue, awaiting your answer.’ ”
Leviev paused at this point in the story. Dramatic tales of peril and salvation are part of the Chabad oral tradition.
“Heydar consulted his advisers,” Leviev said. “Then he returned to me and said: ‘The school can remain open. All right?’
“I told him: ‘Well, there’s another problem. The Jewish institutions here are in bad shape. Can you arrange for me to acquire a plot of land to rebuild?’
“ ‘Yes,’ said Heydar. ‘Is that all?’
“ ‘Not quite. I’d appreciate it if you would personally open the school next year. That way there will be no misunderstandings about what the government’s position is.’
“Heydar said: ‘I’ll do that. Are you satisfied now?’
“I told him: ‘Just one last thing, sir. Those journalists in your outer office? Would you mind announcing our agreement to them?’ ”
After Aliyev’s press conference, Leviev remembers returning triumphantly to the synagogue to deliver the good news. Shortly thereafter, Aliyev died and was succeeded by his son, with whom Leviev is on friendly terms.
“And did you invest after that?” I asked.
Leviev smiled. “No,” he said. “Azerbaijan has so many natural resources they don’t need my investment. But I told them that they would get a blessing from God.”
Leviev insists that he maintains a strict division between his community leadership and his business dealings. Perhaps this is so, but the republics of the former Soviet Union are not famous for their transparency. At any rate, business depends to a large extent on personal and political access. “A big part of our analytical value depends on the perception that we can get anything approved in Russia,” says Jacques Zimmerman, the vice president for communications of Africa Israel, Leviev’s international holding and investment company.
This perception has been strengthened by public displays of affection between Putin and Leviev. In 2000, the Russian president was the guest of honor at the opening of the Jewish Community Center in the Marina Roscha district of Moscow, which Leviev played a major role in building. It was a gesture widely interpreted as a sign of good will not only toward Russia’s Jews but toward Leviev himself.
Putin also took Leviev’s side in a dispute over the post of chief rabbi of Russia, backing Leviev’s candidate, Berel Lazar, over Adolf Shayevich, who held the position. The Kremlin’s endorsement of Lazar was a final confirmation that Leviev had achieved a typically audacious and improbable victory — putting the fundamentalist Chabad in effective control of the assimilated, mostly irreligious Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union.
Lazar’s selection has been quite controversial not only in Russia but also among Jewish groups in Israel and in the U.S. But Chabad is nothing if not practical, and they have taken a gradualist approach to winning over Russia’s secular Jews. Schools enroll nonreligious students and offer them a full government curriculum, along with some beginner’s Torah studies. Community centers hold coeducational social events. There are even mixed dances.
Such modernity comports with Leviev’s personal style, which is, in its outward aspect, Chabad-lite. He once made headlines by closing his upscale mall in Ramat Aviv — a bastion of WASP Israel — on the Sabbath, and officially his businesses are closed on Saturday. But he maintains a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for his Israeli executives, some of whom hold unofficial meetings and phone sessions on the Sabbath. Abroad, some of the businesses Leviev owns an interest in work seven days a week, and his American 7-Elevens sell nonkosher food. Leviev himself strictly observes the Sabbath, but he has been known to interrupt his weekday prayers for important phone calls.
Unlike many Chabad men, Leviev is clean-shaven, wears stylish business suits open at the collar and sometimes lounges in jeans, and his small black skullcap is barely visible. He is also something of a feminist. The women in his office, including his private secretaries, are allowed to wear slacks, a violation of strict Orthodox custom. Leviev’s two eldest daughters have been brought into the business as senior executives. Zvia, a mother of four who runs international marketing and mall businesses for her father, is frequently mentioned in the Israeli press as a potential successor. Leviev is proud to have raised his nine children in B’nai B’rack, Tel Aviv’s ultra-Orthodox suburb, but he is planning to move to an estate in Saviyon, the equivalent of going from Borough Park to Scarsdale.
Leviev’s pragmatism ends, however, at the vexing and fundamental question of who is a Jew. American Reform Judaism recognizes patrilineal descent. The State of Israel grants citizenship under the Law of Return to people with a single Jewish grandparent. But Leviev accepts only the Talmudic rule that a Jew is anyone born to a Jewish mother, or someone who has undergone an Orthodox conversion and agreed to keep all 613 Jewish laws.
There are a great many people who regard themselves as Jews but do not meet these criteria. In Israel alone, there are an estimated 300,000 among Soviet immigrants, and perhaps more than that in the former Soviet Union. “What do you do about all these people?” I asked Leviev. “Just write them off?”
Leviev’s answer: “It’s not a matter of what I do or what I want. I have no choice. The law is the law.”
A few years ago, concerned Bukharan Jewish immigrants in New York reported to Leviev that their children were being corrupted by the public schools of Queens. “The kids were going out with Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, all sorts of people,” I was told by one of Leviev’s intimates. Leviev would have been equally horrified to learn that the Bukharan Jews of Queens were hooking up with descendants of the Mayflower.
In response, Leviev donated the money for a private school in Elmhurst. He picks up the tuition tab for the entire student body — about 800 kids at an estimated $18,000 a pop. Leviev regards this as a pilot project. His goal, I was told by his assistant, Shlomi Peles, is to make a free Orthodox Jewish education available to every Jewish child in United States.
The educational project is just one part of Leviev’s recent discovery of America. After 9/11, he and a partner bought the JP Morgan building near ground zero at a bargain price (a reported $100 million), converting it into luxury condominiums and clearing a very handsome profit. It made him a believer in New York.
“Every building is half a billion dollars,” he told me. “All you need is a global perspective. I knew New York would come back.”
Jacques Zimmerman, who handles communications for Africa Israel, told me: “Lev’s natural tendency, his home court, is Israel and Russia. But he is constantly looking to expand.”
The engine for this growth is Africa Israel. The company is publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and handles Leviev’s businesses, not including privately held diamond interests. Leviev personally owns about 75 percent of Africa Israel, which was valued, in mid-July, at approximately $5 billion.
According to Zimmerman, Africa Israel has made a “strategic decision” to think big. “The work involved in large and small projects is about the same, so why not do big projects?” In Moscow, Africa Israel is currently building a million-square-foot mall as well as another 750,000-square-foot mall that is entirely underground. It is the lead partner in a consortium that is building the subway in Tel Aviv. Africa Israel is active in China, India, the Philippines and Latin America as well.
“We’re worldwide, but our emphasis is moving more and more to the United States,” Zimmerman says. “In the last six months, we’ve bought into more than a billion dollars’ worth of projects in Manhattan, and that’s going to grow.”
Africa Israel’s American holdings include not only the former New York Times Building but also a half-share of the Apthorp apartment building on the Upper West Side and the Clock Tower on Madison Avenue, 1,700 Fina gas stations around the country and development projects in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Phoenix. Recently the company announced it will be opening a giant Hard Rock amusement park in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
“All you need to do business in America is a good name, and banks will lend you all the money you need,” Leviev told me with enthusiasm.
Israel is a society in which successful people are rarely praised. But I encountered very little criticism of Leviev there, even from members of the Jewish WASP business establishment. “He’s still an outsider,” one high-powered Tel Aviv lawyer told me. “We don’t know anything about his personal life. But from what anyone can tell, he’s clean. You read about him in the business pages of the newspaper, not the gossip columns.”
One of Leviev’s greatest admirers is Eitan Raff, chairman of Israel’s Bank Leumi, from which Leviev bought Africa Israel in 1996. The sale was controversial at the time. “He was a Russian,” Raff says. “We didn’t know him or anything about him. We thought he might be some kind of oligarch. I hired two or three investigators to check him out. He came up clean.”
There were a number of foreign suitors for Africa Israel, but after fighting broke out in Jerusalem between Israeli and Palestinian gunmen, they became skittish and withdrew, leaving Leviev as the sole bidder. The asking price was $400 million, and Bank Leumi had to sell; it had been ordered by a court to divest itself of nonfinancial holdings, including Africa Israel, by a certain date. Leviev had the bank over a barrel. “What would you say to $330?” Leviev asked Raff.
“No, it’s worth four, that’s the fair price,” Raff said.
Leviev stuck out his hand, diamond-business style. “Four,” he said.
“He acted with great probity,” Raff says. “He didn’t try to take advantage or squeeze. His word is his bond,” he says. “Look, I’m a kibbutznik. Leviev and I aren’t from the same world at all. But I consider him a friend, and I think he’s an example of what the head of a public company should be.” Leviev’s biggest public-relations problem is his association with Arkady Gaydamak, a mysterious Russian-Israeli billionaire of unsavory reputation, now under indictment in France for a variety of offenses, including gunrunning and money laundering. Gaydamak, who cuts a flamboyant figure and recently established his own political party in Israel, is reputed to have made his fortune selling arms in Angola in partnership with various European, Israeli and African military and government figures.
Leviev says he was first introduced to Gaydamak by the former Mossad chief Danny Yatom. They certainly knew each other. According to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan journalism group based in Washington, Leviev and Gaydamak jointly acquired a metallurgy plant in Kazakhstan in 1999. A year later, Gaydamak bought a 15 percent share of Africa Israel, which he later sold. Leviev swears they are no longer partners, but the relationship has stained his reputation.
Unlike Gaydamak, Leviev has thus far steered clear of Israeli politics. That doesn’t mean he lacks influence, however. He meets from time to time with the nation’s leaders, mostly to discuss the economy. He owns Israel’s Russian-language television station, which reaches about 15 percent of the population. Despite his allegiance to Chabad, Leviev is considered a moderate. “He’s not one of the crazies,” a former adviser to Ariel Sharon told me. “Certainly not a Greater Israel man.”
Leviev’s global view is Moscow-centric and more than a little Machiavellian. He says he believes, for example, that America’s difficulties in places like Iran, Syria and Venezuela come primarily from George W. Bush’s failure to come to Russia’s economic aid. “If Bush had invested $100 million to help the Russian economy early in his first term, he’d have Putin’s friendship,” he says. “Instead, Bush put the money into a war with Iraq, and he’s been paying for it all over the world ever since.”
The first time I spoke to Leviev, he denied that he had any personal political aspirations. Three days later, he wasn’t so sure. “Would I like to be prime minister?” he mused. “I might. When I turn 60.”
That’s nine years off. At Leviev’s pace, nine years is a lot of time — time enough to make his way into the Forbes “starting 10,” time to complete the Chabadization of Soviet Jewry and time, perhaps, to make a run at becoming Israel’s first Russian-Bukharan-mohel-mogul prime minister.
Zev Chafets is a frequent contributor to the magazine and the author of ‘A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists and One Man’s Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance.”
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There is no love lost between Leviev and Vladimir Putin; they are two scorpions circling each other. The Christ-hating Leviev cannot be pleased that Putin has helped restore Christianity in Russia. The supposed alliance between the two conceals a high-stakes' chess game. Leviev is a Mossad-connected (via Danny Yatom) billionaire with ties to one of the largest criminal money-laundering operations in the world, the Israeli Bank Leumi. His silent business partner is the Russian-Israeli gangster, Arkady Gaydamak.
Having corrected Chafets' deliberate omissions and obfuscations, most of the rest of his information on Leviev appears to be reliable, however. It indicates the extent to which clever movers-and-shakers like Leviev are acquiring fantastic political and material power, through the accumulation of vast wealth, which is then used to advance Judaism at levels that are mind-boggling. If we add American-based media moguls into the mix, like Sam Zell, the new owner of the Chicago Tribune, and Rupert Murdoch, who now sits atop Dow Jones which owns the Wall Street Journal, one gains insight into billionaire Judaic-Zionist solidarity and altruism, unmatched by any other religion or nation. With these levels of money and power married to unity and unselfish dedication to the welfare of their Talmudic creed and its adherents, their supremacy on earth is no mystery.
THE MISSIONARY MOGUL
By Zev Chafets
New York Times Magazine
September 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16Leviev-t.html?hp
When Lev Leviev’s first son, Shalom, was born in 1978, Leviev decided to circumcise the baby himself. He was only 22 years old. He had never studied the art of circumcision and never performed one. But he had seen it done. His father, Avner, had been an underground mohel in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbek Republic, at a time when performing any Jewish ritual act could get you in trouble with the Soviet authorities. The family had been in Israel for eight years. There were plenty of trained ritual mohelim in Tel Aviv. But Leviev regarded the act of circumcising his own son as both a religious duty and the fulfillment of a family tradition.
Avner Leviev advised his son to prepare by cutting chicken legs, but young Lev felt no need to practice. “I knew what I was doing,” he told me when I spoke to him recently at his office in Yahud, a suburb of Tel Aviv. “I was a diamond cutter, after all. It’s not all that different.” He extended his hands, palms down, for my inspection and smiled. “I’ve got steady hands.”
In the years since he introduced his son into Israel’s blood covenant with the almighty, Lev Leviev has performed more than a thousand ritual circumcisions — many on the sons of employees in his ever-expanding business empire. In those years, Leviev has gone from impoverished immigrant to the man who broke the De Beers international diamond cartel. His companies build vast shopping malls, housing projects, highways and railways throughout Israel, the former Soviet Union and Western Europe. He owns everything from diamond mines in Angola to a string of 7-Elevens in Texas. Recently he has been buying up iconic American properties, including the former New York Times Building in Manhattan for a reported $525 million.
Lev Leviev is probably Israel’s richest man. Forbes ranks him 210th among the world’s wealthiest people, with an estimated personal net worth of $4.1 billion. (People close to Leviev put that figure closer to $8 billion.) However much Leviev has, he is hungry for more. His business role model is Bill Gates, whom he says he hopes to eventually join in what he calls, in Russian-accented Hebrew, “the world’s starting 10.”
Leviev admires not only Gates’s wealth but also his activist style of philanthropy. “A lot of very rich men wait too long to give their money away,” he told me. “Warren Buffett, for example. He’s in his 70s now, and he should have started earlier. But Bill Gates is a young man, and he’s already giving to help the world. That’s the right way to do it.”
Leviev, who is 51, is a legendary philanthropist, too — he refuses to say how much he gives away each year, but he did not dispute an estimate of $50 million. He does not share Gates’s universalist outlook, however. Leviev is a tribal leader, a benefactor of Jewish causes, particularly in the former Soviet Union, where he underwrites Jewish day schools, synagogues, orphanages, social centers and soup kitchens for more than 500 communities. To make this vast philanthropic enterprise run, Leviev subsidizes an army of some 10,000 Jewish functionaries from Ukraine to Azerbaijan, including 300 rabbis.
Most of the 300 rabbis are Chabadniks, adherents of the Brooklyn-based Hasidic group Chabad — fundamentalist, missionizing, worldly and centered on the personality and teachings of the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe. Chabad is anti-abortion, regards homosexuality as a sexual perversion and generally finds itself aligned with other fundamentalist religious groups on American domestic issues. In Israel, it has supported right-wing Greater Israel candidates. Most controversially, during Rebbe Schneerson’s lifetime, Chabad entertained the notion that he might be the messiah; a vocal group in the community still does. (This led the ultrapious Rabbi Eliezer Shach to acidly define Chabad as the sect closest to Judaism.) Lev Leviev’s loyalty to Chabad is unquestioning. “The rebbe is my role model, and my values are his values,” he says.
Lev Leviev arrived in Israel as a teenager in 1971, at a time when Moshe Dayan, hero of the Six Day War, was the legendary embodiment of the Israeli WASP (Well-born/Ashkenazi/Secular/Paratrooper). Immigrants were classified by their potential to attain this ideal. The Leviev family — unconnected, uneducated, not even real Russians but Bukharan Jews, primitives from the steppes of Central Asia — were classified as “bad material” and dispatched by government authorities to the dusty “development town” of Kiryat Malachi.
Avner Leviev enrolled his son in a Chabad yeshiva. It was a match that didn’t take. “I’m not a born yeshiva scholar,” Leviev admits. In Tashkent he had finished 10th grade. He left the yeshiva after a few months, ending his formal education. If Leviev regrets this, he doesn’t show it. “I just wanted to make money,” he told me.
Through a family friend, Leviev found work as an apprentice diamond cutter. It was industry practice not to teach anyone all 11 steps of the diamond-cutting trade, but Leviev paid his fellow workers to show him every facet of the process. By the time he finished an undistinguished stint in the rabbinical corps of the army, he was ready to go into business for himself.
“I never doubted that I would get rich,” Leviev told me. “I knew from the time I was 6 that I was destined to be a millionaire. I’d go with my father to shops, and while he was talking business, my eyes automatically counted the merchandise.”
Leviev chose a tough industry. “The diamond business is usually a family business,” says a Tel Aviv diamond merchant. “People accumulate wealth slowly, over generations. When Leviev started out, all he had was an amazing amount of ambition and the ability to understand the stone. Understanding the stone — that was the key.”
The headquarters of Leviev’s U.S. diamond company, LLD USA, is located at the mouth of the Manhattan diamond district, on the corner of 47th Street and Fifth Avenue. To get up to his office, you need to be both photographed and fingerprinted by a very high tech security system.
People who handle gems are cautious and security-conscious, and Leviev is no exception. Perhaps for that reason, many of his closest associates are relatives or longtime friends, most of them also Bukharan Jews. Paul Raps, the general manager of LLD USA, has known Leviev since they were both young diamond merchants in Ramat Gan. “One day we were sitting there, just chatting, and suddenly Leviev said to me: ‘You know what we need? We need to get our hands on the gelem.’ Uncut diamonds. I thought he was kidding. Nobody could find uncut diamonds back then.”
Before Leviev’s epiphany, the world’s diamond market was strictly regulated by De Beers, a company founded in the 19th century to mine its first shaft of diamond-bearing kimberlite. In 1930, De Beers established a cartel that over the next few decades came to dominate diamond mining in the Soviet Union, Africa and the rest of the world. It regulated the market through a system of “sightholders,” handpicked producers of rough diamonds and dealers of finished diamonds, who were allowed to buy quantities of unfinished diamonds at fixed prices, via De Beers.
When Leviev started out, there were about 100 sightholders around the world. They came to London several times a year and, at syndicate headquarters, were offered diamonds on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Those who left it too often were decertified, and new sightholders were selected.
Small diamond cutters and merchants like Leviev couldn’t afford to buy from sightholders. They were allowed to buy rough diamonds from “secondary dealers” who managed to get their hands on small, smuggled quantities. It was a limiting arrangement, and Leviev didn’t like limitations. He applied to become a De Beers sightholder.
“There was resistance to him at first,” recalls the Tel Aviv diamond merchant, who knew Leviev at the time. “A lot of people thought he was uncouth, not really civilized. This wasn’t anti-Semitism. Most of the people who rejected him were European Jews themselves. Leviev was an outsider, a Bukharan. But he was so industrious, so ambitious, such a good businessman, that eventually they had no choice. They had to accept him.”
Soon Leviev became a rising star in the De Beers syndicate. He brought his extended family into his business, leveraged their resources and prospered. But he chafed under the control of the syndicate.
In the late ’80s, Leviev saw an opportunity. De Beers had encountered antitrust problems in the United States. In South Africa, the apartheid government that had worked with De Beers was losing political power. At the same time, the Soviet Union, whose leaders had long had a mutually profitable partnership with De Beers, was nearing collapse.
Leviev has a complicated relationship with his former homeland. In our first meeting, when I asked him about his boyhood memories, he surprised me by saying: “Fear. I grew up in fear.”
Tashkent is a Muslim city, and although there wasn’t much overt anti-Jewish violence, there was a climate of mistrust. “Many times I was beaten up in school,” he recalls. But his biggest fear was of the Communist government.
“As a boy, they used to make us stand at attention and salute the statue of Lenin,” he told me. “I’d curse him and the other Communists under my breath. They sent my grandfather to Siberia. They wouldn’t let us keep the Sabbath — we had to go to school on Saturdays. Just being Jewish was dangerous.”
Still, he saw business potential in Russia. He spoke the language, knew the local customs. His father, sensing danger, begged Leviev not to go. So Leviev traveled to Brooklyn, to the headquarters of the Lubavitcher rebbe, for a second opinion.
It is a meeting that has become folklore, both in Chabad and in the diamond industry. Leviev tells the story with obvious relish: “I spoke to the rebbe in Hebrew. I asked him, Should I go or not? He answered me in a kind of antique Russian. He said: ‘Go. Go to Russia and do business, but don’t forget to help the Jews. Remember your family tradition.’ ”
This was more than good advice. The rebbe’s blessing gave Leviev the keys to the Chabad network in the former Soviet Union at a very dangerous time.
Officially, Leviev was invited by the Soviet minister of energy in 1989, which was exploring ways of ending the De Beers grip on the country’s diamonds. “When I got there, Gorbachev was still in power, but you could sense that things were coming apart,” Leviev says. “Everything was unsettled, and I felt the fear again.”
There were other risks, too. To do business with the Russians, Leviev had to give up his position as a De Beers sightholder. This shook the international diamond business. “It was unbelievable,” says the Tel Aviv merchant. “He was breaking the rules, going after the source. When he succeeded in Russia, and then in Angola, others saw it and were suddenly emboldened. That’s how Leviev cracked the De Beers cartel. With the instincts of a tiger and the balls of a panther.”
There’s no need to cry for De Beers, which still controls a major share of the world’s uncut diamonds. But the syndicate no longer sets the worldwide market value of diamonds or decides who can manufacture and sell them.
Neither can Leviev. But he has become the world’s largest cutter and polisher of diamonds and one of its major sources of rough diamonds — the gelem he dreamed of.
A key to his success is his vertical integration. He mines the diamonds in Angola, Namibia and Russia, cuts and polishes them, ships them and sells them, wholesale and retail. He has a string of high-end shops in Russia and a luxury boutique, Leviev, on Bond Street in London. Next month, Leviev is opening a store on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, which, as the president of Leviev Jewelry, Thierry Chaunu, told a reporter, will cater to “the young hedge-fund professional who just got his bonus.”
One of Leviev’s first moves in Russia was to set up a high-tech cutting and polishing plant. It provided jobs and, more important, showed the Russians how they could gain control of their own industry. In turn, the Russian government helped him gain a foothold in Africa. In 1997, Leviev bought into the Catoca diamond mine, Angola’s largest, in a joint venture with the Russian state diamond company, Alrosa; a Brazilian partner; and the Angola state diamond company. Leviev soon established warm ties with the Angolan president, José Eduardo Dos Santos, who speaks fluent Russian from his days as an engineering student in the U.S.S.R.
When Leviev arrived in Angola, Dos Santos was fighting a civil war against Unita rebels, who were financed by the sale of smuggled “blood diamonds.” Leviev had a suggestion: Why not create a company that would centralize control of all diamonds? The company that grew out of that idea was the Angola Selling Corporation, or Ascorp, jointly owned by the Angolan government, a Belgian partner and Leviev. While Leviev’s plan took aim at the trade in conflict diamonds, critics say that Ascorp took advantage of mounting international pressure to establish and profit from a monopoly.
Unita surrendered in 2002, after the death of its leader, Jonas Savimbi. By then, the Angolan government had effectively pushed De Beers out of the country, and Ascorp had generated great sums for the Dos Santos government (and, it is rumored, the Dos Santos family), created thousands of jobs for Angolans in newly established factories and mines and made Lev Leviev a vast fortune. None of this would have been possible without the Russian connection.
On a shelf in Leviev’s Ramat Gan office sits a framed photo of Vladimir Putin. Leviev describes him as a “true friend.” The offices of many Israeli business magnates feature photographic trophies, grab-and-grin shots with (in ascending order of importance) the prime minister of Israel, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton and A-list Hollywood stars. Leviev has a different collection. Aside from the Lubavitcher rebbe and Vladimir Putin, there are photos taken with the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Kazakhstan, for which he serves as honorary consul in Israel. (“Yes, I saw ‘Borat’ ” Leviev told me wearily. “Yes, I thought it was funny. But silly.”) Leviev’s picture gallery reflects his status as the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the former Soviet Union, an organization he has led since 1998. Nobody knows exactly how many Jews live in the former Soviet Union, but estimates range from 400,000 to upward of one million. Leviev leads them with his checkbook.
“When it comes to contributing to the Jewish people, Lev Leviev is in a class by himself,” says Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and former Israeli deputy prime minster. “I know a lot of rich people who give money. But Leviev is on a completely different level. He’s building entire communities.”
More than this, he is a power broker and intercessor on behalf of beleaguered Jews throughout the former U.S.S.R. Take, for instance, the case of the Jewish private schools in Baku, Azerbaijan. Three years ago the government, concerned about the influence of neighboring Iran and the spread of local madrassas, decided to close all the private schools in the country. This, of course, included the Jewish school in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. The community elders petitioned the government, but to no avail.
“They even tried to get American Jewish organizations to intervene,” Leviev recalled. “But the Jewish organizations couldn’t do a thing.” He smiled thinly. He has a generally low opinion of American Jewish activists, especially his fellow billionaires.
And so Leviev decided to ride to the rescue. He flew to Baku on his private plane, parked at the airport and went straight to the synagogue.
“The Jews were all gathered there,” he recounted in what is obviously a favorite story. “I told them to wait while I talked to the president.” At the time, that was Heydar Aliyev. “There were journalists in his outer office. Everyone was excited to see me there, because they thought I had come to invest money in the country. Heydar thought so, too. He said: ‘Just tell me what you’re interested in — oil? Gas? Tourism? What can I do for you?’
“I asked him, ‘How can I invest in a country that doesn’t like Jews?’ Heydar got very upset when I said that. He began telling me how many Jewish friends he had and how much the Jews had contributed to his culture and the country and so on.
“ ‘But you’re closing down the Jewish school,’ I told him. ‘I’ve come to ask you to allow it to remain open. Right now the Jews of Baku are gathered in the synagogue, awaiting your answer.’ ”
Leviev paused at this point in the story. Dramatic tales of peril and salvation are part of the Chabad oral tradition.
“Heydar consulted his advisers,” Leviev said. “Then he returned to me and said: ‘The school can remain open. All right?’
“I told him: ‘Well, there’s another problem. The Jewish institutions here are in bad shape. Can you arrange for me to acquire a plot of land to rebuild?’
“ ‘Yes,’ said Heydar. ‘Is that all?’
“ ‘Not quite. I’d appreciate it if you would personally open the school next year. That way there will be no misunderstandings about what the government’s position is.’
“Heydar said: ‘I’ll do that. Are you satisfied now?’
“I told him: ‘Just one last thing, sir. Those journalists in your outer office? Would you mind announcing our agreement to them?’ ”
After Aliyev’s press conference, Leviev remembers returning triumphantly to the synagogue to deliver the good news. Shortly thereafter, Aliyev died and was succeeded by his son, with whom Leviev is on friendly terms.
“And did you invest after that?” I asked.
Leviev smiled. “No,” he said. “Azerbaijan has so many natural resources they don’t need my investment. But I told them that they would get a blessing from God.”
Leviev insists that he maintains a strict division between his community leadership and his business dealings. Perhaps this is so, but the republics of the former Soviet Union are not famous for their transparency. At any rate, business depends to a large extent on personal and political access. “A big part of our analytical value depends on the perception that we can get anything approved in Russia,” says Jacques Zimmerman, the vice president for communications of Africa Israel, Leviev’s international holding and investment company.
This perception has been strengthened by public displays of affection between Putin and Leviev. In 2000, the Russian president was the guest of honor at the opening of the Jewish Community Center in the Marina Roscha district of Moscow, which Leviev played a major role in building. It was a gesture widely interpreted as a sign of good will not only toward Russia’s Jews but toward Leviev himself.
Putin also took Leviev’s side in a dispute over the post of chief rabbi of Russia, backing Leviev’s candidate, Berel Lazar, over Adolf Shayevich, who held the position. The Kremlin’s endorsement of Lazar was a final confirmation that Leviev had achieved a typically audacious and improbable victory — putting the fundamentalist Chabad in effective control of the assimilated, mostly irreligious Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union.
Lazar’s selection has been quite controversial not only in Russia but also among Jewish groups in Israel and in the U.S. But Chabad is nothing if not practical, and they have taken a gradualist approach to winning over Russia’s secular Jews. Schools enroll nonreligious students and offer them a full government curriculum, along with some beginner’s Torah studies. Community centers hold coeducational social events. There are even mixed dances.
Such modernity comports with Leviev’s personal style, which is, in its outward aspect, Chabad-lite. He once made headlines by closing his upscale mall in Ramat Aviv — a bastion of WASP Israel — on the Sabbath, and officially his businesses are closed on Saturday. But he maintains a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for his Israeli executives, some of whom hold unofficial meetings and phone sessions on the Sabbath. Abroad, some of the businesses Leviev owns an interest in work seven days a week, and his American 7-Elevens sell nonkosher food. Leviev himself strictly observes the Sabbath, but he has been known to interrupt his weekday prayers for important phone calls.
Unlike many Chabad men, Leviev is clean-shaven, wears stylish business suits open at the collar and sometimes lounges in jeans, and his small black skullcap is barely visible. He is also something of a feminist. The women in his office, including his private secretaries, are allowed to wear slacks, a violation of strict Orthodox custom. Leviev’s two eldest daughters have been brought into the business as senior executives. Zvia, a mother of four who runs international marketing and mall businesses for her father, is frequently mentioned in the Israeli press as a potential successor. Leviev is proud to have raised his nine children in B’nai B’rack, Tel Aviv’s ultra-Orthodox suburb, but he is planning to move to an estate in Saviyon, the equivalent of going from Borough Park to Scarsdale.
Leviev’s pragmatism ends, however, at the vexing and fundamental question of who is a Jew. American Reform Judaism recognizes patrilineal descent. The State of Israel grants citizenship under the Law of Return to people with a single Jewish grandparent. But Leviev accepts only the Talmudic rule that a Jew is anyone born to a Jewish mother, or someone who has undergone an Orthodox conversion and agreed to keep all 613 Jewish laws.
There are a great many people who regard themselves as Jews but do not meet these criteria. In Israel alone, there are an estimated 300,000 among Soviet immigrants, and perhaps more than that in the former Soviet Union. “What do you do about all these people?” I asked Leviev. “Just write them off?”
Leviev’s answer: “It’s not a matter of what I do or what I want. I have no choice. The law is the law.”
A few years ago, concerned Bukharan Jewish immigrants in New York reported to Leviev that their children were being corrupted by the public schools of Queens. “The kids were going out with Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, all sorts of people,” I was told by one of Leviev’s intimates. Leviev would have been equally horrified to learn that the Bukharan Jews of Queens were hooking up with descendants of the Mayflower.
In response, Leviev donated the money for a private school in Elmhurst. He picks up the tuition tab for the entire student body — about 800 kids at an estimated $18,000 a pop. Leviev regards this as a pilot project. His goal, I was told by his assistant, Shlomi Peles, is to make a free Orthodox Jewish education available to every Jewish child in United States.
The educational project is just one part of Leviev’s recent discovery of America. After 9/11, he and a partner bought the JP Morgan building near ground zero at a bargain price (a reported $100 million), converting it into luxury condominiums and clearing a very handsome profit. It made him a believer in New York.
“Every building is half a billion dollars,” he told me. “All you need is a global perspective. I knew New York would come back.”
Jacques Zimmerman, who handles communications for Africa Israel, told me: “Lev’s natural tendency, his home court, is Israel and Russia. But he is constantly looking to expand.”
The engine for this growth is Africa Israel. The company is publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and handles Leviev’s businesses, not including privately held diamond interests. Leviev personally owns about 75 percent of Africa Israel, which was valued, in mid-July, at approximately $5 billion.
According to Zimmerman, Africa Israel has made a “strategic decision” to think big. “The work involved in large and small projects is about the same, so why not do big projects?” In Moscow, Africa Israel is currently building a million-square-foot mall as well as another 750,000-square-foot mall that is entirely underground. It is the lead partner in a consortium that is building the subway in Tel Aviv. Africa Israel is active in China, India, the Philippines and Latin America as well.
“We’re worldwide, but our emphasis is moving more and more to the United States,” Zimmerman says. “In the last six months, we’ve bought into more than a billion dollars’ worth of projects in Manhattan, and that’s going to grow.”
Africa Israel’s American holdings include not only the former New York Times Building but also a half-share of the Apthorp apartment building on the Upper West Side and the Clock Tower on Madison Avenue, 1,700 Fina gas stations around the country and development projects in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Phoenix. Recently the company announced it will be opening a giant Hard Rock amusement park in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
“All you need to do business in America is a good name, and banks will lend you all the money you need,” Leviev told me with enthusiasm.
Israel is a society in which successful people are rarely praised. But I encountered very little criticism of Leviev there, even from members of the Jewish WASP business establishment. “He’s still an outsider,” one high-powered Tel Aviv lawyer told me. “We don’t know anything about his personal life. But from what anyone can tell, he’s clean. You read about him in the business pages of the newspaper, not the gossip columns.”
One of Leviev’s greatest admirers is Eitan Raff, chairman of Israel’s Bank Leumi, from which Leviev bought Africa Israel in 1996. The sale was controversial at the time. “He was a Russian,” Raff says. “We didn’t know him or anything about him. We thought he might be some kind of oligarch. I hired two or three investigators to check him out. He came up clean.”
There were a number of foreign suitors for Africa Israel, but after fighting broke out in Jerusalem between Israeli and Palestinian gunmen, they became skittish and withdrew, leaving Leviev as the sole bidder. The asking price was $400 million, and Bank Leumi had to sell; it had been ordered by a court to divest itself of nonfinancial holdings, including Africa Israel, by a certain date. Leviev had the bank over a barrel. “What would you say to $330?” Leviev asked Raff.
“No, it’s worth four, that’s the fair price,” Raff said.
Leviev stuck out his hand, diamond-business style. “Four,” he said.
“He acted with great probity,” Raff says. “He didn’t try to take advantage or squeeze. His word is his bond,” he says. “Look, I’m a kibbutznik. Leviev and I aren’t from the same world at all. But I consider him a friend, and I think he’s an example of what the head of a public company should be.” Leviev’s biggest public-relations problem is his association with Arkady Gaydamak, a mysterious Russian-Israeli billionaire of unsavory reputation, now under indictment in France for a variety of offenses, including gunrunning and money laundering. Gaydamak, who cuts a flamboyant figure and recently established his own political party in Israel, is reputed to have made his fortune selling arms in Angola in partnership with various European, Israeli and African military and government figures.
Leviev says he was first introduced to Gaydamak by the former Mossad chief Danny Yatom. They certainly knew each other. According to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan journalism group based in Washington, Leviev and Gaydamak jointly acquired a metallurgy plant in Kazakhstan in 1999. A year later, Gaydamak bought a 15 percent share of Africa Israel, which he later sold. Leviev swears they are no longer partners, but the relationship has stained his reputation.
Unlike Gaydamak, Leviev has thus far steered clear of Israeli politics. That doesn’t mean he lacks influence, however. He meets from time to time with the nation’s leaders, mostly to discuss the economy. He owns Israel’s Russian-language television station, which reaches about 15 percent of the population. Despite his allegiance to Chabad, Leviev is considered a moderate. “He’s not one of the crazies,” a former adviser to Ariel Sharon told me. “Certainly not a Greater Israel man.”
Leviev’s global view is Moscow-centric and more than a little Machiavellian. He says he believes, for example, that America’s difficulties in places like Iran, Syria and Venezuela come primarily from George W. Bush’s failure to come to Russia’s economic aid. “If Bush had invested $100 million to help the Russian economy early in his first term, he’d have Putin’s friendship,” he says. “Instead, Bush put the money into a war with Iraq, and he’s been paying for it all over the world ever since.”
The first time I spoke to Leviev, he denied that he had any personal political aspirations. Three days later, he wasn’t so sure. “Would I like to be prime minister?” he mused. “I might. When I turn 60.”
That’s nine years off. At Leviev’s pace, nine years is a lot of time — time enough to make his way into the Forbes “starting 10,” time to complete the Chabadization of Soviet Jewry and time, perhaps, to make a run at becoming Israel’s first Russian-Bukharan-mohel-mogul prime minister.
Zev Chafets is a frequent contributor to the magazine and the author of ‘A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists and One Man’s Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance.”
-------
Monday, September 10, 2007
Report on progress on Hoffman's book "Judaism Discovered"
Report from Michael Hoffman on progress on his book "Judaism Discovered."
I'll make it short and sweet, folks. I am progressing very well on "Judaism Discovered." In fact I am excited when I read it over and even though I have been familiar with most of it for many months, it still thrills me to see the information God has allowed me to gather through the donations of some of you and for which I am deeply grateful. In some cases these donations have involved some significant sacrifices.
Nonetheless, as I enter the final stretch there are still expenses and I no longer wish to appeal for donations. By now, everyone has gotten the message and made their decision one way or another in this regard. There are still some valuable and costly manuscripts I need to purchase and I just purchased one very rare book allegedly listing most of the cases of Judaic censorship of dissident and heretical Judaics by the rabbis themselves! How could I let that one go? How could I omit it from my book?
The donations received of late have helped me pay my house mortgage and keep the wolf away from our door so I can devote myself to this task. I have also increased my personal security and without giving too much away, this sometimes involves changing the portrait of my likeness on our web site. Some people have complained about that. Trust me. We're going to install some exterior motion detection lights on our home/office. I can't say more, but surely you can fill in the blanks.
Even with the donations I have still taken on some copy editing work which is lucrative ($45 - $60 hr.). Copy editing is not proof-reading. The copy editor is supposed to receive the manuscript after it has been proof-read. In my experience copy-editing in often a euphemism for ghost writing. One shapes and sometimes re-writes the book. So I am doing some of that on the side because for a half day's work I can earn around $250 and that allows me to labor on "Judaism Discovered" for the other half of the day.
We are coming to the end, however. We're looking at least 700 pages in hard cover; possibly more, but a minimum of 700 pages. I have reached that benchmark thanks to you donors. It's 100 pages we wouldn't have had were it not for you. I would have also gone to press without the English translation of Ariel Toaff's ritual murder book had it not been for the extra time your donations have purchased. So hopefully, for you donors, your donations have been worth the sacrifice.
For the printing of the book I have the promise of a $6,0000 interest-free loan from a man I have known for a long time. The terms are as follows: we must take the loan by the end of October (not a problem; we'll go to press before then); and repay it starting in November at $500 per month for 12 months. We will need another $6,000 on top of that to pay the whole printing bill ($12,000) and that does not include any monies should we wish to advertise the book, which I think we can all agree is rather important. I can't look that far ahead, however. I'm taking everything week by week and at present I am still seeking to buy time to keep writing.
So please be patient. I have many irons in the fire. I am divided across a range of pursuits. I am satisfied that everyone who has a desire to donate has done so and that now it's up to me to finish the course, so I've hit on this mixed schedule of copy-editing other people's books and writing my own. There are family and security matters complicating the mix as well, but that's life and we all have to deal with our less than perfect situations and arrangements in this world. I am not the only one struggling on that front.
The main thing is that I keep my promises and "deliver the goods." God willing, later this autumn you will see that I have.
If you don't hear from me for a while it is due to "grindstone silence" i.e. my nose to the grindstone.
Subscribers to Revisionist History Newsletter: I realize you have not received an issue since May. Please bear with me. I have written six books but never one of 700 pages. Meticulous proof-reading and indexing is mandatory (this book will have one of the most detailed indexes ever compiled, so that it will be a reference work , not just a history/theology critique and survey). I can't pause to do the newsletter at this time. I doubt this will happen again anytime soon (writing a 700 page book); this project has taxed every resource we have and then some.
That's it for now. I would appreciate your continued prayers.
Sincerely,
Michael
***
I'll make it short and sweet, folks. I am progressing very well on "Judaism Discovered." In fact I am excited when I read it over and even though I have been familiar with most of it for many months, it still thrills me to see the information God has allowed me to gather through the donations of some of you and for which I am deeply grateful. In some cases these donations have involved some significant sacrifices.
Nonetheless, as I enter the final stretch there are still expenses and I no longer wish to appeal for donations. By now, everyone has gotten the message and made their decision one way or another in this regard. There are still some valuable and costly manuscripts I need to purchase and I just purchased one very rare book allegedly listing most of the cases of Judaic censorship of dissident and heretical Judaics by the rabbis themselves! How could I let that one go? How could I omit it from my book?
The donations received of late have helped me pay my house mortgage and keep the wolf away from our door so I can devote myself to this task. I have also increased my personal security and without giving too much away, this sometimes involves changing the portrait of my likeness on our web site. Some people have complained about that. Trust me. We're going to install some exterior motion detection lights on our home/office. I can't say more, but surely you can fill in the blanks.
Even with the donations I have still taken on some copy editing work which is lucrative ($45 - $60 hr.). Copy editing is not proof-reading. The copy editor is supposed to receive the manuscript after it has been proof-read. In my experience copy-editing in often a euphemism for ghost writing. One shapes and sometimes re-writes the book. So I am doing some of that on the side because for a half day's work I can earn around $250 and that allows me to labor on "Judaism Discovered" for the other half of the day.
We are coming to the end, however. We're looking at least 700 pages in hard cover; possibly more, but a minimum of 700 pages. I have reached that benchmark thanks to you donors. It's 100 pages we wouldn't have had were it not for you. I would have also gone to press without the English translation of Ariel Toaff's ritual murder book had it not been for the extra time your donations have purchased. So hopefully, for you donors, your donations have been worth the sacrifice.
For the printing of the book I have the promise of a $6,0000 interest-free loan from a man I have known for a long time. The terms are as follows: we must take the loan by the end of October (not a problem; we'll go to press before then); and repay it starting in November at $500 per month for 12 months. We will need another $6,000 on top of that to pay the whole printing bill ($12,000) and that does not include any monies should we wish to advertise the book, which I think we can all agree is rather important. I can't look that far ahead, however. I'm taking everything week by week and at present I am still seeking to buy time to keep writing.
So please be patient. I have many irons in the fire. I am divided across a range of pursuits. I am satisfied that everyone who has a desire to donate has done so and that now it's up to me to finish the course, so I've hit on this mixed schedule of copy-editing other people's books and writing my own. There are family and security matters complicating the mix as well, but that's life and we all have to deal with our less than perfect situations and arrangements in this world. I am not the only one struggling on that front.
The main thing is that I keep my promises and "deliver the goods." God willing, later this autumn you will see that I have.
If you don't hear from me for a while it is due to "grindstone silence" i.e. my nose to the grindstone.
Subscribers to Revisionist History Newsletter: I realize you have not received an issue since May. Please bear with me. I have written six books but never one of 700 pages. Meticulous proof-reading and indexing is mandatory (this book will have one of the most detailed indexes ever compiled, so that it will be a reference work , not just a history/theology critique and survey). I can't pause to do the newsletter at this time. I doubt this will happen again anytime soon (writing a 700 page book); this project has taxed every resource we have and then some.
That's it for now. I would appreciate your continued prayers.
Sincerely,
Michael
***
Friday, September 07, 2007
Michael Gordon, NY Times: war in Iraq making "progress"
Michael Gordon is the liar who shared authorship with Judith Miller of the infamous "mushroom cloud" atomic bomb prediction if Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" were not stopped. Did the Times fire this war-mongering false prophet? Is he pitching manure in the boondocks now? Nah, he's still reporting front page stories for the gray lady.
His latest propaganda, shorn of its cant, is reproduced below from the Sept. 8, 2007 issue of the NY Times, which has a vested interest in subtly propping up the Bush administration's nation building project in Iraq, since it is viewed by Times' executives as good for "Israel."
ASSESSING THE 'SURGE'
Hints of Progress, and Questions, in Iraq Data
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
NY Times | Sept. 8, 2007
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — For months, proponents and critics of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq have pointed to conflicting indicators about whether it has produced progress. The figures that have emerged in recent government reports have seemingly provided something for everyone.
The most comprehensive and up-to-date military statistics show that American forces have made some headway toward a crucial goal of protecting the Iraqi population. Data on car bombs, suicide attacks, civilian casualties and other measures of the bloodshed in Iraq indicate that violence has been on the decline...
...the reduction in attacks...And...the improvement...American military officials note that... August...the most significant gains in reducing violence materialized not only in Baghdad, but also across Iraq.
The unclassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate “Prospects for Iraq’s Stability,” which was released Aug. 23, reported “measurable....improvements in Iraq’s security situation.” The intelligence estimate noted that that overall attack levels had fallen “in seven of the last nine weeks.”
The American military is not the only organization reporting that violence in Iraq has dropped. Iraqi government statistics on wounded and dead civilians generally run somewhat higher than those recorded by the American military. (American military officers say that General Petraeus’s command uses Iraqi government data, but omits reports that it concludes are duplicative or which cannot be corroborated.)
Still, the trend is similar: both the American and the Iraqi reports note a roughly 50 percent drop in the number of civilians who have been killed since the end of 2006. According to Iraqi government data, the number of civilians nationwide who died as a result of violent causes dropped to about 2,000 in August from about 4,000 in December 2006. American military statistics shows that the number of civilian deaths declined to 1,582 in August from 2,989 in December.
“All major categories of violence have been trending downward over the course of the year, according to most primary data sources, be they American, Iraqi or nongovernmental,” said Michael O’Hanlon, the senior author of the Iraq Index, a database on Iraq maintained by the Brookings Institution. “This includes the overall civilian fatality count from all violent causes.”
Iraq Body Count, a British-based nongovernmental group that monitors civilian deaths, notes that the number of civilians who were killed by shootings, executions and bombs has declined from January through July. The organization says its August figures are not yet available....
When President Bush announced in January his decision to send more forces to Iraq, his commanders outlined a new strategy. The goal was to protect the Iraqi public against attacks from insurgents and militias, not merely to hold the line while responsibility for security was being transferred to the Iraqis. The main focus was Baghdad.
The last of the five combat brigades that were deployed under the plan arrived in June when the American command began a major operation against militants from Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi group with foreign leadership. A new series of operations began in mid-August in an effort to disrupt any plans that these Sunni militants might have to mount a Tet-style offensive to influence the coming American debate on Iraq.
... the infusion of more American troops encouraged Sunni tribes, including former insurgents, to align themselves with American forces, providing American troops with additional allies in their struggle to establish order in Iraq.
To measure the military progress, the American command has gathered an array of statistics...The new alliance with Sunni tribes in Anbar Province led to a dramatic reduction in violence there......In June, July and August of 2006, the average monthly number of car bombs in the Baghdad metropolitan area was 42. In 2007, however, the average for the same three-month period was 23, the same number as in 2005.
The number of deaths in sectarian violence is also a key indicator. According to the American military count, the August total for the 10 security districts in Baghdad was 321, down from 1,621 in December when such attacks were at a high....military officials and some nongovernmental experts say that American military efforts have been an important factor...“The overall trajectory has been encouraging,” General Petraeus wrote Friday in a letter to American troops...
(End quote)
***
His latest propaganda, shorn of its cant, is reproduced below from the Sept. 8, 2007 issue of the NY Times, which has a vested interest in subtly propping up the Bush administration's nation building project in Iraq, since it is viewed by Times' executives as good for "Israel."
ASSESSING THE 'SURGE'
Hints of Progress, and Questions, in Iraq Data
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
NY Times | Sept. 8, 2007
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — For months, proponents and critics of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq have pointed to conflicting indicators about whether it has produced progress. The figures that have emerged in recent government reports have seemingly provided something for everyone.
The most comprehensive and up-to-date military statistics show that American forces have made some headway toward a crucial goal of protecting the Iraqi population. Data on car bombs, suicide attacks, civilian casualties and other measures of the bloodshed in Iraq indicate that violence has been on the decline...
...the reduction in attacks...And...the improvement...American military officials note that... August...the most significant gains in reducing violence materialized not only in Baghdad, but also across Iraq.
The unclassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate “Prospects for Iraq’s Stability,” which was released Aug. 23, reported “measurable....improvements in Iraq’s security situation.” The intelligence estimate noted that that overall attack levels had fallen “in seven of the last nine weeks.”
The American military is not the only organization reporting that violence in Iraq has dropped. Iraqi government statistics on wounded and dead civilians generally run somewhat higher than those recorded by the American military. (American military officers say that General Petraeus’s command uses Iraqi government data, but omits reports that it concludes are duplicative or which cannot be corroborated.)
Still, the trend is similar: both the American and the Iraqi reports note a roughly 50 percent drop in the number of civilians who have been killed since the end of 2006. According to Iraqi government data, the number of civilians nationwide who died as a result of violent causes dropped to about 2,000 in August from about 4,000 in December 2006. American military statistics shows that the number of civilian deaths declined to 1,582 in August from 2,989 in December.
“All major categories of violence have been trending downward over the course of the year, according to most primary data sources, be they American, Iraqi or nongovernmental,” said Michael O’Hanlon, the senior author of the Iraq Index, a database on Iraq maintained by the Brookings Institution. “This includes the overall civilian fatality count from all violent causes.”
Iraq Body Count, a British-based nongovernmental group that monitors civilian deaths, notes that the number of civilians who were killed by shootings, executions and bombs has declined from January through July. The organization says its August figures are not yet available....
When President Bush announced in January his decision to send more forces to Iraq, his commanders outlined a new strategy. The goal was to protect the Iraqi public against attacks from insurgents and militias, not merely to hold the line while responsibility for security was being transferred to the Iraqis. The main focus was Baghdad.
The last of the five combat brigades that were deployed under the plan arrived in June when the American command began a major operation against militants from Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi group with foreign leadership. A new series of operations began in mid-August in an effort to disrupt any plans that these Sunni militants might have to mount a Tet-style offensive to influence the coming American debate on Iraq.
... the infusion of more American troops encouraged Sunni tribes, including former insurgents, to align themselves with American forces, providing American troops with additional allies in their struggle to establish order in Iraq.
To measure the military progress, the American command has gathered an array of statistics...The new alliance with Sunni tribes in Anbar Province led to a dramatic reduction in violence there......In June, July and August of 2006, the average monthly number of car bombs in the Baghdad metropolitan area was 42. In 2007, however, the average for the same three-month period was 23, the same number as in 2005.
The number of deaths in sectarian violence is also a key indicator. According to the American military count, the August total for the 10 security districts in Baghdad was 321, down from 1,621 in December when such attacks were at a high....military officials and some nongovernmental experts say that American military efforts have been an important factor...“The overall trajectory has been encouraging,” General Petraeus wrote Friday in a letter to American troops...
(End quote)
***
Thursday, September 06, 2007
New "Israel Lobby" book by Mearsheimer and Walt reviewed by NY Times
A Prosecutorial Brief Against the Israeli Regime and Its Supporters
Editor's Note: A review by William Grimes of John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's newly published "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" appears in today's editions of the New York Times. We have reproduced the review below, following our commentary.
The headline of the review, "A Prosecutorial Brief Against Israel and Its Supporters" is subtly tilted against the authors. It should have been headlined, "A Prosecutorial Brief Against the Israeli Regime and Its Supporters," rather than "against Israel." The Times' accords George W. Bush the distinction of opposing the "Iranian regime" while allegedly supporting "the Iranian people." The Times should have extended the same distinctive benefit of the doubt to Mearsheimer and Walt.
Having said that, this initial review (the Times will publish another one by a different and likely more jaundiced reviewer in a future edition) is something approaching a balanced assessment. It is marred by distractions, such as the predictive programming embedded in the reviewer's omniscient assertion that "most Americans" are pro-Israeli. We also can't help discerning the creeping semi-literacy that has slowly eroded the Times' once formidable use of the English language. I refer to Grimes' use of the neologism, "unignorable," a non-word inspired by the tech-manual scribbling of computer geeks who have appended the suffix, "able" to hundreds of words, reflective of our growing American intellectual laziness.
In that slothful sense Grimes' review fails in that he does not scruple to quote one major argument of Mearsheimer and Walt. His central antidote to their work is his suggestion that Americans have too much emotional affection for the Israeli entity to detach from it. This is not an argument, it's a crystal ball prognostication. Grimes also fails to observe that Mearsheimer and Walt's antagonist, Alan Dershowitz, our nation's self-appointed Grand Inquisitor, is fresh from his triumphant interference in the tenure process at DePaul University, where he helped ensure the termination of Dr. Norman Finkelstein's professorship at that institution. Grimes also damns Mearsheimer and Walt's book with faint praise. He makes it appear cold, statistical, academic and therefore, unappealing. To his credit, however, the Times' reviewer briefly notes, though without naming the culprits, that the authors have been boycotted by institutions that are supposed to be champions of free inquiry.
Allow this writer to fill in the blanks: the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs and three organizations in Chicago turned down or canceled scheduled public events with the authors.
A book can't change the masses. The masses no longer read books. They are in thrall to television, movies and talk radio. "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is intended to educate the current American elite and the future elite among today's university students. While this volume will not necessarily spark a revolution, it will gnaw, in the boardrooms, judges' chambers and among the middle and upper classes generally, at the foundations of Israeli prestige, as Jimmy Carter's "Peace not Apartheid" book did, and that's better than nothing.
With typical hyperbole, the hysterical Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations compared the Mearsheimer/Walt book to "Hitler's big lie," charging that its aim is to "intimidate Jews and silence them." Observe the Judaic mentality at work: Hoenlein's powerhouse umbrella organization has done everything in its power to keep the book from being published. Mearsheimer and Walt have never tried to do anything similar to Zionist books (ADL's Abe Foxman has issued a book-length diatribe against them), and yet they are the ones accused of silencing and intimidating people.
The tragedy of it all is found in the question that no one is asking: where is the Palestinian lobby in America? Answer: it doesn't exist. Hence, even if tomorrow utopia dawned, and every American pledged to support the Palestinian cause, there would be no political, financial or lobbying vehicle to channel that support into legislative muscle on Capitol hill. Some of the Israeli grip on the American ship of state is not due solely to pernicious Israeli lobbying, it's also the fault of Arab-American torpor. Sad to say, thus far U.S. Arabs have not approached anywhere near the energy and organizing ability of American Judaics.
But let's see what there is to celebrate, rather than always being negative: two courageous professors who will not back down; the Farrar, Straus & Giroux publishing house that is printing and distributing their book and has paid them a $750,000 advance; and the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which continues to function as protection against religious-fanatic zealots who would, if they had the opportunity, ban Mearsheimer and Walt's reasoned and documented dissent as "anti-semitic hate literature."
I assure you, if we are not grateful for even small victories, God will not send us bigger ones.
Thank you, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and your allies in American publishing and journalism, for a significant intellectual effort toward curbing the single most destructive assault on our nation's security, and the peace of the world: the regime that has imposed the racist, Talmudic, pirate state of counterfeit "Israel" on the indigenous people of the Middle East.
--Michael A. Hofman II
(Hoffman is the author of "The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians." He is at work putting the finishing touches on his forthcoming book, "Judaism Discovered").
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
A Prosecutorial Brief Against Israel and Its Supporters
By WILLIAM GRIMES
NY Times September 6, 2007
THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
484 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” arrives carrying heavy baggage. John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, set off a furor last year by arguing, in an article that appeared in The London Review of Books, that uncritical American support for Israel, shaped by powerful lobbying organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, does grave harm to both American and Israeli interests.
A bitter debate has raged ever since, with accusations of anti-Semitism leveled by, among others, Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, and Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the principal lobbying organizations taken to task by Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt.
“The Israel Lobby,” an extended, more fully argued version of the London Review article, has done nothing to calm the waters. The authors have been barred from making appearances by at least one university and several cultural centers to discuss their subject, and continue to reap a whirlwind of criticism and abuse. If they were looking for a fight, they have found it.
Slowly, deliberately and dispassionately Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt lay out the case for a ruthlessly realistic Middle East policy that would make Israel nothing more than one of many countries in the region. On those occasions when Israel’s interests coincide with America’s, it should count on American support, but otherwise not. What Americans fail to understand, the authors argue, is that most of the time the two countries’ interests are opposed.
The reason they do not realize this, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt insist, can be explained quite simply: The Israel lobby makes sure of it. Working closely with members of Congress, public-policy organizations and journals of opinion, energetic, well-financed groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee, along with dozens of political-action committees, perpetuate the myth, as the authors see it, of Israel as an isolated, beleaguered state surrounded by enemies and in need of America’s unstinting financial and military support.
This lobby is particularly adept at stifling debate before it begins, the authors argue. “Whether the issue is abortion, arms control, affirmative action, gay rights, the environment, trade policy, health care, immigration or welfare, there is almost always a lively debate on Capitol Hill,” they write. “But where Israel is concerned, potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all.”
There is nothing underhanded or devious about this, the authors say. Like the National Rifle Association or the AARP, the Israel lobby relies on the traditional political weapons available to any special-interest group in pressing its agenda. It just happens to be unusually skillful and effective.
“It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel’s case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state,” they write.
The problem, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, is that Israel has become a strategic liability with the end of the cold war and a moral pariah in its dealings with the Palestinians and, most recently, the Lebanese. Uncritical American support for its closest Middle East ally has damaged American credibility in the Arab world, encouraged terrorism, stymied the search for a solution to the Palestinian problem, and in every way made America’s international position weaker and more dangerous.
Coolly, not to say coldly, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt mount a prosecutorial brief against Israel’s foreign and domestic policies, and against the state of Israel itself. They describe a virtual rogue state, empowered by American wealth and might, that blocks peace at every turn, threatens its cowering neighbors with impunity, crushes the national aspirations of the Palestinians and, whenever the opportunity arises, bites the hand that feeds it.
Working tirelessly in the background is the Israel lobby, playing Iago to America’s Othello, leading president after president down ever more dangerous paths. Without intense pressure from the Israel lobby, the authors argue, America would not have undertaken the war in Iraq.
Most American readers will bristle at the authors’ characterization of Israel. This is to be expected, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, because of the completely false image of Israel and its history that has been manufactured by the Israel lobby. As a result, Americans completely misinterpret the Palestinian issue and fail to support a productive policy that would tilt away from Israel and toward the Palestinians.
The authors state, on several occasions, their belief that Israel has a moral and legal right to exist, but the effect of their book is to leave it dangling by a moral and strategic thread. In essence they call for the United States to cut Israel loose, to return more or less to American policy before the 1967 war, when the United States tried to occupy a middle ground between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Strangely, the authors do not itemize the fabulous benefits delivered by this approach in the 1950s and ’60s.
It is a little odd that so chilly a book should generate such heat. Most of Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt’s arguments are familiar ones, and it is hardly inflammatory to point out that the major Jewish organizations tend to take a much tougher line on, say, a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem, the Iraq war or settlements in the West Bank, than most American Jews favor. The writers stand on eminently defensible ground when they argue for a more constructive, creative American role in peace talks.
The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way.
They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on.
“It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism.
End quote
***
Editor's Note: A review by William Grimes of John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's newly published "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" appears in today's editions of the New York Times. We have reproduced the review below, following our commentary.
The headline of the review, "A Prosecutorial Brief Against Israel and Its Supporters" is subtly tilted against the authors. It should have been headlined, "A Prosecutorial Brief Against the Israeli Regime and Its Supporters," rather than "against Israel." The Times' accords George W. Bush the distinction of opposing the "Iranian regime" while allegedly supporting "the Iranian people." The Times should have extended the same distinctive benefit of the doubt to Mearsheimer and Walt.
Having said that, this initial review (the Times will publish another one by a different and likely more jaundiced reviewer in a future edition) is something approaching a balanced assessment. It is marred by distractions, such as the predictive programming embedded in the reviewer's omniscient assertion that "most Americans" are pro-Israeli. We also can't help discerning the creeping semi-literacy that has slowly eroded the Times' once formidable use of the English language. I refer to Grimes' use of the neologism, "unignorable," a non-word inspired by the tech-manual scribbling of computer geeks who have appended the suffix, "able" to hundreds of words, reflective of our growing American intellectual laziness.
In that slothful sense Grimes' review fails in that he does not scruple to quote one major argument of Mearsheimer and Walt. His central antidote to their work is his suggestion that Americans have too much emotional affection for the Israeli entity to detach from it. This is not an argument, it's a crystal ball prognostication. Grimes also fails to observe that Mearsheimer and Walt's antagonist, Alan Dershowitz, our nation's self-appointed Grand Inquisitor, is fresh from his triumphant interference in the tenure process at DePaul University, where he helped ensure the termination of Dr. Norman Finkelstein's professorship at that institution. Grimes also damns Mearsheimer and Walt's book with faint praise. He makes it appear cold, statistical, academic and therefore, unappealing. To his credit, however, the Times' reviewer briefly notes, though without naming the culprits, that the authors have been boycotted by institutions that are supposed to be champions of free inquiry.
Allow this writer to fill in the blanks: the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs and three organizations in Chicago turned down or canceled scheduled public events with the authors.
A book can't change the masses. The masses no longer read books. They are in thrall to television, movies and talk radio. "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is intended to educate the current American elite and the future elite among today's university students. While this volume will not necessarily spark a revolution, it will gnaw, in the boardrooms, judges' chambers and among the middle and upper classes generally, at the foundations of Israeli prestige, as Jimmy Carter's "Peace not Apartheid" book did, and that's better than nothing.
With typical hyperbole, the hysterical Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations compared the Mearsheimer/Walt book to "Hitler's big lie," charging that its aim is to "intimidate Jews and silence them." Observe the Judaic mentality at work: Hoenlein's powerhouse umbrella organization has done everything in its power to keep the book from being published. Mearsheimer and Walt have never tried to do anything similar to Zionist books (ADL's Abe Foxman has issued a book-length diatribe against them), and yet they are the ones accused of silencing and intimidating people.
The tragedy of it all is found in the question that no one is asking: where is the Palestinian lobby in America? Answer: it doesn't exist. Hence, even if tomorrow utopia dawned, and every American pledged to support the Palestinian cause, there would be no political, financial or lobbying vehicle to channel that support into legislative muscle on Capitol hill. Some of the Israeli grip on the American ship of state is not due solely to pernicious Israeli lobbying, it's also the fault of Arab-American torpor. Sad to say, thus far U.S. Arabs have not approached anywhere near the energy and organizing ability of American Judaics.
But let's see what there is to celebrate, rather than always being negative: two courageous professors who will not back down; the Farrar, Straus & Giroux publishing house that is printing and distributing their book and has paid them a $750,000 advance; and the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which continues to function as protection against religious-fanatic zealots who would, if they had the opportunity, ban Mearsheimer and Walt's reasoned and documented dissent as "anti-semitic hate literature."
I assure you, if we are not grateful for even small victories, God will not send us bigger ones.
Thank you, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and your allies in American publishing and journalism, for a significant intellectual effort toward curbing the single most destructive assault on our nation's security, and the peace of the world: the regime that has imposed the racist, Talmudic, pirate state of counterfeit "Israel" on the indigenous people of the Middle East.
--Michael A. Hofman II
(Hoffman is the author of "The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians." He is at work putting the finishing touches on his forthcoming book, "Judaism Discovered").
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
A Prosecutorial Brief Against Israel and Its Supporters
By WILLIAM GRIMES
NY Times September 6, 2007
THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
484 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” arrives carrying heavy baggage. John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, set off a furor last year by arguing, in an article that appeared in The London Review of Books, that uncritical American support for Israel, shaped by powerful lobbying organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, does grave harm to both American and Israeli interests.
A bitter debate has raged ever since, with accusations of anti-Semitism leveled by, among others, Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, and Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the principal lobbying organizations taken to task by Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt.
“The Israel Lobby,” an extended, more fully argued version of the London Review article, has done nothing to calm the waters. The authors have been barred from making appearances by at least one university and several cultural centers to discuss their subject, and continue to reap a whirlwind of criticism and abuse. If they were looking for a fight, they have found it.
Slowly, deliberately and dispassionately Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt lay out the case for a ruthlessly realistic Middle East policy that would make Israel nothing more than one of many countries in the region. On those occasions when Israel’s interests coincide with America’s, it should count on American support, but otherwise not. What Americans fail to understand, the authors argue, is that most of the time the two countries’ interests are opposed.
The reason they do not realize this, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt insist, can be explained quite simply: The Israel lobby makes sure of it. Working closely with members of Congress, public-policy organizations and journals of opinion, energetic, well-financed groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee, along with dozens of political-action committees, perpetuate the myth, as the authors see it, of Israel as an isolated, beleaguered state surrounded by enemies and in need of America’s unstinting financial and military support.
This lobby is particularly adept at stifling debate before it begins, the authors argue. “Whether the issue is abortion, arms control, affirmative action, gay rights, the environment, trade policy, health care, immigration or welfare, there is almost always a lively debate on Capitol Hill,” they write. “But where Israel is concerned, potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all.”
There is nothing underhanded or devious about this, the authors say. Like the National Rifle Association or the AARP, the Israel lobby relies on the traditional political weapons available to any special-interest group in pressing its agenda. It just happens to be unusually skillful and effective.
“It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel’s case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state,” they write.
The problem, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, is that Israel has become a strategic liability with the end of the cold war and a moral pariah in its dealings with the Palestinians and, most recently, the Lebanese. Uncritical American support for its closest Middle East ally has damaged American credibility in the Arab world, encouraged terrorism, stymied the search for a solution to the Palestinian problem, and in every way made America’s international position weaker and more dangerous.
Coolly, not to say coldly, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt mount a prosecutorial brief against Israel’s foreign and domestic policies, and against the state of Israel itself. They describe a virtual rogue state, empowered by American wealth and might, that blocks peace at every turn, threatens its cowering neighbors with impunity, crushes the national aspirations of the Palestinians and, whenever the opportunity arises, bites the hand that feeds it.
Working tirelessly in the background is the Israel lobby, playing Iago to America’s Othello, leading president after president down ever more dangerous paths. Without intense pressure from the Israel lobby, the authors argue, America would not have undertaken the war in Iraq.
Most American readers will bristle at the authors’ characterization of Israel. This is to be expected, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, because of the completely false image of Israel and its history that has been manufactured by the Israel lobby. As a result, Americans completely misinterpret the Palestinian issue and fail to support a productive policy that would tilt away from Israel and toward the Palestinians.
The authors state, on several occasions, their belief that Israel has a moral and legal right to exist, but the effect of their book is to leave it dangling by a moral and strategic thread. In essence they call for the United States to cut Israel loose, to return more or less to American policy before the 1967 war, when the United States tried to occupy a middle ground between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Strangely, the authors do not itemize the fabulous benefits delivered by this approach in the 1950s and ’60s.
It is a little odd that so chilly a book should generate such heat. Most of Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt’s arguments are familiar ones, and it is hardly inflammatory to point out that the major Jewish organizations tend to take a much tougher line on, say, a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem, the Iraq war or settlements in the West Bank, than most American Jews favor. The writers stand on eminently defensible ground when they argue for a more constructive, creative American role in peace talks.
The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way.
They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on.
“It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism.
End quote
***
Monday, September 03, 2007
The Legend of Maimonides the Humanitarian as told by the NY Times
by Michael A. Hoffman IICopyright 2007. All Rights Reserved
www.RevisionistHistory.org
Here below we reproduce an ecumenical propaganda tale from the Zionist grandees at the New York Times.
It's a classic "feel good" human interest story dedicated to expanding the myth of the "Rambam," Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the medieval supreme codifier (along with the Renaissance-era Rabbi Joseph Karo) of halacha (Judaic law).
The central features of Maimonides' mythology repeated in this horse "tail" (I could refer to another substance produced by horses in this connection, but will spare you the analogy), are:
1. Maimonides was a wise and wonderful religious teacher who had love for all, especially the Arabs.
2. Maimonides is an ecumenical bridge to all peoples on the path to peace and understanding.
Both propositions are a huge joke on the gentiles in general, and Muslims and Christians in particular.
State of the art research on Maimonides shows there is no evidence he ever medically treated Saladin ("the sultan") himself; only his family. That was bad enough of course, if you've read the late, great Israel Shahak's revelations about Talmudic sabotage of Judaic medical care for gentiles.
However, as every Orthodox rabbi knows, but the NY Times is keeping secret, Maimonides despised Muslims, reserving his severest rancor for Mohammed himself.
Observe how shrewdly this is handled in by the Times. It is never stated in the article that Maimonides liked Muslims or had anything good to say about them. The whole thing is handled from the perspective of the people he fooled, while none of his own statements are cited or assessed:
“He was respected and honored by both Jews and Arabs. This is especially relevant now in our life and times...He was a very special man who was highly regarded by all people, regardless of faith..."
Correct. The rooks and sycophants among the goyim love him. But did Maimonides love them in return? The New York Times article does not say. It cleverly implies that he did, since he is allegedly "highly regarded by all people."
In truth, Moses Maimonides was a high level mole, spying on the the Muslim religion and closely scrutinizing Arab ethnography; the insights he obtained on his enemies allowed Judaism to gain an ever more firm purchase inside Islam, until today the Al Qaeda/Salafist operation (that's the CIA-sponsored movement now in the news after one tentacle was expelled from the refugee camp in Lebanon), is a mirror image of rabbinic doctrine on war (i.e. terror).
Maimonides was one of the most diabolical figures in all of history. He applauded the murder of Christ and advocated the murder of Christians. The grief, misery and slaughter his teachings have caused are incalculable. His secret writings on Muslims and Mohammed are dripping with venom and homicidal hatred.
But due to a highly sophisticated and, pardon the pun, well-oiled propaganda machine, Maimonides' benign image is generally taken at face value by a dumbed-down population of Arabs and Christians.
Because St. Thomas Aquinas made favorable remarks about Maimonides' treatise against atheism, otherwise knowing next to nothing about his covert doctrines, Maimonides is presented as bearing a Catholic imprimatur; which was certainly not true prior to the modernist recasting of the Vatican and papacy.
As for his supposedly humanitarian medical care: Maimonides taught the clandestine rabbinic principle of indirectly causing the deaths of gentiles: you see them stuck in a deep hole, you leave them there. Would you want this guy for your physician, if you were a gentile?
According to halacha, sound medical care is relative to circumstances: to be extended only to a population of dangerously alert gentiles who are highly suspicious of Judaics, and then solely in order to win their favor and overcome their premonitions of Judaic treachery.
Eight hundred years later, the legend of Maimonides' medical humanitarianism lives on in Arab society, hence the services he rendered the sultan's family (never to the sultan himself, according to the best and latest research), have paid huge dividends in maintaining prestige for the religion of Judaism in the Middle East, in spite of hostility toward Zionism.
In the West, he is viewed through an intellectual prism, as a philosopher in the same exalted league as Aristotle and Aquinas, as a genius on par with Einstein, and as an Old Testament ethicist who tried to put the brakes on the Kabbalah (actually he only curbed its excesses for the sake of not blowing Judaism's Biblical cover, while reaffirming the core of the goddess-worshipping cultus which is intrinsic to Orthodox Judaism).
Maimonides wished the deaths of all faithful Christians and Mohammedans, yet in our upside down wonderland world, he is presented as the catalyst for a twenty-first century Runyonesque tale of Judaic-Arab cooperation, peace and love, in of all places, the Saratoga racetrack.
But can real peace and true love be based on lies?
This writer will furnish documentation on the deception and murderous teaching of Rabbi Moses Maimonides in my new book on Judaism ("Judaism Discovered"), which I am still writing. I will reproduce Maimonides' statements in English AND the original Hebrew and Aramaic in which Maimonides wrote them, so the master deceivers cannot wiggle their way around these embarrassing facts, which could destabilize their media charade, if widely publicized. Perhaps when my book is finished we should send copies to the King of Spain, the Pope of Rome and the Muslims of Cairo?
Please take the time to read the following NY Times report, so you will better understand the Judaic mentality and, now that you know some of the truth abut Maimonides, have a good (horse) laugh at the same time.
(Thanks to the altruistic persons whose financial support makes my writing possible).
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SHARING A NAME AND A MESSAGE:
COLT SERVES AS A REMINDER OF A PHILOSOPHER'S REACH
by Joe Drape
New York Times | September 3, 2007
click here for link to the article at the Times' website
This heart-warming photo of loveable bearded Talmudists affectionately gathered around the horse is featured on the front page of today's hard copy NY Times.Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Sept. 2 — Rabbi Israel Rubin conceded that it was an unusual field trip for his students. They were here at Barn 70 on the backside of Saratoga Race Course on Friday morning to see a trainer about a horse. The trainer was Bob Baffert, and the horse, Maimonides, was a fast one who just may capture the Kentucky Derby next May.
Maimonides cost $4.6 million at last year’s Keeneland September Sale, and last month he appeared as if he was worth every penny when he won his debut by 11 lengths. He is one of the favorites Monday to win the Grade I $250,000 Hopeful Stakes, a seven-furlong sprint for 2-year-olds.
None of that, however, interested Rubin or his charges. He does not attend horse races or gamble. In fact, upon hearing about the colt, Rubin thought long and hard before arranging to take his students here. “Some may think this is sacrilegious,” he said.
Ultimately, however, the rabbi and his students were drawn here from the Maimonides Hebrew Day School in Albany for what is in a name. The school and the colt are named for Moses Maimonides, who lived more than 800 years ago and is considered among the greatest Jewish philosophers. He was the chief rabbi of Cairo and the physician to the sultan of Egypt. “He blended religious study and intellect with worldly manners to heal the sick and guide the healthy,” Rubin said. “He was respected and honored by both Jews and Arabs. This is especially relevant now in our life and times.”
Maimonides is owned and was named by Ahmed Zayat, an Egyptian now living in New Jersey. He did not know about Rubin’s visit, and, indeed, was flying back from San Diego and Del Mar on Friday morning. When told of the smiles of the youngsters petting the nose of his expensive colt, however, Zayat was beyond gratified. He is a Muslim who grew up in a suburb of Cairo and had put much time and effort into bestowing the name Maimonides on his prize purchase.
“He was a very special man who was highly regarded by all people, regardless of faith,” Zayat said of Maimonides. “What has happened with Sept. 11, Iraq, and what’s going on in the region is contrary to the way I grew up. If this horse was going to be a superstar, I wanted an appropriate name. I wanted to say something with the tool I had, which was a horse. I wanted it to be pro-peace, and about loving your neighbor.”
When Zayat tried to register the name Maimonides with the Jockey Club, however, he discovered that it had been reserved for more than nine years by Earle I. Mack, a New York real estate investor and a former ambassador to Finland.
In 1997, Mack, then the chairman of the board for the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, was instrumental in bringing King Juan Carlos I of Spain to New York to accept the school’s Democracy Award. Mack had been moved by the king’s remarks about how much Spain’s culture had lost when the country expelled its Jews in 1492 as part of the Inquisition. The king mentioned Maimonides, who was born in Córdoba, Spain, in 1135, and who, with his family, was forced out of the country while Spain was ruled by Muslims. “I was just waiting for a horse good enough to deserve the name,” Mack said.
He has owned and bred horses for more than 40 years, and knew that Zayat’s colt, a son of Vindication, was bred to be special. Each also understood the other’s good intentions. Zayat donated $100,000 to Cardozo to commemorate the king’s visit there, and to promote tolerance. Mack released his claim to the name Maimonides. “He had the right horse, and the right motives,” Mack said. “We are all after the same thing: to touch people across cultures.”
Zayat and Mack know that horse racing is an unpredictable business, and a thoughtfully named horse hardly guarantees future fame and fortune.
When Eli O’Brien, 14, patted Maimonides between the ears and promised to say some prayers for him, Baffert nodded enthusiastically. “We’ll take anything you can give us,” Baffert said.
(End quote)
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