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We did not overlook the massacre at Itamar. Jeff Jacoby tells us about the Palestinian beasts.
The killers started with Yoav, the Fogels’ 11-year-old, and Elad, his 4-year-old brother. Yoav’s throat was slit, and Elad was stabbed twice in the heart. Then the attackers murdered Ruth, knifing her as she came out of the bathroom. In the next room they killed Ruth’s sleeping husband, Udi, and their infant daughter, Hadas. Apparently they didn’t notice the last bedroom, where the two other boys, Ro’i, 8, and Yishai, 2, were asleep. It wasn’t until half past midnight, when 12-year-old Tamar came home from a Friday night youth group, that the horrific slaughter was discovered. Much of the house was drenched in blood, and the 2-year-old was shaking his parents’ bodies, crying for them to wake up.
What explains such unspeakable evil? What sort of human being deliberately butchers a sleeping baby, or plunges a knife into a toddler’s heart?
As news of the massacre in Itamar spread, candy and pastries were handed out in Gaza in celebration. …
Ed Koch writes in Real Clear Politics about FDR’s lack on concern for Jews.
The latest Palestinian violence against Israelis, and the continuing abandonment of Israel by most of the international community, inevitably bring to mind the abandonment of the Jews during the Holocaust. Just this past week, a document emerged which raises disturbing new questions about President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Nazi mass murder of Europe’s Jews.
The document was brought to my attention by Dr. Rafael Medoff, a Holocaust scholar and director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, DC. Several years ago, Dr. Medoff collaborated with me on my book “The Koch Papers: My Fight Against Anti-Semitism.” It was based on my writings and speeches about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, during the course of my nine years in Congress and twelve as mayor of New York City.
The document which Dr. Medoff sent me last week, concerning FDR and the Holocaust, was frankly shocking. It had to do with the Allies’ occupation of North Africa, which they liberated from the Nazis in November 1942. …
Tony Blankley picks up on the name game started here by Craig Pirrong two days ago.
Amidst all the confusion over our new little war in Libya, one thing is clear: Notwithstanding the bravery and professionalism of our troops in naming it Operation Odyssey Dawn, the Pentagon has invoked a haunting specter. The war’s namesake Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” is the tale of the hero, Odysseus, taking 10 years to get home from the Trojan War which itself took 10 years to fight.
In fairness to the Pentagon, when the Germans started their ill-fated campaign in Tripoli in February 1941 which was to be lost because of a too long and thin logistics line they too had difficulty, calling it Operation Sonnenblume (Sunflower). As the German historian Wolf Heckmann drolly noted of the Wehrmacht High Command: “Unconsciously, someone had hit upon the perfect symbol: a huge and showy flower at the end of a long and rather fragile stem.”
This whole business of christening wars with catchy names is curious. …
Stanley Kurtz in a Corner Post lays open the president’s hidden agenda.
Obama doesn’t tell you what he’s thinking. He keeps his motives to himself. Cherished long-term ideological goals are advanced as pragmatic fixes to concrete problems in the present. Now we’re seeing the familiar domestic pattern in foreign policy as well.
Few Americans realize that Obama has had a longstanding interest in multilateral efforts to combat war crimes and genocide. Obama would like to see a more constraining international legal regime on war crimes, even at the cost of national sovereignty, not to mention the blood and treasure of the countries doing the enforcing. In general, Obama has said little about his larger foreign policy goals. To the extent that he has done so, Obama seems more the “realist” than an advocate of humanitarian intervention.
Yet for years, Samantha Power, a prominent advocate of humanitarian intervention and a key backer of our action in Libya, has been a powerful member of Obama’s foreign policy team. In 2005, Obama contacted Power after reading her book on genocide. There followed a long conversation, after which Power left Harvard to work for Obama, quickly emerging as his senior foreign policy advisor. …
It is not just our favorites. Here’s Richard Cohen from WaPo.
In the Oval Office, President Obama keeps busts of his heroes — Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. He should add one of Milton Berle, the so-called Mr. Television of the 1950s. Berle used to signal his studio audience to both continue and stop applauding by holding up one hand to wave them on and another to quiet them. This is the president’s Libya policy in a nutshell.
The Berle Doctrine, the closest thing this administration has to a coherent foreign policy, has almost certainly cost lives. It entailed a heroic amount of dithering as the Obama administration first went to war with itself — to intervene or not to intervene — with the so-called boys (Bob Gates, Tom Donilon) arguing with the girls (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power), a summer-camp metaphor unbecoming the seriousness of the situation. Clinton ultimately got her no-fly zone but claimed no credit. “We did not lead this,” she said in Paris.
That’s for sure. The French did this, with President Nicolas Sarkozy saying “France has decided to assume its role, its role before history.” …
Mark Steyn has earth shaking thoughts.
‘Why is there no looting in Japan?” wondered a headline in the Daily Telegraph. So did a lot of other folks. Various answers were posited:
The Japanese are a highly civilized people — which would have been news to the 22 British watchkeepers on the island of Tarawa who were tied to trees, beheaded, set alight, and tossed in a pit less than 70 years ago.
Alternatively, Japan enjoys the benefits of being an ethnically homogeneous society — which didn’t prevent the ethnically homogeneous West Country of Britain from being wracked by widespread thievery during the floods of 2007.
Most analysts overlooked the most obvious factor: Looting is a young man’s game, and the Japanese are too old. They’re the oldest society on earth. …
Christopher Hitchens missed his Slate column this week. First time in almost a year and a half. Actually, the only time we can find is a two week period from March 27, to April 10, 2006. We got tired of looking after that. Point is, his column is overdue. Number two son says Hitchens cancelled a speaking engagement two weeks out.