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Abba Eban Speaks on Israel's 10th Anniversary

On the occasion today of Israel's 60^th anniversary, going back fifty years and watching a television interview on April 12, 1958, with the country's then-ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, offers both an insight into what has changed and what has not and an opportunity to hear the most eloquent defender, bar none, of the Jewish state. Video and transcript of the interview can both be found on the University of Texas website. Take the very first exchange, in which a flat-toned Mike Wallace notes to Eban that "in its ten years as a nation, Israel has been involved in repeated violence: major border incidents, two open wars with the Arabs" and asks his expectations of what is to come in the next ten years. To which, Eban immediately responds:

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Thu, 8 May 2008 at 12:00 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (0)

Responding to Joshua Muravchik about "Moderate Islamists"

Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute began a debate with me on the subject of lawful Islamists in a June 2007 piece titled "Pipes v. Gershman," to which I responded on July 6, 2007 at "When Conservatives Argue about Islam." Muravchik initiated a second round in February 2008 with an article (co-authored with Charles P. Szrom), "In Search of Moderate Muslims."

Here is my reply to the latter, in the form of a letter to the editor of Commentary magazine, published in the May issue. The following version differs in many small ways from the published one; in three places, where the print version differed substantially from my original text, I added square brackets to show the contrast:

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Thu, 1 May 2008 at 12:00 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (30)

Laurie Mylroie's Shoddy, Loopy, Zany Theories – Exposed

Andrew McCarthy, the U.S. prosecutor who successfully put away Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, has finally written the piece that many of us have long intended to do but never got around to doing – exposing the work of Laurie Mylroie.

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Wed, 30 Apr 2008 at 12:00 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (2)

Predicting the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

In March 2004, I took a risk and in a blog titled "Predictions about the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election" stated that "I expect the U.S. presidential election in 2004 will be a Bush blow-out, reminiscent of 1984."

Today, I took a similar trip out on a limb and replied to a question about Barack Obama:

He is the first far-leftist possibly to become the Democratic candidate for U.S. president since George McGovern succeeded at this in 1972. Should Obama be nominated, I expect he will do less badly than McGovern (who won just 17 out of 537 electoral college votes), but he will also do very badly.

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Wed, 23 Apr 2008 at 8:39 PM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (27)

Exposed: A University Grovels for Saudi Money

Richard Kerbaj, the Australian's extraordinary young reporter, has himself another scoop, one that reveals the inner workings of Brisbane-based Griffith University's efforts to win A$1.37 million in Saudi funding for its "Islamic Research Unit."

Griffith's Vice-Chancellor Ian O'Connor wrote in a letter to Saudi ambassador Hassan T. Nazer, dated September 11, 2006:

We would be pleased to discuss ways in which your contribution could be recognised through, for example, the naming of a particular research fellowship position. The university is actively seeking to attract additional support from governments, industries and other benefactors to allow us to enhance the activities of the unit. As you may be aware, Griffith is rapidly becoming a popular ‘university of choice' for students from Saudi Arabia ... and we look forward to seeing a greater number of Saudi Arabian students on our campuses in the future.

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Tue, 22 Apr 2008 at 4:45 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (4)

Mecca Mean Time?

That Greenwich Mean Time became universally accepted resulted from centuries of British cultivation of the maritime sciences. Although replaced by the technically more advanced Coordinated Universal Time, GMT remains in place; more importantly, perhaps, its exact opposite, running through the Pacific Ocean defines the International Date Line.

So much for science and history. According to the BBC, at a conference held in Qatar titled, "Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice," a group of Muslim scientists and religious leaders called for replacing GMT with Mecca time. Magdi Abdelhadi explains:

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Mon, 21 Apr 2008 at 12:00 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (9)

Those Gentle Humanitarians at Fatah

In addition to Fatah clearly and explicitly wanting to eliminate Israel; for a fresh example see the statement on April 9 by the Palestinian Authority representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, about the Israelis: the PLO, he says, intends to "drive them out of all of Palestine." But in addition to this – which should be enough to render it unfit for negotiations with Israel or benefits from Western states – it is also a horrific organization in its own right.

For one instance of its brutality, read about its torture of a Hamas agent in the West Bank, Majd Barghouti, as reported by Griff Witte, "Killing in the West Bank Exposes a Furtive War: Hamas Cleric Apparently Tortured to Death in Custody of Rival Palestinian Authority":

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Thu, 17 Apr 2008 at 12:00 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (5)

Learning in Arabic about Jews and Judaism

When I lived in Cairo in the 1970s, I conducted a little experiment: What, using only Arabic-language sources, could I learn about Jews, Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish culture, and the like? The paucity of resources stunned me; basically, the best way to learn about these subjects was to read between the lines of antisemitic tracts.

It is therefore with delight that I read today that the American Jewish Committee, under the directorship of Yehudit Barsky, has launched a new website, Asl Al-Yahud ("origins of the Jews"), that deals in Arabic with these subjects, with an emphasis on the history of Jews in Arabic-speaking lands. As a press release explains,

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Thu, 10 Apr 2008 at 7:21 PM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (5)

Strange Sex Stories from the Muslim World

The deepest differences between Muslims and Westerners concern not politics but sexuality. Each side has a long history of looking at the other's sexual mores with a mixture of astonishment and disgust. Here are some examples from the Muslim side of the divide (in reverse chronological order) that have me, for one, shaking my head:

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Saudi imam details heavenly sexual delights: Omar Al-Sweilem, a Saudi imam, extols in near-pornographic detail on Saudi television the delights that await the faithful (men) when they find the "black-eyed virgin with her black hair and white face" in heaven. He paraphrases the Sufi sheikh, Harith Al-Muhasibi (c. 781-857):

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By Daniel Pipes  |  Wed, 9 Apr 2008 at 12:00 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (39)

SaveIsraelsChildren.com

The effort is the first time since World War II – when the Germans bombed London, and London children were sent off to families in the countryside to be cared for until the German assault ended – that a "people-to-people" campaign has been organized to remove children from a war zone. Sadly, indeed embarrassingly, the children are those of S'derot, an Israeli town of 19,000 near the border with Gaza that has been under a missile barrage since the Israeli retreat from Gaza in September 2005, with thousands of missiles to date. These have causing damage to property and injuries and death to residents.

The national government of Israel has basically averted its collective eyes from this tragedy, leaving the citizens of S'derot and potentially other towns to fend basically for themselves.

Into the breach now has come www.SaveIsraelsChildren.com, a Brooklyn-based non-profit that matchmakes between "families wanting to send their children abroad, and families who are willing to provide a temporary ‘home' for these children."

Comment: The need for such a private initiative points to the moral and operational bankruptcy of the Olmert government in Israel. (April 3, 2008)

By Daniel Pipes  |  Thu, 3 Apr 2008 at 12:00 AM  |  Permalink  |  Comments (22)

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