Saturday, June 20 - Motzei Shabbat

1. Letter to the Editor - On June 10th, I linked to a column by Paul Schneidereit of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald about Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh. I had the pleasure of meeting Khaled on my trip to Israel in April/May. Here is Paul's original column.

On June 17th, the Herald published three letters critical of Paul's column - they are here, about halfway down the page. I will put this diplomatically, but my experience is that the letter writers frequently write to the Herald and are generally quite critical of anything Paul writes about Israel, and for that matter, Israel itself. I wrote in reply to the Herald, and today my letter was published (about halfway down the page).

2. Iran - this cauldron continues to boil.

In his Friday "sermon", Ayatollah Khamenei managed to, among other things, explicitly threaten violence against the protesters and blame the United States, Great Britain, and, of course, Zionists. His remarks have caused widespread condemnation, including even Amnesty International, which has found someone other than Israel to criticize, saying:

Amnesty said that instead of warning security forces, including the volunteer Basij militia, to act with restraint and in accordance with the law, Khamenei threatened the Iranian people by saying that if they continued to take to the streets, the consequences would lie with them.

"For a Head of State to put the onus of security on peaceful demonstrators and not on the security forces is a gross dereliction of duty and a license for abuse..."

Here are a number of other good source readings - from Joshua Muravchik of Commentary Magazine, David Frum of the National Post (who is the originator of the "Axis of Evil" phrase), Fareed Zakaria of CNN, Iranian expert Afshin Molavi in Der Spiegel and the always excellent Victor Davis Hanson.

3. Israel - even though events in Iran are dominating the news, Israel is never far from the front page, and we can expect it to be back there again soon. The Arabs are harshly critical of PM Netanyahu and FM Lieberman. Here is a view from Robert Fulford of the National Post about Avigdor Lieberman and his plan for peace.

4. Jewish Influence - Every day, I am more and more amazed at the influence we Jews seem to have - just the other day the (in)famous Jeremiah Wright of President Obama fame/infamy blamed the Jews for restricting his access to President Obama (he quickly tried to correct his remarks to blame only Zionists). Now the German priest who is spearheading the move to beatify Pope Pius XII, claims that pressure from jewish groups is behind the delay in that process. The Vatican has condemned the allegation.

Pope Pius XII was the Pope during the Holocaust. In that regard, he is a controversial figure. Some say that he did not do enough to help the Jews of Europe and was more concerned with protecting the Catholic Church. Others claim that he did all that he could to save Jews. Here is an interesting link on the subject from the Jewish Virtual Library, with links at the bottom of the article just above the bibliography page to defences of the Pope.

I have read "Hitler's Pope" by John Cornwell, but not "The Myth of Hitler's Pope" by Rabbi David Dalin. Cornwell's book was very critical of Pius XII, though he has now backed off his criticism in large part. In a 2004 interview in The Economist, Cornwell said:

"...While I believe with many commentators that the pope might have done more to help the plight of the Jews, I now feel, 10 years after the publication of my book, that his scope for action was severely limited and I am prepared to state this... Nevertheless, due to his ineffectual and diplomatic language in respect of the Nazis and the Jews, I still believe that it was incumbent on him to explain his failure to speak out after the war. This he never did."

5. The Canadian Human Rights Commission - the most recent spat between Ezra Levant and the CHRC about an appearance on the CTV show "Power Play" did not seem to generate much traction (here is Levant's side of the story). Here is a National Post editorial critical of the CHRC on another side of the issue.

6. Torii Hunter - a good friend of mine who shall remain nameless is a huge fan of the Minnesota Twins baseball team. I found this Twins promotional video from a couple of years ago featuring Hunter, (now playing with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). I think that the look on the young child's face at the end of the spot is priceless.