Dennis Prager says no on his radio show Tuesday.

The NYT editorialized: "Israel must immediately allow foreign journalists access to Gaza, as the Israeli high court ruled on Dec. 31. As in every war zone, reporting by journalists — and human rights monitors as well — can discourage abuse and is essential to full public understanding of the conflict."

Dennis: "There is nothing more desirable than the truth… The world media have served in the case of the Middle East and in Iraq as a great aid to the most evil people in the world at this time. The deterioriation of the media in my lifetime is one of the saddest stories of my lifetime… It’s one of the reasons many Americans now get their news from Comedy Central… Jon Stewart probably gives a more accurate view of the world than Keith Olbermann.

"The New York Times has repeatedly reported phony stories about US servicemen in Iraq, way overblown the atrocity stories. Abu Ghraib was a disgusting exhibit of behavior by American troops, but 31 days in a row it was on the front page?

"Maybe one in 300,000 Americans know what Abu Ghraib really stood for? The torture center of Sadam Hussein’s universe. Now it is known only for the American abuse of prisoners.

"You then have The New Republic reporting on atrocities by US troops that it then withdraws.

"The NYT reported on American troops coming back from Iraq committing homicide and suicide when they commit homicide and suicide at lower rates than people their own age who never went to Iraq.

"Then they cry, ‘Let us in or the world won’t know the truth.’

"If showing pictures of Gazans weeping, and of course it is true, it is happening, but does it give you a sense of proportionality? What if during WWII, the media had only shown Germans weeping? Plenty of Germans were weeping over the vast numbers of German civilians who died. What if 90% of the reporting was weeping Germans and .1% was about Aushwitz? Would you say that was true?"

"Thousands of rockets were sent over from Gaza to kill as many Israelis as possible… Can you imagine if this happened to us from land in Mexico? You don’t think we would invade?"

"The media are the least self-critical group in the world."

Prager reads from this news article in the NYT:

Israelis say the war is being reduced on television screens around the world to a simplistic story: an American-backed country with awesome military machine fighting a third-world guerrilla force leading to a handful of Israelis dead versus 600 Gazans dead.

Israelis and their supporters think that such quick descriptions fail to explain the vital context of what has been happening — years of terrorist rocket fire on civilians have gone largely unanswered, and a message had to be sent to Israel’s enemies that this would go on no longer, they say. The issue of proportionality, they add, is a false construct because comparing death tolls offers no help in measuring justice and legitimacy.

There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict, of course. But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death.

John Ging, an Irishman who directs operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, entered Gaza on Monday as journalists were kept out. He told Palestinian reporters in Gaza that the policy was a problem.

“For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in,” he said.

Prager writes:

Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is that rare individual who is both a highly respected academic and well known to the general population.

But in another regard he is even rarer. He regards himself as a man of the left, yet on one of the defining moral issues of our time, attitudes toward Israel, he has nothing in common with the left. He is not only one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, he spends much of his time defending Israel. He has written innumerable articles and four books defending Israel: “The Case against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace,” “The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved,” “The Case for Israel,” and “What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists.”

This past week, Dershowitz wrote two eloquent columns defending Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza. One was titled “Israel, Hamas, and Moral Idiocy,” published in the Christian Science Monitor and the other, “Israel’s Policy Is Perfectly ‘Proportionate,’” was published in the Wall Street Journal.

In his Monitor column, Dershowitz describes “three types of international response to the Israeli military actions against the Hamas rockets” — “Iran, Hamas, and other knee-jerk Israeli-bashers,” “the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and others who, at least when it comes to Israel, see a moral and legal equivalence between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that responds by targeting the terrorists,” and “the United States and a few other nations that place the blame squarely on Hamas.”

Report:

THE Australian soldier killed by a rocket attack in Afghanistan on Sunday evening (January 4) was Jewish.

Greg Sher, 30, was a private in the 1st Commando Regiment that was serving with the Special Operations Task Group that was conducting operations in Tarin Kowt.

He was killed instantly when a rocket exploded in the compound of an Afghan operating base.

He leaves behind his parents, two brothers and a partner.

Born in South Africa, Sher moved to Melbourne with his family in 1986.

Dennis Prager finds it interesting that this USA Today editorial does not mention vouchers in its call for more successful schools. Do they really believe that would be a bad thing, to give black parents most choice about where their kids go to school?

And no mention of religion. Couldn’t church and clergy and religious-discipline help?

There’s no talk about family structure. There’s no talk about marriage and sexual discipline. There’s no talk about the boost of being raised by a mother and a father.

Fathers are not indistinguishable from mothers.

From the USA Today:

You can see the message on brick wall murals in inner cities: Yes we can. You can hear it in the music of Black Eyed Peas’ frontman will.i.am: Yes we can.

You can imagine hearing it pass the lips of thousands of black mothers, perhaps after awakening their sons early to complete homework before they head off to school, just as President-elect Barack Obama’s mother did: Yes you can.

There’s no question Obama was elected by Americans of all races and ethnicities to be president of all America. But many hope that his presidency will have a profound impact on one group most in need, African-American boys.

Obama’s success notwithstanding, the American dream remains a more distant hope for black boys than it does for any other group. Taken as a whole, their eighth-grade reading and math scores are scales below those of other students. In many school districts, virtually the only students getting expelled are black males. They make up 9% of enrollments but 20% of the mental-retardation classifications.

The social price of this is terribly high. One in five black males lacking a high school diploma is incarcerated. Other statistics are similarly discouraging.

Black males might come from the same families, neighborhoods and schools as their sisters, but the girls’ outcomes are very different. For the most part, black females are doing far better than black males, outdistancing them by wide gaps in high school graduation and college enrollment rates. Many colleges report that black women have higher graduation rates than white men.

This gender gap has many causes, starting with the fact that 70% of black children are born into single-parent families. The girls have mothers for role models; the boys lack fathers. Then, ladle on daily doses of inner-city crime, violence, drugs and toxic popular culture, which disproportionately affect boys.

CHAIM AMALEK EMAILS:

In terms of natural selection, a penis, vigorously and fearlessly employed to inject semen into the vaginas of fertile women counts for much, much, much more than the results of any IQ test. White racists/supremacists, writers, lawyers, bloggers, etc. who take comfort in their putative intellectual superiority while ceding the planet to those they take to be their inferiors need to rethink a few things.

The better question: why are white men fathering so few white children?  Why is it that Luke Ford, a man deep into his forties with a beard but little life savings, has no children, even though his chosen faith expects him to have procreated?  It is easy enough to make fun of black people (and who among us does not like a good shvartze joke?), but the fact is that whatever their IQs, they and other peoples who look upon the white man with deep resentment are winning the planet. 

I am tempted to say that this is all very dysgenic, but maybe not.  Maybe not.

KHUNRUM EMAILS: "Easy to answer. They’re expensive….and many people my age never stop supporting them. In Thailand the children take care of the parents in their dotage (although that is changing) Here it’s the opposite. If you are not paying for the kid’s rehab expenses then perhaps you’re footing the costs of higher education.”

I took my first yoga class tonight.

I’ve been walking past this yoga studio for a decade. Tonight for the first time I walked in.

I met a nice bloke named Siri.

He offered me a free cup of tea.

He said I can come in any time and have a free cup of tea. I don’t even have to take a class. Just have a cupper.

Jolly good.

Lots of sikhs around here wearing funny turbans. They have nice faces. Lovely auras. Good vibes.

Man, this place smells good. Looks good. Lots of art. It’s clean. No homeless come around begging for money, I hope.

Lots of women.

I’m feeling very spiritual.

Nice tunes.

The stretches are a bit beyond me but the tunes are nice.

Wow, nice gong.

I wonder if I can give it a go later.

Must have another cupper.

Oy, must use bathroom.

Lovely and clean.

This whole place smells good, looks good, tastes good.

I feel like the whole world is opening up to me.

Usually I sit home along in my hovel and curse the world but right now my heart chakra is opening up and I’m pulling in my navel and my sexual organs and I’m feeling very spiritual.

God bless you in all of your legitimate endeavors.

I think I’m going to become a maharishi.

From the New York Times: "Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series “Conversations with God,” recently posted a personal Christmas essay on the spiritual Web site Beliefnet.com that was nearly identical to a 10-year-old article originally published by a little-known writer in a spiritual magazine. He now says he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually happened to him."

I’m glad to see the downfall of somebody who wrote such trash.

Max emails: Luke you are an embarrassment enough for the jews. Now that beard is really pushing it. Next thing we know you will be stealing from charities, or ripping off the IRS in your attempt to become an authentic frummie.

Did you get free shoes in exchange for that plug?

Don’t you think that fact should have been disclosed? I think the Federal Trade Commission would be interested in this….

Have you noticed the inverse relationship between the length of your beard, and the number of opportunities for female sexual contact?

But you’ll fit right in at lubavitch. They’re very accepting of freakshow types. Why are you not a member there? They are the true children of Abraham.

The only way you will ever gain legitimacy in blackhat shuls is if you become a succesful fraudster, and spread some sheckels around to the rabbi.

How often do you clean that beard, you kangaroo raping, (fake) dirty jew bastard?

Here’s my essay on a previous biography of Kahane.

From haaretz.com:

Nearly two decades after his murder, Meir Kahane’s wife has written a biography of the controversial rabbi and rabble-rouser - or rather its first volume. Her love and admiration still burning strong, Libby Kahane is convinced her husband got a bum rap.

Rabbi Meir Kahane
His Life and Thought − Volume One: 1932-1975, by Libby Kahane, Lambda Publishers, 762 pages, $45

In Friedman’s thoroughly sourced telling, Kahane comes off as something of a rake: a serial adulterer who used his frequent absences from home to carry on affairs with a series of women. Friedman describes how, when he was still a young man, Kahane went so far as to set a wedding date with one mistress, who jumped off the Queensboro Bridge when she finally learned that he was already married.

It is perhaps a wonder, then, that Libby Kahane has spent the past decade researching and writing a back-breaking panegyric to the first 43 years of her husband’s life, a 762-page doorstop entitled "Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought, Volume One: 1932-1975." Based on Meir Kahane’s own writings and speeches, along with recently conducted interviews and other sources, the book focuses on his political activities, from his early years as a leader in right-wing youth movements through his first unsuccessful bid for a Knesset seat.

Let’s get the formalities out of the way. You should not read this book. It’s altogether too long, lacks serious analysis, is excessively footnoted, and ignores important unflattering details. Most unforgivably, it somehow succeeds in making the story of one of the most fascinating Jewish figures of the past century a terribly boring one.

It’s worth asking what Libby Kahane thought she was doing. In the book’s introduction, she says the study is intended as a resource for future historians. "While no author can be completely objective about his subject," she writes, "I believe that my twenty-seven years as a reference librarian … gave me expertise and experience in the methods of careful research and proper documentation that make this book an accurate, authoritative study." The attempt to claim the status of the dispassionate investigator, is, of course, ridiculous, given that she was married to her subject for 44 years. It’s rather unlikely that future historians will take the work as "authoritative." As a research librarian, the author must surely know this. So why did she really write the book?

I called Libby Kahane at her home in Jerusalem (she includes the number, oddly, on the biography’s last page) to press her on the point. She told me the project came out of a desire to correct what she saw as a flawed perception of her husband as a "crazy fanatic."

Bibliyoga.com. Transcript

Bibliyoga.com. Transcript

Bibliyoga.com. Transcript

Bibliyoga.com. Transcript