http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=919 The New Mid-East school of thought underlines political correctness, but undermines the stability of the Real Mid-East. This has been recently verified by Western support of the “March of Democracy,” which has unleashed rampant violence on the Arab Street. In defiance of an unpredictably raging Mid-East, the New Mid-Easterners call for a quick transition […]
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2755
Jewish cemetery in Kosovo capital desecrated: ‘Jews out’ spray-painted on memorial for Jewish families who perished during World War II. (AP, via Israel News, Dec. 1)
Police in Kosovo are investigating who sprayed swastikas on dozens of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery recently restored by American and Kosovan students, a spokesman said Thursday.
Brahim Sadrija said police had sealed off the cemetery in the capital, Kosovo, and are looking for clues. The vandalism is believed to have happened Tuesday.
…
In June, a group of students from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and their peers from the American University in Kosovo restored the neglected cemetery by clearing debris from around the graves and cutting overgrown grass.
Rabbi Edward S. Boraz of the college’s Roth Center for Jewish Life held a dedication ceremony at the memorial site, with students taking turns to read out the names of Jewish families from the region who perished during World War II.
I remember those poor suckers, and have been meaning to write about that visit. Note that when it comes to Americans and the Balkans, even the Ivy League gets only a remedial-level education, as my follow-up blog will illustrate. In advance of the PR trip, a boob named Jason Steinbaum was dispatched from NY Rep. Eliot Engel’s office to tell the wiz kids all they’d need to know about Kosovo, a briefing that was more or less three general-issue paragraphs.
Jason Steinbaum, “expert”; senior foreign affairs committee staffer for Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
According to the article about the cemetery desecration, it seems the Albanians haven’t forgotten their German. Well, almost:
On Thursday the hate graffiti “Jud Raus” – a misspelling of the German “Juden Raus,” which means “Jews out” – could still be seen at the foot of a memorial.
President Atifete Jahjaga and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci condemned the act.
“The damaging of cemeteries presents an act in complete contradiction with the traditions and values of the people of Kosovo, based on tolerance and full respect for all the dead and all the monuments,” Jahjaga said in a statement.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10957/pub_detail.asp
Boko Haram is a controversial Islamist group that seeks the imposition of Shariah law in the northern states of Nigeria. The group’s official name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, which in Arabic means “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.”
Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, released a bipartisan report entitled “Boko Haram – Emerging Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” (pdf) detailing the rapid evolution of the Nigerian-based terrorist organization Boko Haram.
In August 2011, Boko Haram attacked the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria with a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (IED), killing 23 people and wounding more than 80 others.
In a video recorded before the attack, the suicide bomber described the U.N. as a forum for “all global evil” and stated that the attack was designed to “send a message to the U.S. President and ‘other infidels.’”
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10965/pub_detail.asp
Even if you have read other histories of World War II you will want to read this book by the man The Economist calls Britain’s finest military historian. And if you haven’t, there is no better way to start than with this scholarly yet immensely readable history of the last great war.
Here are only a few of its virtues:
1. Maps. Roberts provides a large number of maps and sketches of the most important battles and campaigns, in order of time, in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, at the beginning of the book. This makes it easy for the reader to follow the action without the typical frustrating searches in the book’s interior when maps are interspersed with text–and there are not enough of them.
2. Eye for telling detail. A book of this scope has to husband its quotes and anecdotes very carefully so as to illuminate what is important without bogging the reader down. Roberts is at his best here. For example, that Patton was a colorful general with a high opinion of his own talents is well known. Roberts conveys this with a quote from Patton’s diary during the war: “When I think of the greatness of my job and realize that I am what I am, I am amazed, but on reflection, who is as good as I am? I know of no one.” And Roberts skillfully conveys the mindless horror of the war. He quotes, on the German side, a Lieutenant Schutte whose company commander saw the face of what he thought was an enemy sniper, and fired a full clip of his pistol into what turned out to be “a bodiless head, which had been blown off by an artillery blast and tossed up into the tree, where it had lodged.”
3. Wit and humor. Roberts has a dry wit that enlivens a book which inevitably has more horror than humor. Of Charles de Gaulle, he writes that examples of his ingratitude towards his British wartime hosts are legion. “De Gaulle’s staple diet between 1940 and 1944 was the hand that fed him.” And on the “special relationship” between England and America: “The British and American generals in the west between 1943 to 1945 did indeed have a special relationship: it was especially dreadful.” And he reports on the moments of unintended humor from Hitler himself. At one of the military conferences during the war (Hitler had them meticulously documented for posterity by six–eventually eight–parliamentary stenographers) Hitler declared: “One always counts on the decency of others. We are so decent.”
4. The human side. Roberts gives us an insight into the foibles of the war’s great (and not so great) generals, including their vanity and efforts to outdo the others, in public relations if not on the battlefield. General Mark Clark emerges as the biggest self-promoter of the lot. Roberts quotes from one book on the war that noted Clark had fifty men working on public relations, which included a “three to one” rule. “Every press release was to mention Clark three times on the front page and at least once on all other pages–and the General also demanded that photographs be only taken of him from his left side. His public relations team even came up with a Fifth Army song: ‘Stand up, stand up for General Clark, let’s sing the praises of General Clark…He was very fond of that song.'” On the other hand, Roberts lets us see a softer side of General Patton, revealed after the war by General John Hull, who worked with Patton closely on three campaigns. “At heart he was very gentle, he was modest, very friendly, not at all superior in his attitude toward you…when he left a formation where he bawled somebody out, he might sit down and write a prayer…So, all in all he was quite a character, interesting and very likeable if you knew him.”
5. Asks interesting questions. Roberts asks questions that were not raised during the war or in its immediate aftermath but have become a focus of concern decades later. Should the Allies have bombed the railroad lines to Auschwitz? Was the Pope culpable in not speaking out against the Holocaust while it was in progress? Could the battle of El Alamein, with its heavy casualties for the Allies, have been avoided? Was it justifiable–or indeed of strategic value–to bomb the civilian population in occupied Europe, Germany and Japan? And, of course, what has become the most asked question, Should the U.S. have dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Roberts also raises the question, throughout the book, Could a different decision by Hitler, at various pivotal moments, have produced a Nazi victory?
Roberts delivers thoughtful and sometimes surprising answers to these and many other questions he raises in this chronicle of what fellow historian Max Hastings calls “the largest event in human history.” To learn what his answers are, read the book.
It is a privilege to meet and interview the author.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10966/pub_detail.asp The new Obama initiative urges colleges and universities to increase diversity on campus by pretending that affirmative action is not about race, which courts have found to be unconstitutional, but about something else that mysteriously will provide a better racial mix. Colleges could decide to give admission preferences to graduates of certain schools (which would be […]
