Once again, Jews are embroiled in a controversy about a cross. A Los Angeles Times article (June 9), about a demonstration in favor of keeping the cross on the L.A. County seal, noted a Jewish presence there and quoted a Jewish demonstrator as saying, \”The cross … reminds us, even as Jews (sic), that religion is free here.\”
Gullibility cuts both ways. I try to remember this as I reflect on "Control Room," a fascinating documentary on the Arab news channel Al Jazeera.
At first blush it seemed an odd thing for an observant Jew to do: Slogging my way through morning rush-hour traffic to get downtown to demonstrate against the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors\’ decision to remove a small cross from the county seal.
And yet, I felt compelled to be there. The supervisors had already capitulated, in a 3-2 vote, to a threat by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to sue the county over the cross. Surprised by the public outcry, the supervisors called for another vote to consider a so-called \”compromise\” with the ACLU in which the cross on the seal — just one of a dozen various symbols of the region\’s history — would be replaced by a mission. But as one clever observer noted, a mission without a cross just looks like a Taco Bell.
A friend of mine opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. He predicted it would lead to a deadly morass; that it would create more terror and more terrorists; that President George W. Bush had neither the moral or mental gravitas to prosecute such a war. Over the weekend, he asked me if it was true that the Jews were behind the war. I looked at him dumbfounded. After all, he is Jewish.
In Muslim culture, during the Daheyah (sacrifice) feast, Muslims bring a lamb into the home for a ritual slaughter accompanied by the invocation, \”Allahu Akbar,\” in the presence of the family and the children.
Now we see the Daheyah of radical Islam to be Jews such as Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl who were beheaded with no mercy, accompanied by the same pious invocation. This is a perversion of Islam, but don\’t expect an apology.
We have long since learned to swallow hard as the Israelis persist in policies that are ill-conceived and ill-executed, policies that threaten the entire Zionist enterprise.
The media had a grand time recently when tens of thousands of Jewish women stopped wearing their wigs out of concern that they might contain hair that had been offered to an idol. The more revealing story, though, lay not in the deep dedication to the Second Commandment but in the feeding frenzy of the Fourth Estate.
Before he was the Buddha, or Enlightened One, Prince Siddhartha lived a luxurious life behind the walls of his family castle. But each time he ventured out, the legend goes, he discovered the lame, the halt, the dying. His squire, Chandara, convinced him to ignore such things, as the world was full of suffering. Then his wife gave birth, and Siddhartha, at 29, was struck by the inexplicable mysteries of life and death. Late one night, he kissed his sleeping wife and newborn son goodbye and wandered out of the palace with Chandara to find the answer to how one overcomes sufferin
