I dearly want to contribute to the betterment of society, and am willing to be an apostle of Al Gore, who has championed “tradable energy credits” as a way to make life more sustainable for everyone.  I will march to the garbage heaps of Mount Vesuvious to make such as vision reality.  I will be “Paul”, trekking in my sandals, carrying Uncle Al’s message.

While he is willing to trade the energy usage of his huge home and private jet travel with those who have neither, I want to take to the next level: I propose the institution of “moral” tradable credits.

Under my program we may be able to alleviate all world tensions that stem from different views of religion and morality.  To wit: To make western Europeans feel better about American greed, I can trade my lust for wealth for their 2-month holidays and health care.  Similarly, I’m sure I can trade two martinis a week with Muslims, who disdain drinking alcohol, for a prayer session or two, or at least a carpet to kneel on.  As I gave up smoking, like Mark Twain, 20 minutes ago, perhaps I can exchange my oxygen for a smoker’s cough (oops, I think I should make that vice versa).

And, I think that by utilizing the internet, I can ferret out a Darwinian-secularist who, for just a moment, would trade reason for faith.

Obviously I cannot trade my penchant for flirting with the French, as they appear to have an abundant supply, but perhpaps our more devout citizens would be willing to sit down with me and give me a dose of foregiveness in exchange for a wink or licentious one-liner.  If we cold only outsource, or trade away all flirting, that alone would make the climate cooler — and the world less populated!

Then we’d all be “even-Steven”…with nothing to fight against — or for.

To quote that great American philosopher, Louis Armstrong, “What a wonderful world…” — if only, according to Uncle Al, we (not him) would be willing to trade that which we have for that which he thinks we should have.

Alan Bromley

The Arab nations have reiterated their plan, nay demand, that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders and give a “right to return” to all Palestinian ancestors who were displaced during the 1948 war they waged against Israel.  Both demands would set an international legal precedent never before contemplated or implemented in history.  Mexicans have a greater “right of return” and major border concessions than do the Palestinians.

A cursory examination of the Arabic media in 1948, when five Arab nations simultanously attacked the fledgling state of Israel, reveals that the Arab nations pleaded with the Palestinians (there was no such term as Palestinians then) to flee their homes, so that the Arabs could destroy Israel, kill all the Jews and the Palestinains could then return and take the Jewish homes and valuables.  Meanwhile, Israel had pleaded for peaceful co-existence. 

I had a recent opportunity to revisit this history with U.S. Sen. Arlen Spector, and asked him who has the right to land voluntarily abandoned, and he said there is a well-known legal doctrine called “adverse possession”, which means those who left their homes gave up their rights to their homes.  It is grounded in both common law and statutes. (He also noted that the law of “adverse possession” has never been brought up in discussions or negotiations visa vis the Palestinians.)  In laymen’s terms, as it applies to the Palestinians, it means they put their chips on the wrong number at the craps table,  and now they want those chips back.  Steve Wynn, if he lived by those rules, would be living at a Marriott senior residence, at best.

While dining with a couple of Mexican-American friends, they openly rooted for the Arab “solution”, noting they wanted Texas back and a good part of California, for starters, and that all issues about illegal Mexican immigration would therefore be moot.  Indeed!

As to the borders of Israel, Arab leaders, and a good deal of western Europe and U.S. elitist/leftists, endorse the idea of Israel returning to its pre-1967 borders.  This too, would enforce on the Jewish state parameters never before set in history for anyone else: To wit, return land to those who attacked you, and which you won in a defensive war (and, in this case, among cries from your attackers, that they will continue to attack).  When they thought of the ramifications, my Mexican friends immediately wanted the Alamo back!

But in the end, it all comes back to the question (in the Arab minds) of Israel’s legitimacy. That is the core of the problem.  While most people acknowledge that the Jews are the indigenous people of religion of Palestine (living there for more than 4,000 years before a Muslim existed!) what no one addresses is that there are approximately 52 Muslim nations in the world, about half of which were either formed by western powers, or by the vacuum left by European colonialists, and no one — not one legal body, not one nation, not one legal scholar — questions the validity of any Arab or Muslim nation.  Not Jordan, which was simultaneously formed with Israel, not Saudi Arabia, not Kuwait, not Iraq, not Chechnya, not Bangladesh…only the sole Jewish state’s legitimacy is challenged in the court of world opinion.

To have one set of rules for the Jews, or the Jewish state of Israel, and another set of rules for the rest of the world, no matter what they say in the enlightened world of western Europe and U.S. universities, falls under an age-old definition:  anti-Semitism!

BBC RUSSIAN.com reported that an Egyptian legal scholar at the University of Cairo is preparing a lawsuit, with the help of a Swedish attorney, that claims the remaining Jews in the world owe the Egyptian people untold trillions of dollars for fleeing slavery with kitchen goods and, he claims, hordes of gold and silver.

First, let me try to get his “facts” correctly: We escaped generations of slavery by slipping out in the middle of the night with stolen goods. These antiquities are now worth trillions of dollars (or is it dinars).

But, I have a few questions: Did we break into their homes, steal their kitchen utensils and silver first? Without making as much as a clatter? How much silver can one carry under a toga? And, if we were so laden with these metal goods, how did we outpace those poor, ripped-off warriors riding their chariots in hot pursuit of us? What did we carry these “stolen goods” in, our wheeled- Gucci pull cases?

I can hear my ancestors now: “Moishe, I’m tired…can you carry the silverware?”

“Are you kidding Sadie, I’m going to have to carry some real heavy tablets. I need to conserve my energy. I can’t drop them. And, I don’t think I can leave them anywhere, like in front of a courthouse. I’m going to shlep them around forever.”

“This whole trip is making me hungry. Sadie, where’s the yeast for the bread?”

“We were so busy with the pots and pans, we forgot to steal the yeast.”

“Oy vey, how could you forget to steal the yeast; on top of everything else, you know that now we’ll have to invent matzoh, don’t you?”

But one of the beauties of this proposed suit is that it becomes so easy to file a counter-
suit in response.

So, I’m consulting my attorneys, and we are preparing to file a counter-suit against all Eqyptians and I am demanding reparations for the generations of slave labor we performed. Foremost, I am going to demand they turn over the pyramids, which were built on our backs. Tourists will need shekels. Next, I am going to pursue punitive damages for their spreading the “blood libel,” that we put gentile blood into our matzohs (my mother’s matzoh brie never had a hint of red in it, and if it had I would have thrown it out). Then, we’re going after civil and criminal penalties for false imprisonment.

After that, employing the deep-pocket theory of collecting humongous sums, I’m going to see if I can expand the suit and name all Muslims as defendants. There are 1.25 billion of them, and only 15 million of us. Even if we have a few very successful businessmen, we’ve always been sprinkled with socialists, who never make money. Surely we don’t have as much as the sheiks and their clans. (But we may have more lawyers.)

If only they didn’t mobilize so fast and rush our exodus, we could have had the time to steal the yeast, saving me the agony of eating matzoh for eight straight days every Passover. I’m getting my internists’ bills together now.

Bring it on now professor!

My cousin, whom I’ll call “Bob,” just included me in a group e-mail that implied President Bush was anti-Semitic because he hadn’t appointed a Jew to his cabinet. The e-mail, which went out to some 50 people in my cousin’s address book, said that every president in the past hundred years or so had indeed selected at least one Jew to be in his cabinet.

I was incensed, and my first reaction was to press “Delete” and erase the offending message. After doing so, I reflected a bit more and decided that my silence might imply that I agreed, so I went to an earlier mass e-mail from Bob and pressed “Reply to All.” My trigger finger has now caused a family furor.

My initial message to Bob–and everyone in his address book–stated that before we malign President Bush as an anti-Semite, we should note that FDR turned his back on Jewish refugees during World War II, just as he did on the Holocaust itself; that President Carter engineered a “peace accord” that was quite disadvantageous to Israel; that President Clinton resurrected Yasser Arafat from the politically dead (and that Hillary Clinton publicly kissed Arafat’s wife after Mrs. Arafat accused Jews of poisoning Arab children), and that virtually every Jewish organization has labeled President Bush the most pro-Israeli American president in memory.

When I opened my e-mail Monday morning, I was hit with a reply that made me wonder: Exactly what are the legalities, and what is the prevailing etiquette of “replying to all”?

Bob’s view–and I might be breaking all rules of etiquette by quoting this–was quite clear:

Proper e-mail etiquette does not include the use of other people’s personal address books to further one’s political, personal objectives, or opinions, and is very offensive. Especially when all their opinions and objectives are totally wrong and inconsistent with public sentiment!!…FYI, AOL calls it spam and you know the United States Government is prosecuting spammers!!!

So there it was! Could he form a group, gratuitously include me, send out political messages of his own liking, and then try to shame me from replying by bringing up some newfangled Internet etiquette? And, then could he, armed with the benefit of law, threaten to prosecute me for expressing to the group into which he had thrown me a political view divergent from his?

I did a little research. One lawyer said my replying, regardless of content, was clearly within my First Amendment right to freedom of speech, even though he was unsure of the etiquette. (You can’t call too many lawyers for free input, as they like to talk for seven minutes, their minimum billing time!)

I then went to workers in their 20s and 30s, who are frequent and fluent e-mail users. They all said they don’t reply to the entire group, but out of self-preservation: they don’t want to be bombarded with return e-mails from the group. I turned to my 17-year-old daughter and a couple of her friends, and they said they respond to the entire group all the time.

So perhaps it’s time for someone (me) to set up the “rules of etiquette” for e-mail:

- Don’t share your address book if you don’t want group replies.

- Inform the recipients if you will accept only replies with which you agree.

- Inquire about other people’s political views before you fill their e-mailboxes with yours.

- Keep family and politics separate!

And finally, a note to my cousin: Sorry “Bob,” I didn’t mean to offend you, but you’ve known me long enough to know that I rarely keep my views to myself. Hope the wife and kids are well.

Bret Stephens, in his Nov. 29 editorial-page essay “Why Europe Hates Israel” notes that the Belgian court is hearing arguments about the role of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “guilt” for the 1982 Sabra and Chatilla massacres of Palestinians near Beirut.

The massacres at these camps were done by Lebanese Christian militia as a reflex response to the assassination of the president of Lebanon, also a Muslim Christian. An Israeli inquiry found that Mr. Sharon neither participated in the massacre nor knew about it in advance. However, he was found “guilty” because he “should have known” that the Christian militia would retaliate.

The Belgian court has been hungering for this case, in part to prove the moral superiority of Belgium, and by association, Europe. I recommend, if we are to use these standards of morality and translate them into verdicts of guilt going back 20 years, we should expand this and, in short order: Bring to trial, posthumously if necessary, every European leader (including the pope) who in the 1930s and 1940s knew or should have known that the Nazis were exterminating European Jews. We should include FDR as well. Then we should bring in Mr. Reagan, Mr. Bush (Sr.) and Mr. Clinton, who knew or should have known that there were massacres in Sudan, Ethiopa and Somalia. Then we need to indict every world leader now in power, including the Belgian leaders (whose country had a heavy hand in colonializing Africa, as in Belgian Congo), and prosecute them for the massacres now taking place in Zimbabwe and continuing in Sudan, Asia etc.

Isn’t life grand when we can set and apply standards for everyone to live up to? Or is it more fun when we apply them only to the Israelis?