- May 8, 2002
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Hi all!
The general feeling here is overwhelming support for the US- and UK-led allied struggle against a savage, probably psychotic, thoroughly untrustworthy and murderous tyrant Saddam Hussein. Anyone who believes that this crisis could be, or could have been, resolved by peaceful means via the UN, inspections and the like is, I believe, either deluding himself, out-and-out lying, dangerously naive or has an ulterior motive (I guess that Gerhard Schroeder couldn't wait for Oktoberfest). The sooner the world acts against him the better. The longer they wait, the more difficult & costly it will be. Hitler could have been stopped, almost painlessly, during the 1935 Rhineland crisis but the UK and France chose to stick their heads in the sand & do nothing. Someone who sticks his/her head in the sand, thereby exposes another part of his/her anatomy & that's exactly where the UK & France got it in 1939. It's the same dynamic with Saddam. Israel recently marked the 10th anniversary of the passing of the late Menahem Begin (may his memory be for a blessing!). Not only should he be remembered for making peace with Egypt, but the world should also thank him for destroying Saddam's nuclear reactor in 1981. I don't even want to think of what Saddam could have done with nukes. Israel has known the brunt of Saddam's twisted wrath; he must be put of the Iraqi people's, and the world's, misery once and for all. Whoever doesn't support Saddam's removal is, in effect, his tacit partner in his reign of terror, in torturing people with cattle prods, hanging menstruating women upside down, using rape squads, etc. Nobody here relishes the war but we recognize that sometimes such measures are necessary. We pray that the operation will be over as soon as possible with as little loss of life as possible; any lives that are lost are on Saddam's head alone. (The government has set up a National Information Center for the duration of the crisis; it's at <http://www.nic.gov.il/mfm/InformationCenterWeb/Main/MissionHome.asp>).
Wendy took Yohanan (6) to kindergarten yesterday & along with his lunch, took his gas mask. Wendy told me that it was very striking & poignant to see the tots coming to kindergarten with their gas mask kits & to see all the kits neatly stacked up on a shelf. 6-year-olds with gas mask kits. Yohanan recognizes Saddam Hussein when he sees him on TV. I tell him, "Saddam is a bad man because he likes to hurt people." (Can anyone think of a better definition of bad than that?) I think that Yohanan is too young (thank God) to be really worried about what's going on. If Wendy & I are calm & nonplussed, then he'll pick that up from us. (I've always said that there are 2 things that I will not teach Da Boyz & they are fear and bigotry.)
Deuteronomy 25:3 says that a court may give no more than 40 stripes with a whip in order to chastize a guilty person. Our Sages ruled that a rabbinical court could give no more than 39 stripes (our Sages were afraid that if the court was counting towards 40, they might miscount & accidentally give 41 stripes, which would be a violation of the Torah, so they set the maximum at 39 figuring that if the court was counting towards 39 & miscounted and gave out 40 stripes, that would still be OK). 12 years ago, exactly 39 SCUDs fell on Israel. 39 stripes to chastize, 39 SCUDs on Israel...it made a lot of people here wonder.
We divide the Book of Psalms into 30 sections, with each one to be read on each day of the (Hebrew) month. Today is the 17th day of the month of Adar II. (Our calendar is a lunar calendar that we adjust to keep pace with the sun by inserting a leap month 7 times in a 19 year cycle; the leap month is always a second month of Adar, see<http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm> ) I read the Psalms for the 17th of the month, Psalms 83 to 87, just after saying the morning prayers. Very interesting to read such chapters at the current time given everything that's going on.
Be well!
ssv
The general feeling here is overwhelming support for the US- and UK-led allied struggle against a savage, probably psychotic, thoroughly untrustworthy and murderous tyrant Saddam Hussein. Anyone who believes that this crisis could be, or could have been, resolved by peaceful means via the UN, inspections and the like is, I believe, either deluding himself, out-and-out lying, dangerously naive or has an ulterior motive (I guess that Gerhard Schroeder couldn't wait for Oktoberfest). The sooner the world acts against him the better. The longer they wait, the more difficult & costly it will be. Hitler could have been stopped, almost painlessly, during the 1935 Rhineland crisis but the UK and France chose to stick their heads in the sand & do nothing. Someone who sticks his/her head in the sand, thereby exposes another part of his/her anatomy & that's exactly where the UK & France got it in 1939. It's the same dynamic with Saddam. Israel recently marked the 10th anniversary of the passing of the late Menahem Begin (may his memory be for a blessing!). Not only should he be remembered for making peace with Egypt, but the world should also thank him for destroying Saddam's nuclear reactor in 1981. I don't even want to think of what Saddam could have done with nukes. Israel has known the brunt of Saddam's twisted wrath; he must be put of the Iraqi people's, and the world's, misery once and for all. Whoever doesn't support Saddam's removal is, in effect, his tacit partner in his reign of terror, in torturing people with cattle prods, hanging menstruating women upside down, using rape squads, etc. Nobody here relishes the war but we recognize that sometimes such measures are necessary. We pray that the operation will be over as soon as possible with as little loss of life as possible; any lives that are lost are on Saddam's head alone. (The government has set up a National Information Center for the duration of the crisis; it's at <http://www.nic.gov.il/mfm/InformationCenterWeb/Main/MissionHome.asp>).
Wendy took Yohanan (6) to kindergarten yesterday & along with his lunch, took his gas mask. Wendy told me that it was very striking & poignant to see the tots coming to kindergarten with their gas mask kits & to see all the kits neatly stacked up on a shelf. 6-year-olds with gas mask kits. Yohanan recognizes Saddam Hussein when he sees him on TV. I tell him, "Saddam is a bad man because he likes to hurt people." (Can anyone think of a better definition of bad than that?) I think that Yohanan is too young (thank God) to be really worried about what's going on. If Wendy & I are calm & nonplussed, then he'll pick that up from us. (I've always said that there are 2 things that I will not teach Da Boyz & they are fear and bigotry.)
Deuteronomy 25:3 says that a court may give no more than 40 stripes with a whip in order to chastize a guilty person. Our Sages ruled that a rabbinical court could give no more than 39 stripes (our Sages were afraid that if the court was counting towards 40, they might miscount & accidentally give 41 stripes, which would be a violation of the Torah, so they set the maximum at 39 figuring that if the court was counting towards 39 & miscounted and gave out 40 stripes, that would still be OK). 12 years ago, exactly 39 SCUDs fell on Israel. 39 stripes to chastize, 39 SCUDs on Israel...it made a lot of people here wonder.
We divide the Book of Psalms into 30 sections, with each one to be read on each day of the (Hebrew) month. Today is the 17th day of the month of Adar II. (Our calendar is a lunar calendar that we adjust to keep pace with the sun by inserting a leap month 7 times in a 19 year cycle; the leap month is always a second month of Adar, see<http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm> ) I read the Psalms for the 17th of the month, Psalms 83 to 87, just after saying the morning prayers. Very interesting to read such chapters at the current time given everything that's going on.
Be well!
ssv
when they say that their goal is a democratic Iraq (or Palestinian state for that matter). They know very well that not one member of the Arab League is democratic and/or has a genuinely independent judiciary, rule of law, etc. One cannot make something out of nothing.
