The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy

On Behalf Of Leah at the Ariel Center for Policy Research

Dear Friends,

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new issue of Nativ Online—in English.

We welcome you to visit the ACPR website, and read the latest issue (No. 9) of Nativ Online. (more…)

A comment on the article: Intimidating the West, from Rushdie to Benedict, which appeared on the danielpipes.org website.

The hypersensitivity of Muslims or Arabs to aspersions of their prophet Muhammad is not merely a result of piety. Muslims have exaggerated ideas of their world–historical significance; indeed, they are notorious for their overweening pride. The West indulges this conceit, and not only because of the West’s dependence on the oil resources of the Persian Gulf. Also operative is cultural relativism, which has eroded the West’s confidence as the pinnacle of civilization.

Be this as it may, notice the double standards and duplicity of Muslim clerics who demand Pope Benedict XVI apologize for his unflattering reference to Muhammad: Did these clerics ever apologize for 9/11? (more…)

I believe Pope Benedict XVI would be on more solid moral grounds if he were to call upon Muslims to apologize for their sins against the Jewish people as did Pope John Paul II.

In A Jew Today (1978), Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the death camps, recalls how he had been “struck by a harsh truth: in Auschwitz all the Jews were victims, all the killers were Christians.” He apologizes for embarrassing his Christian friends, but he is morally bound to tell the truth. He asks: “How is one to explain that neither Hitler nor Himmler was never excommunicated by the Church? (more…)

The following is a comment on the article: Pope Benedict Criticizes Islam, which appeared on the danielpipes.org website.

The violent Muslim reaction to Pope Benedict’s reference to Muhammad involves far more than the issue of freedom of speech. The ultimate issue is one of theological truth on the one hand, and the true nature of Islam on the other. Pope Benedict’s “indirect” disparagement of Muhammad—who was denigrated by St. Thomas Aquinas, the touchstone of Roman Catholicism—is by definition a disparagement of Islam.

Be this as it may, the Pope now calls for “dialogue.” When Islam substitutes dialogue for the sword it will cease to be Islam. (more…)

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of Caroline Glick’s brilliant article “Israel’s Strategic Rot” (The Jerusalem Post, September 19, 2006), I am republishing a piece which might have been entitled “The Rot Underlying Israel’s Strategic Rot.” (more…)

Israeli Jurisprudence Lowers Israel’s Ethical Standards

The following was reported by Arutz-7 on September 17, 2006:

“Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has decided not to open a criminal investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a noted pen-collector, regarding the various expensive pens given to him over the years.

“Mazuz explained that the police had failed to uncover concrete evidence indicating that the pens served as bribe. (more…)

The following paraphrases observations and ideas articulated in Ben Hecht’s Guide for the Bedevilled.

1. Our reasonable thinkers are always assuring us that it is a sin against reason to condemn a whole people as evil when only a part of their soul is at fault; since it is obvious that, in addition to being or gleefully cheering murderers, they are also very polite and hospitable. (more…)

Please disseminate these marvelous items as widely as possible—and perhaps once a week! Try to get this edict to President Bush and of course to high profile American journalists.

• Australia meets with Muslim leaders to root out extremism
• Interview of Treasurer of Australia
• Minister tells Muslims: accept Aussie values

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Australia meets with Muslim leaders to root out extremism

Prime minister John Howard held a summit with Muslim representatives, but left out many others. By Janaki Kremmer, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor. 25 August 2005.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – The London Tube bombings this July have raised concerns about domestic terrorism in countries with large Muslim immigrant populations, including Australia, which has hitherto enjoyed a fair measure of interreligious harmony. (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 18, 2006.

As indicated in Part I, members of Israel’s Knesset are not individually elected by or accountable to the people in constituency elections. This enables Knesset members to ignore public opinion with impunity. That’s what 23 Likud MKs did when they voted for Sharon’s Labor-inspired policy of “disengagement,” a policy rejected by a vast majority of the people in the 2003 election.

This policy—Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza —led to the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, as recently confirmed by former Chief of General Staff Moshe Yaalon.

Now it’s easy to blame Israel’s fiasco in that war on the flawed character of Israel’s political elites. But if we consider how disengagement via the Evacuation Law was passed, the war would not have occurred were it not for the flawed character of Israel’s system of governance—a system that virtually disenfranchises the Jewish people. Let’s probe a little deeper. (more…)

On Tuesday (September 12, 2006) in Germany, Pope Benedict XVI quoted verbatim from criticism of the Prophet Muhammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

(more…)

Israel’s Supreme Court stands accused by eminent citizens of Israel of exceeding its lawful powers and endangering the democratic as well as Jewish character of the State.

Former President of Israel, the late Chaim Herzog: “In a democracy, according to [Court President Aharon] Barak, the courts are placed above the Government. In my humble opinion, this approach endangers, in certain cases, the very basis of democracy.” (more…)

The Law vs. Aharon Barak: A full-page advertisement with this title was published on October 22, 2004 in The Jerusalem Post, in Makor Rishon and in the International Edition of The Jerusalem Post.

According to international law Judea and Samaria are not “occupied territories”, as evidenced by several international agreements that have recognized the Jewish People’s right to possess and settle the land.

The primary international legal documents that assumed, either expressly or implicitly, that Judea and Samaria are Jewish territories, being an indivisible part of the Jewish National Home, are: (more…)

Oriana Fallaci, the writer and renowned Italian journalist, died on Friday. She was 76. Fallaci, who had been diagnosed with cancer years ago and who was living in New York, had come back to her hometown in Florence days ago as her condition worsened. Here is what I wrote earlier this year about this extraordinary woman for the Hebrew journal Nativ: A Journal of Politics and the Arts.

Introduction

I fell in love with Oriana Fallaci some 30 years ago, reading her interview of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. I was struck by her razor-sharp questions. These were not the questions asked by fawning, even if seasoned, American journalists. Fallaci was challenging, provocative. Here was a no-nonsense, fearless woman of extraordinary knowledge. This woman of the world understood international politics, and she understood men. (more…)

On behalf of the Yamin Israel Party, we wish all our friends a healthy and happy New Year. May the New Year usher in a new Government inspired by the wisdom of the Torah. May this Government restore the dignity and confidence of the Jewish People. May this Government hasten the release of Israel’s heroic and long-suffering son, Jonathan Pollard. May Israel’s captives Gil’ad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev be returned unharmed to their families. And may the good Lord bless His People with Peace.

Prof. Paul Eidelberg, President
Mrs. Eleonora Shifrin, Chairlady

Politicians, pundits, and political scientists have blamed Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, the Sudan and other Islamic states as sponsors of terrorism, and so they are. But if we consider the policies of American presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, as well as the behavior of Israeli prime ministers from Yitzhak Shamir to Ariel Sharon, another picture emerges.

President Carter allowed the PLO, the world’s leading terrorist organization, to establish offices in Washington, D.C. and New York. That was in the late 1970s. (more…)

Having just received Freedom House’s 800-page volume Freedom in the World 2005, I can now update not only the number of democracies which Freedom House ranks “free” (as opposed to “partly free”), but also set forth how many of these democracies are smaller than Israel both in population and in size. This article refutes the contention that regional or multi-district elections in Israel would favor its Arab parties and disfavor its religious Jewish parties. Although more needs to be said about regional elections, this article provides a rational basis for further discussion.

It seems that many benighted Jews in Israel believe that their system of government descended from Mount Sinai. Their educators have yet to tell them their first and greatest prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, deplored Israel’s governmental system. He deemed it divisive and discordant as well as unprincipled and undemocratic. (more…)

Courtesy of JewishIndy.com

EDITORIAL: Why the Deadly Silence of Our American Jewish Leaders

…This is a very serious problem: there is no public support for institutional reform on the part of right-wing commentators and Zionist organizations. Why is this so?

The basic reason is that major American Jewish institutions and our most prominent Jewish thinkers and writers are ashamed for not having focused on the issue of institutional reform in the past. Here is their excuse: (more…)

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, September 11, 2006.

If ever it was obvious that Israel is in dire need of reconstructing its system of governance, it is now—now that we have experienced the ineptitude of the Olmert government. We need a more democratic, a more rational, and a more Jewish governmental system.

First, we must make the government responsive and accountable to the people. This necessitates rational parliamentary election rules. There are two extreme types of parliamentary election rules. (more…)

This hate-filled Islamic video should be disseminated as widely as possible. It should be sent to every American congressman and governor, as well as to prominent Jewish and Christian clergyman. Most important: it should be presented to Muslim organizations in America and they should be asked to denounce the genocidal incitement contained in this video. (more…)

In support of Bukay’s article below:

Ibn Warraq (Why I am Not a Muslim) cites a welter of historians and orientalists, according to whom the Quran is punctuated by “Arabian paganism”—for example, the rites and rituals of the Pilgrimage to Mecca (see Suras 2:153; 22:28-30; 5:1-4; 22:23). Islam even owes the term “Allah” to heathen Arabs. Perhaps Warraq’s most damaging statement about Islam appears in the very headnote of his book, where he quotes the renowned historian and philologist Ernest Renan (1823-1892): “Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient, that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, a man of extraordinary refinement, said this of the Quran and Islam:

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. (more…)