CAFI Newsletter #102

[cafi-list@christianactionforisrael.org]

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* CHRISTIAN ACTION FOR ISRAEL NEWSLETTER  #101 *
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"ON YOUR WALLS, O JERUSALEM, I HAVE APPOINTED WATCHMEN"
Isaiah 62:6
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               Friday, September 20, 2002

IN THIS ISSUE:

  1.    IS GOD ENOUGH?
  2.    ISRAEL BETWEEN WATER AND FIRE
  3.    THE MORAL POWER OF DEMOCRACY
  4.    HARVARD PRESIDENT WARNS OF ANTI-SEMITISM
  5.    QUOTES TO NOTE
  6.    HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
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The seven day festivities of Sukkot begin tonight at
sundown with many Israelis spending a good part of
the holiday with family and friends in "sukkot,"
temporary dwellings that commemorate the huts that
the Children of Israel lived in while wandering in
the desert for forty years. See our Judeo-Christian
Studies Section;
http://christianactionforisrael.org/judeochr/sukkot/sukkot.html
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PLEASE  HELP US get the truth out about Israel
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   1.   IS GOD ENOUGH?

Dennis Prager Townhall.com  September 18, 2002

We need God. But we also need more than God.

Before dismissing this as some heretical statement,
the reader should know that I have spent much of my
life -- in speeches, articles, books, and on my radio
show -- making the case for faith in God. I am deeply
religious and have a traditional theology rooted in
the Bible. I have been teaching and recording a
verse-by-verse commentary on the Torah for 10 years
at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

I know that God is necessary for morality, that
without positing a transcendent objective source for
good and evil, these terms are no more than personal,
subjective descriptions of actions that we like or
dislike. There are, of course, moral atheists and
evil theists, but that is unrelated to the question
of whether morality actually exists as anything more
than personal opinion if there is no God.

I also know that faith in God is necessary in order
for life to have ultimate meaning, that without the
Creator, there is no ultimate purpose to the
universe, let alone to our lives.

However, as necessary as faith in God is for our
ethics, our emotional and psychological well being,
our sense of purpose, and our ability to stand firm
in a world that pulls us in every direction, God
is not enough. We also need people.

Two relatively recent events have brought this point
home particularly strongly. One was the plight of
the Pennsylvania miners recently trapped in a mine.

Imagine yourself in a mine in water so cold that
it could bring on hypothermia and death. Imagine
that it is dark. Imagine that the water is gradually
rising, leading to a slow and terrifying death
by drowning.

That is what the miners experienced. Why didn't
any of them go crazy?

They were kept sane largely because they had one
another. As important as faith in God was for any
of them, the fact that they were not alone was
as important.

The other event was the terrorist attack on the
World Trade Center towers and perhaps the most
frightening deaths therein -- of those people who
were forced to jump from a hundred stories above
ground. Nothing quite brings home the horror of
9-11 as does the terror faced by those who jumped.
And yet, I have no doubt that those few who jumped
holding onto someone else, quite possibly a total
stranger, suffered less than those who jumped alone.
If they believed in God, that, too, surely helped.
But whatever the jumpers' faith, facing death holding
onto another human being brought more comfort.

It was a Christian pastor (whose name unfortunately
eludes me) who gave the best theological justification
for the notion that even God is not enough. After
creating Adam, God makes the critically important
observation, "It is not good for man to be alone,"
and then He creates woman. There is much to be
learned from this statement; not least that God
Himself is saying that He is not enough, that the
human being needs more than God. We need other people.

At the same time, people are not enough either.
We need God. Many theists and many atheists are so
committed to their respective worldviews that they
cannot entertain the thought that their belief does
not answer all human needs. Humanists are so committed
to faith in humanity and to denying God's existence
that they refuse to confront the built-in need people
have for the transcendent and that more than people
are needed for inner peace and happiness. At the
same time, many religious people mirror this view
when they argue that faith in God is all that one
needs, that the true believer in God needs nothing
more than God for a wholesome life.

Both views are wrong. We need God and we need people.
That is the way we are made -- by God, I believe.
May we never be faced with the terror faced by
the miners and by the jumpers of 9-11. But if we
are ever faced with such a terror, may we be
granted at that moment both faith in God
and people to be with.
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   2.    ISRAEL BETWEEN WATER AND FIRE

BY URI DAN  -  Sep. 18, 2002

Water is also a weapon in the terrorist war against
Israel. Hizbullah, a terrorist organization supported
by Syria and Iran, lies behind the attempt to steal
the water of the Wazzani River, and certainly takes
into account that this is liable to end in fire
on the northern border.

Hizbullah apparently believes that in either case it
will benefit. If Israel does not hinder it from stealing
the water, in contravention of international law and
the agreement in force between Israel and Lebanon for
decades, Israel's water shortage will become even more
extreme. If Israel does react with fire in order to
prevent the pumping of the Wazzani waters, Hizbullah
has set up thousands of rockets and missiles capable
of causing damage to Israeli towns, and will attempt
to disrupt the American campaign against Iraq.

Even US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David
Satterfield, who is not known for his support of Israel,
said in an August 28 meeting with Foreign Ministry
personnel: The US interprets the tremendous quantities
of arms that Iran is sending to Hizbullah, with
Syrian approval, as a potential for escalation.

Accordingly, the US intends to work to halt the
transfer of these weapons, and specific requests have
been made to the countries overflown by the supply
flights to stop permitting these flights. Satterfield
added that the US is not threatening Syria but has
made it clear that any use made of the arms supplied
to Hizbullah will cause escalation that will first
and foremost harm Syria itself.

In the light of the progress of the feverish work
executed by Hizbullah on the piping project over
many kilometers, it seems that Satterfield's messages
and warnings have made little impression on Beirut
and Damascus, and certainly not on Hizbullah.

Evidentaly, the Lebanese government, like southern
Lebanon, is a hostage of Hizbullah, with the silent
agreement, if not the encouragement, of Syria.

This is in fact a complex minefield. At the end of
the day, however, Israel must ensure that the Lebanese,
including Hizbullah's terrorist regime, do not
pump the waters of the Hatzbani.

THIRTY-SEVEN years ago the Arab countries made a
joint decision to attempt to divert the sources of
the Jordan River. At that time the Syrians organized
the heavy equipment and commenced work, protected by
their army deployed on the Golan Heights. The
pan-Arabic intention was to steal the water in order
to make Israel as short of water as possible. In a
series of brilliant military operations Israel
destroyed the heavy equipment.

Maj.-Gen. Yisrael Tal, then an outstanding commander
of the Armored Corps, made sure that the shells
from his tanks reached unprecedented ranges and hit
the Syrian bulldozers and tanks. This protracted
battle for the sources of the water not only
thwarted the Arab plan but also led to the Six Day War.

The problem is of course how to prevent the theft
of the waters of the Wazzani without causing the
outbreak of war in the north, for which the Shi'ite
terrorist organization deployed in southern and
central Lebanon is striving. There are still people
in Israel who remember the lessons of the war for
the water in the Sixties and who know very well
what resources and options are held by Israel today.

The major difference is the international and
geopolitical background to the Israeli-Arab conflict
against which this latest affair is taking place.

In the Sixties some Arab countries struggled openly
against Israel in order to attempt to steal the
water, while the Soviet Union, as part of the Cold
War, provided political support and military aid to
Egypt and Syria. At that time the Soviets helped to
cause the escalation of the water conflict into
the 1967 war.

Now a terrorist organization, Hizbullah, is in the
front line of the attempt to steal the water,
while Iran and Syria hide behind it.

Today the world is run by a single superpower, the
United States. Unfortunately for the terrorist
organizations, President George W. Bush has
identified the great deception of nations that
support terrorism and given it a name: the axis of
evil. Even if these nations are not always singled
out by name, and even if they sometimes successfully
hide their fingerprints, they are in America's sights.

In this global war against terrorism declared by
the US, Israel will also find the way to prevent the
theft of the waters of the Hatzbani becoming a new
weapon in Hizbullah's arsenal.

The writer is the Mideast correspondent of
The New York Post.
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   3.   THE MORAL POWER OF DEMOCRACY

 BY Gerald M. Steinberg  -  Sep. 19, 2002

No one should be surprised that the countries most
committed to fighting terrorism, whether from Islamic
groups such as al-Qaida and Hamas or from states such
as Iraq and Syria, are also the world's strongest
democracies. In 1991, the United States and Britain
led the war to reverse Iraqi aggression, and are
again at the forefront of the battle 10 years later.

In both countries, the internal debate and opposition
is intense, but when the evidence is presented and
the case is made clearly, the opponents close ranks
and share the burden. This relationship is also
visible in Israel's dedication to democracy and the
resilience in the face of unprecedented Palestinian
terrorism. This peculiar strength of democracies and
governments that are responsible to the public has
been recognized for hundreds of years. In his handbook
of advice to leaders, the Italian political
philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli noted that republics
are more flexible in adapting to the challenges of
war than authoritarian regimes. In the mid-19th
century, de Tocqueville made similar observations
about the powers of America's open and vibrant
society when attacked.

Democracies often appear to be weak and divided
before deciding to act to preserve their liberty, as
was the case in the 1930s and the prelude to World War
II, but their hidden reserves are activated decisively
when they are attacked. Two years ago, Yasser Arafat
and other Palestinian leaders saw Israel as socially
feeble, tired and divided, and expected collapse under
the onslaught of the escalating terror campaign. Many
Israeli leaders, including Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak,
were also concerned that the "post-heroic age,"
comfortable, middle-class Israelis would no longer
be willing to take risks and sacrifice their lives
for the sake of national survival.

They were wrong. Instead of buckling under the
pressure, the Jewish citizens of Israel have displayed
remarkable resilience. Like England following the
failure of appeasement, after the Oslo "peace process"
exploded in their faces, the Israeli people used the
mechanisms of democracy to replace a weak and failed
government. They demanded and got a unity government
that would act with determination to insure national
survival and emerge victorious. Instead of reservist
protests and refusal to report for duty, as a few
determined ideologues and ill-informed journalists
predicted, the IDF was swamped with more volunteers
than it could use.

Across the ideological, social, and economic spectrum
(with the exception of the Arab minority), Israelis
understood that in this war of survival, the country
and the Jewish people could not consider surrender.

Despite the internal divisions on the future of the
Jewish state and misleading intellectual fads such
as "post-Zionism," the shared values and goals of
Jewish sovereignty and rebirth that have energized
Israelis for over 50 years are as vibrant as ever.

IN CONTRAST, the level of democracy in Arab and
Islamic countries is among the lowest in the world,
run by archaic monarchies, thugs like Saddam Hussein
and the Assads (first Hafez and now Bashar), and
narrow military dictatorships as in Egypt and Algeria.
As has been repeatedly demonstrated, none of these
authoritarian regimes have the societal strength
and coherence necessary in periods of prolonged
confrontation.

This is also true of Arafat's authoritarian regime,
created under the Oslo agreements. Instead of enjoying
the benefits of peace and sovereignty based on
negotiated compromise with Israel, Palestinians
have paid a huge price for Arafat's deadly strategy
based on violence and terrorism. In addition, they
are far poorer and more dependent on outside aid
than ever before.

Following the realization that this strategy has
led them to yet another catastrophe, an increasing
number of Palestinians have begun to speak out
against the failed rule of Arafat and demanding much
broader participation in decision-making. In their
rebellion against this authoritarianism and
corruption, a group of Palestinian legislators
who were directly elected in their own right set
an important precedent and struck a very important
blow for democracy throughout the Arab world. If
there is any hope for eventual peace and stability
resulting from mutual acceptance and compromise,
it is based on the eventual spread of these
principles in the region.

At the same time, the failure of some Western
democracies particularly in Europe to speak up in
defense of these basic principles is deafening. In
adopting positions favoring Palestinian rejectionism
and incongruously critical of Israeli policies of
survival, and by attempting to block confrontation
with Saddam's totalitarian regime, many officials of
the European Union are betraying the fundamental
values of freedom and liberty. With the exception of
Tony Blair, European leaders rarely mention Arab
authoritarianism, and references to Israeli democracy
in the ubiquitous declarations from the offices of
the EU are extremely rare. (The same studied
neutrality or even hostility characterizes European
policies towards other exceptional democracies,
such as India and Turkey.) The undertone of mockery
and hostility to America's "cowboy democracy"
expressed by many self-proclaimed "intellectuals"
is a further reflection of this smug elitism and
lack of real commitment to democratic principles.
This blindness is not only a reflection of the power
of Arab oil reserves, but also a demonstration of
the weakness of the European elite's commitment
to individual freedom and true democracy, even
in their own societies.

In the confrontation with Saddam, the core issue
is neither inspections nor the role of the UN, but
rather the need to replace tyranny with responsible
government. Iraq is the most dangerous of many such
regimes from North Africa, through Egypt and the
Palestinian Authority, and extending to the
Persian Gulf and Pakistan.

To end the threat of terror from this entire region,
the principles of democracy must be taken seriously.

The writer is director of the Program on Conflict
Management and Negotiation at Bar-Ilan University.
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   4.   HARVARD PRESIDENT WARNS OF ANTI-SEMITISM

Summers devotes address at morning
prayers to rising tide of bigotry

By Joseph Farah  - September 20, 2002

Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. Treasury
secretary and now president of Harvard
University, fresh from a highly charged dispute
with one of his own faculty members, is warning
of a rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world
and in the United States – even in academia.

"I speak with you today not as president of the
university but as a concerned member of our
community about something that I never thought
I would become seriously worried about – the
issue of anti-Semitism," he said in his address at
morning prayers earlier this week.

After a highly publicized national spectacle in
which he was accused of racism by one of his
own faculty members, Summers says he never
thought he would see the day when the specter
of anti-Semitism reared its ugly head in America.

"I am Jewish, identified but hardly devout," he
said. "In my lifetime, anti-Semitism has been
remote from my experience. My family all left
Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. The
Holocaust is for me a matter of history, not
personal memory. To be sure, there were
country clubs where I grew up that had few if
any Jewish members, but not ones that included
people I knew. My experience in college and
graduate school, as a faculty member, as a
government official – all involved little notice of
my religion."

Summers, who served as Treasury secretary
during the Clinton administration, says he was
struck with how little notice the country paid
when he teamed with Robert Rubin, Alan
Greenspan, Charlene Barshefsky and other Jews
to provide the government with economic
leadership.

"It was something that would have been
inconceivable a generation or two ago, as indeed
it would have been inconceivable a generation or
two ago that Harvard could have a Jewish
president," he said.

He no longer takes such achievement for granted
– especially not after his public tussle with
former Harvard professor Cornel West – now of
Princeton.

West ripped Summers, essentially indicting him
as a racist, after the university president
complained the black professor did little serious
academic work and inflated the grades of his
students. While at Harvard, West devoted
significant time to projects like a rap CD and Al
Sharpton's presidential campaign.

West accused Summers of racism, then left
Harvard in a huff for a six-figure job at
Princeton. He later called Summers "the Ariel
Sharon of American higher education."

"Without thinking about it much, I attributed all
of this to progress – to an ascendancy of
enlightenment and tolerance," he said. "A view
that prejudice is increasingly put aside. A view
that while the politics of the Middle East was
enormously complex, and contentious, the
question of the right of a Jewish state to exist had
been settled in the affirmative by the world
community. But today, I am less complacent.
Less complacent and comfortable because there
is disturbing evidence of an upturn in
anti-Semitism globally, and also because of some
developments closer to home."

Summers cited synagogue burnings, physical
assaults on Jews and the painting of swastikas
on Jewish memorials in every country in Europe.
He pointed out political candidates who denied
the significance of the Holocaust reached the
runoff stage of elections for the nation's highest
office in France and Denmark. He said
state-sponsored television stations in many
nations of the world "spew anti-Zionist
propaganda." He added that "the United
Nations-sponsored World Conference on Racism
– while failing to mention human rights abuses in
China, Rwanda, or anyplace in the Arab world –
spoke of Israel's policies prior to recent struggles
under the Barak government as constituting
ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

"I could go on," he said. "But I want to bring this
closer to home. Of course academic communities
should be and always will be places that allow
any viewpoint to be expressed. And certainly
there is much to be debated about the Middle
East and much in Israel's foreign and defense
policy that can be and should be vigorously
challenged. But where anti-Semitism and views
that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally
been the primary preserve of poorly educated
right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel
views are increasingly finding support in
progressive intellectual communities. Serious
and thoughtful people are advocating and
taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect
if not their intent."

Summers decried an anti-Jewish trend
evidenced, he says, in actions singling out Israel
for unfair criticism and punishment:

"Hundreds of European academics have called
for an end to support for Israeli researchers,
though not for an end to support for researchers
from any other nation.

"Israeli scholars this past spring were forced off
the board of an international literature journal.

"At the same rallies where protesters, many of
them university students, condemn the IMF and
global capitalism and raise questions about
globalization, it is becoming increasingly
common to also lash out at Israel. Indeed, at the
anti-IMF rallies last spring, chants were heard
equating Hitler and Sharon.

"Events to raise funds for organizations of
questionable political provenance that in some
cases were later found to support terrorism have
been held by student organizations on this and
other campuses with at least modest success and
very little criticism.

"And some here at Harvard and some at
universities across the country have called for
the university to single out Israel among all
nations as the lone country where it is
inappropriate for any part of the university's
endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the
university has categorically rejected this
suggestion."

What's the cure? Speaking out, Summers says.

"We should always respect the academic
freedom of everyone to take any position," he
said. "We should also recall that academic
freedom does not include freedom from criticism.
The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong
alternatives vigorously advocated. I have always
throughout my life been put off by those who
heard the sound of breaking glass, in every
insult or slight, and conjured up images of
Hitler's Kristallnacht at any disagreement with
Israel. Such views have always seemed to me
alarmist if not slightly hysterical. But I have to
say that while they still seem to me unwarranted,
they seem rather less alarmist in the world of
today than they did a year ago."

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

Joseph Farah is editor and chief executive officer of
WorldNetDaily.com.
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   5.   QUOTES TO NOTE

     "I believe God is deeply saddened by this,
      just as we are, but for years we've been telling
      God to get out of our schools, to get out of our
      government and to get out of our lives. And
      being the gentleman He is, I believe He has
      calmly backed out. How can we expect God to
      give us His blessing and His protection if
      we demand He leave us alone?"

Anne Graham, daughter of Billy Graham , interviewed
on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her
"How could God let something like this happen?"
(regarding the attacks on Sept. 11).

       -----------------------------

     "Bush wants to divert attention from his domestic
      problems. It's a classic tactic.
      It's one that Hitler used."

Germany's Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin
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   6.    HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES ON THE SITE

THE WORLD'S COLLECTIVE AMNESIA
It's bad enough the Arab states created a small
nation of refugees by their actions. It's worse that
they have successfully blamed that international
crime on the Jews.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/sept02/amnesia.html

TAKE BACK JOSEPH'S TOMB
Last week, the cabinet wisely decided to include
Rachel's Tomb, outside Bethlehem, within the boundaries
of the security zone to be constructed around Jerusalem.
There is no reason for Joseph, Rachel's beloved son,
to be left behind either.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/sept02/tomb.html
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Become a WITNESS TO THE NATIONS and let them know what
great things our Lord is doing for Israel and what great
things He will continue to do for her, His firstborn.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/witness/home1.html
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