ALERT

From a media singing the praises of Benazir Bhutto comes a few keenly skeptical voices, among them a razor-sharp commentator called The Stiletto who in Political Mavens depicts a far more complex and morally compromised political figure than the one being lauded in the shock of her assassination, and alludes to the suggestion that “Bhutto may not have been the scourge of Islamofascist terrorists that some believe…”

While realistic about Bhutto’s flaws, Steve Schippert, the tough-minded former marine who edits ThreatsWatch, maintains in a FrontPage interview that “the only significantly popular alternative (to Bhutto) is another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. And he has advocated a Pakistani position of unceremonious distancing of Pakistan from the United States and cozying up to the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance of terrorists and insurgents nested in Pakistan’s tribal regions.”

Schippert concludes that “History can tell us many things. But what it cannot tell us is often more troubling. We are now in uncharted waters with an increasingly unstable nuclear power while a bloodthirsty international terrorist organization thrives within its borders. Not even the fall and breakup of the Soviet Union can compare in potential perils.”

Viewing the Bhutto assassination from an American political perspective, Rossner’s Blog in Haaretz notes that the brutal killing in Pakistan has driven foreign policy issues back to a prominent place in the campaigns where “It is generally accepted that the more seasoned candidates - Clinton and former U.N. ambassador Bill Richardson on the Democrats’ side and McCain and Giuliani on the Republican side - are more experienced in foreign policy than the newcomers.”

The following quote from a Wall Street Journal commentary by James Taranto casts reaction to the Bhutto assassination in the light of the failure of the feminist movement to address international issues in general and in particular Islamist oppression of women.

NOW or Never
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was a sort of grim feminist milestone. She was, as far as we can remember, the most important female political figure to be assassinated since Indira Gandhi in 1984. (Another was Safia Ama Jan, an official with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs, who was gunned down last year.) And as silly as Hillary Clinton’s “fellow mother” comment was, she was right to describe Bhutto as “a pioneering woman”–all the more notably since South Asian Muslim societies are not as forward-looking when it comes to women’s roles as we in the West are.

So what does the National Organization for Women, America’s premier feminist organization, have to say about Bhutto’s life and death? Only this: . We did a search for “Bhutto” on NOW’s Web site and it came up empty. The top item under “Hot Topics” on NOW’s homepage is “NOW’s Naughty List: Stereotyping Toys” Here’s NOW head Kim Gandy:

Naturally the NOW office has been abuzz about the ubiquitous “Rose Petal Cottage” TV commercials. If you haven’t seen these ads, count yourself lucky. Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I would think they were beamed in from 1955, via some lost satellite in space. . . .

According to the makers at Playskool, the Rose Petal Cottage is “a place where her dreams have room to grow.” And what might those dreams be? Well, baking muffins, arranging furniture and doing the dishes. The voiceover even declares that the toy house will “entertain her imagination” just before the little girl opens the miniature washing machine and says–I kid you not–”Let’s do laundry!” . . .

Through the world of toys, girls and boys are given separate dreams to follow. Girls are prepared for a future of looking pretty, keeping house and taking care of babies. Boys are given a pass on that domain, and instead pointed toward the outside world of challenge, physical development and achievement.

NOW has a different vision. When your daughter grows up, she can follow the example of Kim Gandy: grab a broom and sweep invidious stereotypes right out of the toy aisle! International politics? That’s icky, leave it to the boys!

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The Phyllis Chesler message that “most Western academic and mainstream feminists have not focused on what I call gender apartheid in the Islamic world, or on its steady penetration of Europe,” has apparently not reached the ears of an organization that is no longer concerned with the realities of NOW.

Christmas for Gaza’s Christians

Gaza’s tiny Christian community is keeping a low profile during Christmas this year, traumatized by the killing of a prominent activist after Hamas’ takeover of the coastal territory. Read More

Palestinian Version of Christmas

Most Christians celebrate Christmas as their Savior’s birthday. But the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Center in Jerusalem proposes a Baby Jesus who is fighting for a Palestinian state. Read More

Islamist Cleric Rants Against Christmas

Hate preacher Omar Bakri, who is barred from Britain, is calling on Brits to boycott Christmas. Using the internet to post a rant against the festive season, Bakri claims Christmas should be “completely forbidden”. In another chilling post the radical cleric said Christmas Day would be the perfect day to launch a terror attack on the UK. Read More

Putting the Ism into Islam

Political Mavens writer Julia Gorin explains how Islam is now more a political ideology than a religion. She concludes with the statement that “Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.”

In America, we are observing how regarding Islam as primarily a religion protects it from the scrutiny that would be the sanctioned approach with an aggressive ideology bent on world conquest.

Gorin Goes to the Core

Visiting the Web site of Ms. Gorin, a comely controversial conservative comedian and columnist is to take a step past alliterative efforts into a spirited slice of life in the media of the late 00’s. A zesty right-wing pundit who packs a wallop of panache, Gorin has earned her perch on the zeitgeist with cutting-edge commentary on issues ranging from Condi to Kosovo.

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We thank those of you who have let us know how much you appreciate our selecting for you the journalistic gems for which you find links on our site. While we intend to keep bringing you our version of the Best of the Web, we have not lost sight of our initial goal: to function as an online bulletin board for a growing activist community composed of a myriad of organizations committed to Israel advocacy and countering Jihad encroachments on America.

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Big News from Boulder

Following the academic demise of the infamous Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado adopts a policy supporting academic freedom including the right of students not to be indoctrinated by their professors and protection from unfair treatment in the classroom.

Does Ron Paul Have Neo-Nazi Connections?

American Thinker thinks we should be asking about the idiosyncratic candidate’s apparent unwillingness to reject support from extremists.

Phyllis Chesler Honors Philippe Karsenty

An American-Jewish activist honors the French modern-day Emile Zola at an event in her home to which she aptly invited a descendant of Alfred Dreyfus. (thanks to AlertToday friend Joan Kahn for alerting us to a story rich in historical association and highly pertinent for the present.)

Political Mavens‘ goal is “to serve as a forum of enlightenment in an effort to clarify one’s thinking.” That this blog has realized its lofty intention is evident in the following recent posts by some of the sites stellar bloggers:

Judith Klinghoffer explores the disturbing implications of the inflammatory cover of the Walt and Mearsheimer book’s Italian and Spanish editions. Klinghoffer quotes observers on the implicit anti-Semitism in a book jacket that could be “straight out of neo-nazi publications that rant about the ZOG.”

Jonathan Kay writes what we consider to be a pivotal post on the influences of a tribal mentality on Islamism. Kay’s thesis is that the clash of civilizations is not over the nature of God but is the result of vastly difference perspectives on the nature of man.

Heather Robinson reports on a talk by former Sudanese slave and human rights activist Simon Deng in which he accuses Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of Selective Humanitarianism, quoting Deng: “No one is talking about [slavery in Sudan] because the slave is a black African Christian and the enslaver calls himself an Arab.”

Conservative Canadian columnist Mark Steyn looks at anti-Natalism (yes, it means just what the phrase connotes) in Europe juxtaposed to Muslim fecundity and draws some disturbing conclusions.

From FrontPage Magazine, a chapter from David Meir-Levi’s new book, History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression.

The Terrorism Awareness Project previously printed his history of the “right-wing” influence on Islamic extremism, “The Nazi Roots of Palestinian Nationalism and Islamic Jihad.” Taken together (with his entire book), these chapters show that Islamofascism is a political, not merely a religious force; and the potent and deadly offspring of the totalitarian ideologies of the past. — The Editors, FrontPage Magazine

David Meir-Levi is a most helpful friend to AlertToday, generously giving us the benefit of his extensive knowledge on issues pertaining to our core concerns, sometimes on a moment’s notice despite a demanding schedule.

Israeli technological and medical research have resulted in a groundbreaking discovery in the field of artificial intelligence, conducted by two Tel Aviv University academics, and Israeli research into treating Parkinson’s disease, have been selected as among the past year’s greatest advancements in science by a top U.S. periodical.

Evidence is emerging that “in a major strategic change, the Algerian arm of Al-Qaeda appears to be using terrorists older than 60 to carry out its attacks.”

The Algerian attack was cited by the New York Sun to challenge the theory by David Brooks discussed in our previous post: that this election is taking place in a “postwar” mentality. The Sun refuted the Brooks commentary, stating that “hours after the column was issued, the world got a powerful reminder that the war is still on, in the form of two car-bomb attacks in Algiers that killed dozens, including several United National staffers. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.”

We think Brooks was not so much saying that he believes the terror threat to have significantly diminished as that a feeling the threat has lessened appears to characterize the national mood, and is a reason for challenges to tough-talking front runners Clinton and Giuliani from candidates considered more likable, Obama and Huckabee.

Brooks attributes a portion of the perception of a diminished interest in the terrorist threat to the NIE report on Iran. The report has now been contested by an exiled Iranian opposition group which claims that while Teheran halted a nuclear weapons development program in 2003, the bomb-making program resumed the following year.

Cognizant of an imperative to comprehend these complex times, we will occasionally be bringing you the Zeitgeist Gazette, a potpourri of social trends and pop culture that may help us get a better handle on where we are, and may be headed.

Postwar Mentality

David Brooks, New York Times columnist and brilliantly discerning cultural trend spotter, defines the current political scene as The Postwar Election, in which the public is turning from a war to a peace mentality, from a focus on the terrorist threat and the Iraq War to other issues the likes of “Mormonism, mortgages and the cosmic importance of Oprah Winfrey.” Brooks gives astute evidence for this seismic shift in the public consciousness; whether the new perception reflects reality is another issue.

Obama Bound

A Wall Street Journal review of Shelby Steele’s study of the Obama campaign, “A Bound Man,” examines Steele’s thesis that Obama’s new-style racial identity places the candidate in a no-win bind between reassuring whites and pleasing blacks. Interestingly, the Brooks’ post-war-mentality hypothesis cited above gives Obama more of a chance than was earlier apparent. The reviewer does not agree with Steele’s contention that the Obama candidacy is doomed by the bind.

Steel Lady

The New York Sun features long-lived comic book icon Wonder Woman in a lively pop culture piece by film critic Grady Hendrix. Painting the colorfully attired Amazon as Politically Incorrect by transcending rather than exemplifying feminism (Wonder Woman is not the equal of men; she is their superior), Hendrix examines the varied incarnations of the Steel Lady and concludes that today she is back on track, depicted as a blend of strength and compassion illustrated by her fighting “a gang of super-gorillas before realizing that they’re not evil, merely misguided.” Is this, we wonder, another indication that the zeitgeist is in a postwar mentality?