The #1 jewish issue

I got an e-mail from Pillage Idiot the other day (I'm assuming he doesn't mind my quoting him)

On another subject, wait till the Jews start talking about Palin. Point 1: She's pro-life, which no liberal Jew can accept. Abortion, the ultimate Jewish issue.

He's prescient. What can I tell you? The NJDC termed the choice of Palin as "bizarre."

Moreover, on a broad range of issues— most strikingly on the issue of women’s reproductive freedom— she is totally out of step with Jewish public opinion.

Of course they also mention that she has no public record on Israel. Why the governor of Alaska should speak publicly about Israel is beyond me. And why silence more of a disqualification than attending a church that supports Hamas is similarly bewildering.

On a related matter, yes Gov. Palin is pro-life. And she isn't just preaching to others. It's what she practiced. As Don Surber wrote:

I thought her pregnancy and the birth of her child this year would dash her VP hopes. Her son has Down’s Syndrome, which she learned of during her pregnancy. She does not believe in the death penalty for retarded children.

In other words she lives by the principle she wishes to see others abide by.

One final note: Crablaw points out in a comment that there are charges that Palin supported Pat Buchanan in the Republican primary in 2000.

Apparently she was extending a courtesy to Buchanan, but she supported Steve Forbes in that campaign.

And indeed, another AP story from August 7, 1999 -- one month after the Buchanan trip to Wasilla -- states that joining state sen. Mike Miller of Fairbanks on the Forbes campaign's Alaska "leadership committee will be Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin, and former state GOP chairman Pete Hallgren, who will serve as co-chairs."

(via memeorandum)

And if she did support Buchanan, it would be a negative in my mind. But I still find Sen. Obama's associations a lot more troubling. And he's not running to become the understudy in the next administration. To quote Don Surber again:

Democrats nominated an inexperienced but cute senator who won’t just be a heartbeat from the presidency; he will be the heartbeat.

Mahmoud Abbas, Master Of StandUp Comedy

Arafat II Mahmoud Abbas has had a lot of funny bits but this surpasses anything he's ever done.

Today, Abbas responded to Israeli PM Olmert's statement that Israel and the Palestinian are 'close to a deal except on Jerusalem' by saying that if Israel doesn't bend over for him on everything, including Jerusalem, he's going to call off negotiations.

I nearly fell over laughing.

Here's somebody who's authority barely extends past the door in his office in Ramallah not only representing himself as someone who can make a meaningful deal and trying to dictate conditions but threatening to pull out and drop everything if he doesn't get his way!

"We will negotiate until the end of the year, and then the president will review our options," [Abbas spokesmouth and top aide Rafik] Husseini said, adding that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's declaration this week that a peace deal on everything but Jerusalem could be reached by the end of the year was unacceptable.

"Without a deal on Jerusalem, there will not be a peace deal at all," he said.

Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, said that as far as the Palestinians were concerned, Jerusalem was a "red line" that couldn't be crossed.

If I were the Israelis,I would tell Mr. Def Jam that we're taking him at his word, no deal means no deal and end this farce. After all, the Palestinians have not kept a single one of the basic commitments they've ever made since Oslo...yet they're still hanging on to the land they managed to squeeze out of Israel, the only country in the Middle East to ever give them any land of their own at all.

Even funnier is Abbas' assumption that any deal he might make with the Israelis is worth the paper it's printed on, given that Abbas has almost zero authority to make anything stick since Hamas isn't signing on to it.Of course the real joke is on Olmert, Livni and the current Israeli government.

Abbas may still draw an audience in the EU and the US State Department, but the Arabs are definitely getting sick and tired of the Palestinians' shabby act.

They've pretty much reneged on all those flowery pledges of cash to the Palestinians as a ba-ad investment, which actually makes them a lot smarter than I gave them credit for. Anyway,why should they shell out any of their oil billions when the stoopid infidels are so willing to do it for them? $1 billion in international aid had been disbursed to the PA in 6 months by us wacky Westerners, about 40% of it passed to Gaza by Abbas to fund Hamas in the Gaza Strip...who says terrorism doesn't pay? Yet the Palestinian Authority still complains that it is broke...what
a bunch of jokesters!

If the Israeli government was thinking straight, they'd call Abbas' bluff and end the comedy once and for all.

-Rob Miller. Crossposted at JoshuaPundit