The Butcher and the Surgeon

They call Bashar al-Assad "son of the butcher," but he is merely a butcher twice removed. The original butcher of Syria was Abul Abbas al-Saffah, the last appellation meaning "shedder of blood." 

The Arabian Epic  M.C. Lyons,  Cambridge University Press.  OK, al-Saffa spilled some blood. But he reformed the army, promoted diversity, set up early paper mills—a regular progressive.  SAVE

Hafez al-Assad, Obituary  Patrick Seale,  Guardian.  Externally, the "main landmarks of Assad's life," as a journalist summed up, "had to do with the struggle against Israel."  SAVE

Red Cross Recovers Marie Colvin's Body  Huffington Post.  The Syrians murdered journalist Marie Colvin on February 22. It took another 10 days for them to let her mother have her body.  SAVE

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Cyrus Cylinder postage stamp (Iran).

Cyrus, Ahmadinejad, and the Politics of Purim

At this week's pre-Purim meeting in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss Iran's nuclear threat to Israel, Netanyahu gave Obama a present: the book (or m'gilah, scroll) of Esther, which tells how the Jewish heroine foiled Haman's plot to kill the Jews of ancient Persia.

The Cyrus Cylinder  British Museum.  An illustrated introduction to a prize object in the British Museum; as the English translation shows, the king addresses himself to his own accomplishments, not the rights of his subjects.  SAVE

2600 Years of History in One Object  Neil MacGregor,  TED.  The director of the British Museum is among those touting the Cyrus Cylinder's inscription as one of the "great declarations of a human aspiration." (Video)  SAVE

Ghosts of Purim Past  Jeffrey Goldberg,  New York Times.  A report on a 2003 visit to Iran and on close encounters with Islamic anti-Semitism.  SAVE

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English translation (1934).

Evil Genius

Very little anti-Semitic literature is new; most of its tropes seem ageless, continually recombined and updated by haters reacting only dimly to their actual circumstances. Few anti-Semitic works exhibit literary or lesser, sociological gifts. The one exception is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Myth of the Jewish Menace  Lucien Wolf,  Macmillan.  As early as 1921, English journalist and historian Lucien Wolf tried to debunk the forged Protocols.  SAVE

The Protocols in Arabia  Middle East Media Research Institute.  Collected reports on the appearance of the Protocols in Islamic media today.  SAVE

Among the Truthers  James Kirchick,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  With the democratization of the media, conspiracy theories are becoming more prevalent. And while not all conspiracy theorists are anti-Semitic, all conspiracy movements attract anti-Semites.  SAVE

Treacherous Texts  Benjamin Balint,  Haaretz.  The amazing and enduring power of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has little to do with the mind of its forgers and everything to do with the avidity of its consumers.  SAVE

Back to the Future  Ruthie Blum,  Jerusalem Post.  In a 2007 interview, Robert Wistrich describes the return of apocalyptic anti-Semitism, its perpetrators, its enablers and fellow-travelers, and its global implications. (PDF)  SAVE

Eco Chamber  Paula Marantz Cohen,  Smart Set.  With The Prague Cemetery's virulently anti-Semitic protagonist, Umberto Eco may have joined those famous authors whose "editors grew afraid to edit them even as reviewers grew unwilling to pan them."  SAVE

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The Signal-to-Noise War

A "signal-to-noise" ratio compares the power of a transmitted signal to that of the accompanying background noise. In the war of words between Israel and Iran the noise-to-signal ratio is so high that it is an almost overwhelming task to decipher what's going on.

Kill All Jews: The Jurisprudential Case  Lee Moran,  Daily Mail.  A website close to Ayatollah Khameini explains that destruction would be legally and morally justified—and could be accomplished in nine minutes.  SAVE

Iran Says It Intends to Destroy Israel, NY Times Doesn’t Hear It  Jonathan S. Tobin,  Contentions.  The Times reported on Khameini's speech about Iran's nuclear intentions. Somehow it missed the part where he promised to destroy the cancerous Israeli tumor.  SAVE

U.S.-Israel Split on Iran’s Speed  Mark Landler, David E. Sanger,  New York Times.  Israel says that once Iran's nuclear program is impregnable, Iranians can develop a bomb at leisure. The Americans say "many other options" would remain.  SAVE

Better a Failed Strike Than None  Daniel Goure,  Defence Professionals.  The Israelis may not be able to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities—but could still succeed in what one analyst calls an "extreme form of deterrence signaling."  SAVE

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Terror in the Shadow of the Holocaust

For most people, "Mykonos" evokes sunny holidays on the Greek coast. But for the Iranian diaspora, the word is a warning that the murderous arm of the Islamic Republic can reach Iranian immigrants even when they find new homes in the democratic West.

Tehran’s Long History of Murder in the West  Investigative Project on Terrorism.  Mykonos wasn't the first such foray by agents of the Islamic Republic; it was just one of the few times they got caught.  SAVE

Germany and Iran in Diplomatic Spat  Deutsche Welle.  In 2004, Berlin unveiled a plaque to commemorate the victims of the Mykonos killing. Guess how Iran planned to express its hurt.  SAVE

Listening to Saddam  Alex Joffe,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  With Iran on the edge of going nuclear, we can get a sense of the mullahs' minds by listening in on the private conversations of another tyrannical regime.  SAVE

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