Israeli Army Saving Lifes in Haiti

Israeli Jews saving Christians out of the ruins of Port-au-Prince. The army has dispatched over 200 soldiers from a medical home front unit, who have set up a field hospital with 50 beds in a socker stadium. The BBC (not exactly pro Israeli any other day) called the hospital the "Rolce-Royce" under the field hospitals and praised the Israeli search and rescue team as "the only team that knows what it is doing". Fresh wind from London?

Where are the search and rescue teams from Hezbollah, Hamas, The Muslim Brotherhood, The Islamic Jihad? Not fair? Okay, then let's think about Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Sudan (and North Korea)?

The obvious answer is: Islamic fundamentalists couldn't care less about 100,000 dead Christians. Actually, they are probably celebrating ("God is punishing the infidels"). The really crazy thing is that even many fundamentalist Christians are using God as an explanation for the Earth Quake ("They used condoms, that place is full of homosexuals, ...."). And the Jews that died over there were punished for driving on Shabbat. Yeah, sure. What a world - FUBAR (remember that one?).

I wondered how Turkey would respond to the desaster. To my relief and satsifaction there are Turkish search and rescue teams in Haiti. Maybe there is a reason deeper than cold strategic interests for Turkey being the only muslim ally of Israel?

Read Christopher Hitchens in Slate about the religious abuse of natural desaster over centuries. Nothing has changed, people.

And in any case, you can make a humanistic donation void of a missionary agenda here: Non-Believers Giving Aid: a religion-free way to help disaster victims.

Atheists donated $50,000 in the first 24h after the quake via Richard Dawkins' initiative. That is the power of the web, paired with human compassion. No religious dillusion necessary to help your fellow humans, it seems.

The Taliban in the IDF

Without anybody noticing, the Taliban have arrived at the Israeli Defense Forces (click on the title to read the Haaretz article). They masquerade as Rabbis and abuse the public trust into the IDF's rabbinate in order to educate Israeli soldiers to behave like Taliban, Hamas or Hezbollah warriors. "Show no mercy to the cruel" sounds a lot like "show no mercy to the infidels" to me, in my humble opinion.

The only thing that separates us and them now is that common Israeli soldiers subjected to that kind of teachings came forward and reported the intellectual garbage to the press, for all of us to read and get goose bumps. Free minds and a free press are the only thing standing between us and the final abyss.

Still there are islands of reason and common sense left, but where is all of that leading us? If Rabbi Ronzki will still be the Chief Rabbi of the IDF in a couple of months from now, it is time to pack up and move to Afghanistan, I'd say. At least the property prices there are a lot more reasonable.