It appears that Michael Bernard Mukasey is a religious Jew, which is freaking out the usual suspects.
At The People's Voice, a 9-11 "truther" is quite upset as he
painstakingly goes through Mukasey's family tree, digging up every Jewish-sounding name he can:
Michael B. Mukasey married Susan Bernstock Saroff in July 1974. They were married by Rabbi Judah Nadich, the first adviser on Jewish Affairs to General Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the U.S. forces in Europe. Nadich involved in the displaced person (DP) camps and requested that the Jewish DPs have their own camps and receive preferable treatment in such things as food and emmigration to the United States.
See: Judah Nadich (1912 — 2007)
Susan is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Bernstock. Her marriage with Mr. Saroff had ended in divorce.
According to obits in the New York Times, Michael Bernard Mukasey was born in, or about 1941 to Albert Mukasey and his wife, the former Mae Fischer. He has a sister named Rhoda Eckstein, who evidently married a Norbert Eckstein.
Albert Mukasey died in September 1972 and Mae Fischer Mukasey died in February 1975.
At Vanguard News Network (sorry, I won't link to it), the headline is "
SURPRISE! Bush Picks KIKE for Attorney General!". (One comment was "Ashkenazim Talmudic serpentilic creature from the black pit of the Lord of Darkness. Put a black brim hat on his head and a long black beard on his face and you will see him as he truly is.")
One person has been spamming investment forums with "This means this traitorous, piece of parasitic filth has dual citizenship with Israel, which is against The Constitution Of The United States Of America. "
On
Yahoo Answers, someone posted a question:
"Was the nomination of Jew Michael Mukasey a taunting message to White Christians (like the middle finger)?"
I found
this account of him during the 1993 WTC trial interesting:
Given that all of the defendants are Muslims and most of the defense lawyers are Jews, the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 10 others on terrorism charges has all along had a strange-bedfellows quality. And there was a rare moment of conflict involving religion at the trial last week when the defendants were out of the courtroom on a regular break so they could perform their afternoon Muslim prayers.
With the jury out of the courtroom, Judge Michael B. Mukasey took the bench and, clearly annoyed, announced that a problem had arisen. It seems, the judge said, that the marshals had summoned the defendants in the middle of their prayers and, feeling insulted, they "took the position" that "they are either starting all over, or don't want to come out, or whatever."
"I take the position," the judge said through clenched teeth, "that anybody who isn't in here in five minutes is voluntarily absenting himself. We're going to go ahead without them." And to make up for the lost time, he said, he would sit a bit later than usual.
Judge Mukasey generally is low-key, soft-spoken, kindly, but he clearly wants the trial to move along, and he is impatient when legal arguments, or what he sees as small complaints about the prison conditions of the defendants, slow things down. He frequently cuts lawyers off in mid-sentence and tells them to sit down, or answers a request with a curt "no," offering no explanation.
On the afternoon the defendants refused to return to court before their prayers were finished, Lynne Stewart, the lawyer for Mr. Abdel Rahman, pleaded with the judge to take into account that it is now Ramadan, the monthlong holiday during which Muslims take no food from before dawn until after nightfall.
"I don't care what it is," Judge Mukasey snapped. "I gave a 20-minute break."
Ms. Stewart: "I don't think if someone said, 'I don't care if it's Passover or not,' you would take that very kindly. I wouldn't take it so . . . "
Judge Mukasey interrupted: "Take it kindly or not, they were given 20 minutes. That's ample time. They were to be back here in 20 minutes, or we will go ahead without them. That's the way it is going to get done."
Ms. Stewart: "Judge . . . "
Judge Mukasey: "Period."
A little later, another lawyer, Anthony Ricco, passed along to the judge a request by the defendants to discuss the issue, but Judge Mukasey refused. "I'm not talking to them," he said. Still, he seemed to soften, and when every lawyer on the case promised to talk to the defendants over the weekend and let them know that they had to follow the judge's schedule, he relented in his insistence on proceeding without the defendants. A few minutes later, the 11 men, most of them carrying prayer rugs in their manacled hands, walked back into the courtroom.
Sounds exactly right - allow them to practice their religion properly but don't allow them to use religion to bully everyone else.
This will be interesting!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Elder of Ziyon
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
My goodness! You’re all still at it. I salute your indefatigability.
Mr. Abourezk’s mention of Camp David piqued my interest as this was the issue that led me to takes sides on the Israeli/Arab confab. Given that we had the Israelis and the Palestinians in failed negotiations, why would one simply believe either side? It seems reasonable to at least turn to the mediators for some understanding. In this case, the two chief functionaries were Clinton and Ross, both of whom categorically blamed Arafat.
Given the enormous cachet that would have attached to solving this issue, it seems highly likely that the mediators did in fact seek a real solution and the balance of probability strongly suggests their accounts should be reliable.
Even if not, even if the stories about how it was a bad deal are true, it was the best offer ever. (I know this because the media in general was quite adamant and even at that time when I paid less attention to world affairs, I knew the general media was hardly pro-Israel.) Given that Israel was bending so far, what on earth was the point of not only not negotiating further, but starting an Intifada? It speaks volumes.
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I’m given to wonder whether both Elder and Brzezinski are in touch with reality. When Dennis Ross left the government, he returned to a component of the Israeli Lobby to work. I guess it’s OK to identify Wolf Blitzer as a part of the Lobby, mostly because he worked for AIPAC. If these folks deny that AIPAC is part of the Lobby, then I find it impossible to continue this debate.
And yes, I think Bill Clinton lied a lot about a lot of issues when he was president.
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Fair enough Mr. Abourezk, but I offered an argument even if Clinton & Ross were wrong. You have not countered what I said for that case.
It also strikes me that if someone working for “a component” of The Lobby is automatically disqualified from talking on this issue, then the same must apply to you on the other side for you have made your biases very plain.
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I appreciate that Mr. Abourezk finally acknowledged a couple of my comments, even if they were extremely peripheral to the major points I was making. (Wolf Blitzer indeed edited an AIPAC newsletter some thirty years ago although he never lobbied for AIPAC, and Dennis Ross indeed works for a pro-Israel think tank now - although I am not aware of any earlier work he may have done for the “Lobby” that Mr. Abourezk implies from the word “returned.”)
The implication that Mr. Abourezk is making, of course, is that anyone who is pro-Israel on any level is assumed to be a liar.
While I gave specific reasons why the books written by Ilan Pappe and Clayton Swisher can be considered unreliable, from their own words and/or omissions as well as my own original research, the best that Mr. Abourezk can do to cast aspersions of Ross’ book is to mention that he now works for that evil “Lobby.” Using that logic, of course, would allow us to assume that Abourezk is equally suspect for being an uncompromising supporter of Arab causes. I prefer to stick with facts, not guilt by association, and any problems I have with Mr. Abourezk come from his own words, most specifically his praise for Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists that was mentioned earlier in this thread and that he has studiously ignored so far.
In the end, the biggest flaw with Abourezk’s positions is that he consistently ascribes the best of intentions to Arab and Muslim countries and the worst of intentions to Israel and, often, the US. In one particularly hilarious paragraph in his review above he says that “both Iran and Syria have proposed a nuclear weapons free Middle East.” The reported events of recent weeks by British journalists who can hardly be considered pro-Israel indicate that not only did Syria have a clandestine nuclear weapons program, but also that there was a major chemical weapons accident this past summer killing dozens of Syrians and Iranian engineers with WMD that were meant to be placed on missiles. But Abourezk, quite willing to publicly assume that anybody who supports Israel is not trustworthy, has no such skepticism about the public pronouncements of dictators and the world’s worst human rights abusers.
This, in a nutshell, is the problem with Mr. Abourezk’s positions on the Middle East and of the “Israel Lobby.”