Tim Blair

A New Light by Joe Fitzgerald
from the Boston Herald

The Markovitz Family was one of the few Jewish families in a quiet suburban neighborhood in Pennsylvania where Chirstmas decorations lit up the street. In, their home, however, an illuminated menorah in the window reminded everyone it was also Hanukkah.
Around five o'clock one morning, Judy Markovitz was awakened by the shattering of glass. "My husband and I ran downstairs and saw the menorah was on the floor. The frame was shattered. They must have used a bat. Whoever did it had to squeeze behind bushes to reach it."
For the Markovitz family, it was an assault compounded by personal history. "Both of my parents were in the camps at Auschwitz: my husband's mother was there also," explained Judy, who came to America from the Ukraine in 1974. "All of my mother's family died. There are things we don't talk about, but I know older people like her have a need to feel safe, so I didn't tell her much about this. And I tried to isolate my children from it too.
"We were home much of that day because my husband had to get the window replaced," she recalled. "Neighbors kept approaching us to say how sorry they were."
" One of those neighbors, Lisa Keeling, now living in North Carolina, explained their thinking. "I know that a menorah represents a miracle by our God before our faith was known as Christianity. I know of the king who told the Jews they couldn't practice their religion. When they reclaimed Jerusalem and saw the Temple had been desecrated, they wanted to reconsecrate it, but found only a tiny bit of oil, enough for a night. They decided to use it anyway and it burned for eight nights.
"That was a miracle from the same God we worship, and why anyone would take a symbol of his love and use it for hatred, I don't understand."
There were things the Markovitzes did not understand as well. After the workmen repaired the window, the family went to Judy's brother's home, unaware that their neighbors were working determinedly to repair something else.
That evening, when the Markovitzes came home from their visit and turned onto their street, they were met by an extraordinary sight: Nearly every home on the block was adorned by an illuminated menorah.
Vicky Markovitz, Judy's daughter, now 18, remembers those glowing windows as an affirmation of compassion and community. "It was as if they said,'If you break their windows, you will have to break ours.'"

Sorry about the long post, but I needed to get the taste of that Hamas spokesman out of my head.
Besides that, I second what Vicky said above.

"Through the Bounty of Allah........"
The Saudis with all their oil wealth and after spending more than a trillion dollars to push their Wahabi sect in the West over the past 30 years are still incapable of the following:

Heart surgery on Iraqi baby succesful

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/S

"The girl checked into an Israeli hospital Tuesday for an emergency heart operation after European hospitals refused to accept her for treatment."

Barry -

I thought the "more than a trillion dollars" spent by the Saudi's in the West was on weapons from the U.S. and Britain.

Do you have some other "trillion dollars" in mind or are you just making that up?

Really, Analogue? The Saudis have bought a trillion dollars worth of weapons? Where are they? Who is using them? As far as I know their own military is rather ineffectual, which is why their fundyloons have taken to terrorism and why the Saudis themselves have taken to passive-aggressive means of destruction such as promoting their intolerant Islamic school of thought in other countries by means of such things as "special schools for Muslims" and the like.

But you knew that already, didn't you, Analogue Brit. You are just pulling that bs about weapons out of your ass.

Contrast with Ritual Murders of Jews in Paris

Exerpt - Initial reports in small news outlets naturally terrified and confused the French Jewish community. Intense anti-Semitism has been building there for more than a decade, according to Nidra Poller, an American expatriate living in Paris for several decades. Anti-Semitic crimes frequently go unreported in the major press, she said, suppressed by French authorities, victims fearing retribution, and news agencies themselves. Jewish community members thus most often learn of attacks as they did during previous centuries in North African and Eastern European ghettoes—by word of mouth.