SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month

May 2002
Volume 9, No. 5

Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
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CONTENTS
Features
  -> The Moving Picture
  -> The Obsession
  -> Wilder and His Betters
Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition)
List of Columns Reprinted



FEATURES

The Moving Picture
(pages 1-2)

     Desperate, agonized e-mail messages from the West 
Bank remind us that Christians are among the innocents 
caught in the crossfire between murderous Israeli forces 
and West Bank Muslims. Even the Church of the Nativity in 
Bethlehem, one of the world's holiest sites, is under 
siege; its Franciscan custodians, despite the danger to 
themselves, are afraid to leave it temporarily, lest it 
be destroyed. One priest has already been killed, several 
nuns wounded. Apart from the Pope, Western Christians are 
showing little interest in the plight of their co-
religionists. 

*          *          *

     Prematurely hailed as "a great wartime president," 
G.W. Bush has now shown that he isn't up to the job of 
global emperor. (See below.) This may be a blessing for 
the globe. Israel's crazed prime minister, Ariel Sharon, 
is too much for him; it's like a dude ranch visitor 
trying to ride a furious Brahma bull. Without Sharon's 
cooperation in pacifying the Palestinians, Bush won't get 
cooperation from the Arab states whose support he needs 
for war on Iraq. So Sharon's belligerence may save us 
from a disastrous widening of the "war on terrorism."  

*          *          *

     Bush, it appears, has no will of his own, or at 
least no idea of how to impose it. He reacts to events 
and does as little as possible. Like most American 
Christians, he thinks the world can be ruled by sermons 
-- banal, platitudinous, studiously "even-handed." His 
Middle East policy seems to be guided by his hope of 
carrying Florida in the next election. You have to feel a 
little sorry for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, NATIONAL 
REVIEW, the WALL STREET JOURNAL, and other Republican 
pundits who are duty-bound to pretend to portray Bush as 
an avatar of American strength and savvy. 

*          *          *

     Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East mission was 
a total flop: all the Arab governments were adamantly 
opposed to war with Iraq. In fact, nearly all European 
governments are equally opposed to it. In fact, of all 
the governments on earth, only one would whole-heartedly 
support the United States against Iraq. 

*          *          *

     Optimism is the mother of war. The hawks are all 
assuming not only that the United States could defeat 
Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, which is plausible, but 
that this would settle everything, which is preposterous. 
No U.S. puppet government would be legitimate or secure; 
the Arabs have many faults, but stupidity isn't one of 
them. The region's perpetual turmoil would merely move 
into a new phase. 

*          *          *

     In his column for the New York DAILY NEWS, A.M. 
Rosenthal has smashed his own record for ... well, 
Rosenthalian excess: he suggests that France is preparing 
concentration camps for Jews. You suspect exaggeration? 
Here: "Jews, listen and you will hear the sound of 
breaking glass.... Breaking glass, burning synagogues, 
and diplomats making filthy anti-Semitic remarks mean 
that a sickening number of people around the world, many 
in high office, would have no great objections if the 
concentration camps arrived again, and would even take 
pleasure in speeding their coming.... This year, a French 
ambassador to England described Israel as feces.... It 
means the blueprints for the new camps are probably 
already drawn." 

*          *          *

     Bill Clinton now tells NEWSWEEK that he regrets 
pardoning Marc Rich: "It wasn't worth the damage to my 
reputation." Well, maybe. But it was damaging because it 
was so congruent with the reputation he'd already earned. 
If he'd been known as an honest man, like Jimmy Carter, 
it would have been seen as an anomaly -- well-meaning, 
gullible bumbling, perhaps. The problem was that even 
Clinton's most dogged defenders saw it as entirely 
Clintonesque. 

*          *          *

     Yet another left-wing academic fraud has been 
exposed. ARMING AMERICA: THE ORIGINS OF A NATIONAL GUN 
CULTURE, by Michael Bellesiles of Emory University, made 
a big hit with the gun-control crowd two years ago by 
showing, contrary to popular belief, that gun ownership 
was rare in the early days of the Republic. 
Unfortunately, somebody checked Bellesiles's footnotes 
and discovered -- get this -- that his sources didn't 
even exist! He'd just made them up out of his haid! 
Meanwhile, such heavyweight historians as Garry Wills and 
Edmund Morgan had vouched for his scholarship and praised 
him for debunking a right-wing myth. 

*          *          *

     As for gun control generally, the Second Amendment 
is clear enough: it assumes that the "right" to keep and 
bear arms is natural and inviolable, not created or 
granted by the state. Alexander Hamilton speaks of self-
defense as the right that is "paramount" to all others. 
But the Tenth Amendment should make all such arguments 
needless anyway: it says that powers not "delegated" to 
the Federal Government are denied to it, and the 
Constitution gives that government no power to limit the 
ownership of weapons. 

*          *          *

     The scandal rocking the Catholic Church has occurred 
in part because Church officials chose to regard 
homosexuality and pedophilia as sicknesses rather than 
sins. They put their faith not in Christian doctrine, but 
in psychotherapy, with its false promises of cures. 
Penance? Grace? Reparation? No, they trusted modern 
quackery, and they are paying the price. 

*          *          *

     Let's not overlook the media's role in pushing this 
scandal. They are avoiding any reference to 
homosexuality, preferring to call the problem 
"pedophilia" -- though the great majority of the victims 
have been teenaged boys. Church officials have allowed an 
aggressive homosexual network to capture the seminaries 
and infiltrate the priesthood. But as someone has well 
said, this is a case where the media "love the sin and 
hate the sinner." 

*          *          *

     Yasser Arafat is constantly told he must "renounce 
terrorism." Fair enough. (Though he has done so several 
times, only to be accused of lying about it.) But nobody 
has demanded that Sharon disavow any purpose of expelling 
-- or "transferring" -- all Arabs from Israel and the 
occupied territories he claims for Israel. Far from 
abhorring such a policy, Sharon has welcomed cabinet 
ministers who openly advocate it.



The Obsession
(pages 3-5)

     Now and then I get letters and e-mail messages 
asking why I am so "obsessed" with Jews and Israel. The 
question amuses me. It would be one thing if I often 
wrote about Mali, or Honduras, or Borneo, or any other 
nation or country most people remember only as a name 
from geography class.

     I should think it's obvious that I'm *responding* 
to an obsession -- an obsession of contemporary culture, 
politics, the media, the arts. We have been getting 24/7 
coverage of Jews, the Holocaust, and Israel for years 
now. The front pages, the evening news, the magazine 
covers devote so much attention to Israel -- a country 
the size of New Jersey on the other side of the world -- 
that you could get the impression that it spans several 
time zones and includes much of the world's population 
(plus a few gentiles). Many columnists write about it 
more often than I do: Charles Krauthammer, William 
Safire, Cal Thomas, Paul Greenberg, Mona Charen, and 
George Will, to name a few. Of course they write 
uncritically about Israel, so they aren't considered 
obsessed; Eric Alterman of THE NATON has compiled a list 
of more than 60 well-known pundits who "reflexively" 
support Israel, while finding only 6 who are frequently 
critical.

     Every American president has to spend a 
disproportionate amount of his time coddling Israel and 
denouncing or actively fighting Israel's enemies. It's 
become part of the job description, as much as if it were 
written into the Constitution -- or more so, since 
constitutional obligations have become optional and 
*this* obligation is definitely not. At the same time, 
no president or any other politician may suggest that the 
American-Israeli alliance imposes undue risks, costs, or 
burdens on the United States.

     Journalism still devotes so much attention to the 
Holocaust that, as I once quipped, "The NEW YORK TIMES 
should be renamed HOLOCAUST UPDATE." Books and movies 
about it continue to pour forth; bookstores have whole 
sections on the Holocaust, and universities consecrate 
entire departments to "Holocaust studies." Holocaust 
memorials spring up everywhere. Elie Wiesel preaches that 
we *should* be obsessed with the Holocaust, as he is. 
Churches, accused of silent complicity in, and even 
ultimate responsibility for, the Holocaust, do their best 
to repent and atone.

     Current Jewish sufferings are treated as specially 
tragic facts, extensions of the Holocaust itself. When 
Arab terrorists seized an Italian ship, the Achille 
Lauro, and threw a Jewish passenger overboard, a leading 
American composer, John Adams, wrote an entire opera, THE 
DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER, about the incident.

     "Anti-Semitism" has become the chief of sins. It's 
seldom helpfully defined, but it seems to take a thousand 
forms, from outright genocide to indiscreet bons mots 
about Israel. Many gentiles live in dread of being 
labeled anti-Semitic, a charge against which there is no 
real defense or appeal: to be accused is to be guilty. 
The burden of proof, as I've often pointed out, is on the 
defendant -- and a difficult burden it is, since he 
hardly knows what he's being accused of. How can you 
prove your innocence of an undefined crime? By the same 
token, there is no penalty for false charges of anti-
Semitism, since a meaningless charge can't be proved 
false anyway.

     No gentile is quite safe from the charge. The 
Gospels, Catholicism, and the papacy have been indicted; 
so have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Edmund Burke, 
Dickens, Henry James, Henry Adams, Dostoyevsky, Mark 
Twain, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, Ezra 
Pound, Hemingway. (So far Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson 
seem to have escaped the accusation.) Then there are 
whole anti-Semitic nations, among them Russia, Poland, 
Hungary, Romania, Germany, France, and Spain, lately 
joined by most of the Arab nations (thereby proving it is 
possible to be Semitic and anti-Semitic at the same 
time).

     Billy Graham was recently roasted for anti-Semitism 
when it transpired that he'd made a few disparaging 
comments about Jews in the media during what he'd thought 
were private conversations with President Richard Nixon 
*30 years ago!* Perish the thought that there might have 
been a grain of truth in what he'd said; Graham dutifully 
groveled, then, when Jewish groups indignantly complained 
that this was not enough, he groveled again. A few years 
back, even that Hollywood icon Marlon Brando had to do a 
tearfully groveling retraction of some mildly critical 
comments about Jews in Hollywood.

     And they wonder why I'm obsessed.

     Of course I have my own special reasons. In 1986 I 
had my own run-in with fanatical Zionists, earned the 
dreaded label, and refused to perform the mandatory 
grovel. I won't retell the whole story here, except to 
say that my own ardent support for Israel had ended in 
1982 when I realized what Israel's cruel invasion of 
Lebanon, led by Ariel Sharon, meant for America and for 
my family.

     For America it meant that the Jewish lobby, 
including some of my neoconservative friends (as I 
thought them), had gotten this country into a sticky 
situation: an alliance that was morally dubious and very 
dangerous. We were being steered into a needless war with 
the Arabs, hotly desired by Israel and its supporters but 
contrary to our own real interests.

     As for the Sobrans, two of them -- my sons Kent and 
Mike -- were in their teens. If, as seemed likely, the 
military draft was restored, they might be sent to fight 
the war the Zionists were seeking. I began arguing in my 
syndicated column for American disengagement from Israel.

     Shortly afterward I ran into Ben Wattenberg, one of 
my friends (I thought), who said he'd heard I'd "gone off 
the reservation on Israel." It was the first time I'd 
been informed that I was on a "reservation," but I soon 
learned what he meant.

     Despite various warnings and pressures -- veiled 
threats, really -- I wasn't about to back down or retract 
anything. As far as I was concerned, I was fighting for 
my boys' lives. But if I wanted to thrive in journalism, 
I was expected to put Jewish interests ahead of 
everything, or at least keep quiet.

     As I told Bill Buckley at the time, the Jewish-
Zionist interest amounted to an unacknowledged third 
party in American politics. Though it had been 
traditionally liberal, it had sprouted a 
"neoconservative" wing since 1967. In truth, the 
neoconservatives were hardly conservative at all. For 
most of them, Israel was everything and overrode all 
other issues. You could agree with them on nine out of 
ten issues, but if the tenth was Israel the other nine 
didn't matter to them. You were the enemy.

     You couldn't really feel the power of the Jewish 
Party until you ran up against it. With amazing speed it 
had thoroughly satellized the largely Christian 
conservative movement, thanks in large part to Buckley. 
He wasn't about to let me imperil his position. He tried 
to tell me so, in his indirect and avuncular way, but I 
couldn't take a hint.

     Luckily, I was a fairly small fry in the movement, 
and the Jewish Party had far bigger antagonists to target 
for destruction. I didn't get the full treatment Buckley 
would have gotten if he'd said what I had said, or the 
treatment Pat Buchanan did get.

     Still, when the blowup came I felt deserted -- and 
in some cases betrayed -- by my fellow conservatives. 
Much as I wished they would rush to my defense, I also 
wished that if this was too much to ask, they would at 
least see the *meaning* of what was being done to me.

     Put simply, I was paying the price for *defending 
American interests* (and conservative principles). If, 
as the neocons insisted, American and Israeli interests 
were more or less identical, they should have called me 
anti-American, not (or not only) anti-Semitic. But of 
course they never did; they weren't that subtle, and in 
some ways they were deeply confused.

     Without realizing it, they were tacitly admitting 
that I was right: that American and Israeli interests 
were very different -- even conflicting -- things. Why 
else would Israel need a lobby in America at all, except 
to promote its interests to the detriment of our own? 
This should be obvious, but most people don't get it.

     Of course there is no American lobby in Israel to 
look out for our interests, regardless of the impact on 
Israeli interests. This is only one of the many unnoticed 
asymmetries of the situation. Double standards can 
succeed in their furtive purpose only when they pass 
unobserved. But to call attention to double standards 
favoring Jews is "anti-Semitism." According to Zionist 
rhetoric, of course, only anti-Semites apply double 
standards -- though in fact Zionism's first principle is 
that ordinary standards of justice don't apply to Jews. 
As one Israeli rabbi has put it, "A million Arabs are not 
worth one Jewish fingernail."

     That sounds like a defiantly brutal denial that "all 
men are created equal." The rabbi may have meant that it 
would be better to murder a million Arabs than to 
tolerate the slightest Jewish loss. But he might have 
meant something much less bellicose, something even 
pacific: that the current tradeoff of Jewish and Arab 
lives is a terrible thing for the Jews, even if far more 
Arabs than Jews die. Nobody really wins a war that 
diminishes both sides.

     It may be said that all this amounts to a caricature 
of the Jews. In fact, I'll say it myself. It's really a 
self-caricature of the Jews, drawn by the prevalent part 
of the Jewish community. It reflects neither the older 
tradition of the Orthodox, which is rooted in the hard 
objectivity of Mosaic law rather than modern sentimental 
victimology; nor the immense variety of Jewish 
intellectuals, who are as the sands of the sea but who 
don't usually subscribe fully to the oversimplified myths 
of the Holocaust and Zionism.

     The Orthodox Jew, faithful to an ancient and 
rigorous tradition, commands respect. So, in a different 
way, does the nonobservant intellectual Jew, who greatly 
enriches the life of the mind in the modern West; he 
remains unobsessed by the Holocaust and skeptical of, 
even embarrassed by, Zionism. In some cases, both the 
Orthodox Jew and the unaffiliated intellectual Jew may be 
downright anti-Zionist.

     The plague-carriers, so to speak, are the 
secularized, liberal, middlebrow Jews whose vulgarity 
sets the tone for American politics, public discourse, 
and popular culture. Some of them, like Steven Spielberg 
and Barbra Streisand, have real talent, of sorts; most of 
them are good at making money and aggressive in using it 
for their pet causes. Above all, they have a low genius 
for propaganda -- for shaping the popular mind and its 
characteristic platitudes.

     This is the prevalent body of Jews, our 
unacknowledged third party -- the party of Zionism, 
Holocaust promotion, secularism, sexual license 
(including "gay rights" and legal abortion), and an 
aggressive U.S. foreign policy (in the interests of 
Israel, not the United States itself). The Jewish Party, 
only a small fraction of the U.S. population, donates 
more than half the money received by the presidential 
candidates of the two major parties. It also dominates 
the major news and entertainment media.

     The Jewish Party's inordinate power, though 
unmentionable in the major media, explains why gentiles, 
especially the ambitious, dread the label of "anti-
Semitism." Some of the most perceptive, sensitive, and 
effective critiques of Jewish power -- that is, of the 
Jewish Party -- have been made by Orthodox and 
intellectual Jews. One danger of the present situation is 
that the Jewish Party will become synonymous with "the 
Jews."

     And this is exactly what the Party wants: to be 
recognized as the only authoritative Jewish voice, with 
all dissenting Jews marginalized. Under the brutal rule 
of Ariel Sharon, Israel's image in the West is worse than 
ever before. Today it's startling to remember the radiant 
aura it enjoyed in the days when its chief international 
spokesman was the urbane and eloquent Abba Eban. Those 
days are gone forever. The old image of a humane, 
democratic Israel was largely myth -- a myth Sharon 
himself still exploits -- but at least the Israelis made 
some effort to maintain its plausibility. Now, as Israeli 
soldiers shoot Arab women in labor without official 
rebuke or regret, the ugliness of Zionism has become 
visible to anyone with eyes to see.

     Shouting "Holocaust" and "anti-Semitism" can no 
longer disguise the facts. Despite all the rhetoric, 
Israel is a "democracy" only in a Pickwickian sense. It 
began by expelling most of its Arab majority, seizing its 
homes, and refusing it reentry. That created a Jewish 
majority, which has been maintained and increased by 
extending to every Jew on earth the "right of return" to 
a land where few of those Jews (or for that matter, of 
their ancestors) had ever lived in the first place. Yet 
the fiction of Israeli democracy is still honored by the 
United States.

     The Great Obsession has become a huge embarrassment 
for the Bush administration. It can't repudiate the U.S. 
alliance with Israel, even as it needs international -- 
especially Arab -- support for the "war on terrorism." Of 
course that war itself is a result of the Obsession, 
which has shaped American foreign policy for decades.

     The embarrassment is also a Laocoon-like 
entanglement. Polite diplomacy flounders in the vain 
quest for a peaceful settlement; Rome and Carthage are 
trying to destroy each other, and both sides are invited 
to a tea party.

     As suicide bombings alternate with disproportionate 
yet unavailing retaliations, the daily news from Israel 
is so painful that we all yearn for a solution. But it's 
probably too late. It has been wisely said that even the 
greatest chess player can't take over a misplayed game 
after 40 moves. This game is clearly destined to end -- 
or to continue indefinitely -- in tragedy. The only 
question is how many millions of people will be engulfed 
in its flames.



Wilder and His Betters
(page 6)

     Billy Wilder's death at 95 summoned generous 
eulogies, and most of them rang true. He was an excellent 
writer-director, one of Hollywood's rare originals. At 
his best -- in perhaps a dozen of his many films -- he 
displayed a caustic wit unusual in that sentimental, 
formulaic medium. And who else in the film industry could 
have produced movies as different as DOUBLE INDEMNITY and 
THE APARTMENT?

     I use these two movies as illustrations for a 
specific reason: both of them cast the same comic actor 
as a villain, to brilliant effect. His name, of course, 
is Fred MacMurray, best remembered for the warm sitcom MY 
THREE SONS. In DOUBLE INDEMNITY he plots with Barbara 
Stanwyck to murder her husband in order to collect on a 
phony insurance policy; if there is anything implausible 
about this red-hot plot, it's the idea that a man could 
even imagine living happily ever after with Stanwyck. But 
the plot twists make you overlook that; anyway, the 
irresistible desirability of a wicked dame is a given of 
the film noir genre, which Wilder never returned to 
despite this great success. In THE APARTMENT, a 
bittersweet comedy more in keeping with Wilder's other 
work, MacMurray plays a philandering business executive 
who cynically uses his mistress, played by Shirley 
MacLaine, and breaks her heart. Would anyone but Wilder 
have had the insight to see how perfect this light 
comedian could be in both these heavy roles?

     Wilder's other successes show his versatility: THE 
LOST WEEKEND, SUNSET BOULEVARD, STALAG 17, SOME LIKE IT 
HOT, and THE FORTUNE COOKIE. But his failures could also 
leave a bad taste. IRMA LA DOUCE, an attempt at a 
"sophisticated" European-style sex farce, is disgusting 
in conception and made worse by Jack Lemmon's foolish 
performance. Wilder, a European Jewish refugee, was 
refreshing in his wry disdain for Hollywood banality, yet 
he could sometimes combine cynicism with his own kind of 
bathos -- an unhappy mixture.

     Like most people I love movies; but just because 
they are so popular we make too much of them as an art 
form. We tend to forget that the very nature of the genre 
is inhospitable to genius. The greatest painter needs 
only a canvas and paint; the greatest poet needs only a 
pen and paper. But a movie requires, in the first place, 
a lot of money and so many talents that it's not 
altogether clear who deserves chief credit for the final 
result -- actors, director, writer, producer?

     The public usually goes to see the actors, the 
"stars." But among intellectuals, the fashion is to 
credit the director, the "auteur." And some directors do 
put their stamp on their films: Renoir, Welles, 
Hitchcock, Capra, Lean, Kurosawa, Kubrick, and Spielberg, 
to name the most obvious. But the writer may be even more 
important, yet few screenwriters are known to the public. 
The producer is the one who assembles all these diverse 
talents, but he is regarded as a mere businessman, of no 
artistic significance.

     Wilder made the question of credit fairly simple: he 
was usually producer, director, and co-author of the 
script. That's as close to total control of the project 
as one man usually gets.

     He leaves no successor, as they say, but I like to 
think there is one comparable talent in the American 
movie industry: the Coen brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen, a 
pair of Jews from Minnesota, write their own scripts, 
Ethan produces, and Joel directs.

     Their first film (nearly two decades ago already!) 
was BLOOD SIMPLE, which was quickly hailed as the most 
brilliant debut in ages. Debut or not, it's a terrific 
thriller, done in a distinctive style of eerie wit, about 
a man who hires a detective to kill his wife and her 
lover. You don't know where it's coming from until the 
very end; meanwhile, it delivers several shocking plot 
twists. Despite its low budget and lowlife Texas setting, 
the color cinematography is rich, verging on gorgeous.

     RAISING ARIZONA, their second movie, is a comedy 
about a childless couple who kidnap a quintuplet. Given 
that premise, it's hardly necessary to add that the 
comedy is offbeat. It's also hilarious and surprisingly 
warm, full of funny menace and witty dialogue -- two 
regular Coen touches.

     My favorite remains their third film, MILLER'S 
CROSSING, a neo-noir job roughly based on THE GLASS KEY. 
Albert Finney is tops as a lovably growling gangster 
betrayed but ultimately saved by his best friend. The 
movie abounds in funny nostalgia, eccentric characters, 
and period slang, none of which dissipate the electric 
tension of the plot.

     Since then the Coens have produced a half-dozen 
films, diverse in genre and atmosphere, but all of them 
bearing their unique style. BARTON FINK and FARGO have 
been the most successful, but nearly all of them are 
beautiful to watch and -- the rarer thing in movies -- 
delightful to listen to. It's far too early to sum up the 
Coens' work, but for my money they have already surpassed 
Wilder's lifetime achievement.



NUGGETS

HISTORY LESSON: In his pro-Israel history of Zionism, THE 
SIEGE, Conor Cruise O'Brien mentions that the "moderate" 
founders of Israel, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, 
viewed the proposed 1948 partition of Palestine as an 
interim measure, not a final settlement; in other words, 
a foot in the door. Ben-Gurion wrote privately that even 
a small "Jewish State in part of Palestine is not the end 
but the beginning. The establishment of such a Jewish 
State will serve as a means in our historical efforts to 
redeem the country in its entirety." Weizmann likewise 
wrote (also privately), "The Kingdom of David was 
smaller; under Solomon it became an Empire. Who knows? 
C'est le premier pas qui compte." Remember that the next 
time you hear that the obstinate Arabs missed their 
chance to have a state when they rejected the 1948 
partition. They apparently knew just what they were 
dealing with. (page 5)

MORDANT REFLECTION: To think! Two of the Beatles are now 
Dead White Males. (page 7)

ERNEST VAN DEN HAAG, R.I.P.: If cruelty to liberals were 
a crime, Ernest van den Haag, who died at 87 in late 
March, would have done life without parole. As I once put 
it, at a roast for this great, grouchy logician: "Bill 
Buckley gave us the romance of conservatism; Ernest gave 
us the S&M." He was great fun, and he died in the 
Catholic Church. He also had his faults, and I enjoyed 
every one of them. (page 9)

ECUMENICAL NOTES: In Powhatan, Virginia, two private 
schools -- Blessed Sacrament and Huguenot Academy -- have 
merged to form, yes, Blessed Sacrament Huguenot School. 
(page 9)

QUERIES: Why is democracy holy? Why did it take the human 
race so many centuries to realize its self-evident 
holiness? Why does only a small fraction of the human 
race realize it even now? And, by the way, what *is* 
democracy? 

YOU CAN'T WIN: Conor Cruise O'Brien says that G.K. 
Chesterton was a Zionist *because* he was anti-Semitic. 
I know it's anti-Semitic to disagree with the Jews; but I 
get confused when I'm told it's also anti-Semitic to 
agree with them.(page 12)


Exclusive to the electronic version:

DAREDEVIL: Bill Buckley has shocked some readers by 
attacking (after a fashion) Ariel Sharonıs "crackdown on 
terrorism." I am unshocked. In the first place, Bill has 
always known what's what in Israel, even when he played 
dumb. In the second place, his criticism is more tactical 
-- the crackdown will hurt *Israel* -- than moral. 
Still, he deserves credit for sticking his neck out: he 
has risked being fired from the staff of NATIONAL REVIEW. 

"WHIZZER" WHITE, R.I.P.: Former U.S. Supreme Court 
Justice Byron White, a relic of the Kennedy years, has 
died at 84. His occasional resistance to the Court's more 
bolshevist rulings -- notably on abortion -- won him an 
exaggerated reputation as a conservative. But he did give 
us a memorable phrase: he called the Court's 1973 
abortion ruling "an exercise of raw judicial power." 



REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)

* Can This War Be Won? (March 19, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/020319.shtml

* Bad Explanations (March 21, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/020321.shtml

* Bad Hair Night (March 26, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/020326.shtml

* Big Lies (March 28, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/020328.shtml

* The Catholic Position (April 4, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/020404.shtml

* Shakespeare and the Snobs (April 9, 2002)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/020409.shtml

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