Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

When Ariel Sharon made the decision to abandon Gaza to Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorists numerous security experts warned that this would grant a major victory to the terrorists. The media and the politicians chose not to see it. The cost of the withdrawal is estimated at 11 Billion Shekels. The results struck a blow at the core of the army and destroyed the Likud. When the former Likud and Labor party members who formed Kadima were running for elections, the first of a new wave of Katushya rockets struck Ashkelon. The news was suppressed in Israel by a military censor so as not to 'affect the election.' As usual the political elites protect themselves while the public is under fire from their mistakes. Thousands are still homeless and unemployed after the Disengagement. Olmert's new plan will wind up costing several times more than the entire education budget and will leave ten times that number homeless and unemployed. Between the wave of irresponsible fiscal spe...

"Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Akiva were walking towards Yerushalayim. When they arrived at the Temple Mount, they saw a fox running out of the area where the Holy of Holies had been. They began to cry, while Rabbi Akiva laughed." "They said to him, 'Why are you laughing?' " "He responded, 'Why are you crying?' " " 'If from the place about which it is written, 'And the stranger who enters there, shall die,' we see a fox coming out, should we not cry?' " "For that very reason, I am laughing. Yeshayahu the Prophet said, 'I will bring two reliable witnesses regarding my People, Uriah the Priest and Zecharya ben Yevarech'yahu. '(Yeshayahu 8:2) Now what do Uriah and Zecharya have to do with each other? Uriah prophesied in the time of the First Temple, and Zecharya in the time of the Second Temple! But the verse in Yeshayahu makes Zecharya's prophecy dependent on...

Long before 1939 rolled around the Nazis had gotten well underway by drumming up a campaign of hate against Jews. Today many of the same Protestant denominations, such as the Lutherans and the Methodists, who supported Hitler then have signed on to divestment, the first stages of extending the decades old Arab boycott of Israel to America and the West. In Europe major political parties and labor unions have already proposed boycotts of Israel and even academic boycotts of scientists and engineers and graduate students whose only crime is being from Israel; regardless of their personal politics. That divestment from Israel has gained more traction among Unitarians, Presbyterians, Methodists and Lutherans than on any academic campus strongly suggests that these denominations are either more left wing or more Anti-Semitic than even American campuses. Either possibility is extremely disturbing at best considering that these are the spirtual leaders for a large number of Americans. In Europ...

For all that the future of Israel is at stake in this election, it is a surprisingly quiet one. Prime Minister Olmert has refused to participate in television debates and as Kadima's Tzahi Hanegbi has said, they want a boring election. A quiet election serves the incumbents best. With the takeover of the Labor Party by the Histadrut, the left wing Labor set has departed Labor and the Likud's own left and the careerists all joined together with Kadima. This leaves Kadima with the lion's share of the center-left vote. It has also meant that most of the contest for votes is happening on the right and instead of joining together to fight Kadima, much of the right-wing and religious parties are fighting the Likud and each other. Mafdal\Ehud Leumi and Shas and Hazit and Herut are busy bashing the Likud and arguing why they deserve the votes. Aside from Shas, they have a point. They do represent a lot of the correct ideas that the Likud has increasingly abandoned about fighting te...

The accusation of Islamophobia is thrown around more and more often these days, most often at critics of terrorism. Recently the refusal to turn over American ports to an Arab nation with strong ties to Al-Queda was described as Islamophobia. The Danish cartoons which inspired Muslim death threats were also described as Islamophobic. The cartoons depicted, for the most part Mohammed, the supposed prophet of Islam, and his affinity for murder and it is this which inspired the vast resevoir of Muslim rage. But let us consider the term 'Islamophobia' for a moment. We live in a very politically correct society nowadays which has words to describe many types of bigotries. There is Anti-Semitism for hatred aimed at Jews. There is racism for hatred aimed at various races. There is homophobia for hatred of homosexuals. There is Misogyny for hatred of women. Islamophobia is different than all of these in a very fundamental way. Where the words for all these forms of bigotry focus on the...

An 88 year old New Jersey man is about to be thrown out of his home. He is not a criminal. He is not in debt or defaulting on any payments. The home is his own. He is a war hero who served his country well. He lived a good life and wants nothing more than to live out the remainder of his years in his own home. Yet the Mayor insists that he and many others be thrown out of their homes. Major American ports including those in New York and ports which the army uses to move military equipment and vehicles are about to be turned over to the control of an Arab company based out of Dubai. This sale will be funded by money raised from unknown sources. Though this directly endangers our security and puts millions of lives at risk, the President has threatened to use his veto against any attempt to prevent this takeover. What is the connection between these two things? Between the lonely struggle of an old man in Long Branch, NJ and the vulnerable ports of a great nation. The faltering ste...

He was a Prime Minister in waiting. A man without real military experience replacing a famed war hero whose tragic demise had given him power but his left-wing politics and vaugely slimy exterior hadn't made him too popular. It was election time now and the test of whether he would be able to hold onto power or not. With weak poll numbers he came up with a simple plan, Wag the Dog, a short-term military operation that would boost his standing and credibility on national security and fighting terrorism. The Prime Minister in question was Shimon Peres but it could just as easily have been Ehud Olmert. In 1996 with a little over a month till the elections, Peres launched 'Operation Grapes of Wrath' pounding Hizbullah positions in Lebanon. In Israel with far less time to go and polls showing his Kadima party losing 10 seats and a public that now percieves him as left of center, Olmert launched his own version of 'Grapes of Wrath' with heavily publicised raids into Pales...

On March 17, 2005, the first post went up on Sultan Knish. I had initially posted it as a comment on a bulletin board where it was then picked up by a number of blogs including and was reprinted in the Jewish Press. Now it's +40,000 visitors, 556 posts, three templates and one year later. Sultan Knish has been listed several times in the Jewish Press Media Monitor blogs section, pieces from this blog have appeared in the Jewish Press, was nominated for Best Blog Overall in the IsreallyCool\Jerusalem Post blog awards, was linked to by Arutz 7 , SedmoyKanal, AFSI and a large number of sites and publications over the events in Amona. It's a lot more than I expected when I first started and there were definetly times over the past year I considered shuttering the blog. Sultan Knish has gone from a more random scattering of ideas, observations and photos to being focused on important issues with an emphasis on the War on Terror. The photos have been spun off to their own blog at Ne...

Text of Shas TV Ad In the video, Shas leader Ovadia Yosef tells of a man who passes away and reaches shamayim: "The malach at the sha'ar ha'shamayim says to the man, 'Go right in.' "'Why?' asks the man. "'Because you built tens of mikvaot and batei tefila,' answers the malach. "'I built all these things?' asks the dumbfounded man. 'I barely earn a lira a month.' "'But on the day of the elections you voted for Shas, and Shas built a lot of mikvaot and batei tefila, so your place is in shamayim.'" Reality "The malach at the shar ha'shamayim says to the man, 'Go to your place down in gehinom.'" "Why?' asks the man. "Because you caused the murders of thousands of Jews, the destruction of numerous batei midrashim, batei tefila and mikvaot and the ultimate destruction of Eretz Yisrael,' answers the malach. "Me?' asks the dumbfounded man. 'I never did anyt...

Courage often lies with daring the impossible. The word originated from Medieval French meaning "heart and spirit," because courage requires a brave heart and a courageous spirit. True courage means facing down an impossible situation. It means defying conventional wisdom, the voices of authority, social pressures and sometimes even common sense to do what is right. The media today excels at telling us what to think and what to believe. What good 'normal' ideas we should hold, as opposed to the evil 'extremist' ones. What attitudes are acceptable and what attitudes are unacceptable. For many the media has become the voice of conscience suppressing the human conscience within. It has usurped the role of G-d, the role of our parents and our teachers. It takes courage to defy these things. For those who have adopted the normative positions of the media as truth defiance is extremism and the defier an extremist. To step outside their box, to hold to actual v...

The casual reader browsing the Israeli press might have thought that the front page announcements that a 'Religious Settler Rabbi' had endorsed Kadima was some sort of major news story. Every outlet from Yediot Aharanot to the Jerusalem Post seemed to give it top billing with the impression being that even 'such a person' supports Olmert. The reality is that it would have been much more shocking if Oslo's Rabbi, Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun hadn't endorsed Kadima, since he was also a supporter of every land giveaway politician from Rabin to Peres to Barak. To say that Rabbi Bin Nun supports Kadima is as redundant as saying that a Yankees fan wants his team to win the World Series. This however doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of who Rabbi Bin Nun really is. After Rabin's assassination when the Labor party did their best to hang the act of one man around the neck of their political opposition, one of their key claims was that Yigal Amir had received ...

Anat Roth was a member of the left wing party Meretz, she had served as an assistant to several Labor Party MK's and working as a researcher for the Israeli Democracy Institute and doing her doctorate on the Yesha Council. She had extensively interviewed settlers and members of the council and she was at Amona when special police squads were sent in. Today she was in the Knesset testifying to the police brutality she had seen and experienced herself. Roth recounted how the pre-evacuation preparations for the confrontation among the protestors was of a totally non-violent nature. "They were instructed over and over that the nature of the struggle would be non-violent and merely passive," she said. "It was decided that the method of struggle would be the same as in Gush Katif, meaning – to sit on the floor, cross hands and be evacuated by force." "The children who were standing around the houses were shaking with fear, and groups of policemen stormed around t...

In a Newsweek roundtable Steven Spielberg lambasted members of the Jewish community who came out against his film “Munich.” "So many fundamentalists in my own community, the Jewish community, have grown very angry at me for allowing the Palestinians simply to have dialogue and for allowing Tony Kushner to be the author of that dialogue," Spielberg said. Ah yes those pesky 'fundamentalists' again. A fundamentalist according to Spielberg being apparently anyone who feels that using a movie about the murder of Israeli Olympic atheletes to smear Israel, based on a discredited book by a fraud with a script by Tony Kushner who had stated that he wished Israel had never existed; is wrong. This is apparently a whole new definition of Fundamentalist, meaning anyone who doesn't like Spielberg's movie is now a 'Fundamentalist' It's yet another demonstration of Liberal Newspeak. Newspeak was the fictional politically correct langauge of George Orwell's dys...