by Kung Fu Jew · Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
The Republican Jewish Coalition is running Obama-hates-Israel ads full steam to the tune of $1 million — and the Forward and other papers are carrying them without challenge, prompting Tikun Olam and J Street to protest.
The ads are running in Haaretz, The Forward, JTA and Jewish Week calling the candidate “anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, hostile to America.”
Richard Silverstein over at Tikun Olam has an extensive exchange with David Drimer, Associate Publisher, and their PR firm (nu?) defending the ads. Well, not defending them, but certainly failing to explain why they’re not exercising any journalistic integrity. As Richard explains, blocking ads which lie isn’t censorship.
This is in light of FOX refusing Obama smear ads. And yet The Forward won’t?
The ads show every terrorist and Muslim leader feared by Jewish Americans with Obama’s ties and connections footnoted extensively. If only the footnotes were facts, it wouldn’t be psuedo-fact window dressing.
The most irritating component to me is the photo of Rob Malley labeled “Pro-Palestinian.” Malley is one of the most eloquent and frequently consulted peacenik voices in the American Jewish community. More than partisan, these ads are libelous.
J Street has out an action alert which you can tell the publications what you think: That there is a difference between free speech and fear mongering and hate-peddling, should be out of bounds, especially in the Jewish community.
by Kung Fu Jew · Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
The Simon Weisenthal Center has announced an alternative energy menorah, which will be sent to all 50 governors and mayors of major cities. “The menorah features a crystal design with candleholders inscribed with the laser-cut symbols for biofuel, electric car, wind power, clean coal, nuclear, natural gas, solar power and hydro power.” The reason is, says the center, if the Maccabees fought for freedom from foreign occupiers, America is now struggling for freedom from foreign oil despots.
Which tickles my funny bone more: That the Simon Weisenthal Center thinks treehugging is central to the fight to preserve the Jews? (Jews specifically, they mean, not just Jews among all other creatures that need a healthy environment.) Or that it thinks it can accomplish this with a piece of glass? Or that existing Jewish environmental advocacy groups, say COEJL, have been more or less ineffective outside the Jewish community?
Or that they think you’ll want to buy it for $162 online here?
by Kung Fu Jew · Thursday, September 25th, 2008
In the words of Mikhael Manekin of Breaking the Silence, directed to Defense Minister Ehud Barak: “The explosive device directed at Professor Sternhell is not a new incident; it’s merely closer to your home.”
One million shekel reward note for the death of members of Peace Now, found near the scene of the pipe bomb
In the past two days: a yeshiva rabbi poseks that those who condone transfer of Jewish property are subject to death and yesterday a pipe bomb and death reward poster was placed outside the home of the President of Shalom Achshav.
In response, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced, “We won’t let any elements, from any dark corner of Israeli society, to harass people who let their clear, lucide, unique voices like that of Ze’ev Sternhell be heard,” Barak said.
Really, Ehud?
Mikhael Manekin responds in an open letter in YNet today, “Barak, just do you job.” Is Barak really surprised? For years, Hebron has been the lab where the settlers test the limits of the Israeli government’s tolerance, he writes. Non-kipah wearing visitors to Hebron are attacked and even Ministers of Knesset find boiling water poured on them. It’s been reported on Israel’s Channel 10 news. The Arab world hears plenty about it. It’s not a damn secret, Barak.
“Police officials claim that they are concerned for our safety and fear that radical settlers are coming to the city from all across the territories. The police fear these settlers because they do not have the tools to deal with them. You, Mr. Barak, are not providing them with those tools.”
In essense, Barak, just do your job.
(The edict (fatwa?) by Rabbi Yisrael Rosen is rich, I recommend a full read of his quoting of Maimonades to justify the killing of fellow Jews.)
by Diaspora Mentality · Sunday, September 21st, 2008
Negative attitudes against both Jews and Muslims have worsened lately in Europe, according to a recent world-wide surveythat made the rounds in the news this past week.
Having grown up in Europe (Sweden) and being that my family still lives there and I visit often, none of this surprises me.
Let me start by saying that I am by no means trying to deny the fact that a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe comes from Muslim communities (and vice-versa, as we all well know). But, prejudice is not a zero-sum game, two wrongs do not make a right.
I often hear American and Israeli Jews bemoan the influx of Muslims in Europe. It drives me up the wall when I hear Jews talking about how “scary” Europe’s new large communities of Muslims are. Obviously blanket statements about any group are never good. But such talk like also shows a total lack of understanding of the topography of prejudice in Europe.
Jews — even those of us who are born in Europe and hold European passports — are just as weird and foreign to the majority of Europeans as Muslims are. This is especially true in northern Europe where someone who is darker than the average German or Swede (as many Jews are) is immediately pegged as a foreigner.
The very same right-wing parties and individuals in Europe that talk about ousting Muslim immigrants often hate Jews even more. In fact some on the extreme right have been known to work with anti-Jewish Islamists. If Jews, American or otherwise, fuel Islamophobic flames unthinkingly we are only contributing to a fire that will ultimately burn European Jews too.
by Aryeh Cohen · Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Maimonides, in what is perhaps one of the more disturbing implications of his Guide to the Perplexed, concludes that stupid people (as infidels) should be put to death (I:36,37). His fear is that stupid people have the wrong understanding of God—thinking that God can change by answering prayers, or that God might do something in contravention of the laws of nature, etc—and that this understanding of God is idolatrous. So, Maimonides’ thinking goes, we should kill them for committing idolatry.
I never really understood the thinking behind this passage until the current election. Idolatry is essentially a form of thinking in which one privileges a fictional account of reality, given a life of its own, over reality. When it is applied to politics writ large it becomes fascism. The state, a political entity which in actuality is the aggregate of the residents and citizens of a geographical region who have invested certain power in a few people to deploy the treasure and armed might of the state in their names, is transformed into an entity independent of its citizens, a being almost, which exists outside of history (the thousand year Reich, for example). When applied to commerce, it ends up in a reified “market” understood as a natural force rather than the aggregate of thousands of choices which may be tracked sociologically but do not exist independently of those who make the choices.
In the current campaign, where the reality is that we are spending life and treasure at an absurd level in a wrong-headed war, and the economy is collapsing–and threatens to bring the empire down with it–because the “market” doesn’t, apparently, regulate itself, it boggles the mind that the McCain/Palin (or McSame/Pain as one bumper sticker has it) campaign chooses to deride community organizing and falls back on macho rhetoric (“I didn’t blink,” “I won’t blink,” “I never blink”) and declares the economy essentially sound and is not driven out of town on a rail.
While Sarah Palin might work as an icon of change–young, not of Washington, not beclouded by thoughts of foreign policy–the icon, as all icons, has no independent substance. She is, as one supporter of Palin said, “anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, anti-Big Oil, a lifetime member of the N.R.A., she hunts, she fishes — she is the perfect woman!” What is needed is some good old iconoclasm.
WAKE UP EVERYBODY!! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!
by BZ · Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
[UPDATE: The Republican Jewish Coalition has taken credit.]
John McCain has been on a maverick mission to run the sleaziest presidential campaign in history, so it was only a matter of time before push polling entered the picture. The AP reports:
The Jewish Council for Education in Research says at least two women in separate states were push polled, or asked questions intended to influence voters while pretending to take a poll, on Sunday afternoon from a caller who said he was from Research Strategies.
Joelna Marcus says she became uncomfortable when the caller asked if she was Jewish, whether she was Orthodox and how often she attends synagogue.
The caller then asked if Marcus would be influenced if she learned that Obama had donated money to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The caller also asked how she would vote if she learned that someone on the Illinois senator’s staff had close ties to Palestine.
[...]
Deborah Minden, who lives in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh received a similar call Sunday afternoon. After asking basic demographic information, Minden, 56, said the caller said, “I’m going to ask you some things about Sen. Obama and you tell me if it would make you more or less likely to vote for him.”
The poller then ticked off a list of accusations including that Obama’s church had made anti-Semitic statements and that Obama had met with Hamas leaders.
Now where would McCain supporters have learned about this dirty and dishonest tactic? I don’t know, maybe from here:
Having run Senator John McCain’s campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary.
[...]
Anonymous opponents used “push polling” to suggest that McCain’s Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the “pollster” determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.
Thus, the “pollsters” asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that’s not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.
This time around, the push polls are targeting Jewish voters in Florida and Pennsylvania rather than racist white Republican voters in South Carolina, but the tactics are the same. And the trick here is that by saying “Would you be more or less likely to vote for _____ if ____?”, they’re not making any falsifiable claims, so if pressed, they can claim that they’re not actually lying, just asking questions. (Perhaps this provides circumstantial evidence that McCain himself is not behind the push polls, since McCain’s own lies have been direct and out in the open.)
So two can play this game. I’d like to do a little poll to get the opinions of Jewish voters about the presidential election. Feel free to answer the poll questions in the comments to this post.
- Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that, when McCain was a POW in Vietnam, he tried to negotiate a deal with his North Vietnamese captors wherein the Jewish prisoners would remain in custody while the non-Jewish prisoners were released, but the North Vietnamese rejected the deal because it was too cruel?
- Would you be more or less likely to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket if you knew that Sarah Palin referred to Michael Chabon’s novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union as “the most horrifying book I’ve read,” adding “Thank God we don’t really have any Jews in Alaska!” ?
- Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that McCain’s second wedding was officiated by a minister who has said that all Jews must convert to Christianity or suffer eternal damnation?
- Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that, in a recently declassified 2002 memo to Dick Cheney laying out McCain’s reasons for supporting an invasion of Iraq, McCain said that Iraq would be a convenient base for the United States to launch missile attacks at Israel?
- Would you be more or less likely to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket if you knew that Bristol Palin’s fiance Levi Johnston is Jewish… and marrying a non-Jewish girl?
by Mel · Monday, September 15th, 2008
I thought it best for my first JewSchool post to just jump right on in there with my latest political tsuris, which is aggrieving but still more fun than making my who-do-I-have-to-apologize-to-this-year list.
So, there it was, snuck into the middle of Jeffrey Goldberg’s newest hard-hitter for the Atlantic Monthly. The article is basically an interrogation of how McCain approaches the idea and the realities of war, but what made me double-take was this:
The most plausible target of a McCain-ordered preemptive war would be Iran. In January 2006, he said, “There’s only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option—that is a nuclear-armed Iran. The military option is the last option, but cannot be taken off of the table.”
I asked him in Columbus to describe a situation in which preemption might be required. He offered a scenario in which Iran provides the terrorist group Hezbollah with weapons of mass destruction to use against Israel.
And a little later, the coup de grace:
In May, when I asked McCain why the defense of Israel was an American national-security interest, he said, “The United States of America has committed itself to never allowing another Holocaust.”
In case you haven’t guessed, John McCain is pro-war. As in, pro-the-idea-of-war. The idea that war can solve things when diplomacy fails, regardless of the complexity of the issue.
I have been a massive news addict for this whole election cycle, and I am just sick over the intense tear-down Obama’s gotten from certain segments of the Jewish population (no secret here). I knew John McCain’s attitude towards armed conflicts—that they can work where diplomacy hasn’t yet—is bad, and that the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive military actions (known to some parties as the “Say what?”) might give any of our future Commanders in Chief an itchy trigger finger. I was already freaking out about that, and now I have to carry around the burden of knowing that when John McCain and the let’s-wipe-out-Iran crowd start fantasizing, Israel is playing a starring role. Fantastic.
I sent a friend to go talk to Jewish women at the Republican Convention and she was pretty clear that she thinks those women were voting on two issues: Israel and, at times, their taxes. That’s purely anecdotal and probably only speaks to the concerns of political-convention-goers of the Jewish, female and Republican persuasion, but certainly we all know Israel’s a major issue on the table. And I was thinking, maybe when young Jewish lefty orgs encourage us (those of us also young, Jewish and lefty) to engage with our friends and loved ones in a discussion of how Barack Obama is, in fact, not going to be terrible for Israel and don’t you really enjoy that Medicaid, Grandma?, maybe that’s when we should point out that Israel may be just another excuse. Maybe we don’t have to convince people that Barack Obama is great for Israel—maybe it will be enough to call into question this assumption that McCain would be. Because that answer above seems a little too quick and a little too easy—and I no longer trust Republicans not to launch a war using whatever’s at hand. How horrible it would be to have the start of the next war on our own naïve collective head.
by feygele · Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Daily Kos reports via The Politico that McCain’s VP nominee, Sarah Palin, was at church on August 17th for a sermon by David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus.
An illustration of that gap came just two weeks ago, when Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus.
Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church’s website.
“He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,” Kroon said.
Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.
“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.
Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”
Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.
So what’s the issue here? A Christian who potentially could be in a position of power over the US sat through a sermon that bridged Jews For Jesus and Evangelical Christians. And, what’s more for readers of this fine Jewish blog, heard why Jews need to hear the message of Jesus and his disciples, who had been Jewish (gee, I never knew that!), and the power of his salvation. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to have an elected official (even one who doesn’t know what her job would entail) with proselytizing views.
Mik Moore, of jspot and JewsVote, sent out an email addressing additional concerns:
Sen. McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin as his Vice President, cabinet member, and possible successor. Gov. Palin has no foreign policy experience whatsoever. She didn’t even have a passport in 2007 when she was preparing to take a trip to visit troops from Alaska’s National Guard.6 She got her start in politics as an ardent anti-choice activist and member of the Alaska Independence Party,[1] which advocates voting on Alaska’s secession from the United States.
In 1999 she attended a fundraiser for Pat Buchanan who was running for President.[2] The same Pat Buchanan who praised Hitler and blames Jews for turning Congress into “Israeli occupied territory;” the same Pat Buchanan who merits seven separate pages on the Anti-Defamation League’s website.[3] Buchanan has described Palin as a “[pitchfork] brigader for me in 1996, as was her husband. They were at a fundraiser for me. She is a terrific gal.”[4] Like many on the Christian Right, Palin believes that the earth is 6000 years old and has supported the teaching of creationism in the classroom.[4] As the editor of the L.A. Jewish Journal noted, a search for “Palin” in the AIPAC database produces no matches.[5] That is because Palin has no record on Israel, one of many countries she has never visited.[6]
Among Jews who take seriously American foreign policy generally, and particularly our nation’s approach to the Middle East and Israel, the choice of Sarah Palin is deeply disturbing. At this moment of international crisis and ongoing instability in the Middle East, why would John McCain choose as his successor and running mate a governor with absolutely no background in this area? With the future of Israel hanging in the balance, can we take a chance on John McCain, who chose Sarah Palin despite being told by many of his supporters that the choice was a bad idea?
Palin is also a life-long activist of the Christian Right. After eight years of a Bush Administration that at times appeared to exist solely to do the bidding of this powerful voting bloc, many Jews shudder at the idea that we could be in for another four years of the same with McCain/Palin. Yet according to the New York Times, McCain felt he had to ask Palin, and not his close friend Sen. Joe Lieberman or former Gov. Tom Ridge, because he feared the wrath of the Christian Right.[7]
This has left us with some important questions to consider. Will McCain serve out his term and not be forced to turn the White House over to President Palin? Will McCain continue to be controlled by the Christian Right? Will McCain’s decision making change once he is elected to take into account the needs other communities, including the Jewish community?
It was obvious that when Barack Obama selected Joe Biden to be Vice President, he placed the interests of the United States and our allies first. Unfortunately, when John McCain selected Sarah Palin to be Vice President, he placed the interests of the Christian Right and their allies first.
A McCain/Palin administration would combine the recklessness of McCain with the inexperience of Palin. It is now very clear that we need the steady hand of Obama/Biden during these challenging times for America, for Israel, and for our other allies abroad.
Those Jewish voters who were voting for Hillary and now considering McCain, based on Israel and not-Muslim pro-Jewish values? Time to reevaluate that decision.
by BZ · Monday, September 1st, 2008
You’d think that liberal Jews would know when to quit. They were very generously granted access to Robinson’s Arch (as long as they pay for admission to the archaeological park) so that they and their women “rabbis” wearing nothing but tefillin could hold “prayer services” and eat their bacon cheeseburgers in peace without interference from Torah-true Jews throwing things at them. That should have been enough to keep their mouths shut and their money streaming in. But wait till you hear their latest extremist demands.
The lefty rag The Jerusalem Post reports that a group of liberal Jews wanted to — get this — blow a ram’s horn. They claimed that they were doing it because today was the new moon, clear evidence that this was part of their feminist pagan goddess worship, with no connection to Judaism.
Fortunately, someone in this insane country is still sane, and the East Jerusalem Development Company told the dirty hippies that their idolatrous ceremony was unreasonable, preserving the sanctity of Judaism’s holiest site. It’s a good thing that this was nipped in the bud now; you wouldn’t believe what they were planning for Sukkot.
by Kung Fu Jew · Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Oh man, if it weren’t bad enough that the Jewish blogosphere too frequently contains steaming piles of right-wing ugliness, then Netanyahu’s visit to the purported first Jewish bloggers summit in Jerusalem just drives it all home for me. But in the same week, Jewschool posted a ton about a summit we support greatly, the Havurah Institute. Why?
As a humorous first interlude, whoever wrote the article knows dick about blogging in a hilarious way. Apparently, the Israel-Diaspora divide is exacerbated by different blogging platforms! Israelis and Arabs use Tapuz and Diaspora Jews use WordPress — it was a make aliyah call to Tapuz! Leave behind your wimpy and yeshivish WordPress for the sun-bronzed, muscular kibbutznik of LiveJournal! Come home, my sons, come home. Netanyahu said it, I swear. That and somehow the author thinks we all read Heeb to “keep up with the banter.” Whaaaat?
But short of the writing, the article is troubling and elucidating:
Netanyahu got a “storming applause” from “Jewlicious, West Bank Mama, Israpundit, and the like” at a conference organized by aliyah agency Nefesh B’Nefesh, which is not surprising. This of course is the Netanyahu who dismantled the social safety net of Israel, pushing through Knesset the odious (and thankfully repealed) welfare-to-work “Wisconsin Plan”. The Netanyahu against whom an 8-seat party composed of pissed off pensioners was created out of thin air in the same elections that created Kadima. Netanyahu who represents the Greater Israel schemers and the all-military-all-the-time cheerleaders. He’s the head of Israel’s largest right-wing party. And the Jewish blogosphere loves him. Isn’t that a shame? [Editor's post-note: Haaretz also picked up on the right-wing selection; Nefesh B'Nefesh disputes bias claim.]
Where’s the summit of the Jewish blogosphere which supports social justice within Israel, and not punitive programs against Israel’s own poor? And the Jbloggers who find more to be concerned about in the world than Israel’s aliyah rate? Maybe some Jbloggers who think that Israel’s society might benefit from an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Essentially, where were the Jewschoolers hanging out? Easy: last week a bunch of us were at the Havurah Institute. More »
by Justin Goldstein · Friday, July 18th, 2008
In a heated interrogation of Morris (Moshe) Talansky, American business man and bankroller of Olmert’s campaigns and general lavish lifestyle, contradicts his earlier testimony. A link of the video, courtesy of ynet.com, can be seen here, in English with Hebrew subtitles. One of the interrogators asks the poignant question: “If nothing was done wrong why are you so angry?”
Ha’retz reports:
Talansky was quizzed about contributions he had passed on to Olmert during his Jerusalem mayoral campaigns in 1993 and 1998. Eli Zohar, Olmert’s attorney, presented Talansky with a letter from an accountant which alludes to Olmert’s ‘93 campaign. The letter states that the source of NIS 80,000 which were donated remains unaccounted for. The witness was asked if it was possible that the sum of money was befitting the amounts he had procured for Olmert.
The American businessman was then presented a list of donors to Olmert’s 1998 campaign. Earlier, Talansky claimed that none of the donors had contributed money by way of Talansky. Zohar then produced a statement Talansky gave to police in which he confirmed that some of the donors on the list had in fact contributed money through him.
When asked about the discrepancy, Talansky said that he thought he was being asked about donors who had contributed in cash, and not donors who had sent checks.
Further into questioning, Talansky was shown a list of donors, each of whom had contributed $1,200 to Olmert’s 1998 campaign. Talansky said that the names that appear on the list were people who did not attend fundraising events, and that Uri Messer, Olmert’s former law partner, told him that the amount was the maximum contribution that was permissible.
Olmert’s lawyers then showed Talansky a video of the testimony he gave to the prosecution on May 21 in which he stated that the donors indeed attended fundraisers and that it was Olmert who issued the directive about the maximum amount that donors could contribute.
by Kung Fu Jew · Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Profiled in all his ugliness in The New Yorker this week: Billionaire Sheldon Adelson is the third richest man in America, a huge funder of birthright israel, Bush’s election campaigns, the ZOA, the Republican Jewish Caucus (check out the new RJC Watch blog, by the way), One Jerusalem, AIPAC…the list goes on. You’re looking at the sugardaddy-Godfather of American (Jewish) right-wingery here.
More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., conservative legal-advocacy group is attempting to provoke a new legal challenge to the rule that requires nonprofits to refrain from intervening in political campaigns. To be clear, it is llegal for nonprofits, including churches and synagogues, to endorse or publicly oppose political candidates or to intervene in candidates’ elections, although they are free to take sides on issues.
Alliance fund staff hopes 40 or 50 houses of worship will take part in the action, including clerics from liberal-leaning congregations. About 80 ministers have expressed interest, including one Catholic priest, says Erik Stanley, the Alliance’s senior legal counsel.
“The government should not be telling the church what it should or should not be saying,” says the Rev. Steve Riggle, senior pastor of Grace Community Church in Houston, who hopes to take part in the Alliance effort. Mr. Riggle says he told his congregation from the pulpit, before the Texas primary in March, that he was supporting former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee for president. “As a pastor, a private citizen, I can speak for myself. The IRS cannot quench my voice,” he says.
In recent years, attempts by members of Congress to change the law have failed. “Tax exemption is a benefit, and it comes with conditions,” says Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit that has filed more than a dozen complaints in the past year with the IRS, accusing nonprofits of tax-code violations. “So if any pastor out there feels he is gagged or can’t speak on partisan politics…forgo the tax exemption and say what you want.”
Personally, I think this is a crock. The “Alliance” is attempting to get some liberl clergy involved with it’s attempt to overturn this rule, but the rule is there for a good reason; to prevent the kind of nonsense we see in Israel with rabbis giving out amulets to vote for this one, or cursing people who vote for that one, and telling people who they must vote for or be booted. It’s not like if your minister/rabbi/preacher/ priest has an opinion on the candidate it’s likely to be a big secret (although I did once have a conversation with a rabbi who told me that their congregation couldn’t guess who they would vote for. They were proud of it, I thought it a sign that that person never engaged in real advocacy; IMO a problem if you actually believe in the words you read in our texts), which is, IMO okay. I think that clergy should have opinions - and I don’t limit it to those whose opinions agree with mine (although if they don’t they’re wrong, of course)- and act on them, but I don’t want to see the pulpit devolve into an opportunity to socially coerce the votes of their followers . As we all know, there are clergy who may not be perfect out there, and I’m just as happy for them not to abuse the privilege.
by chillul Who? · Thursday, April 10th, 2008
Jews On First has the details. You may remember Indian River as the area of Delaware from which the Dobriches, a Jewish family, fled to escape the non-stop harassment, antisemitic abuse, and Christian bigotry which began when they complained about the district-sanctioned proselytizing by teachers and school officials.
The story has been proceeding through varying levels of ugliness for a few years. Just a few months ago there was that elementary school teacher who told her class that Barack Obama was a Muslim, and therefore “different” and “scary”. Or the mob of 800 that turned out to jeer & silence advocates of pluralism at an IRSD board meeting in 2006.
Hopefully, this lawsuit settlement - which includes not only monetary damages paid to the victims of the harassment but new, constitutional, policies on what religious expression is and is not allowed in a public school - will eventually protect the religious minorities of southeastern Delaware from more violations of their and their childrens’ constitutional rights. (see Jews On First for the text of the new policies, it’s a fascinating read) But before the happy dances can begin in Indian River, there needs to be a sea change in the local culture. And there needs to be eagle-eyed vigilance to make sure these new policies are followed.
I was astonished when this story first broke a few years ago, that these kind of First Amendment and civil rights violations could happen in the beach towns of what I considered the diverse and enlightened Mid-Atlantic, but a friend from Wilmington, DE insisted that she wasn’t surprised. The reaches below the C & D Canal (containing most of Delaware’s area and a tiny fraction of its population) are known to the Wilmingtonians to their north as “The Slower Lower”, a region less defined by its historical stature as the First State or by its consumer-pleasing lack of sales tax, and more by its residents’ apparent difficulty with remembering which side of the Civil War they were on. (That would be the winning side).
So is it possible to introduce a culture of respect for diversity by fiat? What is needed to make it stick?
by Kung Fu Jew · Saturday, March 15th, 2008
You might not call this direct support of Breaking the Silence, but you can call it standing up against right-wing blowhards like Mort Klein. This I can definitely respect. Rabbi Bernie was distraught by the “lack of context” to the exhibit but nonetheless stood by his students’ decision to bring the exhibit into a Jewish space. He, like many others, disagree with the soldiers on many points. But thank the Lord this doesn’t mean he’s like some of the people who’ve come to exhibit simply to tell the soldiers that they should be shot as traitors. Or even attack them (and Hillel International at large) for being anti-Israel, as Mort did in a press release.
The highlights here, the full open letter below the fold.
On the ZOA:
I do not know the mission of the ZOA. If, however, your mission does include working with young Jews, you have done a grievous disservice to the ZOA. If it is not part of your mission, you should not intrude clumsily and aggressively into the Harvard campus, and undermine the good work of young Jews…
…Truth from a skyscraper in New York City looks different than on the ground of a campus in Cambridge. Every campus and every Hillel has its own unique culture.
On the student body:
Many students feel inconvenienced by the presence of the exhibit in the building. Many more criticize the presentation of the exhibit itself. Some feel that it humanizes the soldiers and they come away with a more positive feeling about Israel. I myself did not anticipate this response. It is more widespread than I would have thought.
On what Mort’s press release did:
…As a result of your actions, our students are receiving hate emails [from ZOA members]. In light of what you have said and have not said, this is a totally predictable response. If you intended to injure and hurt young Jews, your recent actions and words are a success. If your goal is to inflame and to defame Harvard Hillel, you should justly feel a sense of pride – mission accomplished.
Whether you’re into Breaking the Silence or otherwise, you can also tell Mort to fuck off here.
More »
by Kung Fu Jew · Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Mort Klein is at it again: playing Jewish communal chicken with forces bigger than himself. This excellent reportage from Larry Cohler-Esses at the NY Jewish Week about Breaking the Silence:
“This is a fight over the identity of Israel and Judaism,†said group co-founder Yehuda Shaul…“This is why American Jews must take part in the debate.â€
But Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, declared he would call the national president of Hillel this week to protest the Harvard chapter’s decision to provide Breaking the Silence a venue.
“Harvard Hillel should be ashamed of itself and should immediately rescind giving legitimacy to a program that only promotes hatred against Israel and Jews,†he declared. “They should not be allowing programs that harm Israel’s image, in this case falsely. Donors give to Hillel because they think they will be promoting love for Israel, not a negative and distorted image of the Israeli Army.â€
Mort’s private ZOA soapbox is noisy. But if he wants to go head-to-head with 500 Israeli soldiers who saw it, did it, and regretted it, then he’s more than welcome to embarrass himself once more. (Hell, he should do it more often.) He’s called BTS a lie. A year ago, Mort Klein tried and failed to get the UPZ kicked out of the pro-Israel campus umbrella for sponsoring a tour by the veterans. It comes as no surprise to anyone that his goat is got again.
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by chillul Who? · Friday, February 8th, 2008
Reports of religious impropriety in today’s U.S. military appear with the regularity of abuse reports from Rubashkins meat plants. Unlike the Agriprocessors scandal, however, the problem of Evangelical Christian influence in places like the U.S. Air Force Academy has attracted little Jewish attention and less organized response, except from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and its founder, retired J.A.G. Michael Weinstein.
The latest issue exposed by the MRFF is the invitation of three Arab converts to Christianity to speak at a weeklong conference on terrorism organized by cadets at the Air Force Academy. The three speakers, Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zak Anani, claim to be reformed Islamist terrorists and “have appeared numerous times on Fox News Channel, The 700 Club, the Pastor John Hagee program and other venues in which they engaged in embellished stories of their conversion from Islam to Christianity, extolling its virtues and the wholesale denigration of Islam and its followers,” according to the MRFF’s Richard Baker.
The Academy’s official story, on the other hand, as related by spokesman Brett Ashworth to a NY Times reporter, is that “the three were invited because ‘they offered a unique perspective from inside terrorism,’… [and that] the conference is to result in a report on methods to combat terrorism that will be sent to the Pentagon, members of Congress and other influential officials.”
There must be individuals out there with more reliability than Shoebat, Saleem, and Anani who can provide that kind of perspective, however, considering that experts who have heard them speak have serious doubts about the stories they present: More »
by Kung Fu Jew · Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
Avigdor Lieberman, avowed racist and right-wing MK, pulled his 11-seat Beiteinu party out of the coalition government, leaving Olmert still standing with a majority of 67 of 120 seats but lacking a clear mandate.
CNN reports, “Avigdor Lieberman announced Wednesday he was pulling his Israel Beiteinu party out of Israel’s coalition government because the new push to establish a peace deal was taking the focus off more pressing issues, such as the threat from Iran.”
More:
 Lieberman said the issues of a shared capital, borders with a Palestinian state, and the return of Palestinian refugees are “the most sensitive nerve points of the Israeli society” and threaten to divide the Jewish state.
“We are moving from consensus and agreement to discord,” he said.
…”This process, this direction of Annapolis, I cannot accept and if I cannot accept this process I must be out of the government.”
…Good riddance.
