http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?eid=2470&ICJS=139&article=1186
ABC acknowledges errors in coverage of mid-east conflict
by Senator Michael Ronaldson
Monday January 29, 2007
from Media Release
Senator Michael Ronaldson, Liberal Senator for Victoria, today welcomed the ABC’s acknowledgement that its coverage of the Israel-Lebanon conflict in 2006 was riven with errors.
In answers to questions placed on notice by Senator Ronaldson at the Senate Supplementary Estimates Hearings in October 2006 the ABC has acknowledged that the news coverage was misleading.
The ABC specifically acknowledged that it had:
- repeatedly incorrectly described the location where Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists;
- used language that portrayed a bias against Israel;
- made references in stories that were inconsistent with its own policies, and
- misled viewers over the history of conflict in the area.
"I welcome the ABC’s admission that its reporting of the lamentable conflict in the middle-east last year did not accurately reflect the truth" Senator Ronaldson said.
At the Supplementary Estimates Hearings on 30 October 2006 Mark Scott, ABC Managing Director described the purpose of the ABC’s new editorial policies as being "really about good journalism – journalism that is fair, accurate, balanced and objective; journalism that lets the facts speak."
"If these recent admissions by the ABC are the first step towards the more fair, balanced, accurate and objective reporting that Mr Scott describes then it is a welcome step forward" Senator Ronaldson said.
"The ABC must learn from its mistakes and prevent such breaches of its own standards in the future"
"I will continue to keep a close watch on the ABC in the hope that its new editorial policy and new Director will ensure that the community does not see a repeat of such errors"
"The Australian community deserves public broadcasting that is balanced and objective. The ABC’s admissions make it appear that this has unfortunately not been the case in 2006"
Monday, January 29, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Porkbarreling Multiculturalism in Australia. (Anti-racism-racists!)
I wrote the following BLOG below, after the Cronulla riots in Sydney, just over a year ago.
Since then, we have seen several manifestations of the same inter-ethnic-type confrontations also in Melbourne, the latest between young Australians of Croat and Serb background, at the the Tennis centre, on the first day of the Australian Open Tennis Championships.
"ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN AUSTRALIA. Dec. 2005.
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2005/12/ethnic-violence-in-australia-dec-2005.html
"The majority of Australians are waking up to the unpleasant fact that there is a growing amount of interethnic-violence developing in our country. Most of us who come from Europe post WW2 could have predicted it. It was inevitable given the naiveté of the Australian politicians who devised the multicultural policies in this country."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The politicians did not divide ethnicity, nationality, religion and customs in a way that would ensure the development of a cohesive Australian society within the "multicultural policiws".
French writer Pascal Bruckner writes about mutliculturalism as "chaining people to their roots". The Jewish people welcome this aspect of multiculturalism and as far as the society at large is concerned, they have no need to fear any repercussions from this because the Jewish people have always contributed more to the societies in which they lived, than most other ethnic minorities, in any country.
However, there are some aspects of nationalistic and ethnic minorities which do not sit well with peaceful coexistence with some other minorities within the same country. Political "porkbarreling" to gain polling advantages, an exercise in which all Parties have been engaging in ever since the "Multicultural" word and policy has been coined in Australia, meant that new generations have been imbued with negative racist ideologies which Australians thought that the immigrant parents' generation had previously abandoned overseas!
A naively tolerant federal education system, coupled with a self-righteous journalistic tendency to promote the NESB perceived "underdogs", the minority communities irrespective of backgrounds,- has created an atmosphere wherein the new generation of young Australians of immigrant parentage feel free to display their racist, and/or anti-feminist and/ or anti-Semitic tendencies inherited from their parents' indoctrination,- all with Government largesse and no monitoring of what they were being taught in their ethnic and foreign nationalistic community institutions!
Pascal Bruckner in his aricle below, articulated something that has been noticed by most clear thinking people and their Western Governments. Those who claim to be "anti-racists" are in fact the new racists!
(On Wikipedia's entry about Pascal Bruckner's educational and literary CV, there is a note, obviously added at the end, that he is a "pro-USA acitivist" having written some articles in France in support of Donald Rumsfeld and American policies in Iraq!
Imagine,- how terrible! The anti-American lobby, is incensed! This is the group which includes of course the communists , anti-Semites, Islamists, anti-Israel and anti-Western activists, the so-called-peace-activists and every group of terrorists and anarchist rabble-rousers supporting the undemocratic world,- but going under the term and banner of "democratic", - as part of the "anti-American lobby" have labelled this French writer on Wikipedia for those groups' information.
These are of-course Bruckner's anti-racist racists! This is how Hitler and the Nazis managed to demonize the tolerant Jews for their planned genocide! Now copied by the Islamists against the Israelis. What a world is being prepared for future generations. )
MM
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http://www.signandsight.com/features/1146.html
2007-01-24
Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists?
Pascal Bruckner defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali against Ian Buruma and TimothyGarton Ash, condemning their idea of multiculturalism for chaining people to their roots.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"It's not enough that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live like a recluse, threatened with having her throat slit by radicals and surrounded by bodyguards. She - like the French philosophy professor Robert Redeker who has also been issued death threats on Islamicist websites - has to endure the ridicule of the high-minded idealists and armchair philosophers. She has even been called a Nazi in the Netherlands. (6) Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims!This vicious mechanism is well known. Those who revolt against barbarism are themselves accused of being barbarians. In politics as in philosophy, the equals sign is always an abdication. If thinking involves weighing one's words to name the world well, drawing comparisons in other words, then levelling distinctions testifies to intellectual bankruptcy. Shouting CRS = SS as in May '68, making Bush = Bin Laden or equating Voltaire to Savonarola is giving cheap satisfaction to questionable approximations. Similarly, the Enlightenment is often depicted as nothing but another religion, as mad and intransigent as the Catholicism of the Inquisition or radical Islam. After Heidegger, a whole run of thinkers from Gadamer to Derrida have contested the claims of the Enlightenment to embody a new age of self-conscious history. On the contrary, they say, all the evils of our epoch were spawned by this philosophical and literary episode: capitalism, colonialism, totalitarianism. For them, criticism of prejudices is nothing but a prejudice itself, proving that humanity is incapable of self-reflection. For them, the chimeras of certain men of letters who were keen to make a clean slate of God and revelation, were responsible for plunging Europe into darkness. In an abominable dialectic, the dawn of reason gave birth to nothing but monsters (Horkheimer, Adorno).The entire history of the 20th century attests to the fanaticism of modernity. And it's incontestable that the belief in progress has taken on the aspect of a faith, with its high priests from Saint Simon to August Comte, not forgetting Victor Hugo. The hideous secular religions of Nazism and communism, with their deadly rituals and mass massacres, were just as gruesome as the worst theocracies - of which they, at least as far as communism goes, considered themselves the radical negation. More people were killed in opposition to God in the 20th century than in the name of God. No matter that first Nazism and then communism were defeated by democratic regimes inspired by the Enlightenment, human rights, tolerance and pluralism. Luckily, Romanticism mitigated the abstraction of the Enlightenment and its claims to having created a new man, freed from religious sentiment and things of the flesh.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In AUSTRALIA, again, as previously pointed out:
" Those angry young men (and some women) who have a problem living in our modern, liberal, tolerant, gender-liberated and multicultural society, should try living in their parents' "old countries" for a while. It might enlighten them and straighten them out a little! Trying to change our society through violence to suit themselves won't work. Hopefully, even the soccer-field may become a uniting force, rather than a divisive one, now that Australia is in the World Cup!"
In fact, this is why the louts chose the Tennis Centre, by their own admission! They are looking for a fight wherever they can find it!
MM
Since then, we have seen several manifestations of the same inter-ethnic-type confrontations also in Melbourne, the latest between young Australians of Croat and Serb background, at the the Tennis centre, on the first day of the Australian Open Tennis Championships.
"ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN AUSTRALIA. Dec. 2005.
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2005/12/ethnic-violence-in-australia-dec-2005.html
"The majority of Australians are waking up to the unpleasant fact that there is a growing amount of interethnic-violence developing in our country. Most of us who come from Europe post WW2 could have predicted it. It was inevitable given the naiveté of the Australian politicians who devised the multicultural policies in this country."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The politicians did not divide ethnicity, nationality, religion and customs in a way that would ensure the development of a cohesive Australian society within the "multicultural policiws".
French writer Pascal Bruckner writes about mutliculturalism as "chaining people to their roots". The Jewish people welcome this aspect of multiculturalism and as far as the society at large is concerned, they have no need to fear any repercussions from this because the Jewish people have always contributed more to the societies in which they lived, than most other ethnic minorities, in any country.
However, there are some aspects of nationalistic and ethnic minorities which do not sit well with peaceful coexistence with some other minorities within the same country. Political "porkbarreling" to gain polling advantages, an exercise in which all Parties have been engaging in ever since the "Multicultural" word and policy has been coined in Australia, meant that new generations have been imbued with negative racist ideologies which Australians thought that the immigrant parents' generation had previously abandoned overseas!
A naively tolerant federal education system, coupled with a self-righteous journalistic tendency to promote the NESB perceived "underdogs", the minority communities irrespective of backgrounds,- has created an atmosphere wherein the new generation of young Australians of immigrant parentage feel free to display their racist, and/or anti-feminist and/ or anti-Semitic tendencies inherited from their parents' indoctrination,- all with Government largesse and no monitoring of what they were being taught in their ethnic and foreign nationalistic community institutions!
Pascal Bruckner in his aricle below, articulated something that has been noticed by most clear thinking people and their Western Governments. Those who claim to be "anti-racists" are in fact the new racists!
(On Wikipedia's entry about Pascal Bruckner's educational and literary CV, there is a note, obviously added at the end, that he is a "pro-USA acitivist" having written some articles in France in support of Donald Rumsfeld and American policies in Iraq!
Imagine,- how terrible! The anti-American lobby, is incensed! This is the group which includes of course the communists , anti-Semites, Islamists, anti-Israel and anti-Western activists, the so-called-peace-activists and every group of terrorists and anarchist rabble-rousers supporting the undemocratic world,- but going under the term and banner of "democratic", - as part of the "anti-American lobby" have labelled this French writer on Wikipedia for those groups' information.
These are of-course Bruckner's anti-racist racists! This is how Hitler and the Nazis managed to demonize the tolerant Jews for their planned genocide! Now copied by the Islamists against the Israelis. What a world is being prepared for future generations. )
MM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1146.html
2007-01-24
Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists?
Pascal Bruckner defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali against Ian Buruma and TimothyGarton Ash, condemning their idea of multiculturalism for chaining people to their roots.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"It's not enough that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live like a recluse, threatened with having her throat slit by radicals and surrounded by bodyguards. She - like the French philosophy professor Robert Redeker who has also been issued death threats on Islamicist websites - has to endure the ridicule of the high-minded idealists and armchair philosophers. She has even been called a Nazi in the Netherlands. (6) Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims!This vicious mechanism is well known. Those who revolt against barbarism are themselves accused of being barbarians. In politics as in philosophy, the equals sign is always an abdication. If thinking involves weighing one's words to name the world well, drawing comparisons in other words, then levelling distinctions testifies to intellectual bankruptcy. Shouting CRS = SS as in May '68, making Bush = Bin Laden or equating Voltaire to Savonarola is giving cheap satisfaction to questionable approximations. Similarly, the Enlightenment is often depicted as nothing but another religion, as mad and intransigent as the Catholicism of the Inquisition or radical Islam. After Heidegger, a whole run of thinkers from Gadamer to Derrida have contested the claims of the Enlightenment to embody a new age of self-conscious history. On the contrary, they say, all the evils of our epoch were spawned by this philosophical and literary episode: capitalism, colonialism, totalitarianism. For them, criticism of prejudices is nothing but a prejudice itself, proving that humanity is incapable of self-reflection. For them, the chimeras of certain men of letters who were keen to make a clean slate of God and revelation, were responsible for plunging Europe into darkness. In an abominable dialectic, the dawn of reason gave birth to nothing but monsters (Horkheimer, Adorno).The entire history of the 20th century attests to the fanaticism of modernity. And it's incontestable that the belief in progress has taken on the aspect of a faith, with its high priests from Saint Simon to August Comte, not forgetting Victor Hugo. The hideous secular religions of Nazism and communism, with their deadly rituals and mass massacres, were just as gruesome as the worst theocracies - of which they, at least as far as communism goes, considered themselves the radical negation. More people were killed in opposition to God in the 20th century than in the name of God. No matter that first Nazism and then communism were defeated by democratic regimes inspired by the Enlightenment, human rights, tolerance and pluralism. Luckily, Romanticism mitigated the abstraction of the Enlightenment and its claims to having created a new man, freed from religious sentiment and things of the flesh.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In AUSTRALIA, again, as previously pointed out:
" Those angry young men (and some women) who have a problem living in our modern, liberal, tolerant, gender-liberated and multicultural society, should try living in their parents' "old countries" for a while. It might enlighten them and straighten them out a little! Trying to change our society through violence to suit themselves won't work. Hopefully, even the soccer-field may become a uniting force, rather than a divisive one, now that Australia is in the World Cup!"
In fact, this is why the louts chose the Tennis Centre, by their own admission! They are looking for a fight wherever they can find it!
MM
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
JERUSALEM: plans for the future for a modern metropolis.
Focus on Jerusalem
The New Jerusalem?
(Planned since 2005.)
The heavenly Jerusalem is planned by God, but the earthly Jerusalem is planned by man.
Over the next 15 years, Jerusalem will undergo a major facelift, turning it into a super modern city, which combined with its ancient historical places, will attract millions of visitors from around the world. Plans include a skyscraper, a cable car, a blimp to give an aerial view of the city, and an artificial lake.Today this is a vision; tomorrow a reality. “Dreams and deeds are often much less different than we think,” said Israel’s founding father Theodor Herzl. “Every human deed starts with a dream and ends with a dream.” Under the plan, Israel will have its own version of the Eiffel Tower on the Hass Promenade in East Talpiot. The 130-meter (422-foot) tower, which will have a revolving restaurant on the top floor, will afford a magnificent view of Jerusalem and the Judean hills all the way to the Dead Sea. On King George Street, one of the main downtown thoroughfares, a 62-story skyscraper will be erected. Called Migdal haYekum (Universe Tower), it will be one of the tallest buildings in the Middle East. There will be a special covering over the famous Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, providing protection from rain in the winter and sun in the summer. The mall will be extended from Jaffa Road to Bezalel Street, where the new israel today bureau is located. The Great Synagogue on King George Street will be turned into the Museum of the Jewish People, at a cost of $33 million. The 250-meter (812-foot) Ezekiel Tunnel will begin near Damascus Gate in the Old City and run under the Moslem Quarter. The tunnel will incorporate Solomon’s Quarries, a big cave from Biblical times. It will include a sound-and-light show, restaurants and a theater with 480 seats. A 3,500-square meter (35,000-square foot) lake will extend from the popular Malcha Mall to the Biblical Zoo (see Drawing). It will include the capital’s first water park, with attractions like water-skiing, sailing and ice-skating. A new Imax Cinema will also be built in this area.
To the chagrin of environmentalists and ordinary citizens, the beautiful young forests around southwestern Jerusalem will be destroyed to accommodate 20,000 new housing units, highways, schools and other buildings. The forests were planted 70 years ago by the Jewish National Fund. The most hotly disputed project is in the eastern part of the city, where 3,500 housing units will be built connecting Israel’s biggest settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the Judean hills to Jerusalem. Since the US and Palestinians oppose this project, Israel will expand in the meantime to the West. It is easier to destroy the precious forests that are among the last unspoiled green areas of the capital, than to convince the world about Israel’s right to build on Biblical Land in Judea and Samaria.
Other projects include new highways and trains to connect the city to its growing suburbs. An ultra-modern bridge will be built at the entrance to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, designed by Spaniard Santiago Calatrava, one of the world’s top architects. The aim is to bring this vision to reality in just 15 years. But timetables are hard to keep in the turbulent Middle East, where wars, terrorism, unrest and politics often cause delays and a change in plans. Even the experts admit that the building of the earthly Jerusalem depends on grace from Heaven above. The City of the Great King, where the modern Jewish state meets ancient Jewish history
The New Jerusalem?
(Planned since 2005.)
The heavenly Jerusalem is planned by God, but the earthly Jerusalem is planned by man.
Over the next 15 years, Jerusalem will undergo a major facelift, turning it into a super modern city, which combined with its ancient historical places, will attract millions of visitors from around the world. Plans include a skyscraper, a cable car, a blimp to give an aerial view of the city, and an artificial lake.Today this is a vision; tomorrow a reality. “Dreams and deeds are often much less different than we think,” said Israel’s founding father Theodor Herzl. “Every human deed starts with a dream and ends with a dream.” Under the plan, Israel will have its own version of the Eiffel Tower on the Hass Promenade in East Talpiot. The 130-meter (422-foot) tower, which will have a revolving restaurant on the top floor, will afford a magnificent view of Jerusalem and the Judean hills all the way to the Dead Sea. On King George Street, one of the main downtown thoroughfares, a 62-story skyscraper will be erected. Called Migdal haYekum (Universe Tower), it will be one of the tallest buildings in the Middle East. There will be a special covering over the famous Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, providing protection from rain in the winter and sun in the summer. The mall will be extended from Jaffa Road to Bezalel Street, where the new israel today bureau is located. The Great Synagogue on King George Street will be turned into the Museum of the Jewish People, at a cost of $33 million. The 250-meter (812-foot) Ezekiel Tunnel will begin near Damascus Gate in the Old City and run under the Moslem Quarter. The tunnel will incorporate Solomon’s Quarries, a big cave from Biblical times. It will include a sound-and-light show, restaurants and a theater with 480 seats. A 3,500-square meter (35,000-square foot) lake will extend from the popular Malcha Mall to the Biblical Zoo (see Drawing). It will include the capital’s first water park, with attractions like water-skiing, sailing and ice-skating. A new Imax Cinema will also be built in this area.
To the chagrin of environmentalists and ordinary citizens, the beautiful young forests around southwestern Jerusalem will be destroyed to accommodate 20,000 new housing units, highways, schools and other buildings. The forests were planted 70 years ago by the Jewish National Fund. The most hotly disputed project is in the eastern part of the city, where 3,500 housing units will be built connecting Israel’s biggest settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the Judean hills to Jerusalem. Since the US and Palestinians oppose this project, Israel will expand in the meantime to the West. It is easier to destroy the precious forests that are among the last unspoiled green areas of the capital, than to convince the world about Israel’s right to build on Biblical Land in Judea and Samaria.
Other projects include new highways and trains to connect the city to its growing suburbs. An ultra-modern bridge will be built at the entrance to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, designed by Spaniard Santiago Calatrava, one of the world’s top architects. The aim is to bring this vision to reality in just 15 years. But timetables are hard to keep in the turbulent Middle East, where wars, terrorism, unrest and politics often cause delays and a change in plans. Even the experts admit that the building of the earthly Jerusalem depends on grace from Heaven above. The City of the Great King, where the modern Jewish state meets ancient Jewish history
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Carter aside, Israel deserves total support
By Jim Wooten
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2007/01/14/
At some point, the names matter. And so, too, do their words.
Whenever another person long invested in the passionsof Jimmy Carter feels so betrayed by the assertions in his latest book that they divorce themselves from his legacy work, the rest of us should surely take notice.When they, loyalists such as former Ambassador WilliamB. Schwartz Jr., scholars such as Kenneth Stein and Melvin Konner, public people never given to impetuousness, such as former state Rep. Cathey Steinberg and former De Kalb CEO Liane Levetan, when they - and others whose contributions to the betterment of this state and nation are renown - walkaway from the most important figure most of them will ever know, the world should take notice. And ask why.
In their farewell, the language is of a pained, bewildered soul forced to consider that they had misread, misjudged or been betrayed by a beloved and trusted friend. "I love Jimmy Carter and I've always loved Jimmy Carter," said Barbara Babbit Kaufman, one of the 14 who resigned last week as members of the Carter Center's board of councilors, along with Schwartz, Steinberg, Levetan and others. "But this isn ot the Jimmy Carter that I've always known and loved." she said. Konner, the Samuel Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory and the author of "Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews," wrote as much in a powerful AJC op-ed jus tbefore Christmas. "Carter has changed," wrote Konner."Something has happened to his judgment. I don't understand what it is, but I know it is very dangerous." He wrote too:"[Carter] has become a spokesman for the enemies of my people. He has become an apologist for terrorists."
Stein, a Middle East expert and the first executive director of the Carter Center , parted company expressing similar views and distress. In each case, their actions are minimized or discounted: The 14 are among a 200-member advisory board; the 21-member board of trustees is the important one. But the names and the language chosen by careful and precise scholars and people whose lives reflect soundness, judgment and balance reflect a concern the rest of us should share that Carter's book"Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" chooses sides with harmful and lasting consequence. It's a legitimate worry. This is not a tempest-in-a-teapot, a spat or a quarrel among friends.The matter of Israel 's survival and this country's relationship with it is much too consequential to discuss in the normal language of political debate. But I do sense a growing willingness, on the left especially, to regard Israel as the villain and America as the enabler. As the war in Iraq has grown more unpopular in thiscountry, there's an eagerness to make peace, or at least the illusion of peace, so that we can get out.If we leave in defeat, the entire world knows we won't go back, even in defense of Israel , for at least the time it took to recover from Vietnam .
For me this is not a time to be equivocal, either about Iraq , Iran , Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas or our commitments to friends who believe in our word.Israel's right to exist has never been affirmed by its enemies. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vows to see it destroyed. Palestinians chose a terrorist organization, Hamas, in parliamentary elections a year ago. Syria arms Hezbollah, which seeks to destroyIsrael , as Syria would directly if it could. For my part, there can be no "balance" in U.S. policyin the region.
Retreating from Gaza in the summer of 2005, Israel did something this country would never have done, sending 25,000 soldiers to haul 8,500 of its citizens from their abodes, sacrificing their homes and land to the prospect of peace. What did they get in return? A rain of missiles. With that example, with Hezbollah and Hamas, and a frighteningly dangerous leader in Iran who is no more than five years away from nuclear weaponry ”- sworn enemies all ”- you'll not find a word here that undermines support in this country for Israel . That was surely not Carter's intentions, but I fear it will be a consequence.We have one permanent friend in the region and that is Israel .
When longtime Carter supporters speak out, as Stein and Konner and board members who resigned last week did, the rest of us should listen.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor.
His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2007/01/14/
--
By Jim Wooten
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2007/01/14/
At some point, the names matter. And so, too, do their words.
Whenever another person long invested in the passionsof Jimmy Carter feels so betrayed by the assertions in his latest book that they divorce themselves from his legacy work, the rest of us should surely take notice.When they, loyalists such as former Ambassador WilliamB. Schwartz Jr., scholars such as Kenneth Stein and Melvin Konner, public people never given to impetuousness, such as former state Rep. Cathey Steinberg and former De Kalb CEO Liane Levetan, when they - and others whose contributions to the betterment of this state and nation are renown - walkaway from the most important figure most of them will ever know, the world should take notice. And ask why.
In their farewell, the language is of a pained, bewildered soul forced to consider that they had misread, misjudged or been betrayed by a beloved and trusted friend. "I love Jimmy Carter and I've always loved Jimmy Carter," said Barbara Babbit Kaufman, one of the 14 who resigned last week as members of the Carter Center's board of councilors, along with Schwartz, Steinberg, Levetan and others. "But this isn ot the Jimmy Carter that I've always known and loved." she said. Konner, the Samuel Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory and the author of "Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews," wrote as much in a powerful AJC op-ed jus tbefore Christmas. "Carter has changed," wrote Konner."Something has happened to his judgment. I don't understand what it is, but I know it is very dangerous." He wrote too:"[Carter] has become a spokesman for the enemies of my people. He has become an apologist for terrorists."
Stein, a Middle East expert and the first executive director of the Carter Center , parted company expressing similar views and distress. In each case, their actions are minimized or discounted: The 14 are among a 200-member advisory board; the 21-member board of trustees is the important one. But the names and the language chosen by careful and precise scholars and people whose lives reflect soundness, judgment and balance reflect a concern the rest of us should share that Carter's book"Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" chooses sides with harmful and lasting consequence. It's a legitimate worry. This is not a tempest-in-a-teapot, a spat or a quarrel among friends.The matter of Israel 's survival and this country's relationship with it is much too consequential to discuss in the normal language of political debate. But I do sense a growing willingness, on the left especially, to regard Israel as the villain and America as the enabler. As the war in Iraq has grown more unpopular in thiscountry, there's an eagerness to make peace, or at least the illusion of peace, so that we can get out.If we leave in defeat, the entire world knows we won't go back, even in defense of Israel , for at least the time it took to recover from Vietnam .
For me this is not a time to be equivocal, either about Iraq , Iran , Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas or our commitments to friends who believe in our word.Israel's right to exist has never been affirmed by its enemies. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vows to see it destroyed. Palestinians chose a terrorist organization, Hamas, in parliamentary elections a year ago. Syria arms Hezbollah, which seeks to destroyIsrael , as Syria would directly if it could. For my part, there can be no "balance" in U.S. policyin the region.
Retreating from Gaza in the summer of 2005, Israel did something this country would never have done, sending 25,000 soldiers to haul 8,500 of its citizens from their abodes, sacrificing their homes and land to the prospect of peace. What did they get in return? A rain of missiles. With that example, with Hezbollah and Hamas, and a frighteningly dangerous leader in Iran who is no more than five years away from nuclear weaponry ”- sworn enemies all ”- you'll not find a word here that undermines support in this country for Israel . That was surely not Carter's intentions, but I fear it will be a consequence.We have one permanent friend in the region and that is Israel .
When longtime Carter supporters speak out, as Stein and Konner and board members who resigned last week did, the rest of us should listen.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor.
His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2007/01/14/
--
JIMMY CARTER'S JEWISH PROBLEM. Debra Lipstadt, Washington Post.
Debra Lipstadt says it is hard to criticize an icon. From the comments posted after her article in The Washington Post, too many people seem to believe "the icon" and his Arab sponsors, and not the critics. It seems that they agree with Carter and apportion no blame or responsibility to the Arabs whatsoever,- only to the Jews and Israelis.
"How one makes one's bed, so does one lie in it" is an old adage. The Jews in Palestine took what was given to them by the UN, then not only had to fight to keep it, but gained more land in the process, developed their country while having to maintain an army at the ready to survive constant terrorism and danger of annihilation from their "unfriendly" neighbours.
What have the Palestinian Arabs done in the meantime? What have their millions of Arab brethren done to help them? Lived on handouts from the UN, built nothing, constantly whingeing, inciting to hatred, war and killings and produced nothing to help themselves in 60 years. Now they want to destroy whatever Israel has,- not to build on it!
They could have had it all,- a state of their own, a normal life for their people and a peaceful coexistence,- if they would only know the meaning of that word. All they had to do is extend their hand in peace, but it seems that this is an unknown concept amongst the Islamists in the ME.
I wonder how many Washingtonians who blame Israel would like to go to bed with these Al Qaida-like neighbours?
MM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WASHINGTON POST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR2007011901541_pf.html
Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem
By Deborah Lipstadt
Saturday, January 20, 2007; A23
It is hard to criticize an icon. Jimmy Carter's humanitarian work has saved countless lives. Yet his life has also been shaped by the Bible, where the Hebrew prophets taught us to speak truth to power. So I write.
Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," while exceptionally sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.
One cannot ignore the Holocaust's impact on Jewish identity and the history of the Middle East conflict. When an Ahmadinejad or Hamas threatens to destroy Israel, Jews have historical precedent to believe them. Jimmy Carter either does not understand this or considers it irrelevant.
His book, which dwells on the Palestinian refugee experience, makes two fleeting references to the Holocaust. The book contains a detailed chronology of major developments necessary for the reader to understand the current situation in the Middle East. Remarkably, there is nothing listed between 1939 and 1947. Nitpickers might say that the Holocaust did not happen in the region. However, this event sealed in the minds of almost all the world's people then the need for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Carter never discusses the Jewish refugees who were prevented from entering Palestine before and after the war. One of Israel's first acts upon declaring statehood was to send ships to take those people "home."
A guiding principle of Israel is that never again will persecuted Jews be left with no place to go. Israel's ideal of Jewish refuge is enshrined in laws that grant immediate citizenship to any Jew who requests it. A Jew, for purposes of this law, is anyone who, had that person lived in Nazi Germany, would have been stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws.
Compare Carter's approach with that of Rashid Khalidi, head of Columbia University's Middle East Institute and a professor of Arab studies there. His recent book "The Iron Cage" contains more than a dozen references to the seminal place the Holocaust and anti-Semitism hold in the Israeli worldview. This from a Palestinian who does not cast himself as an evenhanded negotiator.
In contrast, by almost ignoring the Holocaust, Carter gives inadvertent comfort to those who deny its importance or even its historical reality, in part because it helps them deny Israel's right to exist. This from the president who signed the legislation creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Carter's minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as "one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation" in the world. When the interviewer asked "Worse than Rwanda?" Carter said that he did not want to discuss the "ancient history" of Rwanda.
To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let's say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians' situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?
Carter has repeatedly fallen back -- possibly unconsciously -- on traditional anti-Semitic canards. In the Los Angeles Times last month, he declared it"politically suicide" for a politician to advocate a "balanced position" on the crisis. On Al-Jazeera TV, he dismissed the critique of his book by declaring that "most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish-American organizations." Jeffrey Goldberg, who lambasted the book in The Post last month, writes for the New Yorker. Ethan Bronner, who in the New York Times called the book "a distortion," is the Times' deputy foreign editor. Slate's Michael Kinsley declared it "moronic." Dennis Ross, who was chief negotiator on the conflict in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, described the book as a rewriting and misrepresentation of history. Alan Dershowitz teaches at Harvard and Ken Stein at Emory. Both have criticized the book. Because of the book's inaccuracies and imbalance and Carter's subsequent behavior, 14 members of the Carter Center's Board of Councilors have resigned -- many in anguish because they so respect Carter's other work. All are Jews. Does that invalidate their criticism -- and mine -- or render us representatives of Jewish organizations?
On CNN, Carter bemoaned the "tremendous intimidation in our country that has silenced" the media. Carter has appeared on C-SPAN, "Larry King Live" and "Meet the Press," among many shows. When a caller to C-SPAN accused Carter of anti-Semitism, the host cut him off. Who's being silenced?
Perhaps unused to being criticized, Carter reflexively fell back on this kind of innuendo about Jewish control of the media and government. Even if unconscious, such stereotyping from a man of his stature is noteworthy. When David Duke spouts it, I yawn. When Jimmy Carter does, I shudder.
Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book. A man who has done much good and who wants to bring peace has not only failed to move the process forward but has given refuge to scoundrels.
The writer teaches at Emory University. Her latest book is "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving."
"How one makes one's bed, so does one lie in it" is an old adage. The Jews in Palestine took what was given to them by the UN, then not only had to fight to keep it, but gained more land in the process, developed their country while having to maintain an army at the ready to survive constant terrorism and danger of annihilation from their "unfriendly" neighbours.
What have the Palestinian Arabs done in the meantime? What have their millions of Arab brethren done to help them? Lived on handouts from the UN, built nothing, constantly whingeing, inciting to hatred, war and killings and produced nothing to help themselves in 60 years. Now they want to destroy whatever Israel has,- not to build on it!
They could have had it all,- a state of their own, a normal life for their people and a peaceful coexistence,- if they would only know the meaning of that word. All they had to do is extend their hand in peace, but it seems that this is an unknown concept amongst the Islamists in the ME.
I wonder how many Washingtonians who blame Israel would like to go to bed with these Al Qaida-like neighbours?
MM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WASHINGTON POST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR2007011901541_pf.html
Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem
By Deborah Lipstadt
Saturday, January 20, 2007; A23
It is hard to criticize an icon. Jimmy Carter's humanitarian work has saved countless lives. Yet his life has also been shaped by the Bible, where the Hebrew prophets taught us to speak truth to power. So I write.
Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," while exceptionally sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.
One cannot ignore the Holocaust's impact on Jewish identity and the history of the Middle East conflict. When an Ahmadinejad or Hamas threatens to destroy Israel, Jews have historical precedent to believe them. Jimmy Carter either does not understand this or considers it irrelevant.
His book, which dwells on the Palestinian refugee experience, makes two fleeting references to the Holocaust. The book contains a detailed chronology of major developments necessary for the reader to understand the current situation in the Middle East. Remarkably, there is nothing listed between 1939 and 1947. Nitpickers might say that the Holocaust did not happen in the region. However, this event sealed in the minds of almost all the world's people then the need for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Carter never discusses the Jewish refugees who were prevented from entering Palestine before and after the war. One of Israel's first acts upon declaring statehood was to send ships to take those people "home."
A guiding principle of Israel is that never again will persecuted Jews be left with no place to go. Israel's ideal of Jewish refuge is enshrined in laws that grant immediate citizenship to any Jew who requests it. A Jew, for purposes of this law, is anyone who, had that person lived in Nazi Germany, would have been stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws.
Compare Carter's approach with that of Rashid Khalidi, head of Columbia University's Middle East Institute and a professor of Arab studies there. His recent book "The Iron Cage" contains more than a dozen references to the seminal place the Holocaust and anti-Semitism hold in the Israeli worldview. This from a Palestinian who does not cast himself as an evenhanded negotiator.
In contrast, by almost ignoring the Holocaust, Carter gives inadvertent comfort to those who deny its importance or even its historical reality, in part because it helps them deny Israel's right to exist. This from the president who signed the legislation creating the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Carter's minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as "one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation" in the world. When the interviewer asked "Worse than Rwanda?" Carter said that he did not want to discuss the "ancient history" of Rwanda.
To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let's say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians' situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?
Carter has repeatedly fallen back -- possibly unconsciously -- on traditional anti-Semitic canards. In the Los Angeles Times last month, he declared it"politically suicide" for a politician to advocate a "balanced position" on the crisis. On Al-Jazeera TV, he dismissed the critique of his book by declaring that "most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish-American organizations." Jeffrey Goldberg, who lambasted the book in The Post last month, writes for the New Yorker. Ethan Bronner, who in the New York Times called the book "a distortion," is the Times' deputy foreign editor. Slate's Michael Kinsley declared it "moronic." Dennis Ross, who was chief negotiator on the conflict in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, described the book as a rewriting and misrepresentation of history. Alan Dershowitz teaches at Harvard and Ken Stein at Emory. Both have criticized the book. Because of the book's inaccuracies and imbalance and Carter's subsequent behavior, 14 members of the Carter Center's Board of Councilors have resigned -- many in anguish because they so respect Carter's other work. All are Jews. Does that invalidate their criticism -- and mine -- or render us representatives of Jewish organizations?
On CNN, Carter bemoaned the "tremendous intimidation in our country that has silenced" the media. Carter has appeared on C-SPAN, "Larry King Live" and "Meet the Press," among many shows. When a caller to C-SPAN accused Carter of anti-Semitism, the host cut him off. Who's being silenced?
Perhaps unused to being criticized, Carter reflexively fell back on this kind of innuendo about Jewish control of the media and government. Even if unconscious, such stereotyping from a man of his stature is noteworthy. When David Duke spouts it, I yawn. When Jimmy Carter does, I shudder.
Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book. A man who has done much good and who wants to bring peace has not only failed to move the process forward but has given refuge to scoundrels.
The writer teaches at Emory University. Her latest book is "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving."
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
The untold story of Donna Gracia Nasi and the museum-hotel in Tiberias.
16th Century Female Philanthropist
Land-Builder's Untold Story
16:26 Jan 07, '07 / 17 Tevet 5767
by Hillel Fendel
Tzvi said, "I have a dream," Yaakov said, "Here's a5,000-square building to make it happen" - and it did.A report about an Israeli museum-hotel, honoring the woman who preceded Herzl by 350 years. The life of Dona Gracia Nasi - a former Maranno, the richest woman in the world, and a Baron de Rothschild-type supporter of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land in the 1500's - was a story very sparsely-told - until the Dona Gracia Hotel-Museum was built in Tiberias in recent years.
Tzvi Schaik (pronounced S-kha'ik, from the word Yitzchak), the curator of the unique museum, told the story to Israel National Radio's Yishai and Malkah Fleisher. He said that about eight years ago, he came to know the amazing personage Dona Gracia, and also met a wealthy Israeli man named Yaakov Amsalem."Wealth, in this case, was not enough, however,"Schaik said; "he also had a very Zionist, Jewish heart. I told him the story of Dona Gracia, and of my dream to create a living monument dedicated to her special life. He was barely able to believe the story,and I told him that I had barely told him 10% of it...At the end of the evening, he said, 'Here it is - a 5,000-square meter building for you to build your dream' - a beautiful building in the heart of Tiberias, which Dona Gracia began to build up from its ruins 350 years ago."
A short recap of the woman's life includes the following: Born to a secretly-Jewish family that had been expelled from Spain and then Portugal in the 1490's... Fiercely dedicated to her Jewish faith...Married into a wealthy Jewish banking family, assuming control of the business at the age of 32 after her husband and his brother died... Running through Europe, pursued both by Inquisition elements and those who wanted her fortune, yet emerging all the stronger and wealthier after each encounter... Ended up finally in Turkey, where she was admired by Sultan Suleimon the Magnificent, who acceded to her request - for which she paid a high yearly fee - to build up the city of Tiberias for persecuted Jews from all over the world.
It was this story, Tzvi Schaik said, that aroused the Jew within Yaakov Amsalem: "He's a businessman, and a former Israel Air Force pilot - very Israeli. But when I told him this story, he said that this was the first time he really felt Jewish, not just Israeli. This is something very significant; it says something about us Israelis, that when we hear about Chanukah and the like, we feel Jewish..."Schaik also noted that Amsalem, fittingly, is a descendant of Rabbi Chaim Abulafia, who helped rebuild Tiberias in 1740 after 1,600 years of ruin. "This is a living museum," Schaik said, "with no pictures on the wall or statues or the like. My dream was to rebuild Dona Gracia's palace in which she lived in Constantinople [Istanbul]; the palace no longer exists, nor do we know what it looked like. So Iplanned that the lobby would represent all the cities in which she lived. Her parents lived in Spain, and she was born in Lisbon, and also lived in Antwerp,Venice, Ferrara, Thessalonica in Greece, and Koshta(Constantinople). So for example, when you enter the Lisbon room, it's like a synagogue... Each room has a theme, such as in Lisbon, curtains hiding a Jewish Star and Moses and Mt. Sinai and the Torah - showing how she was forced to hide her Judaism. Venice, for instance, was a place of feasting and the like, so we use this room for various celebrations like parties and the like, with costumes from the 16th century..."
Schaik said that Dona Gracia helped Jewish causes all over the world, including the Land of Israel:"Unfortunately, most of the time in Jewish history, we hear about men and not women. Dona Gracia is a special case; she was born 400 years before Theodore Herzl,and was the only woman who after 1,500 years of exile and destruction came to the Sultan - essentially, the leader of the world at the time - and said, 'We are the richest family in the empire. May I have some land for my people?' The Sultan Suleimon the Magnificent said, 'Of course, how about Hungary?' She said no thanks; she wanted Tiberias."Departing on a tangent for a moment, Schaik asked,"Why did she choose Tiberias, and not Jerusalem or any other holy place in Jerusalem? Dona Gracia told the Sultan that Tiberias was the capital of Israel from the 2nd to 7th centuries - not Jerusalem. TheSanhedrin was in Tiberias, and the Jerusalem Talmud was completed there, and more. It was the capital of the Land until the Arabian conquest."
"And so," Schaik said, "Suleimon agreed that Tiberias would be the capital of a new Jewish state following the expulsion from Spain and Portugal. He signed this into law, in the year 1562. She immediately sent workers to Tiberias to build the [city's southern]wall and houses, and she wrote a letter to European Jews, offering land, a house, sheep and mulberry trees for silk to whoever comes to Tiberias. Some Jews did come, in fact, but one day in 1569, [after she had been ill,] she was found dead in her palace in Constantinople..."The story does not end there, as Dona Gracia's son-in-law, the famous Don Yosef Nasi, took over her endeavors. Among the projects Dona Gracia supported was a Kabbalah-study program initiated in the Galilee city of Tzfat by the saintly Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulchan Arukh - the Jewish People's classic Law Code. Rabbi Karo visited her in Constantinople; he and other leading rabbis of the day praised her generosity and courage in standing up for Jewish causes.
Click here for more information on the fascinatingDona Gracia Hotel-Museum.January 07, 2007 www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=118908
--
Land-Builder's Untold Story
16:26 Jan 07, '07 / 17 Tevet 5767
by Hillel Fendel
Tzvi said, "I have a dream," Yaakov said, "Here's a5,000-square building to make it happen" - and it did.A report about an Israeli museum-hotel, honoring the woman who preceded Herzl by 350 years. The life of Dona Gracia Nasi - a former Maranno, the richest woman in the world, and a Baron de Rothschild-type supporter of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land in the 1500's - was a story very sparsely-told - until the Dona Gracia Hotel-Museum was built in Tiberias in recent years.
Tzvi Schaik (pronounced S-kha'ik, from the word Yitzchak), the curator of the unique museum, told the story to Israel National Radio's Yishai and Malkah Fleisher. He said that about eight years ago, he came to know the amazing personage Dona Gracia, and also met a wealthy Israeli man named Yaakov Amsalem."Wealth, in this case, was not enough, however,"Schaik said; "he also had a very Zionist, Jewish heart. I told him the story of Dona Gracia, and of my dream to create a living monument dedicated to her special life. He was barely able to believe the story,and I told him that I had barely told him 10% of it...At the end of the evening, he said, 'Here it is - a 5,000-square meter building for you to build your dream' - a beautiful building in the heart of Tiberias, which Dona Gracia began to build up from its ruins 350 years ago."
A short recap of the woman's life includes the following: Born to a secretly-Jewish family that had been expelled from Spain and then Portugal in the 1490's... Fiercely dedicated to her Jewish faith...Married into a wealthy Jewish banking family, assuming control of the business at the age of 32 after her husband and his brother died... Running through Europe, pursued both by Inquisition elements and those who wanted her fortune, yet emerging all the stronger and wealthier after each encounter... Ended up finally in Turkey, where she was admired by Sultan Suleimon the Magnificent, who acceded to her request - for which she paid a high yearly fee - to build up the city of Tiberias for persecuted Jews from all over the world.
It was this story, Tzvi Schaik said, that aroused the Jew within Yaakov Amsalem: "He's a businessman, and a former Israel Air Force pilot - very Israeli. But when I told him this story, he said that this was the first time he really felt Jewish, not just Israeli. This is something very significant; it says something about us Israelis, that when we hear about Chanukah and the like, we feel Jewish..."Schaik also noted that Amsalem, fittingly, is a descendant of Rabbi Chaim Abulafia, who helped rebuild Tiberias in 1740 after 1,600 years of ruin. "This is a living museum," Schaik said, "with no pictures on the wall or statues or the like. My dream was to rebuild Dona Gracia's palace in which she lived in Constantinople [Istanbul]; the palace no longer exists, nor do we know what it looked like. So Iplanned that the lobby would represent all the cities in which she lived. Her parents lived in Spain, and she was born in Lisbon, and also lived in Antwerp,Venice, Ferrara, Thessalonica in Greece, and Koshta(Constantinople). So for example, when you enter the Lisbon room, it's like a synagogue... Each room has a theme, such as in Lisbon, curtains hiding a Jewish Star and Moses and Mt. Sinai and the Torah - showing how she was forced to hide her Judaism. Venice, for instance, was a place of feasting and the like, so we use this room for various celebrations like parties and the like, with costumes from the 16th century..."
Schaik said that Dona Gracia helped Jewish causes all over the world, including the Land of Israel:"Unfortunately, most of the time in Jewish history, we hear about men and not women. Dona Gracia is a special case; she was born 400 years before Theodore Herzl,and was the only woman who after 1,500 years of exile and destruction came to the Sultan - essentially, the leader of the world at the time - and said, 'We are the richest family in the empire. May I have some land for my people?' The Sultan Suleimon the Magnificent said, 'Of course, how about Hungary?' She said no thanks; she wanted Tiberias."Departing on a tangent for a moment, Schaik asked,"Why did she choose Tiberias, and not Jerusalem or any other holy place in Jerusalem? Dona Gracia told the Sultan that Tiberias was the capital of Israel from the 2nd to 7th centuries - not Jerusalem. TheSanhedrin was in Tiberias, and the Jerusalem Talmud was completed there, and more. It was the capital of the Land until the Arabian conquest."
"And so," Schaik said, "Suleimon agreed that Tiberias would be the capital of a new Jewish state following the expulsion from Spain and Portugal. He signed this into law, in the year 1562. She immediately sent workers to Tiberias to build the [city's southern]wall and houses, and she wrote a letter to European Jews, offering land, a house, sheep and mulberry trees for silk to whoever comes to Tiberias. Some Jews did come, in fact, but one day in 1569, [after she had been ill,] she was found dead in her palace in Constantinople..."The story does not end there, as Dona Gracia's son-in-law, the famous Don Yosef Nasi, took over her endeavors. Among the projects Dona Gracia supported was a Kabbalah-study program initiated in the Galilee city of Tzfat by the saintly Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulchan Arukh - the Jewish People's classic Law Code. Rabbi Karo visited her in Constantinople; he and other leading rabbis of the day praised her generosity and courage in standing up for Jewish causes.
Click here for more information on the fascinatingDona Gracia Hotel-Museum.January 07, 2007 www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=118908
--
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
NATION MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER ETHNICITY.
Brett Mason: Nation must get precedence over ethnicity
Sheik Hilali's outbursts point to what's wrong with multiculturalism, and a policy change is overdue
January 16, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21063688-7583,00.html
IT looked really good on paper. Immigrants would be encouraged to retain their distinct cultural identities on condition that they subscribed to the tenets of Westminster democracy.
But since September 11, multiculturalism has been taking a beating at home and abroad. In Britain the emergence of home-grown Islamic terrorism has caused a serious re-evaluation of that policy. The British Government for many years adopted a hands-off multicultural policy that allowed Muslim extremism to flourish throughout England without impediment. Until his arrest in 2004, Abu Hamza al-Masri openly preached holy war against the West from the pulpit of north London's Finsbury Park Mosque. And this official attitude of anything goes facilitated an influx of fugitive jihadis into Britain that caused its capital city to become known in intelligence circles as Londonistan. At Finsbury Park, Scotland Yard was astonished to find a clear links between word and deed. In addition to thousands of jihadi propaganda videos, police found a cache of weapons and forged passports in the mosque basement. The BBC reported that intelligence agencies believed al-Masri and his acolytes were "linked to dozens of terrorist plots around Europe and beyond". Over here it was all supposed to be different. The Australian brand of multiculturalism intended to maintain a fine balance between sectarian rights and mainstream responsibilities. Minority groups would be free to follow their creeds as long as they did not contravene the values of democracy. And in the event of such a conflict, the tenets of Australian multiculturalism mandated that individual rights, gender equality and religious freedom would always reign supreme. However, in practice this principle has gradually been eroded by the sordid abrasives of political correctness and calculation. Case in point: Islamic firebrand cleric Taj Din al-Hilali, who once again made the news by claiming on Egyptian television that by rights Australia should be a Muslim country. But because ALP heavies thought that Hilali could deliver votes in Sydney's southwest, they pressured the Department of Immigration and Multicultural And Indigenous Affairs to overlook his history of incitement to racial hatred. Needless to say, Hilali got his permanent residency and citizenship. And Osama bin Laden groupie Mohammed Omran has suffered no repercussions for selling jihadi literature at his Melbourne bookstore or teaching that 9/11 was a US conspiracy against Islam. Such policy mishaps, foreign and domestic, have inflicted a major haemorrhage on popular support for Australian multiculturalism. There is a wide public sense that this policy is losing the battle for Muslim hearts and minds to the siren song of radicalism and resentment. And the sight of establishment Islamic leaders last year convening in Canberra to petition the Prime Minister on behalf of Hezbollah only served to reinforce that belief. It is said that in politics perception is reality. And the key to the clarity of any political program is the words that are used to describe it. And herein lies the problem. At its core, the word multiculturalism implicitly elevates ethnic tribalism over national commonality. The term makes express reference to factionalism without specific mention of the unifying factors that are supposed to be the pride of this policy. It sends the message that diversity is an end in itself, rather than merely a means to the end of a better Australia. Having never read the fine print of government policy statements, most Australians base their outlook on the impression created by the nomenclature of the program. And this ambiguity between what the word multiculturalism purports to mean and what it really does signify is a recipe for confusion and disharmony. Similarly unsatisfactory are the amorphous references to the rule of law that feature in government policy statements on multiculturalism. The real question facing Western democracies is not rule of law but, rather, which law is to rule. In several European nations, Muslim leaders have begun to press for the application of sharia law to their communities. And because sharia constitutes a distinct legal code, there is nothing in the strict definition of Australian multiculturalism that would preclude such a demand in Brunswick or Lakemba. In fact, that is precisely what the radical Muslim Hizb ut-Tahrir movement is doing when it calls for a Taliban-style Islamic caliphate in Australia. But I categorically reject such moral relativism. I make no apologies for my belief that one wife is better than four, or that the amputation of limbs for petty theft is pure barbarism. Australian democracy is the direct ideological descendant of the English common law system, and I contend that Westminsterism is ethically superior to Wahabism. At times ideas can have real-world consequences. And the conceptual shortcomings that mar the core of Australian multiculturalism have spawned hesitancy and confusion in its application. In the popular mind, this policy has bungled one of the pre-eminent social challenges of our era: the rise of radical Islam in our midst. If there is any chance of salvaging the positive elements of this program, then it must be comprehensively repackaged and rebranded. We must set aside the terminology of multiculturalism that has been compromised by fecklessness and ineptitude. And in its stead we should adopt a national compact whose title explicitly emphasises the primacy of national obligations over separatist privileges. An Australian Compact would achieve this end by clarifying the standards of behaviour that are mandated by our democratic polity. Rather than nebulous generalities, the compact should employ specific language that will establish detailed behavioural expectations as well as penalties for their violation. Properly conceived, an Australian Compact will constitute an important tool in our effort to avoid the sort of inter-ethnic strife that is now engulfing parts of Europe. It is the cultural imperative of our time.
Brett Mason is a Liberal senator from Queensland.
(SEE MY PREVIOUS POST: ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN AUSTRALIA.)
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2005/12/ethnic-violence-in-australia-dec-2005.html
MM
Sheik Hilali's outbursts point to what's wrong with multiculturalism, and a policy change is overdue
January 16, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21063688-7583,00.html
IT looked really good on paper. Immigrants would be encouraged to retain their distinct cultural identities on condition that they subscribed to the tenets of Westminster democracy.
But since September 11, multiculturalism has been taking a beating at home and abroad. In Britain the emergence of home-grown Islamic terrorism has caused a serious re-evaluation of that policy. The British Government for many years adopted a hands-off multicultural policy that allowed Muslim extremism to flourish throughout England without impediment. Until his arrest in 2004, Abu Hamza al-Masri openly preached holy war against the West from the pulpit of north London's Finsbury Park Mosque. And this official attitude of anything goes facilitated an influx of fugitive jihadis into Britain that caused its capital city to become known in intelligence circles as Londonistan. At Finsbury Park, Scotland Yard was astonished to find a clear links between word and deed. In addition to thousands of jihadi propaganda videos, police found a cache of weapons and forged passports in the mosque basement. The BBC reported that intelligence agencies believed al-Masri and his acolytes were "linked to dozens of terrorist plots around Europe and beyond". Over here it was all supposed to be different. The Australian brand of multiculturalism intended to maintain a fine balance between sectarian rights and mainstream responsibilities. Minority groups would be free to follow their creeds as long as they did not contravene the values of democracy. And in the event of such a conflict, the tenets of Australian multiculturalism mandated that individual rights, gender equality and religious freedom would always reign supreme. However, in practice this principle has gradually been eroded by the sordid abrasives of political correctness and calculation. Case in point: Islamic firebrand cleric Taj Din al-Hilali, who once again made the news by claiming on Egyptian television that by rights Australia should be a Muslim country. But because ALP heavies thought that Hilali could deliver votes in Sydney's southwest, they pressured the Department of Immigration and Multicultural And Indigenous Affairs to overlook his history of incitement to racial hatred. Needless to say, Hilali got his permanent residency and citizenship. And Osama bin Laden groupie Mohammed Omran has suffered no repercussions for selling jihadi literature at his Melbourne bookstore or teaching that 9/11 was a US conspiracy against Islam. Such policy mishaps, foreign and domestic, have inflicted a major haemorrhage on popular support for Australian multiculturalism. There is a wide public sense that this policy is losing the battle for Muslim hearts and minds to the siren song of radicalism and resentment. And the sight of establishment Islamic leaders last year convening in Canberra to petition the Prime Minister on behalf of Hezbollah only served to reinforce that belief. It is said that in politics perception is reality. And the key to the clarity of any political program is the words that are used to describe it. And herein lies the problem. At its core, the word multiculturalism implicitly elevates ethnic tribalism over national commonality. The term makes express reference to factionalism without specific mention of the unifying factors that are supposed to be the pride of this policy. It sends the message that diversity is an end in itself, rather than merely a means to the end of a better Australia. Having never read the fine print of government policy statements, most Australians base their outlook on the impression created by the nomenclature of the program. And this ambiguity between what the word multiculturalism purports to mean and what it really does signify is a recipe for confusion and disharmony. Similarly unsatisfactory are the amorphous references to the rule of law that feature in government policy statements on multiculturalism. The real question facing Western democracies is not rule of law but, rather, which law is to rule. In several European nations, Muslim leaders have begun to press for the application of sharia law to their communities. And because sharia constitutes a distinct legal code, there is nothing in the strict definition of Australian multiculturalism that would preclude such a demand in Brunswick or Lakemba. In fact, that is precisely what the radical Muslim Hizb ut-Tahrir movement is doing when it calls for a Taliban-style Islamic caliphate in Australia. But I categorically reject such moral relativism. I make no apologies for my belief that one wife is better than four, or that the amputation of limbs for petty theft is pure barbarism. Australian democracy is the direct ideological descendant of the English common law system, and I contend that Westminsterism is ethically superior to Wahabism. At times ideas can have real-world consequences. And the conceptual shortcomings that mar the core of Australian multiculturalism have spawned hesitancy and confusion in its application. In the popular mind, this policy has bungled one of the pre-eminent social challenges of our era: the rise of radical Islam in our midst. If there is any chance of salvaging the positive elements of this program, then it must be comprehensively repackaged and rebranded. We must set aside the terminology of multiculturalism that has been compromised by fecklessness and ineptitude. And in its stead we should adopt a national compact whose title explicitly emphasises the primacy of national obligations over separatist privileges. An Australian Compact would achieve this end by clarifying the standards of behaviour that are mandated by our democratic polity. Rather than nebulous generalities, the compact should employ specific language that will establish detailed behavioural expectations as well as penalties for their violation. Properly conceived, an Australian Compact will constitute an important tool in our effort to avoid the sort of inter-ethnic strife that is now engulfing parts of Europe. It is the cultural imperative of our time.
Brett Mason is a Liberal senator from Queensland.
(SEE MY PREVIOUS POST: ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN AUSTRALIA.)
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2005/12/ethnic-violence-in-australia-dec-2005.html
MM
Bukowina-Czernowitz Reunion, Israel, April 2007.
(From the Czernowitz e-list.)
Dear Friends,
I hereby pronounce the final details of our 2007 Reunion. It is a copy/paste text of the official announcement, which will be published at various internet sites and newspapers:
Reunion of Bukowinian Jews and their Descendants
17-19 April 2007
Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Hotel, Tel Aviv, Israel .
Under the Auspices of the World Organization of Bukovinian Jewry and the Cz-List
Jews of Bukowinian descent will meet in a festive reunion at the elegant
Crowne Plaza Hotel at the Tel-Aviv beach area for two days of exciting meetings, lectures, discussions, stories, humor, food and news about projects for the preservation of the glorious heritage of the Jewish communities of Czernowitz and the Bukowina.
The third day will be devoted to a guided tour to the Galilee, combined with tree-planting
to restore the northern woods and a visit to the German Speaking Jewry Museum in Teffen
Program
The Reunion will be held for 2 days on
Tuesday, April 17th and Wednesday, April 18th 2007, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. At the convention center of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 145 Hayarkon St., Tel-Aviv Each day will start with a rich buffet.
Hot/cold drinks plus refreshments will be served during the rest of the day.
The topics to be discussed include Jewish Czernowitz and its heritage, family histories and personal memories, Bukowina towns communities - past and present, the contribution of bukowinian jewry to the state of Israel etc.
On the evening of Wednesday April the 18th, We shall have a festive Banquet with an artistic program and
a nostalgic meal of typical Bukowinian dishes (optional)
On Thursday, April 19th
We shall leave for a whole day professionally guided excursion
along the Northern border, we shall have a nice lunch together, plant trees at a "Keren-Kayemet" forest, in memory of our beloved, visit the magnificent German Speaking Jewry Museum in Teffen and meet with Israeli entrepreneur Mr. Steff Wertheimer (optional(
Registration is now open to all Bukowinians and their offspring
How to register:
In order to register to the Reunion, please send a request to the following e-mail address (official e-mail of the organizing committee):
bukowina2007@gmail.com
http://czernowitz.ehpes.com
Upon request, you will receive a registration form as an attached document. Print the registration form, fill in your details, calculate the price you have to pay, and send the form together with a cheque (cheques in foreign currencies are welcome) to the World Organization of Bukowinian Jews (as written in the registration form).
Since I cannot copy the prices table, I will quote some of the prices for you to get a general idea: 1 Person - 50 US$ A Couple - 90 US$ Every 3rd person coming - 45 US$
Hotel Prices for overnight stays are quoted in the registration form as well. These are negotiated prices for the Reunion comers (remember - this is a 5-star de luxe hotel). Hotel reservations should be made individually and independently, not through the committee or the World organization of Bukowinian Jews. Participants who so wish, may of course stay at other hotels. Please mark whether you are interested in participating in the Banquet. The price per person has not been finalized yet, but it should be somewhere in between 30-40US$ per person.
We thank you for your patience and cooperation and hope to see many of you in April in Tel Aviv .
On behalf of the organizing committee,
Danny Alon
--
Dear Friends,
I hereby pronounce the final details of our 2007 Reunion. It is a copy/paste text of the official announcement, which will be published at various internet sites and newspapers:
Reunion of Bukowinian Jews and their Descendants
17-19 April 2007
Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Hotel, Tel Aviv, Israel .
Under the Auspices of the World Organization of Bukovinian Jewry and the Cz-List
Jews of Bukowinian descent will meet in a festive reunion at the elegant
Crowne Plaza Hotel at the Tel-Aviv beach area for two days of exciting meetings, lectures, discussions, stories, humor, food and news about projects for the preservation of the glorious heritage of the Jewish communities of Czernowitz and the Bukowina.
The third day will be devoted to a guided tour to the Galilee, combined with tree-planting
to restore the northern woods and a visit to the German Speaking Jewry Museum in Teffen
Program
The Reunion will be held for 2 days on
Tuesday, April 17th and Wednesday, April 18th 2007, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. At the convention center of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 145 Hayarkon St., Tel-Aviv Each day will start with a rich buffet.
Hot/cold drinks plus refreshments will be served during the rest of the day.
The topics to be discussed include Jewish Czernowitz and its heritage, family histories and personal memories, Bukowina towns communities - past and present, the contribution of bukowinian jewry to the state of Israel etc.
On the evening of Wednesday April the 18th, We shall have a festive Banquet with an artistic program and
a nostalgic meal of typical Bukowinian dishes (optional)
On Thursday, April 19th
We shall leave for a whole day professionally guided excursion
along the Northern border, we shall have a nice lunch together, plant trees at a "Keren-Kayemet" forest, in memory of our beloved, visit the magnificent German Speaking Jewry Museum in Teffen and meet with Israeli entrepreneur Mr. Steff Wertheimer (optional(
Registration is now open to all Bukowinians and their offspring
How to register:
In order to register to the Reunion, please send a request to the following e-mail address (official e-mail of the organizing committee):
bukowina2007@gmail.com
http://czernowitz.ehpes.com
Upon request, you will receive a registration form as an attached document. Print the registration form, fill in your details, calculate the price you have to pay, and send the form together with a cheque (cheques in foreign currencies are welcome) to the World Organization of Bukowinian Jews (as written in the registration form).
Since I cannot copy the prices table, I will quote some of the prices for you to get a general idea: 1 Person - 50 US$ A Couple - 90 US$ Every 3rd person coming - 45 US$
Hotel Prices for overnight stays are quoted in the registration form as well. These are negotiated prices for the Reunion comers (remember - this is a 5-star de luxe hotel). Hotel reservations should be made individually and independently, not through the committee or the World organization of Bukowinian Jews. Participants who so wish, may of course stay at other hotels. Please mark whether you are interested in participating in the Banquet. The price per person has not been finalized yet, but it should be somewhere in between 30-40US$ per person.
We thank you for your patience and cooperation and hope to see many of you in April in Tel Aviv .
On behalf of the organizing committee,
Danny Alon
--
Monday, January 15, 2007
Borat's Hebrew-speaking Mockumentary.
[Some of us picked up the fact that Borat's supposed Kazakh gibberish was actually Hebrew. By then we were really rolling in the aisles understanding his asides to his sidekick. Translations couldn't do them justice.
MM]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.joo2joo.org/hebrew_interview_with_borat
January 11, 2007 -
Interview with Borat JOO2JOO. Israel.
Like moviegoing masses around the world, Israelis have crowded theaters to watch the hit spoof "Borat." But they are laughing for another reason: They actually understand what the anti-Semitic, misogynist Kazakh journalist is saying.
Few realize that comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s wacky comedic creation, Borat Sagdiyev, is not speaking Kazakh or even gibberish, but rather Hebrew, the biblical language of the Jewish people.
The 35-year-old British comedian is no stranger to Israel. He is an observant Jew, his mother was born in Israel and his grandmother still lives in Haifa. In high school, he belonged to a Zionist Jewish youth group, Habonim Dror, and upon graduation spent a year working and studying on a kibbutz, or collective farm, in northern Israel. He has since returned for several visits, his Hebrew is excellent and his understanding of Israeli culture superb.
The irony of a Hebrew-speaking anti-Semite is not lost on the admiring Israeli audience, which has made the movie a huge hit here.
"It is extremely funny and kind of cool to realize that you are understanding something no one else does," said Gaby Goldman, 33, of Tel Aviv. "It’s not just the Hebrew but also the way he speaks. He sounds almost Israeli, he sounds like one of us."
Israelis begin giggling right from the opening scene, when Borat departs his hometown in Kazakhstan for the "U.S. and A.," assuring a one-armed man in fake Kazakh: "Don’t worry I will bring you a new hand in America."
The subtitles give the direct translation, but there’s no need in Israel. It merely repeats what Borat has just said in his impeccable Hebrew.
The film is peppered with Hebrew expressions and Israeli slang, inside jokes only Israelis could truly appreciate. In one scene, Borat sings the lyrics of the legendary Hebrew folk song "Koom Bachur Atzel," meaning "get up lazy boy." Later, he refers to a Kazakh government scientist, "Dr. Yarmulke," who proved that a woman’s brain is the size of a squirrel’s. Even Borat’s signature catch phrase - "Wa wa wee wa," an expression for wow - derives from a skit on a popular Israeli comedy show and is often heard in Israel.
The movie’s comedic climax - an over-the-top, full-frontal male nude wrestling scene - is sparked when Borat curses his sidekick Azamat with a vulgar, Hebrew expletive.
Uri Klein, movie critic for the Israeli daily Haaretz, said the Hebrew-sprinkled dialogue gave Israelis watching the mockumentary some added value and created an empathy with the Israeli audience.
"We are the only ones who know what he is talking about," he said.
Baron Cohen almost never appears in public out of character. His Los Angeles-based publicist declined several requests to interview Borat in English - or Hebrew. But by all accounts, Baron Cohen is the opposite of the anti-Semitic journalist he portrays.
He is said to keep kosher and observe the Jewish Sabbath, and his fiancee, Australian actress Isla Fisher, has converted to Judaism. His ties to Israel run deep and he still has an extended family here.
MM]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.joo2joo.org/hebrew_interview_with_borat
January 11, 2007 -
Interview with Borat JOO2JOO. Israel.
Like moviegoing masses around the world, Israelis have crowded theaters to watch the hit spoof "Borat." But they are laughing for another reason: They actually understand what the anti-Semitic, misogynist Kazakh journalist is saying.
Few realize that comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s wacky comedic creation, Borat Sagdiyev, is not speaking Kazakh or even gibberish, but rather Hebrew, the biblical language of the Jewish people.
The 35-year-old British comedian is no stranger to Israel. He is an observant Jew, his mother was born in Israel and his grandmother still lives in Haifa. In high school, he belonged to a Zionist Jewish youth group, Habonim Dror, and upon graduation spent a year working and studying on a kibbutz, or collective farm, in northern Israel. He has since returned for several visits, his Hebrew is excellent and his understanding of Israeli culture superb.
The irony of a Hebrew-speaking anti-Semite is not lost on the admiring Israeli audience, which has made the movie a huge hit here.
"It is extremely funny and kind of cool to realize that you are understanding something no one else does," said Gaby Goldman, 33, of Tel Aviv. "It’s not just the Hebrew but also the way he speaks. He sounds almost Israeli, he sounds like one of us."
Israelis begin giggling right from the opening scene, when Borat departs his hometown in Kazakhstan for the "U.S. and A.," assuring a one-armed man in fake Kazakh: "Don’t worry I will bring you a new hand in America."
The subtitles give the direct translation, but there’s no need in Israel. It merely repeats what Borat has just said in his impeccable Hebrew.
The film is peppered with Hebrew expressions and Israeli slang, inside jokes only Israelis could truly appreciate. In one scene, Borat sings the lyrics of the legendary Hebrew folk song "Koom Bachur Atzel," meaning "get up lazy boy." Later, he refers to a Kazakh government scientist, "Dr. Yarmulke," who proved that a woman’s brain is the size of a squirrel’s. Even Borat’s signature catch phrase - "Wa wa wee wa," an expression for wow - derives from a skit on a popular Israeli comedy show and is often heard in Israel.
The movie’s comedic climax - an over-the-top, full-frontal male nude wrestling scene - is sparked when Borat curses his sidekick Azamat with a vulgar, Hebrew expletive.
Uri Klein, movie critic for the Israeli daily Haaretz, said the Hebrew-sprinkled dialogue gave Israelis watching the mockumentary some added value and created an empathy with the Israeli audience.
"We are the only ones who know what he is talking about," he said.
Baron Cohen almost never appears in public out of character. His Los Angeles-based publicist declined several requests to interview Borat in English - or Hebrew. But by all accounts, Baron Cohen is the opposite of the anti-Semitic journalist he portrays.
He is said to keep kosher and observe the Jewish Sabbath, and his fiancee, Australian actress Isla Fisher, has converted to Judaism. His ties to Israel run deep and he still has an extended family here.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
IRAQ-USA. Not happy Mr. President (Martin Chulov, The Australian)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21050348-601,00.html
THE AUSTRALIAN
Not happy, Mr President
Confidence is low among Iraqis despite the US boost,
reports Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov from Amman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13jan07
FOR the fourth time in little more than a year, Condoleezza Rice will be back in the Middle East this weekend attempting to do a deal.
This time she is without a slate of intentions. The lessons of her recent visits have taught the US Secretary of State to be careful what she wishes for - and even more wary of what she trumpets. Rice's whistle-stop will take her to Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank, but not to the war-torn crisis point that will, one way or another, define her time in office - Iraq.
Rice flew in with no promises days after one of the biggest calls of George W. Bush's administration. The "surge" of 20,000-plus troops to Baghdad and its surrounds aimed at sorting out the dire sectarian mess that is rapidly imperiling the region and reshaping USpolitics.
The Bush play has not been well received in the Sunni Arab world, much of which appears to seriously doubt whether the US can usher in a solution to any of the three main conflicts that fester across the region. Rivalry between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq underscores theviolence.
Iraq's bloody woes could easily be followed by war in the Palestinian territories and perhaps Lebanon, which is in the midst of a precarious political shake-out from the war last July between Hezbollah and Israel.
For exiled Iraqis in neighbouring Jordan, the Bush admissions of mistakes made in Iraq have been greeted with deep scepticism and a fear that his mea culpa about not escalating sooner will not prevent more mistakes.
"Bush listens but implements things in his own way," says Hassan al-Bazzaz, secretary-general of a fledging Iraqi advocacy group, the Patriotic and National Forces Movement. "The Americans have made mistakes more than once. They create problems and they do not know how to solve them. They create political problems in their labs and turn them into monsters that cannot be controlled. All their attempts ended in failure."
Mohamad Dabdab, a former Baathist who fled the Iraqi capital shortly after it fell in mid-2003, says the US cannot control security in his homeland.
"More than one secretary in the US administration acknowledged mistakes, like Rice and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"Not a single day passes without the Iraqi news being in the lead. The US is not capable of dealing with the world's problems. The American politicians need to understand the Arab mentality and the Iraqis. If they think that a strategy is announcing their mistakes, they are wrong.
"The Americans have failed in their strategic approach, to instil democracy and confront terrorists. There is no democracy in Iraq, while terrorism has intensified."
For the past five years, the cornerstones of Bush's Middle East policy have been to curb terrorism in an area he regards as ground zero of the war on Islamist terrorists, and instil democracy where strongmen have ruled amid totalitarian states for hundreds of years. Much of the Arab world appears to have flunked him on the first mission statement and regard the second as, at best, a work in progress.
The brutal flare-up between Hezbollah and Israel, the escalating intra-Palestinian violence in Gaza and the West Bank, and the bloody turmoil in Iraq are testament to the intrinsic problems with both objectives. They surfaced quickly after the Iraqi invasion in early 2003 and have gathered steam ever since - stirred along by two would-be regional powerbrokers, Iran and Syria, that each have an interest in the world's most powerful democracy being kept in a quagmire.
The occupation of Iraq has unleashed a staunch sectarianism across the region that seriously threatens to derail the US troop surge, which many observers see as a last ditch attempt to regain control of Iraq. For the first time since the borders of the Arabian nation-states were drawn after the two world wars of last century, Shia Muslims are on the crux of a wave influence. Backed heavily by Shia Iran, which sees the turmoil as a chance to reassert the influence of the old Persian empire, the Shi'ites of Iraq are now in pole position, should the fragile nation succumb to a sectarian carve-up.
A break-up would bolster Iran, which has been partially emboldened by Hezbollah taking the fight to Israel in July and August and the threat of a nuclear capability it holds over the US and the region.
"For Arabs, there is a sectarian and ethnic struggle, almost a civil war," says Bazzaz. "But the war is not a civil war. And it would not necessarily lead to disintegration and divisions. We believe that there are external forces influenced by Persians. But the vast majority want unity in Iraq.
"We do not know where we are heading to. There are powers that are steering in a way that suits their interests. That's why, we as Iraqis, are in a vehicle and we do not know who's navigating us, or driving us. The strategy refers to the police and armed forces as if they are neutral parties, while the problem lies in these people.
"We want the Americans to depart, and leave Iraq for its people. We do not wish to be a second Lebanon, or another Sudan for that matter. We Iraqis will stand together when this government leaves."
Some support for the Bush plan comes from sources the US would find as encouraging: hardline Sunni elements that were the first to stir the sectarian uprising.
Sunni sheik and tribal leader Bazee al-Qaoud says he's "optimistic about the strategy, because in a way it considers the Sunni interests. Maybe there will be a change.
"Two-and-a-half months ago, 625 Sunni personalities met Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and discussed a code of honour that we have signed. The meeting was also attended by factions representing the Iraqi people including minority Turkmen sheiks. We have asked for dissolving the sectarian militias and reinstatement of the Iraqi army disbanded after Saddam Hussein's fall, and to acknowledge the rights of the resistance, repeat the elections, abolish the constitution, and withdraw foreign troops."
If the Sunnis, who lost a lot of power and influence to the Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south when Saddam was toppled, are seen to be appeased, a lot of antagonism could be removed from the insurgent battlefield.
"Iraq should not be divided, all the people are entitled to its goods," says al-Qaoud. "The Iraqis are responsible for their land. We have also agreed that autonomy remains in the north."
Rice's weekend mission is at this stage confined to a high-stakes sales pitch. The bid to sort out Iraq will anchor the US's Middle Eastern policy for at least the first half of the year. The recent history of the region is littered with broken deals and ineffective outcomes, many of which she has been a party to. In November 2005, Rice brokered a lauded deal to reopen Gaza's border crossing points and get cargo trucks rolling in and out of the strip. The deal never took hold and 15 months later, Gaza, the West Bank and the Palestinian territories are further away from an entry point to the so-called road map for peace than ever before.
Rice was also central to the deal to bring an end to the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, a deal that has left Israel feeling short-changed. The key elements involved the Shia militia retreating to north of the Litani River, surrendering its weapons and handing over southern Lebanon to the Lebanese Army. Only the latter of the three objectives have been achieved, and Israel has complained vigorously that the thousands of UN peace keepers have not kicked Hezbollah out, or done anything to prevent it from re-arming.
More is at stake for the US in the Middle East over the next six months than at any time since Bush was elected. Enemies and sceptics alike are poised to seize the vacuum that further failure would create. That would unambiguously mean civil war - and probably a broader regional conflict.
privacy terms © The Australian
THE AUSTRALIAN
Not happy, Mr President
Confidence is low among Iraqis despite the US boost,
reports Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov from Amman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13jan07
FOR the fourth time in little more than a year, Condoleezza Rice will be back in the Middle East this weekend attempting to do a deal.
This time she is without a slate of intentions. The lessons of her recent visits have taught the US Secretary of State to be careful what she wishes for - and even more wary of what she trumpets. Rice's whistle-stop will take her to Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank, but not to the war-torn crisis point that will, one way or another, define her time in office - Iraq.
Rice flew in with no promises days after one of the biggest calls of George W. Bush's administration. The "surge" of 20,000-plus troops to Baghdad and its surrounds aimed at sorting out the dire sectarian mess that is rapidly imperiling the region and reshaping USpolitics.
The Bush play has not been well received in the Sunni Arab world, much of which appears to seriously doubt whether the US can usher in a solution to any of the three main conflicts that fester across the region. Rivalry between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq underscores theviolence.
Iraq's bloody woes could easily be followed by war in the Palestinian territories and perhaps Lebanon, which is in the midst of a precarious political shake-out from the war last July between Hezbollah and Israel.
For exiled Iraqis in neighbouring Jordan, the Bush admissions of mistakes made in Iraq have been greeted with deep scepticism and a fear that his mea culpa about not escalating sooner will not prevent more mistakes.
"Bush listens but implements things in his own way," says Hassan al-Bazzaz, secretary-general of a fledging Iraqi advocacy group, the Patriotic and National Forces Movement. "The Americans have made mistakes more than once. They create problems and they do not know how to solve them. They create political problems in their labs and turn them into monsters that cannot be controlled. All their attempts ended in failure."
Mohamad Dabdab, a former Baathist who fled the Iraqi capital shortly after it fell in mid-2003, says the US cannot control security in his homeland.
"More than one secretary in the US administration acknowledged mistakes, like Rice and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"Not a single day passes without the Iraqi news being in the lead. The US is not capable of dealing with the world's problems. The American politicians need to understand the Arab mentality and the Iraqis. If they think that a strategy is announcing their mistakes, they are wrong.
"The Americans have failed in their strategic approach, to instil democracy and confront terrorists. There is no democracy in Iraq, while terrorism has intensified."
For the past five years, the cornerstones of Bush's Middle East policy have been to curb terrorism in an area he regards as ground zero of the war on Islamist terrorists, and instil democracy where strongmen have ruled amid totalitarian states for hundreds of years. Much of the Arab world appears to have flunked him on the first mission statement and regard the second as, at best, a work in progress.
The brutal flare-up between Hezbollah and Israel, the escalating intra-Palestinian violence in Gaza and the West Bank, and the bloody turmoil in Iraq are testament to the intrinsic problems with both objectives. They surfaced quickly after the Iraqi invasion in early 2003 and have gathered steam ever since - stirred along by two would-be regional powerbrokers, Iran and Syria, that each have an interest in the world's most powerful democracy being kept in a quagmire.
The occupation of Iraq has unleashed a staunch sectarianism across the region that seriously threatens to derail the US troop surge, which many observers see as a last ditch attempt to regain control of Iraq. For the first time since the borders of the Arabian nation-states were drawn after the two world wars of last century, Shia Muslims are on the crux of a wave influence. Backed heavily by Shia Iran, which sees the turmoil as a chance to reassert the influence of the old Persian empire, the Shi'ites of Iraq are now in pole position, should the fragile nation succumb to a sectarian carve-up.
A break-up would bolster Iran, which has been partially emboldened by Hezbollah taking the fight to Israel in July and August and the threat of a nuclear capability it holds over the US and the region.
"For Arabs, there is a sectarian and ethnic struggle, almost a civil war," says Bazzaz. "But the war is not a civil war. And it would not necessarily lead to disintegration and divisions. We believe that there are external forces influenced by Persians. But the vast majority want unity in Iraq.
"We do not know where we are heading to. There are powers that are steering in a way that suits their interests. That's why, we as Iraqis, are in a vehicle and we do not know who's navigating us, or driving us. The strategy refers to the police and armed forces as if they are neutral parties, while the problem lies in these people.
"We want the Americans to depart, and leave Iraq for its people. We do not wish to be a second Lebanon, or another Sudan for that matter. We Iraqis will stand together when this government leaves."
Some support for the Bush plan comes from sources the US would find as encouraging: hardline Sunni elements that were the first to stir the sectarian uprising.
Sunni sheik and tribal leader Bazee al-Qaoud says he's "optimistic about the strategy, because in a way it considers the Sunni interests. Maybe there will be a change.
"Two-and-a-half months ago, 625 Sunni personalities met Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and discussed a code of honour that we have signed. The meeting was also attended by factions representing the Iraqi people including minority Turkmen sheiks. We have asked for dissolving the sectarian militias and reinstatement of the Iraqi army disbanded after Saddam Hussein's fall, and to acknowledge the rights of the resistance, repeat the elections, abolish the constitution, and withdraw foreign troops."
If the Sunnis, who lost a lot of power and influence to the Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south when Saddam was toppled, are seen to be appeased, a lot of antagonism could be removed from the insurgent battlefield.
"Iraq should not be divided, all the people are entitled to its goods," says al-Qaoud. "The Iraqis are responsible for their land. We have also agreed that autonomy remains in the north."
Rice's weekend mission is at this stage confined to a high-stakes sales pitch. The bid to sort out Iraq will anchor the US's Middle Eastern policy for at least the first half of the year. The recent history of the region is littered with broken deals and ineffective outcomes, many of which she has been a party to. In November 2005, Rice brokered a lauded deal to reopen Gaza's border crossing points and get cargo trucks rolling in and out of the strip. The deal never took hold and 15 months later, Gaza, the West Bank and the Palestinian territories are further away from an entry point to the so-called road map for peace than ever before.
Rice was also central to the deal to bring an end to the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, a deal that has left Israel feeling short-changed. The key elements involved the Shia militia retreating to north of the Litani River, surrendering its weapons and handing over southern Lebanon to the Lebanese Army. Only the latter of the three objectives have been achieved, and Israel has complained vigorously that the thousands of UN peace keepers have not kicked Hezbollah out, or done anything to prevent it from re-arming.
More is at stake for the US in the Middle East over the next six months than at any time since Bush was elected. Enemies and sceptics alike are poised to seize the vacuum that further failure would create. That would unambiguously mean civil war - and probably a broader regional conflict.
privacy terms © The Australian
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Ahmed Abaddi: a different sort of radical Muslim, Morocco.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDI4MDYxYmRjODNkOTE4NDE1NjZlMGNkZGUwMzMwMTg=
May 9, 2006
A Different Sort of Radical Muslim.
Ahmed Abaddi is helping Muslims to understand the West.
By Joel C. Rosenberg
As Osama bin Laden and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continue to breathe their murderous threats against Christians and Jews, and attempt to incite Muslims around the world to annihilate the U.S. and Israel, another Muslim leader made the rounds in Washington last week offering a radically different vision.
Topping his agenda were under-the-radar peace talks with Israel, religious classes to teach Imams the history and virtues of the West, and dramatic new initiatives to build ties to Rabbis and evangelical Christians.
Were Dr. Ahmed Abaddi merely a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered professor of comparative religion in his native Morocco, his views would certainly be welcome, but not particularly newsworthy. However, Abaddi is actually in a position of some influence. As Morocco's Director of Islamic Affairs and senior advisor to King Mohammed VI, he is responsible for overseeing his country's 33,000 mosques. And he's not just talking about a new approach to Muslim relations with the West. At the direction, and with the blessing, of his King, Abaddi has already taken a number of concrete-and controversial-steps.
Abaddi recounted to House and Senate leaders, Bush administration officials, journalists, and business leaders the changes he and his colleagues have brought about in recent years:
They embarked upon a campaign of interviews, speeches, and sermons that condemn al Qaeda's teachings and violence. This accelerated after 9/11 and a series of suicide bombings that ripped through Morocco's Muslim- and Jewish-owned restaurants, as well as a bombing at a Jewish community center on May 16, 2003, that left some 45 dead and more than 100 wounded.
They helped mobilize more than one million Moroccans to take to the streets of Casablanca in May 2003 to denounce radical Islamic terrorism-a march in which 1,000 Moroccan Jews openly participated and were warmly embraced by the Muslim community.
They launched a theological training program for Imams to teach them how to promote moderation within Islam, to teach them more about Western history and the importance of Christianity and Judaism to Western social and political development, and to help them identify and oppose extremist forces and trends within Islam. Participants take 32 hours of instruction per week for a full year. The first class of 210 just graduated, and included 55 women.
They helped organize the "World Congress of Rabbis and Imams for Peace" in Brussels (January 2005) and Seville (March 2006) where some 150 Muslim and Jewish leaders "sit beard to beard" to explore common ground, denounce extremists, and "write declarations of peace."
They launched an initiative to build a "bridge of friendship" to evangelical Christians in the U.S., including on-going dialogues with Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council, and Josh McDowell of Campus Crusade for Christ, among others. Abaddi and his colleagues have also invited pastors and evangelical business leaders to Morocco for conferences and high-level inter-faith talks, and have even helped organize a series of concerts in Marrakesh where Christian and Muslim rock bands perform together for thousands of Moroccan young people.
They published a book about the importance of encouraging religious freedom within Islam and even suggested that "Muslims have the right to change their religion" if they so desire.
Abaddi also confirmed rumors swirling about in the Arab press that his government is quietly laying the groundwork with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hold a new round of high-level peace talks in the Kingdom in the near future. He noted that King Hassan II-the late-father of the current monarch-opened secret talks with the Israelis as far back as the early 1970s and that Morocco was the first Arab government after Egypt to welcome an Israeli Prime Minister for a public visit (Shimon Peres in July 1986).
"We need our people to know the real West.to understand that the West ain't no angel, but it ain't no demon either," Abaddi said, attempting a Western accent, at a private dinner in a Washington, D.C., suburb last week. "[This effort] is not a luxury. We are not being pressured to do it. We are trying to train responsible people to live in dangerous times."
"Our world is threatening to destroy itself," he noted, citing apocalyptic rhetoric coming out of Tehran, Iran's nuclear program, radical Islamic terrorism, AIDS, and severe global poverty. "Morocco can help bring about peace. I think the Moroccan model is practical and helpful. It communicates an entirely different concept of Islam to the rest of the world..I personally can't sit back and do nothing. After all, there is an Arab proverb that says, 'Don't be a mute Satan.' I feel compelled to do everything I can to make a better world."
Abaddi's refreshing vision notwithstanding, Morocco still has a way to go to insure religious liberty for all of its citizens. "The Government places certain restrictions on Christian religious materials and proselytizing," noted the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2005. "The Government permits the display and sale of Bibles in French, English, and Spanish, but it confiscates Arabic-language Bibles and refuses licenses for their importation and sale despite the absence of any law banning such books." What's more, in March 2005, "authorities expelled a South African pastor of a Protestant church in Marrakech for not having lucrative employment, although authorities had renewed his temporary residence permit annually for five years.The deportation followed a series of news and opinion articles in the local press concerning the presence of foreign Christian missionaries in the country [and] the Government's invitation to American Christian leaders to visit and meet with political and religious officials."
Still, the efforts by King Mohammed VI and advisors such as Abaddi are impressive, and should be encouraged by the administration and congressional leaders, as well as by Jewish and Christian leaders in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere. Better still, the Moroccan model is being mirrored by Jordan's King Abdullah II, who has consistently denounced sectarian violence, delivered the keynote address at the evangelical-organized National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in February, and just held the Iraqi Islamic Reconciliation Summit in Amman on April 22 to "call for an end to bloodshed and religious tension in Iraq" and "promote moderation and harmony among Muslims."
The world needs more people who dream "God-sized dreams," said Abaddi-dreams of peace and reconciliation, not just bigger houses and another Lexus. To that we should all say a hearty "Amen."
-Joel C. Rosenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of political thrillers such as The Last Jihad and The Ezekiel Option, now out in paperback.
May 9, 2006
A Different Sort of Radical Muslim.
Ahmed Abaddi is helping Muslims to understand the West.
By Joel C. Rosenberg
As Osama bin Laden and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continue to breathe their murderous threats against Christians and Jews, and attempt to incite Muslims around the world to annihilate the U.S. and Israel, another Muslim leader made the rounds in Washington last week offering a radically different vision.
Topping his agenda were under-the-radar peace talks with Israel, religious classes to teach Imams the history and virtues of the West, and dramatic new initiatives to build ties to Rabbis and evangelical Christians.
Were Dr. Ahmed Abaddi merely a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered professor of comparative religion in his native Morocco, his views would certainly be welcome, but not particularly newsworthy. However, Abaddi is actually in a position of some influence. As Morocco's Director of Islamic Affairs and senior advisor to King Mohammed VI, he is responsible for overseeing his country's 33,000 mosques. And he's not just talking about a new approach to Muslim relations with the West. At the direction, and with the blessing, of his King, Abaddi has already taken a number of concrete-and controversial-steps.
Abaddi recounted to House and Senate leaders, Bush administration officials, journalists, and business leaders the changes he and his colleagues have brought about in recent years:
They embarked upon a campaign of interviews, speeches, and sermons that condemn al Qaeda's teachings and violence. This accelerated after 9/11 and a series of suicide bombings that ripped through Morocco's Muslim- and Jewish-owned restaurants, as well as a bombing at a Jewish community center on May 16, 2003, that left some 45 dead and more than 100 wounded.
They helped mobilize more than one million Moroccans to take to the streets of Casablanca in May 2003 to denounce radical Islamic terrorism-a march in which 1,000 Moroccan Jews openly participated and were warmly embraced by the Muslim community.
They launched a theological training program for Imams to teach them how to promote moderation within Islam, to teach them more about Western history and the importance of Christianity and Judaism to Western social and political development, and to help them identify and oppose extremist forces and trends within Islam. Participants take 32 hours of instruction per week for a full year. The first class of 210 just graduated, and included 55 women.
They helped organize the "World Congress of Rabbis and Imams for Peace" in Brussels (January 2005) and Seville (March 2006) where some 150 Muslim and Jewish leaders "sit beard to beard" to explore common ground, denounce extremists, and "write declarations of peace."
They launched an initiative to build a "bridge of friendship" to evangelical Christians in the U.S., including on-going dialogues with Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council, and Josh McDowell of Campus Crusade for Christ, among others. Abaddi and his colleagues have also invited pastors and evangelical business leaders to Morocco for conferences and high-level inter-faith talks, and have even helped organize a series of concerts in Marrakesh where Christian and Muslim rock bands perform together for thousands of Moroccan young people.
They published a book about the importance of encouraging religious freedom within Islam and even suggested that "Muslims have the right to change their religion" if they so desire.
Abaddi also confirmed rumors swirling about in the Arab press that his government is quietly laying the groundwork with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hold a new round of high-level peace talks in the Kingdom in the near future. He noted that King Hassan II-the late-father of the current monarch-opened secret talks with the Israelis as far back as the early 1970s and that Morocco was the first Arab government after Egypt to welcome an Israeli Prime Minister for a public visit (Shimon Peres in July 1986).
"We need our people to know the real West.to understand that the West ain't no angel, but it ain't no demon either," Abaddi said, attempting a Western accent, at a private dinner in a Washington, D.C., suburb last week. "[This effort] is not a luxury. We are not being pressured to do it. We are trying to train responsible people to live in dangerous times."
"Our world is threatening to destroy itself," he noted, citing apocalyptic rhetoric coming out of Tehran, Iran's nuclear program, radical Islamic terrorism, AIDS, and severe global poverty. "Morocco can help bring about peace. I think the Moroccan model is practical and helpful. It communicates an entirely different concept of Islam to the rest of the world..I personally can't sit back and do nothing. After all, there is an Arab proverb that says, 'Don't be a mute Satan.' I feel compelled to do everything I can to make a better world."
Abaddi's refreshing vision notwithstanding, Morocco still has a way to go to insure religious liberty for all of its citizens. "The Government places certain restrictions on Christian religious materials and proselytizing," noted the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2005. "The Government permits the display and sale of Bibles in French, English, and Spanish, but it confiscates Arabic-language Bibles and refuses licenses for their importation and sale despite the absence of any law banning such books." What's more, in March 2005, "authorities expelled a South African pastor of a Protestant church in Marrakech for not having lucrative employment, although authorities had renewed his temporary residence permit annually for five years.The deportation followed a series of news and opinion articles in the local press concerning the presence of foreign Christian missionaries in the country [and] the Government's invitation to American Christian leaders to visit and meet with political and religious officials."
Still, the efforts by King Mohammed VI and advisors such as Abaddi are impressive, and should be encouraged by the administration and congressional leaders, as well as by Jewish and Christian leaders in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere. Better still, the Moroccan model is being mirrored by Jordan's King Abdullah II, who has consistently denounced sectarian violence, delivered the keynote address at the evangelical-organized National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in February, and just held the Iraqi Islamic Reconciliation Summit in Amman on April 22 to "call for an end to bloodshed and religious tension in Iraq" and "promote moderation and harmony among Muslims."
The world needs more people who dream "God-sized dreams," said Abaddi-dreams of peace and reconciliation, not just bigger houses and another Lexus. To that we should all say a hearty "Amen."
-Joel C. Rosenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of political thrillers such as The Last Jihad and The Ezekiel Option, now out in paperback.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Israeli and Palestinian researchers to clean up river.
DEMOCRACY
Israeli-Palestinian team cleaning up regional rivers
By Nicky Blackburn
January 07, 2007
When Michael Cohen visited the Alexander River estuary in the center of Israel a few weeks ago with other researchers, he was shocked at what he found. "The river was so unclean, there were dead fish, plastic bottles and other garbage floating downstream and it was a disgusting brown colour," says the director of special projects at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies on Kibbutz Ketura near Eilat. "The tide was out, so the filthy river just stopped five feet from the Mediterranean. The sea looked so pristine and clear, but at high tide, all the filth from the river washes straight into the sea polluting it for miles around," he told ISRAEL21c.
The miserable state of the Alexander, which runs through both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, is one of the reasons why a team of Israeli and Palestinian researchers have joined forces to create a blueprint for action to restore the quality of not only the Alexander, but the 15 rivers that flow through both Israeli and Palestinian areas. Rivers, as everyone knows, are not confined by borders. Cleaning a river in one location, will not stop it becoming polluted elsewhere, if people continue to dump sewage or industrial waste along the route. Most of the rivers that flow through PA and Israeli land are heavily polluted with raw sewage, effluent, and industrial waste. This is the first time, however, there has ever been any kind of joint monitoring of water quality or combined action plan to clean the rivers up.
The team of 14 researchers from the Arava Institute on the Israeli side, and the Water and Environment Development Organization (WEDO) in Bethlehem on the Palestinian side, is being funded with a $1 million grant from the Middle East Regional Cooperation (MERC) Program of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The three-year Trans Boundary Stream Restoration Project began in October 2004, and after two years of monitoring, team members are now in the final stages of putting together an effective river restoration strategy for Israel and the PA which is tailored to the unique ecological and geographical conditions of local streams. Final recommendations will be available in July this year (2007).
The group, who meet regularly in the field and elsewhere to assess their work, focused on two steams that flow through large population centers in both Israel and the PA - the 25 mile Alexander, which flows from the heavily populated West Bank city of Nablus to its estuary not far from Netanya in Israel; and the River Hebron, which passes Hebron in the West Bank, flows through Beersheva as the River Besor, and then runs on to Gaza and the sea. The researchers set up 15 monitoring stations along the length of both rivers - six on the Alexander (three on each side), and nine on the Hebron River (four on the PA side) and began monitoring the quality and flow of the water, and the ecological health of the streams. "This is the first time any monitoring of water quality has been carried out on these two rivers," says Lior Asaf, scientific coordinator of the project on the Israeli side. So far 300 measurements from these rivers have been analyzed, and a further 100 samples taken during recent storms have now been sent away to be checked. Though the data so far is still raw, the results are clear, says Asaf, a hydrologist from the Arava Institute. "Both steams are heavily polluted," he says. There are numerous point pollution sources that originate in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, according to the project's recently published annual report. In the Alexander, untreated sewage is dumped into the stream at Nablus, and the annual report states that there are 70 sources of pollution along the steam's route, including sewage and effluents from refugee camps, towns, the Palestinian city of Tulkarm, stone cutting industries, landfills, and leather factories. In addition, from October to December, waste from surrounding olive press factories is added to the general pollution.
In Israel, pollution sources include treated and untreated sewage, fishpond effluents and industrial effluents. Winter storms and floods bring even more pollution. Since 1995 some $12 million has been spent on restoration efforts to the Alexander, and Israel has even set up a wastewater treatment facility on the river. In 2003, the river won the international Riverprize award in Australia for this work. Despite this, however, the report states: "Despite considerable restoration efforts, to date, the stream is still severely polluted, unsuitable for human use with unhealthy ecosystems." Without any kind of wastewater treatment facility, the Hebron stream is inevitably in worse condition than the Alexander, according to Asaf. The major source of pollution is raw sewage discharged from Hebron. Domestic sewage is also pumped into the stream from the Israeli settlement of Qiryat Arba. In addition, according to the report, wastewater from almost 100 industrial facilities flow into the steam, treated effluents are discharged from Dimona, wastewater from Ofakim, and on occasions treated wastewater leaks out of municipal waste facilities in Beersheva. "Raw sewage flows for over 60 miles from Hebron, through Beersheva to Gaza," says Asaf. During winter storms pollution also comes from Ramat Hovav, a toxic waste disposal site that contains some of Israel's heaviest chemical industries.
In the past, both the Alexander and the Hebron steams traditionally dried up during the summer months. Now they have become a permanent, year-round conduit for sewage and effluent, says Asaf. "In the last 50 years, many streams have been transformed into sewage canals," he explains. With the monitoring virtually complete, the Palestinian-Israeli team has now set about the last part of their program, developing the foundations for an effective river restoration strategy for Israel and the PA. Four team members (two Israeli and two Palestinian) recently took part in a two-week workshop at the University of Maryland, to learn about the clean up of the once heavily polluted Chesapeake Bay. "We are not simply coming up with a report or a survey, but are developing a real road map to move things forward," says Asaf. "We plan to develop a clear plan of what should be achieved. Many people say we should wait for peace and then we will all have a clear vision of what's going on, but we believe that we can't wait for that. We should address our problems now because natural resources do not know boundaries. We need to come forward with a clear Palestinian and Israeli vision of how to address these problems, what is in our best interests, what should be done, and how much it will cost."
The Palestinian and Israeli researchers, who include Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Moslems and Palestinian Christians, meet regularly and communicate mostly in English. Their most recent meeting took place in Beit Jalla, just outside of Jerusalem. "We meet in a place that is usually safe for both of us," says Asaf. The project demands a great of cooperation between the Palestinian and Israeli teams and Asaf says the researchers work extremely well together. "Certainly from the perspective of "peace making" the initiative has exceeded the participants' expectations," the annual report states. In May the research team plans to hold a joint workshop in Akaba in Jordan where they will invite policy makers from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. "We have received a positive reaction so far," says Asaf. In the meantime, the researchers have also approached the Ministry of Environment in Israel to encourage them to continue monitoring water quality in the two rivers using the framework of monitoring stations already set up by the team. "We believe it is easier to encourage people to go forward once we have this framework for information," says Asaf. Asaf is a firm believer that the only way to solve the problem of the region's polluted rivers is by working together. Israel, for instance, now has plans to build a wastewater facility on the Israeli side of the Hebron river. "In the short term that may prevent pollution down stream, but if we don't deal with the source of the pollution it will not solve the problem forever," Asaf insists. "If we don't take control we won't do the right job. "Our team includes many people from different religions, but there is no difference between any of us," Asaf continues. "As human beings we need clear water and water resources. We need natural places that we can come and relax and enjoy ourselves, not places fouled by raw sewage and effluents. We can only achieve this if we work together. Only multilateral action will solve these problems."
© 2001-2004 ISRAEL21c.org. All rights reserved.
Israeli-Palestinian team cleaning up regional rivers
By Nicky Blackburn
January 07, 2007
When Michael Cohen visited the Alexander River estuary in the center of Israel a few weeks ago with other researchers, he was shocked at what he found. "The river was so unclean, there were dead fish, plastic bottles and other garbage floating downstream and it was a disgusting brown colour," says the director of special projects at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies on Kibbutz Ketura near Eilat. "The tide was out, so the filthy river just stopped five feet from the Mediterranean. The sea looked so pristine and clear, but at high tide, all the filth from the river washes straight into the sea polluting it for miles around," he told ISRAEL21c.
The miserable state of the Alexander, which runs through both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, is one of the reasons why a team of Israeli and Palestinian researchers have joined forces to create a blueprint for action to restore the quality of not only the Alexander, but the 15 rivers that flow through both Israeli and Palestinian areas. Rivers, as everyone knows, are not confined by borders. Cleaning a river in one location, will not stop it becoming polluted elsewhere, if people continue to dump sewage or industrial waste along the route. Most of the rivers that flow through PA and Israeli land are heavily polluted with raw sewage, effluent, and industrial waste. This is the first time, however, there has ever been any kind of joint monitoring of water quality or combined action plan to clean the rivers up.
The team of 14 researchers from the Arava Institute on the Israeli side, and the Water and Environment Development Organization (WEDO) in Bethlehem on the Palestinian side, is being funded with a $1 million grant from the Middle East Regional Cooperation (MERC) Program of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The three-year Trans Boundary Stream Restoration Project began in October 2004, and after two years of monitoring, team members are now in the final stages of putting together an effective river restoration strategy for Israel and the PA which is tailored to the unique ecological and geographical conditions of local streams. Final recommendations will be available in July this year (2007).
The group, who meet regularly in the field and elsewhere to assess their work, focused on two steams that flow through large population centers in both Israel and the PA - the 25 mile Alexander, which flows from the heavily populated West Bank city of Nablus to its estuary not far from Netanya in Israel; and the River Hebron, which passes Hebron in the West Bank, flows through Beersheva as the River Besor, and then runs on to Gaza and the sea. The researchers set up 15 monitoring stations along the length of both rivers - six on the Alexander (three on each side), and nine on the Hebron River (four on the PA side) and began monitoring the quality and flow of the water, and the ecological health of the streams. "This is the first time any monitoring of water quality has been carried out on these two rivers," says Lior Asaf, scientific coordinator of the project on the Israeli side. So far 300 measurements from these rivers have been analyzed, and a further 100 samples taken during recent storms have now been sent away to be checked. Though the data so far is still raw, the results are clear, says Asaf, a hydrologist from the Arava Institute. "Both steams are heavily polluted," he says. There are numerous point pollution sources that originate in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, according to the project's recently published annual report. In the Alexander, untreated sewage is dumped into the stream at Nablus, and the annual report states that there are 70 sources of pollution along the steam's route, including sewage and effluents from refugee camps, towns, the Palestinian city of Tulkarm, stone cutting industries, landfills, and leather factories. In addition, from October to December, waste from surrounding olive press factories is added to the general pollution.
In Israel, pollution sources include treated and untreated sewage, fishpond effluents and industrial effluents. Winter storms and floods bring even more pollution. Since 1995 some $12 million has been spent on restoration efforts to the Alexander, and Israel has even set up a wastewater treatment facility on the river. In 2003, the river won the international Riverprize award in Australia for this work. Despite this, however, the report states: "Despite considerable restoration efforts, to date, the stream is still severely polluted, unsuitable for human use with unhealthy ecosystems." Without any kind of wastewater treatment facility, the Hebron stream is inevitably in worse condition than the Alexander, according to Asaf. The major source of pollution is raw sewage discharged from Hebron. Domestic sewage is also pumped into the stream from the Israeli settlement of Qiryat Arba. In addition, according to the report, wastewater from almost 100 industrial facilities flow into the steam, treated effluents are discharged from Dimona, wastewater from Ofakim, and on occasions treated wastewater leaks out of municipal waste facilities in Beersheva. "Raw sewage flows for over 60 miles from Hebron, through Beersheva to Gaza," says Asaf. During winter storms pollution also comes from Ramat Hovav, a toxic waste disposal site that contains some of Israel's heaviest chemical industries.
In the past, both the Alexander and the Hebron steams traditionally dried up during the summer months. Now they have become a permanent, year-round conduit for sewage and effluent, says Asaf. "In the last 50 years, many streams have been transformed into sewage canals," he explains. With the monitoring virtually complete, the Palestinian-Israeli team has now set about the last part of their program, developing the foundations for an effective river restoration strategy for Israel and the PA. Four team members (two Israeli and two Palestinian) recently took part in a two-week workshop at the University of Maryland, to learn about the clean up of the once heavily polluted Chesapeake Bay. "We are not simply coming up with a report or a survey, but are developing a real road map to move things forward," says Asaf. "We plan to develop a clear plan of what should be achieved. Many people say we should wait for peace and then we will all have a clear vision of what's going on, but we believe that we can't wait for that. We should address our problems now because natural resources do not know boundaries. We need to come forward with a clear Palestinian and Israeli vision of how to address these problems, what is in our best interests, what should be done, and how much it will cost."
The Palestinian and Israeli researchers, who include Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Moslems and Palestinian Christians, meet regularly and communicate mostly in English. Their most recent meeting took place in Beit Jalla, just outside of Jerusalem. "We meet in a place that is usually safe for both of us," says Asaf. The project demands a great of cooperation between the Palestinian and Israeli teams and Asaf says the researchers work extremely well together. "Certainly from the perspective of "peace making" the initiative has exceeded the participants' expectations," the annual report states. In May the research team plans to hold a joint workshop in Akaba in Jordan where they will invite policy makers from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. "We have received a positive reaction so far," says Asaf. In the meantime, the researchers have also approached the Ministry of Environment in Israel to encourage them to continue monitoring water quality in the two rivers using the framework of monitoring stations already set up by the team. "We believe it is easier to encourage people to go forward once we have this framework for information," says Asaf. Asaf is a firm believer that the only way to solve the problem of the region's polluted rivers is by working together. Israel, for instance, now has plans to build a wastewater facility on the Israeli side of the Hebron river. "In the short term that may prevent pollution down stream, but if we don't deal with the source of the pollution it will not solve the problem forever," Asaf insists. "If we don't take control we won't do the right job. "Our team includes many people from different religions, but there is no difference between any of us," Asaf continues. "As human beings we need clear water and water resources. We need natural places that we can come and relax and enjoy ourselves, not places fouled by raw sewage and effluents. We can only achieve this if we work together. Only multilateral action will solve these problems."
© 2001-2004 ISRAEL21c.org. All rights reserved.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Zionist propaganda??? ARABS vs. ISRAEL (from Pakistan)
Zionist propaganda?: Arabs vs Israel
05.01. 2007
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000326.html
Original content copyright by the author
The News - International
Facts speak louder than any propaganda, and they speak to any honest person who wants to know the truth, as this article from Pakistan shows. This article also shows precisely where Israel's true strength is. Anyone who is for a strong Israel, should keep this in mind. -- A.I.(also here: Arabs vs Israel)
Arabs vs Israel
By Farrukh Saleem
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=35880
Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb: "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him knowledge" The League of Arab States has 22 members. Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman are 'traditional monarchies'. Of the 22, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria and Somalia are 'Authoritarian Regimes' (Source: www.freedomhouse.org). Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Somalia are among the 'world's most repressive regimes' (Source: A special report to the 59th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights). Of the 330 million Muslim men, women and children living under Arab rulers a mere 486,530 live in a democracy (0.15 per cent of the total).A mere two hundred and fifty miles from the 'League of Dictators' HQ in Cairo is the only 'parliamentary democracy' in the region; universal suffrage, multi-party, multi-candidate, competitive elections. Israel's 6,352,117 residents are 76 per cent Jewish and 23 per cent non-Jewish (mostly Arab).Israel spends $110 on scientific research per year per person while the same figure for the Arab world is $2.
Knowledge makes Israel grow by 5.2 per cent a year while "rates of productivity (the average production of one worker) in Arab countries were negative to a large and increasing extent in oil-producing countries during the 1980s and 90s (World Bank; Arab Development Report)."
Facts cannot be denied: The state of Israel now has six universities ranked as among the best on the face of the planet. Hebrew University Jerusalem is in the top-100. Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University and Weizmann Institute of Science are in the top-200. Bar Ilan University and Ben Gurion University are in the top-300. The Arab League does not have a single university in the top-400 (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm).
One in two Arab women can neither read nor write (remember, "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him/her knowledge").Israel's universities are producing knowledge. Israeli society is applying that knowledge plus diffusing knowledge produced by others. On the other hand, within the Arab League, repressive regimes have erected religious, social and cultural barriers to the production as well as diffusion of knowledge.Look at how knowledge is abandoning the Arab world: Between 1998 and 2000 more than 15,000 Arab physicians migrated. According to the World Bank, "roughly 25 per cent of 300,000 first degree graduates from Arab universities emigrated. Roughly 23 per cent of Arab engineers, 50 per cent of Arab doctors and 15 per cent of Arab BSc holders had emigrated."Israel, on the other hand, has more engineers and scientists per capita than any other country (for every 10,000 Israelis there are 145 engineers or scientists).
Israel ranks among the top-7 countries worldwide for patents per capita. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Israel's pharmaceutical giant, is the world's largest producer of antibiotics (Teva developed Copaxone, a unique immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, the only non-interferon agent available).Facts are hard to deny: Most members of the Arab League grant Muslim women fewer rights -- with regards to marriage, divorce, dress code, civil rights, legal status and education. Israel does not. Spain translates more books in a year than has the Arab world in the past thousand years (since the reign of Caliph Mamoun; Abbasid, caliph 813-833). Six million Israelis buy 12 million books every year making them one of the highest consumers of books in the world. Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita in the world; the Arab world has the lowest. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other country (109 per 10,000 Israelis); the Arab world -- next to nothing.
Results are for everyone to see: The average per capita income in Israel is $25,000 while the average income within the League of Arab States is $5,000.The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com
Original content is Copyright by the author 2007. Posted at ZioNation-Zionism and Israel Web Log, http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000326.htmlwhere your intelligent and constructive comments are welcome. Disributed by ZNN list. Subscribe by sending a message to ZNN-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Please forward by e-mail with this notice, cite this article and link to it. Other uses by permission only.
__._,_.___
05.01. 2007
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000326.html
Original content copyright by the author
The News - International
Facts speak louder than any propaganda, and they speak to any honest person who wants to know the truth, as this article from Pakistan shows. This article also shows precisely where Israel's true strength is. Anyone who is for a strong Israel, should keep this in mind. -- A.I.(also here: Arabs vs Israel)
Arabs vs Israel
By Farrukh Saleem
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=35880
Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb: "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him knowledge" The League of Arab States has 22 members. Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman are 'traditional monarchies'. Of the 22, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria and Somalia are 'Authoritarian Regimes' (Source: www.freedomhouse.org). Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Somalia are among the 'world's most repressive regimes' (Source: A special report to the 59th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights). Of the 330 million Muslim men, women and children living under Arab rulers a mere 486,530 live in a democracy (0.15 per cent of the total).A mere two hundred and fifty miles from the 'League of Dictators' HQ in Cairo is the only 'parliamentary democracy' in the region; universal suffrage, multi-party, multi-candidate, competitive elections. Israel's 6,352,117 residents are 76 per cent Jewish and 23 per cent non-Jewish (mostly Arab).Israel spends $110 on scientific research per year per person while the same figure for the Arab world is $2.
Knowledge makes Israel grow by 5.2 per cent a year while "rates of productivity (the average production of one worker) in Arab countries were negative to a large and increasing extent in oil-producing countries during the 1980s and 90s (World Bank; Arab Development Report)."
Facts cannot be denied: The state of Israel now has six universities ranked as among the best on the face of the planet. Hebrew University Jerusalem is in the top-100. Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University and Weizmann Institute of Science are in the top-200. Bar Ilan University and Ben Gurion University are in the top-300. The Arab League does not have a single university in the top-400 (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm).
One in two Arab women can neither read nor write (remember, "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him/her knowledge").Israel's universities are producing knowledge. Israeli society is applying that knowledge plus diffusing knowledge produced by others. On the other hand, within the Arab League, repressive regimes have erected religious, social and cultural barriers to the production as well as diffusion of knowledge.Look at how knowledge is abandoning the Arab world: Between 1998 and 2000 more than 15,000 Arab physicians migrated. According to the World Bank, "roughly 25 per cent of 300,000 first degree graduates from Arab universities emigrated. Roughly 23 per cent of Arab engineers, 50 per cent of Arab doctors and 15 per cent of Arab BSc holders had emigrated."Israel, on the other hand, has more engineers and scientists per capita than any other country (for every 10,000 Israelis there are 145 engineers or scientists).
Israel ranks among the top-7 countries worldwide for patents per capita. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Israel's pharmaceutical giant, is the world's largest producer of antibiotics (Teva developed Copaxone, a unique immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, the only non-interferon agent available).Facts are hard to deny: Most members of the Arab League grant Muslim women fewer rights -- with regards to marriage, divorce, dress code, civil rights, legal status and education. Israel does not. Spain translates more books in a year than has the Arab world in the past thousand years (since the reign of Caliph Mamoun; Abbasid, caliph 813-833). Six million Israelis buy 12 million books every year making them one of the highest consumers of books in the world. Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita in the world; the Arab world has the lowest. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other country (109 per 10,000 Israelis); the Arab world -- next to nothing.
Results are for everyone to see: The average per capita income in Israel is $25,000 while the average income within the League of Arab States is $5,000.The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com
Original content is Copyright by the author 2007. Posted at ZioNation-Zionism and Israel Web Log, http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000326.htmlwhere your intelligent and constructive comments are welcome. Disributed by ZNN list. Subscribe by sending a message to ZNN-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Please forward by e-mail with this notice, cite this article and link to it. Other uses by permission only.
__._,_.___
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Recalling Teddy Kolek, (the late Mayor of Jerusalem) by David Hochstein.
My own recollection of Teddy Kolek.,- the late Mayor of Jerusalem. (Miriam)
Reading the comments below, reminded me of my one and only meeting with the then Mayor of Jerusalem. He made exactly the same impression on me which Joseph Hochstein describes,- a casual person who did not stand on ceremony with anyone and was bored with protocol. I looked up my photo album of 1991 when I was part of the International Council of Jewish Women’s Executive at a Reception hosted by the Mayor and he pinned a Jerusalem badge on each of us. On the photo which I took of the dignitaries sitting on the stage listening to our President giving him a Vote of thanks, the Mayor is the only one looking away into the distance,- obviously bored with the proceedings! Never mind that we represented the leaderships of some 50 Jewish communities,- I really don’t think that he was impressed or interested in us Diaspora Jews,- or perhaps it was because we were “only” women!
I contrast this meeting with my first encounter with PM Ehud Olmert (who followed Teddy Kolek as mayor), way back in the ‘70s when he was a young Minister while visiting us here in Melbourne as an emissary for the UIA. I was designated to pick him up from the airport and being new at this VIP protocol-game, I did not greet him according to his expectations as befitting his status as a Minister of the Israeli Government. He was most unimpressed with me and let me know it,- to my embarrassment!
I briefly met PM Olmert again years later when he was Mayor, in a Jerusalem Hotel lobby and he was most charming and greeted me most cordially,- so perhaps he forgave me,- or forgot me. He seemed far more casual and relaxed then,- he also seemed to have matured somewhat by then.
MM.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recalling Teddy Kollek
by Joseph M. Hochstein, MidEastWeb http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000552.htm
Here are a few personal recollections of Teddy Kollek, the Vienna-born ex-kibbutznik who served as Jerusalem's mayor from 1965 until Ehud Olmert defeated him in 1993. Kollek died today (January 2, 2006) at 95. In the 1970s, Kollek spoke at a breakfast meeting of journalists visiting from the United States. The organizers asked me to chair the program and introduce Kollek. He arrived late, alone.
As I rose to make the introduction, he cut me off. "So, what are your questions?" were his first words to the group. He took it from there. Everyone, Kollek included, knew he needed no introduction. Some years later, Kollek gave a guided tour of his city to visitors attending an international conference on local government in Israel. I was there as a member of the conference staff. As before, Kollek came alone, without the typical entourage of aides who accompany mayors of important cities. He walked briskly along a hillside, and not everyone in the group was keeping up. I saw a chance to speak privately with him and ask for an appointment to interview him for a book I was researching. He could shed light on Haganah activities in New York in 1947-48, before Israel's war of independence. He had headed the no-longer-secret Haganah mission. "I'll give you five minutes," he said and kept striding toward a point overlooking his city. I protested. He took a moment to explain. Speaking slower and with less impatience, almost like an exasperated parent, he explained that he wasn't going to devote more than five minutes to talking about the past. What mattered now was the present and the future, he said, and he was prepared to make time to discuss that.
Another time, when he was pushing 80 years of age, I ran into Kollek at the arrivals terminal at New York's JFK international airport. He was alone, and no security guards were in evidence. He was standing at a baggage carousel, waiting for his luggage. He stood there with no sign of impatience, and with no VIP treatment. He said hello, and when his luggage arrived he wrestled it off the carousel by himself and walked off alone.
He was still the mayor of Jerusalem then, but he wasn't flaunting it. ---
Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv January 2, 2006
__._,_.___ =========================================================================ZNN - Zionism News Network - is for distribution of information about Zionism, Israel, Israeli and Zionist history, Israel advocacy and anti-Semitism and telling people about your Web site or activist issues.
Reading the comments below, reminded me of my one and only meeting with the then Mayor of Jerusalem. He made exactly the same impression on me which Joseph Hochstein describes,- a casual person who did not stand on ceremony with anyone and was bored with protocol. I looked up my photo album of 1991 when I was part of the International Council of Jewish Women’s Executive at a Reception hosted by the Mayor and he pinned a Jerusalem badge on each of us. On the photo which I took of the dignitaries sitting on the stage listening to our President giving him a Vote of thanks, the Mayor is the only one looking away into the distance,- obviously bored with the proceedings! Never mind that we represented the leaderships of some 50 Jewish communities,- I really don’t think that he was impressed or interested in us Diaspora Jews,- or perhaps it was because we were “only” women!
I contrast this meeting with my first encounter with PM Ehud Olmert (who followed Teddy Kolek as mayor), way back in the ‘70s when he was a young Minister while visiting us here in Melbourne as an emissary for the UIA. I was designated to pick him up from the airport and being new at this VIP protocol-game, I did not greet him according to his expectations as befitting his status as a Minister of the Israeli Government. He was most unimpressed with me and let me know it,- to my embarrassment!
I briefly met PM Olmert again years later when he was Mayor, in a Jerusalem Hotel lobby and he was most charming and greeted me most cordially,- so perhaps he forgave me,- or forgot me. He seemed far more casual and relaxed then,- he also seemed to have matured somewhat by then.
MM.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recalling Teddy Kollek
by Joseph M. Hochstein, MidEastWeb http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000552.htm
Here are a few personal recollections of Teddy Kollek, the Vienna-born ex-kibbutznik who served as Jerusalem's mayor from 1965 until Ehud Olmert defeated him in 1993. Kollek died today (January 2, 2006) at 95. In the 1970s, Kollek spoke at a breakfast meeting of journalists visiting from the United States. The organizers asked me to chair the program and introduce Kollek. He arrived late, alone.
As I rose to make the introduction, he cut me off. "So, what are your questions?" were his first words to the group. He took it from there. Everyone, Kollek included, knew he needed no introduction. Some years later, Kollek gave a guided tour of his city to visitors attending an international conference on local government in Israel. I was there as a member of the conference staff. As before, Kollek came alone, without the typical entourage of aides who accompany mayors of important cities. He walked briskly along a hillside, and not everyone in the group was keeping up. I saw a chance to speak privately with him and ask for an appointment to interview him for a book I was researching. He could shed light on Haganah activities in New York in 1947-48, before Israel's war of independence. He had headed the no-longer-secret Haganah mission. "I'll give you five minutes," he said and kept striding toward a point overlooking his city. I protested. He took a moment to explain. Speaking slower and with less impatience, almost like an exasperated parent, he explained that he wasn't going to devote more than five minutes to talking about the past. What mattered now was the present and the future, he said, and he was prepared to make time to discuss that.
Another time, when he was pushing 80 years of age, I ran into Kollek at the arrivals terminal at New York's JFK international airport. He was alone, and no security guards were in evidence. He was standing at a baggage carousel, waiting for his luggage. He stood there with no sign of impatience, and with no VIP treatment. He said hello, and when his luggage arrived he wrestled it off the carousel by himself and walked off alone.
He was still the mayor of Jerusalem then, but he wasn't flaunting it. ---
Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv January 2, 2006
__._,_.___ =========================================================================ZNN - Zionism News Network - is for distribution of information about Zionism, Israel, Israeli and Zionist history, Israel advocacy and anti-Semitism and telling people about your Web site or activist issues.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
CHOOSING TO BE CHOSEN: Crypto Jews in New Mexico
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061231/LIFE/612310301/1006
CHOOSING TO BE CHOSEN
Hispanic New Mexicans intrigued by hints of a hidden Jewish past
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 12/31/06
BY MATT CRENSON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Within weeks of assuming the job of New Mexico state historian, Stanley Hordes started receiving some odd visitors. They would enter his Santa Fe office, close the door — and gossip about their neighbors.
"So-and-so lights candles on Friday nights," they would whisper. "So-and-so doesn't eat pork," they would say.
Hordes wasn't the first scholar who had ever heard such things. But as a curious new arrival from Louisiana, the young historian was intrigued.
So Hordes began visiting rural villages to interview the "viejitos," Hispanic old-timers whose families had lived in the state for generations, sometimes since the original Spanish settlers came up from Mexico.
He was astounded by what they told him.
Though the people Hordes spoke with were clearly Catholic, they reported following an array of Jewish customs.
When Hordes asked why they did such things, some said they were simply following family tradition. Others gave a more straightforward explanation.
"Somos judios," they said. We are Jews.
They didn't really know anything about the Jewish faith — and yet, they called themselves Jews.
Were they?
People don't just decide they're Jewish for no reason. Cultural traditions and identities, no matter how tenuous, have to come from somewhere.
A quarter century later, Hordes has a stirring explanation of how Judaism got to New Mexico. Like so many Jewish stories — the Exodus, David and Goliath, the Hanukkah story — it is an ancient and epic tale of triumph against overwhelming adversity.
In his 2005 book "To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico," Hordes suggests that many crypto-Jews found their way to the northern frontier of the Spanish colonial empire, where evading the authority of both church and state was an easier proposition.
There they continued to observe their religion behind locked doors, blending publicly into the monolithic Catholic culture.
"They were invisible," Hordes said.
But the people had no synagogue, no Torah, no connection to global Jewish culture. By the 20th century, Hordes concludes, all that was left were a few suggestive customs and a vague sense among a few viejitos that somehow, they were Jewish.
For Sonya Loya, there's nothing vague about it. She has always felt Jewish. Growing up Catholic in Ruidoso, N.M., Loya was intensely spiritual. But she never identified with Jesus or Christianity.
"I never felt whatever I was supposed to feel when I was Catholic," Loya said.
Loya began observing the Jewish sabbath, Shabbat, six years ago, about the same time that she learned about the secret Jewish past that was being uncovered by Hordes and other scholars. She was thrilled at the possibility that she might actually have Jewish heritage.
"I believe that what drew me back home to who I am is my Jewish soul," Loya said.
In 2004 she went to her parents, asking them to bless her conversion to Judaism but expecting the worst. But not only did her father give his blessing, Loya said, but he also revealed that he had known since childhood that he had Jewish ancestry. An uncle, returning from World War II, had seen the family name among a list of concentration camp inmates.
"I'm still discovering a lot of these things from my own family," she said.
Bill Sanchez always felt Jewish too. But not that Jewish — he's a Catholic priest.
Sanchez discovered his own Jewish roots after watching a television documentary on genetics. The show inspired him to have his own genes tested by a Houston-based company called Family Tree DNA. The company determined that he has a set of genetic markers on his Y-chromosome that is also found in about 30 percent of Jewish men.
Like Hordes, folklorist Judith Neulander was fascinated by the story of the Southwestern crypto-Jews when she first encountered it as a graduate student in the early 1990s. Neulander is an American Jew who grew up in Mexico City.
"I really in my heart wanted to curate the crypto-Judaic exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York," said Neulander, co-director of the Jewish Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Neulander went to New Mexico in the summer of 1992 and began doing interviews.
Neulander heard accounts of grandfathers donning shawls before they prayed and grandmothers carefully draining every drop of blood from chickens after slaughtering them. But she grew increasingly uneasy, and then dismayed.
People told her about how their parents or grandparents prayed to "Yahweh" — Hebrew for God. But Judaism forbids saying God's name out loud.
They talked about playing as children with a four-sided top that resembled a dreidel. But dreidels first appeared among Central and Eastern European Jews well after 1492. How would the descendants of Spanish Jews who fled Europe during the Inquisition have known anything about them?
"All of it just doesn't really hold up when you examine it carefully," Neulander said.
In 1994, Neulander wrote a paper in the Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review that offered an explanation. She can't prove it, but Neulander believes Protestant evangelicals, possibly from a group that splintered off the Seventh Day Adventist church, inspired the belief in a Southwestern Jewish past less than a century ago.
Hordes dismisses her theory as outrageous.
"Do you think they would have forgotten that they were Seventh-Day Adventists?" he asked.
Though Judaism has always allowed for the conversion of people who have demonstrated a sufficient commitment to the faith, it has an ethnic component that other religions lack. People become Christian when they choose to put their faith in Jesus Christ. But Jews don't choose; they're chosen. They have a special relationship with God, forged by the events chronicled in the Old Testament and kept alive over millennia.
Crypto-Jews have an uncomfortable relationship with that legacy. Though their claim to Jewishness is based on inheritance, they have no way of documenting it. "You'll never have proof," Loya said. "You have these bits of evidence — like bread crumbs."
But that doesn't matter to people like Loya. Having "felt Jewish" for most of her life, the crypto-Jew story, she says, gives her the authority to embrace the heritage of her choice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved.
Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. (Updated June 7, 2005) Site design by Asbury Park Press / Contact us
CHOOSING TO BE CHOSEN
Hispanic New Mexicans intrigued by hints of a hidden Jewish past
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 12/31/06
BY MATT CRENSON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Within weeks of assuming the job of New Mexico state historian, Stanley Hordes started receiving some odd visitors. They would enter his Santa Fe office, close the door — and gossip about their neighbors.
"So-and-so lights candles on Friday nights," they would whisper. "So-and-so doesn't eat pork," they would say.
Hordes wasn't the first scholar who had ever heard such things. But as a curious new arrival from Louisiana, the young historian was intrigued.
So Hordes began visiting rural villages to interview the "viejitos," Hispanic old-timers whose families had lived in the state for generations, sometimes since the original Spanish settlers came up from Mexico.
He was astounded by what they told him.
Though the people Hordes spoke with were clearly Catholic, they reported following an array of Jewish customs.
When Hordes asked why they did such things, some said they were simply following family tradition. Others gave a more straightforward explanation.
"Somos judios," they said. We are Jews.
They didn't really know anything about the Jewish faith — and yet, they called themselves Jews.
Were they?
People don't just decide they're Jewish for no reason. Cultural traditions and identities, no matter how tenuous, have to come from somewhere.
A quarter century later, Hordes has a stirring explanation of how Judaism got to New Mexico. Like so many Jewish stories — the Exodus, David and Goliath, the Hanukkah story — it is an ancient and epic tale of triumph against overwhelming adversity.
In his 2005 book "To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico," Hordes suggests that many crypto-Jews found their way to the northern frontier of the Spanish colonial empire, where evading the authority of both church and state was an easier proposition.
There they continued to observe their religion behind locked doors, blending publicly into the monolithic Catholic culture.
"They were invisible," Hordes said.
But the people had no synagogue, no Torah, no connection to global Jewish culture. By the 20th century, Hordes concludes, all that was left were a few suggestive customs and a vague sense among a few viejitos that somehow, they were Jewish.
For Sonya Loya, there's nothing vague about it. She has always felt Jewish. Growing up Catholic in Ruidoso, N.M., Loya was intensely spiritual. But she never identified with Jesus or Christianity.
"I never felt whatever I was supposed to feel when I was Catholic," Loya said.
Loya began observing the Jewish sabbath, Shabbat, six years ago, about the same time that she learned about the secret Jewish past that was being uncovered by Hordes and other scholars. She was thrilled at the possibility that she might actually have Jewish heritage.
"I believe that what drew me back home to who I am is my Jewish soul," Loya said.
In 2004 she went to her parents, asking them to bless her conversion to Judaism but expecting the worst. But not only did her father give his blessing, Loya said, but he also revealed that he had known since childhood that he had Jewish ancestry. An uncle, returning from World War II, had seen the family name among a list of concentration camp inmates.
"I'm still discovering a lot of these things from my own family," she said.
Bill Sanchez always felt Jewish too. But not that Jewish — he's a Catholic priest.
Sanchez discovered his own Jewish roots after watching a television documentary on genetics. The show inspired him to have his own genes tested by a Houston-based company called Family Tree DNA. The company determined that he has a set of genetic markers on his Y-chromosome that is also found in about 30 percent of Jewish men.
Like Hordes, folklorist Judith Neulander was fascinated by the story of the Southwestern crypto-Jews when she first encountered it as a graduate student in the early 1990s. Neulander is an American Jew who grew up in Mexico City.
"I really in my heart wanted to curate the crypto-Judaic exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York," said Neulander, co-director of the Jewish Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Neulander went to New Mexico in the summer of 1992 and began doing interviews.
Neulander heard accounts of grandfathers donning shawls before they prayed and grandmothers carefully draining every drop of blood from chickens after slaughtering them. But she grew increasingly uneasy, and then dismayed.
People told her about how their parents or grandparents prayed to "Yahweh" — Hebrew for God. But Judaism forbids saying God's name out loud.
They talked about playing as children with a four-sided top that resembled a dreidel. But dreidels first appeared among Central and Eastern European Jews well after 1492. How would the descendants of Spanish Jews who fled Europe during the Inquisition have known anything about them?
"All of it just doesn't really hold up when you examine it carefully," Neulander said.
In 1994, Neulander wrote a paper in the Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review that offered an explanation. She can't prove it, but Neulander believes Protestant evangelicals, possibly from a group that splintered off the Seventh Day Adventist church, inspired the belief in a Southwestern Jewish past less than a century ago.
Hordes dismisses her theory as outrageous.
"Do you think they would have forgotten that they were Seventh-Day Adventists?" he asked.
Though Judaism has always allowed for the conversion of people who have demonstrated a sufficient commitment to the faith, it has an ethnic component that other religions lack. People become Christian when they choose to put their faith in Jesus Christ. But Jews don't choose; they're chosen. They have a special relationship with God, forged by the events chronicled in the Old Testament and kept alive over millennia.
Crypto-Jews have an uncomfortable relationship with that legacy. Though their claim to Jewishness is based on inheritance, they have no way of documenting it. "You'll never have proof," Loya said. "You have these bits of evidence — like bread crumbs."
But that doesn't matter to people like Loya. Having "felt Jewish" for most of her life, the crypto-Jew story, she says, gives her the authority to embrace the heritage of her choice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved.
Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. (Updated June 7, 2005) Site design by Asbury Park Press / Contact us
Tim Palmer: new producer for ABC's Media Watch
Australian Broadcasting Commission's journalist Tim Palmer was part of a Jewish discussion list in 2002 for a few months. He was a newcomer to the ME and was interested to learn about Jews, Israel and how we as Australian Jews reacted to what was happening there at the time.
We were great "friends" at the beginning and we were going to meet up in Israel when I was going to introduce him to some of the local people,- but then suddenly, he became most unfriendly towards Israel and quite aggressive towards us who were arguing with him about it.
Tim Palmer was a raw-journalist in the ME area at first. Then he started to feel sorry only for the Palestinian people, many of whom were obviously caught in the crossfire in the political as well as the actual physical sense! One could not blame him after all,- having no affinity for Israeli Jews, being ignorant in the main about the past, why should he care more about the 'mighty' Israelis than about the 'poor' Arabs? He seemed to be like most reporters,- more of an intuitive journalist reacting to the moment than an analytical, objective one.
This is the Zionists' PR problem and the image difficulties which Israel faces! When one sees on the spot how some people are suffering, one's heart goes out to them without stopping to apportion accurate rather than instant blame. Most of the journalists live in comfort in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but report from Gaza and the West Bank! The preventive measures taken by Israel to save its citizens are not lauded and newsworthy, but used against them to prove that they are not the victims,- only the other side is!
Then Tim went to Indonesia. Would he have become more or less pro-Islamic-terrorists since then, I wonder?
But I don't think that his next local assignment, producing the ABC's 'Media Watch' (a 15 minute program picking mainly local media items to pieces for inaccuracies) will affect us or the media's reporting about the ME,- or will it?
MM
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20999566-2702,00.html
Free rein for media monitor
Imre Salusinszky
January 02, 2007
YEARS spent dodging bullets as a correspondent in the Middle East and
southeast Asia might -- just might -- prepare Tim Palmer for life in
charge of ABC television's Media Watch.
Palmer has been confirmed as the executive producer of a show that
causes much angst in newsrooms around the country.
"A lot of the time the program doesn't generate all that much heat," he
told The Australian , optimistically.
-----------------------snip.--
We were great "friends" at the beginning and we were going to meet up in Israel when I was going to introduce him to some of the local people,- but then suddenly, he became most unfriendly towards Israel and quite aggressive towards us who were arguing with him about it.
Tim Palmer was a raw-journalist in the ME area at first. Then he started to feel sorry only for the Palestinian people, many of whom were obviously caught in the crossfire in the political as well as the actual physical sense! One could not blame him after all,- having no affinity for Israeli Jews, being ignorant in the main about the past, why should he care more about the 'mighty' Israelis than about the 'poor' Arabs? He seemed to be like most reporters,- more of an intuitive journalist reacting to the moment than an analytical, objective one.
This is the Zionists' PR problem and the image difficulties which Israel faces! When one sees on the spot how some people are suffering, one's heart goes out to them without stopping to apportion accurate rather than instant blame. Most of the journalists live in comfort in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but report from Gaza and the West Bank! The preventive measures taken by Israel to save its citizens are not lauded and newsworthy, but used against them to prove that they are not the victims,- only the other side is!
Then Tim went to Indonesia. Would he have become more or less pro-Islamic-terrorists since then, I wonder?
But I don't think that his next local assignment, producing the ABC's 'Media Watch' (a 15 minute program picking mainly local media items to pieces for inaccuracies) will affect us or the media's reporting about the ME,- or will it?
MM
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20999566-2702,00.html
Free rein for media monitor
Imre Salusinszky
January 02, 2007
YEARS spent dodging bullets as a correspondent in the Middle East and
southeast Asia might -- just might -- prepare Tim Palmer for life in
charge of ABC television's Media Watch.
Palmer has been confirmed as the executive producer of a show that
causes much angst in newsrooms around the country.
"A lot of the time the program doesn't generate all that much heat," he
told The Australian , optimistically.
-----------------------snip.--
Monday, January 01, 2007
ISRAEL: ARTS AND CULTURE: the PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA at 70.
ARTS & CULTURE
As it turns 70, Israel Philharmonicrelishes role as musical ambassador
By Dina Kraft
December 26, 2006
TEL AVIV, Dec. 28 (JTA) — Zubin Mehta was a jobless wunderkind conductor in Vienna in 1961 when he received a curious invitation to lead a concert of Dvorak and Stravinsky with a symphony the telegram labeled the “Pal. Phil. Orchestra.”
“I did not know who the orchestra was,” said Mehta, who was 25 at the time. “I had to ask around.”
It turned out to be the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, but the telegraphic service had not updated its name in the 13 years since Israel had become a state.
The orchestra has since become Israel’s premier cultural institution, albeit with less funding from the state in recent years. Its players and Jewish communities abroad see it as the orchestra of the Jewish people.
Now one of the world’s top conductors, Mehta has been with the orchestra almost since he came aboard, first as music adviser, then music director. In 1981 he became music director for life.
He is now 70, the same age as the orchestra, and the gregarious maestro is overseeing the philharmonic’s celebratory anniversary concert series.
The series in Israel will include musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Yefim Bronfman, and conductors Kurt Masur and Valery Gergiev. Several performances in early 2007 will be held in the United States, including at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
One of the signatures of the orchestra has been its ability to attract some of the world’s top names in classical music, beginning in its early years with Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Rubenstein.
The orchestra was the creation of Bronislaw Huberman, a Polish-born violin virtuoso who under the shadow of Hitler convinced 75 top Jewish musicians from European orchestras to come to Palestine. The Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, the most famous conductor of his time, led the first concert in Tel Aviv on Dec. 26, 1936.
Toscanini, who had fled fascist Italy and saw in the new orchestra a voice against the darkness descending on Europe, said he would not accept payment.
“I am doing this for humanity,” he announced.
The orchestra has played through the founding of the state, wars and diplomatic tours, all the while growing and improving. It has been used by the Israeli government as a diplomatic tool, showing another face of Israel beyond conflict.
Edwin Seroussi, chairman of the department of musicology at Hebrew University, said part of the orchestra’s appeal is its dramatic history.
“It has a lot to do with the creation of something out of nothing, which is in a way a metaphor for the whole State of Israel,” he said.
The orchestra’s improvement in recent decades is attributed in large part to Mehta’s abilities to scout and cultivate new talent.
There is also the “family” of the orchestra, which includes the violinist Zukerman, who’s in Israel to perform the Bruch violin concerto as part of a gala concert.
Zukerman first performed with the orchestra at age 11 — a Mozart concerto, he recalled.
On Monday, as Zukerman warmed up during a rehearsal, he recalled the autumn of 1973, when he and other members of the philharmonic family, including Barenboim and Isaac Stern, flew in to perform as an act of solidarity during the Yom Kippur War.
Zukerman recalled the blackouts and how the musicians scrambled to play whatever pieces they had brought with them in their hastily packed suitcases.
They performed at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, the orchestra’s home since 1959, but under low lights because of the blackouts and to the smattering of audiences that ventured out to hear them.
They also brought their music to hospitals, playing for soldiers injured in the fighting.
“Music in a time of war is the most important thing there can be,” Zukerman said before playing another bar of Bruch. “It’s a human shelter.”
Some of the orchestra’s most dramatic moments have been set against the backdrop of war.
In 1948, Bernstein conducted a concert on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem for soldiers, including wounded hospital patients. In 1967, during the Six Day War, he returned to conduct Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection Symphony” and lead the orchestra in the national anthem, “Hatikvah.”
Stern rushed to Israel during the 1967 war, as did Mehta, who had been abroad at the time.
Mehta, much adored in Israel, is often remembered for conducting a performance during the Gulf War in 1991. Audience members, who had ventured out of sealed rooms to hear the orchestra, wore gas masks.
“I feel my place is here with my musicians,” he told a group of journalists this week.
The philharmonic’s concerts typically focus on standard classical pieces, although works by several emerging Israeli composers are performed each season. Mehta says Israeli audiences are especially conservative.
“The population has lived in a state of terror and anxiety for the last 50 years, listening to the news every hour, and they don’t want to come to a concert hall and have to concentrate on contemporary music and pay attention,” he said. “They want to sit back and listen to their favorites.”
Helping boost the orchestra since the 1970s has been the immigration of many top players, especially string musicians, to Israel from the former Soviet Union. The unofficial language of the string section is Russian, jokes Avi Shoshani, the orchestra’s longtime executive director.
A mix of languages is nothing new for an orchestra whose founding members spoke more German, Polish, Hungarian and Yiddish than Hebrew.
It was from those founding players, many Jews of Polish descent who had been living in Vienna, that Mehta learned to speak Yiddish. He also has tried to preserve their warm string sound, which is among the orchestra’s hallmarks.
Uzi Shalev, 45, the orchestra’s first bassoonist, studied at Juilliard in New York City but never considered playing for any other symphony.
“The orchestra is Israel’s No. 1 cultural and musical ambassador all over the world,” Shalev said. “We feel we are the orchestra of the Jewish people, and Jewish people everywhere — in Argentina, [North] America, South America and European countries — really do their best to host us, to make us feel at home. There is a real sense of pride in the orchestra.”
Shalev recalls performing in the Soviet Union in 1990 when the orchestra toured with Itzhak Perlman, who played Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto.”
“Many Jews had previously been forbidden contact with Israel. We were a symbol,” he said.
Their tour was greeted with roaring applause by audiences, many of whom were Jewish.
Keeping the orchestra running can be a logistical and financial juggling act, Shoshani said. As state funding for the arts has shrunk over the years, only 15 percent of the orchestra’s annual budget comes from the Israeli government. About 50 percent is from subscription sales; the rest is raised by philanthropists in Israel and abroad.
The orchestra’s vast network of friends associations in countries like the United States, Australia and Argentina has been vital to its success.
The orchestra keeps to a tight concert schedule in Israel and around the world. The players fly on charter flights and stay in three-star hotels.
For Israel Zohar, 62, a clarinetist who has been with the philharmonic for 38 years, the highlight of his career was a 1971 tour of Germany, the first by the orchestra since World War II. As an encore, Mehta conducted “Hatikvah.”
“For one of the first times in my life I had tears,” Zohar said. While playing he thought to himself, “We live.”
As it turns 70, Israel Philharmonicrelishes role as musical ambassador
By Dina Kraft
December 26, 2006
TEL AVIV, Dec. 28 (JTA) — Zubin Mehta was a jobless wunderkind conductor in Vienna in 1961 when he received a curious invitation to lead a concert of Dvorak and Stravinsky with a symphony the telegram labeled the “Pal. Phil. Orchestra.”
“I did not know who the orchestra was,” said Mehta, who was 25 at the time. “I had to ask around.”
It turned out to be the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, but the telegraphic service had not updated its name in the 13 years since Israel had become a state.
The orchestra has since become Israel’s premier cultural institution, albeit with less funding from the state in recent years. Its players and Jewish communities abroad see it as the orchestra of the Jewish people.
Now one of the world’s top conductors, Mehta has been with the orchestra almost since he came aboard, first as music adviser, then music director. In 1981 he became music director for life.
He is now 70, the same age as the orchestra, and the gregarious maestro is overseeing the philharmonic’s celebratory anniversary concert series.
The series in Israel will include musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Yefim Bronfman, and conductors Kurt Masur and Valery Gergiev. Several performances in early 2007 will be held in the United States, including at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
One of the signatures of the orchestra has been its ability to attract some of the world’s top names in classical music, beginning in its early years with Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Rubenstein.
The orchestra was the creation of Bronislaw Huberman, a Polish-born violin virtuoso who under the shadow of Hitler convinced 75 top Jewish musicians from European orchestras to come to Palestine. The Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, the most famous conductor of his time, led the first concert in Tel Aviv on Dec. 26, 1936.
Toscanini, who had fled fascist Italy and saw in the new orchestra a voice against the darkness descending on Europe, said he would not accept payment.
“I am doing this for humanity,” he announced.
The orchestra has played through the founding of the state, wars and diplomatic tours, all the while growing and improving. It has been used by the Israeli government as a diplomatic tool, showing another face of Israel beyond conflict.
Edwin Seroussi, chairman of the department of musicology at Hebrew University, said part of the orchestra’s appeal is its dramatic history.
“It has a lot to do with the creation of something out of nothing, which is in a way a metaphor for the whole State of Israel,” he said.
The orchestra’s improvement in recent decades is attributed in large part to Mehta’s abilities to scout and cultivate new talent.
There is also the “family” of the orchestra, which includes the violinist Zukerman, who’s in Israel to perform the Bruch violin concerto as part of a gala concert.
Zukerman first performed with the orchestra at age 11 — a Mozart concerto, he recalled.
On Monday, as Zukerman warmed up during a rehearsal, he recalled the autumn of 1973, when he and other members of the philharmonic family, including Barenboim and Isaac Stern, flew in to perform as an act of solidarity during the Yom Kippur War.
Zukerman recalled the blackouts and how the musicians scrambled to play whatever pieces they had brought with them in their hastily packed suitcases.
They performed at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, the orchestra’s home since 1959, but under low lights because of the blackouts and to the smattering of audiences that ventured out to hear them.
They also brought their music to hospitals, playing for soldiers injured in the fighting.
“Music in a time of war is the most important thing there can be,” Zukerman said before playing another bar of Bruch. “It’s a human shelter.”
Some of the orchestra’s most dramatic moments have been set against the backdrop of war.
In 1948, Bernstein conducted a concert on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem for soldiers, including wounded hospital patients. In 1967, during the Six Day War, he returned to conduct Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection Symphony” and lead the orchestra in the national anthem, “Hatikvah.”
Stern rushed to Israel during the 1967 war, as did Mehta, who had been abroad at the time.
Mehta, much adored in Israel, is often remembered for conducting a performance during the Gulf War in 1991. Audience members, who had ventured out of sealed rooms to hear the orchestra, wore gas masks.
“I feel my place is here with my musicians,” he told a group of journalists this week.
The philharmonic’s concerts typically focus on standard classical pieces, although works by several emerging Israeli composers are performed each season. Mehta says Israeli audiences are especially conservative.
“The population has lived in a state of terror and anxiety for the last 50 years, listening to the news every hour, and they don’t want to come to a concert hall and have to concentrate on contemporary music and pay attention,” he said. “They want to sit back and listen to their favorites.”
Helping boost the orchestra since the 1970s has been the immigration of many top players, especially string musicians, to Israel from the former Soviet Union. The unofficial language of the string section is Russian, jokes Avi Shoshani, the orchestra’s longtime executive director.
A mix of languages is nothing new for an orchestra whose founding members spoke more German, Polish, Hungarian and Yiddish than Hebrew.
It was from those founding players, many Jews of Polish descent who had been living in Vienna, that Mehta learned to speak Yiddish. He also has tried to preserve their warm string sound, which is among the orchestra’s hallmarks.
Uzi Shalev, 45, the orchestra’s first bassoonist, studied at Juilliard in New York City but never considered playing for any other symphony.
“The orchestra is Israel’s No. 1 cultural and musical ambassador all over the world,” Shalev said. “We feel we are the orchestra of the Jewish people, and Jewish people everywhere — in Argentina, [North] America, South America and European countries — really do their best to host us, to make us feel at home. There is a real sense of pride in the orchestra.”
Shalev recalls performing in the Soviet Union in 1990 when the orchestra toured with Itzhak Perlman, who played Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto.”
“Many Jews had previously been forbidden contact with Israel. We were a symbol,” he said.
Their tour was greeted with roaring applause by audiences, many of whom were Jewish.
Keeping the orchestra running can be a logistical and financial juggling act, Shoshani said. As state funding for the arts has shrunk over the years, only 15 percent of the orchestra’s annual budget comes from the Israeli government. About 50 percent is from subscription sales; the rest is raised by philanthropists in Israel and abroad.
The orchestra’s vast network of friends associations in countries like the United States, Australia and Argentina has been vital to its success.
The orchestra keeps to a tight concert schedule in Israel and around the world. The players fly on charter flights and stay in three-star hotels.
For Israel Zohar, 62, a clarinetist who has been with the philharmonic for 38 years, the highlight of his career was a 1971 tour of Germany, the first by the orchestra since World War II. As an encore, Mehta conducted “Hatikvah.”
“For one of the first times in my life I had tears,” Zohar said. While playing he thought to himself, “We live.”
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