Beware The Bully Pulpit: The Problems With Heksher Tzedek / Jonathan Mark in New York
Liberal Jews just love the idea that they are embodiment of ethical behavior, unlike the mean ol' Orthodox who supposedly are only about ritual. The American and Israeli police blotters don't bear that out but so what, being smug is more important than being right.
This past week, a letter to the editor in The Jewish Week asked, "Is someone who swings a chicken over his head in anticipation of Yom Kippur but neglects the hungry and oppressed… really a more 'religious' Jew?"
The falsehood of that slur ought to be self-evident to anyone watching in the evening hours when Orthodox Jews deliver several thousands of food packages to hungry Jews before each and every Shabbat and holiday. And from the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in the early 1960s (to pick an arbitrary starting point), Orthodox Jews have been as out in front of just about every movement for the oppressed.
Meanwhile, at last winter's convention of Rabbi for Human Rights, several hundred Conservative and Reform rabbis (and just six Orthodox rabbis, all from Yeshivat Chovivei Torah) spent three days talking about the oppressed in Guantanamo and Ramallah without mentioning once - not once -- the Jews in Sderot, or the captive Israel soldiers. Last time I went to a rally for the captives, it was obvious that if it wasn't for Orthodox day schools and day school graduates there'd barely be a minyan, even counting women.
Why is it "ethical" to slander the Orthodox? And there's no doubt that a lot of this interdenominational waterboarding is fed by leaders who fancy themselves the most ethical among us.
The new Heksher Tzedek movement - linking kashrut certification to the treatment of animals and agribusiness workers - is more about being smug, more about positioning the Jew who is casual about ritual against the Jew who is passionate about it.
The rabbis of the Conservative movement, the heart and soul of the Heksher Tzedek initiative, let us know they care deeply about animal right and workers rights. But why don't they have anything to say about consumer rights? A Federation study determined that there are 350,000 Jews near the poverty line, in the New York State area alone. Hekshers are big business. Some restaurants spend upwards of $60,000 a year on kashrut supervision, and an article in the New Jersey Jewish Standard determined that a non-kosher restaurant going kosher will need to spend $130,000 in its first year. Someone is going to pay and it'll be the consumer. The rabbis will be the ones getting paid.
Rabbinical kashrut supervision has reached such cynical heights that some rabbis charge to give a Heksher to bottled water.
Why is it that pre-Passover price gouging has never been policed by rabbis, Conservative or otherwise, but by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.
And speaking of agribusiness, a Sukkot bundle of branches from a palm, a myrtle and a willow, coupled with an etrog fruit, ought to cost about ten dollars, tops, but can instead cost Jewish consumers $36 or $72 or upwards of $300, prices totally out of whack with real cost, as betrayed by the price hikes of chai. This price gouging often done in conjunction with synagogues and local rabbis who frequently use the gouging for fund raising. It is a cabal that often includes local Judaica stores that kick back money to the synagogues. To the extent that is fund-raising, it is tax exempt, but that's a meaningless sop to a Jew at the poverty line.
When have the ethical voices of the rabbinate ever spoken up on behalf of consumers that see a lulav and etrog not as a luxury but as a necessity?
Heksher Tzedek press releases make a point of saying they do not intend to get involved with actual kashrut certification, the province almost entirely of the Orthodox. Somehow when it comes to religious price gouging, the great ethical arbiters are suddenly reluctant to critique their fellow teamsters in the rabbinic union. But when Orthodox shuls do the opposite and make Jewish life more affordable? Oh, then we hear howls of protest from the Heksher Tzedek crowd.
The other day one of our reporters, a Conservative Jew, let us know that Conservative rabbis on Long Island were indignant - indignant - that Chabad shuls on Long Island were allowing bar mitzvah boys (of any denomination) to be called to the Torah without their families being charged Temple membership - upwards of $2,000 in some Conservative Temples. The nerve of those Orthodox, not charging a marginally affiliated Jew, perhaps in financial trouble, as much as a Conservative synagogue would charge. Giving Jews a financial break?
That is so unethical!
When Conservative rabbis get together, with that sort of elite economic insensitivity, and say they've dreamed up a new form of rabbinic certification, all in the name of ethics, the first thing I want to know is - in the name of ethical concern for oppressed, financially-strapped Jews - how much is this thing going to cost? You can bet these Conservative rabbis will be charging more than Chabad.
It's a curious thing. The Conservative movement certainly values kashrut but yet has no internal kashrut supervision apparatus, and are not planning for it now. I'd be curious how many zip codes in the United States, with a Conservative synagogue but no Orthodox synagogue in the vicinity, would support a kosher restaurant?
The Web site of Conservative movement's United Synagogue congregational organization, noted (Dec. 19, 2006) that the movement's "Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has voted to accept the hashgachot, or kashrut supervision, of… Rabbi Dov Hazdan, whose symbol is the Ner Tamid K," based on Staten Island.
Surely that rabbi and committee know more about kashrut than I do, but I noticed that shortly before they made Rabbi Hazdan their standard bearer, New York magazine ran an item (April 2, 2006), "When is a restaurant that serves bacon considered kosher? To most Orthodox rabbis, the answer is easy: never. But Staten Island rabbi Dov Hazdan has been granting his own kosher certification to city Dunkin' Donuts franchises that have served bacon, ham, and sausage, the trayf trifecta," although Hazdan says his supervision did not extend to Dunkin's non-kosher meat.
Hazdan, reports New York magazine, was subsequently fired "as the kosher supervisor at a Dunkin' franchise on 34th Street after it received complaints from the Yeshiva University community about the rabbi and the pork. Spokesmen for the four top kosher-certifying agencies said they would never approve a restaurant that served nonkosher meats," but of course, those agencies are the kind that care about the quaint. We need to trust Heksher Tzedek to help us with the ethical.
Hazdan insisted to New York Magazine that his methods of supervision are 100 percent kosher. I take his word for it, but it sure sounds curious. Do restaurants serving non-kosher meat have to be Heksher Tzedek or is Heksher Tzedek just for the rest of us?
I was just wondering, all the non-Orthodox journalists and editors and public relations people and lay leaders that have, so far, given an uncritical free pass to Heksher Tzedek, how seriously do they themselves take it? Are we supposed to believe that these Heksher Tzedek cheerleaders will never again eat in a restaurant, or buy a sandwich from a Midtown lunch counter, or buy a burger that doesn't have proper Heksher Tzedek certification? When these Heksher Tzedek aficionados go to the grocery, will they only buy food that has the Heksher Tzedek certification? Will they not eat at Shabbat tables where non-observant Jews are so lax as to not serve Heksher Tzedek food? In other words, are they as serious about Heksher Tzedek in an equivalent way to real kashrut, the kashrut upon whose back they're riding? Or is all of this just ethical grandstanding to show up the Orthodox who, of course, supposedly care more about the ritual but not the animals or the workers?
Why do I have the hunch that the vast majority of Heksher Tzedek advocates, who talk like Cesar Chavez when the microphones are on, will sit down to eat just like the rest of us when the microphones turn off?
There is yet another problem with Heksher Tzedek, and that is the danger of an imperial rabbinate trying to do some social engineering for one Jewish value, decency to employees, by linking it to a second Jewish value, in this case kashrut.
It seems harmless enough. But the Israeli imperial rabbinate has been playing this game for a while, denying a kashrut Heksher to many non-haredi hotels and restaurants that kosher food because those establishments allow "mixed dancing," or because those hotels and restaurants allow New Year's Eve parties. The Israeli rabbinate can't stop dancing or partying, so they squeeze these venues on kashrut.
Imagine another case, if a rabbi would refuse to give a fully Jewish person an aliyah to the Torah, or access to tefillin, or a tahara ritual purification after death, because that person was intermarried or gay. His linkage is his own version of Heksher Tzedek.
A few months ago, the only Jewish elementary school in Vienna expelled a Jewish child, denying that child his only possible formal Jewish education, because that child's father was among the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta who visited Tehran in support Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinijad. The Zionist rabbinate couldn't touch the guilty father so they punish the innocent child. It is the principle of Heksher Tzedek, a rabbinate that can't enforce one value, grandstands upon a second value entirely.
Liberal Jews and Orthodox Jews alike ought to beware when one religious sentiment becomes hostage to another.
May all rabbis of all denominations be blessed in their attempts to influence agribusiness to operate in more spiritual ways.
May all rabbis enforce existing Jewish law regarding the rights of animals and workers.
But when rabbis on the right or left insist on sanctifying positions in which there can be honest disagreement - be it Zionism, male-female socializing, or the extent of animal rights - by utilizing the pious language of "Heksher" and smug para-halachic self-righteousness, it's time for the rest of us to get up and sit at a different table.
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Prescription for an AWOL Community? / James Besser in Washington
Critics have accused Jewish groups of ducking and running every time the issue of the treatment of foreign detainees in the war against terrorism comes up.
That's one reason Rabbis for Human Rights- North America is broadening its own campaign against torture and other forms of abuse. On December 10 the group will officially launch "K'vod Habriot: A Jewish Human Rights Network."
The new project is intended to bring together rabbis, synagogues, community groups and individuals. Rabbi Brian Walt, the group's executive director, said Amnesty International provides a kind of model.
"The intention is to create an activist network across the country," he said. "Action alerts and information on a specific issue will be distributed each month, with suggestions for activism."
Temple Isaiah of Lafayette, CA is the first synagogue to officially join the K'vod Habriot network.
The initial focus will be on torture, he said, but he expects the group to quickly delve into other human rights controversies.
One area will NOT be on the group's agenda for the foreseeable future, he said: the Middle East.
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Rocks and Hard Places / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
A lot of my time, and every congregational rabbi's time, is spent trying to figure out how to be a good rabbi to the very different constituencies in my synagogue.
There are people who crave change, and others who, with equal passion, want things to stay exactly as they have been. There are liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, the more observant and the less observant, and almost every shading in-between.
The hackneyed old joke about the Jew who builds two synagogues so that he can always have one not to go to has survived all these years because, in no insignificant measure, it's true. We Jews are a contentious lot, and we love our arguments. How appropriate that the Talmud is such an important study text for us; its volumes are built on the idea of machloket, of disagreement. Hillel and Shammai, Rabbi Akivah and Rabbi Yishmael- as long as the argument is considered to be l'shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven, it is not, in and of itself, considered a bad thing. That's how Jews think, and work things out.
On no one issue does this occasionally unnerving tendency to loudly argue things out figure more prominently than the security of Israel and its general state of being.
As this week's peace conference in Annapolis convened and adjourned before we knew too much of what was really happening, I could hear familiar voices from my congregational family speaking (loudly?) in my figurative ear. That's what happens when you serve the same community for twenty-seven years; you can almost construct the arguments without the benefit of the presence of the arguers!
"Remember Oslo!" "Look what happened when they gave back Gaza!" "Remember the intifada(s)!" That was in my left ear (or maybe I should say my right ear?).
In the other ear, I could hear the quieter but nonetheless insistent voice of members who refuse to lose their hope that a peace worth having might yet be achieved, and who lament Israel's reluctance to move more forthrightly in the direction of further concessions. One person posted on our synagogue listserv that he was going to Annapolis to stand and be counted in support of the conference and what it represents. He invited others to come with him. I don't know if he got any takers- my sense was that far more of our members were skeptical than hopeful- but I was glad to "hear his voice."
Woe unto us when we lose the capacity to dream of something better for Israel than endless hostility.
I'm just wondering about my own voice. I have my opinions, to be sure, but "preaching my opinions" as more correct or valid than anyone else's is a tricky business at best. I am hardly the sole possessor of any elevated wisdom, and I would never begrudge the right my members to disagree with me no matter how misguided I might think them. To the extent that I might know the reality of Israel better than many of them, I certainly have both the right and the responsibility to help shape their opinions. But there will always be the people talking in my other ear.
I'm wondering what I'm going to say this Shabbat…
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The Strangest Bedfellows: Kucinich and Paul? / Jame Besser in Washington
The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) doesn't mind criticizing some fellow Democrats - especially when they can do that and take a hit at an increasingly popular Republican candidate with the same swipe.
This week the partisan group lashed out at Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), whose fierce anti-war campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination might sell well with Jewish voters - if not for his views on Israel.
Kucinich's latest sin: his suggestion that if he is nominated, he would consider selecting as his running mate Rep. Ron Paul - the libertarian/isolationist/antiwar Republican who remains low in the polls but is doing extraordinarily well on the Internet and in fundraising.
At a New Hampshire meeting, he suggested a Kucinich-Paul ticket could "balance the energies" of the country.
"Despite his views on the Iraq war, Rep. Paul no more belongs on a Democratic ticket than Dennis Kucinich on a Republican one," said NJDC executive director Ira Forman. "Any Jewish Democrats or independents that are tempted toward Rep. Paul because of his stance on the war should be reminded that this Republican Representative has a terrible record on Middle East politics, is anti-choice, and opposes stem cell research. Rep. Paul has even gone so far as to call the Israel government evil."
What Forman neglected to mention is that Kucinich, too, has a long record of statements and actions that infuriate pro-Israel leaders, including his speech at a conference sponsored by the anti-Israel Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.
Paul has attracted some far-left wingers who admire his anti-war stance, but a Kucinich-Paul ticket would be the strangest of marriages. Kucinich is the most vocal advocate of a government-sponsored single-payer health care system; Paul wants to virtually dismantle the federal government.
Jewish Democrats can afford to do some bipartisan criticism in his case. Kucinich is going nowhere in the polls or in the fundraising sweepstakes; Paul, on the other hand, is gaining more national attention by the day.
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Not a Soldier's Job? / James Besser in Washington
This week's groundbreaking Annapolis declaration, which will in theory result in the immediate start of "final status" negotiations for creation of a Palestinian state, has revived a familiar problem: monitoring and ensuring implementation.
This time around, Israel and the Palestinians have decided to trust the Americans with the job of determining whether both sides are complying with their obligations under the Mideast Road Map, the outline for the resumed negotiations.
The State Department's choice for the job: retired Gen. James Jones, a onetime NATO commander, who will serve as special U.S. envoy for Middle East security.
Jones is a former Marine Corps Commandant with more than 40 years of active duty service.
"I believe that we need an experienced leader who can address the regional security challenge comprehensively and at the highest levels and who can provide the full support of our government to the partners, as they work to meet their responsibilities," Rice said in making the announcement on Wednesday. "General Jones is the person we need to take up this vital mission."
(Watch Secretary Rice's post-summit wrap up here)
The question is, what KIND of experience; some Jewish leaders quickly questioned whether a military man is the right choice for a job that involves security but also delicate questions of diplomacy and Mideast politics.
"He's an excellent marine, but this is not a job for a soldier," said Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). "The mandate is political, by nature."
Other observers wonder how Jones will perform the first time his views about Palestinian security efforts clash with Israeli intelligence and military assessments.
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Difficult Trade-Offs / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
(Rabbi Gerald. C. Skolnik has served as spiritual leader of The Forest Hills Jewish Center for twenty-seven years. He also teaches at JTS, is an officer of the Rabbinical Assembly, and is involved in numerous causes and organizations within the Jewish community.)
This past Sunday I officiated at the funeral of an old friend's mother, and yesterday I attended the funeral of another old friend's brother. As I write, yet another old friend herself lies in a hospice with her family sitting vigil at her bedside. Every time my cellphone rings, I fear the worst. It is a funeral I am dreading.
Ask any seasoned pulpit rabbi and he/she will tell you that deaths tend to cluster, particularly around holidays. This phenomenon is not at all unique to Judaism. My Christian colleagues tell me that the same is very much true in their communities. No one really knows why. It may have something to do with depression, which is an unwelcome leitmotif of holiday seasons for people who aren't well, or aren't happy. I certainly don't know why it is, but I know that it is so.
There is enormous gratification from knowing that others look to you in their worst moments, when they are at their most vulnerable, and that you are the person that they want around to help them through.
I've learned time and again how even in this age when models of clerical authority are so in flux, a good pastor is an invaluable asset to a grieving person or family. I know this. But I've also never been able to escape the feeling that that every death, every sadness that I am a part of diminishes me in some insidious and imperceptible way, and takes its toll. I also know that the day I stop letting someone else's loss affect me is the day that I should leave the rabbinate, for I will have lost my capacity for true empathy.
It's a difficult trade-off.
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Fighting Terror Through Kindness/Gary Rosenblatt in New York
Tiki Barber, the former New York Giants star running back, said he was “honored and humbled” to receive the Koby Mandell Foundation Humanitarian Award at the group’s annual dinner Tuesday evening at the Puck Building.
He told several hundred attendees that having been raised by a single mother, he and his twin brother relied on the kindness of coaches, teachers and ministers.
He said Sherri and Seth Mandell do “what those people did for me – you give people a shoulder to stand on.”
The Mandells created the foundation to memorialize their 13-year-old son who, along with a friend, was stoned to death in a cave near their homes in Tekoa, Israel, on Lag B’Omer 2001.
The foundation operates camp programs in Israel for children who lost a parent or sibling to Arab terror, and retreats for women who have lost husbands or children. The Mandells believe that they have reached about two-thirds of the 1,300 Israeli families who have lost a loved one to terror over the last seven years.
Koby was a sports fan, his parents said, and previous award recipients were former Oriole Cal Ripken and New York Mets Manager Willie Randolph.
Barber, who retired last year and is now a commentator on NBC’s Today Show, said he was moved by the Mandells’ response to his question as to how they could deal with their loss. “You said, `because we have other kids,’” Barber noted.
He told the audience he visited Israel in the summer of 2005, at the invitation of Israeli leader Shimon Peres, and found it to be “one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever been to.”
Earlier, Sherri Mandell thanked the audience for helping her, her family and the youngsters who attend Camp Koby to heal. “Our goal [at the camp] is not just resilience, but post-traumatic growth,” she said, and to use emotional pain as a catalyst for growth. “We’ve become leaders in the field of traumatic bereavement.”
An adult counselor and 14-year-old camper told the guests of how caring a place Camp Koby is, where youngsters can smile and enjoy themselves, knowing that everyone there understands their sadness.
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Nothing Has Changed/Gary Rosenblatt in New York
Thinking about the Annapolis conference and prospects for peace creates an internal battle for me between Mideast hope and Mideast history, between the silver lining and the clouds of skepticism.
I’d like to think a new page was turned on Tuesday, just as I felt when watching Rabin, Arafat and Bill Clinton on the White House lawn more than 14 years ago. Then, and yesterday, the speeches were moving, the expressions of ending violence and resolving differences were powerful. The logic of two peoples sharing a land rather than killing each other over it was compelling.
But I have learned that the Mideast is not about logic.
Annapolis showed that when the U.S. wants to act, it can bring together the leading cast of characters in the Mideast drama. But for all its influence, it can’t make them resolve their differences, especially in light of past experiences – Oslo, Madrid, Wye River, etc. -- and the same willful blindness on the part of American officials.
Why am I pessimistic? For starters, there is no indication that Mahmoud Abbas has the clout – even if he has the intention – of reining in Palestinian militants, or that Ehud Olmert could navigate the political obstacles in selling a plan to return to pre-1967-like borders. Not to mention that Hamas, which reasserted its intention to destroy Israel and increase violence soon, has not been dealt with in the Annapolis talks.
Equally disturbing to me is that the U.S., after being burned by so many previous peace attempts, continues to advance negotiations by ignoring the realities and conditions that undermined earlier efforts. Differences are glossed over through ambiguous rhetoric rather than confronted outright because the impetus is on moving forward. But towards what?
As Natan Sharansky pointed out this week in a piece in the Wall Street Journal, even Israeli officials are always saying not to insist on dramatic changes from Abbas. First strengthen him, they argue – through aid and support – and then make demands. But why should the Palestinian leader ever go against popular opinion – which he helps foster by allowing anti-Semitism to prevail -- especially if he lacks the boldness of a Sadat or Rabin?
Will the Palestinian Authority continue to resist recognizing Israel as a Jewish state? Will it continue to allow, if not promote, hatred of Jews through textbooks, media, children’s television shows and religious leaders?
I pray that I am wrong, but I think that unless and until the Arab world comes to grips with the reality of a Jewish state in the Mideast, the prospects for increased violence in the region in the coming year are greater than those for pea ceful negotiations.
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Behind the Almontaser Stories / Larry Cohler-Esses, Editor at Large
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Nation Magazine denouncing inaccurate smear campaigns against Muslims, Arabs and critics of Israel as a kind of “new McCarthyism”---for which I was strongly criticized in some corners of the Jewish community.
This week I am under attack from another sector of the community, charged with practicing what I so recently denounced. The charge comes from my Page One story on Debbie Almontaser---one of those I cited in my Nation article as a victim of the New McCarthyism.
My story -- headlined “Ex-Arab School Head Rapped for Rally Partners” --highlights the identity or backgrounds of several speakers at a rally in support of Almontaser, who resigned under fire last August as leader of a new dual language Arabic-English public school in Brooklyn. The story implies that these supporters’ backgrounds stand in contrast to Almontaser’s own moderate public positions. It includes the attack of a critic who asks: “Now that [Jewish Week readers] know who the supporters of this school are, are they happy? Are they comfortable?”
The three speakers at Almontaser’s support rally who came under attack were part of a total of nine or 10 who appeared there, including a labor leader, a prominent Manhattan rabbi, an academic and the chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee (all also cited high up in the article). One of those angry about my highlighting the other speakers and their backgrounds asked: “Are you sure this is not tainted by neo-McCarthyism?”
I think the best way to answer this is to relate how the news judgments in this story came about. In this case, this includes how those news judgments interacted with personal feelings I had come to develop about the issues and people involved in this story.
Almontaser resigned last August under fire as founding head of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) in Brooklyn. The new public middle school, which opened in September, offers a dual language, dual culture English-Arabic college prep curriculum. One of some 60 dual language public school programs in the city, it aims to draw in students from Arab and non-Arab backgrounds. But from its inception a group of critics has attacked the school and Almontaser herself for, they say, harboring a covert extremist and Islamist agenda.
None of this had any effect until Almontaser granted an interview to The New York Post last August. Almontaser was asked then about her association with T-shirts for local Arab American teen-age girls bearing the message “Intifada NYC.” The T-shirts were produced by Arab Women in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), a group that shared office space with a separate, unrelated group on whose board Almontaser sat. Almontaser was quoted explaining that the root meaning of the word intifada---“shaking off”---had different meanings in different contexts; voicing her understanding that the word “is developing a negative connotation” due to the Israel-Palestinian conflict; and stating her belief that neither the T-shirts nor the girls wearing them meant to extol violence.
Right-wing media outlets slammed Almontaser for not having simply condemned the T-shirts. So did Stop the Madrassa, the group that charged the school and Almontaser with seeking to instill extremism in students. In her suit last week, Almontaser alleged that the Department of Education had illegally forced her to resign as interim principal in the face of this pressure and was now refusing to consider her application for the post of permanent principal.
At the time of her resignation, I wrote a story detailing how this was but the latest episode in a months-long smear campaign by forces opposed to the school who sought to portray Almontaser as an extremist. I detailed specific distortions and falsehoods they had put out about her in the months preceding the ill-fated Post interview. The story reviewed Almontaser’s long history of commitment to nonviolence and interfaith work with Jews and Christians.
The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater New York and Rabbi Michael Paley, who works for UJA-Federation, were among those who attested to this.
This story and another that followed led Almontaser and her attorney, Alan Levine, to offer me an exclusive interview with her shortly before they filed suit. During this interview, Almontaser reiterated her view that the Post reporter had sought to impose an inappropriate litmus test by asking her about AWAAM’s T-shirts: “I said [to The Post] this organization and its T-shirt have nothing to do with me or the school,” she said.
I also discovered then that I shared a rare common point of personal background with Levine. We had both, it turned out, done civil rights work in Mississippi many years ago and even shared some common acquaintances from that era, an intense and vivid period in both our lives. On top of this, it turned out that Levine’s spouse was Donna Nevel, the person who first recruited me to come to New York and work in Jewish journalism after I finished graduate school in Illinois in 1982. Nevel, with whom I had had no contact for many years, is one of the organizers of the community group defending Almontaser and KGIA.
On a personal level, I liked these people and what they were trying to achieve. I also disliked what I had, through my reporting, found to be the falsehoods, distortions and guilt-by-association charges that school critics had launched against Almontaser.
Because of this, my heart sank when I attended the support rally for Almontaser.
The lead speaker, with Almontaser at her side, was Mona Eldahry, who was introduced as executive director of AWAAM, the group that produced the T-shirts and---equally relevant---the group Almontaser had repeatedly stressed she had nothing to do with. Eldahry praised Almontaser in her speech for having refused to condemn the T-shirts or her organization.
I knew that Eldahry’s role as lead speaker on Almontaser’s behalf with Almontaser next to her ran up against Almontaser’s repeated emphasis previously that she had nothing to do with AWAAM. Whatever the situation before, she did now, and this change was news.
The news impact was similar when City Council Member Charles Barron stepped up to the microphone. Almontaser’s history---one she herself stresses---reflects a consistent commitment to nonviolence in confronting racial and social issues.
In contrast, Barron, after the police shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man in Queens, advocated protest marches and prayer—first: “Then, if they don’t respond to none of that, then don’t ask our people to be peaceful while they are being murdered,” he declared to hundreds at a protest rally last November. “We are not the only ones that can bleed.”
Barron is most famous lately for pushing for naming a street in Brooklyn after Sonny Carson, the late self-described “anti-white” activist involved in the CrownHeights riots and the protests against Korean owned stores in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Of less, but not no significance: I knew a young woman who spoke at the rally from the Council on American Islamic Relations would be of interest to Jewish Week readers. Some non-government investigators, such as Steven Emerson, have accused CAIR of having ties to terrorist groups. Former FBI counter-terrorism investigators have been quoted challenging this. At the same time, the U.S. Justice Department named CAIR as an unindicted conspirator in its recent---failed---prosecution against the Holy Land Foundation for allegedly supporting Hamas.
There was no way the issue of these speakers’ backgrounds could be kept out of a news story. At the very least, Stop the Madrassa would have something to say about how these speakers clashed with Almontaser’s public stand. And since in this case, they were speaking up for Almontaser with her at their side at a rally she endorsed with her presence, I would be obliged to quote the group.
Nevertheless, in my initial draft, I wrote about all this deep down in the body of the story. My lead angle was about Almontaser’s suit and some of the contents of the complaint. But when I turned my story in, Rob Goldblum, the paper’s managing editor, pointed to the section on the speakers and said no---this belongs at the top. Basically, he effectively ruled this, not the suit---whose imminent filing and basic outline had been previously announced and reported----is the story, at least for our readers.
I didn't like this instruction. At the same time, with the clock ticking relentlessly toward deadline, I could not think of one quick knockout response to show he was wrong----by which I mean wrong in his news judgment. Almontaser had made her lack of any connection to the T-shirt people a central point in her position that the Post was wrong to even be asking her about the shirts. Now the leader of the T-shirt people was her lead speaker. This was the "new" in the word "news," independent of whether one thought the T-shirt's message or AWAAM itself was right or wrong in its stance.
Throw in Charles Barron and the woman from CAIR, and the angle Rob favored was reinforced.
Rob Goldblum and I have a long relationship as editor and writer, one in which there is both trust and freedom to challenge and dispute. Yet I could not rebut him. In the rushed and frazzled way in which thought occurs as deadline looms, I concluded that I might well not like Rob’s instruction simply because I DID like Almontaser and did not much care for Stop the Madrassa’s distortions of her record.
I thought: this is what editors are for---to provide the distance from a story that a writer can lose.
Rob's job is to know his publication's readers and what is, or should be, important to them. It's true this can easily turn into simply pandering to their fears. But in this case, the news judgment criteria for Rob's position were pretty solid.
Therefore, my resistance to pandering here would consist of making sure I did not portray the presence of AWAAM or CAIR at this rally one dimensionally, as self-evident evils (as say, The New York Post might). In the space I had (a very big constraint), the best way to do this was by giving good play to the strong responses of Levine, Almontaser's attorney: that the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater New York had actually offered AWAAM a mini-grant of $500 in 2005---a kind of heksher that, he argued, tied JCRC more closely than Almontaser to AWAAM; and that CAIR-NY's chief counsel is a mayoral appointee.
I was not sure what to do about Charles Barron. But Almontaser’s supporters challenge why any of this is relevant to the news. "Does the fact that Charles Baron and speakers from AWAAM and CAIR spoke at her conference cast any doubt in your mind on the facts of her case?” asked one. “If not, why mention them? Because your readers would be interested? How about if one of the speakers was gay?”
If Almontaser was presenting herself as an anti-gay rights advocate who had never had anything to do with gay people, such a speaker at her rally would, indeed, be newsworthy.
In short, there is a big difference between noting the way in which some speakers standing with Almontaser at her own rally stepped on her message; and say, charging---as one of her opponents did---that a member of KGIA’s advisory committee was a speaker at a Muslim youth camp, where another person also spoke who was accused in unidentified “court papers” of helping yet a third person make backup copies of a fundraising site for terrorism. The latter is, to my mind, guilt by association. The former is reporting.
Janet Malcolm of The New Yorker famously wrote about journalists being seducers and betrayers, as a matter of necessity. She spoke about this as a conscious art good journalists cultivated. I never accepted this. But I certainly experienced a deep divergence in this story between my sense of connection and sympathy on a personal level with one side and my professional obligation.
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An Annapolis Reading Guide / James Besser in Washington
This week’s Annapolis peace conference has produced a veritable avalanche of words as Mideast think tanks churn out analyses and political groups on both sides of the Mideast peace debate produce position papers and op-eds. And let's not leave out legions of journalists and bloggers.
Here is a modest sample of opinions and perspectives on the conference. (Note for Internet newbies: click on the underlined link to go to the story).
David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who is right more than almost another Mideast talking head, writes a cogent analysis of the meaning of Annapolis – and the “confidence building” measures necessary as followup.
Ha’aretz blogger and chief U.S. correspondent Shmuel Rosner has one of the best characterizations of the downsized expectations and upsized guest list for the conference. In a story that also appeared in Slate, he suggests readers think of Annapolis as “a big party.”
The Orthodox Union has decided that the battle for Jerusalem is on whether or not there are any breakthroughs at Annapolis. The group’s political director, Nathan Diament, published an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun that called Jerusalem the “unbridgeable divide in the followup negotiations” after Annapolis.
The conventional wisdom is that Annapolis is just a fancy photo-op, but Americans for Peace Now spokesman Ori Nir, writing in the Jewish Week’s Machers Blog, makes the case that this week's conference is “a beginning of a new, somewhat different Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process.” The set-piece conference in the Maryland capital, he writes, was intended to “generate drama” to launch that process.
American Jewish groups have been mostly mute in the run-up to the conference, but JTA has an interesting report on some of the behind-the-scenes drama in Jewish communal boardrooms.
Writing in last week's Forward, Leonard Fein writes about the stakes of Annapolis; failure, he argues, could lead to a resumption of large-scale violence and a "terminal collapse of the 'two-state solution.'"
The Council on Foreign Relations offers a somewhat gloomy analysis of the talks, saying that “the conflict is not even close to being ripe for resolution,” and suggesting that the best goal now is simply to avoid making matters worse.
Several weeks ago the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) presented a paper to U.S. officials listing recommendations by their diplomatic experts for a successful conference. It’s not new, but it’s still informative.
Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and now head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, worries that the Annapolis conference signals a shift away from the new U.S. approach to the region laid out in April, 2004, which included a statement that Israel is not expected to return to its pro-1967 borders. Read it here.
Meretz USA offers a “Guide to the Perplexed” on the conference listing the key players and major issues.
An interesting political item in Monday's Washington Post speculates about President Bush's absence from Israeli-Palestinian mediation efforts and the fact he has never traveled to Israel as president. "For Bush, It's Not About Being There" is the headline.
The Post also has a long excerpt from a new book about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that describes her evolution from "passive participant to activist diplomat" on Israeli-Palestinian talks.
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In Defense of Annapolis / Ori Nir, spokesman, Americans for Peace Now
Pundits and analysts seem to be competing over who can be more dismissive of the Annapolis conference. A “charade,” a “mere photo-op,” a “parody” - are some of the kinder expressions used to trivialize the gathering by those who seem happy to bury it before it is born.
These nattering nabobs of negativity – to borrow William Safire’s phrase – are both wrongheaded and wrong.
They are wrong because the Annapolis summit is not intended to result in peace now. It is intended to launch a new Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is intended to make a statement that bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are resuming and that this time negotiations are based on a sounder, more promising foundation. Annapolis is not intended to be a venue for negotiations. It is rather a beginning of a new, somewhat different Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process.
The Annapolis conference is supposed to generate drama. Call it a photo-op. Call it a media event. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will mark the beginning of a process and that it does so with some drama.
How is this process different? First - for the firs time - it is sponsored by an American administration that says it views Israeli-Palestinian peace as a vital U.S. national security interest. The administration apparently recognizes now how much Israeli-Palestinian peace could help America achieve its goals in the region, particularly its efforts to curtail the regional influence of Islamist militants led by Iran. Second, for the first time, there is broad Arab support for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Third, there is a Palestinian partner who is regarded as legitimate and credible by Israel, the U.S. and other stakeholders in the peace process. Fourth, there is a mutual commitment by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to steer the negotiating process toward resolving the “core issues” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while detangling the complex reality on the ground of the West Bank.
For those who support a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace – a large majority of Israelis and American Jews do, as do most Palestinians – this new process is an exciting development. But there is little excitement, whether in Israel or on the other side of the Atlantic
Unfortunately, past failures, violence and the lack of any significant positive movement in the seven years that passed since the collapse of the Barak-Arafat negotiations have left almost everyone weary, skeptical and cynical.
That’s why drama is important. An impressive event in Annapolis might could rekindle some hope and trust in the viability of a negotiated peace process. If that happens – and there is good reason to believe it will - the conference will have achieved significant success. That is why eulogizing the conference before it happens is simply wrong.
Obviously, garnering enthusiasm for the relaunched peace process is but a means to an end. For this process to succeed, Israelis and Palestinians must follow through with real negotiations and with on-the-ground implementation of peace-oriented measures. The U.S. government must follow-up with robust leadership and. The Arab world and international community must demonstrate real support. Such follow-up efforts could turn into a credible, ongoing process. We will probably refer to it in the future as the “Annapolis process.”
Focusing on the Annapolis conference rather than on the Annapolis process is not only wrong. It’s wrongheaded. Done right, the process may bring about the peace that Israelis so yearn for, peace not only with the Palestinians but with Syria and Lebanon, as well as normalization with the entire Arab world.
Israelis don’t need American naysayers. They need American friends who can influence America’s government to stay engaged and steer a responsible, credible diplomatic process that will provide peace with security for a democratic Jewish state.
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Shades of Shepherdstown/ James Besser in Washington
In Mideast capitals and in American Jewish boardrooms, optimism about Tuesday’s Mideast summit in Annapolis, Md. is hard to come by.
But local leaders in Annapolis – with its trendy waterfront district, old state capitol building and the sprawling U.S. Naval Academy, where the talks will take place – are hoping the city’s name will enter the political lexicon as a positive landmark in the quest for Mideast peace.
This week Mayor Ellen Moyer issued a proclamation welcoming the upcoming talks.
The city is “honored” to be the venue for “these important talks,” she said.
The city, she said, “offers attendees…its best wishes and urges them to find the courage, strength, commitment, determination and humility necessary to achieve success in this important endeavor.” She proclaimed Tuesday “Annapolis Conference Day” in the city.
The statement won praise from Americans for Peace Now (APN).
“This proclamation demonstrates the depth of American support for negotiations to achieve Arab-Israeli peace and the widespread recognition of the importance of this issue to American interests,” said Debra DeLee, the group’s president. “We join Mayor Ellen Moyer and the City of Annapolis in rolling out the red carpet to the delegates.”
The proclamation might also reflect plain old boosterism.
In 2000, the mountain hamlet of Shepherdstown, West Virginia hosted Syrian-Israeli peace talks. Stores along the city’s main street posted signs welcoming delegates; pictures of doves appeared everywhere. Local church ladies set up money-making concession stands for the army of reporters who descended on the small town; entrepreneurs produced T-shirts and other souvenirs.
But ultimately Shepherdstown, like Camp David, Wye River, Taba and Oslo, became just another name associated with missed opportunities.
Groups on both sides of the Mideast debate won’t miss the opportunity afforded by next week’s talks.
APN and other pro-peace process groups are awaiting permits for a Monday afternoon rally supporting the talks. Other participants include Ameinu, Meretz USA, the Union of Progressive Zionists and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom.
Americans for a Safe Israel and other Jewish and Christian Zionist groups that oppose Palestinian statehood and Israeli concessions are planning rallies on Monday and Tuesday at the Naval Academy; some groups also plan a Sunday demonstration at the White House and march to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Their theme: “Stop Munich II.”
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Golan Negotiations at Annapolis? / James Besser in Washington
With only days left before participants start streaming onto the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., some elements of the Bush administration’s latest Mideast peace venture are starting to jell while others remain as murky as ever.
The onetime international peace conference, downgraded to a short Israeli-Palestinian meeting with a huge cast of international onlookers, may now also delve into the core issue in long-stalled Israel-Syrian negotiations: the Golan Heights.
That’s what the Syrians are demanding, and there are signs the Bush administration, desperate to get Damascus to attend, is willing to pay that price.
Washington sources say private diplomacy over the weekend will seek a formula that allows some reference to Golan without shifting the focus away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the reason the meeting was called in the first place.
Is that good or bad? The debate will rage for a long time, but a few things are clear.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been flirting with the idea of negotiations over Golan for a while now, apparently believing there’s a better chance of dealing with strongman Bashar Assad than the weak, vacillating Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Washington has opposed talking to Syria because of its sponsorship of terrorism and its lack of cooperation in Iraq, but officials here are under growing international pressure to ease that policy because of the widespread perception it just isn’t working.
For Olmert, selling any new land-for-peace deal to an Israeli public disillusioned by the Gaza and Lebanon pullouts won’t be easy, but a deal with Assad may go down better because at least the dictator looks like someone who can deliver on his promises - assuming, of course, that he wants to.
In contrast, any movement toward a deal with Abbas will be regarded with skepticism by the Israeli public, especially since Hamas tossed him out of Gaza and may soon threaten his control of the West Bank, as well.
But from the perspective of the U.S. State Department, settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the key to dealing with a wide range of regional problems, starting with Iran. A Syrian –Israeli deal may be nice, but there’s concern that wouldn’t boost other U.S. foreign policy priorities.
The administration got one bit of good news over the Thanksgiving holiday: the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia said he would attend. That fulfills a key goal of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who hopes Saudi participation will stiffen Abbas’ backbone.
But according to an Associated Press report, Saud al-Faisal's participation is grudging; he said he isn’t interested in diplomatic niceties like handshakes and photo-ops, at least with Israeli leaders.
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Religion in Campaigns, Again / James Besser in Washington
Responding to the rise of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Republican presidential sweepstakes, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen had a provocative column yesterday on the growing focus on religion in American politics in general and the 2008 presidential race in particular.
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, has talked more openly about the connection between his faith and his politics than any other current candidate. Cohen writes that if he wants to keep doing that, he should “tell us how your religious beliefs, your rejection of accepted scientific knowledge, will not impinge on your presidency.”
Cohen offers a backhanded defense of former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith continues to be a problem in his effort to win over the GOP’s important religious right faction.
Romney’s turnabouts on issues like gay rights and abortion are a kind of virtue in today’s political world, Cohen writes.
“If anything, Romney is the anti-Huckabee. There is not the slightest hint that his religion has constrained his politics in any way. You name the issue and he's been for it and against it -- gun control, abortion, gay rights. Call this what you may, it is proof that Romney is not enslaved by any dogma.”
Read Cohen’s interesting, controversial column here.
Romney’s Mormonism is also the subject of alleged “push polls” in Iowa and other early primary and caucus states.
Push polls are bogus public opinion surveys commissioned by one candidate that ask a lot of questions about a particularly controversial aspect of an opposing candidate. The goal isn’t to get statistics but to remind voters of something the sponsoring candidate doesn’t dare to raise publicly.
Push polls have been used against Jewish candidates in the past, including Jill Docking, a Democrat who ran against Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) in 1996. Calls from pollsters in that race reminded voters that Docking was Jewish.
In Romney’s case, pollsters asked voters if they knew he was a Mormon and that he had served as a Mormon missionary.
In the past two presidential elections, the Anti-Defamation League has campaigned against the growing emphasis on personal questions of faith and religious practice in campaigns; looks like the group has its work cut out for it in 2008.
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Inviting Syria To Annapolis Would Violate U.S. Law / Stuart Ditchek,
As the U.S. gears up for the Annapolis Middle East conference, an invitation and enticement for the Syrians to join is being carried out. While including the Syrians in a peace conference might be a political consideration, it would constitute a violation of United States Public Law 106-89 (“The Zachary Baumel Law”).
Zachary Baumel is an American-Israeli citizen who was captured by combined Syrian and Palestinian forces during the Lebanon War’s battle of Sultan Yakoub in 1982. He has been held by the Syrians with no reports of his whereabouts since he and his tank crew were beaten and paraded through the streets of Damascus on the day of the battle. His parents, American citizens, live in Jerusalem and along with me have carried out a 25-year campaign to gain information on his status, dead or alive.
To date the Syrians and Palestinians have stonewalled all efforts.
Several years ago, information was gained which indicated that Zack was alive and being held in a Syrian military instillation. Efforts were renewed to pressure the Syrians to cooperate but without results. As Zachary Baumel’s legal guardian in the United States, I have since filed a hallmark lawsuit against the president and government of Syria in Washington, DC district court under the exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The Syrians have never responded to the lawsuit. We will soon be pursuing the State and Justice Department to freeze and liquidate all Unite States based Syrian assets.
In November 1999, “The Zachary Baumel Law” was passed by Congress and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. The law clearly states that the Secretary of State must continuously raise the issue of Baumel and his crew with all governments and authorities involved, specifically the Palestinian Authority and the Syrians until they cooperate with inquiries. It further details that no assistance can be provided to these entities until they cooperate. I would specify that during the Oslo accords, Yasir Arafat was pressured to hand over half of Baumels’ dog tags to Yitzchak Rabin and promised to tell Rabin what Zack’s status was as soon as he got everything he wanted from the negotiations. He never followed through on the promise.
The United States government has been in frequent violation of this law since providing the Palestinian Authority with material assistance for years. Should they greet the Syrians at Annapolis, this will compound these violations. The catch lies in the subtle “precatory” exception written into the law. This means that if the president of the United States decides that the law should not be enforced, it can be ignored. The question must be raised as to why a law would be written with such an exception other than to satisfy political expedience. The answer lies in the sometimes not fully forthcoming foreign policy of the United States government as it pertains to the Palestinian Authority.
Giving the Syrians a seat at Annapolis would require President Bush to allow Secretary of State Rice to utilize this Presidential precatory exception. His conscience should not allow him or any other president to do so.
My commitment as Zack’s friend is to be the voice of one who cannot speak for himself. In a resounding voice of Zachary Baumel, he and his family say no! The fact that the Palestinian Authority has been given a pass for all these years since Oslo is painful enough for the family of an MIA and a United States citizen. Allowing the Syrian government that is holding Baumel to the Annapolis summit would be an insult that they could not and should not bear.
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Lax Reporting in Hate Crimes Report / James Besser in Washington
Once again, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported an increase in hate crimes – those crimes based on the race, ethnicity, religious, sexual orientation or disability of the victims.
And once again, Jewish groups say the numbers may significantly understate the problem, thanks to lax reporting by many states.
According to the latest FBI statistics, collected under the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act, there were 7,722 hate crimes committed last year – an 8 percent increase from 2005.
There were 1462 hate crimes based on the religion of the victims – and 66 percent of those were against Jews and Jewish institutions.
Among hate crime perpetrators, 59 percent were white, 21 percent black. California, New Jersey and Michigan led the nation in hate crimes; Northern states reported significantly more hate crimes than those in the South.
But that, according to hate crime monitoring groups, mostly reflects big differences in reporting.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, only 17 percent of the local law enforcement agencies that contributed data reported even a single hate crime. 5000 police departments didn’t bother to participate at all.
Other groups say reporting has been particularly lax in southern states.
ADL officials say the results show the need for more comprehensive anti-bias education, better cooperation by local enforcement agencies – and passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, an expanded hate crimes statute now pending in Congress.
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Immigration Reform Retreat: Why Jews Should Care / Lisa Shuger Hubliz, Washington director, The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
With the collapse of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress in June of this year, not only have the prospects for a reasonable and humane fix any time soon to our broken immigration system decreased considerably, but it appears that an all-out assault on immigrants, reminiscent of backlashes we’ve seen in the past, especially against Jews after the creation of national origin quotas in the 1920s.
As a people historically all too familiar with outsider status, and based on our religious and ethical teachings and values, there is a clear and firm foundation for Jewish involvement in the current immigration debate. Jews have long understood what it means to come to a country in search of freedom, opportunity, and to be with family members. Like our grandparents and great-grandparents who benefited from these opportunities and along the way made this country better – economically, politically, culturally, and in many other ways – today’s immigrants want these same opportunities for themselves and their families. They want to contribute to their new homeland and become full participants in American society and should not be denied that same opportunity.
In spite of its support to get a comprehensive immigration reform bill across the finish line, the Bush Administration recently released a 26-point plan containing enforcement-only measures that unfairly and unreasonably hampers the lives of undocumented immigrants who are only here to work hard and make important and necessary contributions to this country. Shortly after the release of this plan, the draconian enforcement-only Sensenbrenner bill of 2005 was reincarnated by Senators Kyl (R-AZ), Sessions (R-AL), McCain (R-AZ), and Graham (R-SC). Senators Specter (R-PA) and Martinez (R-FL) are also cosponsors of this legislation. This bill would supercharge immigration arrests, raids, and detention, all while rolling back legal protections and due process for immigrants, and include a provision that would make it a criminal offense to be out of immigration status.
While it is not surprising that some in Congress would continue their pursuit of legislation that focuses entirely on enforcement measures, it is extremely curious and downright disturbing that the Administration and Senators McCain, Graham, Kyl, and Specter, who were ardent supporters of the Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill, would turn their backs on immigrants and a comprehensive approach.
It seems they have opted to secure political points rather than to secure our borders, adopting an enforcement-only strategy that ignores an entire population of undocumented immigrants already here in this country. Abandoning efforts that would provide hard-working immigrants the opportunity to get on the right side of the law combined with tough enforcement policy does nothing to bolster our national security and stem the tide of illegal immigration.
For the past several years, HIAS has consistently urged Congress and the Administration to enact legislation that does both by: offering a path to citizenship to the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows; creating wider legal channels for future workers and worker protections; reuniting families; and including enforcement and border security measures that are tough, effective, and humane.
To abandon this effort and move so far in the wrong direction creates more systemic dysfunction and anti-immigrant backlash, neither of which we, as a nation, can afford to do. Only by channeling the current undocumented flow into a legal and orderly system that is secure and protects human and civil rights at the same time will we truly be able to secure our borders and more easily distinguish between those who mean to do us harm and those who only seek to work or reunite with family. Rejecting a compassionate approach in favor of one that is harsh and unrealistic is simply not a solution.
We agree that our borders must be secure. However, the only way to stop illegal immigration is to develop a national policy that is truly comprehensive and will effectively fix our broken immigration system.
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Reacting to the Iran Story / James Besser in Washington
Recently the Jewish Week ran a story describing a Zogby International poll showing growing support in America for military action against Iran – and an even sharper increase in the Jewish community.
Now, according to Zogby, more than 60 percent of Jews favor military action to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, 48 percent “strongly” supporting it. That contrasts with an American Jewish Committee poll a year ago showing 60-plus percent opposed.
Do you believe it? A lot of Jewish leaders around the country don’t, as calls from several suggested after the story ran.
“Attention? Yes, it’s on peoples’ radar screens now,” said a Jewish Federation leader in response to the Jewish Week story. “But I don’t see the support for military action. Zogby didn’t poll my community.”
Overall, the Zogby numbers differ from other key polls, which show smaller and in some cases declining proportions of Americans favoring the military option. If Zogby is wrong about the nation as a whole, couldn’t he be wrong about the Jews, as well?
The Jewish Week story was picked up by numerous blogs as “proof” that Professors Walt and Mearsheimer are right: that the Jewish groups that “caused” the war in Iraq are trying to do the same with Iran.
The fear such notions could get a lot of additional traction if there is a military confrontation with Iran – and if it goes as badly as the war in Iraq – has made many Jewish leaders fearful of talking about trends in the community.
In private, they say that relentless warnings about Iran from groups ranging from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to AIPAC are having an impact on Jewish public opinion.
But that doesn’t necessarily translate into support for military action, although some concede the focus on Iran by major Jewish groups and the apocalyptic rhetoric of some (which, many observers say, seems to be getting toned down of late) creates that impression.
Increasing awareness of the menace of Iran is coexisting with growing fears that the Bush administration could be following the path it blazed in Iraq right into Iran, many say.
Even for the segment of the Jewish community that puts Israel at the top of its list of political priorities, there is ambivalence – concern that the warnings about Iran’s nuclear effort are more accurate than those about Iraq’s, but also fear Israel could pay the price for any attack and uncertainty over this administration’s ability to conduct yet another war.
Jewish public opinion is in flux on Iran, many say – but for it to jump to support for another military action by this administration would be a political stretch few see happening.
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The Jerusalem Game / James Besser in Washington
In 2000, then-Gov. George W. Bush went before Jewish groups and promised to start moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as soon as he was elected, and attacked his opponent – former Vice President Al Gore – for the Clinton administration’s position that the issue should be decided only after final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
But once in office, Bush did exactly what his Democratic predecessor did: he used the waiver provisions of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act to put off the move, and has repeated that waiver every six months since then.
Now, according to a Jewish Week Political Insider item this week, surrogates for three of the top Republican 2008 presidential contenders -- Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney and former mayor Rudy Giuliani - say their champions will move the embassy as soon as they are elected.
Pardon us while we yawn.
Even many vocal supporters of moving the embassy admit the issue is more about politics than policy; the realities of Mideast diplomacy are strangely impervious to casual campaign promises.
The original embassy statute was sponsored by then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kans.), who was planning to run for president in 1996 – and needed a good issue to help him quickly establish pro-Israel credentials. Dole announced the legislation to great fanfare at the 1995 AIPAC policy conference as his campaign was gearing up.
The issue was trotted out again in 2000, when Bush forces lashed out at President Bill Clinton for invoking the law’s waiver provisions. That effort was particularly energetic in Florida, where the Republicans ran ads touting the GOP nominee’s Jerusalem stand.
And what was the reaction of Jewish Republicans when Bush started his own string of waivers? Not a peep, suggesting the issue has utility only in election years, and only when it can be used to bash an opponent.
Now, with Bush getting ready to ride off into the sunset, the issue is back.
The Democrats are taking a faith based approach to the Jerusalem embassy question; mostly they are praying it doesn’t get asked. Politically, they have nothing to gain from wading into the fray, since the Jewish voters most likely to care about forcing the embassy move are those already inclined to vote Republican.
Republicans are assuming Jewish voters have no memory; most Democrats don’t have the nerve to admit they support the Republican president because they’re scared of getting bashed by … the Republicans.
Isn’t politics a hoot?
Mainstream Jewish and pro-Israel groups face a similar problem.
Most believe either that forcing the embassy move now would complicate U.S. peace efforts, or that fighting the waivers is a losing proposition, so why squander resources?
But no Jewish leader wants to get on the wrong side of the Jerusalem-as-eternal-and-undivided-capital-of-Israel doctrine. So they equivocate, saying the embassy should be moved, but getting all vague when asked about when.
That curious dance is likely to continue after next year’s election no matter who is elected.
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Deepening The GA Experience/Gary Rosenblatt just back from Nashville
Memo to future planners of the scores of programs offered at the GA (General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities), the most significant annual conference of and for Jewish leaders:
The GA does a very good job of offering panels on a variety of vital issues, from innovations in education to restoring a sense of Jewish Peoplehood. But in dealing with 3,000 people and a range of interests in 48 hours, invariably a number of sessions seem superficial.
There is a certain show-and-tell aspect to many presentations, with three or four expert panelists presenting on a given topic, often by expounding on “what our community does to deal with this issue.” That is followed by a brief and often hurried Q and A segment, with audience members not infrequently noting how their community responds to the issue. And then it’s over.
These sessions generally provide a solid overview on topics ranging from pro-Israel advocacy to fundraising techniques. But for those looking for a deeper discussion of the issues
