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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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, why not include longer sessions with a limited number of attendees – delegates would sign up in advance – that could more fully explore a complicated subject in a setting that allows for more give and take between experts and the audience?
Maybe delegates could register for a series of discussions on a given track so that over two days they would come away with a real sense of expertise on the issue they chose to explore.
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Bloggers Are Us/Gary Rosenblatt in New York
The question posed at the Columbia Journalism School’s First Amendment Series breakfast this week was “Bloggers: Are They The Future of Journalism?” The answer from the three panelists was a definitive “yes,” even from a self-proclaimed newspaper “dinosaur” like Arthur Browne, the veteran editorial page editor of The Daily News, who added: “But so what? And welcome to the party.”
“It all comes down to audience, interest and economics,” Browne told a packed room of about 200 people at the Columbia University Club in midtown. Any enterprise that can accomplish all three – be they bloggers or newspapers – will succeed.
He noted that “what sets blogs apart” are speed and unlimited space. But facts count, he insisted. Browne said he already sees a “melding” of blogging and journalism, with both striving to become “useful and interesting” to readers.
Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and advocate of blogging, said that “bloggers are not about to replace journalism” but they “expand the press,” which is a good thing. He cited several examples of niche blogs that, in their specialized interest, ferreted out important information leading to major media coverage. One was firedoglake.com, a liberal blog that raised funds from readers to send six experts to cover the federal “leak” trial of “Scooter” Libby, the vice presidential aide, and transcribe and post the proceedings.
The third panelist, Jen Chung, is editor of the successful website Gothamist.com, now in more than a dozen cities, including New York, where it claims to be the most popular of local blogs. She described how the site began four years ago and combines news summaries, food blogs, social events and a live news map of incidents and accidents around the city.
With a background in marketing and consulting, Chung doesn’t claim to be a journalist, but she said the Gothamist sites are viewed by young men and women who want to know what is happening in the city but “don’t have time to read newspapers.”
She said she is continuing to seek press credentials from the New York Police Department.
Overall, the panel’s message was clear. Blogging has more than its share of crackpots, and most of its content is of narrow interest and opinion-oriented. But the fact that it has its serious participants shedding light on so many more topics than the mainstream press could ever explore means that the field will continue to grow in size and importance, and should be welcomed – with caution.
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Solidarity And Socializing/
Gary Rosenblatt in New York
“Today we pray with our feet,” Lior Sinai of the American Zionist Movement, told hundreds of Jewish students rallying on Tuesday in front of the United Nations for the release of Israel’s kidnapped soldiers.
The protest was one of about 50 planned by the Jewish Agency for Israel and other groups for the same day in communities and college campuses in the U.S. and another 30 in countries around the world, from Australia to Ukraine. It was billed as a “world solidarity day” for the prisoners.
The great majority of those gathered at the UN were yeshiva high school students who chanted “Bring Them Home” and “Let Them Go,” and were addressed by a number of student leaders as well as community and political officials, the new Israeli Consul General, and the mother of one of the kidnapped soldiers.
“Help free our son, your brother,” urged Miki Goldwasser by phone from Jerusalem. Her son, Ehud, now 32, was abducted by Hezbollah in the north in July 206, along with Eldad Regev.
Gilad Schalit was taken by Hamas several weeks earlier.
“This may happen in your backyard” someday,” she warned.
Despite the painful circumstances, the air was festive at the UN event – these were high school students, after all -- and many of the youngsters socialized during the steady string of brief speeches. “It’s camp reunion central,” observed Cynthia Dweck, a senior at the Magen David Yeshiva High School in Brooklyn. She and schoolmate Leona Ashkenazi, a ninth grader, urged bystanders to sign a petition on behalf of the three Israeli soldiers missing for almost a year and a half, and handed out flyers asking people to call the Red Cross and urge the organization to visit the prisoners, which has not happened.
Rachel Klapper, a Baruch College student who organized a campaign to collect signatures on behalf of the missing soldiers, told the crowd how she delivered 3,000 letters “from you” to the families in Israel this summer. “Always use your own power to make a difference,” she said, “and understand the power of your activism.”
Observing the scene, a community organizer asked rhetorically, “How often can we hold a major rally?” He noted that a larger gathering was held at the same spot last month. But how can the community not cry out against the injustice of kidnappings that fly in the face of international law?
It’s an unanswered question, and an impossible situation.
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James Besser's 12/7 Lead Story in JW
12/13/07 @ 04:16 PM | Posted By Fred DanzigAfter reading the James Besser story on the latest NIE report (Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in '03), I think one can conclude that he wrote it just before President Bush's news conference of Dec. 4, Tuesday morning. The news conference was, after all, relevant to the story's thrust, i.e., that Jewish leaders "fear a new softness" on Iran. It is only near the end of the article that Mr.Besser includes the news that Mr. Bush ``seemed to agree" with AIPAC (not the other way around?) It's only at this point that Mr. Besser reports that Mr. Bush is not yet ready to trust the Iranians. He said: ``Iran was...is...and will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.' No ``new softness" there, apparently. Maybe Mr. Besser's lede could have read something like, ``As President Bush was reiterating his view that Iran remains ``dangerous" despite a new intelligence report concluding Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Jewish leaders this week feared a collapse of the international consensus for sanctions against the Iranian threat." My suspicion is that Mr. Besser simply chose not to revise and rewrite, effectively failing to connect all the dots. And in so doing, he missed a chance to give JW readers a more balanced piece.
From: Fred Danzig, Eastchester, NY.
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