President of Ben Gurion University Collaborating with Communist Ideologue

President of Ben Gurion University Collaborating with Communist Ideologue
Jacob Katriel


To right, Stalinist Ideologue Jacob Katriel, wearing his shirt endorsing Tali Fahima, in prison at the time for terrorism.

Prof. Jacob Katriel, professor emeritus from the Technion, who taught chemistry before retiring, is a hardline communist who spent most of his life as a central figure in the Israeli Communist Party, a predominantly Arab anti-Israel party that has never gotten around to renouncing Stalinism.

He runs a small communist cell in Haifa . Katriel was one of the people trying to propose Tali Fahima for an "Alternative Nobel Prize" when she was jailed for assisting her Palestinian terrorist "boyfriend" plan terror attacks against Israel. He was also a longtime promoter and defender of convicted nuclear spy Mordecai Vanunu (see this).

Katriel is a central figure in promoting international boycotts of Israel (see
this and this). He roams the world (most recently in India) declaring Israel an "apartheid regime". See also this.

For a sample of Katriel's anti-Israel writings, see this and this and this and this.

Katriel signs all the usual anti-Israel petitions. Here he is demanding that Ariel Sharon be put on trial in Belgium as a war criminal. Here he is signed to a statement claiming Israel was planning nazi-like atrocities against Palestinians the moment US troops entered Iraq.

Now Katriel is little more than a marginal figure in Israeli society, a dogmatic communist still trying to apply in the Middle East would was rejected massively by all the peoples in the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe less than two decades ago.

What is noteworthy is that Prof. Rivka Carmi, the president of Ben Gurion University, appears to be collaborating with Katriel in some of his efforts.

The following was posted on September 23, 2007 on the chat list of "ICRR Israeli Committee for Residency Rights," an anti-Israel communist front organization. It officially describes itself thus: "The ICRR is an Israeli committee concerned with Palestinian residency rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories." Evidently all of Israel is part of the "Occupied Palestinian Territories," in the opinion of ICRR, because much of its efforts and activities have to do with getting permission for various Palestinians (including those with foreign passports) and other Arabs to enter Israel. ICRR is one of countless microscopic far-Leftist and communist-front Israel-bashing Israeli organizations, most of which contain pretty much the exact same list of members.

The posting on ICRR by Jacob Katriel concerning Carmi is evidently part of an ongoing correspondence between her and Katriel regarding Carmi's endorsing and promoting the political campaign led by Katriel and his cadres to pressure Israel to relax regulation of "academics" entering the West Bank and Gaza to teach in Palestinian universities.

Because of the security situation, Israel has been more cautious in granting transit visas to people entering the West Bank and Gaza through Israel as "foreign professors." In addition, Israel has been cracking down on Palestinian students from the West Bank entering Israel and on the activities of Palestinian institutions, as part of the general set of security controls and sanctions against the Palestinian Authority for its ongoing misbehavior and terrorist aggression. (In the opinion of ICRR of course these are all legitimate acts of Palestinian self-defense!)

Israel does not always grant automatic approval to foreigners seeking to travel to the West Bank and Gaza through Israel. Some of the foreign "academics" who want to enter to teach at Palestinian colleges are themselves Arabs with foreign passports. Others are no doubt from the familiar anti-Semitic international "solidarity" and "anarchist" organizations. Some may be suspect for one reason or another. Given the security situation, each applicant is carefully reviewed and processed by Israel. If anything, Israel is not selective enough, as seen in the fact that so many international "anarchists" get through the inspections and enter the "occupied territories" to make trouble.

It should be borne in mind that Palestinian "universities" are generally little more than centers of radical indoctrination, and in some cases have been used for terrorist training and activities. Hence Israel has an interest in who passes through Israel to work in them.

Katriel and his people have been trying to recruit Israeli university heads for their campaign to end all Israeli discretionary inspections and regulation over who gets such visas and who does not. So far, the Katriel group appears only to have succeeded in recruiting Prof. Rivka Carmi, president of Ben Gurion University, from among Israeli academic officers. Ben Gurion University (BGU) is renowned as one of the worst centers of anti-Israel faculty activism and "Post-Zionism" in Israel, possibly the very worst. Much of the on-campus political activity at BGU, including
in-classroom indoctrination, appears to enjoy approval and endorsement by Carmi.

In part of his Sept. 23, 07 posting on the ICRR chat list, Katriel published Carmi's note to him that reads as follows:

Quoting Rivka Carmi
rca...
@bgu.ac.il:

'Shalom again,
Hamatchil be'mitzva (that is Hebrew for – "He who begins a Mitzvah" – meaning those who only begin a good deed still get credit for the whole mitzvah -- SP)...

'....I suggest that you write a letter along these lines to Kaveh (the head of the Committee of Israeli University Presidents or VERA – SP) c/c other presidents (or at least bcc me). I shall push this idea forward but I need a "formal" approach of VERA.
Thanks,
Rivka'



The initiative that the President of Ben Gurion University is asking to join and support is Katriel's idea of pressuring Israel's government to relax oversight and regulation of who may pass through Israel on transit visas to teach at Palestinian universities.

The idea of pressuring the Israeli government to relax its diligence over who enters Israel in transit for the West Bank and Gaza is what Carmi is describing as a "mitzvah," a strange term to be using in a letter from her to a Stalinist academic.

To right, President of Ben Gurion University and Collaborator with Katriel.

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"We can be confident we will not discover the earth to be flat, notwithstanding the insistence of Rav Yaakov Reischer, one of the greatest halachic authorities of the seventeenth century, that the Gemara teaches otherwise. We can be confident we will not discover that matter is not composed of molecules but instead of earth, air, fire and water. Zoology is a particularly well-established science, which is why Rabbis Lampronti, Musafia, Hirsch, and Illowy were correct in rejecting the notion of spontaneous generation." - The continuing debate on science, emunah and hashkafic thought.

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"As Professor Avi Bell of Bar Ilan University Law School explains, the government is under no international obligation to supply Gaza with electricity and fuel. Moreover, the Israeli government does not supply Gaza with fuel and electricity; Israeli companies do – the Israel Electric Company supplies electricity, Dor Energy supplies fuel. The IEC’s power station in Ashkelon that supplies electricity to Gaza is targeted frequently by rockets and mortars shot from Gaza. It is under no legal obligation to maintain its contracts with the Hamas-led Gaza Strip." - Caroline Glick and the Hostile Entity that is Gaza

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"Nonsense. The invitation to Ahmadinejad had nothing to do with the intellectual exchange of ideas. Is it debatable whether the Holocaust took place? Is it debatable whether a member nation of the United Nations should be nuked out of existence? Would Columbia dream of inviting someone, in the name of “confronting ideas,” to speak about his theories of the world being flat? " - Our lead editorial on the Iranian Dictator's visit.

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"As a result of their lack of Jewish knowledge and identification, many young Jews find themselves conflicted by the images they see on TV, the photos in the newspaper and the discussions they have with peers concerning the bitter conflict in the Middle East. Whatever your opinions on the political situation, it is not difficult to see how young Americans might feel torn about an Israel that they know mostly through the telescoped and jaundiced lens of a TV camera." - Rabbi Efraim Buchwald and our failure to Sell Israel to the next generation.

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Plus Sukkot recipes, Faith in Thailand, and a Celebration in Williamsburg.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 718-992-1600 ext. 344) A Dating Primer, Setting Your Goals and many Chol Hamoed related ads.

Chag Sameach and Happy Reading!

Flashback: Blaming Israel for the Intifada

There are times, admittedly few and far between, when I'm rendered speechless. Such a time came seven years ago this week, with the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada.

Though the violence initially was blamed on the September 28, 2000, visit to the Temple Mount by then-Likud leader Ariel Sharon and a large security entourage, Palestinian leaders would later admit that planning for the outbreak had in fact begun in July, after Yasir Arafat stormed out of Bill Clinton’s Camp David confab.

The sight of Palestinian mobs pillaging and killing, in a bloodthirsty frenzy reminiscent of the Arab riots of the 1920’s and 30’s, was still not enough to cure certain Jews of their chronic need to interpret events through the eyes of their enemies.

On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the death of the Oslo peace sham, this week’s soapbox is yielded to those whose stomach-turning bleating in the weeks immediately following the launch of Intifada II should have been a death blow to the illusion of Jewish intellectual superiority. The Palestinians should only be this stunningly stupid – not to mention breathtakingly craven:

● Obviously, the fuse [for the Palestinian uprising] was lit by the notorious Ariel Sharon ... a man whose entire military and political career consisted of fighting Palestinians and killing them.... It is a tragic feature of what is going on now that at Camp David, Barak in principle agreed to give up many of the positions which are at present being ferociously fought over.... He agreed to give them up – but only at a stiff price of Palestinian [concessions], some of them very unpalatable and others completely unacceptable to the Palestinian side. Will he now soften those positions, at least to some degree? Having gone so far already at Camp David, can he not simply get out of the occupied territories?
– Israeli “peace activists” Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt

● It is not the acceptable thing to say, but this truth must be stated: Only through force have the Arabs achieved what they have achieved, throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict, and certainly in the last 30 years. From Yom Kippur of 5734 (1973) to Rosh Hashana of 5761 (2000), not only has violence paid off for the Arabs, but we have also shown them that violence is the only way open to them.... It certainly cannot be said that [Israeli Arabs] did not first try nonviolent means. Twenty-five years of exemplary, almost exaggerated loyalty ... to the state whose wars are not their wars, whose national anthem is not their anthem, whose language is not their language, whose holidays are not their holidays – and for all this [Israel] treats them the way it does.
– Gideon Levy, columnist, Haaretz

● The massacre of Palestinians in recent days will be with us for many years.... The IDF did not defend Israel. Israel was not in danger.... It is permissible to kill a child in the arms of his father and to afterward deny that killing “because he had no reason to be there.” It is permissible to shoot rockets at demonstrators.... It is permissible to use violence to make others surrender. And as usual, in summing up the entire event, human life is important only when the human is not Arab.
– Yitzhak Laor, columnist, Haaretz

● Those [in Israel] who declare that there is no partner for peace are in effect proclaiming that they are in the middle of a war.... And that is how a few hundred Palestinians armed with MK-17 assault rifles have led a strong nation – one with a nuclear option and a powerful army – to adopt the mood that it is now waging a “war of survival.” In the meantime, the leaders of this strong nation are fueling the paranoia...
– Meron Benvinisti, columnist, Haaretz

● Israelis should atone for their inability to see themselves as the major military power of the region and for their constant use of disproportionate force to repress an essentially unarmed population. Israelis should atone for not being able to recognize as the superior force with the greater responsibility to compromise and respect the needs of the less powerful.
– Michael Lerner, Tikkun magazine

● The horrible deaths of the two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah should serve as a lesson to Israel that the violence it has shown to the Palestinians and Arab Israelis in the past only serves to further the Middle East conflict.... In the wake of the recent clashes, Israel needs to re-evaluate its policy toward the Arabs. Prime Minister Ehud Barak should not react with further violence....
– Goldie Fleischman, Baltimore (letter to The New York Times, Oct. 14, 2000)

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"But strange as it may seem, there is not one national Jewish fundraising organization whose sole focus is ensuring that every Jewish child has access, if his or her family seeks it, to a quality and affordable Jewish education, irrespective of stream of affiliation or financial resources." - Chicago businessman George D. Hanus on the Crisis in Jewish Education.

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"The only distinction between Fatah and Hamas is that Fatah is a corrupt, selfish, secular-based thugocracy that calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state in phases, while Hamas is a corrupt, religiously based thugocracy that calls for the immediate annihilation of the Jewish state." - The founder of Emet with distinctions and prayers for the New Year.

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"There is absolutely no reason why a family with eight children needs to purchase tens sets of arba minim for hundreds of dollars. It is nothing more than an extravagance whose religious advantage is mostly cosmetic. With so many worthy causes that are desperate for money, this is a no-brainer that does not require the deliberation of a Sanhedrin." - Rabbi Chananya Weissman once again addressing issues of Jewish spirit.

And a Worry Worm, Po-lin and a Bat Mitzvah by Rachel's Tomb.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 718-992-1600 ext. 344) a Portrait of Adele, a Bal Tashchis Friend, and Traveling with Dementia.

Gmar Tov and Happy Reading

The Hebrew University's Tokyo Rose

Anti-Israel Hebrew University professor, Victoria Buch, denounces Israel for "ethnic cleansing" on the leftwing neo-nazi web magazine Counterpunch:

"I believe that the final objective of our rulers is to set the stage for the second Naqba. Otherwise what is the point of the endless goading of Palestinians into violence? ... These people (Israelis -- SP) are actually looking forward to the violence. They have their eyes on the real-estate prize - the West Bank.... Will the ethnic cleansing succeed? The authors of these policies obviously count on it.... It is likely that the forthcoming outburst of violence will be initiated by the desperate and destitute Palestinians; and then, for the umptieth time, our propaganda machine will be able to present us to the world as victims, and Palestinians as victimizers.

"Israeli responses will be presented as legitimate defensive actions. Later, the history may judge otherwise, but meanwhile (if the present political constellation persists for a while), who cares about the Palestinians.... The experience of South Africa suggests that the apartheid-type system imposed on Palestinians is not viable in the long run, even if it seems invincible at the beginning.... perhaps most importantly - the Dome of the Rock - the third holiest place of Islam - is at stake. (Fact-free Buch strikes again. She may mean Al-Aqsa Mosque -- SP)"

Want to tell the Hebrew University officials what you think of Victoria Buch playing Tokyo Rose for the anti-Semites?
Hebrew University - President, Rector and Officers: click here

Friends Associations: click here

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"As an aid to fine-tuning our sense of balance, a benevolent Creator gave us the month of Elul, aptly represented by the symbol of Virgo, the feminine characterization of wholesome purity. Following on the heels of the summer season that lends itself well to a nonrestrictive existence, the arrival of Elul is heralded by the call of the shofar, sounded for the duration of the month to afford men and women windows of opportunity through which to emerge from listlessness and repose." In what has become a pre-chag tradition, Rachel Weiss delights and encourages us with her Heavenly Grace.

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"Jewish mysticism teaches that the soul of a tzaddik descends in a fiery pillar to his grave. Therefore, anyone who comes to a tzaddik’s grave can connect to this powerful spiritual presence, which is most active on the date of the righteous one’s passing." This week Yoni Waysman, reveals the hidden beauty that is Tzfat.

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"Halloo! Osama needs a reality check! The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem traveled to Germany, had private meetings with Hitler and heard all about the Final Solution. And the Mufti was like: “Mein Fuhrer, where do we start?”

The Mufti even raised an all-Muslim SS brigade in Bosnia to help Hitler exterminate the Jews. Mein Kampf is still a best seller in the Arab world. It should be – the title translates as “My Struggle.” Which in Arabic is, get this: My Jihad.

And as for how lovey-dovey Muslims and Jews were in the good old days: It was the Muslims, not the Christians, who back in the Middle Ages invented the yellow star for Jews to wear on their clothes." Frequent Jewish Press contributor Robert Avrech gives us the pitch behind Osama, the video.

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"The moment the government raises the question of the fate of the Jewish settlers in Hebron, or in any other place in Israel, and uses them as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the Palestinian enemy (who did not erase, and will not erase, its covenant that calls for the destruction of Israel) it is liable to cross the danger zone line of being unable to protect the majority of Jews in Israel" - Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a column that appeared in The Jewish Press in 1994.

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Also, the Vatican, a Crystal Ball, and The Ride of My Life.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 718-992-1600 ext. 344) our Children's Summer Contest, Ten Ways to a More Meaningful Chag, the Rosh Yeshiva, and The Way the Wheel Turns.

Have a happy and healthy new year!

A Byzantine Battle over Poverty Statistics

With so many other atrocities and outrages going on, it will be understandable if you did not notice the battle in Israel over poverty statistics.

The battle is between the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, run by Prof. Shlomo Yitzhaki, and the other governmental offices, mainly the National Insurance Institute (Israel's Social Security).

Shlomo Yitzhaki is a distinguished and decent economist. He is a bit to the left for my tastes, but I have great admiration and respect for him. (I have debated him in the past, and while we have some disagreements, I consider him a fine human and an accomplished scholar.) The battle between Yitzhaki and the bureaucrats has to do with the concept of poverty and its measurement. It sounds like a minor technical irrelevance, but it ain't.

Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics is state of the art and professional. It and Yitzhaki are trying to get the government to start defining poverty in a meaningful manner. "Poverty" in Israel is defined in an absurd and meaningless manner, in a way that does not measure poverty. It is based on how many people earn less than 45% of the median reported wage. But this means that if every Israeli family struck oil like Jed Clampett, the poverty statistics would still show that 20% of Israelis are impoverished. The problem is that the government's definition of poor has nothing to do with actual hardship or actual level of consumption. It just measures how many people report earnings less than the average. Hold on to your streimel - because half of Israelis will ALWAYS earn less than the average (actually, always less than the median) no matter what. And lots of Israelis who report very low incomes are actually earning more but not reporting it.

The poverty statistics lump students, retired people, people not inside Israel, people not in the labor force, people working for cash payments, and others in the group identified as "poor." There are "poor" people in Israel with three cars, Jacuzzis, and swimming pools. Of course, there are also actual poor people, we just do not know much about them from the poverty statistics.

Yitzhaki and his team want to trash the ridiculous governmental definition and adopt an actual measurement of poverty, based on real consumption and hardship, not based on people's hurt self-esteem because others earn more than them.

But they cannot do this because the pointy headed bureaucrats in the National Insurance Institute refuse to release the income and consumption data for Israeli families needed to create new measures of poverty. They are a state secret, unlike most of Olmert's military moves. The Central Bureau of Statistics wants to go to court to force the other Israeli governmental offices to release the economic data. You with me? – one Israeli government office needs to litigate to get basic data from another office that should be freely available to all citizens.

Meanwhile, the same pointy headed bureaucrats and their allied "poverty lobby" have a new billboard and commercial PR campaign in Israel, screaming about "a million hungry Israelis." Telling Israelis that a sixth of the population does not have enough food. In other words, lying. Lots of Israelis have health problems from over-eating, a growing Israeli problem.

Put aside how we will be feeling late in the day on Yom Kippur in a few days, and let's ignore the anorexic middle class girls with the eating disorders. There is no hunger in Israel. How do we know? Because hunger and malnutrition are visible when they exist. Israel has state-of-the-art mortality statistics, thanks again to the Central Bureau of Statistics. We know how many people in Israel die of malnutrition and the answer is none. (Well, aside from a few anorexic girls.) No swollen bellies, no other easily recognizable signs of hunger and malnutrition. In other words, the poverty lobby is lying.

There is an old joke – that the only place Israelis really do not have bread to eat is in the Chinese restaurants. But the political demagogues are so wedded to posturing on behalf of the poor and hungry that they are committed to stamping out honest measurement of poverty and hardship.

The Left's Nervous Breakdown

President Bush, writes Graydon Carter, paranoiac editor of Vanity Fair, the magazine that strives mightily to be taken seriously while championing celebrity narcissism and mindless titillation (“Nicole Kidman Bares All,” trills the cover of the current issue, thick as always with ads for perfume, lingerie and high-priced clothes and toys for high-income yuppies and those who aspire to be), “has taken away our civil liberties.”

If that were true, of course, Carter would hardly be at liberty to write his monthly screeds against the administration, accusing the president and his aides of every inanity, moral outrage, crime and depredation known to mankind.

But as Noemie Emery writes in the September 3 issue of The Weekly Standard, America’s liberals and leftists have become so “increasingly unhinged” that they really have convinced themselves a dictatorship is being methodically assembled by Washington’s Republican Brownshirts.

Emery quotes a coterie of leftists in full breakdown mode, including feminist author and former Al Gore adviser Naomi Wolf who insists that “Beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable…that it can happen here.”

Wolf seems positively sane compared to Mark Crispin Miller, a professor and playwright obsessed with the notion that Republicans routinely steal elections. Asked why most journalists and even Democratic Party officials weren’t buying into his theories, the addled academic responded that they were unwilling to recognize that “the United States is clearly not a democratic country, or that the Bush administration are [sic] dangerous extremists, intent on building a one-party theocratic state.”

This scenario of Bush as iron-fisted dictator shredding our rights and freedoms “explains,” as Emery wryly puts it, “why poor Cindy Sheehan is now sitting in prison; why Bush critics like CIA retiree Valerie Plame have been ostracized by the corporate media and are wasting away in anonymity; why no critic of Bush can get a hearing, why no book complaining about him can ever get published, and why our multiplexes are filled with one pro-Bush propaganda movie after another, glorifying the Iraq war and rallying the nation behind its leader.”

But of course, she continues, “back on planet Earth, Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress; Valerie Plame is rich and famous;…and press censorship is now so far-reaching that you can’t even expose a legal, effective, and top-secret plan to trace terrorists without getting a Pulitzer Prize.”

Emery also unlocks the padded cell of political writer Michael Lind, introducing readers to the intellect behind the 2004 book Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics, which, in Emery’s thumbnail description, purported to reveal a plot hatched in the Lone Star State to resurrect not just the Confederacy but slave labor as well.

As Emery sums up, being a liberal or leftist in America today means believing some or all of the following:

· Global warming causes both hot and cold weather, just as elections are stolen when the Democrats lose them, but are stolen too when they win.

· A country in which dissent is a flourishing industry is on the brink of a great fascist crackdown, as you can tell by all the books written attacking the president, the plays put on that call him an idiot, and the movies that call for his death.

· When exit polls indicate a different result from the actual vote count, the polls are correct and the vote count is fraudulent, a fact covered up by journalists who are (a) Democrats by something close to a nine-to-one ratio; and (b) dying to uncover a huge government scandal, so that they too can be famous like Woodward and Bernstein, make millions of dollars, and be played in the movies by Hollywood stars.

· That [both] Presidents Bush, from Yale and a long line of Yankees, who made the careers of the first black secretaries of state ever named in this country, are secretly longing to bring back the South of 1859.

· And, that the Republican party, whose frontrunners are a once-divorced actor (just like Ronald Reagan), a Mormon from Massachusetts by way of Michigan, and a thrice-married Italian Catholic from the streets of Brooklyn, is a shrunken husk of a regional faction, punitive, narrow, and wholly obsessed with extreme social mores, relying on extralegal repression to perpetuate itself in power.

Flood Gaza Now!

Since, after yesterday's rocket attack on an Israeli army base, even the Olmerites now realize that appeasing the Pestilianians will not stop the Kassam rockets, I wanted to propose my own solution. The solution is … solution. That is, pump sea water into the Gaza Strip until it is permanently under 4 feet of salt water. And then do nothing. Trust me, the rockets will stop. You do not see any Qassam rocket being fired out of Bengla Desh after the annual floods. None were fired from New Orleans right after the hurricane.

If anyone whines, Israel can blame global warming for it.

The New York Times and The New Yorker Visit the Israel Lobby

Two recent comments/reviews of Walt and Mearsheimer's new book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy:
David Remnick in the Comment for The New Yorker offers a very sensible analysis.
William Grimes in The New York Times doesn't offer much at all.

Here's an example from each discussing Walt and Mearsheimer's delusional and simplistic view of how things work in the Middle East:

Grimes: "They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on."

He seems to be a tad incredulous, but not much--and in the rest of the review he seems to give much credence to almost everything they say. (I keep writing "seems" because Grimes's review is quite dull and voiceless.)

Here's Remnick: "This is not a cabal but a world in which Abraham Foxman gives the signal, Pat Robertson describes his apocalyptic rapture, Charles Krauthammer pumps out a column, Bernard Lewis delivers a lecture—and the President of the United States invades another country. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Exxon-Mobil barely exist." In fact a good deal of Remnick's piece addresses this gaping lapse.

Animal Rites

Shechita (ritual slaughter) has long been a favorite target of animal rights activists and anti-Semites. A shechita ban was one of Hitler's first measures against the Jews; today the practice is verboten in several European states. I'm not sure if Kapparos (the pre-Yom Kippur custom of symbolically transferring one's sins to a chicken which is then slaughtered as atonement) has faced quite as much opposition historically--maybe it has simply had a lower profile--but just last week the New York Post ran a piece about PETA's campaign against the "'Fowl' Ritual."

So will the defenders of animal rights be heard to complain about the sacrifice of two goats by airline officials in Nepal in order to fix a plane? The state-run Nepal Airlines had persistent problems with one of its planes. Thinking that perhaps the solution lay in the spiritual realm, airline officials offered up two goats to the Hindu sky god, Akash Bhairab, in front of the aircraft. And the plane was fixed. The media had a heyday with this one, yet the tone was somewhere between bemusement and amusement; one website coined a slogan for the airline, "We'll Sacrifice Anything But Your Safety."

I didn't see any organized outrage, even as news reports made clear that animal sacrifice is often used by Nepalese to appease their Hindu deities. As long as the animals are slaughtered humanely, I don't personally have any problem with the practice. I think it would be hypocritical for any Orthodox Jew to feel otherwise. But it's telling how selective the bleeding hearts are in choosing what to shout about.

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"On this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over our nation, and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come. As we have been assured, neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, can separate us from God’s love. May He bless the souls of the departed, may He comfort our own, and may He always guide our country. God bless America." - as Rosh Hashana and September 11th draw closer, Rabbi Naphtali Hoff reminds us of the importance of acknowledging the Almighty.

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"When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, it resulted in hundreds of deaths, billions of dollars in damage, and the total shutdown of a major port city and cultural center. As we marked the second anniversary of Katrina, we affirmed what it did not destroy. It did not wash away the Jewish community of New Orleans or extinguish its spirit. It has actually strengthened our survival instinct. And as we remember Katrina’s devastating effects, our community here in New Orleans continues to reaffirm its commitment to rebuild." - Rabbi Uri Topolosky and the hope of a Jewish community.

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"Early Friday morning, September 1, 1939, Apt was awoken to the shrill noise of a siren. The primitive, pump-action siren could only be operated by a town council official, and it was effective in rousing the town folk into the market square to learn that Germany had invaded Poland.
Although everyone was very perturbed by the news, there was a measure of consolation from the fact that it would be months, they calculated, before the war reached Apt. Then the second siren sounded." - Rabbi Hanoch Teller and our continuing journey through the shtetl of Apt.

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And memories of Tehila, Sephardic Traditions, and Twenty years of Progress.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 718-992-1600 ext. 344) you'll find Hanging by a Thread, Low Scores in Golf, and Rosh Hashana Greetings.

Separating Rudy From 9/11

In a virtuoso display of the pettiness that has come to define the New York Times editorial page under Andrew Rosenthal, the Sour Gray Lady sniped last weekend against the active participation of Rudy Giuliani in the city’s memorial event marking the sixth anniversary of 9/11.

The reason for the Times’s snit is that Giuliani is running for president, and by actively participating in the event – Mayor Bloomberg asked him to read aloud a passage – rather than standing quietly on the sidelines with other invited politicians, he’ll be given an unfair “opportunity for politicking.”

The Times complained -- in language so breathtakingly insulting it bordered on vulgarity -- that “after turning the 9/11 attacks into a lucrative personal business, [Giuliani] is now elbowing his way to the top of the Republican field by making much of his response to the destruction in his city six years ago. The use of this terrible day as a political slogan should be taboo for any candidate who wants to show respect for the way that tragedy affected not only New Yorkers but all Americans.”

Of course, the idea that Giuliani’s post-mayoral financial success, and his standing as frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, is due solely, or even primarily, to 9/11 is nothing short of ludicrous.

Imagine for a moment that David Dinkins had been mayor at the time of the attack and that by some miracle had provided Giuliani-style leadership to a city shaken to its very core. Would that alone have given him a serious shot at the presidency? To ask the question is to answer it.

It was Giuliani’s record as mayor (a record even the Times had to grudgingly acknowledge when it endorsed him for reelection in 1997) – his reputation as a man who had, against all expectations, made New York City livable after decades of crime and grime – that made him a figure of national repute. His performance in the wake of 9/11 simply served as an unforgettably powerful exclamation point to eight sometimes contentious but nonetheless extraordinary years.

It is unthinkable that the man who led New York through the worst period in the city’s history should be shunted to the sidelines on an occasion marking those dark days because the Times (and this is the paper’s real concern) wants a Democrat elected president in 2008. Giuliani’s reassuring resolve on 9/11 and the weeks that followed will forever be linked to the attack itself.

But don’t take our word for it. New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman wrote on September 16, 2001: “In this crisis, Mr. Giuliani was majestic. He rallied New Yorkers and calmed them, inspired them and consoled them…. This mayor’s superb performance gave him one more claim to history, besides his helping bring rampant crime down to manageable levels.”

Another Times columnist, the intractably liberal Bob Herbert, wrote on September 20 of that year: “Traumatized by the trade center attack, New Yorkers are grateful to Mr. Giuliani for leadership that has been not only steadfast but inspirational.” And Herbert approvingly quoted David Letterman, who upon his return to the airwaves the week after 9/11 told viewers, “Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage.”

The Times editorial board shared those effusive sentiments, as was made clear in a September 14, 2001 editorial describing Giuliani as “the leader New York City needed in its worst moment.”

The editorial continued:

"With little rhetoric and less poetry, he consoled a stunned populace trying to make sense through the smoke and beyond the jagged skyline…. A few scenes stand out. When the disaster hit, the mayor, who always identifies with the police and firefighters, acted like one of them and headed straight for the explosion. When the first of the World Trade Center towers collapsed, he was at a temporary command bunker less than two blocks away. He and his aides had to scramble out of the building and through the storm of dust and debris to safety. Early television interviews showed Mr. Giuliani, like many other surviving New Yorkers, with the silt graying his hair and dusting his shoulders. Even a day later, as he roamed through Manhattan, his soot-covered shoes offered a reminder that he had been running the city at street level….

"In the days ahead, the city will have different needs as New Yorkers suffer through the various stages of individual and communal grief…. Through these aftershocks, we hope Mr. Giuliani can continue to guide us as expertly as he has since Tuesday morning. Until then, he deserves our gratitude for being there to start the city’s revival."

Israel's Unholy Image

Thumbing through this month's issue of Conde Nast Traveler, I stopped upon a two-page spread advertising Israel. The ad features a lithe female in a tube top stretching her body in a dancer’s pose on the beach in Tel Aviv, sleek hotels and condos in the background. “You’ll love Israel from the first ‘Shalom,’” the text proclaims.

The ad is part of a new campaign by the Israel Tourism Ministry to attract visitors to the country by showcasing its people; other versions feature a cowboy on the Golan Heights, a chef in Jerusalem, and an archaeologist atop Masada. So Israel stands for culture, history, adventure, technology. But Judaism? None of the prototypes showcases Israel as the Jewish State or the Holy Land.

If that weren’t troubling enough, the Israeli government recently co-sponsored an event with the men’s magazine Maxim—an unabashedly sex-obsessed publication—to celebrate Maxim’s feature on “Women of the Israeli Defense Forces.” The invitation to this event featured Miss Israel 2004 in a spread that would look right at home in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. The ad aroused the ire of some female members of Knesset, with Colette Avital calling it “pornographic.”

I’m glad that Israel is putting funds into promoting itself—it gets far too little help in that department from the international media. But it’s a shame that the government is trying so hard to present Israel as just another exciting destination, a hedonist paradise no different from Monte Carlo or Puerto Vallarta. What kind of tourists is Israel seeking to attract? What kind of image is it seeking to present? And at what cost to its Jewish identity?

Walt and Mearsheimer Redux

A book version of Walt and Mearsheimer's “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux tomorrow. One of their main claims, if you'll recall, is that any attempt to be critical of Israel in this country is met by fierce and aggressive opposition, as well as anti-Semitic labelling, and effectively halted. So, it was interesting to read this article in The New York Times a few weeks back.

Continuing with the theme of "we don't get a voice," the authors, quoted in the Times article, were disturbed that so many venues--particularly Jewish ones--would not let them speak about the topic. From some of her paragraphs, Patricia Cohen, who wrote the Times article, seemed to be a bit disturbed herself.

But when you read on (and read carefully, because Cohen--don't be surprised here--doesn't say such negative things about the protagonists explicitly) you find out that several of the venues wanted to have them speak, and appear with someone from the opposing viewpoint. Now a wonderful, free debate should have been exactly what the two great defenders of open-dialogue would love, right?

Well, it seems not. It appears that the authors declined, and prefer not to have anyone test the validity and truthfulness of their writing.

Hmm, I guess open-dialogue has its limits.