Yidnews

Obama in Israel video

2008-07-23T16:49:00.001-07:00

Obama Visit Sderot

2008-07-23T16:12:00.001-07:00

Obama at Yad VaShem

2008-07-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

Conservative students split on gay ordination anniversary

2008-03-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

In an incident that underlines the tension between the US and Israeli branches of the Conservative Movement over ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis, the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem clashed this week with a group of visiting American rabbinic students.

Schechter's administration refused to allow a group of about 35 students to mark on Wednesday the one-year anniversary of the groundbreaking decision by the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement's flagship rabbinic school in New York, to accept gay and lesbian rabbinical and cantorial students.

According to a press release put out by Schechter, Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon, dean of the Schechter Seminary, met with the rabbinical students last week and requested that the event include an expression of the more conservative, equally authoritative, halachic opinion adopted by the Law Committee of the Conservative Movement that maintained the status quo by prohibiting the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis.

This was the opinion adopted by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary a year ago....

For the remainder of the article, click here.

2007-05-15T01:44:00.001-07:00

Michael Chabon on NPR (reading from Yiddish Policemen's Union + interview --audio):

Letter From Arnold Eisen on JTS ordaining Gays and Lesbians

2007-03-27T10:53:00.001-07:00

To the JTS Community:

I write to announce that, effective immediately, The Jewish Theological Seminary will accept qualified gay and lesbian students to our rabbinical and cantorial schools.

This matter has aroused thoughtful introspection about the nature and future of both JTS and the Conservative Movement to a degree not seen in our community since the decision to admit women to The Rabbinical School nearly twenty-five years ago. Convictions and feelings are strong on both sides. Some will cheer this decision as justice long overdue. Others will condemn it as a departure from Jewish law and age-old Jewish custom. One thing is abundantly clear: after years of discussion and debate, heartfelt and thoughtful division on the matter is evident among JTS faculty, students, and administration. The same is true of professionals and lay leaders of the Conservative Movement. For many of us, the issue runs deep inside ourselves.

Those of us who undertook the ordination discussion at JTS acted not as poskim, or legal adjudicators — that responsibility fell to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly (CJLS) — but as educators charged with setting standards for our unique academic institution. From the outset, as we set about considering what JTS should do on this matter, three steps seemed necessary.

First, our decision would be preceded by a deliberate and careful process in which the views of all constituencies would be respectfully heard and patiently considered. The positions of both sides would be thought through and the likely consequences weighed. This process is now complete. I will review its elements below.

Second, the announcement of JTS’s decision would lay out our thinking on the matter in detail commensurate with the gravity and complexity of the decision.

Third, the announcement would conclude one process while beginning another. We resolved to take action that would help bring our movement closer together. To that end, we have launched — and in coming months will help to lead — a full-scale process of learning and discussion among all constituencies of Conservative Judaism aimed at a reclarification of our principles and a recommitment to our practices. Its specific focus will be mitzvah: our sense of being commanded and how we exercise that responsibility. The first steps taken in this new process are outlined below.

For me personally, these questions about core principles and practices are at the heart of the discussion in which we have been engaged this past year. The immediate issue was the ordination of gay and lesbian students as rabbis and cantors for the Conservative Movement. But the larger issue has been how we can remain true to our tradition in general and to halakhah in particular while staying fully responsive to and immersed in our society and culture. How shall we learn Torah, live Torah, teach Torah in this time and place? Without these imperatives, the decision before us would have been far easier for many of those involved. That is certainly true for me.

The decision, then, has for many of us been far from plain or simple. I say this despite my strong conviction that the decision I am announcing here is the right one. Let me now explain why I believe it to be so.

The Process

As I announced the day I was named Chancellor-elect of JTS nearly a year ago, the first responsibility for considering ordination of gay and lesbian students at JTS lay with the CJLS. If the CJLS ruled in a way that permitted this step, the JTS faculty would take up the matter. I pledged to take faculty opinion strongly into account if the time came for the JTS administration to make a decision.

The Conservative Movement has from the outset defined itself as bound by halakhah. This aspect of our tradition is precious to me, and it has always been determinative for JTS. It is one of the major ways the Conservative Movement navigates the complex path of change inside inherited tradition. Part of being a halakhic movement is debate over what that means: how halakhah relates to aggadah; how the authority of the rabbis relates to that of the communities they lead and serve; how change can be both adequate and authentic. But even as debate on these and other issues has proceeded, Conservative rabbis acting through the CJLS have for more than half a century considered how best to interpret and apply halakhah in particular circumstances. Their rulings have been all the more important, and more contentious, when circumstances were new and challenging. The decision concerning ordination of women was a case in point. So, too, is the question of gay and lesbian ordination. The CJLS first took up the question about fifteen years ago, debated it again over the past several years, and voted on it at its meeting this past December.

The Law Committee issued a split decision on December 6, 2006, a result in keeping with its commitment to halakhic pluralism. The teshuvah by Rabbis Dorff, Nevins, and Reisner permitting ordination of gays and lesbians received the same number of votes as the one by Rabbi Roth that prohibited it. This paved the way for the discussion at JTS to go forward, and the matter passed to the hands of the faculty.

Even before the December CJLS vote, JTS had initiated forums at which students could make their opinions known to one another as well as to the faculty and administration. These student forums continued after the Law Committee’s vote. JTS administration and faculty explained to students what the CJLS had ruled and discussed with them what possibilities lay ahead for the future of the institution.

Administrative committees also began meeting before December 6. These committees convened with increasing frequency in the weeks following the CJLS decision. Their discussions are ongoing.

The Board of Trustees, at its meeting on December 7, discussed at length the process and its potential outcomes. The members of the board also aired questions and shared concerns and advice about the question at previous and subsequent meetings.

Immediately following the Law Committee decision, JTS, along with the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, commissioned an international survey of the opinions held by Conservative rabbis, cantors, educators, and lay leaders regarding the ordination question. We also polled the student groups most affected by the decision: those at JTS. Sociologist Steven M. Cohen undertook construction and analysis of the survey for us pro bono. We were unable due to constraints of time and budget to include rank-and-file members of Conservative congregations. Nor did we reach every single movement leader. However, many who were not polled directly did fill out and submit the survey that was posted on the JTS website. I have personally heard from hundreds of Conservative Jews on the matter during my travels around the country this year and through correspondence, email, and the JTS website.

The survey findings showed consistent majorities of roughly two-thirds or more in favor of ordination. Rabbis and cantors endorsed the move by almost exactly that majority. Conservative educators, executive directors, and other professionals were in favor 76% to 16% (with others undecided). Lay leaders voted for it 69% to 22%. JTS rabbinical students did so by a much slimmer majority (58% to 32%), as did the cantorial students (58% to 21%). Clergy in Israel were split down the middle. Respondents in Canada were overwhelmingly against ordination.

We undertook this survey as one factor among many informing our decision, not in order to have it dictate policy. The choice to ordain — or not to ordain— gay and lesbian Jews as rabbis and cantors at JTS will, as I have noted, have immediate and significant consequences for the Conservative Movement. We wanted to learn how the leadership of the movement, lay and professional, felt about the matter. For the same reason, I spoke at great length in January with the heads of the other Conservative/Masorti seminaries. I reported on these conversations, as well as on the Cohen survey, to both the faculty and the Board of Trustees.

The Faculty Executive Committee, at my request, accepted the task of designing a process by which members of the Faculty Assembly could inform themselves and give their opinions on the matter. Each person weighed the factors involved — including halakhah — as he or she saw fit. The faculty’s input would contribute significantly in JTS’s decision, I told them, but their opinions would not be binding. I myself took no position in the faculty debate. The Executive Committee, working with these guidelines, set up a series of faculty meetings. JTS administration assisted the process by arranging for two seminars led by distinguished guest lecturers on (1) recent developments in psychiatry and in its attitude toward homosexuality, and (2) philosophy of Jewish law. Several faculty meetings were devoted entirely to discussing and debating the matter. The voting members of the Faculty Assembly filled out private ballots and gave them to the Faculty Executive Committee, which then passed them on to me. The faculty asked, since their vote was not binding, that I report their response but keep exact numbers confidential. I subsequently reported the result of this ballot to the Faculty Assembly and to the Board of Trustees.

An overwhelming majority of those eligible to participate did so. A substantial majority of these favored the admission of gay and lesbian students to the rabbinical and cantorial schools. Quite a few, in keeping with my request, included detailed accounts of their reasoning. I will draw on these letters below.

At no stage did we at JTS take up the question of gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies or marriages. That matter is entirely outside our purview; decision on it rests with the Law Committee and with individual rabbis and congregations. Our concern was ordination alone.

The final stage in the process of reaching our decision rested with the JTS administration. We wrapped up our discussions earlier this month. Ultimate responsibility for the decision rested with me. I turn now to the reasoning behind it.

The Decision

Many participants in this process — whether rabbis on the Law Committee, faculty and students at JTS, members of the Board of Trustees, or leaders of the Conservative Movement — have experienced and explained it as a tug of war between two goods: fidelity to Jewish law and tradition and our sense of conscience as contemporary American Jews. How does one remain true to the dictates of tradition and yet adapt that tradition in ways compatible with changing realities and convictions? Both imperatives compel us. Both are precious to us. Several faculty members explained in their letters to me that they felt this tug in opposite directions acutely. We in the JTS administration have certainly felt this way. The search for balance is what has made the decision difficult. It is also what has made the discussion rich and, by and large, respectful.

It has not been a matter of how “we” the community of Conservative Jews should treat “them” — gays and lesbians. The latter are highly valued and respected members of our Conservative communities. Those opposed to the change, as much as those in favor of it, have taken pains to assert that this is the case.

That is why, even while denying gays and lesbians the right to ordination and commitment ceremonies in 1992 on the basis of its reading of Jewish law, the CJLS affirmed — likewise on the basis of Jewish law — that “gays and lesbians are welcome in our congregations, youth groups, camps, and schools.”

Those opposing ordination have done so, almost without exception, for one reason only: they believe that Jewish law forbids it. Modifying established law on this score, they maintain, would weaken or destroy the halakhic character of Conservative Judaism. Some are convinced, moreover, that a modification of this sort would open the way for other, even more radical changes. But still others are equally convinced of the opposite: that failure to make this change would declare the incompatibility of Jewish law and tradition with Jewish life today, discourage young people from joining the movement, and therefore negatively impact Conservative Judaism. As Conservative Jews, we all sought the middle ground between the demands of tradition and the demands of life that has long distinguished our movement.

We at JTS, as I said earlier, were not called upon to make a legal decision. Our task was to weigh all relevant factors and decide what the right thing was for JTS and for the movement we serve. I, like most of my colleagues, was uncomfortable with the notion of choosing between two teshuvot that had been adopted as legitimate by the Law Committee using time-tested procedures. To reject the propriety of the CJLS process in this matter would call into question, after the fact, the mechanism by which law has been decided in the movement — and has governed JTS policy — for decades. Nevertheless, halakhah had to be a major factor in our thinking. We are an institution committed to the teaching and practice of Torah. In order to decide in favor of ordination, the rabbinic decision allowing for it had to be credible or persuasive in our eyes. Let me explain my own thinking on these matters.

I begin by directly confronting the two major obstacles standing in the way of a credible stance allowing for gay and lesbian ordination. The first is Leviticus chapter 18, verse 22. “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is abomination (to’eva).” Is the text not crystal clear? Is it not God’s word? Why, then, were learned rabbis (and the rest of us) even debating the acceptability of homosexuality? The question has been posed to me many times. It cannot be avoided by any Jew who takes the Torah seriously. No matter how complicated our relationship to the Torah, how much we move away from obedience to its rules, or whatever our views on the divine or human nature of its authorship — one cannot cavalierly dismiss Leviticus and then claim faithfulness to the larger tradition of Torah of which the Five Books of Moses are the core. Integrity and authenticity require more than this.

Moreover, if one claims to be a halakhic Jew, the Oral Torah (as we call Jewish law and teaching over the centuries) also weighs in with serious objection to ordaining gays and lesbians. There is precious little legal precedent that can be invoked in favor of such ordination in the entire 2,000-year history of the Jewish rabbinic tradition. One finds instead either reaffirmation of previous opinion or utter silence on the matter — though there are legal opinions urging welcome of and compassion toward homosexuals. To Conservative Jews, the weight of Rabbinic opinion is no less decisive than the words of the Torah, and it is arguably more so. As Solomon Schechter explained a century ago, “It is not the mere revealed Bible that is of first importance to the Jew, but the Bible as it repeats itself in history, in other words, as it is interpreted by tradition.” That is why the fact of Leviticus 18:22 in and of itself did not free the CJLS or any other Conservative Jew from the need to debate the matter of gay and lesbian ordination.

Our sages found ways two millennia ago to limit the applicability of biblical statutes, one famous example being Deuteronomy’s injunction to put the rebellious son to death. The Rabbis effectively rendered that injunction unenforceable. They have defined and limited the applicability of numerous other biblical ordinances, including some set forth in Leviticus. I am among the faculty members (including many rabbis and experts in Talmud) who are persuaded by the argument that established procedures of halakhah allow for and mandate revision of the legal limitations placed upon homosexual activity; or perhaps one should say that these procedures allow for and mandate expansion of the welcome and acceptance accorded homosexuals under previous Law Committee rulings.

We believe that the law can be modified, and therefore should be modified, in accord with our society’s changed knowledge about and moral attitudes toward homosexuality, knowledge and attitudes far different than those of our ancestors that guided their reading of law and tradition. Core Jewish teachings such as the imperative to treat every human being with full respect as a creature in God's image urge us strongly in this direction. We do not alter established belief and behavior casually. But we are convinced that change in this case is permitted and required, precisely in order to preserve the tradition charged with guiding us in greatly altered circumstances.

For we are Conservative Jews. The question facing us now, as always, is what the tradition as a whole commands us to do. Members of our community disagree about the correct answer to that question and about the proper method of answering it but not, I think, about the nature or urgency of the question itself. As Conservative Jews, we know that halakhah has a history. The fact of its development and change over time, partly in response to altered circumstances, ways of thinking, and moral convictions, was proclaimed by Zacharias Frankel at the very outset of the movement. It is a given in scholarship on Jewish law as well. The CJLS debate and the discussion in its wake follow from these principles of Conservative Judaism.

The debate over ordination of gay and lesbian students has served to highlight the need for serious discussion and resolution of these key issues of principle concerning what halakhah means for Conservative Jews. Such disagreements are particularly vexing to Conservative Jewish laypeople frustrated at the movement’s inability to decide this and other matters quickly and unequivocally. Others, myself included, while no less impatient at times, actually take pride in the fact that our movement struggles over issues such as these. We do so as the heirs to Frankel’s founding declaration of our purpose: “the reconciliation of belief and life, the assurance of progress within our faith, and the refining and regeneration of Judaism from and through itself.” Both sides of the current debate have acted in accord with Frankel’s call for “maintaining the integrity of Judaism simultaneously with progress.” This remains, as he wrote in 1844, “the essential problem of the present.” We cannot, any more than he could, “deny the difficulty of a satisfactory solution.” But we must find a solution.

I believe, with the great majority of my colleagues on the JTS faculty, that the Law Committee, by voting in equal numbers for the two teshuvot, provided halakhic authorization for the ordination of openly gay and lesbian rabbinical and cantorial students. That permission having been given, I believe that the nature of our communities in contemporary America, and the moral convictions we hold, argue strongly for accepting gay and lesbian students for ordination. So does the fundamental mission of JTS. I have in my head, as I make this decision, the faces of numerous gay and lesbian students, colleagues and friends who I know would make fine rabbis and cantors. Their moral character is unimpeachable, their leadership ability remarkable. I am confident that they would serve as excellent role models and guides for their communities. We have the responsibility to train qualified gay and lesbian rabbis and cantors as best we can so they can serve the Conservative Movement.

Moreover, the decision to ordain gay and lesbian clergy at JTS is in keeping with the longstanding commitment of the Jewish tradition to pluralism. That commitment has been all the more central to Conservative Judaism. Pluralism means we recognize more than one way to be a good Conservative Jew — more than one way of walking authentically in the path of our tradition and of carrying that tradition forward. It means, too, that we respect those who disagree with us and understand that, in the context of all that unites us, diversity makes us stronger.

I take heart from the fact that, despite continuing disagreement over other contentious issues in some quarters, JTS and the Conservative Movement are much stronger because of changes that have occurred over the years. Neither the institution nor the movement has splintered, despite predictions to the contrary. I do not believe that we will splinter now, particularly if we take the proactive steps that I will outline below. Nor do I fear the “slippery slope,” used by some as an argument against the change we are adopting. Every choice brings unintended consequences in its wake. We never have control over what those who come after us will do with the legacy we have left them. We do all we can to set course in the proper direction. I trust my successors to act responsibly with the legacy I pass on to them, just as we have carefully weighed the relevant precedents, reasons, and implications before taking the step we are announcing here. We owe this precedent to our successors, this bridge to the reality in which they will be called upon, as we are, to build and strengthen communities of Torah. I am confident that, if they are educated in the principles that have long guided this movement and if they experience the special pleasures and obligations that come with membership in it, they too will make decisions in a manner that takes Conservative Judaism forward and helps its communities, and the Jewish people as a whole, to grow.

In sum: The CJLS has authorized the ordination of gay and lesbian Jews as rabbis and cantors. A solid majority of Conservative clergy and lay leaders supports it. The JTS faculty likewise strongly favors it. I am convinced this decision to ordain is right — right not just on the basis of my experience as a North American who came of age in the latter part of the twentieth century, or as a Jew who seeks above all to remain true to the tradition we call Torah, but as an American Jew seeking wholeness and integrity in the combination of these to the fullest possible extent. That, I believe, is what Conservative Judaism is all about.

The Next Steps

Frankel was clear about the difficulty of this path. “Where is the point where the two apparent contraries should meet?” But he advocated that path nonetheless, as did Solomon Schechter two generations later. I am humbled by the long line of leaders and teachers, wiser and more learned than I, who have found the difficulties of charting this path formidable. But I am also encouraged by the fact that Schechter’s resolution of the matter was not Frankel’s, and that Louis Finkelstein’s, too, differed from theirs in accordance with the unprecedented challenges that JTS faced in his day. The eminent historian Chancellor Gerson Cohen urged Conservative rabbis in 1972 to shape the movement in a way that was clearly and authentically Jewish but that would “also reflect our own formulation of Judaism, a formulation that will respond to our situation, our needs as Jews in America.” That need is once again clear and urgent. How shall we undertake to meet it?

The proper way to do so, I believe, is not for JTS to promulgate a set of standards for Conservative belief and behavior. It is, rather, to engage Conservative Jews in discussion of what matters to them and why. Many of us are convinced, on the basis of numerous conversations with clergy and laypeople alike, that many Conservative Jews do feel a keen sense of mitzvah, in all the connotations stored up in that word by the Bible and the sages. They feel that there are deeds they should perform, activities in which they should engage, loyalties they should cherish. They feel responsible for all these, commanded to do them, drawn to the discipline of which they are a part, privileged to perform them. They take on these tasks, in many cases, not only out of obligation but out of love.

It is my hope and belief that getting Conservative Jews to talk about these matters will be a step toward greater commitment and consensus. Our communities will be strengthened by the very act of discussing our “obligations of the heart” honestly and face to face. We will come to realize in doing so how much unites us as Conservative Jews. The sense of what binds us together will grow still more if we can arrive at consensus about the norms of belief and behavior that should guide us. I believe we can.

JTS has already taken on the responsibility for leading this discussion. Working with the Chancellor’s Rabbinic Cabinet and with the RA and the United Synagogue, we have set in motion a process that we hope will eventually include every arm of the movement as well as professional and lay leaders. Our faculty and students will be actively involved. Stage Two of that process — logically and pedagogically dependent on the first — will be reclarification of the place of halakhah in the movement: the nature, authority, and scope of Jewish law in relation to other sources of authority and guidance. We will embark on that stage in the upcoming two years.

Concurrently, we must and will reaffirm the legitimate place in our movement — and at JTS — of all who take part in this debate. Discussion of how and why we feel commanded, and to what, should reinforce the commitment to pluralism on all such points far more effectively than preachments by me or anyone else could ever do. That discussion, face to face and heart to heart, will serve to remind us all how precious it is to be engaged in the ongoing conversation that defines us as members of the JTS community and as Conservative Jews.

Finally, because our ultimate goal at JTS is to serve Torah and the Jewish people, we will establish and maintain regular contact on the issues dividing us with Conservative clergy and lay leaders elsewhere in the world. JTS will intensify contact with the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in California, the Schechter Institute in Israel, and the Seminario Rab�nico Latinoamericano in Argentina and encourage an increased number of joint missions of lay leaders and more exchanges among the faculty and students at these institutions. We will also take special steps to strengthen the relationship between Canadian and American Conservative Jews. All these actions would have been undertaken to some degree by JTS in any case. They form part of our basic mission as an institution. The decision we have just reached renders them urgent. We will respond appropriately in the coming weeks and months.

In closing, I want to thank the many individuals who took the trouble to write to or meet with me, and in particular those who carefully and honestly explained why they were opposed to the move we have now taken. I hope that all will now join me in focusing on the great deal of work ahead of us. As always, I invite your comments, concerns, and assistance.

Thank you.

Arnold Eisen's signature

Arnold M. Eisen
Chancellor-elect

By Reb Rachmiel- AJC Attacks Left

2007-02-27T13:05:00.000-08:00

Last December, the American Jewish Committee issued a 30-odd page pamphlet by Alvin
H. Rosenfeld entitled "'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." Among his
targets are pote Adrienne Rich, Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York
University, and Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner.

I don't agree with the views of all the people cited in the AJCommittee pamphlet
(Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein come to mind). But I find it repulsive that
individuals like Rosenfeld paint the entirely of us who identify as progressive with the broad
brush of "self-hatred," or "Jewish anti-Semitism." I am also fristrated (but hardly surprised)
that, in Rosenfeld's eyes, the only "progressive" views worth discussing are those relating to
Israel. The rest of the progressive agenda is, it would seem, irrelevent.

So it was a great relief to find this OpEd piece, written by Rob Eshman, editor-in-chief of
the Jewish Journal (Los Angeles). It is entitled "Shutting Jewish Mouths." There is a link to
it below.

Click here for the OpEd piece...

Any thoughts?

Mossad in Iraq

2007-02-13T17:37:00.000-08:00

Conservative Movement Permits Gay Rabbis and Gay Unions (though not 100%)

2006-12-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

Today the CJLS, committee on Jewish laws and standards of Conservative Judaism voted to pass three teshuvot (legal briefs) regarding homosexuality. One maintains the prohibition against gay rabbis. Another, billed as a compromise, permits gay ordination while continuing to ban male sodomy. The third upholds the ban on gay sexual relationships in Jewish law and mentions the option for gays to undergo therapy aimed at changing their sexual orientation. The compromise teshuvah, written by Rabbi Elliott Dorff permits homosexual relationships but retains the ban on gay male sex. This will open the door to Gay and Lesbian Conservative Jews to become rabbis. This will also open the door to the affirmation of same sex unions by conservative rabbis.

For more information click here.

For the Washington Post's treatment of the issue, click here.

For Reuters' story click here...

For NY Times' story click here...
Below is the memorandum that went out regarding the decision:

MEMORANDUM

Date: December 6, 2006

To: USCJ Board of Directors

Congregational Presidents

Congregational Rabbis

Congregational Cantors

Congregational executive directors

From: Dr. Raymond B. Goldstein, International President

Rabbi Jerome M. Epstein, Executive Vice President

RE: Committee on Jewish Law and Standards: Ordination of gays and lesbians and same-sex commitment ceremonies

Within the past few hours, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards completed its deliberation on five responsa that considered whether Jewish law may allow the ordination of gay men and lesbians and same-sex commitment ceremonies. The debate and the deliberation, which took place over many sessions, was serious, passionate, and at times heated. The issue has been treated with great sensitivity by everyone involved.

Although the full texts of the responsa will be made available in due course, we want to inform you as soon as possible that the committee has endorsed papers both reaffirming the status quo and affirming change. The status quo, as you know, has been that the ordination of openly gay men and lesbians was not allowed, and rabbis who performed same-sex commitment ceremonies did so without the Law Committee’s sanction. The result of the committee’s vote means that rabbis, synagogues, and other Conservative institutions may continue not to permit commitment ceremonies and not to hire openly gay or lesbian rabbis and cantors. On the other hand, rabbis, synagogues, and institutions can perform or host those ceremonies and are free to hire openly gay rabbis and cantors. The halakha of the Conservative movement, as voted by the Law Committee, now allows both positions. Both are considered valid.

Although we have the greatest respect for the Law Committee’s decisions, we do not agree with the recommendations of the third paper it accepted, which said that gay men and lesbians are best advised to find “restorative therapy” to change their sexual orientation.

One of the basic tenets of the Conservative movement is that each rabbi who is the spiritual leader of a congregation is the mara d’atra, or final decisor of Jewish law, in that congregation. Therefore, the decisions of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, while important, are advisory. Reached after serious scholarship, thought, and debate, the decisions provide guidance and support to congregational rabbis, who must make their own decisions.

Another basic truth of our movement is its diversity. We draw strength from the differences in practice and commitment that mark Conservative congregations, even as we celebrate our common bonds and shared values. Today’s decision is another example of the wide range of Conservative Judaism. If we work together, we can show that strength in action.

No matter which path a rabbi and congregation may take, which halakha it chooses to follow, all of our rabbis and congregations share a concern for the dignity of all human beings. No matter what a rabbi and congregation chooses to do about hiring gay and lesbian rabbis or commitment ceremonies, all must show respect and sensitivity to all Jews, no matter what their sexual orientation may be. All Jews must be welcome in all our congregations.

Given the Law Committee’s decision today, Rabbi Epstein, who is United Synagogue’s mara d’atra, has told United Synagogue’s leadership that he sees no reason why we should not revise our hiring policies. Based on this conclusion, we may consider applicants for United Synagogue jobs no matter what their sexual orientation. United Synagogue’s leadership will discuss the issue at its next scheduled meeting.

We know that some congregations will face tensions and challenges as they grapple with this issue in the weeks, months, and years ahead. As with the larger Conservative movement, each congregation must find ways to bridge its differences and strengthen the bonds that unite it. It is part of our mission to help each congregation cope with the challenges. That is why over the past few months we sponsored several sessions throughout the country where we explained both the halakhic process and the issues. A video of one of the sessions is on our website – go to www.uscj.org and click on the links at the item on the top left of the bulletin board. Study guides are available on the website as well.

As we face the implications and possibilities inherent in the Law Committee’s decision, we continue our commitment to help each congregation. We offer personal consultation and guidance to each of our member congregations. Rabbi Epstein has convened a meeting of senior staff for tomorrow. They will meet an expert in consultancy and organizational change to begin planning the strategy to help each congregation in concrete ways. On January 2 and 3, the entire United Synagogue staff will meet for intensive training. We are committed to stand by your side as each congregation works through the process in its own time, using its own agenda.

In this week’s Torah portion, we are told that Jacob wrestled with God. As a result of that encounter, Jacob became Israel and evolved into a stronger human being. We share with your our heartfelt prayer that as a result of our wrestling with the issues we confront, we, too, will become stronger in our commitment to Jewish living and to our fellow Jews.

Reconstructionist Movement to Respond to Vote of Conservative Movement on Homosexuality

2006-12-05T21:22:00.000-08:00

MEDIA ADVISORY

Contact: Gerald S. Cohen

Director of Public Affairs
215.576.0800 ext. 133

Reconstructionist Movement to Respond to Vote of Conservative Movement on Homosexuality

Wyncote, PA, Dec. 5 -- Leaders of the Reconstructionist branch of Judaism will issue a statement immediately following the expected vote this week by the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards on its approach to homosexuality. The CJLS is positioned to vote Wednesday.

Spokespersons for the Reconstructionist movement also will be available for a conference call Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. (see call-in information below) with interested representatives of the media. If results of a vote are known at that time, the spokespersons will discuss the vote and Reconstructionist stances on these issues. Otherwise, the spokespersons will offer explanations of Reconstructionist positions on rabbinical ordination of gay men and lesbians, civil unions and other related topics.

The Reconstructionist movement has long been a leading voice on these issues, with all three branches of the movement united in endorsing the rights of gay men and lesbians. In 1984, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College became the first rabbinical seminary to accept openly gay and lesbian students and was the first to endorse the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis. In 1985, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, which represents about 110 Reconstructionist congregations, adopted a resolution welcoming congregations that primarily serve gay and lesbian Jews. In 1990, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, the professional association for Reconstructionist rabbis, recommended that the movement establish a nondiscrimination policy in rabbinic placement. In 1992, the movement issued a position paper on homosexuality and Judaism, which reviewed the traditional arguments against acceptance of gay and lesbian Jews and affirmed full equality in light on new understandings. And in 2004, all branches of the movement endorsed civil marriage for same-sex couples.

The Reconstructionist movement has consistently taken progressive positions in favor of sexual egalitarianism. In 1922, the intellectual founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, presided over his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah, the first in Jewish history. When the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College was founded in 1968, it was the first rabbinical seminary to open its doors with a policy, from the very beginning, of accepting women.

The following will be available for comment on the conference call:

· Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (215.576.0800 ext. 129)

· Rabbi Richard Hirsh, executive director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (215.576.0800 ext. 302)

· Carl Sheingold, Ph.D., executive vice president of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (215.782.8500 ext. 21)

RRC is the rabbinical training institution of Reconstructionist Judaism. Founded in 1968, RRC is a fully accredited academic institution that offers a five- to six-year curriculum leading to a master’s degree in Hebrew letters and the title of rabbi. The rabbinical school prepares men and women for leadership and service in synagogues, universities, campus Hillel programs, social service agencies, homes for the elderly and chaplaincy.

The JRF is the congregational arm of the Reconstructionist movement serving 70,000 American Jews affiliated with Reconstructionist synagogues.

The RRA, established in 1974, is the professional association of Reconstructionist rabbis. Its membership includes 285 rabbis.

Conference Call information:
Toll Free Dial–In Number: 1-866-866-2244
International Dial-In Number: 1-404-260-1415

When prompted, dial the following access code followed by the # sign:
5624115

The Sad Fate of Iraqi Jewry

2006-10-03T17:02:00.000-07:00

Next Year, Anywhere But in Grim Baghdad
City's Last Rabbi Observes Yom Kippur

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; Page A12

For Full Article, click here.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 -- As the sun set on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar Monday night, the last rabbi in Baghdad sat down for his last Yom Kippur dinner in Iraq: a piece of cake and two glasses of milk.

Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, begins with fasting and ends with a celebratory feast. But there was, Emad Levy confessed, very little to celebrate this year.

Today, barely a dozen members of the 2,600-year-old Jewish community in Baghdad remain to observe Yom Kippur. Most are afraid to gather for holidays, and besides, they figure, how can one rejoice in a place like this?

Emad Levy sat alone in his home on Monday night picking at a dessert-as-dinner, with vicious sectarian killings serving as the background music to the holiday. He had just finished chanting the hopeful lines at the end of the Yom Kippur service, he recalled in a phone interview.

"May we be sealed," he sang plaintively in his bedroom, "for a good year in the book of life."

Levy knows his prayers for peace will not be fulfilled in Iraq. Although the bloodshed plunging this country into a civil war has mainly claimed the lives of Sunni Arabs and Shiite Muslims, no group is more terrified -- or a more vulnerable target -- than the tiny Jewish community.

The capital's only remaining synagogue, a pink and yellow building with no identifying marks, has been boarded up since it was denounced more than three years ago as "the place of the Zionists." Most Jews barely leave their homes at all for fear of being kidnapped or executed. And even Levy will not directly mention Israel on the telephone, just because he never knows who might be eavesdropping.

"It's like I'm living in a prison all the time," said Levy, who is 41. "I have no future here. I must go out to have a life for myself."

Even for the long-suffering Jewish people, exiled to Babylon in what is now central Iraq 26 centuries ago by Nebuchadnezzar, the current conflict here has become unbearable. Levy's family survived the increasing anti-Semitic attacks after the founding of Israel in 1948; the 1969 execution of about a dozen Jews accused of spying for the Jewish state; and incessant spying by Saddam Hussein's regime.

After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, though, Levy's father fled to Israel. Levy planned to leave, too, but remained in Iraq to take care of an ailing Jewish octogenarian with diabetes. Now the sick man is staying with friendly Kurds, and Levy plans to leave as soon as he can sell his house. He won't use a regular broker, who might defraud him or worse, so he waits for a friend to return to the country in the next few months to manage his affairs.

"We must be careful, and then God will bless us," Levy said.

In the meantime, he prays....

Video of Interview with Emanuel Goldsmith

2006-08-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

Maliki is Anti-Israel.....no suprise

2006-07-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

Senator says Iraqi PM won't call Hezbollah terrorists
Clipped from
RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday July 26, 2006

(Updated to include DNC Chairman Howard Dean's comments on Iraqi PM)

United States Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said today that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki refused to answer his questions about whether or not Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, according to a transcript acquired by RAW STORY.

"This morning I asked him directly, 'Do you believe that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization?'" Durbin told reporters after Maliki's address to Congress. "He did not respond. He would not respond to that question."

Durbin claims that the Iraqi foreign minister told him later that, "at a meeting of Arab nations they had joined with others in being critical of what Hezbollah has done."

"I think," Durbin concluded, "that is the extent of the statements that will be made by the Iraqi delegation."

Durbin went on to stress that he's more concerned about the state of Iraq, where casualties continue to be higher than those in Lebanon:

"During the last 14 or 15 days, we have watched the news 24/7 about the violence in Lebanon and Israel. During that period of time, about 30 civilians a day are being killed, which is a terribly high number. During that same period of time, approximately 100 civilians a day are being killed in Iraq. That is not covered as closely... In that period of time that I just referred to, the Israelis lost 22 soldiers and have broke the hearts of the families and people of that great nation. In that same period, the American people lost 24 soldiers in Iraq."

At a business leader gathering on Wednesday in Florida, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called al-Maliki an "anti-Semite," according to the Associated Press.

"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," said Dean.

"We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah," Dean added.

... click here for more....

Iraqi Parliament Speaker Accuses 'Jews'

2006-07-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

Jul 13, 4:34 PM (ET)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The speaker of parliament Thursday accused "Jews" of financing acts of violence in Iraq in order to discredit Islamists who control the parliament and government so they can install their "agents" in power.

Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani hinted that the Americans and Israelis did not want to see officials of Sunni and Shiite parties running Iraq because "this is not their agenda."

"They will say that we brought you in a democratic way to the government but you are sectarian people. One of you is killing the other and you don't deserve to become leaders because you are war lords," al-Mashhadani told reporters after a parliament meeting.

Al-Mashhadani is a member of the Sunni Muslim Iraqi Accordance Front while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a member of the Shiite Dawa party.

"Some people say, 'We saw you beheading, kidnappings and killing. In the end we even started kidnapping women who are our honor,'" al-Mashhadani said. "These acts are not the work of Iraqis. I am sure that he who does this is a Jew and the son of a Jew."

"I can tell you about these Jewish, Israelis and Zionists who are using Iraqi money and oil to frustrate the Islamic movement in Iraq and come with the agent and cheap project."

"No one deserves to rule Iraq other than Islamists," he said.

By "agents," he appeared to be referring to secular politicians who do not identify themselves with religious or ethnic communities.

Hamas performs about-turn on Israeli state

2006-06-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

Hamas performs about-turn on Israeli state

Hamas has made a major political climbdown by agreeing to sections of a document that recognise Israel's right to exist and a negotiated two-state solution, according to Palestinian leaders.

In a bitter struggle for power, Hamas is bowing to an ultimatum from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to endorse the document drawn up by Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails, or face a national referendum on the issue that could see the Islamist group stripped of power if it loses.

But final agreement on the paper, designed to end international sanctions against the Hamas government that have crippled the Palestinian economy, has been slowed by wrangling over a national unity administration and the question of who speaks for the Palestinians.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee and a lead negotiator on the prisoners' document, said Hamas had agreed to sections which call for a negotiated and final agreement with Israel to establish a Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem.

"Hamas is prepared to accept those parts of the document because they think it is a way to get rid of a lot of its problems with the international community. That's why it will accept all the document eventually," he said.

Hamas, facing a deep internal split over recognition of the Jewish state, declined to discuss the negotiations in detail. If it formally approves the entire document, it will represent a significant shift from its founding goal of replacing Israel with an Islamic state and its more recent position of agreeing a long-term ceasefire, over a generation or more, if a Palestinian state is formed on the occupied territories but without formally recognising the Jewish state....

Click here for full article...

An Explanation for All the Violence?

2006-06-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the experiments of Stanley Milgram explain incidents such as Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Haditha...

Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was a psychologist at Yale University, Harvard University and the City University of New York. While at Yale, he conducted the small-world experiment (the source of the six degrees of separation concept) and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority.

Although considered one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century, he never took a psychology course as an undergraduate at Queens College, New York, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in political science in 1954. He applied to a Ph.D. program in social psychology at Harvard University and was initially rejected due to lack of psychology background. He was accepted in 1954 after taking six courses in psychology, and graduated with the Ph.D. in 1960. Milgram had a number of significant influences. Among his influences at Harvard were psychologists Solomon Asch and Gordon Allport (Milgram, 1977).

In 1984, Milgram died of a heart attack at the age of 51 in the city of his birth, New York.

In 2004, a biography of Milgram was published under the title The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram, by Thomas Blass.
Contents

Obedience to authority

Main article: Milgram experiment

In 1963, Milgram submitted the results of his Milgram experiments in the article "Behavioral study of obedience". In the ensuing controversy that erupted, the APA held up his application for membership due to questions about the ethics of his work. Ten years later, in 1974, Milgram published Obedience to Authority and was awarded the annual social psychology award by the AAAS (mostly for his work over the social aspects of obedience). He used his models to explain the My Lai massacre (including authority training in the military, depersonalizing the "enemy" through race and cultural differences, etc.).

In 1976, CBS presented a movie about obedience experiments: The Tenth Level with William Shatner as Stephen Hunter, a Milgram-like scientist. Milgram himself was a consultant for the film.

A French political thriller, titled I... comme Icare ("I"...as in Icarus), involves a key scene where Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority is explained and shown.

In 1986, Art Rock musician Peter Gabriel wrote a song called We do what we're told (Milgram's 37), referring to Milgram's obedience experiment.

Small World Phenomenon

Main article: Small world phenomenon

The six degrees of separation concept originates from Milgram's "small world experiment" in 1967 that tracked chains of acquaintances in the US. In the experiment, Milgram sent several packages to random people, asking them to forward the package, by hand, to someone specific.

Let's talk about war, baby

2006-05-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

War, Jewish Values and Iraq
A discussion of the war and its casualties

With Richard M. Garfield, RN, MPH, MS, DrPH
and RTBI Rabbi Michael Rothbaum

Reconstructionist Temple Beth Israel
Maywood, NJ
Monday, June 19, 2006
7:30 PM

RSVP: rebmike@verizon.net

Click here for synagogue website.

In October 2004, the Lancet medical journal published a study of post-war mortality in Iraq which estimated that at least 100,000 excess civilian deaths had occurred since the 2003 invasion; Richard Garfield was one of the researchers who conducted that study. Please join us for an open discussion of the research that Dr. Garfield has conducted, and the role of war in the Jewish tradition.

Pat Robertson at It Again....

2006-05-26T01:57:00.000-07:00

Robertson: Islam is a "Christian heresy," Jews are "very thrifty, extraordinarily good business people"

Summary: On The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson said "Islam is essentially a Christian heresy" that "picked up snippets of the gospels," and other Biblical texts and is now taking "everything that Jesus said" and "transport[ing it] into this fictional Mahdi." Robertson also perpetuated Jewish stereotypes in a discussion about the need for Israeli soup kitchens, stating that "When you think of Jewish people, you think of successful businessmen" who are "very wise in finance and who are prosperous." Robertson later added that "[i]t shocks people" to find out "there's poverty in Israel," because "Jewish people" are "very thrifty" and "extraordinarily good business people."

On the May 23 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's (CBN) The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson said "Islam is essentially a Christian heresy" that "picked up snippets of the Gospels" and other Biblical texts and is now taking "everything that Jesus said" and "transport[ing it] into this fictional Mahdi," a savior figure in Islam.

Robertson also expressed "shock[] ... that there's poverty in Israel," stating that '[w]hen you think of Jewish people, you think of successful businessmen" who are "very wise in finance and who are prosperous." He also said that "Jewish people" are "very thrifty" and "extraordinarily good business people." He then declared his "stunned disbelief" that "a country as rich as Israel" could suffer from poverty.

From the May 23 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: Is the nation of Iran getting ready for Armageddon? Iran's president believes Allah has chosen him to prepare the world for the coming of an Islamic savior called the Mahdi.

[...]

But you know, the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, it's been said years ago that Islam essentially is a Christian heresy. They picked up snippets of the Gospels, picked up snippets of the Ten Commandments, the Pentateuch, writings of Moses, Abraham. You go back, you find many, many references to Moses, many references to Abraham, many references to the true Christian message. And here you've got everything that Jesus said that is true being transported into this fictional Mahdi. But to think there's a man now in charge of a government with nuclear weapons that is willing to bring about the chaos that is necessary to fulfill what he believes is important. And yet, is he having some perverse view of what actually is going to happen? Well, Jesus told us there will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, diseases, famines, pestilence. We were told before he comes back that there's going to be tidal waves and signs in the heavens. We know this is going to happen, but not for some Mahdi. Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here, and it will give you a chance to understand how important Jesus is. I would recommend that you get your Bible, read the 13th chapter of Mark, read the 21st chapter of Luke, read the 24th chapter of Matthew. See what really is going to happen.

[...]

When you think of Jewish people, you think of successful businessmen. You think of people that are very wise in finance and who are prosperous. And when you think of poor countries around the world, you'd never would consider the nation of Israel. But in parts of the Jewish nation, poverty is growing at an alarming rate. Watch this.

[...]

For video and full story click here...

The Advent of the Religious Progressives!

2006-05-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

Religious Liberals Gain New Visibility
A Different List Of Moral Issues

By Caryle Murphy and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 20, 2006; A01

The religious left is back.

Long overshadowed by the Christian right, religious liberals across a wide swath of denominations are engaged today in their most intensive bout of political organizing and alliance-building since the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s, according to scholars, politicians and clergy members.

In large part, the revival of the religious left is a reaction against conservatives' success in the 2004 elections in equating moral values with opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Religious liberals say their faith compels them to emphasize such issues as poverty, affordable health care and global warming. Disillusionment with the war in Iraq and opposition to Bush administration policies on secret prisons and torture have also fueled the movement.

For full article, click here...

Forward Article, Ynet News article, and Haaretz Article on Gafni....

2006-05-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Fired Over Sex Claims, Defenders Offer Mea Culpa
By JENNIFER SIEGEL
May 19, 2006

An Israeli-based spiritual institute has fired its main rabbi over sexual abuse claims, less than two years after several prominent American religious figures rallied to defend him against earlier allegations.

At least five female students and staff members have come forward to accuse Rabbi Mordechai Gafni of luring them into sexual relationships through intimidation, psychological manipulation and deception. Late last week, Gafni, an Orthodox-trained rabbi who has become a star of the New Age-style Jewish Renewal movement, was dismissed from his position as the head of Bayit Chadash, a center on the Sea of Galilee that he co-founded six years ago.

Gafni subsequently issued a public apology for having "hurt people I love," and said that he would seek in-patient treatment for what he called "a sickness."

A number of prominent American rabbis who publicly backed Gafni when allegations surfaced in the fall of 2004 have said that they now regret their previous support. Among those voicing regret are Rabbi Saul Berman, the leader of the liberal Orthodox organization Edah; Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, an Orthodox author best known for his accessible books on Judaism; Rabbi Arthur Green, dean of the rabbinical school of Hebrew College in Newton, Mass., and former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, leader of Congregation Nevei Kodesh, a Jewish Renewal community in Boulder, Colo., and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia and a leader of the Jewish Renewal movement.

In recent years, the Orthodox Jewish community has suffered several high-profile sexual abuse cases. It also has been accused by some critics of being insufficiently alert to the nature of abuse and overly protective of leaders at the expense of alleged victims. The dismissal of Gafni — who had been dogged by a welter of rumors and allegations over the past two decades — has shone a similar spotlight on the responses of a number of individuals on the liberal end of the Jewish spectrum and in liberal Orthodox circles generally untainted by previous scandals.

"The saddest part of the story is that there were these women from the past who had the courage to speak up despite their isolation and their own pain, despite being threatened by him repeatedly, and nobody came forth to give them support," said one of the current accusers at Bayit Chadash, who did not want to be identified by name. "People in this culture [chose] to support the male predator rather than...the women's voices that were alone."

Earlier this week, Jacob Ner-David and Avraham Leader, the two other founders of Bayit Chadash, sent out an open letter announcing that Gafni would be seeking intensive therapy for his "sickness" and that they would be contacting all organizations to which he has been connected.

Gafni, who is in his mid-40s and been married three times, was born Marc Winiarz and moved from the Midwest to New York for high school and college. He was originally ordained as an Orthodox rabbi and moved to Israel more than a decade ago, after leaving posts in New York and in Boca Raton, Fla., amid rumors of sexual misconduct. He assumed an Israeli name and transitioned into the world of Jewish Renewal.

In September 2004, as Gafni's profile was rising again back in the United States — where he had become a frequent guest lecturer and visitor at several spiritual centers and synagogues — the editor and the publisher of The Jewish Week, Gary Rosenblatt, wrote a column reviewing some of the long-standing allegations against him.

Rosenblatt said he had interviewed about 50 supporters and critics, including two prominent Orthodox leaders — Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual mentor at Yeshiva University, and Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Efrat — who had known Gafni since the 1980s. Blau and Riskin, who both criticized Gafni, told Rosenblatt that over the years they had spoken with a number of women who had complaints about the rabbi.

Rosenblatt interviewed several alleged victims. One was a woman named Judy, who first accused Gafni of molesting her in 1986, when she was a 16-year-old member of a youth group he directed. Shortly thereafter, Gafni left New York for a pulpit job in Florida. Another woman, Susan, who was an adviser for the group at the time, said that Gafni had threatened her when she tried to intervene on the girl's behalf.

When asked about the allegations, Gafni told Rosenblatt that Judy was a troubled, unstable teenager who fabricated the story after he rebuffed her advances.

But he admitted to having had a sexual relationship with another girl, when she was 13 and 14 and he was 19 and 20, studying to become a rabbi.

"I was a stupid kid and we were in love," Gafni was quoted as saying in The Jewish Week. "She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her."

The woman told Rosenblatt that Gafni had "repeatedly sexually assaulted her" when he stayed at her house for the Sabbath. The rabbi also told her that she would be "shamed in the community" if she told anyone.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who is widely credited as the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, went on the record in Gafni's defense.

"If you want to find fly specks in the pepper, you can always find them," Schachter-Shalomi told Rosenblatt. "But I've watched him teach. He is learned, exciting and charismatic."

In the weeks after Rosenblatt's column appeared, several Jewish communal leaders vigorously defended Gafni in letters sent to The Jewish Week and attacked the newspaper for running the story. Berman, Telushkin and Firestone wrote a joint letter stating that together they had conducted a thorough investigation and found all the accusations against Gafni "totally unconvincing." This week, in a statement to the Forward, the three rabbis said that they are "deeply regretful of our prior support of Rabbi Gafni."

In a subsequent e-mail to the Forward, they argued that "it is vital to distinguish between past accusations against Rabbi Gafni and the current situation."

Green, who in 2004 penned one of the most vociferous letters in defense of Gafni, agreed that the new batch of allegations were different from the ones that plagued the rabbi two years ago.

"The stories were from long ago, and he had rejected and outgrown that side of himself," Green said in an interview with the Forward. "These are now new cases and new investigations."

In a 2004 letter to The Jewish Week defending Gafni, Green said that he had not investigated the allegations and had "no interest in doing so." This week, Green told the Forward that he felt "victimized" by Gafni's lies and actions, while acknowledging that the accusers have suffered more.

Less than a month after the four rabbis wrote their letters to The Jewish Week in October 2004, the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported allegations, dating from 1994, that mirror the current accusations against Gafni. According to an Orthodox couple interviewed for the lengthy Ma'ariv profile on the rabbi, he sexually preyed on their 23-year-old daughter while serving as a visiting rabbi in Kfar Saba. He went so far as to tell her that he wanted to leave his wife and marry her.

"We taped him saying to our daughter, 'I love you very much. I dream of the day we will be together,'" the couple told Ma'ariv. "When the story became known, Gafni left Kfar Saba." The couple's daughter told Ma'ariv that she subsequently found out that Gafni was having similar relationships with other young women.

The Bayit Chadash accuser contacted by the Forward said that the five women who recently came forth had all been told by Gafni that he wanted to marry them — and the accuser said that all the women had been dumped shortly after being told he was committing himself to celibacy.

In response to an e-mail from the Forward asking if he ever contacted anyone connected to the Ma'ariv story as part of his investigation, Berman wrote that the "article was no more than a repetition of earlier allegations which had been part of our original inquiry."

Rabbi Mark Dratch, who last year founded JSafe, a new organization to help counter sexual abuse in the Jewish community, said that the lesson of the Gafni case is that rabbis do not have impartiality or the expertise to conduct professional investigations involving friends or colleagues.

Dratch said that, in his view, the rabbis who investigated Gafni were handicapped by their own lack of understanding regarding the nature of sex crimes.

One misconception among rabbis, Dratch said, is that their knowledge of someone as a friend or colleague gives them insight into whether he or she is a sex offender. Another mistake, Dratch said, is discounting incidents based on when they occurred, since "what studies show us is that recidivism is very high."

The Bayit Chadash accuser who spoke with the Forward said she hopes that by sharing her experience, she has helped spare other women pain. So far, four of the original five accusers have made sworn statements and three have filed complaints with the police. And since then, three more women have come forward in the Bayit Chadash community, along with three women from Jerusalem.

For full article, click here...

Rabbi Gafni accused of sexual assault

Three women file complaint with Haifa police against modern-Orthodox rabbi, claiming he sexually harassed them during Torah lessons, promised to marry them; Gafni meanwhile flees country to US
Ahiya Raved

Three young women in their twenties who reside in the heart of Israel filed a complaint several days ago with Haifa police against Rabbi Mordechai Gafni, claiming he sexually harassed them during Torah lessons conducted at his Jaffa center.

The women's attorney, Tami Olman, told Ynet that the police did not take the allegations seriously, allowing the rabbi to meanwhile leave the country.

Haifa police officials admitted they have collected the complainants' testimonies, in which they claim the rabbi promised each of them separately he would marry her if she had sex with him. Some of the women were Gafni's students.

According to Attorney Olman, the complainants accused Gafni of rape, sexual harassment and indecent assault and notified police that once the rabbi learns of the complaint against him he is likely to try to flee the country. However, Olman said, no measures have been taken to prevent Gafni's departure.

To make matters worse, Olman said that once in the United States, Rabbi Gafni sent a letter addressed to his congregation in which he apologized to its members for what he had done.

Attorney: Police failed in handling case

In a letter Attorney Olman sent to the officer in charge of the investigation, she stated: "It is curious that the suspect, whom you said there was no hurry to interrogate, confessed to the allegations against him...

For full article, click here.

Haaretz:

Rabbi Mordechai Gafni accused of sexually exploiting women

By Roni Singer-Heruti, Haaretz Correspondent
Last Update: 18/05/2006 13:59

Three female members of the international spiritual community "Bayit Chadash" (New Home) last week filed complaints of sexual exploitation against the head of the community, Rabbi Mordechai Gafni.

The three were Gafni's students and worked beside him within the community. They accuse him of using his authority over them to take advantage of them.

Gafni, 44, is the founder of Bayit Chadash, a self proclaimed "neo-Orthodox" spiritual-cultural Jewish community. Gafni is also known for his research work as well as being the author of several books and host of a television show on Channel 2.

For full article, click here...

More on Gafni

2006-05-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

Ken Wilber on Gafni:

On Tuesday, May 9th, 2006, three women from Bayit Chadash, a spiritual community in Israel headed by Rabbi Marc Gafni, filed complaints of sexual misconduct against Gafni with the police. Upon reviewing relevant testimony, the steering committee of Bayit Chadash decided to remove Marc Gafni from the Bayit Chadash staff. (See below for the formal announcement.)

Subsequently, rumors have been rife. After long conversations with many of the concerned parties, I have come to the following conclusions. At this time, these are my personal opinions, and are open to immediate revision in light of any further evidence. Marc Gafni is a close friend of mine, but in circumstances like this, friendship decidedly takes a backseat to ethics and justice. In my opinion, the viewpoint that takes the most number of perspectives into account is the more likely to be the better moral judgment, with the Basic Moral Intuition the ultimate guide.

These are my conclusions at this time:

1. There is substantial truth to some of these allegations.

2. This has caused something of a feeding frenzy for the mean green meme, which is understandable but I believe inexcusable. Frankly, some of these have reached pathetic portions.

3. Nonetheless, there is some truth to these allegations because of grave wrongdoing on Marc’s part, and I believe this wrongdoing is due not just to bad judgment on Marc’s part, but to a pathology or dysfunction affecting Marc.

4. Marc, in a letter to Bayit Chadash, agreed that some of his actions indeed stemmed from a pathology or, as he termed it, a “sickness.”

5. I do not believe that somebody with an acknowledged emotional illness or sexual pathology is competent to be a public spiritual teacher. Therefore, at this time, Marc will not be involved in public teaching or presentations of any sort at Integral Institute.

6. With Marc’s agreement, I have asked Frances Vaughan to begin a consultation with Marc focused specifically on his dysfunction.

7. I have other suggestions for therapeutic work that I believe would be helpful to Marc, and I believe he is sincere in pursuing them. He will be stopping in Boulder/Denver periodically to consult with me and with Rabbi Zalman as to these directions.

[Correction: Since having written this, I have spoken with Rabbi Zalman. Zalman has decided that it is best neither to meet nor speak with Mordechai until further notice.]

8. I realize that some people doubt Marc’s sincerity. This is understandable. My strong recommendation has therefore been to create a board of advisors to oversee Marc’s therapeutic work. This board would biannually review Marc’s progress, and make specific recommendations at each juncture. This board would have to be composed of individuals completely acceptable to both sides (i.e., to Bayit Chadash and to Marc Gafni).

9. I have stated my conclusion, after reviewing the evidence and as many perspectives as I can, that there is truth to some of these allegations and that this is due in part to Marc’s illness, and that as long as this dysfunction is not addressed, I do not believe that Marc should be teaching. But I want to point out that emotional illness can be treated and in many cases cured. Marc may or may not be sincere, and his therapy may or may not be effective—but that is exactly the purpose of the therapeutic board: namely, to make that decision, and not to let either of the partial sides do so. I do not know if this solution will work, but to date it is the only rational, compassionate, and fair one that I have heard, and therefore the only one which serves justice.

10. Whatever is decided on that issue, my understanding is that there is no objection to Marc pursuing his writing. We all recognize the brilliance of his contributions in this area. If we are accepting a “levels and lines” argument, then allowing Marc to pursue this line seems reasonable to me, and is something I would certainly recommend.

This is an extraordinary difficult period for all parties concerned. Bayit Chadash has been hurt. Integral Institute has been hurt. Mordechai has been hurt by his own actions. And most of all, the parties directly involved have been hurt.

But I beg all of you—all of us—not to inflame the situation further by demanding more pain, more suffering, more agony. Inflicting more pain on Marc will not take away the pain that all of us are already suffering. Let us not have an eye for an eye, but justice and mercy in equal proportions. Please don’t let hatred into your soul, I beg you; that serves nobody, least of all those who offer hatred a home.

My heart goes out to the women involved—I am so deeply, deeply sad at the pain and turmoil they have suffered; and my heart goes out to the men and women who have been affected by these tragic events. My heart goes out as well to Mordechai, a dear friend whose very bright light has cast a very sharp shadow, and in a way that has inadvertently caused such harm. I do believe, however, that emotional illness can be cured; I believe that reasonable restitution can be made; I believe that forgiveness and compassion are stronger than any evil in this world; and I know that the outreach of our own tender mercies and loving kindness will ultimately carry the day.

Sending all of you much Love, Light, and Life,

Ken

Appendix: Stay tuned to this blog, and I will attempt to keep you up to date on these issues as best I can. Here is the formal announcement sent out by Bayit Chadash:

Dear Ken,

We must share with you that on Tuesday, May 9, 2006, three women from our community filed complaints of sexual misconduct against Mordechai Gafni with the police. We were aware of this situation because on Monday, May 8, 2006, we had previously read the depositions that these women had declared to an attorney. We also personally heard the testimonies of these women, as well as that of another woman from an institution where Rabbi Gafni previously worked. We shared our findings and recommendations with Shantam Zohar, a Bayit Chadash teacher and leader; and with Or Zohar, a Bayit Chadash teacher and our CEO.

Our colleagues agreed with us that in the present situation, we should recommend to the Bayit Chadash steering committee that Mordechai Gafni’s tenure in Bayit Chadash be ended immediately, or alternatively, we would collectively resign. After the members of the steering committee read some of the depositions, they decided to remove Mordechai Gafni from the Bayit Chadash staff. The decision of the steering committee was further reinforced in light of the complaints filed with the police.

Were this was a matter solely related to Mordechai Gafni’s private life, it would be of some concern to us and to the community. The problem is greatly exaggerated by the fact that this involves women from our community, staff members and students. It is our position that there is no place for relations like this between a rabbi and his students or between an employer and his employees, whether consensual or not. It would seem that this is also the opinion of Mordechai, since he swore all the women involved to eternal and absolute silence.

Some women, however, decided to speak. We have no doubt that they speak truth, and willingly risk our personal credibility and integrity in support of their testimony.

As to the criminal aspect of his actions, that is up to the police and the courts to decide. Beyond that, judgment is in the hands of the Judge of all the world.

The sense of disappointment is very great, for us personally as well. Mordechai always treated us with friendship and respect. At times like this our sages say that one should scrutinize one’s own actions, and meditate upon why one is part of such a story. Certainly there is much to learn from such a difficult and painful experience.

May we all see, fear and tremble, may healing to our shared soul come swiftly, and may this healing encompass all involved and all who are witness, in this and all worlds.

(end)

Jewish Week on Gafni:

*************************************************
Spiritual Renewal Leader Ousted For Sexual Behavior
Mordechai Gafni, long accused of womanizing, forced out of New Age Jewish group in Israel.
Gary Rosenblatt - Editor And Publisher
Jewish Week (NY)
May 17, 2006

Rabbi Saul Berman says he is “deeply regretful” of his past support for Rabbi Gafni.Mordechai Gafni, 46, a rabbi whose charisma and brilliance dazzled students and large audiences in spiritual renewal communities in Israel and America even as he dodged rumors and accusations about improper sexual behavior for more than 25 years, has been dismissed by the leadership of Bayit Chadash in Israel, a Tel Aviv-based prayer and study group he co-founded and where he served as teacher and religious guide.

The move came last week after four women, including students of his and a staff member, filed complaints of sexual misconduct against Rabbi Gafni with the police in Israel.

“We feel we were deceived,” Jacob Ner-David, a co-founder of Bayit Chadash, told The Jewish Week, which first reported on allegations against the rabbi in September 2004.

“He should not be called a rav [rabbi], his was not the behavior of a rav and he should not be in a teaching or counseling position,” said Ner-David, who noted that the incident “is my worst nightmare come to life.” He added that Rabbi Gafni is “a sick man, and has harmed so many.”

A statement issued by Ner-David and his Bayit Chadash co-founder Avraham Leader said “there is no place for relations like this between a rabbi and his students or between an employer and his employees, whether consensual or not. It would seem that this is the opinion of Mordechai, since he swore all the women involved to eternal and absolute silence.”

Rabbi Gafni achieved much attention here and in Israel as a leader of the New Age Jewish movement. He taught classes, led retreats, wrote several books and appeared in a PBS documentary about the quest for spirituality.

In a statement this week to his followers, he took blame for his actions and said he was “infinitely saddened and profoundly sorry” for the pain he had caused. He acknowledged that he was “sick,” and said he planned to enter a treatment center and leave his “rabbinic teaching capacities.”

Rabbi Gafni, who was divorced from his third wife about a year and a half ago, told The Jewish Week in 2004 that he had “made mistakes in my life” and had “a sense of exaggeration” and was “too ambitious.” But he insisted he had done teshuvah [repentance] and was the victim of a longstanding “witch hunt” from a small cadre of women accusers and Orthodox rabbis jealous of his success.

“I am moral and ethical,” he said during a series of conversations with this reporter in 2004, during which he asserted that he was sharing his “deepest truth.”

Ner-David told The Jewish Week that one of the women involved with Rabbi Gafni over the last 18 months came forward to Leader, and that soon after, another woman spoke out about her relationship with the rabbi. “And then we discovered there were two more.”

Leader and Ner-David asked the women to give sworn statements to an attorney, which they did. At this point the police have not acted on the complaints, which address the boundaries of relationships between teacher-student and employer-employee.

“We have no doubt that they [the women] speak the truth, and willingly risk our personal credibility and integrity in support of their testimony,” Leader and Ner-David said in their signed statement.

“For us it was a complete surprise,” Ner-David told The Jewish Week, noting that as recently as a month ago he had a conversation with Rabbi Gafni affirming that immoral behavior could never be tolerated within Bayit Chadash.

Ner-David, who first met Rabbi Gafni when he was a 13-year-old at summer camp in the United States and the rabbi was his counselor, said he had long known of the allegations about the man born Marc Winiarz in the Midwest. Winiarz moved to Israel in 1991 and took the Israeli name Gafni after a series of controversies about sexual improprieties dogged him when he was a youth leader and later a rabbi in several U.S. communities.

He was ordained by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, founder of Lincoln Square Synagogue here and now chief rabbi of Efrat, in the West Bank. Rabbi Riskin revoked his ordination in 1994 after his former student, in a lengthy interview in Haaretz, called for restoring a balance between the erotic and the spiritual in Judaism.

Rabbi Gafni’s response was that he had other ordinations and had moved beyond Orthodoxy.

Ner-David said he was guilty of having relied on information from others in seeking answers to questions about Rabbi Gafni’s past. Several prominent Israeli educators hired the rabbi as a teacher despite complaints from some women and rabbis who asserted he was unfit to work with students. Those who hired Rabbi Gafni said he was a gifted teacher, that he acknowledged past wrongdoings (though he was vague about them) and that they could find no current cases of women with complaints against him.

Some of the charges went back more than two decades.

Ner-David said he realizes now that Rabbi Gafni was “a master manipulator,” but in the past he had felt justified in working with him because no one had come forward with recent complaints about the rabbi’s behavior.

Rabbi Saul Berman, the founder and director of Edah here in New York, has been an outspoken defender of Rabbi Gafni. In a letter taking this reporter to task for writing about the controversy in 2004, Rabbi Berman, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone and ethicist and author Joseph Telushkin said they had looked into past allegations and found them “totally unconvincing.” They described the article as “unfair” and “scandalous.”

This week, Rabbi Berman said he is “deeply regretful” of his prior support for Rabbi Gafni, and worried that his past defense may have prolonged the rabbi’s “predatory behavior against women.”

“I was clearly wrong in stating that Rabbi Gafni’s continued role as a teacher within the Jewish community constitutes no risk to Jewish women,” he wrote in a statement.

Rabbi Berman said he had felt the earlier accusations “were not justifiable foundations for public disgrace and exclusion,” and noted that he will “continue to struggle with the ideal line between presumption of innocence and protection of potential innocent victims.”

He told The Jewish Week the Gafni case underscores the ongoing need for a mechanism to investigate allegations against rabbis “in a way that the community has confidence in, so that when it’s over, it’s over.”

He said that rabbis are “not capable of enough objectivity to handle such matters themselves,” and called for a collaborative effort of rabbis, lay leaders and professionals in the health care field who deal with abuse.

Other institutions and individuals who had supported Rabbi Gafni in the past also spoke out this week. Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia said he felt “sad, angry and betrayed” by Rabbi Gafni’s behavior, noting that it “raises questions once again about how to walk that thin line between spiritual ecstasy and the domineering frenzy that is not only damaging in itself but sometimes even leads to sexual abuse.”

One of the criticisms of the spiritual renewal movement is that its emphasis on charismatic teachers and the search for religious bliss lends its members to being emotionally manipulated.

Jacob Ner-David, acknowledging that he will be asking himself “for a long time what lessons can be learned” from the Gafni episode, said that Bayit Chadash “must make sure not to allow anyone to become a guru.”

He said the members of the group, which includes hundreds of Israelis who pray and study together, are determined to go on with their work even though Rabbi Gafni, their spiritual leader, has been removed.

As for whether Rabbi Gafni truly understands the pain he has caused and can be rehabilitated and return, Ner-David said it was too early to say.

“It is hard to tell if he really means it or not,” he said.

R' Art Waskow on Mordechai Gafni

2006-05-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Once again we face the news that a position of spiritual leadership has been turned into a platform for sexual abuse.

I am sending you a statement issued Friday by Avraham Leader, head of the Board of Bayit Chadash in Israel — a community dedicated to the spiritual renewal of Judaism..

The statement announces that its Board has just fired Rabbi Mordechai Gafni (its founder and chief teacher) because of his actions described in the formal depositions of four women, and the statements of others — some who had been students and subordinate staff — that he had had sexual relationships with them, and had sworn them to secrecy. Leader affirms his
and the Board’s conviction that the accusations are true.

I hardly need to say how sad, how angry, and how betrayed Gafni’s behavior makes me feel — And how much it raises questions once again about how to walk that thin line between spiritual ecstasy and the domineering frenzy that is not only damaging in itself but sometimes even leads to sexual abuse.

I am grateful that these women have come forward to say the truth.

There is a lot more to say. Some of it I will say below, after inserting here Avraham Leader’s announcement so that we can all know what we are talking about.

I must share with you that yesterday women from our community filed complaints of sexual misconduct against Rabbi Mordechai Gafni with the police. I was aware of this situation because I had previously read the depositions that these women had declared to an attorney. I also personally heard the testimonies of these women, as well as that of another woman from
an institution where Rabbi Gafni previously worked. I shared my findings and recommendations with Jacob Ner-David, the chairman of our board; with Shantam Zohar, a Bayit Chadash teacher and leader; and with Or Zohar, a Bayit Chadash teacher and our CEO.

My colleagues agreed with me that in the present situation, we should recommend to the Bayit Chadash steering committee that Rabbi Gafni’s tenure in Bayit Chadash be ended immediately, or alternatively, we would collectively resign. After the members of the steering committee read some of the depositions, they decided to remove Rabbi Gafni from the Bayit Chadash staff. The decision of the steering committee was further reinforced in light of the complaints filed with the police.

…Were this was a matter solely related to Rabbi Gafni’s private life, this would not be my concern, and certainly not that of the community. The problem is that this involves women from our community, staff members and students. Although these relationships were apparently consensual, it is our position that there is no place for relations like this between a rabbi and his students or between an employer and his employees. It would seem that this is also the opinion of Rabbi Gafni, since he swore all the women involved to eternal and absolute silence.

The women, however, decided to speak. I have no doubt that they speak truth, and willingly risk my personal credibility and integrity on my support of their testimony. I may add that my colleagues arrived at similar conclusions.

As to the criminal aspect of his actions, that is up to the police and the courts to decide. Beyond that, judgment is in the hands of the Judge of all the world.

The sense of disappointment is very great, for me personally as well. Mordechai always treated me with friendship and respect. At times like this our sages say that one should scrutinize one’s own actions, and meditate upon why one is part of such a story. Certainly there is much to learn from such a difficult and painful experience.

May we all see, fear and tremble, may healing to our shared soul come swiftly, and may this healing encompass all involved and all who are witness, in this and all worlds.

Avraham Leader, on behalf of Bayit Chadash
Iyar 14, 5766, the 29th day of the Omer, Friday, May 12, 2006

Back to me, Arthur Waskow:

There is a great deal we could do in all communities of spiritual depth – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, no doubt others — to prevent or minimize this deformation of the Spirit into an idol – an event that has happened in each of these traditions, and not just once.

Not only must the teachers who might fall into this idolatry be taught how to celebrate in joy but not in frenzy; those learners or on-staff subordinates who might fall into the role of victim also need to empower themselves to access their own inner “rebbe,” not feel that the only rebbe-energy that they can access comes wrapped in domination.

And in this they need the help of the community in creating a culture that encourages each of us, all of us, to see ourselves as rebbes, able to be in touch with God.

Of course this involves not just theory or theology but also the real-life suffering of many people. (Truthful theology always flows from the lives of the people – the Images of God.)

Avraham Leader says on his own behalf and that of Bayit Chadash, “At times like this our sages say that one should scrutinize one’s own actions, and meditate upon why one is part of such a story.”

True enough. And I ask myself the same question. Mordechai Gafni taught at both ALEPH Kallot and at Elat Chayyim retreat center. Both organizations will need to respond in their own voices. What I know, having also taught and learned at both places, is that both have extremely strong and clear prohibitions on any sexual relationships between teachers, davvening leaders, and other such persons in positions of authority with any students, participants, etc. Those prohibitions are communicated not only to the teachers but to all participants.

When reports surfaced about Gafni having been an abuser 25 or so years ago – none till now ever surfaced about any occasions more recent – rigorous investigations went forward. Persons in leadership at Elat Chayyim deliberately interviewed women who were in a position to know whether Gafni was violating the ethics standards. No evidence surfaced that he was. Outside the sexual sphere, he was rebuked several times for behavior in classes that was domineering, and seemed to restrain himself thereafter.

I myself have been accused by a few people on the Internet of having “defended” him. What I did defend was a process for investigating allegations – a process that insisted on serious evidence, not second-hand or third-hand statements like ” I have been told that … ” I continue to believe that this is the only way to deal with any allegations of wrongdoing, including this kind.

And in this case, nothing emerged that indicated any problem less than 25 years old – and even those seemed unconfirmable.

It is true that there is an unusual problem in applying this standard in this kind of situation. Some or all of the women who have made statements in regard to his behavior at Bayit Chadash have said that Gafni swore them to secrecy — and they agreed, till now. The fusion of spiritual power and sexual abuse is liable to create such a situation when even people who might be thought to have every reason to reveal violations feel so overawed or so “beloved” by the abuser that they do not define what is happening as abuse, or are unwilling to talk about it.

So that means it is a lot harder to get the kind of evidence that can justify dismissal, etc. At Bayit Chadash, when such evidence did surface the institution responded. I am open to suggestions on how to act in some other way that as the tradition commands, will pursue justice, justice–pursue the ends of justice by using just means.

For some of my thoughts of how we might address and act on this whole matter of the relationships among spiritual leadership, sexual energy, and sexual abuse, see my essay on our Website — (It was written years ago in response to a previous case, and of course I will continue to keep thinking and writing about this issue.)

May all those who are involved in this, the victims first and most of all — and ultimately the perpetrator too — find a healing that includes tzedek and mishpat, both restorative & transformative justice.

To use the Kabbalistic language about God’s aspects or emanations — not just Chesed (overflowing lovingkindness) and not just Gevurah (rigorous boundaries) and not just a “balance” between them — but their profound synthesis in Tiferet / Rachamim, that womb-like, heart-like outpouring of life that is rooted in powerful boundaries, just as the powerful and strongly boundaried heart-muscle sends life-blood pouring through the body, and the powerful and strongly boundaried womb-muscle births new life into the world.

In setting forth this prayer, I do not mean to leave its fulfillment “in the hands of God.” Or rather, I do – in the sense that when human beings act in a holy way, they are indeed “the hands of God.”

Shalom,
Arthur

Gafni's letter to his hevreh:

To my holiest friends,

I want to say I understand I have made grave mistakes. I made choices that
clearly hurt people I love. I am infinitely saddened and profoundly sorry
for the pain I have caused.

I take full responsibility for all the pain I have inflicted. I Clearly all
of this and more indicates that in these regards I am sick. I need to
acknowledge that sickness and to get help for it. That is what I am doing in
this letter.

I want to state clearly and unequivocally that I now recognize that I am
sick in these ways and I am committed with all of my energy to check myself
into the appropriate programs that will get me healing on this. I have
already turned to a leading figure to guide my treatment program and am
entering treatment immediately. want to enter into the most appropriate
healing process with both myself and where appropriate with the others
involved.

I promise you from the bottom of my heart and in the name of everything that
is holy, I am taking this crisis with utmost seriousness. I am making
healing the number one priority of my life. I must act now to discover what
led to me to make these damaging choices that hurt people I care about, hurt
my community, and hurt the people who have supported me for years in
building Bayit Chadash.

In light of all that has happened I am leaving all of my rabbinic teaching
capacities. I am looking now, together with a professional team, for
in-house treatment centers where I can go and learn about what led me here,
where I can grieve for all the pain that I have caused, and where I can heal
so that this never happens again.

I apologize with all of my heart and soul to everyone.

With love and pain beyond words,

mordechai

For more, click here...

NSA WIRETAPPING- FROM WIRED

2006-05-15T00:51:00.000-07:00

Wired News Report 09:15 AM May, 12, 2006

If the National Security Agency is indeed amassing a colossal database of Americans' phone records, one way to use all that information is in "social network analysis," a data-mining method that aims to expose previously invisible connections among people.

Social network analysis has gained prominence in business and intelligence circles under the belief that it can yield extraordinary insights, such as the fact that people in disparate organizations have common acquaintances. So it did not surprise many security analysts to learn Thursday from USA Today that the NSA is applying the technology to billions of phone records. Computer security experts say it is often more important who is talking to who than what is being said.

The NSA declined to comment. But several experts said it seemed likely the agency would want to assemble a picture from more than just landline phone records. Other forms of communication, including cell phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, likely are trackable targets as well, at least on international networks if not inside the U.S. USA Today reported that the NSA has collected call logs from the three largest U.S. phone companies, BellSouth, AT&T and Verizon.

It remains unclear whether other communications providers have been asked for their call logs or billing records. Verizon Wireless has denied involvement in the program, while Cingular — an AT&T/BellSouth joint venture — and Sprint Nextel have not denied participation.

- - -

Philadelphia to be first Wi-Fi city: Philidelphia's City Council unanimously approved a plan to blanket the city's 135 square miles with a high-speed wireless internet connection, ...

For more click here.

Rumsfeld Gets Colberized!

2006-05-04T22:41:00.000-07:00

A headline on ManuMilitari coins the perfect description of what McGovern did: "Rumsfeld se fait 'colberiser.'" I know, it's in French, the language of frog-eaters who wouldn't follow Bush blindly into Iraq. You can guess what it means: Rumsfed gets Colberted. The blogger who posted that defines it this way: "Colberiser: Régler face à face, ses comptes avec un politicien." It means: to hold a politician accountable, face to face.

This time around, it won't be enough to say that Ray McGovern wasn't funny enough, or that he was rude, or went on too long, or the rest of the courtier dyspepsia being attributed to Colbert. McGovern is doing what, shockingly, national Democrats haven't been doing; he's doing what the kewl kids in prom clothes in the Fourth Estate haven't been doing; he's doing what Left Blogistan and a handful of columnists have been doing, and what born-again furies like Chris Matthews are at long last doing...

Click here for more...

Iranian official: We may recognize Israel

2006-05-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

Top nuclear scientist also says Tehran 'playing with international community but will stop when it senses rope has been pulled too far'
Yossi Bar

An Iranian scientist involved with the country's nuclear program claimed his country could recognize Israel in several of years, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday.

"Iran may recognize Israel in a number of years," Dr. Rahman Garmanpoor, a manager of the Iranian nuclear program, told the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.

"Some of our society believes that we must be neutral, but the policies of the new president Ahmadinejad and his warring statements are tied to internal politics. This is a new government, that must consolidate its power," he said...

For full article, click here...

Colbert Lambasts President

2006-05-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

Watch a clip from the Correspondent's Dinner Saturday night, where Steven Colbert didn't let the President off the hook (click here for video).

Watch more here...

Or read transcript of entire routine:

STEPHEN COLBERT: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Before I begin, I've been asked to make an announcement. Whoever parked 14 black bulletproof S.U.V.'s out front, could you please move them? They are blocking in 14 other black bulletproof S.U.V.'s and they need to get out.

Wow. Wow, what an honor. The White House correspondents' dinner. To actually sit here, at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush, to be this close to the man. I feel like I'm dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You know what? I'm a pretty sound sleeper -- that may not be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face. Is he really not here tonight? Dammit. The one guy who could have helped.

By the way, before I get started, if anybody needs anything else at their tables, just speak slowly and clearly into your table numbers. Somebody from the NSA will be right over with a cocktail. Mark Smith, ladies and gentlemen of the press corps, Madame First Lady, Mr. President, my name is Stephen Colbert and tonight it's my privilege to celebrate this president. We're not so different, he and I. We get it. We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say I did look it up, and that's not true. That's cause you looked it up in a book.

Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works. Every night on my show, the Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, OK? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.

I'm a simple man with a simple mind. I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states. And I cannot wait to see how the Washington Post spins that one tomorrow. I believe in democracy. I believe democracy is our greatest export. At least until China figures out a way to stamp it out of plastic for three cents a unit.

In fact, Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong, welcome. Your great country makes our Happy Meals possible. I said it's a celebration. I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible -- I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical. And though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it's yogurt. But I refuse to believe it's not butter. Most of all, I believe in this president.

Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

So, Mr. President, please, pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass -- it's important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash. Okay, look, folks, my point is that I don't believe this is a low point in this presidency. I believe it is just a lull before a comeback....

Click here for remainder of transcript...

Peres in Auschwitz

2006-04-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Peres at Auschwitz: I wish that Ahmedinejad would visit here

By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

Thousands of people marched in silence Tuesday at the site of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in remembrance of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, while sirens sounded across Israel at 10 A.M., bringing the nation to a halt to mark the observance of Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day.

Speaking at Auschwitz, Kadima MK Shimon Peres said, "The Iranian president said there was never a Holocaust. I would hope that he could come here and see the human hair, the eyeglasses, and the eyes that were behind them, and to ask: 'Why, why did this happen?' The world, like back in the 30s, vacillated, didn't believe declarations and found excuses.

"We don't such a right. We need to defend ourselves and we are able to do so. We must understand there are crazy forces in the world. We must identify them and stop them before it is too late," Peres added.

For full article, click here...

Where is All the Money Going?

2006-04-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

ExxonMobil

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Exxon Mobil Corporation
Type Public (NYSE: XOM)
Founded 1882 (merger in 1999)
Location Corporate headquarters in Irving, Texas
Key people Chairman and CEO, Rex W. Tillerson
Industry Oil and Gas
Products Fuels, Lubricants, Petrochemicals
Revenue $371 billion USD (2005)
Employees 88,300
Website www.exxonmobil.com

Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) is the largest publicly traded, integrated oil and gas company in the world, formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. It is the sixth-largest company in the world as ranked by the Forbes Global 2000 and the largest company in the U.S. as ranked by the Fortune 500. It is the largest of the four oil super majors, which also include BP (formerly British Petroleum), Royal Dutch Shell, and Total. It has the highest market value of any publicly traded company in the world, and in 2005 was the most profitable. Its operating profit in 2005 was $36.13 billion (an all-time record for any publicly traded company), slightly less than the gross domestic product of Azerbaijan, while its revenues were slightly less than the GDP of Belgium. ExxonMobil is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The corporate headquarters are in Irving, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. The company markets products around the world under the brands of Exxon, Mobil, and Esso.

The merger of Exxon and Mobil is symbolic in American history because it brought together once again the two largest companies (Standard Oil Company of New Jersey/Exxon and Standard Oil Company of New York/Mobil) of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil trust.

In 2005, ExxonMobil took the place of Wal-Mart as the world's largest corporation by revenue.
Contents
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* 1 Organization
* 2 Name
* 3 History
* 4 Allegations against ExxonMobil
* 5 Ownership
* 6 Corporate governance
o 6.1 Board of directors
* 7 Employee Diversity
* 8 External links
o 8.1 General information
o 8.2 ExxonMobil responses to issues
o 8.3 Funding given by ExxonMobil
o 8.4 Anti ExxonMobil Websites
* 9 Bibliography

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Organization

ExxonMobil is organized functionally into a number of global operating divisions. These divisions are grouped into three categories for reference purposes:

* Upstream
* Downstream
* Chemical

Operating divisions by category are as follows:

* Upstream
o ExxonMobil Exploration Company
o ExxonMobil Development Company
o ExxonMobil Production Company
o ExxonMobil Gas and Power Marketing Company
o ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company

* Downstream
o ExxonMobil Refining and Supply Company
o ExxonMobil Fuels Marketing Company
o ExxonMobil Lubricants & Specialties Company
o ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company
o ExxonMobil Global Services Company

* Chemical
o ExxonMobil Chemical Company

Upstream and Chemical operations are headquartered at various sites in Houston, Texas, and the downstream operations are headquartered at the heritage-Mobil headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.
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Name
Exxon logo
Exxon-branded gas station in California (actually operated by Valero)
Enlarge
Exxon-branded gas station in California (actually operated by Valero)

Exxon formally replaced the Esso, Enco, and Humble brands on January 1, 1973, in the USA. The name Esso, pronounced S-O, attracted protests from other Standard Oil spinoffs because of its similarity to the name of the parent company, Standard Oil. Hence, the company was restricted from using Esso in the USA except in those states awarded to it in the 1911 Standard Oil antitrust settlement. In states where the Esso brand was blackballed, the company marketed its gasoline under the Humble or Enco brands. The Humble brand was used at Texas stations for decades as those operations were under the direction of Jersey Standard affiliate, Humble Oil, and in the mid-to-late 1950s expanded to other Southwestern states including New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma.

In 1960, Jersey Standard gained full control of Humble Oil and Refining Co. and, through a reorganization of the company, restructured Humble into Jersey's domestic marketing and refining division to sell and market gasoline nationwide under the Esso, Enco and Humble brands. The Enco brand was introduced by Humble in 1960 at stations in Ohio but was soon blackballed after Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) protested that Enco (Humble's acronym for "ENergy COmpany) sounded and looked too much like Esso as it shared the same oval logo with blue border and red letters with the two middle letters the only difference. At that point, the stations in Ohio would be rebranded Humble until the name change to Exxon in 1972.

After the Enco brand was discontinued in Ohio, it was moved to other non-Esso states. In 1961, Humble stations in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona were rebranded as Enco and the Enco brand appeared on gasoline and lubricant products at Humble stations in Texas that same year with service stations there changed to Enco in 1962. By that time, Jersey had expanded the Enco brand to stations in the Midwest and Northwest that had been operated by various subsidaries such as Carter, Pate and Oklahoma among others.

In 1963, Humble was approached by Tidewater Oil Company, a major gasoline marketer along the eastern and western seaboards, to purchase the firm's refining and marketing operations on the west coast, a move that would have given Humble a large number of existing stations and a refinery in California, which was then the fastest-growing gasoline market. However, the Justice Department objected to Humble's plan to purchase Tidewater's west coast operations, which were later sold to Phillips Petroleum in 1966. Meanwhile, Humble gradually built up new and rebranded service stations in California and other western states under the Enco brand and purchased a large number of stations from Signal Oil Company in 1967, followed by the opening of a new refinery Benicia, California in 1969.

In 1966, the Justice Department ordered Humble to "cease and desist" from using the Esso brand at stations in several Southeastern states following protests from Standard Oil of Kentucky (a Standard Oil of California subsidiary by that time and in the process of rebranding the Kyso stations as Chevron). By 1967, stations in each of those states were rebranded as Enco.

Despite the success of the "Put A Tiger In Your Tank" advertising campaign introduced by Humble in 1964 to promote its Enco/Esso Extra gasolines, the similar logotypes, use of the Humble name in all Esso/Enco ads and the uniformity in design and products of Humble stations nationwide, the company still had difficulties promoting itself as a nationwide gasoline marketer competing against truly national brands such as Texaco - then a 50-state marketer and the only company selling products under one brand name in each state. Humble officials realized by the late 1960s that the time had come to swallow its pride by developing a new brand name that could be used nationwide throughout the U.S. At first, consideration was given to simply rebranding all stations as "Enco" but that was shelved when it was learned that "Enco" is a Japanese abbreviation of "engine failure." (エンジン故障, enjinkoshou)

In order to create a unified brand, the company changed its corporate name from Jersey Standard to Exxon, rebranding all its U.S. stations under the latter title in the summer and fall of 1972 following the successful test marketing of the Exxon brand and logo in late 1971 and early 1972 at rebranded Enco/Esso stations in certain U.S. cities. However, the unrestricted international use of the popular brand Esso prompted the company to continue using Esso outside of the USA. Esso is the only widely used Standard Oil brand left in existence. Other Standard Oil descendants, such as BP and Chevron, do however maintain a few stations with the Standard Oil brand in specific states in order to retain their trademarks and prevent others from using them.

The rectangular Exxon logo with the blue strip at the bottom and red lettering with the two "X's" interlinked together was designed by noted industrial stylist Raymond Loewy. The interlinked "X's" are incorporated in the modern-day ExxonMobil corporate logo, but the original Exxon sign continues for marketing efforts and station signage.
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History

Both Exxon and Mobil were descendants of the old John D. Rockefeller monopoly, Standard Oil. In 1911, after a United States Supreme Court ruling which upheld a federal court order to dissolve it, the Standard Oil Trust was split into 34 companies. Two of these companies were Jersey Standard, which eventually became Exxon, and Socony ("Standard Oil Company of New York"), which eventually became Mobil.

In the same year, the nation's kerosene output was eclipsed for the first time by gasoline. The growing automotive market inspired the product trademark Mobiloil, registered by Socony in 1920.

Over the next decade, both companies grew significantly. Jersey Standard acquired a 50 percent interest in Humble Oil & Refining Co., a Texas oil producer. Socony purchased a 45 percent interest in Magnolia Petroleum Co., a major refiner, marketer and pipeline transporter. In 1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Co., an industry pioneer dating back to 1866 and a growing Standard Oil spin-off in its own right.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Jersey Standard had oil production and refineries in Indonesia but no marketing network. Socony-Vacuum had Asian marketing outlets supplied remotely from California. In 1933, Jersey Standard and Socony-Vacuum merged their interests in the region into a 50-50 joint venture. Standard-Vacuum Oil Co., or "Stanvac," operated in 50 countries, from East Africa to New Zealand, before it was dissolved in 1962.

Mobil Chemical Company was established in 1960. As of 1999 its principal products included basic olefins and aromatics, ethylene glycol and polyethylene. The company produced synthetic lubricant base stocks as well as lubricant additives, propylene packaging films and catalysts. Exxon Chemical Company became a worldwide organization in 1965 and in 1999 was a major producer and marketer of olefins, aromatics, polyethylene and polypropylene along with specialty lines such as elastomers, plasticizers, solvents, process fluids, oxo alcohols and adhesive resins. The company was an industry leader in metallocene catalyst technology to make unique polymers with improved performance.

In 1955 Socony-Vacuum became Socony Mobil Oil Co. and in 1966 simply Mobil Oil Corp. A decade later, the newly incorporated Mobil Corporation absorbed Mobil Oil as a wholly owned subsidiary. Jersey Standard changed its name to Exxon Corporation in 1972 and established Exxon as a trademark throughout the United States. In other parts of the world, Exxon and its affiliated companies continued to use its Esso trademark.

On March 24, 1989, shortly after midnight, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling more than 11 million gallons (42,000 m³) of crude oil. The spill was the largest in U.S. history, and in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. At the time of the spill, Exxon paid $300 million immediately and voluntarily to more than 11,000 Alaskans and businesses affected by the Valdez spill. In addition, the company paid $2.2 billion on the cleanup of Prince William Sound, staying with the cleanup from 1989 to 1992, when the State of Alaska and the U.S. Coast Guard declared the cleanup complete. Exxon also has paid $1 billion in settlements with the state and federal governments. Virtually all Valdez compensatory damages were paid in full within one year of the accident, and the trial court commended Exxon for coming forward "with its people and its pocketbook and doing what had to be done under difficult circumstances." However, Exxon has yet to pay up for the largest punitive ruling against it, which is currently set at $4.5 billion, as the assessment is under appeal. The punitive damages were set by a Federal court judge in Anchorage,and have twice been vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as excessive.

In 1998, Exxon and Mobil signed a US$73.7 billion definitive agreement to merge and form a new company called Exxon Mobil Corporation, the largest company on the planet. After shareholder and regulatory approvals, the merger was completed November 30, 1999 (the deal was announced the next day).

In 2000, ExxonMobil sold the Benicia, California, refinery and 340 Exxon-branded stations to Valero Energy Corporation, as part of an FTC-mandated divestiture of California assets. ExxonMobil continues to supply petroleum product to over 700 Mobil-branded retail outlets in the state.

In 2005, its stock price surged in parallel with rising oil prices, surpassing General Electric as the largest corporation in the world in terms of market capitalization. At the end of 2005, ExxonMobil reported record profits, reporting U.S $36 billion in annual income, up 42% from the previous year (the overall annual income was an all-time record for annual income by any business, and included $10 billion in the third quarter alone, also an all-time record income for a single quarter by any business). The company and the American Petroleum Institute, the Oil and Chemical industry's lobbying apparatus, however tried to downplay its success in order to avoid criticism from consumers by putting up page-long ads in major American newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, comparing Oil Industry profits to that of other large industries such as pharmaceuticals and banking. [1] [2]

Exxon's long-time mascot is a Tiger; Mobil's mascot is a Pegasus which dates back to the late 19th century and is one of the oldest marketing symbols still in use.

ExxonMobil now has the most assets in the world, and generated $246.7 billion in total revenue for 2003.
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Allegations against ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil's activities in the Indonesian territory of Aceh, where the company extracts and exports natural gas, have attracted scrutiny. In June 2001, ExxonMobil became the target of a lawsuit in the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia, under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The suit alleged that the company knowingly assisted human rights violations, including torture, murder and rape, by employing and providing material support to Indonesian military forces, who committed the alleged offenses in Aceh. Human rights complaints involving ExxonMobil's relationship with the Indonesian military first arose in 1992; numerous inquiries have found evidence of human rights violations on ExxonMobil property and/or committed by Indonesian troops guarding ExxonMobil facilities. The company denies these accusations and filed a motion to dismiss the suit, which is still pending as of 2005. The U.S. State Department filed an opinion in the case in July 2002, requesting that the suit, brought by the International Labor Rights Fund, be dismissed on national security grounds. [3]

ExxonMobil controls concessions covering 11 million acres (44,500 km²) off the coast of Angola that hold an estimated 7.5 billion barrels (1.2 km³) of crude. [4] Questions have been raised about ExxonMobil's actions in securing these concessions—Forbes Magazine alleging that "ExxonMobil handed hundreds of millions of dollars to the corrupt regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos in the late 1990s". [5]

In 2003, the Office of Foreign Assets Control reported that ExxonMobil engaged in illegal trade with Sudan and along with dozens of other companies had to settle with the United States government for US$50,000 [6].

ExxonMobil is regarded by many environmental activists as an example of utter corporate irresponsibility and disregard for environmental concerns by US-based corporations. The company has been a target for a number of political campaigns, including the Stop Esso campaign, held by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and People and Planet, and aimed at boycotting Esso. These organisations commonly parody the company's brandname as "E$$O", an example of alternative political spelling, to indicate their belief that the company is only interested in short-term profit, and is willing to use its financial power to buy influence. A new environmental movement in the form of Exxpose Exxon has emerged to highlight ExxonMobil's stances on global warming, alternative energies, as well as lack of reparations yet awarded to the native americans affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Unlike other major oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP, Exxon is one of the few that has actively fought the Kyoto Protocol and disputed scientific opinion on global climate change. ExxonMobil is highly criticized for funding climate change research, decried by environmentalists as "junk science," such as the work of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine, a grand sounding institution having only a handful of employees and volunteers [7]. ExxonMobil has also been a leading campaigner in the yet-unsuccessful bid to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, a move that environmentalists say will destroy the region's fragile ecology.

Greenpeace has been campaigning against Esso for many years and its main reasons for doing so include ExxonMobil's position on the issue of climate change. Greenpeace claims that ExxonMobil has flatly refused to believe that the burning of fossil fuels has any negative effect on the environment or climate change as a whole.

In 1996 Kelloggs sued Exxon when Exxon's tiger mascot was used to market food products in the Exxon gas station convenience stores based upon a claim of trademark infringement with Kellogg Company's Tony the Tiger.
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Ownership
Owner Percent
Barclays Global Investors 4.2
State Street Global Advisors 3.2
JPMorgan Chase 1.5
Wellington Management Company 1.5
Northern Trust Company 1.4
Fidelity Management and Research 1.3
Alliance Capital Management 1.2
Capital Research & Management Company 1.2
Columbia Management Advisors 1.1
TIAA-CREF Investment Management 0.9
Merrill Lynch Investment Management 0.8
Mellon Financial Corporation 0.7
Lord Abbett & Co 0.7
Janus Capital Corp 0.6
State Farm Investment Management Corporation 0.6
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Corporate governance

The current Chairman of the Board and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation is Rex Tillerson. Tillerson assumed the top position on January 1, 2006 on the retirement of long-time chairman and CEO, Lee Raymond.
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Board of directors

Current Exxon Mobil board members are:

* Michael Boskin
* William W. George
* James R. Houghton
* William R. Howell
* Reatha King
* Philip Lippincott
* Henry McKinnell, Jr.
* Marilyn Nelson
* Walter Shipley

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Employee Diversity

ExxonMobil received a 14% rating from the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index in 2004. The company had previously lost points because after the merger it failed to adopt some of the LGBT-friendly policies previously put into place at Mobil. Moreover, sexual orientation was taken off the list of protected classes in the ExxonMobil non-discrimination policy following Mobil's merger with Exxon, and when the issue was put to a vote of shareholders, a supermajority of shareholders (more than 70%) rejected proposals to reinstate sexual orientation as a specific type of prohibited discrimination.

Domestic partner benefits were ended following Mobil's merger with Exxon. Mobil employees who already had DP benefits were allowed to keep them, but other employees could not add their DPs to the benefit plans after the merger. ExxonMobil does offer DP benefits in countries where same-sex marriage is legal.
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External links
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General information

* ExxonMobil corporate website
o Exxon USA website
o Mobil global website
o Esso global website
* History of Standard Oil spinoffs and their brands
* Exxonmobil entry at Knowmore.org
* ExxonMobil's most recent conference call transcripts
* ExxonMobil Executive Compensation

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ExxonMobil responses to issues

* ExxonMobil Web Page on Business Ethics & Standards
* ExxonMobil Web Page on Climate Change
* ExxonMobil Web Page on Domestic Partner Policies
* ExxonMobil Web Page on Valdez Oil Spill

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Funding given by ExxonMobil

* ExxonMobil's list of funded organizations.
* World Internet News: "Big Oil Looking for Another Government Handout," April 2006.
* Greenpeace's list of organizations that have received funds from ExxonMobil, with evidence of that funding.
* Mother Jones' overview, May 2005, "Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank"

[edit]

Anti ExxonMobil Websites

* Stop Esso
* ExxposeExxon
* Greenpeace UK's page on Esso

[edit]

Bibliography

* Bender, Rob, and Tammy Cannoy-Bender. An Unauthorized Guide to: Mobil Collectibles — Chasing the Red Horse. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Company, 1999.
* Exxon Corporation. Century of Discovery: An Exxon Album. 1982.
* Gibb, George S., and Evelyn H. Knowlton. The Resurgent Years, 1911-1927: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1956.
* Hidy, Ralph W., and Muriel E. Hidy. Pioneering in Big Business, 1882-1911: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1955.
* Larson, Henrietta M., and Kenneth Wiggins Porter. History of Humble Oil & Refining Company: A Study in Industrial Growth. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1959.
* Larson, Henrietta M., Evelyn H. Knowlton, and Charles S. Popple. Horizons, 1927-1950: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
* McIntyre, J. Sam. The Esso Collectibles Handbook: Memorabilia from Standard Oil of New Jersey. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Company, 1998.
* Sampson, Anthony. The Seven Sisters: The 100-year Battle for the World's Oil Supply. New York: Bantom Books, 1991.
* Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). Ships of the Esso Fleet in World War II. 1946.
* Tarbell, Ida M., and David Mark Chalmers. The History of the Standard Oil Company. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
* Wall, Bennett H. Growth in a Changing Environment: A History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) 1950-1972 and Exxon Corporation (1972-1975). New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1988.
* Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil"

Categories: Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange | Dow Jones Industrial Average | 1882 establishments | Climate change organizations | Companies based in Texas | Energy companies of the United States | ExxonMobil | Multinational companies | National Medal of Arts recipients | Oil companies of the United States | Fortune 1000 | Forbes Global 2000

$1000 Prize from Me to Whoever Guesses Bin Laden's Hiding-place

2006-04-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

It's my contest, so I get the first guess:

Waziristan: Bin Laden's hiding place?

By Rahimullah Yusufzai
BBC correspondent in Peshawar

There is growing world attention on the remote Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan as efforts continue to locate Osama Bin Laden and other key al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects.

However, so far no senior al-Qaeda or Taleban figure has been caught in this semi-autonomous area where the Pakistani army beefed up its presence after the US intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan in October, 2001.

There are persistent reports that sympathetic Pashtun tribesmen in the area are providing fugitives with shelter and support.

In the latest government move to pin them down, the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe was fined $95,000 under a local law of collective responsibility.

...
Homes demolished

Pakistan has pursued the classic carrot and stick approach in its seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), including South Waziristan, in a bid to seek tribal support for the US-led war on terrorism.

A record number of development projects, some funded by the US, have been initiated in the under-developed tribal region to improve education, health and communication facilities.

But tribes that refuse to cooperate have been punished with the demolition of homes, sealing of shops and business, seizure of vehicles and dismissals from government jobs.

Tribal elders have already delivered 60 out of 123 tribesmen on a wanted list accused of sheltering suspects. They have promised to step up efforts to surrender the rest.

The strategy of the authorities seems to revolve around interrogating the suspects and locating al-Qaeda and Taleban fugitives through information provided by them.

Read more here...

Guess #2: Tajikistan

TAJIKISTAN DAILY DIGEST
Home > Daily News > Tajikistan
From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Mon Jul 23 2001 - 15:09:33 EDT

RUSSIA BLAMES MURDER OF TAJIK PRESIDENT'S ADVISER ON BIN
LADEN

The murder last week in Dushanbe of President Imomali
Rakhmonov's foreign policy adviser Karim Yuldashev was committed on orders from
Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden with the aim of
destabilizing the situation within Tajikistan, an unnamed
senior Russian military official based in Tajikistan told
Interfax on 20 July. He said the murder was discussed and
planned at a meeting in Pakistan last month. He added that
bin Laden has allocated $1 million for subversive activities
in Tajikistan. It is not clear whether he offered any
evidence to substantiate those claims. LF

"A Spy Speaks Out"--Video of CIA Agent on 60 Minutes

2006-04-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

Watch a CIA agent on 60 Minutes who claims that Bush fixed intelligence around the policy to go to war with Iraq.

The Gnostic Society's Web Lecture on The Gospel of Judas-

2006-04-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

Click here to hear audio lecture from The Gnosis Archive.

CIA Agent Claims that Bush Administration Ignored Intel Which Conflicted with Iraq WMD claim

2006-04-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

Read the story here...

Lawyer: Rice Allegedly Leaked Defense Info

2006-04-21T18:52:00.000-07:00

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's lawyer said Friday.

Prosecutors disputed the claim.

The allegations against Rice came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas sought by the defense for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. The two are former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged with receiving and disclosing national defense information.

Defense lawyers are asking a judge to dismiss the charges because, among other things, they believe it seeks to criminalize the type of backchannel exchanges between government officials, lobbyists and the press that are part and parcel of how Washington works...

For full article, click here.

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
The Associated Press
Friday, April 21, 2006; 9:37 PM

The Worst President in History? One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush

2006-04-21T17:24:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history...

Read the full Rolling Stone Article here...

Abbas traveling to Jordan to mediate dispute with Hamas

2006-04-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

By Haaretz Service

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was to travel to Jordan on Friday to mediate a dispute between Amman and the Hamas government, Army Radio reported.

The Jordanian government announced Tuesday the cancellation of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar's visit to Jordan. The Jordanian authorities said Hamas operatives smuggled materiel into Jordan to carry out terrorist attacks.

Hamas countered by accusing Jordan of "capitulation" to Israeli-American pressure following the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Monday...

Click here for full story...

Interview with Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta

2006-04-21T17:01:00.000-07:00

Click here to hear an interview with Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta.

Click here for some audio clips.

Neil Young Speaks Out Against the President

2006-04-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

Click here to watch video clip.

William Donohue unleashed gay, black, Jewish stereotypes while speaking out against The Da Vinci Code

2006-04-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, William Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, argued that Christians are under attack by eight popular books, including Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Donohue asserted that Christians have every right to be offended by books that are "hypercritical" of Christianity, just as other groups would be offended by a book that claimed that "blacks are natural-born killers, or that gays are naturally born to be moral slugs, or that Jews are taking over the world."

For full article and video clip, click here.

Video Clip

Trouble viewing clip? Download:
QT |
WMV

Bombing in Tel-Aviv

2006-04-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

A young Palestinian blew himself up at a falafel stand near the old bus station in Tel-Aviv on Monday killing 9 civilians.
Click here for full story.

Leak Flap Seen Aiding Lobbyists' Case

2006-04-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Bush Role May Shift Trial That Hinges on Secrecy
Steve Rosen

By MARC PERELMAN
April 14, 2006

Allegations that President Bush authorized the leaking of controversial data on Iraqi weapons could bolster the defense of the two former staffers of the pro-Israel lobby charged with receiving and disclosing classified national defense information, legal experts said.

Keith Weissman
In court filings last week, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asserted that I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, had testified that he leaked intelligence information regarding Saddam Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction to a New York Times reporter in July 2003, after receiving permission from his superiors. According to Fitzgerald's filings, Libby said that he leaked the information on orders from Cheney, who stated that he himself had received authorization from Bush....

for full story, click here...

NY Times Editorial on Bush's Leak

2006-04-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

A Bad Leak

Published: April 16, 2006

President Bush says he declassified portions of the prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq because he "wanted people to see the truth" about Iraq's weapons programs and to understand why he kept accusing Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons that turned out not to exist. This would be a noble sentiment if it actually bore any relationship to Mr. Bush's actions in this case, or his overall record...

For full article, click here.

Are we Already at War with Iran?

2006-04-15T20:01:00.000-07:00

Retired colonel claims U.S. military operations are already 'underway' in Iran

During an interview on CNN Friday night, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations are already 'underway' inside Iran, RAW STORY has found.

Click here to read the remainder of the Raw Story article...

Click here for video clip...

English Translation of Chad Gadya of Alberstein on Ritual Well

2006-04-15T01:37:00.000-07:00

This sad song about the cycle of violence was traditional for passover, but re-written by Chava Alberstein and translated by Juliet Spitzer for Ritualwell.org:

Click here to listen to the song on Windows Media...

U.N. AGENCY CONFIRMS GAY IRAQIS TARGETED FOR KIDNAPPING AND MURDER

2006-04-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

A report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has confirmed that gay Iraqis have been targeted for kidnapping and Gcn_cover_iraq murder because of their sexual orientation, as I earlier reported for Gay City News. (Right, my original March 23 GCN cover story on the Iraqi anti-gay death squads).

This U.N. report, released April 10 by the UNOCHA‘s IRIN news and information service, described the widespread increase in kidnappings for ransom and the subsequent killings of university professors and teachers—350 in the past five months alone—and quoted Iraqi Interior Ministry official Ra’ad Hassan as saying that “roughly 50 kidnappings take place countrywide every day.”

Hassan also told the U.N. office, “Since January, the number of kidnappings has increased unabated, along with attacks and threats against certain communities.”

.... for full article, click here.

New JTS head favors gay rabbis, but calls halachah ‘non-negotiable’ (JTA News)

2006-04-11T13:12:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK, April 11 (JTA) — In his first interview with the U.S. Jewish media after being named the next chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Arnold Eisen told JTA he favors allowing gays and lesbians to become Conservative rabbis.

“My personal opinion is that I would like to see these processes end up with the ordination of gays and lesbians,” he said. “But I might be outvoted.”

The Conservative movement in recent years has been roiled by this hot-button issue. The movement’s central halachic authority, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, has debated the issue at length and has scheduled a vote for December.

Still, Eisen said, despite pressures to resolve the issue,...

For full article, click here.
By Chanan Tigay
April 11, 2006

British Empire blamed for modern conflicts (2002 Jack Straw's comments)

2006-04-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

See how in 2002 Jack Straw admitted that many of the problems in the world todat were caused by British Imperialism:

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw listens to the Queen's speech
Jack Straw said serious mistakes had been made
The UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has blamed Britain's imperial past for many of the modern political problems, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Kashmir dispute.

"A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now - I have to deal with now - are a consequence of our colonial past," he said.

The Balfour declaration... again, an interesting history for us, but not an honourable one

Jack Straw

In an interview with a British magazine, the New Statesman, Mr Straw spoke of quite serious mistakes made, especially during the last decades of the empire.
He said the Balfour Declaration of 1917 - in which Britain pledged support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine - and the contradictory assurances given to Palestinians, were not entirely honourable.

"The Balfour declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis - again, an interesting history for us, but not an honourable one," he said.

The odd lines for Iraq's borders were drawn by Brits

Jack Straw

Mr Straw acknowledged "some quite serious mistakes" in India and Pakistan, jewels of the British empire before their 1947 independence, as well as Britain's "less than glorious role" in Afghanistan.

'Odd' borders

Mr Straw blamed many territorial disputes on the illogical borders created by colonial powers.

He mentioned Iraq, the region which was governed by Britain under the mandate of the League of Nations after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

"The odd lines for Iraq's borders were drawn by Brits," he said.

And he said the British Government had been complacent about Kashmir at the time of Indian independence, when it quickly became the most contentious issue between India and Pakistan.

'Sensible statement'

This is not the first time Mr Straw has made controversial remarks about British history.

In the past he has blamed the English of oppressing the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh.

Jack Straw with Yasser Arafat
Mr Straw said British colonial past was less than honourable
Members of the main opposition Conservative Party accused Mr Straw of undermining British foreign policy, particularly in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe has justified his campaign against white farmers as a way of righting the wrongs of colonialism.

But Downing Street said Mr Straw's remarks were "a sensible statement of history".

Unusual

BBC's Diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason says that Mr Straw's critical remarks about British colonialism would be unsurprising coming from virtually anyone else.

Such views have been commonplace across the world and among left-wingers in Britain.

Our correspondent said 30 years ago, Mr Straw used to be an outspoken left winger himself.

British Foreign Office
New Statesman

Click here....

Hasidic Mob Confronts Police After Arrest Of Elderly Man

2006-04-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

An angry mob of Hasidic Jews confronted police outside a Brooklyn station house Tuesday night after officers arrested an elderly Hasidic man.

Hundreds of Borough Park residents rushed the 66th precinct station house chanting "No justice, no peace" to protest what witnesses say was the rough treatment of an Hasidic business-owner by police.

Two garbage fires were set during the melee, which stretched for several blocks and closed numerous streets. Police, however, were able to contain the crowd by 9:30 p.m. and no injuries were reported.

Police sources say the protest was sparked after officers approached 75-year-old Arthur Schick, who was talking on his cellphone while double-parked in front of his family-owned bakery on 16th Avenue at around 6:30 p.m.

When police attempted to handcuff Schick, two other Hasidic men tried to step in. A crowd then formed, and the scene quickly grew unruly.

Protesters threw garbage and hundreds of residents blocked the street around Shick's Bakery.

Community witnesses say the melee started because police dragged Schick from his car, roughly put him into a police van, and twice slammed the door on his leg.

Witnesses say Schick is a respected businessman who may not have immediately complied with police because he is hard of hearing.

"We saw him being pushed by the police against the car, then they grabbed his hand and put him into an arm-lock and violently manhandled him," said Sariel Widawski. "This is a very busy day in Borough Park – we're all preparing for the Passover holiday – and everybody was a witness to it. They started screaming at the police to leave the old man alone, but they kept on manhandling him and refused to stop."

The heavily-Hasidic neighborhood has been the scene of tension between residents and authorities in the past. In 1978, more than 60 police officers were injured when a group of Hasidim stormed the 66th precinct house after an Hasidic man was fatally stabbed by a street robber.

See here how NYPD officers off duty went on an anti-Jewish rant...

For example, an NYPD officer posted this:

"What a load of sh!t.

Once again these smelly savages riot and the ball-less pussies in charge of this job back down.

I'll bet Espo got a few calls tonight.

Thank God I don't work in Brooklyn."

See what a "Jewish blogger" has to say about the fact that the NYPD has anti-Jewish folks:

"...And I can’t tell you how many people have been sending me links to the NYPD rant board discussion, to complain about the barely-present anti-semitism there from perhaps two or three NYPD officers. Again, you’d have to lack all sense of proportional response to complain about this...."

Orthomom.blogspot.com feels otherwise (click here)...

Letter from Gershon Kekst on Choice of Arnold Eisen for Chancellor of JTS

2006-04-10T17:43:00.000-07:00

[Dr. Arnold Eisen]
April 10, 2006

I am delighted to announce that Professor Arnold M. Eisen has been
elected to serve as the seventh Chancellor of The Jewish Theological
Seminary.

He is an extraordinary individual and, I believe, uniquely qualified
to lead JTS at this important time in the history of Conservative
Judaism and the American Jewish community.

Prof. Eisen is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and
Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion at Stanford
University. He is one of the world's foremost experts in
American Judaism. For the past twenty years, he has worked closely
with synagogue and federation leadership around the country in
analyzing and addressing the challenging issues of Jewish identity,
the revitalization of Jewish tradition and the redefinition of the
American Jewish community.

He is a strong advocate of JTS as the premier center of scholarship in
the Jewish world and hopes to bring that scholarship to bear on the
pressing issues of the day. He is also passionate about making Israel
a greater part of American Jewish life.

He received a PhD in the History of Jewish Thought from The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem; a BPhil in the Sociology of Religion at
Oxford University; and a BA in Religious Thought from the University
of Pennsylvania. His many publications include a personal essay,
Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America
(1997), Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community
(1998), and The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America
(2000), co-authored with sociologist Steven M. Cohen (2000). Previous
positions include Senior Lecturer in the Department of Jewish
Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and Assistant Professor in the
Department of Religion at Columbia University.

He will serve as Chancellor-Designate effective July 1. As he
fulfills his commitments to Stanford during the coming year of
transition, he will engage with JTS students, faculty, staff and
donors to fully understand our opportunities and challenges.

There is no doubt that the days and years ahead will be exciting,
demanding and inspiring. I am confident that Prof. Eisen is the right
person at the right time. His vision and energetic leadership
will help to assure the vibrancy of JTS, the Conservative Movement and
the Jewish people.

I look forward to your having the opportunity to meet him. In the mean
time, my best to you and your loved ones for a Chag Kasher
V'Sameach.

Hypocrisy of Bush's Statements on Leaks (Video)

2006-04-10T00:57:00.000-07:00

Click here for a video recounting some of Bush and co.'s hypocritical statements about leaks.

Joseph Wilson Interview with George Stephanopoulos

2006-04-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

Watch Joseph Wilson speak about the leak of his wife's name to George Stephanopoulos (click here)(Windows Media format.)
What he didn't say is that his wife worked on Iran WMD intelligence, and the leak of her name was a major blow to national security. He also didn't say where the forged documents that the British used to bolster the case for urianum to Hussein from Niger came from...(read more)

The Anti-War Movement?

2006-04-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Sheehan

04/07/06 -- Being a so-called anti-war movement leader (at least to the MSM), brings much responsibility and so much love for the people and the groups who are working hard to end this insane occupation, but is this enough?

Recently, a blog written by an aquaintance, Scott Ritter, on AlterNet was called to my attention, where Scott, who is a self-proclaimed Republican, conservative who courageously opposed this war from the beginning, is predicting the eminent demise of the anti-war movement.

At first, I was highly offended and defensive at what I thought was Scott's arrogant attack on the movement that I am so intimately and overwhelmingly involved in. But then after my knee-jerk reaction, I realized that for all of the wrong reasons, Scott was partially correct.

The anti-war movement is not on the "verge of collapse" because we are not organized, or because we don't take a "warriors" view of attacking the neocons and the war machine using the tactics of Napoleon, or Sun Tzu—but because the two-thirds of Americans who philosophically agree that the war is wrong, BushCo lied, and the troops should come home, will not get off of their collective, complacent, and comfortable behinds to demonstrate their dissent with our government. Some, like Casey and almost 2400 other Americans and their families give all, while some, like the people of Iraq, have everything stolen from them by unlawful war; some, like myself, give a lot; some give some, by writing letters, attending an occasional vigil or march; but the majority of Americans give nothing—except an occasional vote, which we all know counts practically for nothing with our electoral process being so corrupted and almost rendered meaningless by paperless voting machine, no instant run-offs, and exploitation of the religious right by such contrived issues as gay marriage and teaching evolution in our public schools...

For full article, click here.

Jewish scholar's books disturbs pro-Israel circles in US

2006-04-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

The book by an American Jew critical of the founding fathers of the Zionist regime has caused fiery reactions among the supporters of Tel Aviv in the United States.

In his work "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two People" Ilan Pappe narrates the Palestinian view on the occupation and the Middle East conflict.

"My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the 'truth' when reconstructing past realities. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers," the author explains in the introduction to A History of Modern Palestine.

Pappe also regards Zionism and Israeli history "more than a century of colonization, occupation, and dispossession of
Palestinians."
In his doctoral dissertation, subsequently published as Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-51 in 1988, the author had also tried to explain the Palestinians view of the formation of Israel.

In his recent book, he refers to Herzl's attempts to "enlist British help in installing a temporary Jewish state in British Uganda."
According to Pappe, this offer was "seriously considered by some in Whitehall." However it was foiled by Weizmann who suggested the occupation of Palestine instead.

Those who support Israel are angered by the publication of the book.

A case in point is a critical review by Efraim Karsh director of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at King's College, University of London, and editor of the quarterly journal Israel Affairs.

Karsh is the author of Arafat's War: the Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest in 2003.

In a review recently published in The Middle East Quarterly, Karsh accuses Pappe of "distorting" the history and "subscribing to a relativist view of history and repeating the Arabs' cliches concerning the being victims of foreign invasion".

In criticising Pappe's account, Karsh reveals that it was British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, not Herzl, who conceived of the East Africa idea.

Karsh said that the "Uganda Plan", contrary to what Pappe says, narrowly passed by last Zionist Congress in 1903 but was buried after Herzl's death in July 1904.

Trying to cast doubt on the accuracy of Pappe's account, he asks, "Does Pappe count on the ignorance of the general reader to accept it? Does he expect his peers to give him a pass?"
The editor of Israel Affairs goes on to claim that publication of books such as the one by Pappe "symbolizes the crisis in Middle East studies."

London, April 9, Iranian News Agency.

Sources Say that Plame was working on Iran's WMD at the CIA

2006-04-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

Click here for story...

New Conservative Movement Chancellor?

2006-04-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

JTS To Select Eisen as Chancellor?

Two sources familiar with the search for the next chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America told the Forward that the choice will be Stanford University professor Arnold Eisen, a leading expert on Jewish identity.

Eisen, a professor of religious studies, has written a number of books on the future of American Judaism, including the 2000 book “The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America,” which was co-written with Steven Cohen, an associate professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The book used survey data to argue that American Jews increasingly see religious identity as an individual matter, and opt to craft their own religious practices and identities, rather than depend on rabbinic authorities...

For full article, click here...

By Jennifer Siegel
April 7, 2006

Eisen on Mordecai Kaplan's Judaism as a Civilization

Eisen on "Rebuilding Jewish Communities."

Eisen on Myjewishlearning.com on chosenness...

Lost Gospel of Judas Released

2006-04-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

Click here for more information...

Click here for video lecture from National Geographic Society...

Click here for NPR audio program.

read an interesting perspective on the new gospel by clicking here.

Libby Testifies that it was Bush who authorized leak

2006-04-06T19:36:00.001-07:00

A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case, THE NEW YORK SUN reports Thursday...

Click here.

by RAW STORY
Published: Thursday April 6, 2006

or listen on NPR.org

or read the original by Patrick Fitzgerald.

Bush's Prewar Putin Strategy

2006-04-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

Check out this article by David Corn (April 5, 2006)of The Nation...

David Corn discusses a lesser-known passage in the recently disclosed "Manning Memo" of the 31 January 2003 Bush-Blair war discussion. It was George Bush's idea to have Silvio Berlusconi convince Vladimir Putin of the necessity of the Iraq war by lecturing him on free-market economics.

Copyright © 2006 David Corn - The Nation
[republished t PEJ News with permission of Agence Global]

It was January 31, 2003. George W. Bush was moving toward war in Iraq, and he was meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the Oval Office to discuss various war-related matters.

Last week, The New York Times disclosed portions of a secret memo -- written by Blair's senior foreign policy adviser, David Manning -- that summarized what the two leaders covered at this session, which Manning also attended. Blair, according to the memo, wanted Bush to fight for a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein. Bush agreed to try for such a resolution, but he told Blair that the start date for the war, win or lose at the UN, would be March 10. Bush also proposed provoking a confrontation with Saddam's regime that would justify attacking Iraq.

The pair chatted about postwar Iraq, agreeing that sectarian violence was unlikely.

And according to a previously undisclosed portion of this memo -- a passage obtained by The Nation -- Bush and Blair discussed what to do about Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was opposed to a war in Iraq...

for remainder of article , click above.

Remaining Cochin Jews Celebrate Passover

2006-04-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

In Picture: Cochin Synagogue

Visitors by the thousands come to the 550-year-old Paradesi Synagogue to marvel at its chandeliers, four-century-old floor tiles and other furnishings.

Possibly a last hurrah for the tiny Jewish community of Cochin is the first-night seder to be held next Wednesday in the home of Queenie Hallegua on Synagogue Lane in Jewtown.

Now numbering less than a dozen elderly members, the dwindling community will celebrate the festival of deliverance as it has done for perhaps 2,000 years, since the first Jewish settlers landed here in southern India upon the destruction of the Second Temple in 72 C.E. Such dates are shrouded in legend, as are the cherished reports that the merchant ships of King Solomon traded goods with merchants from this part of India as early as the sixth century BCE.

Cochin is a small town in Kerala, India’s southern province on the coast of the Ara
bian Sea, and Hallegua is a descendant of the Sephardic families who eventually landed in that town and others in the province after their expulsion from Spain.

Click here for full story....

Click here for more information on Cochin Jews....

Gabe Levenson - Travel Writer

White House gets new Jewish community liaison

2006-04-06T02:16:00.003-07:00

Pictured in photo: Zeidman and father.

Zeidman, 22, was named White House liaison to the Jewish community last month, and has been tasked with selling Bush administration policies to Jews at a time when the president's approval ratings are at historic lows.

Zeidman's father, Fred, chairs the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and is a fund-raiser for President George W. Bush in the Jewish community. The younger Zeidman said he attended a lot of meetings with his father for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Anti-Defamation League in Houston, and walked away with strong support for Israel and political activism.

"I've found the community to be quite receptive to our agenda, both domestic and foreign," he said. "They are willing to listen."

Zeidman replaces Jeffrey Berkowitz, an associate director of scheduling at the White House, who tried to balance both tasks for a year. Zeidman is a staffer at the White House Office of Public Liaison, and officials said he will have more time to devote to working with Jewish leaders, considered a full-time job in itself.

Zeidman is the fifth liaison to the Jewish community since Bush came to office in 2001.

Click here for whole story...

by Matthew E. Berger

JTA News and Features

or click here for another version...

A new White House liaison
The son of the chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has been chosen as the new White House liaison to the Jewish community.

Jay Zeidman, 22, has been working in the White House Office of Public Liaison since last summer, and will be taking over the Jewish portfolio, sources told JTA.

He coordinated a meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House last week. Jeffrey Berkowitz, who became the White House Jewish liaison last year, will now focus on his main job in the presidential scheduling office.

Zeidman´s father is Fred Zeidman, a Houston friend of President Bush who was named chairman of the museum in 2002 and led fund raising in the Jewish community for Bush´s re-election.

Jay Zeidman was the first Jewish student body president at Texas Christian University.

What do you think? Is this the best they could find--a 22 year old guy from Texas? How about a Jewish leader?

Israel's Supreme Court To Hear Gay Marriage Case

2006-04-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

(Jerusalem) The Supreme Court of Israel announced Wednesday that it will hear an appeal by five same-sex couples married in Canada who want those marriages recognized at home.

Oral arguments in the case will be heard May 28th.

In a rare move the court said the case will be heard by seven justices. Usually only three justices hear arguments in cases brought before the high court.

A decision could take months or possibly more than a year, Onn Stock, one of the lawyers involved in the case told 365Gay.com.

"Of course we hope it will not take too long for the decision, but regardless of the time period, we hope for a successful outcome," stock said.

He said he will argue that even though same-sex marriage is not permitted in Israel legal marriages performed outside the country should be recognized in the Jewish state.

For the remainder of the article, click here.

by Malcolm Thornberry, 365Gay.com European Bureau Chief

The Sinner Cannot Hold

2006-04-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

And then there is Tom DeLay. The erstwhile "Hammer" crumbled faster than last year's Afikomen. Lost in the political maneuvering of the DeLay disintegration is the real wreckage the Hammer has left in his wake.

Back in April, decidedly non-blogospheric ABC News reported that the former House Majority Goniff told his hosts from the Pacific-rim Northern Mariana Islands, “You represent everything that is good about what we're trying to do in America.” If you’ve never heard of the Mariana Islands, you’re not alone. A territory of the United States since World War II, the tiny islands are loved by apparel manufacturers – who’d just as soon you’d never heard of them – because garments produced there are allowed to display the coveted "Made in the USA" label.

A House resolution, which would have investigated working conditions in the Marianas, was stopped, nearly single-handedly, by Tom DeLay. Despite the fact that workers there are paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and forced to live in barbed wire labor camps without plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week. Despite the fact that many of the immigrants enticed to the islands with the promise of jobs are forced into prostitution. Despite the fact that, according to Tu Xiao Mei, "When I told them I was pregnant, they told me to have an abortion,” a condition for continued employment.

So much for the “culture of life.”

Even more tragic than the brutal beating the Constitution took under DeLay's leadership, even more tragic than the blatant vote-selling, are the faceless victims of DeLay's policies -- nameless numbers paying in blood for right-wing misery and cynicism.

May DeLay and Abramoff enjoy their time-share in Gehinnom.

On trip to Russia, Tehran Jews insist there’s a Jewish future in Iran

2006-04-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

MOSCOW, April 3 (JTA) — Russian Jewish organizers of a trip for 15 Iranian Jewish women in Russia say they hope the trip will launch contacts between the two communities.

“We have not had any contacts with Iranian Jews,” said Adolph Shayevich, one of Russia’s two chief rabbis. “We have heard various rumors lately, that there is no Jewish community in Iran, that things are bad for Jews there. We are happy to see it for ourselves that this isn’t the whole truth.”

The group is a 15-member women’s amateur folk dance group that came to Moscow last week to take part in the Light a Candle Jewish children’s arts festival.

The trip was a rare group visit abroad by Iranian Jews, who live...

Click here to continue...
or Click here.

Jewish groups protest budget

2006-04-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

Jewish groups wrote members of the U.S. Congress to protest a budget bill likely to pass this week.

“The budget plan passed out of the House Budget Committee would make huge cuts to domestic discretionary programs,” says the letter signed by the United Jewish Communities, the federation system’s umbrella group; the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for Jewish community relations councils and national Jewish groups; the Reform movement; the National Council of Jewish Women; and B’nai B’rith International. “These cuts would be extremely harmful both to our social service agencies that are dependent on public funding as well as the vulnerable populations we advocate on behalf of,” the letter said...

Click here for remainder of article.

Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Metzger Asked to Resign by Menachem Mazuz

2006-04-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger should resign, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said yesterday. If he does not, Mazuz will recommend that the justice minister begin proceedings to remove him from his post. Mazuz's decision followed his investigation into Metzger's alleged receipt of perks in the form of Jerusalem hotel accommodation, and other affairs in which Metzger was involved. Mazuz called Metzger's behavior "unsuitable" for a chief rabbi.

By Yuval Yoaz of Haaretz

Click here to read full story.

Horowitz and Friends Strike Again, and Again, and Again....

2006-04-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

University professors denounced for anti-Americanism; schoolteachers suspended for their politics; students encouraged to report on their tutors. Are US campuses in the grip of a witch-hunt of progressives, or is academic life just too liberal?

For full story, click here.

By Gary Younge

Libby lawyers finger top State Dept. leaders for CIA leak

2006-04-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

Attorneys for former Vice President Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby say one of three senior State Department officials was the source of a leak that exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame.

They say the officials are: former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman.

For full story, click here.

Feingold Declares he is in Favor of Gay Marriage

2006-04-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

United States Senator Russ Feingold this week indicated that he not only opposes a constitutional amendment in Wisconsin to ban gay marriage and civil unions, but in fact, favors full marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples...

For full story, click here.

by RAW STORY

Abramoff and Sudan?!

2006-04-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Abramoff Offered to Aid Sudan, Envoy Says

The former lobbyist sought millions to help the sanctioned nation clean up its image, the country's ambassador and an ex-associate say.

WASHINGTON — Two eyewitnesses say that former lobbyist Jack Abramoff proposed to sell his services to the much-criticized government of Sudan to help improve its abysmal reputation in the United States, especially among Christian evangelicals who were campaigning against human rights violations in the troubled African nation.

Khidir Haroun Ahmed, Sudan's ambassador to the United States, said in an interview that Abramoff proposed a multimillion-dollar lobbying contract in late 2001 but that the proposal was "never seriously considered" by the Sudanese. He declined to elaborate....

For full story, click here.

By Tom Hamburger and Ken Silverstein, Times Staff Writers
April 4, 2006

AIPAC Trial: First Amendment Issues Raised About Espionage Act

2006-04-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

The federal judge overseeing prosecution of two former lobbyists charged with receiving and transmitting national defense information under the 1917 Espionage Act has given the government until today to respond to defense claims that the statute is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad and may violate the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III ordered the government to provide the additional support for the charges filed last August against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The two were accused of receiving classified information during conversations with government officials, one of whom, then-Pentagon employee Lawrence A. Franklin, warned Weissman that the information he was giving was highly classified.

At a hearing last Friday on the defendants' motion to dismiss the indictments, Ellis directed a series of questions to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin DiGregory expressing concern that the government had not dealt with constitutional issues raised by the defense.

"I didn't find your response in writing to match up with the fairly extensive attack by the defendants . . . so I am going to have further briefing," Ellis said. Last January, at the hearing where he sentenced Franklin to 12 years for passing classified information to the two lobbyists, Ellis called attention to the imprecise nature of the almost 90-year-old statute that restricts disclosure of "national defense information" that could harm U.S. interests or help enemies....

For remainder of story click here...

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 31, 2006; A06

Forbes Israel: 12 groups run economy

2006-04-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

Twelve business groups control the Israeli economy, making it one of the most concentrated in the world, Forbes Israel said in a report published Sunday.

The groups - controlled by Sami Ofer, Nochi Dankner, Shari Arison, the Cerberus-Gabriel consortium, Charles Bronfman, Yitzchak Tshuva, the Saban group, Lev Leviev, Matthew Bronfman, Tzadik Bino, the Borovich family, and Eliezer Fishman - have each put together empires of the largest companies in Israel, using organizational structures that have since been eliminated in other parts of the Western world, the report said.

"This is an economy in which the banks can control whole corporations and where the country is afraid of its capital holders," said Ben-Gurion University professor Daniel Maman.

These 12 groups own 60 percent of the aggregate market value of all Israeli public companies (when the exceptionally-large Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is excluded), with shares valued at some NIS 200 billion, Forbes Israel showed.

The groups achieved their control by structuring their holdings like pyramids, such that the top-level holding company controls different groups of companies through descending layers of ownership....

By ZEV STUB of the Jerusalem Post

Click here for remainder of story...

U.S. televangelist to launch Christian pro-Israel lobby

2006-04-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK - Televangelist John Hagee told Jewish community leaders over the weekend that the 40 million evangelical Christians in the United States support Israel and that he plans to utilize this power to help Israel by launching a Christian pro-Israel lobby.

The lobby, called Christians United for Israel, is slated to launch in July, during a Washington conference in which hundreds of American evangelicals are slated to participate, Hagee said at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which represents 52 national Jewish groups. He also discussed the lobby with Israel's consul general in New York, Aryeh Mekel.

Hagee said his group would be a Christian - and more powerful - version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a large pro-Israel lobby, and would target senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill. A quarter of congressmen are evangelicals, and many American legislators represent regions that include a large evangelical population, he said.

Click here for the remainder of the article...

By Shlomo Shamir

Fischer to Hamas: Recognize the Jewish state

2006-04-02T18:27:00.000-07:00

Stanley Fischer, Israel's central bank chief on Sunday offered a simple solution for the Western dilemma on how to send aid to the Palestinians without supporting the new Hamas government: They should recognize Israel and stop violence.

Fischer, who moved to Israel to take over governorship of the Bank of Israel last year, also said he understands the government's decision to suspend the tax transfers to the Palestinians.

"It's kind of awkward to start transferring money to a government that doesn't recognize your right to exist," he told reporters.

Fischer said "the whole world is trying to find a way to get to the issue of how can you help Palestinians with humanitarian aid without supporting the Hamas government. That's very difficult."

He said non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies could provide a partial solution.

"Beyond that, it starts getting very complicated," he said. "Of course, the easiest way to deal with it is for Hamas to change its stand."

Click here.

Hamas PM orders gunmen off streets after clashes

2006-04-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

GAZA - Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday ordered all gunmen and security forces involved in deadly clashes in the Gaza Strip to get off the streets.

Gunbattles between police and militants on Friday, during which three people died, posed a major challenge for Islamist militant group Hamas days after it took over running the Palestinian government...

For full story, click here.

Click here for more coverage of this story.

Zarqawi replaced at head of Iraq resistance

2006-04-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

(Zarqawi in an undated photo)

AMMAN - Iraq’s resistance has replaced Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as political head of the rebels, confining him to a military role, the son of Osama bin Laden’s mentor told AFP on Sunday in Jordan.

“The Iraqi resistance’s high command asked Zarqawi to give up his political role and replaced him with an Iraqi, because of several mistakes he made,” said Hudayf Azzam, who claims close contacts with the rebels.

“Zarqawi’s role has been limited to military action,” said Azzam, whose late father Abdullah Azzam was the mentor of Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda boss.

“Zarqawi bowed to the orders two weeks ago and was replaced by Iraqi national Abdullah bin Rashed Al Baghdadi,” Azzam said.

Azzam, 35, whose father was known as the “prince of mujahedeens”, said he regularly receives “credible information on the resistance in Iraq”.

He said Zarqawi “made many political mistakes”, including “the creation of an independent organisation, Al Qaeda in Iraq”.

“Zarqawi also took the liberty of speaking in the name of the Iraqi people and resistance, a role which belongs only to the Iraqis,” Azzam said.

As a result “the resistance command inside and outside Iraq, including imams, criticised him and after long discussions demanded that he be confined to military action”, Azzam said.

“Zarqawi pledged not to carry out any more attacks against Iraq’s neighbours after having been criticised for these operations which are considered a violation of Shariah (Islamic law),” Azzam said.

Most wanted man

Zarqawi is Iraq’s most-wanted man with a 25-million dollar US bounty on his head. The feared Islamist militant is accused of masterminding a large part of the Iraqi insurgency including some of its most gruesome attacks and hostage beheadings.

He has been sentenced to death three times in Jordan for the murder of a US diplomat in 2002 and two conspiracy plots. He has also claimed several attacks on the country, including hotel suicide bombings in November that killed 60 people.

Nevertheless, the Amman-based Azzam insisted that Zarqawi remains strong on the ground.

“He is stronger than before on the battlefield and the resistance has profited from his military experience,” he said.

“Five organisations have rallied around Zarqawi: the Mujahedeen Army, Ansar Al Islam (also known as Ansar Al Sunna), the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Iraq, Al Tawid Wal Hujra and Revolution 20 Brigades,” he said.

The joint US-Iraqi operation launched in mid-March around Samarra, north of Baghdad, aimed at “dismantling these five groups,” Azzam said.

General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, said at the time that the offensive targeted Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups in Samarra.

“Generally it’s linked to the notion that in that vicinity where they’re operating that there are some hard Al Qaeda in Iraq nodes and some hard insurgent nodes that need to be dealt with,” Abizaid said.

Azzam also expected “several mistakes made in the past, such as some hostage-taking, not to occur again”.

Asked about the wave of abductions in Iraq targeting journalists, Azzam said: “Not all journalists are innocent”.

“The resistance is against the occupiers. It is a natural and legitimate right,” he said.

Azzam said that last week’s liberation of US hostage Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor journalist who was held in Iraq for 12 weeks, allowed the release from jail of “wives and sisters of resistance brothers”.

“When the American army cannot succeed in arresting resistance members, they arrest their wives or other members of their family,” Azzam said.

In 1984 bin Laden decided to leave his native Saudi Arabia for Afghanistan to follow Abdullah Azzam, who became his mentor.

Before being killed with two of his sons in a bomb attack against their car in Afghanistan in November 1989, Abdullah Azzam wrote a five-volume encyclopedia on jihad which has become the reference book for his Muslim followers.

Abdullah Azzam also founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories

For the entire article, click here.

NPR's 6 Degrees of Jack Abramoff

2006-04-01T21:43:00.000-08:00

Click here.

Neturei Karta Rabbis Support Iran

2006-04-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

(Neturei Karta rabbis meeting in Tehran)

Members of an orthodox Jewish sect have met top Iranian officials in Tehran to show support for the Iranian president's call for the destruction of Israel, reports say.

Leading rabbis of Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist group of ultra-Orthodox Jews who consider the existence of Israel an abomination, met with Gholamreza Aghazadeh, Iran's Vice President, the top-selling Yediot Aharonot reported.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the Jewish state "must be wiped off the map" or moved as far away as Alaska - comments that have provoked anger in the West and condemnation from the UN Security Council.

Rabbi Dovid Weiss, the group's spokesman, was quoted as supporting Ahmadinejad's call during an interview on Iranian television last week.

Although all of the rabbis who visited Iran live in either New York or London, there are some 400 Neturei Karta families living in Jerusalem who refuse to recognise Israel's authority.

'Wish for calm'

The Iranian Fars News Agency reports that the group said in a statement that Ahmadinejad's call for a "world free from Zionism ... is nothing more than wishing for a better world dominated by peace and calm."

"The issue of the Holocaust has to do with the Zionist use ... The Zionists are using this issue. We, the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, do not use the Holocaust as a tool for promoting our cause"

Rabbi Dovid Weiss
Neturei Karta
"This means a true hope for a peaceful life and coexistence between the Jewish and Muslim communities following the dismantlement of the Zionist regime," the group's statement added.

The group also said that it was "a dangerous deviation" to pretend that the Iranian president is an anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic personality since President Ahmadinejad, in fact, restated what the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini had frequently stated.

"That is, Zionism is different from Judaism and while the Zionist state of Israel must be disintegrated, the Jewish communities world wide and the religion of Judaism must be respected."

Holocaust

Following Ahmadinejad's claim that the Holocaust - the killing of an estimated six million Jews by the Nazis and their allies during World War II - was a myth used to justify the creation of Israel, the visiting rabbis agreed the mass killing had been hijacked by Zionists.

Weiss was quoted as saying: "The issue of the Holocaust has to do with the Zionist use ... The Zionists are using this issue. We, the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, do not use the Holocaust as a tool for promoting our cause."

"Neturei Karta are well known for their hatred towards Israel," Yediot Aharonot wrote, "but it seems that this time they have crossed the line."

For full article, click here.

by Aljazeera + Agencies

The Israel Lobby

2006-04-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

(John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt)

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.

Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.

This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.

Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America’s relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.

The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again.

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.

‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around....

by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

John Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and the author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Stephen Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His most recent book is Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy.

For remainder of the article, click here.

September Eleventh 2001 Video

2006-03-31T23:07:00.000-08:00

What do you think of this video--click here to watch?

Horowitz and Students for Academic Freedom are Schooled...

2006-03-31T22:43:00.000-08:00

Academic freedom not in jeopardy, SUNY trustees say

(March 17, 2006) — ALBANY — State University of New York trustees eschewed an "Academic Bill of Rights" being promoted to fight alleged liberal indoctrination in higher education, after a majority of college leaders and instructors told them Thursday such freedoms are not being suppressed.

Carl Wiezalis, president of the University Faculty Senate, said he has not seen evidence of discrimination against students or professors with different viewpoints. "I don't think we need to be lectured by outside agencies," he said.

He was referring to Students for Academic Freedom, a national group founded by David Horowitz, a conservative commentator. The group says the measure is needed across the country because the atmosphere at many schools doesn't encourage intellectual diversity. Liberal arts faculties are "politically and philosophically one-sided," according to the group's Web site. ...

Cara Matthews

For remainder of article click here.

Conservative Judaism and Gay Rights

2006-03-31T22:14:00.000-08:00

Moves to lift a ban on gay rabbis and marriages has come has proved a sticking point for the leaders of the American Conservative Judaism community convening in an annual meeting in Mexico City....

For whole story click here...

Lessons Learned from Jewish-Black Tensions

2006-03-31T18:40:00.000-08:00

Listen to the NPR program.

Kabbalah on NPR

2006-03-31T18:36:00.000-08:00

Click here to listen to programs on Kabbalah.

Feingold to Judiciary Committee: 'Under this theory... we have a monarchy'

2006-03-31T17:34:00.000-08:00

Statement of Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) to Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing On the Call to Censure the President:

Mr. Chairman, first, thank you for scheduling this hearing. I know you recognize that this is a serious issue, and I thank you for treating it as such. I want to welcome and thank our witnesses, some of whom – Mr. Fein, and Professor Turner -- were with us just a few weeks ago, and one of whom -- Mr. Dean -- last appeared before a congressional committee in 1974. I am grateful for your participation, particularly given the short notice that you were given of this hearing.

There is a time-honored way for matters to be considered in the Senate. Bills and resolutions are introduced, they are analyzed in the relevant committee through hearings, they are debated and amended and voted on in committee, and then they are debated on the floor. We have now started that process on this very important matter, and I look forward to seeing it through to a conclusion.

Mr. Chairman, I have looked closely at the statements you have made about the NSA program since the story broke in December. We have a disagreement about some things, but I am pleased to say we are in agreement on several others. We agree that the NSA program is inconsistent with FISA. We agree that the Authorization for Use of Military Force did not grant the President authority to engage in warrantless wiretapping of Americans on U.S. soil. We agree that the President was and remains required under the National Security Act of 1947 to inform the full Intelligence Committees of the NSA program, which he refuses to do.

Where we disagree, apparently, is whether the President’s authority under Article II of the Constitution allows him to authorize warrantless surveillance without complying with FISA. You have said you think this is a close question. I do not believe he has such authority and I don’t think it’s a close question. We will continue to debate that I’m sure. But I think the fact that you have proposed legislation on this program undermines your argument that such presidential authority exists. Because if it does exist, then nothing that we can legislate, no matter how carefully crafted, is worth a hill of beans. For starters, your proposed bill may or may not cover what the NSA is now doing. You and I have no way of knowing because we have not been fully briefed on the program, and I am a member of the Intelligence Committee as well. But regardless, if the President has the inherent authority to authorize whatever surveillance he thinks is necessary, then he surely will ignore your law, just as he has ignored FISA on many occasions.

If Congress doesn’t have the power to define the contours of the President’s Article II powers through legislation, then I have no idea why people are scrambling to draft legislation to authorize what they think the President is doing. If the President’s legal theory, which is shared by some of our witnesses today, is correct, then FISA is a dead letter, all of the supposed protections for civil liberties contained in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act that we just passed are a cruel hoax, and any future legislation we might pass regarding surveillance or national security is a waste of time and a charade. Under this theory, we no longer have a constitutional system consisting of three co-equal branches of government, we have a monarchy.

We can fight terrorism without breaking the law. The rule of law is central to who we are as a people, and the President must return to the law. He must acknowledge and be held accountable for his illegal actions and for misleading the American people, both before and after the program was revealed. If we in the Congress don’t stand up for ourselves and for the American people, we become complicit in his law breaking. A resolution of censure is the appropriate response – even a modest approach.

Mr. Chairman, the presence of John Dean here today should remind us that we must respond to this constitutional crisis based on principle, not partisanship. How we respond to the President’s actions will become part of our history. A little over 30 years ago, a President who broke the law was held to account by a bipartisan congressional investigation and by patriots like Archibald Cox and Elliot Richardson and yes, John Dean, who put loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law above the interests of the President who appointed them. None of us here can predict how history will view this current episode. But I hope that thirty years from now, this Senate will not be seen to have backed down in the face of such a grave challenge to our constitutional system.

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Mordechai Liebling Featured in Village Voice

2006-03-31T15:13:00.000-08:00

Rabbi Meets Genocide's General

Refugees fleeing . . . from a village called Saleya described how nine boys were seized by the janjaweed, stripped naked and tied up, their noses and ears cut off and their eyes gouged out. They were then shot dead and left near a public well. From the continuing reports from Darfur by Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

I have wondered what it would be like to be in the presence of Sudanese president General Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the apprentice Hitler of our time, who is responsible for the genocide in Darfur, which is very likely to surpass the Rwanda genocide in the number of slaughtered corpses. Rwanda's atrocities lasted less than a year, but Darfur's started in 2003, and in addition to the killings, more than 2 million black Africans have been displaced from their razed homes and villages.

Recently, however, I talked to an American rabbi who actually has been in the same room with the mass murderer Bashir, members of his cabinet, and other officials.

The rabbi is Mordechai Liebling, vice president for programs at the Jewish Fund for Justice. In June of last year, he was invited by the Muslim American Freedom Foundation to be part of an interfaith, interracial delegation of religious leaders to Sudan....

For full article, click here...

by Nat Hentoff

4 Killed in Suicide Bombing Outside Kedumim, Mofaz Blames Hamas Led PA

2006-03-31T12:16:00.000-08:00

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz blamed the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority on Friday for a suicide bombing the day before that killed four Israelis at the entrance to the settlement of Kedumim.

Mofaz has ordered the Israel Defense Forces and other security services to escalate their activities against terror in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The IDF tightened its closure on the nearby West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, in response to the attack....

For the remainder of the story, click here...

AIPAC trial delayed

2006-03-29T23:27:00.000-08:00

The judge in the classified-information case against two former AIPAC staffers delayed the trial for a month.

Judge T.S. Ellis III did not explain his order Monday postponing the trial from April 25 to May 23.

However, he also postponed his ruling on whether to dismiss the charges, which had been due Friday, until April 25.

In hearing arguments for dismissal last Friday, Ellis said the constitutional implications of the government’s charges against Steve Rosen, the former foreign policy director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s former Iran analyst, were weighty enough to merit serious consideration of the dismissal motion.

for the remainder of the article, click here.

Evangelicals Reconsider Bush's Drive In Mideast

2006-03-29T23:23:00.000-08:00

With support for President Bush already at record lows, some Christian conservative leaders say that they are reconsidering their support for the administration's push to democratize the Muslim world.

for full article, click here.

By Ori Nir

Watch Feingold's Censure Resolution

2006-03-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

In a brave move, Russell Feingold offered a censure resolution to hold the President accountable (click here).

European Jewish group to file complaint against Ahmadinejad in The Hague

2006-03-29T20:56:00.000-08:00

The European Jewish Congress is to file a complaint urging the International Criminal Court in The Hague to bring Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to trial for incitement to genocide.

According to informed sources, the EJC initiative was adopted by an extraordinary meeting of the EJC’s general assembly meeting Sunday in Vienna, Austria.

Austria currently holds the rotating European Union presidency.

The Iranian President, who was elected last year, made repeated statements in recent weeks in which he denied the Holocaust of six million Jews during WWII, calling it a “myth”, and said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”.....

For remainder of article, click here...

By Samuel Laster in Vienna

Rabbis and Imams call for peace in Spain

2006-03-29T20:54:00.000-08:00

The Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace, a four-day meeting in the southern Spanish city of Seville has called for an end to incitement and religious hatred. The final congress statement also condemned Iran’s call for Israel’s destruction.

The congress was organized by a Paris-based group called Hommes de Parole. It drew some 250 imams, rabbis and academics from 31 countries. The main aim of the congress was to assemble as many delegates as possible so each would have a better understanding of the other’s religion.

The congress was remarkable for the statement released at the end by the delegates. They said: "We condemn any incitement against a faith or people, let alone any call for their elimination, and we urge authorities to do likewise."

"United Nations of Religious Groups"

Yona Metzger, Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, felt the congress had been extremely conducive and called for a “United Nations of religious groups.” The congress was remarkable for the mostly friendly atmosphere that prevailed at the conference.

A rabbi from Brussels tried to convince a cleric from Indonesia that he was working hard to bring Jews and Muslims closer together in Belgium. The mufti of Britain offered a cup of coffee to the chief rabbi of Austria. An Al-Jazeera journalist took a picture of the chief rabbi of Israel, and an imam from Gaza tried his English out on a rabbi from London.

However, it wasn’t all plain sailing at the congress and politics and anger did sometimes intrude into the atmosphere. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict could not escape the otherwise politics free conference.

Not all friendly

"Unless we get to the core of the issue, we are pussyfooting around," said Nazlin Umar Rajput, chairwoman of the National Muslim Council of Kenya. "It is a fight over ownership of land."

After abruptly changing the schedule when a session dealing with family issues turned heated, organizers again rushed to calm tempers later in the week.

At one point, Muslim delegates stood up and shouted when a moderator tried to halt a Palestinian professor from the Gaza Strip who said life under Israeli occupation was like being in "a large prison."....

For the rest of the article, click here...

By Ashley Perry

Rabbi receives Muslim award

2006-03-29T20:51:00.000-08:00

Augsburg Rabbi Henry Brandt is the first Jew to receive the prestigious Muhammad-Nafi-Tschelebi Prize for his commitment to interfaith dialogue – in particular for his rapprochement efforts with Islamic communities in Germany.

The Central Institute Islam–Archive honoured the rabbi with the 2,500 euro award “for the way in which he brought about understanding between Muslims and Jews”, according to the institute’s chairman, Salim Abdullah.

Abdullah called Brandt, “a pioneer”.

“Such dialogue among Muslim communities can not be taken for granted,” writes Chaim Guski of the Jewish monthly Juedische Zeitung (JZ), unlike the 60-year tradition of dialogue between Christians and Jews.

JZ said the challenges faced by Jews and Muslims today were very similar. As far as these two minority groups are concerned, they often share the same problems that arise from religious precepts that are astoundingly similar - from analogous dietary regulations to comparable languages and timetables of prayer....

For cull article, click here.

By Oliver Bradley

David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean

2006-03-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an "Israel lobby" is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke.

The Palestine Liberation Organization mission to Washington is distributing the paper, which also is being hailed by a senior member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization.

But the paper, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," by the Kennedy School's Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, is meeting with a more critical reception from many of those it names as part of the lobby. The 83-page "working paper" claims a network of journalists, think tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America to invade Iraq. Included in this network, the authors say, are the editors of the New York Times, the scholars at the Brookings Institution, students at Columbia, "pro-Israel" senior officials in the executive branch, and "neoconservative gentiles" including columnist George Will.

Duke, a former Louisiana state legislator and one-time Ku Klux Klan leader, called the paper "a great step forward," but he said he was "surprised" that the Kennedy School would publish the report.

"I have read about the report and read one summary already, and I am surprised how excellent it is," he said in an e-mail. "It is quite satisfying to see a body in the premier American University essentially come out and validate every major point I have been making since even before the war even started." Duke added that "the task before us is to wrest control of America's foreign policy and critical junctures of media from the Jewish extremist Neocons that seek to lead us into what they expectantly call World War IV."

Mr. Walt said last night, "I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world."....

For full article, click here...

By ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the NYSun

Bush Reaffirms Ties With Leading Neocons

2006-03-29T20:42:00.000-08:00

If the medium is the message, then U.S. President George W. Bush's choice of forum to launch a new public campaign to defend his beleaguered Iraq policy should be troubling to those, particularly in Europe, who had hoped that his administration was moving toward a more evenhanded stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The staunchly neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), one of the most hawkish groups on the "war on terror" since it was created two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon, has often taken strident positions against Arab and European allies whose cooperation has been sought by the administration itself.

Part of an interlocking network of neoconservative-dominated groups that include the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Committee on the Present Danger, which it founded, FDD has also tried to build support here for "regime change" in Syria and
Iran...

For remainder of article, click here:
by Jim Lobe

Kadima leads, Pensioners shock, Likud crashes

2006-03-29T20:33:00.000-08:00

Kadima, headed by Ehud Olmert, will probably form the next coalition, following its win in yesterday's elections, although it garnered a smaller number of seats than had been predicted over the past weeks.

The Pensioners' list, Gil, was the big surprise of yesterday's elections, according to last night's exit polls, published after the closing of polling stations at 10 P.M. The Pensioners' Party, which did not manage to pass the electoral threshold in the last elections, received eight to 10 seats, depending on the exit poll.

Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by Avigdor Lieberman, also chalked up a major achievement, going from seven seats to an expected 12 to 14; it is now the third largest party.

The Likud was apparently shunted into fourth place with 11 to 12 seats predicted by the exit polls.

Kadima is expected to receive between 29 to 32 seats, down from the 36 to 38 predicted by opinion polls over the past weeks.

The exit polls gave Labor between 20 and 22 seats, slightly better than the polls before the elections. The gap between Labor and Kadima will dictate to a great extent the nature of coalition negotiations, and it was predicted differently by the various TV exit polls. Channel 1 projected the smallest gap - seven seats, while Channel 10 forecast the largest - 11 seats.

Meretz is expected to enter the 17th Knesset with five seats, one less than in the 16th Knesset, while Shas seems to be keeping its number steady at 10 to 11. United Torah Judaism, with five or six seats, may have one more MK in the 17th Knesset. The United Arab List-Ta'al received three to four seats; Hadash, two to three, while Balad is teetering on the brink of the threshold of a seat.

The distribution of seats according to the exit polls show that the National Union-National Religious Party's eight to nine seats will not allow it to form an obstructing bloc even if it were joined by the Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and the ultra-Orthodox parties.

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said last night that the public had said yes to the convergence plan he presented three weeks ago in the media. He also reiterated that if Israel were not able to negotiate with the Palestinians, it would take its fate into its own hands and act unilaterally.

Labor chairman Amir Peretz said yesterday in private conversation that ...

For remainder of article, click here.

By Gideon Alon, Yuval Yoaz and Yossi Verter

Debate Between Shlomo Ben Ami and Norman Finkelstein

2006-03-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

To listen to this debate between Ben Ami and Finkelstein on the Israel-Palestine conflict from Democracy Now, click here.

For a transcript, click here.

PBS Frontline's Report on Olmert

2006-03-29T20:27:00.000-08:00

Click here.

Haniyeh says won't oppose talks between PA head Abbas, Israel

2006-03-29T20:22:00.000-08:00

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday after the swearing-in ceremony for his cabinet in Gaza that the Hamas government is prepared to give negotiations between Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Israel a chance.

"The problem is not the Palestinian side or its consent to negotiations, but that Israel does not honor commitments it already undertook in negotiations. If the Authority chairman, as the elected president, wants to get the negotiations moving, we have no objection to that. If what Abu Mazen presents to the people as a result of negotiations serves its interest, then we too will redefine our position," Haniyeh said.

The cabinet of 24 (including Haniyeh) was sworn in at a ceremony that took place simultaneously in Gaza and Ramallah by means of video conference. The 14 ministers from the West Bank and 10 from the Gaza Strip will not be able to attend cabinet meetings together because of the Israeli ban on traveling from one region to the other.

By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent, and AP

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Peretz: We will march toward peace and social justice

2006-03-29T20:20:00.000-08:00

After 70 percent of the votes in Tuesday's elections were counted, the Labor Party appeared set to receive 20 seats in the upcoming Knesset.

Following initial exit poll results, Chairman Amir Peretz told supporters at the party's Petah Tikva headquarters that "a real social-democratic movement was established in the state of Israel tonight... We are going to establish a new society."

Despite the relatively disappointing results - Labor had been hoping to win at least 24 seats - hundreds of celebratory Labor activists greeted Peretz with applause and cheer.

"I want you to know I love you," Peretz told his supporters. "Despite the fact that others tried to take the wind from the sails out of the social revolution, it lives and breathes... we are the only party that will make sure the next government will march toward peace and social justice."

Labor figures insisted that the difference between their party's results and those of Kadima - set to receive 28 seats - is negligible. MK Isaac Herzog said, "Before the elections, everyone mourned the Labor Party, but it succeeded in changing the order of the day in the state."

Avishai Braverman, third on Labor's list, also invoked Labor's emphasis on social issues, saying, "We have changed the agenda in the sate. Even after the Yom Kippur war, it took four years for an upheaval to take place. Today, the bang has begun to roll."

In praise of the party's chairman, Shelly Yachimovitch (Labor) called Amir Peretz the "undisputed leader of the Labor Party."

Former prime minister Ehud Barak, who refrained from campaigning for Peretz due to political differences between the two, congratulated Peretz for preserving Labor's strength.

Labor MK Yuli Tamir said that the party will sit in a coalition only if its political and social platform is adopted. "We have clear guidelines for a coalition we're willing to sit in," Tamir said.

Dan Yatom of Labor said the results of the exit polls showed a defeat for Kadima and victory for Labor.

"According to these exit polls this is a severe defeat for Kadima. This is a big achievement for the Labor Party," he said.

"As far as the coalition is concerned, we will wait and see. I am very satisfied with these results."

Meretz disappointed with only five seats
Disappointment was palpable in the Meretz camp on Tuesday night, after 70 percent of votes counted pointed to only five seats for the leftist party, down from six in the 2003 elections.

Speaking before party activists in Tel Aviv, Chairman Yossi Beilin expressed hope that the official results would give the party another seat. Beilin noted that Meretz would be ready to sit in the opposition, and would not be willing to join a coalition government unconditionally.

"We will not sit in a coalition that won't make changes to the welfare system and return some government allowances. We will not sit in a government with the Likud, National Union or Yisrael Beiteinu."

If Meretz does not pick up a sixth seat, Zvia Greenfield, ultra-Orthodox writer, peace activist and doctor of philosophy, will not make it into the Knesset. Greenfield said Tuesday night, "I am worried about the disintegration of responsibility among the public. I'm worried that a party with roots and long-term commitment does not win, while a fake party that nobody has heard of is growing. This is a disconcerting sign of political instability."

Greenfield expressed regret that she would not be a part of the next Knesset.

By Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Click here for full article

Kadima to start setting up coalition negotiating team

2006-03-29T20:17:00.000-08:00

After Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared election victory early Wednesday, his confidants said Shas and the Pensioners' Party would be partners in the new government. During the course of the day Wednesday, Kadima will set up its negotiating team and begin working to create Israel's next ruling coalition.

The statement by Olmert's associates appears to be the reflection of results in which Kadima won far fewer seats than it had hoped and in which Shas and the Pensioners' Party garnered more than expected.

Kadima member Haim Ramon said Wednesday morning he expects the new government to be presented immediately after the Passover holiday.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Ramon said Kadima will be able to implement a withdrawal from the West Bank with the support of between 70 and 80 Knesset members. He added the Labor Party would be "a possible central partner" in the coalition and emphasized "social issues will not be a hindrance in coalition negotiations."

With 99.5 percent of the vote counted, Kadima had a less than expected 28 seats. Labor held at 20 seats, and Shas rose to 13, making the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party the third largest faction in the Knesset.

As of Wednesday morning, election observers had yet to count the votes of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Israeli diplomats abroad, hospitalized patients, incarcerated citizens and Israeli mariners. Their votes could alter the final results slightly.

The Likud had hoped to block a center-left coalition, but with almost all of the votes in weakened to 11 seats, far below the figures the party had hoped and a far cry from the 38 seats it won under Ariel Sharon in 2003.

Avigdor Lieberman's Russian immigrant-dominated faction Yisrael Beiteinu captured 12 seats, positioning itself as the chief opposition party to head the nationalist camp.

In the largest surprise of the night, the Pensioners' Party won seven seats. The right-wing National Union-National Religious Party secured nine seats, with United Torah Judaism at six and Meretz at four. The Arab parties won a total of ten seats.

Exit polls released as polling stations closed at 10 P.M. Tuesday showed center-left parties gaining a total of between 62 and 66 seats, with Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima winning 29 to 32 seats, Labor 20-22 seats, Meretz five and the Arab parties seven to eight seats.

Lowest voter turnout in history
The total voter turnout was 63.2 percent, by far the lowest percentage in Israel's history. The previous low was notched in 2003, when 68 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots.

While the results pointed to a new government headed by Olmert, he would likely seek additional partners to broaden his coalition and shore up support for such policy moves as a further withdrawal in the West Bank.

Netanyahu: Sharon left us a shattered movement
Kadima, which had slipped in polls in recent weeks, was jubilant over the results, as were Labor Party officials.

"Kadima has won today. The next prime minister is Ehud Olmert," said Kadima MK Roni Bar-On, who, like Olmert and a host of other senior political figures, had followed Sharon out of the Likud to found a new centrist party.

Labor Party candidates said their party had won a victory as well, apparently exceeding the predictions of recent opinion surveys.

"I am quite satisfied. This party is now considered a serious party, and this is a success story tonight," said Collette Avital, a senior Labor Party member.

There was dejection in the Likud camp, which had difficulty regrouping after the party split late last year into rival factions headed by Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Although the actual results have yet to arrive, we have no doubt that the Likud has sustained a heavy blow," Netanyahu told party activists.

In a direct swipe at Sharon, Netanyahu said the party had already been hard hit when "the former head of the party left it - and left us - a broken, shattered movement."

Netanyahu said he would stay on as party chairman. "We intend to continue along the path we have only just begun in order to ensure this movement is rehabilitated and takes its rightful place in the nation's leadership," he told reporters.

Just before Netanyahu spoke, a buoyed Lieberman told well-wishers that he had no doubt that in the next election, Yisrael Beiteinu would become Israel's ruling party.

Rafi Eitan, leader of the Pensioners party, turned aside questions as to the faction's positions on matters of state. But he was forthright on the goals the party has set for itself, safeguarding the future of senior citizens. "We'll achieve our goals within one year," he said.

For full article, click here:

By Haaretz Service

Abramoff Gets Almost 6 Years in Prison

2006-03-29T20:12:00.000-08:00

MIAMI - Assuring the judge he is working to become "a new man," disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced Wednesday to nearly six years in prison for committing fraud in the purchase of a fleet of gambling boats.

He will remain free while helping prosecutors with a vast bribery investigation involving members of Congress.

Abramoff, 47, and former business partner Adam Kidan, 41, received the minimum under federal guidelines: five years and 10 months.

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer

For full article, click here.

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